Makeup

#FoundationFocus: Mostly Matte With a Subtle Pink Sheen Using MAC Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 and Strobe Cream in Pinklite

September 27th, 2017 by Karen 12 Comments

mac studio fix nc 42 k final look 2 — Natural-looking skin with a classic MAC foundation

I threw it waaaaaaay back to the old school today with MAC Studio Fix Fluid Foundation.

C’mon, MAC girls, I know y’all went through a phase when you wore this for a minute. I know I totally did! It was my jam back in the day. I’m talking late ’90s, early 2000s. It was the first MAC Foundation I ever tried.

Oh, the trouble I got into while wearing this… So great. 😉

macfixfam — MAC Studio Fix Fluid — old school and effective!

Full-coverage matte MAC Studio Fix Fluid is THE foundation I think of when I picture classic full-on glam MAC makeup, but here’s the deal: it’s surprisingly flexible. You can easily change the look of it if you’re feeling creative, which is how I was feeling this morning after I watched this video with MAC Artist Nemah Hasan.

She mixes Studio Fix Fluid Foundation with Pinklite Strobecream…

So genius, right? Why didn’t I ever think to try that?

Anyway, it inspired me, so today I put my own spin on it. I did a mostly matte, skin-focused makeup look with a subtle pink sheen. I think it’s quite sheer and natural looking, which I’ve been loving lately.

Here’s how I did the foundation…

1. Prep your skin first by spritzing a few sprays of moisturizing MAC Prep + Prime Fix+.

LOL! I look like I just emerged from an ocean swim in this pic! My face is drenched. For the record, it’s not easy to take a self-portrait when you’re spraying your face with Fix+.

I do this to moisturizing my skin and make the foundation look smoother.

2. Prime your skin with MAC Prep + Prime Skin.

Today was my first time trying this smoothing face primer. The colorless formula contains tiny, seductive sparkles that I can’t really see once they’re blended in, unless I look very closely. I like it. It smooths ‘ze pores while delicately blessing you with radiance. Ah…

mac prep primes skin k — Don’t forget to let it dry before applying foundation.

3. Mix equal parts MAC Studio Fix Fluid Foundation and MAC Strobe Cream in Pinklite.

mac studio fix strobe cream pinklight brush — MAC Studio Fix Fluid SPF 15 in NC42, MAC Strobecream in Pinklite, and the 190 Foundation Brush

Adding Pinklite Strobe Cream sheers out the Studio Fix Fluid a bit.

I wanted to keep the sheen on my cheeks and chin, so, when I was done with the foundation, I set my forehead and the sides of my nose with a little MAC Mineralize Slinfinish Natural in Medium Golden using a MAC 140S Synthetic Fan Brush.

mac 190 foundation brush — I mixed equal parts on the back of my hand.

mac studio fix nc42 k — Fingers work too, but I was feeling fancy today.

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Stila Stay All Day Cover Powder Finish Foundation & Cream Concealer

September 26th, 2017 by Karen 3 Comments

stila stay all day cover powder finish foundation concealer honey 8 packaging — Matte AND full coverage!

If James Bond’s tech team also made beauty gadgets, one would look like this. To the untrained eye, this doohickey may appear like a run-o-the-mill stick foundation, but flick the top and voila! — a hidden concealer. 🙂

Stila Stay All Day Cover Powder Finish Foundation & Cream Concealer ($36 and available now at Stila and Ulta) is for girls and guy who are committed to a full-coverage glam face beat, and it’s like getting three products in one, because the creamy, matte stick foundation dries to a matte powder finish, so you’re kinda-sorta also getting a setting powder.

Both the foundation and its peachy partner-in-crime satin-finish under-eye concealer cover everything, including post-pimple pigmentation, freckles, sunspots and under-eye circles. It comes in 16 shades, too.

Now, being a 40-something-year-old gal who loves natural-looking coverage and is brutally picky about concealers and face powders (I don’t like cake-y face makeup), I was skeptical about this at first, but turns out I like it a lot.

It lasts a solid eight hours and makes my skin look super smooth. I won’t wear it every day, though, because it feels heavier than the face makeup I normally wear, but if you like full coverage and don’t want your foundation to move, Stila’s got’chu covered.

stila stay all day cover powder finish foundation concealer honey 8 open — Sadly, a chunk got stuck to the cap when I opened it. 🙁 But see the secret concealer in the cap?

stila stay all day cover powder finish foundation concealer honey 8 before after — Before and after Honey 8, which looked like it would be a tad too light for me, but these oxidize a step. It looks a little light, yeah? But shortly after I took this pic, the foundation had oxidized about half a step, so it ended up being darker than it is in this pic.

