Septemberry 2: Sparkling Berry

Today’s make-up: sparkling berry toned eyeshadow worn in the crease paired with shiny shiny lips.

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a good close up shot of my eye make-up but you can see in the photo below that the berry eyeshadow is very subtle, which makes this an accessible way to wear a berry tone on the eyes. I applied a wash of pale pink cream eyeshadow over my lids to my crease then worked some shimmering berry eyeshadow along my crease from outer to inner corner.

The shadow that I used was Glitter Rock from the Urban Decay Moondust range. They’re basically pressed micro-glitters which have some pros and cons: the fall out is nowhere near as horrific as with Urban Decay’s somewhat old-fashioned chunky glitter shadows but you still get the same sparkly effect, and they’re very sheer which is either an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what you’re looking for. If you hope to achieve the colour in the pan then basically your best bet is to pack the colour on over a (preferably slightly sticky) base and press it on with your finger tips though even then I don’t know if it’s really going to be as opaque. However, if you like the sound of a subtle sheen over your eyelids then you can easily achieve that with these shadows.

I found it difficult to capture the sparkle I was trying to describe in my photos today but I hope you can appreciate some of the effect from the photos below. The pic on the left is a single swipe from my fingertip, while the pic on the right is the same swipe (no extra product applied) blended out across my arm.

With Eyeshadow Like This, Who Needs Eyeliner?

I used my current favourite, Urban Decay’s Glinda palette, to create this messy smoky eye with a huge aubergine flick. I didn’t blend the eyeshadows together at all as I wanted to keep the stark, graphic contrast at the point where the shadows met. I thought the eyeshadows looked pretty good on their own so I skipped the eyeliner and just added some mascara and a translucent lipgloss and I was good to go.

I wouldn’t wear this to the office but I would definitely wear this as a weekend day look. For evening I would probably smudge a bit of khol pencil along my outer upper lash line for some added intensity.

 

 

 

The shades I used from the Glinda palette were: Tornado (top left) and South (bottom right).

Fun Daytime look for Autumn 2013

Hellooooo again! So the explanation for my three month blogging hiatus is that I actually moved across the country from London to Edinburgh a month ago and have been very busy organising the move and setting into my new home.

If you’d like any more info on my life in London and/or Edinburgh in general then there will be more updates coming soon to my “life” blog at http://ahteem.wordpress.com/

But back to make-up which is mainly the point of this blog. Today I’m easing myself back into blogging with a simple daytime look featuring metallic earth tones on the eyes and a lovely subtle matt peachy lip.

Above: I used the shades “Oz” (the olive shade) and “South” from my Urban Decay Glinda palette (pictured below – these are the two shadows in the bottom right)

The result on the eyes is quite subtle and perfect for a lazy (this took me about five min to apply) but fun daytime look. A word of warning though – there is bad glitter fallout from both of these shades, so have a glitter busting solution on hand (such as some gentle sticky tape to lift the glitter off the skin with, or some loose face powder to try to brush the glitter off with) when you apply these to clean up all the glitter that will land on your face from these shadows!

I did a “triple flick” eyeliner shape or as I prefer to think of it – drawn on lashes! It’s just a fun way to shake up your eyeliner routine if you’ve gotten into a winged-out rut like me and always wear your eyeliner in the same way but fancy trying something a bit different. The liner I used was 24/7 liquid liner in Smog by Urban Decay which is a lovely deep khaki green shade which complements these particular shadows perfectly.

Finally I patted on a matt peach lipstick – I used Accessoize matt lipstick in Smitten. As you can see from the pic it’s a gorgeous colour but it’s a bit difficult to work with as the dry texture tends to settle into the fine lines of the lips. My solution is to pat it on from the bullet then work it into the lips with a lipbrush, mixing with another creamier orange lipstick if necessary. I think the end result is worth the effort though and it’s the shade that I’ve been reaching for time and again the past few weeks.

Big Bang

I got this Urban Decay Super Saturated lip pencil in Big Bang for Christmas but hadn’t played around with it until this weekend. I’m not sure if I really approve of lipsticks/glosses that come in pencil form that you have to sharpen because it feels like an awful waste of product. Anyhow I will try to remember to stick this one in the fridge for a couple of hours before sharpening it as that will make the product harder and hopefully cut down on waste a little.

