Eyes

Makeup Shortcuts: Save Time by Using Eyeliner as Eyeshadow

April 18th, 2017 by Karen 15 Comments

mac costa riche top — Using eyeliner as eyeshadow

Sometimes you wanna get lost in the moment, forget your cares, and blend your eye makeup to your heart’s ? delight…and sometimes you don’t.

Next time you don’t, try using an eyeliner as eyeshadow. You can whip out a quick look in minutes.

It’s usually easier if you use a soft liner because you can scoot it around with a brush, and liners that don’t dry immediately and stay pliable longer will give you more time to blend them out. I’m wearing MAC Costa Riche Eye Kohl in these pics.

Step 1: Get to linin’

Start by lining your lash and water lines with the eyeliner, then apply it your lids and just barely into the crease.

Note: you don’t have to be neat here at all. In fact, if you look in the mirror and see a crazy person starting back at you, you’re doing it right, LOL! 🙂

Step 2: Buff with a fluffy brush

Buff and smooth out the liner doing tight little circles and sweeping motions with your brush until it looks sufficiently buffed and even. FYI, you can coax it up and out as far as you’d like.

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A Dashing Duo: Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’, and the Unwritten Rule of Middle School Dancing (Circa 1989)

February 6th, 2017 by Karen 22 Comments

benefit theyre real sexy smokin — Wearing the new Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ ($24) on my eyes and They’re Real Double the Lip in Pink Thrills on my lips

Middle school dances were the worst. I don’t know why anybody thought they were fun.

Well…I know that there were some kids who probably had fun, like the kids in the popular clique who planned the dances. I bet they had a good time, but I never did. I always felt awkward sitting there in the bleachers, wringing my hands and tap-tap-tapping my lace-less Keds.

This was before it was OK to dance with a group of your girlfriends out on the dance floor, so you had to wait for someone to ask you, ugh! So painful. Nobody I ever actually wanted to dance with would ask me, which wasn’t a big surprise. I mean, I was beyond shy and awkward and nerdy.

I did get asked a couple times…which leads me to the unwritten rule of middle school dances (circa 1989), which is that two is the magic number.

I’m thinking about this because I’ve been all about “the twos” today. I’m rockin’ a new eyeshadow duo and a new lipstick duo from Benefit — They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ ($24) and They’re Real Double the Lip lipstick ($20). They’re part of Benefit’s new spring collection (available now at Benefit stores and counters), which is all about duos.

With the eight neutral powder eyeshadow duos and the eight lipsticks, and they’re basically um… the whole deal is they make your eyes and lips look bigger, instantly.

The shadows have a funky round sponge applicator, which you swipe across the pan (the pan has the two shadows stacked on top of each other horizontally). You swipe the funky sponge across the pan, and then across your eye, with the darker shade closest to your lash line.

The idea is to make your eyes look bigger, brighter and schmexier with just one swipe.

And you do something similar with the lipsticks. They have a teardrop-shaped bullet, with a slighter darker color at the tip, so that when you swipe the tube across your lips, the darker edge makes the lighter part in the center pop.

So your lips look bigger. ?

benefit theyre real duo shadow blender — The eight new They’re Real Duo Shadow Blenders ($24 each)

I plan to do a full review of the whole collection soon, but today was all about Sexy Smokin’. It’s a dark, satiny, cool-toned brownish taupe, and a shiny, silvery taupe shimmer.

I’m all about the darker taupe, and when I wore it with my NARS primer last Saturday, it stayed put all day long.

So, back to the unwritten magical rule of twos… It was one of those things that nobody ever told my me or my friends. Ever.

You know how there were things that your friends never told you, and you had to figure out on your own? Well, one of them was that back in the late ’80s at middle school dances, you couldn’t just move your arms and feet to the beat however it moved you. There were, like, actual dance moves that the kids in my school did, like the snake, the running man, the kid ‘n’ play and the robocop #datingmyselfsohardrightnow. And the unwritten rule was that when you were dancing with somebody, you couldn’t just do one of these dances… You had to do two of them. Two dances.

benefit theyre real sexy smokin pink thrills — Swatches of Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ and They’re Real Double the Lip in Pink Thrills

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The Urban Decay Full Spectrum Palette | Color Blocked Rainbow Eyes

October 27th, 2016 by Karen 12 Comments

I’m staring out a window right now, a.k.a. writing, and it’s really dark outside! It’s the late afternoon, it’s cloudy, and it looks like it’s gonna rain. I don’t see any rainbows…yet.

I’m thinking that when I go out to go run some errands, I should probably wear layers, because when you live in California, that’s what you do. You wear layers. You kind of expect it. But with some things, like Urban Decay eyeshadows, I don’t expect to have to wear layers. Their shadows are usually super pigmented. Yeah, there’s a lot of fallout, too, and I expect that. But I also expect potent pigments and a formula that’s easy to blend.

That’s why I like them, and that’s also why I didn’t expect to have to do a lot of layering with the new $55 Urban Decay Full Spectrum Eyeshadow Palette.

