Wednesday, 23 February 2011

Russet Eye Glitter Dust (Beauty UK) and EOTD

What can I say. I think I might have a little crush on Beauty UK. After Lily from Beauty’s Bad Habit was raving about the metallic eye sparks, I wanted to get some for myself. Alas there was none in my Superdrug: instead 2 little pots (the last ones) of  glitter eye dust were begging me to grab them: Russet and Green. The glitter lover in me couldn’t resist at £2.99 each.


SAM_4194

Let’s cut to chase and go right into it: the packaging is far from ideal but let it not deter you as the product it contains it’s gorgeous. It is like your traditional loose glitter but more finely milled to look almost like an eyeshadow. With this product, you get the best of both worlds: vibrancy, glitter and drama which you would get with a loose glitter, but a product very similar to eyeshadow as far as the removal goes: a cotton dampened with eye make up remover will take it off very easily, while traditional glitter would be more tedious (I usually resort to sellotape to remove the excess first)


SAM_4192


Talking of packaging, this is what it looks like inside. I feel like the product dissipates itself around its little opening at the top.

Image5 



You can actually remove the whole plastic protector inside and just use the lid. I happened to have some mini jars (5ml) left so I decided to depot them.


Image7
 
Are you still with me yet?
Now for the look. This is not very elaborate at all. Look at it more like it’s a swatch of the product but made directly on the eyelid.

 
Image15

Image9


To create this look, I used 3 colours from the Day and Night Palette (reviewed and fotd’ed here) and the russet glitter eye dust. Eyepencil and eyeliner are the same usual ones, I won’t bore you with it :P Again, I must point out that you won’t usually see me using shimmery shadows in my crease.  But the shimmery burgundy from this palette as well as the other colours don’t have an overpowering shimmer at all, it’s more of a mix between subtle sheen and shimmer.

I treated the glitter eye dust exactly like it was chunky loose glitter and applied it with my beloved and trusty splash proof sealer. In retrospect, I wish I had darkened the crease a bit more with a bit of black. Never mind.


 Image21
Image16

Now what am I going to do with 2 jars of the same glitter, huh? ;)
Oh, anyone want to have a guess at the nail polish I am wearing? answer tomorrow. I know, you just can't contain yourself ... and I need to get out more
Read more ...

Friday, 21 January 2011

Double Dares with Lily – A clown in Vegas FOTD

In short, this post is about a cool makeup challenge the lovely Lily from Beauty's Bad Habit has invited me to take part in, my excitement the whole way through the challenge and lastly my disappointment with my finished look. If you're reading this in hurry skip along to lily's blog to read all about the challenge and her makeup creation. At the time of writing this post, I have not yet seen her look, but knowing Lily, it's going to be absolutely stunning!


And in details... (Put the kettle on)
I don't know why. It's my own personal blog but I can't help myself from feeling self conscious about writing lengthy posts and losing you, my readers in the process, even before you get to the 'meat' of the post. Even in normal speech, when I explain things at work, I tend to want to speak fast and summarise, before people want to cut me and lose interest. Today, I don't care and I have got a lot to say and I don't want to be rushed. Please bear with me, will you? xx


If you've been following my blog or my youtube channel for a while, you will have noticed that I am very fond of makeup contests and makeup challenges. I absolutely adore them. There's nothing quite like a makeup challenge to excite me, get my creative juices (or lack of) flowing, and have an excuse to play around with makeup. There is also that buzz, which is like no other, when you're happy with your finished look, especially when it's been challenging and that you've overcome successfully a few obstacles. (You’ve scrolled down to the bottom already haven’t you, had one glance at the piccie and left didn’t you? ;)

When Lily, from Beauty's Bad Habit invited me to take part in her 'double dares' makeup challenges series, I was bouncing up and down. Her first episode with Leanne (from donotrefreeze.com} really excited me and I just fell in love with the concept. I was also mega excited as I have a lot of respect for Lily. Not only her makeup skills are absolutely out of this world, she has got amazing enviable photography skills and  all this in a really cool and unpretentious blog. Off the top of my head, my favourite recent posts from her are her photography guide 101 ( for dummies like me), her bermuda sunshine makeup look fotd and her post about some cheap as chips crappy looking eyeliner at first, where she goes beyond the first impressions of the product, work with it and reveal its true brilliance. I love that about her: striking makeup looks with high end products as well as products that even a teen would be embarrassed buying because they *think* it's  going to be crap and they don't want to give the product a chance. So, put it that way, I was pretty chuffed when Lily invited me to take part in her 'double dares' challenge on top of mildy cacking myself with the pressure.
The idea of this double dares challenge is that I challenge Lily to create a makeup look (theme of my choice) and we both create a look from the same theme and post it at the same time and surprise each other with the finished product. The theme I have chosen for her this week was:

to recreate a makeup look from a Mac Cosmetics Collection Promo Picture from any collection she liked. To see her creation, click here (at the time I am writing this, I have yet to see her look).

Die hard fan of Mac Cosmetics or not, and if you are remotely interested about makeup, you would have come across some stunning makeup creations and visuals. It was very hard to choose but my heart set for this promotion picture, in particular, which I believe was part of the Star Flash or Star Vegas Collection.


starflash



Was this a wise choice? No. Was it more than I could chew? Oh my definitely. I couldn't have made life more difficult for myself. I wish I could be positive about my finished look. The truth is that I don't like it and that I didn't want to post it. Personal pride and respect for Lily made it that I just had to go ahead with it and post it anyway.


SAM_2518


So without further ado, this is my very loose recreation of the mac visual (hell, there is some pink and yellow, right?)  I'll spare you the 1000 additional words of why I don't like my finished look and try to focus on the positive: I've had a whale of time playing with brown face paint and foundation changing my skin colour (I didn’t have to, but I really wanted to have fun with it) and I can't wait to be invited to a pocahontas fancy dress when I can play some more. :P



SAM_2514

  
This week, a few things pretty surreal happened to me. I reached 300 readers on my little blog and 15,000 subscribers on my youtube channel. This is to hoping that I won't lose any after this makeup, where a 6 year old could have done better with just fingers for tools. I shall end this post, with a nice cheery smile…

SAM_2490
Read more ...