Cliloopatra: My character for Halloween 2014

I can't tell you for how long I had been wanting to travel to Ancient Egypt and  become Cleopatra for a day. I have been putting it for so long, then when Katy Perry released Dark Horse, I interpreted it as a sign so I had to be the Queen of the  Nile this year for Halloween.


I couldn't have made life for difficult for myself choosing to become Cleopatra.  Cleopatra eye makeup, in my eyes anyway, is all about intricate eyeliner work,  which is the last thing you want to replicate on a person with hooded eyelids like  me. And then Cleopatra is famous for her luscious fringe (or bangs as Americans  would call it) so began the maniac hunt for a decent looking wig. Now if you thought there were a  huge reality gap between advertisement photos of, say, burgers or eyes supposedly  transformed by mascara, the gap is even bigger when you buy a wig. The amount of  money I spent buying wigs which looked absolutely nothing like the picture is  unbelievable. Then to top it all off, the finishing touch for a Cleopatra look is  some form of golden headdress which turned out to be the biggest ball ache. Again,  an incredible amount of money was spent in buying all sorts of head gear on eBay for nothing. One week before Halloween, I wish I had broken my leg instead of  wanting to become Cleopatra. In a nutshell, everytime I was trying to wear a  headband over my wig, I looked like an Arabian Sheik, the hair would be stuck to my  head, would ping out at the bottom and I just felt very unpretty and unhappy. Then  I thought getting a headchain would be a good idea. I purchased this very one actually but it didn't work out. On a  wig it would constantly slide about, fluff the hair up and make you nervous the wig would lift off. On my natural mop of hair, it looks actually really really nice but  I looked more like Princess Jasmine than Cleopatra. In the end, I wished I just went ahead, bit the bullet and bought a headdress à la Moloko.


To cut a painfully long story short, decisions had to be made. On Friday Night, I wore the wig without any form of headgear, which made difficult for people to recognise who I am and on Saturday, I wore a necklace, which I already own, under the wig fringe and it added a little Cleopatra touch to my costume. Without further ado, here are some photos of my Halloween week end. A nice blurry one to start the proceedings…






















Last but not least, some snaps illustrating the not so attractive sheikh hair style, pinging out at the bottom, which I talked about earlier on, and why I felt I just couldn’t possibly go out like that.





What I used:
 
Eyes: Two faced shadow insurance, Nyx Jumbo Pencil Collection (2000) Felt Tip Eyeliner, Gold Eyeshadow in the L'oreal HIP Flamboyant Duo, Dark Blue from Sleek Makeup Monaco Palette, 'Atlantis' Blue Eyeshadow from Milani, Katy Perry Eye Lashes Revlon eyepencil,
Lips: Boring Nude Lip (Mac Velvet Teddy)
Wig: This wig From Ebay.
Necklace: Primark. £3








See? I told you the wig looks shorter in real life! Or maybe it’s just because of the model’s giraffesque neck.


What I learnt from doing this makeup: When you see a wig, reality is that it will be 2 inches shorter on you, use double sided tape to secure your wig, wigs and hair accessories are a nightmare when paired together. I am grumbling a lot, but I really enjoyed wearing this look. Most of all, I enjoyed the makeup challenge and trying to be Cleopatra for the week end. Next year, I fancy being something spooky again though. Wouldn't mind having a dab at special effects makeup.


Hope you have had a fantastic Halloween. If you dressed up and did some fancy makeup, let me know in the comments, I would love to see :) xx

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Last Minute Halloween Makeup: Webby Witch

You know when you have not been in touch with an old friend for years, you know an email is long overdue but you don't know where the heck to start, how to summarise years of absence,  I am like that with this blog. So I'm just going to go right into it and share a little bit of makeup with you, just like in the old days. About two months ago, I started a new hobby and I have been going to salsa classes every Thursday. So last Thursday, on Halloween Eve, the Halloween Obsessed girl that I am couldn't resist the urge of wearing a halloweeny makeup look. It had to be wearable as I would still need to be able to dance  with a partner, without smearing him with face paint or something like that but most of all it had to be simple, because I knew no one else would wear an Halloween makeup on the night.


Once on new year's eve, I decided to join a fancy dress bar crawl on my own and I turned out to be the only one in fancy dress gear and makeup, bar a lost Jack Sparrow. After surviving that experience, it is pretty safe to say that I've gone past caring whether I am going to be the only one wearing fancy dress makeup. It's too much fun to be had, fancy dress makeup opportunities are too rare and I didn't want to miss out.
So this is what I came up with: a mismatched asymmetrical colourful cobweb look and black lip accessorised with a mini-witch hat on a headband, ideal if you can't bring yourself choosing just one colour symbolic with Halloween.










Although this look can be done last minute and requires very few products, you might want to practise beforehand before your big day. What made all the difference was the  marvellous Extreme 24 hour felt tip eyeliner from Collection (2000). You still require a pretty steady hand but it made my life so much easier. But the product which I had the most pleasure using was 'Sunrise' orange eyeshadow from the makeupstore: fantastic pigmentation, very smooth and hands down the easiest shadow I have ever worked with. It makes me want to throw all my makeup away and buy products just from the makeup store. The green is a combination of the 2 green eyeshadows from the sleek makeup acid palette and the purply brown colour in the crease comes from the 'oh so special palette'.