Alas, that was not the case.

I ended up doing lots of layers with this color blocked rainbow eye look — many more than I expected to. Sometimes it took me four or five layers to get really punchy color. With the bright orange spotlight on that one lid, I even ended up having to wet my brush to intensify it.

I got the idea for this look from the bejeweled, sparkly UD logo on the front of the palette, with the colors moving into each other like a gradient. I thought, “Oh, that’s some neat color blocking. Why don’t I try that on my eyes?”

Plus, it’s a rainbow eyeshadow palette. I mean, come on. My first inclination was to use a shimmery olive and put some browns in the crease, but that would have been a missed opportunity, right? I had to taste the rainbow.

Urban Decay Full Spectrum Eyeshadow Palette
$55, limited edition and available now
21 shades (18 new shades, three exclusives from past palettes)
Includes a dual-ended eyeshadow brush
It’s a followup to 2015’s Urban Spectrum Eyeshadow Palette.

“We organized the shadows by color family, creating a rainbow of ombré trios: pinks, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, and even a wildcard row that goes from white to black. The end result? A palette that not only looks stunning, but also delivers tons of options. Create dimensional ombré looks by working within the color-coordinated trios or experiment with multiple shade groups at once. With 18 NEW shades, three exclusives from past palettes, and a wide range of finishes, you’ll never run out of options.”

— urbandecay.com

Shades:

Alchemy (deep fuchsia satin)
Gossip (bright metallic pink w/subtle floating pearl)
Paranoia (soft metallic blue-pink)
Warning (deep metallic copper)
Seize (bright metallic coral w/subtle floating pearl)
Jones (metallic orange w/subtle floating pearl)
Midnight Blaze (black matte w/yellow-gold pearl)
Calavera (bright yellow matte w/subtle floating pearl)
Goldmine (metallic yellow-gold)
Hundred (deep metallic forest green)
Hatter (vibrant green w/tonal micro-sparkle)
Mean (bright metallic lime green)
Minx (deep navy matte w/floating tonal pearl)
Blindsided (bright teal blue matte w/floating pearl)
Metamorphosis (vibrant periwinkle blue w/micro-sparkle)
Delirious (deep plum matte w/subtle floating pearl)
Sketch (metallic medium purple)
Faded (lavender w/gold shimmer)
Platonic (black matte w/iridescent glitter)
Iced (oyster silver w/shimmer)
Bump (white matte)

Fill Weight: 21 x 1.2 g POIDS NET/NET WT. 21 x 0.04 oz

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MAC Spellbinder Shadow: This Shine Has Powerful Pull

October 24th, 2016 by Karen 10 Comments

mac spellbinder collection — The MAC Spellbinder Shadows. On the left from top to bottom: Aphrodisiatic, Blue Karma, Cosmic Clash and Mysterious Influence; on the right: Retrograde, Gravity’s Pull, Higher Power and Dynamically Charged

This is probably as close as I’m going to get to sci-fi makeup this week. They’re the new MAC Spellbinder Shadows, and they have magnetized particles — which is weird and freaky and cool.

I held a paper clip above one of the pots, and you can see the particles cling to it…

Ooh, science. 🙂

These eight new $22 limited edition loose powder shadows look kind of like cream shadows in their pots, but they aren’t. They’re loose, but they’re ionized and bound together by a magnetic charge.

The shades are all on the darker end of the spectrum, like dark blue, brown and plum — so they’re very moody and very fall. They’re also very bling-worthy and shiny.

MAC Spellbinder Shadow
$22 each, available now online in eight shades
Available in-store October 20 through December 1, 2016
#MACSpellbinder

I gotta say, though…I expected these to be easier to work with than MAC’s other loose pigments because of the whole magnetic action, but they aren’t. When I did this look, I got shadow all over the place — all over my desk, all over my hands, all over my face.

I should not have done my foundation first; it took a while to clean everything up…

But you do get high-wattage, super dramatic, super frosty drama with these, and incredibly enough, they don’t highlight my fine lines. If you want your eyes to sparkle from a mile away, these are great for that.

“A shadow made of ionized, magnetically charged pigments that cling to lids like velvet. Black, ionized pigments are magnetically charged, fusing the loose powder together so it magically maintains its form and dimension. Features eight shades in a metallic finish.

“Apply using fingers, brush or sponge. Works best after application of Prep + Prime 24-Hour Extend Eye Base.”

—maccosmetics.com

mac spellbinder jar — The MAC Spellbinder jar packaging

mac spellbinder closeup — I’m wearing Aphrodisiatic (outer lid), Blue Karma (inner lid, applied wet), Mysterious Influence (lower lash line) and Dynamically Charged (crease)

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MAC Nutcracker Sweet Holiday 2016 Gift Sets: The Warm Eye Compact Eye Shadow X 9

October 19th, 2016 by Karen 9 Comments

mac nutcracker sweet warm eye compact — Wearing MAC Era, Woodwinked, Lady Fingers and Twelve Chimes on my lids

So, that shade right there? — one-two-three-four from the left? That’s Woodwinked.

