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Archives for November 2008

Beauty Snacks: Sites of the Day, November 7

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Disney Does Shoes and a Bunch of Other Stuff

Shoe Lust, Part Deux

  • I saw these red strappy sandals on Seychelles Footwear and instantly fell in lurve. With cold weather just around the corner my sandal-wearing days are numbered, but I’m oh-so-tempted!

Rabid About Twilight? Me Too!

  • The Twilight Lexicon Blog features up-to-the-minute news and info on the upcoming movie! I check it every day. 🙂

Annie, Get Yer Gunn… Yer Tim Gunn, That Is

  • Last night I watched my very first episode of Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style. Yes, I’ve been living underneath a rock. In the show T. Gunn (of Project Runway fame) helps women discover clothing shapes and colors to suit their body types, so they can make smarter fashion choices.

    The show’s website features this really fun game called The Wardrobe Room, where you can create outfits by paring up Tim Gunn’s wardrobe essentials — tops, bottoms, dresses and jackets (no accessories though, boo). It’s fun… and addictive. I spent WAAAY too much time playing this today.

Get Your China Glaze On For Mere Duckets

Smell Less Stinky, Naturally

  • Looking for an all-natural deodorant? Bella Sugar suggests trying Bergamot Oil to mitigate that stinky pit sitch!

New Bath and Body Works Packaging

  • Beauty Addict gives the run down on the redesign of the bottles, tubes and artwork on the new Bath and Body Works Signature Collection product packaging.

Heya! I’m off to do a short run before the sun sets. Gotta burn some calories so I can eat popcorn when I go to the movies tonight. I’m taking El Hub to watch Let the Right One In, a Swedish film about vampires!

Watcha up to tonight? 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Aussie Opposites Attract Shampoo Does Double Duty as a Fast, Cheap Brush Cleaner

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Happy Friday! Guess what? Last night I found my new favorite way to clean my makeup brushes.

Normally, I use MAC Brush Cleanser ($11) because it works fast, thoroughly removing all the gunk from the brush head and rinsing out quickly. But last night my bottle ran out when I was halfway through cleaning my brushes. I really wanted to finish before 30 Rock came on the telly (lovin’ ya, Tina Fey!), so I reached into the tub and randomly grabbed a bottle of Aussie Opposites Attract Protect + Soften Shampoo ($3) to complete the job.


Oh, Tina Fey, I’m totally not worthy.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Although I love this stuff for my hair, I’ve used shampoos like Johnson’s Baby Shampoo to clean brushes in the past but never liked the results. Even after a thorough brush cleaning, they would leave bits of foundation or concealer. Plus, the suds took forever to rinse out.

But Aussie Opposites Attract Shampoo worked great! Caked on concealer, dried gel liner, crusty cream shadow (eww) — it removed even the most stubborn makeup, breaking up the product within seconds. And the suds rinsed out quickly, too.

To clean brushes with Aussie Opposites Attract Shampoo, I squeeze a pea sized amount in a cupped palm, add some warm water and swirl the brush head around in the shampoo-and-water mix. If the brush head has a lot of caked makeup on it then I’ll gently work the shampoo directly into the fibers with my fingers. I then rinse out the brush head in running water to remove the makeup and suds. Tada! Less than a minute later, I’ve got a clean brush.

The best part? It costs a WHOPPING THREE BUCKS for a big 13.5-oz bottle, woo hoo! It’s my new favorite fast and cheap way to give brushes a heavy duty cleaning. 🙂

How do you clean your makeup brushes? Do you have a favorite product or a special technique?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

MAC Smokey Eye Tutorial: Halloween Flashback

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Hey, ladies! On Halloween some of you asked for a tutorial describing the MAC Smokey Eyes look I wore to dinner.

I was in the mood for MAC today, so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s heavy on MAC products, but you could definitely use similar products from other brands.