Originally, I wanted to recreate the gorgeous web look from GoldieStarling but had to declare forfeit after battling with my hooded lids. I have to start so much higher than my crease that I end up with very little space for the web part. The web part under my eye was not much easier, as it gets all distorted every time I smile and laugh. It was pretty much a case of working with what I had (lots of under eye wrinkling action) rather than against it and adapt the angle of the web and the space between the lines to match the wrinkles, so that the web still looks pretty when you smile and move your face.





had so much fun wearing this look. I was so worried the eyeliner would smudge but a practise the night before made me realise I had nothing to worry about: it withstood lots of laughter tears and didn't budge until I was ready to take it off. Oh why can't it be Halloween again next week so that I can have some more play with it?


 

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Bella of the ball

If there is one thing which is difficult to buy online because of unrealistic and digitally enhanced pictures is coloured contact lenses. Prime example of this are the Edit Twilight Bella Contact Lenses. I expected golden reddened light hazel nut eyes and all I got was slightly more defined brown eyes.

   



I love how the outer darker rim gives my boring dark brown eyes a little bit more edge. I love how it gives bigger eyes, a little bit like a doll but in the grand scheme of things, I wish I didn't bother with these lenses. They are a bit pointless in the sense that the change is not dramatic enough.






If you are going to go to the expenses of buying contact lenses and through the MASSIVE faff of putting them in, you want them to be really noticeable. I wore them yesterday on my trip to Nando's and none of the 4 people I was with noticed any difference. This is how subtle they are.

But since I had them in yesterday, I decided to keep them for a few (ahem) drinks round town. I seem to be in a red phase at the moment. I gave my red clip in extensions another outing and I decided to adapt my moulin rouge makeup, get rid of the fake lace, the feather and add a little glitter. Red eyeliner was made with snazaroo red face paint mixed with Ben Nye Liquiset mixing medium.






I was so scared to wear face paint as an eyeliner on a night out, in case it would smear but the eyeliner lasted remarkably well. I was really impressed. To make it more durable, I added a little bit of red glitter on top which I stuck with eyelash glue. If I wear glitter on the whole lid, I would usually rely on my trusty splash, but since it was only a small area, I decided to use eyelash glue instead.



  





As predicted, people didn't notice the lenses, but the makeshift red glitter eyeliner coupled with the red extensions got me some compliments. Woo :) If I lack inspiration for the makeup for my staff Christmas do, I might do this one again.

  

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Un petit moulin {fotn}

One of my favourite bloggers is holding a fabulous competition whereby you could win, thanks to Vaseline a trip to Paris with £500 of spending money to go with it.

My chances of winning are very slim for mainly 2 reasons: 1) I am a French native speaker and although I spent all my life in Mauritius, I doubt the folks at Vaseline are going to choose me 2) My entry is a little bit predictable to say the least. But if you don't try, you'll never win, non?


Without further delving into my pessimistic introduction, this is my entry to Lipglossiping's 'Beautiful Paris' Competition sponsored by Vaseline. If you haven't already guessed by the title of this post, my inspiration is 'Le Moulin Rouge' cabaret, one of the most iconic night time establishments of the French capital, spiritual birth place of the Can Can dance.






  



There are many things I would have liked to tweak to this makeup look to try make it more interesting: more dimension to the faux-head gear lace pattern, more feathers, more drama all around basically but I quite like the way the eyes have turned out and I could see myself wearing this look in real life. The lace pattern is surprisingly quite long lasting and the only change would be to use ben nye liquiset to activate the red mehron face paint that I used for the red eyeliner. I had also planned to wear more extravagant lashes for this look but they didn't arrive in time. Boo

  






Other things I have used: stargazer red eyeshadow (ebay)
the fabulous 'All for Eve' red lipstick
estee lauder double wear maximum foundation
hd brows palette in 'foxy' for eyeshadow and eyebrows
mac vanilla eyeshadow

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Sleek Saturday. Pepperminty {eotd}

I can't believe the last makeup look I posted was September 2011. Time I put back some makeup in this makeup blog, don't you think? Don't get your hopes too hyped up, it's only something very simple today. While the blogosphere is starting to buzz about the new ultra matte palettes, I am revisiting the Sleek PPQ palette, the last palette, I believe which featured the trademark waffle pattern on the pans.    



Is it still worth quoting the official description of the palette at this late hour? Ok, go on then:

It’s the ultimate collaboration of beauty and fashion: Sleek MakeUP has teamed up with fashion house PPQ to produce the makeup looks for PPQ’s London fashion week show. The Me, Myself & Eye I-Divine is the result of a mutual admiration of colour, texture and vibrancy! Taking inspiration from PPQ’s S/S 2012 theme, the palette is a heavy mix of pattern and colour to toughen up feminine summer silhouettes making it the ultimate accessory for every self-confessed fashionista and beauty lover! Packed with an array of brilliant bolds, with matte and shimmer eye colours, you can create endless looks from smoky black, to glistening and gold. The finishing touch is PPQ’s renowned naughty sense of humour, with eye shadow names like Lilac Allen, Primal Green and Barry White!