Big Bang is a beautiful bright fuschia with plenty of sparkle thrown in. It actually matches the colour on the barrel of the pencil quite closely. I wore this for four hours before eating some scampi and chips after which it was still on my lips, then I had to remove it with make-up remover as I was going to a party and wanted to wear a different colour on my lips. So to conclude, if you’re looking for a long lasting bright pink, this could be your lippie. Super Saturated lip pencils retail for around £14 for 2.8g in the UK.

Chuck out Your Black Liner

Or if chucking out your black liner seems a bit dramatic, at least consider packing it away until the autumn! I love coloured and light eyeliners in the spring and summer.

Today I’ve got some shots of a pink eyeshadow teamed with an antique gold liner. I think it’s a great colour combo for the lighter, brighter days we’re enjoying now that it’s spring.

The eyeshadow that I’m wearing is Magic from the Urban Decay Glinda palette. I like to apply it over a creamy base for maximum colour payoff.

The liner that I used was Waterproof Gel Eyeliner by BarryM in No. 3. I actually picked up this product a couple of weeks back because I thought the colour was interesting but not expecting anything spectacular but I have to say, I think this product is fantastic and I’m really glad I picked it up. It is very long lasting and I just love the colour. I just wish that they had more colours in the range as I would snap up any more slightly unusual colours they came out with. I’ve done another post with more pics here.

Urban Decay Glinda Palette

Today I have some pics and swatches of one of my latest acquisitions, the Urban Decay Glinda palette. This is one of two palettes that Urban Decay have released in conjunction with the Disney film Oz the Great and Powerful. I’m not a fan of Disney but I liked the colours in this palette so I decided to pick it up.

The palette comes in a cardboard box with a picture of Michelle Williams as Glinda on the back, along with the shades and names of the colours in the palette. Inside there’s also a card with the same picture of Michelle Williams and a guide on how to use the colours in the palette to achieve the look. To be honest though, Michelle’s make-up in the picture looks nothing like the look on the card which is a smokey purple as you can’t actually see any of her eyeshadow in the photo that they chose to use!

Shades from left to right, top row: Tornado, Aura (duo eyeshadow), Magic.

Bottom row: Illusion, Oz (duo eyeshadow), South

The lid of the palette is filled with a massive mirror, but it doesn’t stand up on its own so is quite awkward to use. I prefer to use a smaller, handheld mirror when doing my make-up.

The palette also comes with a 3/4 sized 24/7 eye pencil in the aubergine shade “Rockstar” (which I now have about 3 different versions of from various palettes and collections…) and a super-saturated lip gloss pencil in a nude shade (not pictured here).

The palette is housed in the new “Build Your Own” packaging which to be honest I’m not a fan of. It’s very bulky and the eyeshadow pans don’t seem to sit quite right. I don’t know why they didn’t come up with a magnetic system seeing as their eyeshadows sit in metallic pans. Anyhow it is nice that you can pop the colours out and swap them around however the fancy takes you.

Tornado

Aura

Magic

Illusion

Oz

South

Rockstar

Left to right: Tornado, Aura, Magic, Illusion, Oz, South, Rockstar

Above: Illusion, Oz, South, Rockstar

I do really like the selection of colours in this palette, with the duo-chrome sheens on Aura being particularly beautiful (my photos don’t do them full justice). I also like the fact that you can create both a subtle day time look or a smokier, more glamourous look with the colours in the palette.

The shadows are all smooth and pigmented, and there isn’t too much glitter in this palette thankfully which is usually Urban Decay’s weak point (in that their glitter eyeshadows tend to fall down from the eyelids and all over the face!). I would say that if you are interested in these colours and looking for a new everyday palette then this is definitely worth checking out. The price of £35 RRP actually represents excellent value for money when you consider that their eyeshadows normally retail at £14 EACH – so for the price of this whole set you would normally only be able to pick up 2 and a bit eyeshadows, but here you get 6 full sized shadows in 8 shades (thanks to the two duo shadows), a lip gloss pencil (also usually £14 each) and a 3/4 sized eye pencil.

Warmth Added

I’ve been wearing mostly cool toned, white based shimmery eyeshadows all winter long so far, so last weekend I decided to wear some gold-based eye make-up for a change. I also added some orangey red lipstick which I think complimented my eyeshadow really nicely.

