3 days 'til Christmas: Holographic Eyes

Another tinsel inspired look from me, this is a very easy to do look which is more dedicated to a technique than to a specific color or style. 

Iridescent eyeshadows, on top of plain colors like white, black, and brown, come to life in different ways. Here I have given you the example of the effects of two different loose pigments on top of white and black eyeshadows.

 For this, I am using the NARS Pandora palette which is a satin finish white and a matte black as my base colors to apply on top of. My two pigments are Slag by O.C.C and Dragon Scales by Lime Crime. Dragon Scales is a discontinued product by Lime Crime but both MAC and Illamasqua make loose and pressed colors very similar.

You can see here how Slag is more yellow on white and how Dragon Scales is more blue on black. This chameleon effect provides a lot of versatility and fun to your products. Any color underneath brings out a different tone of the pigment.

For this look, I used the Pandora palette underneath and the two pigments on top to create a festive look. My foundation is bare minerals matte powder paired with Shu Eumura contouring bronzer and highlighter. I used the limited edition Legendary blush from the MAC Marilyn Monroe collection. The icing on this cake is my lovely nude lip done with NARS satin lip pencil in Biscayne Park. 

5 days until Christmas Makeup Tutorial, Easy

Coming up to Christmas I am doing daily tutorials of different party looks you can do to impress the family and look your best! Today I did five minute super easy smokey eye and red lips look.

I used Benefit Big Easy bb cream foundation on my skin with Illamasqua's contouring powder duo.

My lips are Lancome liquid lipstick in 197, classic red.

My eyes are Anastasia Brow Pomade, 

Maybelline Big Eyes dual end pencil, 

and Maybelline Colossal Lash Mascara.

By Requests, About Brows

Nothing, NOTHING, is more important than good eyebrows.

I take great pride in eyebrows. I recently was attempting the Cara Delevigne bushy brows and realized that I looked just absolutely ridiculous. I see a lot of people work it but I have a masculine haircut so big brows just made me look questionable. 

I have gone for medium thickness angular brow for now, shaped using an eyebrow razor. I prefer to use an eyebrow razor in between waxing because I hate getting my eyebrows waxed and plucking is just torture! (I whine... a lot)

My main advice for those looking to those looking to fine tune their brows there are two things I recommend and neither of them are at home. As a professional, I always say leave it to the professionals. I can only provide so much advice on brow shape online but a local professional can really give you maximum results.

My favorite brow fixing brands are:

The HD brow system is expanding though I believe it is currently only in the UK and Ireland. This brilliant eyebrow system gives you eyebrows on fleek with an arch of envy! The beauty therapist waxes, threads, tints and fills the brows while teaching you all about achieving the best brow.

I am a personal mega fan of Benefit and I will never get my brows waxed anywhere else. It is more than likely psychosomatic but I feel like their wax hurts less. Benefit Brow Specialists have intense training in mapping, planning and executing flawless though natural looking brows. They teach you the art of eyebrow filling and shaping with their wide range of eyebrow products. 

I am currently using the Anastasia Brows brand brow pomade in the color, Chocolate. Recommended to me in Sephora at the Mall of America, it is my all time favorite brow product of all time. When picking an eyebrow color, go my your root color or the color of the low lights in your hair or like some, any bright color or epic glitter that you do so please.

I use an angle brush and an eyebrow brush. 

The pictures are step by step explaining my application process.

Tinsel Inspired Manicure

This is an extreme easy manicure that will make you sparkle bright this holiday season. 

You can use any variation of glitter but I used silver and gold. Glitter is forgiving so no worry about technique, it will not show your mistakes!

I used:

Nail HQ Argan Oil Base Coat

Maybelline Crystallise Nails in Light Up

OPI James Bond Collection- Goldfinger 

Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat

LOTD: Venus Palette

Using Muse, Rebirth and Venus from the Lime Crime Venus. Maybelline Colossal Lash mascara and Anastasia Brows brow pomade. 

My Lime Crime Collection

I mention on my facebook page and on here quite regularly my use of Lime Crime products because I adore them because of their versatility and striking colors. The products, especially the lip products, have such a different texture in comparison to other brands I use and that texture it memorable in appearance.

Let me introduce you to this rising empire by showing you the Lime Crime products I own! But first, about the brand...

Doe Deere, CEO of Lime Crime Cosmetics

Lime Crime is a cruelty free and vegan brand brought forth by the imagination of the queen unicorn herself, Doe Deere. She came to fame as a nirvana loving model from Russia. Now married and creating a living doll house with her husband, she rules this girly "nu-grunge" brand with ever expanding product lines to please all.

I have been collecting Lime Crime products for about three years and I have yet to be disappointed. I did have a reaction to their gold eyeliner but oddly enough I have had reactions to gold liquid eyeliner from four different brands. My skin refuses to let me fabulous.