Eye Products I Used

  • MAC Nice Vice Paint Pot
  • MAC Smolder Eye Kohl
  • MAC Dark Soul Pigment
  • MAC Smoke Signal Pigment
  • MAC Your Ladyship Pigment
  • MAC Silver Fog Pigment
  • MAC Plushblack Plush Lash Mascara
  • MAC Lashes

Cheek Products I Used

  • MAC Blushbaby Powder Blush

Lip Products I Used

  • Chanel Pretty Pink Lip Definer
  • MAC Modesty Cremesheen lipstick
  • Chanel Astral Glossimer

How I Did the Eyes

First, to improve the staying power of my eye makeup, I prepped my lids with a thin layer of Too Faced Shadow Insurance.

Then, with a MAC 249 synthetic shader brush, I patted a layer of Nice Vice Paint Pot onto the lid and into the crease.

With Smolder Eye Kohl, I drew a very thick line on my lids and along my upper lash and water lines…

…and then along the lower lash and water lines, doing my best to really get the pencil between the root of each lash (darkening the skin between the lashes to enhance the desired effect).

Knowing I was going to smudge pigment on top of the liner, I didn’t worry about messy lines.
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Clinique Holiday 2008 Blog Treasure Hunt [WIN A PRIZE]

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UPDATE: We have a winner! Sylvie, you were the first person to submit the correct answer, which was MAC Cosmetics Originals Glitter Swatches. Congratulations!

Clinique Holiday 2008 Blog Treasure Hunt

What’s up, girls! Tabs, that naughty kitty and part-time beauty booty pirate, is up to his old hijinks again.

Deep within the blog archives he’s hidden some Clinique Holiday 2008 treasure. Do you think you can find it?

Enter the Clinique Holiday 2008 Treasure Hunt for a chance to win some cool stuff. Just be the first to find the picture of Blackberry Bloom Tabs hidden within a post. Keep reading for your clue!

The Prize



The winner receives the following items from the Clinique Blackberry Bloom and Party Red Holiday 2008 collections; a $132 value.

Clinique = Awesome…

  1. Fresh Bloom Allover Colour in Blackberry Bloom
  2. Colour Surge Eye Shadow in Black Coffee
  3. Colour Surge Eye Shadow in Black Amethyst
  4. Colour Surge Eye Shadow in Black Smoke
  5. Kohl Shaper for Eyes in Black Honey
  6. High Impact Mascara in Black Honey
  7. Full Potential Lips Plump and Shine in Sugarfull
  8. Buttershine Lipstick in Parisian Red

How to Enter

Search through the blog archives to find the hidden picture of Blackberry Bloom Tabs (just like the one above). When you find it, shoot me an email (karen_at_www.makeupandbeautyblog.com) with the name of the post. The first person to email the correct answer wins.

Use any combination of the blog search box, Google, the monthly archives links in the right sidebar and the navigation links above and below each post to find the hidden pic! Good luck!

Here’s your clue…

If you’re trapped in a rut,
Use those guts.
Don’t freak out;
Tabs has no doubt,
You’ll use your smarts.
No need for martial arts!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Comments are turned off for this post.

Yves Saint Laurent: A Career Retrospective

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I played hooky earlier this week and drove into San Francisco to visit the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. The museum has on display a new exhibit featuring a career retrospective of clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent, who passed away on June 1 of this year.

Yves Mathieu-Saint-Laurent was born on August 1, 1936 in Oran, Algeria, at the time a French colony.


Yves Saint Laurent

I don’t really know much about Yves Saint Laurent clothes (they’re out of my Old Navy budget), but I’ve seen and played with the YSL luxe makeup line at Nordies and Sephora and have always been curious about the man, so I thought the exhibit might be cool.


A cocktail dress and hat, circa 1960. I’d so rock this in a heartbeat!

The exhibit features over 130 original Yves Saint Laurent designs from the ’60s to the present day, outfits ranging from sleek, sophisticated cocktail dresses to intricate haute couture gowns.

Beyond presenting his clothes, the exhibit explores the man and what had been some of his sources of inspiration during his life — art, theatre, history, literature and nature.

There aren’t any compacts or lipsticks in the hizz, but I think his influence on the entire world of beauty, from fashion to cosmetics, comes through in the patterns and colors of his clothes.