The eyeliner that I used which is a 24/7 liquid eyeliner in Smog by Urban Decay is one of my favourite colours – it’s an olive toned dark gold that is the perfect complement to warm/brown based looks that you don’t want to overwhelm by using a black eyeliner. I skipped mascara as my eyes have been watering so much lately that it’s a guaranteed path to panda eyes for me at the moment, and in the dim light of winter evenings I don’t think the lack of mascara makes too much difference to the overall effect of my eye make-up. I do think it would look more balanced with mascara but it’s just too much maintenance for me so I’d rather skip it and save myself the hassle.

Incidentally I have been growing my eyebrows out and I’m really glad that I managed to resist plucking them until they got to this stage, as I’m now happy that they look a good shape from a distance and require absolutely no maintenance whatsoever, for the first time in fifteen years! I know they look rather straggly and wild in the close up above but there is no way anybody looks at my eyebrows that closely in everyday life so the close-up isn’t really a good reflection of how they really look. OK so it’s a minor achievement but an achievement none the less I feel!

From the Archives

I haven’t posted anything for almost a month, mostly because it’s been so dark here in London now that winter’s coming that all my photos look really crummy lol, so I thought that I’d post a picture taken a few months back when it was a bit more bright and summery.

Here I’m modelling yet another pair of cat’s ears (I have four now, I get a kick out of collecting them for some reason – these particular ones were Halloween specials from Accessorize) and some peach and green eyeshadow, probably Snatch and Grafitti by Urban Decay.

Stay tuned for some wintery posts coming up this week!

Downsizing with DVD Palettes

Check out my latest stack of new eyeshadow palettes!

Well, sort of new. This week I got all crafty with most of my huge boxed palettes and depotted a ton of eyeshadows into DVD cases. There are empty palettes available that you can buy for this purpose; the one that springs to mind is the Z Palette which is available in the UK from the website Love Make Up, but they are quite expensive with prices starting at £9 (and going up to £16+ for a palette this size) and since I had a boxful of empty DVD cases anyway I thought I really ought to use them instead of spending a ton on expensive palettes.

My boyfriend was kind of impressed and shocked in equal measure when I showed him what I’d created ha ha. He was impressed by the idea – which unfortunately I can’t take credit for as it’s a well-covered topic on YouTube, where I first saw it, but shocked that I would want to get rid of all the cool packaging. However I had to depot one of my Urban Decay Book of Shadows as one of the shadows had gone bad so I had to get rid of it and also ideally re-house the others at the same time, and I was so pleased with the results that I decided to depot my Book of Shadows IV at the same time. The shadows just weren’t getting the attention they deserved at all because I never have time to deal with the unwieldy packaging in the mornings.

This palette contains the entire contents of my Urban Decay Book of Shadows II and IV.

As that was my first ever attempt at depotting I did crack and chip a few of the shadows, but the result is still honestly better than the set-up I had before, whereby the massive palettes had just ended up being stored out of sight and out of mind in a corner. You can see that all of the shadows have hardly been touched even though I’ve had the BoS II for about three years (!!) and the BoS IV for one year. Now they’re so accessible I use them much more.

I also went and depotted my massive Front Cover palettes. By this time I had done a bit more research and I used the oven-method as described in this YouTube video by Gossmakeupartist. It’s very simple and effective but you must pay attention and be careful when you do this as high temperatures are involved and you could easily burn yourself.

As well as empty cases to house the shadows in you’ll also need a tool to prise the eyeshadows out with and glue to stick them down into the new cases with. I used some nail scissors and an all purpose glue by UHU.

Here’s an example of how much space one DVD palette can save. This palette contains all the eyeshadows that were housed in this massive case.

I just wrote the names of the shadows on a piece of notepaper and stuck it to the front of the DVD case.

I also depotted some larger domed baked shadows. These are a bit higher than shadows in flat pans so they did suffer a small amount of indentation from the opposite side of the case, but again I would much rather have them in this much more accessible format and slightly dented than have them lying neglected in their original packaging.

I also created a DVD lipgloss palette which I think looks quite cool :) I just depotted these by prising them out of the cases with the nail scissors as they are cream products and would have melted and things might have become a little messy if I had heated them in the oven.

What do you think about depotting shadows into cases? Do you love your original packaging too much, or does it just sit around a bit neglected like mine did?