I keep all my goodies in my Lime Crime shipper box. When ordering from Lime Crime directly your box it came in is reversible into that gorgeous black floral lovely! My collection is ever growing I plan on having a lot more than this.

I will start off with the oldest Lime Crime product I have (and worship) that Lime Crime no longer makes. This is Dragon Scales loose eyeshadow.

Extremely hard to photograph because of its multi-tonal holographic appearance so I pulled a picture off the internet to help me. Dragon Scales is a blue, brown, terracotta, purple magic? It simply just looks like dragon scales!

From Oldest to Newest, I have just bought the new Venus palette which is supposed to bring Lime Crime into a new era from unicorns to "nu-grunge" which is a term Doe Deere has invented.

Completely made of warm red tones in a mixture of satin and matte finishes. They are extremely pigmented and have a striking effect on brightening eye color. I have even experimented with using some of the colors for blusher contouring. 

It is funny how much of an effect packaging has on the decisions you make. The first thing to ever turn me on to this brand was the purple lipstick tubes with holographic unicorns on them. I like when my makeup is pretty but it is really important to me that my makeup compact and packaging is pretty as well. It adds to that luxury and that pampering princess feel you want to get when you have spent absolute fortunes on products.

Airborne Unicorn- pastel neon purple satin finish

My Beautiful Rocket- coral infused orange satin finish

Geradium- pretty princess pink satin finish

Poisonberry- deep glittery purple metallic finish

When it comes to pretty packaging. The Carousel Glosses have always been my favorite. They are so elaborate and girly. The gloss collections are all extremely shiny and packed full of glitter.

This is Present. A gloss released for Christmas. It has a cranberry tone with three different shades of red, pink and cranberry glitter specks that make this product a show stopper. I ended up being very dissatisfied with the tackiness and texture of gloss but I never ever wear lipgloss. I mix the gloss with lip colors for the glitter effect but I never use it directly.

Uniliner liquid precision eyeliners go unnoticed which is sad because these are such strongly pigmented beautiful eyeliners available in colors I do not see anywhere else. I mentioned it above but this gold eyeliner, Ryhme, did cause a serious reaction on my eyes but i have used it on other people and they have had no issues and loved it!

Blue Milk- pastel sky blue, matte

Quill- jet black, leather finish

Rhyme- gold with gold glitter

Lazuli- lapsis lazuli blue, matte

Orchidacious- shocking pink-purple

I have a glitter problem, I love it all. When they introduced their Zodiac Glitters, things got real. Each glitter is themed around the horoscopes. Though a Virgo, I liked Scorpio better.

 Scorpio is an olive green and gold with hints of teal and purple

 I am not an eye primer believer because none have ever prevented creasing on my greasy eyelids. The Lime Crime Eyeshadow Helper brightens the applied shadow and near acts like a velcro, grabbing the shadow and packing it on the lid. 

Over the years Lime Crime has made themed palettes in beautiful purple unicorn tins. This particular collection is Alchemy, themed around old school gypsies, fortune tellers, and well, alchemy. All the shadows have a opalescent and satin finish and are extremely bright on the skin.

 Divination- teal blue satin finish

Spellbound- creamy ivory with pearly look

Love Potion No. 9- purple with lots of shimmer

Lucky Charm- olive green with a soft satin finish

Incantation- coppery orange with a bright mirror shine

Okay, these.....are the goods. These took Lime Crime from a small cult brand to a raging international trend. These liquid lipsticks dry to an extremely matte finish that does not rub off the lips and really does have the velvet look. the application tip makes a really strong line around the edge of the lips. The colors are intense and very heavily pigmented thus making a trendy statement lip that is very kissable. These are like pokemon cards to me, I need to have them all.

 Black Velvet- well, it looks like black velvet...if you please

Wicked- dark brick red with a berry undertone

Red Velvet- true red (my favorite makeup product to ever be invented)

Utopia- neon pinky purple

Suedeberry- a muted coral-red 

(not pictured because it came in the mail late) Pink Velvet- neon barbie pink

This is the entire range of Velvetines and I wanted to show you because three of the colours are not being sold yet but I obsess over these and plan on having them all!!!!!

Velvetine Complete Range recently released by Lime Crime HQ

I saved this for the bottom because it is completely unrelated to the quality of the products Lime Crime makes. The brand lately has been making business mistakes that are costing them a lot of clientele. For example, just two weeks before Christmas they stopped sending product to Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. Mostly, their customer service is appalling and I thought I had just had a bad few experiences but then I read online about the amount of people torn up over their lack and good customer care. It is very obvious that this brand grew a lot faster than they expected and they have no idea how to handle it. When a product goes out of stock it takes months to go back into stock, they are slow in stocking outside of the united states and just make staying on trend and giving them my money a really difficult process. My order for my Venus palette took nearly six weeks which is just unacceptable.