He Changed How We Dress

Ah, the pantsuit. There are several pant suits and tuxedos up in the mix, items that were signature to YSL style. In the 1960s, YSL designed and dressed women in clothes that had historically symbolized male power. The shift signaled a revolution in the history of women’s clothing. Now we wear pants day and night!


A Shakespeare-inspired haute couture gown

Couture Gowns

Who doesn’t like pants, right? Heck, I wear pants like *every* day!, but YSL was also a master of the haute couture gown.

Before my trip to the museum this week, I’d never seen a haute couture gown in person. Fo sho, they’re extremely detailed — the pleating, bead work and embroidery — but in general they’re not something you’d wear to the library on a Tuesday. It took every ounce of willpower to refrain from touching.
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Lancome Holiday 2008 Face of the Day

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Greetings, fellow citizens of the world! This morning I experimented with the Lancome Holiday 2008 C’est Manifique makeup collection for this subtle brown and purple eye.

I took Glamour Premiere Eye Shadow Quad ($42), one of the two limited edition C’est Manifique holiday palettes, and paired it with a dark red lip using In All Her Splendor ($18), one of five limited edition Ultra Shiny Juicy Tube lipglosses from the collection.

Earlier today I walked by a fire station out here; all the fire dudes were outside washing the truck. I couldn’t help thinking how glad I was to be wearing lipgloss, LOL! I loves me some El Hub, but I gotta say there’s just something hot about dudes washing fire trucks…


From left to right: In All Her Splendor, Pinkee, First Take, Camera Queen, Beauty Brown

The Eyes

  1. First, I primed my lids by applying a thin layer of Too Faced Shadow Insurance over the entire lid.
  2. Next, I patted Camera Queen (a shimmery light purple) onto the lid with a Sonia Kashuk Large Eye Shadow Brush.
  3. Using the same brush, I applied Pinkee (a shimmery beige) onto the brow bone.
  4. Then, with a MAC 217 blending brush, I swept First Take (a shimmery taupe) into the crease.
  5. For a smokey effect, I applied Beauty Brown (a shimmery, cool bronzy brown) into the outer v and along the lower lash line with a MAC 239 eyeshadow brush.
  6. With Lancome Le Stylo Waterproof eyeliner in Noir, I lined both the upper and lower water lines.
  7. To finish the eyes, I curled my lashes and added two coats of Lancome Virtuose mascara in black.

The Cheeks

  1. Step One: Smile a big cheesy smile in the mirror, and then use a MAC 129 blush brush to sweep two layers of Lancome Blush Subtil in Bronze Escapade (a shimmery warm brown) onto the apples of your cheeks.

The Lips

  1. This was the easiest part! I just applied a small amount of All Her Splendor from the tube directly onto my lips (a single layer).

I dig both of these items. The four Glamour Premiere palette shadows work well together. I think they’d even work well for simple washes over the eye, like for really quick day looks.

Next time I wear ’em I think I’ll try layering a rich brown eye pencil beneath Brown Beauty and Camera Queen for a brown and purple smokey eye…

OOH! If you’re more into red, you gotta check out In All Her Splendor next time you hit a Lancome counter. It’s sheer and glamorous and very nicely done.

Daily Photo


This doe was all “BINGO!” when she found some tasty red flowers and berries today. I had to pull over and snap her picture.

NOTE: If you ever stop in the middle of the street to take pictures of deer, people in other cars will look at you strangely. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

MAC Cosmetics and the Twilight Movie: Dreams Do Come True

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SWEET! I just found out from my friends at MAC that they did the makeup for the upcoming Twilight film. Here’s an interview with Jeanne Van Phue, Makeup Department Head for Twilight, featuring some insight into the makeup direction of the movie.

Q: What was the process for creating the various characters’ looks?
A: Katherine Hardwicke, the director, and I have previously worked together on a movie called Lords of Dogtown, so we know each other very well. I began by preparing sketches of my vision, keeping in mind the descriptions Stephanie Myers (Twilight‘s Author) set forth in the books. 

Bella’s (Kristen Stewart’s character) description in the novel is very pale and extremely beautiful with large chocolate brown eyes, so she wore colored lenses every day. I also pictured her as a natural beauty, which is exactly what Kristen is. I used a light hand while applying all neutral colors to make her look as though she had no makeup on.

