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Thursday, March 31, 2011

E.L.F. Beauty Book "Bright Eye Edition"

I first saw these E.L.F. Beauty Books probably about a year and a half ago but I never bought one just because I wasn't sure about them, even though they had gotten good reviews.  So when I was at Target the other day, I checked out their selection.  By the way these are only $5, which for 12 eyeshadows, you can't really beat.  They had the "Bright Eye Edition" and the "Smoky" one.  I was more drawn to the colors in the smokey eye one, but I decided to get the Bright Eye one because of the dark blue/purple color because I thought it might be a good dupe for my Kat Von D "Redemption" which is one of my favorite eyeshadows.

So here is what the palette looks like:

And the inside:
I have to say that I looked in every "Bright Eye Edition" book they had and every single one of them had some broken shadows, this was just the least broken.

And now some swatches (NYX JEP "Milk" as a base):
taken inside with flash
taken outside, no flash
Most of these colors have a nice, silky feel but the medium purple and the dark browns feel chalky and dry.

Three of the colors in this palette reminded me of other colors that I own.
ELF palette vs. Kat Von D "Redemption"
The elf shadow is a bit more blue and not as bright as "Redemption"
top picture is in natural light
ELF palette vs. Urban Decay "Twice Baked"
If the two elf shadows had a baby, they would be Twice Baked
the left picture was taken in natural light
ELF palette vs. NYX "Mermaid Green"
Mermaid Green in a lot lighter and more yellow than the elf shadow
the left picture was taken in natural light
And then I wanted to do a look using this palette exclusively so I could get an idea as to how the colors translated on my eyes.  I used the whole bottom row of the palette over TFSI.

Overall, this palette is just eh.  I really wanted to like it a lot but I'm not thrilled.  Would I buy it again?  No.  The colors aren't terrible but they're not fabulous either.  They blend well but when I see a bright color in the palette, I want to see a bright color on my eye (I do like the greeny/gold highlight color, though).  I'm going to give the rest of the colors a shot another day just to be fair but I don't foresee myself reaching for this very often.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss and a Sunflower inspired look!

When I buy things or do a look, I always get so excited and want to show you everything all at once but then I have this majorly long post and then I have nothing to tell you about the next day haha.  I did a little better since I got a few things yesterday and only showed you one of them so far (even though as soon as I got home, I swatched everything and took pictures).  So on to the next item! 

When I was at Rite Aid yesterday (for the 40% off Revlon sale), I also picked up the Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss in "Papaya" and with the sale it was $5.49.  I had picked it up a few times in different stores and kept putting it back, so I decided to finally just get it.  Almost every single lipgloss from that collection has glitter in it.  I used to be a HUGE glitter fan but lately I just don't like it.  This lipgloss is a little shimmery but has no glitter and the color is just GORGEOUS!!!    
It's a lot more orangey than it appears here
I wanted to show you the color in the tube versus the color it is on my lips as lipgloss usually tends to be very sheer.  I was pleasantly surprised that it's got really good pigmentation, as you can see.
Haha I didn't know which picture would be more helpful so I put both!
I love this color!  The gloss is not sticky AT ALL (which I'm totally skeptical about because almost every lipgloss is at least a little sticky) but my lips didn't even try to stick together.  I would definitely recommend this product!!

The new challenge is up on MakeupGeek, which is flower inspired challenge.  Since I did my "Kingfisher" look I've been wanting to do a sunflower look so this gave me the perfect opportunity to actually do it.  So here's what I came up with (I have the Revlon lipgloss on, layered over MAC Myth!).
On my eyes:
~TFSI
~Ben Nye pigment "Sun Yellow"
~Ben Nye pigment "Tangerine"
~Urban Decay "Twice Baked"
~NYX "Barely There" (highlight)
~Ben Nye "Chartreuse"
~Bobbi Brown gel liner "Black Ink"
~L'oreal Extra Volume Collagen "Blackest Black"

Well, that's all for today, I hope you are having better weather than we are here in North Carolina (it's cold and rainy)!  Have a great day!






Tuesday, March 29, 2011

An oldie but goodie with purple and green!