 Even with the company's bad business plan and rude employees, I will always buy their products because the quality is intense and they are really a niche girly brand offering 100% vegan products (even though the cruelty free status of their products is regularly argued). This brand will hopefully sort out their faults and rise to be a department store regular serving up immaculate products.

Crayola Crayon Lipsticks

Youtube has presented me with many videos on making lipstick with crayons. I was a complete skeptic and was not sure about putting crayons on my lips. I thought I would give this odd internet invention a try. Crayola has always been my favorite brand and they regularly advertise the non toxicity of their products which put me more at ease...

For this, I went to my local Tescos to pick up the supplies as per Promise Tamang Phan's lovely video tutorial; Coconut Oil, Crayons, and small plastic mixing cups.

My local Tesco only sold glitter crayons which was not an upset for me at all! I love glitter. Bought a tub of Vita Coco coconut oil and the closest thing to mini plastic tubs was these hard plastic shot glasses. though lidless this was an experiment I wanted to keep as cheap as possible.

There were five colors in the pack that I thought suited as conventional lipstick colors.
Glitter Crayons do not have names so I have appropriately named them, from left to right:
Dark Red, Berry, Red, Purple and Princess Pink

To prep for the melting and mixing, I got a non stick skillet and put the hob on the lowest heat setting just to get the skillet warm enough to stay warm and then turned it off. I heated my kettle to boiling and prepped my cups in the skillet with half an inch of the hot water.

Each cup was prepped with a teaspoon of coconut oil which melts very quickly to get nice and warm so when i add the crayons they will melt a lot easier.

The crayons had their paper wrappers removed and i snapped them into chunks. For faster melting time, you can use a knife and mince the crayon into tons of very small pieces.

Now we combine everything. melting coconut oil, crushed crayons, and the heat of hot kettle water.
All the videos I watched made it seem like this melted quite quickly but it too ages! Each pot took about 10 or 15 minutes to melt completely and needed regular stirring for the coconut oil to completely mix with the crayon wax. The more crayon you use, the thicker the coverage but also the more like a crayon it will dry to. One spoon of coconut oil for every crayon.
For a soft satin finish, add more coconut oil.

All melted I start to see them as lipsticks. I sat the cups on a paper towel and laid a piece of cling film of the top to avoid dust drying into my little lovelies. Because all the wax and oil where in the cups, there was virtually no mess afterwards

Finished, they have dried and look like shot glasses of homemade lipstick!

Still worried these are not going to give a good look on skin.

On the top of my hand here, with flash, these are my colors!
They have the texture of Vaseline lip care tins and a lot less coverage on the lips than expected but it is still a lovely soft sheen.

Coconut Oil is extremely hydrating and restorative for skin so during the winter using these will prevent lip chapping 
while looking extremely fabulous!

Experiment Completed. I will probably never do this again because of the really light coverage and because I am a lipstick snob but it did work and it was insanely easy and inexpensive.

For the DIY lover, this is for you! 

Look of The Day: Channeling my inner Jeffree Star

I always find a way to channel my inner 

Jeffree Star in a 'going out' makeup look!

For those who do not know, Jeffree Star is an extremely talented makeup artist, model, recording artist and come Christmas, CEO of Jeffree Star Cosmetics 

(link to his cosmetics through his facebook page and blog).

His hair- always the most dazzling shade of pink, his lipstick always on point, and his illuminating contouring- brighter than the diamantes on his fingernails! I am always so inspired!

To channel my J, Star, I smoked up my eyes using the 

NARS 'pandora' matte eyeshadow duo (white and black), 

Shu Uemura highlighting/bronzing duo, 

and Lime Crime Pink Velvet liquid lipstick.

Five Minute Face

Everyone knows when you say "Ready in five minutes" 

you truly mean "Ready in an hour". 

Sometimes your husband says we need to go in ten minutes and you are still in your pajamas... thus where this look came from.

Using a minimal amount of products and as simply applied as possible, this is my five minute face.

I styled my hair using dry shampoo and spray wax by Bumble & Bumble

Illamasqua Hydraveil Primer

Illamasqua Skin Base Foundation no. 7

Benefit Hoola Bronzer and MAC Desert Rose blush

Anastasia Brows Brow Pomade in Chocolate

LUSH Happiness Cream Eyeshadow, Maybelline Colossal Lash

Chanel Classic Red Satin Lipstick

HOW TO QUICKEN YOUR 

MAKEUP ROUTINE ON THE GO

-consider a cream shadow or jumbo pencil 

for quick lovely eyes

-contour! if you are well sculpted, 

everything else can be partially done

-eyebrows and mascara make all the difference, 

you might not even need anything else