A lot of creativity has gone into this palette and the play on words for the names of the shades of the palette made me smile. Pigmentation wise, I struggled to make the colours show off on my skin very well (apologies for my pathetic swatches) and I couldn't envisage playing with this palette without a generous dose of 2 faced shadow insurance and nyx jumbo pencil in a bid to make the colour as vibrant as possible. I am trying hard to explain why my swatch of Chris de Burghundy looks like a bullet wound and I am going to pretend it's there for artistic purposes.





Had supernova been a little bit more pigmented, I think I would have reached this palette much more often rather than only twice. If you're a fan of mint colour, Salt and Peppermint would tick all your boxes and is the brightest colour of the set. Expect a true red from 'simply red' and you'll be sorely disappointed. Simply Red is nothing like red. Instead it will give a vibrant golden peach shade: superb colour to own, albeit a bit redundant if you own the 'avoir la peche' palette


For my look today, I've chosen 3 colours from this palette (golden shivers, salt and peppermint, supernova) vanilla from mac to blend it towards the eyebrow and a generous dollop of white eyeliner on the waterline.







There is no way on this earth that the Sleek palette is going to rival my bohemian, oh so special, acid and circus palettes, all including much better matte finish eyeshadows, but I still think PPQ is very special and is a nice item to collect.







Liked this post? Catch the previous episodes of my SleekSaturday series here.


what: sleek makeup PPQ palette
how much: £6.49
where: Sleek Makeup online

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Steamy Glow Makeup Look

Today I want to share with you a gorgeous little eye shadow I bought from Loulou in a past blog sale. This is Steamy, from Rimmel. Despite being all shimmery, the colours are absolutely gorgeous, very well pigmented and blend easily into the skin.








I've used this eyeshadow trio three times now but on all these occasions I've been unhappy with the pictures I took from my looks. This is the less worst of them. If I could go back, I'd change the lip colour wouldn't have had an orange lower lashline, made my brows darker and put less darn highlighter on my browbone.






I do love this lipstick (it’s called My Beautiful Rocket, from Limecrime - blogged in detail here) but not with this look. The lashes, if you are wondering are my beloved Ardell 131 which I just can’t get enough at the moment.





All in all, I am not happy at all with my look, I feel it does not give any justice to the look but I've promised Loulou to publish it anyway. It's best to consider this as an eye swatch rather than a look look.





To make your click on my blog more worthwhile, I've swatched the other item I bought from Loulou. Have a looks on this gorgeous blush and highlighter. Unlike Steamy from Rimmel, this is still available to buy from Boots. Don't ask me how much as I got this for peanuts but being a product from 17 Cosmetics, this won't break the bank. I am afraid I don't have any decent pictures of me wearing Blush and Glow but I hope the swatch below will be able to show you its potential.





Pretty, huh? So pretty that I've wearing the 'glow' part on top of a pale eyeshadow (vanilla from mac) and made up a pale champagne colour on my eyes.

What can I say? You can take the girl out of the high street, but you can't take the high street from the girl :)


I love loulou, she's a great friend on twitter, buys makeup I would want to buy myself and knows everything there is to know about census returns :P She's on holidays at the moment but she's having a blog giveaway at the moment, to celebrate her 500 blog followers. Click here on the picture below if you want to take part.

Oh, I might just as well remind you about my other blog. I've started this blog which is mainly about giveaways. It's updated every monday morning at 06.00am, before breakfast time, to brighten your monday morning. I called it 'Les Petits Cadeaux' (French for Little Presents) but I find myself referring to it as Giveaway Gazette. I update it once a week with giveaways I find whilst reading my blog subscriptions. Bloggers can also submit their giveaway there.

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Wildflowers EOTD

Once upon a time, I participated in a makeup swap with an American friend and collected this little colourful palette from LA Colors. This particular one is 'Wildflowers'. La Colors palettes are really cheap in America: this one retailed around $2 dollars if my memory serves me right. Whilst I was tidying, I found it again, waiting for me to show it some love for the first time.





As you can see the colours are nicely pigmented. Its main flaw jumps from the page: It's way too shimmery. The lilac/purple is much more pigmented in real life and I hope you will excuse these hasty swatches. I managed to damage the purple just after taking the photos. Be warned: these shadows are very fragile.






My look today uses all the colours from the palette apart from the coral colour in the middle. In addition, I added Vanilla Mac eyeshadow, a welcome matte highlight in this disco ball look and a bit of Nyx Black to add a bit more depth to the crease.







 


All in all, I really like the look but I can't help but distracted by the overpowering shimmer. What a shame, what a lovely colour assortment. Back to the drawers it goes then...

Anything I should own from La Colors?

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