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The Awesome Hourglass Ambient Metallic Strobe Lighting Palette

September 26th, 2017 by Karen 14 Comments

When I finally enter Valhalla after my Viking funeral, I wanna be wearing rose gold Lucent Strobe Light from the Hourglass Ambient Metallic Strobe Lighting Palette ($62 and available meow) on my cheeks. My plan is to roll up to the afterlife lookin’ like Pat McGrath herself glowed my @ss up.

hourglass ambient metallic strobe lighting palette 2 — From the pan on the left: shimmery pink Absolute Strobe Light, shimmery gold Pure Strobe Light and shimmery rose gold Lucent Strobe Light

I could pat-pat-pat and blend-blend-blend these highlighting powders on my face-face-face all day-day-day, and I know that’s weird to say because, as you know, I’m not the biggest fan of metallic highlighter that wolf whistles and catcalls as you’re strutting down the street, but the metallics in this palette are magical. Yeah, they’re shiny, and yes, they’re bright, but the powder grains are almost imperceptible. They’re even finer than the particles in the BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector Pressed Powder Highlighters, and that results in a high beam glow that looks creamy and expensive. And that’s a rare find, my friend!

hourglass ambient metallic strobe lighting palette k2 — The lip is MAC Lipglass in N-U-D-E, and the eyes are courtesy of the Kevyn Aucoin making Faces Beauty Book.

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Stila One Step Primer Preps, Primes, Conditions and Smooths Skin

September 25th, 2017 by Karen 10 Comments

Is there a more science-y looking primer than Stila One Step? Seriously, I don’t think so. It’s got that double helix-looking DNA thing swirling around in the bottle, which is kind of cool.

Stila’s moisturizing primer

So, Stila has a bunch of different face primers. I know there’s one for illuminating and one for color correcting, but One Step is their moisturizing, smoothing water-based primer.

The clear liquid surrounding the helix is a combination of water and other moisturizing ingredients. The primer contains a mix of vitamins and 15 botanicals, buuuuuut the plant extracts are mostly all down near the bottom of the ingredient list, which is just something to keep in mind.

I’m not completely sold on this primer’s hydrating power… I have combination skin, and I don’t really feel like this primer does much for my dry spots. (Side note: If you want straight-up hydration, check out MAC Natural Radiance.)

Stila One Step Primer: Ingredients
Water, Cyclopentasiloxane, Butylene Glycol, Octyldodecyl Neopentanoate, Glycerin, Phenoxyethanol, PEG/PPG-18/18 Dimethicone, Carbomer, Dimethicone, Aluminum Hydroxide, Sodium Hydroxide, Caprylyl Glycol, Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891), Sodium Chloride, Sodium Dehydroacetate, Disodium EDTA, Phytantriol, Hexylene Glycol, Glyceryl Acrylate/Acrylic Acid Copolymer, Dextrin Palmitate, Palmitic Acid, Octyldodecanol, Stearic Acid, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate, Tocopherol, Magnesium Ascorbyl Phosphate, Retinyl Palmitate, Zinc Oxide (CI 77947), Lysine, Triethoxycaprylylsilane, Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract, Chamomilla Recutita (Matricaria) Flower Extract, Ginkgo Biloba Leaf Extract, Panax Ginseng Root Extract, Sodium Hyaluronate, Magnesium Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Zinc Chloride, Potassium Sorbate, Montmorillonite, Illite, Kaolin

In case you don’t know primers from pancakes

Primers are applied after your skin care but before your foundation, and a lot of brands carry a number of different primers designed to help address different skin issues.

Generally, though, they all smooth the skin by filling in your pores and fine lines to make the products that you apply on top of them appear smoother and last longer. Many primers, like this one from Stila, use silicones to fill the dips and valleys on the surface of the skin.

TECHNIQUE TIP: After I apply primer, I give it a couple minutes to completely dry before I layer anything else on top, because when there are wet spots, my foundation or concealer won’t adhere very well to those areas.

I don’t wear primer every day, because I don’t think I need it if I’m just going out to buy a loaf of bread, but when I’m going to be meeting someone for lunch, or taking certain kinds of pics for MBB, then yeah, I’ll make the effort, because primer makes a night-and-day difference in terms of smoothness and wear time, especially on my cheeks.