So like forever ago on MakeupGeek, "UrbanelyDecayed" did a look with a purple smokey lid and a pop of turquoise under her eye.  I loved it and have been doing my version of it every so often ever since.  So this is my look for today:
On my eyes, I have:
~TFSI
~NYX JEP "Black Bean"
~NYX Ultra Pearl Mania "Purple"
~NYX eyeshadow "Black"
~NYX Ultra Pearl Mania "Jade"
~MAC "Vanilla" pigment as a highlight
~Bobbi Brown gel liner "Black Ink"
~L'oreal Extreme Collagen Mascara "Blackest Black"

On my lips I have:
~MAC "Myth" lipstick
~MAC "Viva Glam Gaga"
~L'oreal Infalliable Lipgloss "Suede"

Hey, did you guys know that I love nude lips???  Can you tell haha??  I'd heard all of this raving about Revlon "Soft Nude" lipstick and how it's a good dupe for MAC "Myth".  Well I have "Myth" and I love it!!  I wear it a lot (usually under a lipgloss because I have a hard time wearing only one lip product at a time haha, as you might be able to tell from my 3 lip products that I wore today)!  So I decided since Rite Aid had Revlon cosmetics 40% off this week, it would be a good chance to try this lipstick out (even better that it only cost me $4.49!).  So here are my "Soft Nude versus Myth" match:
"Myth" is on top "Soft Nude" is on the bottom

While I do like them both, "Myth" wins for me.  It's more opaque and lighter (which is my personal preference).  "Soft Nude" is creamier but it's definitely a more natural nude, as opposed to skin tone nude (I know people have different definitions of the word nude).  But hey, if you're pale like me and looking for a decent, "lighter than  natural lip color but darker than skin tone" nude than this one might be a good bet for you, the best part?  You can buy almost 3 of these for the price of 1 MAC lipstick!   

Monday, March 28, 2011

NYX Ultra Pearl Mania love!

I love my NYX Ultra Pearl Mania's, they come in a lot of different colors from bright to neutral, but they're all VERY shimmery.  The best thing of all is that they're SO inexpensive!!!  I bought mine on Cherry Culture forever ago http://www.cherryculture.com/product.php?productid=16839 and they were $1.99 apiece.  However, just about once a month, there's a 20% off sale so I waited until then to buy mine.  I hated the containers they came in;
they're small and super portable but almost impossible to actually get the right amount of product out of so I went to Wal-Mart and bought a plastic container that has 24 little plastic jars in it (I think that was about $7) and depotted all of them into the jars. 
 So here's what they look like now:
And I figured I would do swatches of them all for you.  I did a stripe of TFSI, a stripe of NYX JEP "Milk", and a stripe of NYX JEP "Black Bean" so you can see what they look like on each of those bases:
See how, especially in this group, the colors totally pop over the black base?
My favorites are most definitely Mocha, Silver, Lime, Ocean Blue, Turquoise, Nude, Rust, and Sky Pink.  I don't really like the black one at all, the texture is very different than the rest of them, it reminds me of the beard from the toy "Wooly Willy" haha.
  
Hopefully you can see the chunky texture here
Versus the smooth texture here (this is how all of the other ones look too)
And since I'm showing all of these to you, I decided to do a look using only these (well, except my liner).  
The colors I used are: True Purple, Silver, Black, Space, and White (as my highlight).  I used them over NYX JEP in "Milk".  

But I definitely think that for the price, these are definitely worth it (just don't buy the black one!!!).  I really do use them all of the time (usually not all at once haha) and I love them!  

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Women's competition with one another

Well, I had a tutorial all set and ready to go but when I published it all of my pictures went away and it's really not cooperating and I don't know how to fix it right now so I guess this is a good time for me to share an article from my Allure magazine that I thought was interesting.  It's from the February 2011 magazine (the one with Jennifer Aniston on the cover).  It's called "The Sexy-Clothes Urge" by Lois B. Morris (page 79).  Since I cannot find a link to this on their website, I'll type out what it says.