Edward’s (Robert Pattinson’s character) description in the novel is impossibly handsome almost god-like. His skin is marble-pale, hard as stone and ice cold, but perfect and flawless. Edwards’ eyes are described as topaz colored when he is normal and black like onyx, when hungry.

Q: Were there any changes to the looks of the characters that weren’t planned?
A: At the beginning, Katherine Hardwicke visualized Edward with long hair, yet after studying his face and jaw line in the makeup test, the decision was made to go with short hair to accentuate his amazing jaw line.

Q: What was the overall look of the makeup in this movie?
A: All the vampires had to be pale, but I didn’t want them to look to ghoulish, somewhere between Sweeney Todd and Interview with the Vampire. The choice was made for a denser, more opaque look for the supporting vampires and a lighter look for the leading man.

The challenge was they still had to look beautiful and handsome. The key was striking the delicate shading balance. We had two weeks of makeup test. This is the time for a makeup artist to unleash their imagination.

During the testing Katherine let me know when I was on the mark. Katherine has a fabulous eye for detail and everything I did had to be approved by her.

Q: Were there any other challenges you encountered while working on location in Portland, Oregon?
A: The rain was a huge challenge. We were outside, and it rained the entire time we were there. Most of the shots were exterior; trying to fix makeup in the rain with wet faces and wet brushes was difficult. In the end, I must say I loved working on this movie, it challenge my creativity as never before. The cast was such a great group of talented young actors.

Q: What were your non-makeup related responsibilities in terms of creating this look?
A: Another one of my jobs was too find a contact lens specialist. So I called upon the expertise of Cristina Patterson Ceret  FX lens/painter from Professional VisionCare.

Q: What M·A·C products did you use on the film Twilight?
A: The M.A.C products I used on this film were eye shadows and powder for our principles. We had several other characters and day players I used M.A.C. foundations, lipsticks and blushes.

Q: How long have you used M·A·C products?
A: In 30 years as a makeup artist in my career and over 50 movies, M·A·C products have played an integral part in my work. I have probably used all of them at one time or another. I choose the cosmetics based on their skin tone and whether they are oily or dry. It also depends on how the product reacts to their particular skin type.

M·A·C Makeup used on Bella played by Kristen Stewart

  • Blot Powder/Pressed in Light
  • Eye Shadow on Blanc Type, Flute and Wedge

M·A·C Makeup used on Edward played by Robert Pattinson

  • Blot Powder/Pressed in Light

You know I’ll always be TEAM JACOB 4-EVA!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Dior Creme de Gloss: Making Me Feel Like a Natural Woman

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Only two words can describe Dior Creme de Gloss: Hawt Daym!

Released this fall, these babies have the look of a medium coverage lipstick with the feel of a non-stick gloss. They’re fragrance- and flavor-free and kinda remind me of Laura Mercier Lip Velvets from fall’s Cherries Noir collection.

A Natural (yet Sexy!) Lip Look

I tried two of the 14 Creme de Gloss colors, Delicious Plum (a shimmery cool berry) and Coral Elixir (a shimmery golden coral), and one layer of each was all it took…

Some glosses look goopy and thick on lips. They’re obvious and the opposite of natural, but not Creme de Gloss. It looks almost like something applied inside the lips, or blended into them. The result is a natural, yet still shiny and kissable pout.

Use Sparingly

For me, I think the secret to using these is to use them sparingly. I had to be careful I didn’t apply too much because of how highly pigmented they are. A little goes a long way. In these pictures I’m wearing a single thin coat applied with the doe foot applicator that comes with the tube.

Just for kicks, I tried applying two really thick layers and the results were a HOT MESS! I wanted to post the pictures, but to subject you to that horror would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Suffice it to say, both shades looked scary thick and flat-out gross on my lips. I went to do some work at the computer, and within a few minutes gloss had started migrating and smearing outside of my natural lip lines. ‘Twas reminiscent of paparazzi photos of Amy Winehouse shopping shoeless at a 24-hour grocery store. Not good.
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