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Product Shout-Out: NARS Saint-Raphael Precision Lip Liner

September 21st, 2017 by Karen 3 Comments

OK, this is one of those off-label uses of a makeup product, so if you’re a stickler about only using products in the way they’re intended, you might want to look away. For a second.

On the other paw, if you’re open to experimentation, I found a very effective color corrector completely by accident.

Well, technically, it isn’t a face product. It’s an opaque matte orange lip pencil, NARS Precision Lip Liner in Saint-Raphael. It’s one of the new NARS Precision Lip Liners.

I’ve been using it to color-correct a desiccated former pimple that’s now purple, and it totally works.

I wouldn’t use it on under-eye circles, though, because it is a lip pencil, and I don’t know if it’s approved for use along water lines or around eyes in general. But I’ll use it on my chin, my cheeks, forehead, nose and the sides of my mouth.

Here I’m using it as a color corrector on my chin to hide Julian the pimple, who is STILL plaguing me.

We (or I) could literally talk about color correcting for hours. I think it’s fascinating, but to briefly summarize (haha, good luck to me), orange color-correcting products appear to cancel out/neutralize purple and blue shades, because orange and purple sit across from each other on the color wheel, where they stare each other down 24/7, throw shade and give each other the evil eye…

Typically, you’d apply orange color correctors on purple areas, then layer concealer or foundation on top.

karen bare skin before with julian — The before shot: Julian the pimple is obsessed with me…

nars saint raphael as color corrector — It’s called makeup improv, and I’m into it.

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Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Volume 3

September 20th, 2017 by Karen 18 Comments

hourglass ambient lighting edit vol 3 top pic — Inspiring wannabe rappers everywhere: the new Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Vol. 3 ($80)

Hourglass, Hourglass,
Your makeup kicks @ss.
Hourglass, Hourglass,
Face powders lit with all the sass.
Hourglass, Hourglass,
Prepare to drop some major cash!

They say that you should never give up on your dreams…but I don’t think they were referring to me and my dream of becoming M.C. Makeup, because I’m a sh*tty rapper! I might know all the words to most of Lil’ Kim’s songs, but that doesn’t mean they come out in the right order, haha.

This palette, though? — the new Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Volume 3? It IS coming out in the right order, because this is the third year in a row that Hourglass has done a palm-sized travel kit o’ powders for the holidays, and it’s numero three.

I love the first one, Vol. 1, and still use it all the time. The second one, however, I bought but soon returned because, even though I thought it was beautiful, it wasn’t right for my skin tone. It was too light.

Like the first one, Vol. 3 has six pans of face powder that I think will suit more skin tones than ever. It also looks pretty chic in that gorgeous rose gold packaging, but it should…because it’s $80.

hourglass ambient lighting edit vol 3 overhead — Top row, from the left: Finishing Powder in Diffused Light, Strobe Powder in Hypnotic Strobe Light (NEW) and Finishing Powder in Dim Light; Bottom row from the left: Bronzer in Luminous Bronze Light, Blush in Surreal Halo (NEW) and Blush in Pure Effect (NEW)

Of the six pans, three are re-promotes — Dim Light, Diffused Light and Luminous Bronze Light — and three are NEW! — Surreal Halo and Surreal Halo (which are blushes), and Hypnotic Strobe (a highlighter).

Both Surreal Halo and Pure Effect are darker and more intense than the colors in last year’s palette, which is potentially fantastic news for marvelous medium-toned mavens and darker damsels.

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit – Volume 3: the six shades

Dim Light — This subtly luminous peachy beige can set your makeup, and it doubles as a highlighter. It creates that trademark Hourglass Ambient Powder sheen.
I dig this one. I’ve been using it as an all-over face powder and to set concealer.
Diffused Light — This warm pale yellow can set, highlight and conceal redness, but I can’t really work it now because I still have a tan from summer. For now at least, it’s borderline chalky on me.
Lighter lovelies are in luck, and I suspect that it’ll also work better for me as we get closer to winter.
Luminous Bronze Light — This medium tan has golden undertones and creates a subtle golden sheen. I think it works better as a bronzer than a contouring powder, but watch out — if I apply too much of it over large areas on my face, it looks muddy and kinda dirty (especially on my cheeks).
I much prefer Hourglass Radiant Bronze Light, which is warmer and more golden, but this one’s also very pretty if you get the amount right.
Surreal Halo Blush (NEW, exclusive to this palette) — This bright berry is absolutely GORGEOUS and creates a very natural flush. I don’t have anything else quite like it in my Hourglass collection.
I like applying it by doing big sweeps with a large fluffy brush because, for some reason, it looks REALLY good when you cover a lot of skin with it.
Pure Effect Blush (NEW, exclusive to palette) — This bright petal pink is brighter and more intense than the other pink Hourglass blushes out there.
I like layering it on top of Surreal Halo, where I’ll do a small pop of color on the apples of my cheeks. 🙂
Hypnotic Strobe Highlighter (NEW, exclusive to palette) — This shimmering champagne gold is great for subtle highlights.