  "Women prefer to buy revealing, seductive clothes and accessories on the few days a month during which they are most likely to become pregnant.  At the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management in Minneapolis, Kristina M. Durante, a psychology researcher, and her colleagues tested 269 women (who were not taking oral contraceptives) both when they were ovulating and when they were not, asking them to select ten fashion items among several online.  During the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle, women chose more sexy items than when they weren't ovulating- and when they saw photographs of attractive women, sexy choices escalated among ovulating women, peaking when the beautiful women in the pictures were said to live nearby.  Attractive women in a fertile woman's immediate environment constitute an unconscious threat, the researchers explain.  In contrast, pictures of attractive men sparked interest in sexy pictures regardless of ovulation- indicating that fertile women's extra effort to enhance appearance is driven by competition with women rather than simply the seduction of men, Durante says."

If you didn't feel like reading all of that, basically it says that when a woman is ovulating, she is likely to dress sexier if she knows an attractive woman lives nearby, suggesting that perhaps women are more driven by competition with one another as opposed to just getting a man's attention.

So what do you think??  Do you think women put in extra effort when there are other women around even if there aren't any men?  Do you find yourself competing with other women if there aren't any men around?

I think there's always a certain competition between women.  I haven't ever had problems with women but I know a lot of women complain about not getting along with other women "because they're jealous" (ahem... Bad Girl's Club).  But I think that we, as women, should be able to appreciate the beauty in one another and be able to tell one another when we think they are beautiful without feeling threatened by that beauty.  I know when I walk through the mall, I see women and think, "if only I looked like her..." and I'll start comparing myself to them, which does nothing good for me and it can almost start to create jealousy in me and I'll find myself starting to dislike this girl who I don't even know just because she's prettier, or skinnier, or funnier than I am.  I just take a step back and appreciate whatever that quality is about her that I find attractive as opposed to feeling jealous about it and that makes a WORLD of difference.  I think that's part of the reason that I don't have hard time with women because I take the step back and if I think you're pretty, I'm going to tell you.  If I like your hair, or your nails, or your eyelashes, I'll tell you because I know how nice it is when a random person gives you a compliment, how that can make your day.

I challenge you to compliment a random woman on something that you find beautiful about her.  Let me know how it goes!

Greeeen!

I did this look a long time ago and it got a lot of love from my girls on MUG and actually, it got a lot of love from my friends and family who don't even care about makeup too so I decided I'd do a tutorial to show you (as best as I could remember haha) how I did this look:
This look started off because I could not decide which colors I should do on my eyes, so I took out every green I owned and decided to use all of them haha (well, except all of the greens in my 88 palette because that would be madness haha).  So here are the colors I used:
Clockwise starting at the top right:
NYX "Mermaid Green", NYX loose pearl "Jade", Ben Nye pigment "Jade", NYX loose pearl "Lime",
Ben Nye pigment "Chartreuse", NYX "Wildfire"
~Prime with Too Faced Shadow Insurance 
~Add NYX JEP in "Black Bean" on lid, above the crease, and under the eye 
~I know a lot of people wait until the end to tightline (line the upper inner rim of their eyes), but I always mess it up when I wait, so I do it now with Prestige Total Intensity Eyeliner in "Deepest Black"
~Add Ben Nye "Chartreuse" to the inner and outer third of the lid
~Add NYX pearl "Lime" on the middle third, overlapping a little to blend 
~Add Ben Nye "Jade" on the outer corner and blend it up above the crease in almost a "C" shape
~Add MAC "Blanc Type" (or any skintone color) above greens to help blend them out
~Add NYX pearl "Lime" again above the Jade and blend up
~Under my eye, I put "Mermaid Green" on the outer half and "Wildfire" on the inner half and then put NYX pearl "Jade" on top
~Now I did my foundation (which I had skipped on doing first because I didn't want green all over my face) and filled in my brows
~Add MAC "Vanilla" pigment as a highlight and blend "Lime" up into it
~Add Bobbi Brown gel liner in "Black Ink"
~Add L'oreal Extra Volume Collagen in "Blackest Black" and some pinky nude lips (haha, what's new) and you're good to go!

 I hope you guys found this helpful and I hope you enjoy your day!!!  If you have any looks or colors you'd like to see me use, let me know because I'm always up for a challenge!

*Edit:  Sorry if this post is weird, I had it all set, published it and all of my pictures were gone so I hope this works!!!