When makeup recreation goes wrong...

Once upon ages ago, I took part in a makeup challenge with a friend. The idea was to recreate a look from a Mac Cosmetic Promotional Picture. This 'BoomBox' look particularly caught my attention. Not the dog meets sad panda, the arty farty red eyeliner one.





Tonight, I have given up trying to recreate it.







Where do I even begin? bwhahahahahahaahahaha.



Why does it look so pretty on her and absolutely atrocious on me? Well, apart from not having the skills to do it, I think I just don't have the eyelids for it. Or maybe this look is just meant to be shown on closed eyelids and not meant to be worn. I'd give my wage to see the girl with her eyes open to see what the eye makeup looks like…



 


Even my huge and beloved Ardell couldn't lift that look up.
They say practice makes perfect but there are times when it’s good to give up as you realise your idea was totally ludicrous.  This post is dedicated to everyone who, every now and then,
try to bite more than they can chew and make a fool of themselves with makeup :)


When was the last time you made a fool of yourself with makeup?

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'Sharksbiteoflifesque' California Gurls Inspired Makeup Look

If I'm not careful, this blog is going to turn into everything else but not makeup. I can't believe the last makeup look I posted was dated the end of March. Is my addiction of nail polish taking over, am I losing confidence with makeup, I don't know but it's time I tried to rectify the situation and put more makeup into my erm... makeup blog.


There are 2 projects I have been working on for a while now but there are not quite ready yet. Please bear with me whilst I play with makeup again and regain a bit of confidence. In the meantime, this is what I did earlier on - read ages ago. A look which I wanted to recreate from sharksbiteoflife, makeup guru on YouTube and her take on Katy Perry 'California Gurls' look.


 


This happened so long ago and I've lost my notes on what products I used and I am really sorry about that. Well mainly because if I wanted to recreate myself, I would be bummed and not knowing what shadows to use. What I *do* remember is using 2 pairs of false lashes at once, some blue underneath some regular black ones and some green glitter from fairy dust from eBay.


The main idea is to have a block of colour, smoked out as it goes towards the brow, not much of a crease, and some chunky glitter strategically placed only in the centre of the lid to add a bit of dimension to the look.







Ignore as well my blush placement: I do suck excellently well at it and I practise so rarely with blusher that I can't see myself improving in this area. I'm selling this look very well, ain't I? 







In an ideal world, I would be posting this on my YouTube channel but I've lost confidence with that too. Well, whilst we are talking about YouTube activity, to be honest, I am struggling to keep up with blogging (writing & reading that is) and YouTube. I had only 1 new year resolution, going back to YouTube properly and I managed to screw that up in an obsession to keep up with my blog reading & commenting, which is also equally important to me. Do you know what's a pressure? When you have 2000 lovely people subscribed to you YouTube (or thereabout if you ignore the lapsed accounts and the bots) and when you're not delivering the goods.



   



Thank you to all my loyal blog followers who are still following my blog, despite not posting makeup looks as frequently as I would like.
xxx

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BFF series - Un regard fluo - Makeup Look (Recreation)

I might just as well post these photos, right? It would be shame if it went to waste. In continuation to yesterday's  post (or this very early morning’s post more like) this is another look recreation from my friend spittingglitter on YouTube. There is no tutorial for this look, but my friend used mainly neon eyeshadows from affordable brand stargazer cosmetics. This is spittingglitter's look .





And this is my recreation. The pink, purple and green colours are from sleek makeup acid palette (what else, lol). As for the yellow, i totally 'cheated' and opted for a kinder shade of yellow (nyx mellow yellow) rather than a pure neon yellow. 


 








Overall I don’t mind my recreation, it’s all right even though it’s not as neon (fluo in French) as the original. I wish I wasn't so heavy handed on the purple and deposited a soft wash rather than a heavy purple rain. I like to pile it on baby.

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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.






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.





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





  
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…

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Nyx Team Spirit, Milani Atlantis: Review & Recreation Look

A long time ago, long long time ago I received this beautiful Nyx trio palette "team spirit" as part of a 'across the pond' makeup swap with my friend Jessica  aka TheKillerBurrito on YouTube.  Along with this palette, buried in a sea of other American goodies, a little individual shadow from Atlantis which looked like your average drugstore makeup.








Like my 2 previous nyx trio eyeshadow trio palettes, I was once again super impressed: great pigmentation, so soft to the touch (but not too soft like the 120 palette) and very easily blendable, and as usual in its neat little palette with a mirror and everything. It just had to go on my eyes, asap and I just couldn't wait. The minute I saw it, it reminded me of a beautiful makeup look Sophie from @Melovemakeup blog created before (She did her look with Boots17 Cosmetics 'Dolly Mixture'). 


I did this recreation months and months ago and I have always been in two minds (is that the expression?) about posting it as I am not very happy with the result. In the end, what made me decide to go for it is that many people on blogs and YouTube create make up looks, people comment that they like it and feel inspired by it but most of the time, the artist never sees how the others have interpreted and recreated their makeup. Sophie: I hope this doesn’t make you want to stop doing makeup looks lol xx



 


This look makes me yawn just looking at it. It looks absolutely nothing like Sophie’s and I also had to make do without her Arabic liner as I *just* don't suit black pencil on the waterline. I really don't like my recreation, I look PALE as anything, so please take this post as more of a colour swatch on the eye rather than a proper look I would want to show off. What a shame. I might try again one day with some matte shadows. I am stubborn like that.

On me, the look lacks definition. So I went ahead and added a bit of  Milani Atlantis blue eyeshadow  in the crease to add a bit of depth.





I feel it looks better but I'm still not crazy about the look.






However, I was totally sold by Milani Atlantis. I have so many eyeshadows, but just like that, with one swatch it became my favourite blue eyeshadow: pigmentation is incredible, and texture is so velvety smooth, it applies and blends like a dream on the lids. In fact, I know it's bright blue and not easily wearable but I remember quite vividly wanting to play with this shadow again and I couldn't put it down. This little shadow made me want to purchase a lot more Milani eyeshadows. If only I just could just pop down to my local Boots to swatch some. *sigh*  Have you got some milani eyeshadows? Anything you would recommend?

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The Spider on the Banner… Makeup Recreation

I wish I had been creative enough to come up with the concept of the  ‘purple spider’ makeup look on my new banner.  Sadly, it is just an old recreation  from an amazing makeup look from one of  my favourite makeup gurus on YouTube: Her name is sharkbiteoflife and I recreated this look from her a year ago, around her birthday, in a surprise tribute video where I actually attempted to recreate 3 looks in one go. She’s a massive inspiration me. So this is her tutorial.

Apologies for the extreme smoothness of the photo. I only recently purchased my ‘magic’ camera at the time and the smoothing settings are a bit ridiculous really.

Before the web:


 



And after, when I’ve messed it up.

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