hourglass ambient lighting edit vol 3 swatches — Swatch out! From the top: Finishing Powder in Diffused Light, Strobe Powder in Hypnotic Strobe Light (NEW), Finishing Powder in Dim Light, Bronzer in Luminous Bronze Light, Blush in Surreal Halo (NEW) and Blush in Pure Effect (NEW)

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Unsung Makeup Heroes: Shiseido Facial Cotton

September 19th, 2017 by Karen 20 Comments

The Unsung Heroes series highlights some of my ALL-TIME favorite permanent collection products from all sorts of brands.

Dang, I had my heart set on being crabby about these Shiseido Facial Cotton pads, because girl, they’re $10, and you only get 165 of them, which is craziness to me because you could roll up to Target right now and get a massive pack of 300 up & up brand cotton pads for $5.

But ugh, these Shiseido ones are so good!

I didn’t expect to be bougie about cotton pads, but I’m there, man. The Shiseido ones are the softest, most velvety facial pads I’ve ever used, and once you’ve felt their caress (it was unmistakable when they touched my delicate water lines), other cotton pads will feel like rough metal scouring pads. NO JOKE. Even Q-tips.

OK, that was a joke…but you know hear I mean’. The Shiseido Facial Cotton pads feel SOFT. Q-tips used to feel like tabby tum fur to me before I got spoiled by these.

I mostly use them to remove eye makeup, but you can use them like any other cotton ball or cotton pad. They’ll apply toners or liquid essences after cleansing, remove face makeup, and they’ll soften the edges of your blush, eyeshadow or your bronzer perfectly well.

I guess you could also use them to remove nail polish, but I won’t be using them for that. My fingers and toes just wouldn’t appreciate how soft (or pricey) they are.

A single pad can remove all of my eye makeup and face makeup, then STILL have enough oomph left to apply toner.

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3 Mind-Blowing Ways to Transform Your Makeup and Have Tons of Fun With Face Oil

September 18th, 2017 by Karen 15 Comments

chantecaille rose de mail face oil — Wait — what? Why would I want to mix face oil with my makeup?? Please explain.

This one never would have occurred to me on my own. I had no idea anyone was doing this — mixing face oil into their makeup. Then I saw MAC Senior Artist Alev Karli do it in a video (check out her Instagram feed because it’s gorgeous!). She blended a couple drops of MAC Essential Oil into Groundwork Paint Pot, and BAM! — ye olde proverbial light switch got flipped in my head.

Whoa! You mean that if I add a few drops of face oil to cream eyeshadow or cream blush, it’ll thin them out and change their consistency??

That’s brilliant.

mac constructivist face oil — Adding a drop of face oil to MAC Constructivist Paint Pot

Adding a few drops to cream shadow makes it easier to buff and blend (and also makes it look less cake-y and more natural). The finish changes, too. It gets dewier and glossier.

mac constructivist with face oil — The oil makes it glossier.

If you’re in the mood to mix, here are some variations to try…

1. Face oil + cream highlighter

I did this with Cream Colour Base in Hush last weekend and a few drops of Chantecaille Rose De Mail Face Oil, which someone gave me as a gift a few years ago (it’s crazy expensive!), but I bet it would work just as well with any face oil you have around.

mac hush with face oil — MAC Cream Colour Base in Hush with Chantecaoill Rose de Mail Face Oil

I added the oil right into the pan of Cream Color Base, mixed it with a face brush, then gently stippled the new concoction onto my upper cheekbones for a dewy, pearly glow.

You can wear do this on top of your face makeup (although I recommend applying it before you do your face powder so it doesn’t make whatever you’re wearing under it scoot around too much), or apply it under foundation or tinted moisturizer for a soft, subtle highlight.

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