I know! I didn’t realize it until I was halfway through an eye look yesterday morning. I was scooting along, doing my makeup, when I thought, “That one looks really familiar,” but it didn’t look too familiar, so I flipped it over, saw the name and said, “Holy sh*t! That’s Woodwinked. How can that be Woodwinked??”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had to keep flipping the compact over, back and forth. One of my favorite MAC colors of all time (here’s a look with it from 2013!) is in this palette, but it doesn’t look or feel like the Woodwinked I know.

M∙A∙C Nutcracker Sweet
Available online October 20, 2016
Available in stores on October 27, 2016 through December 8, 2016
#MACNutcrackerSweet

Basically, that set the tone for how I feel about the Warm Eye Compact Eye Shadow X 9 palette, one of three X 9 palettes in the MAC Nutcracker Sweet holiday collection.

Like the other two — Smoky and Cool — it has nine eyeshadows, a dual-ended brush and snazzy packaging. Some of the colors are re-promotes, like Woodwinked, Era and Showstopper, and some are new.

I really like the Cool palette from this collection, but it set a high bar for me, and I think that’s influencing how I feel about the Warm palette now.

The Warm Eye Compact Eye Shadow X 9 ($39.50) — Showstopper (Matte), Twelve Chimes (Lustre), Beyond Gorgeous (Veluxe Pearl), Unwind (Veluxe Pearl), Lady Fingers (Matte), Era (Satin), Woodwinked (Veluxe Pearl), Filament (Lustre) and Whirling (Lustre).

It’s one of three X 9 palettes in the MAC Nutcracker Sweet holiday collection (the other two are Cool and Smoky).

The set also comes with…

The 214/213 Dual-Ended Brush

mac nutcracker sweet smoky eye compact — MAC Nutcracker Sweet Warm Eye Compact Eye Shadow X 9

MAC Nutcracker Sweet Warm Eye Compact Eye Shadow X 9 — Top row swatches (from the left): Filament, Whirling, Era, Woodwinked, Unwind; bottom row: Lady Fingers, Twelve Chimes, Showstopper, Beyond Gorgeous

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MAC Nutcracker Sweet Holiday 2016 Gift Sets: Plum Eye Bag and Smoky Eye Bag

October 18th, 2016 by Karen 8 Comments

mac nutcracker sweet plum eye bag — Wearing from the MAC Nutcracker Sweet Plum Eye Bag, Pro Longwear Paint Pot in Stormy Pink, Extra Dimension Eye Shadow in Smoky Mauve, False Lashes Mascara, and the Technakohl Liner in Purple Dash. Also wearing NARS Blush in Unwritten on my cheeks and MAC Cremesheen Lipstick in Kingdom of Sweets.

These products suffer from an unfortunate name…

Eye Bags.

I keep thinking of my under-eye bags and, like, are these going to make my eye bags looks worse?? Why would I want something called an “eye bag”?

Haha!

OK, I think they meant to say that they’re bags that contain products for your eyes, and not that they’re designed to give you eye bags.

I get it.

There are two of ’em in the MAC Nutcracker Sweet collection — one Smoky, one Plum — and each one comes with a Paint Pot, a Technakohl Liner, an Extra Dimension Eye Shadow and a False Lashe Mascara, and surprise! — they’re all full size. So you get all that stuff and a bag for your eye bag products for $42.50, which is a pretty good price, seeing as how a Paint Pot is normally $22 and an Eye Shadow is $20.

M∙A∙C Nutcracker Sweet
Available online October 20, 2016
Available in stores on October 27, 2016 through December 8, 2016
#MACNutcrackerSweet

From reading about these before getting my hands on them, I thought I was gonna be all about the Smoky Bag because I love smoky looks, but nuh-uh. The Smoky one? Just OK. Plum is where it’s at.

Turns out the Smoky one is just too frosty for me — the combination of the frosty Paint Pot, and then when you put the frosty Extra Dimension Eye Shadow on top of that, and then the black liner, Graphblack (old-school fave), it’s just too much frost. For me, it’s just too shiny, but if you like super shiny, you may like the Smoky one more.

I like the Plum one’s mix of finishes. Like, you get the matte base, so you get a little of the matte peeking through when you pop the shinier Eye Shadow on top, so it seems more complex and elegant. It doesn’t just look like a frost fest, vis-à-vis the Smoky Eye Bag.

I keep laughing… Smoky Eye Bag. 🙂

The Plum Eye Bag ($42.50)
Stormy Pink Pro Longwear Paint Pot permanent)
Smoky Mauve Extra Dimension Eye Shadow in Smoky Mauve (permanent)
Technakohl Liner in Purple Dash (permanent)
False Lashes Mascara (permanent)
All are full size

The Smoky Eye Bag ($42.50)
Dream Scene Pro Longwear Paint Pot (not sure if it’s a re-promote, but I can’t remember seeing it before)
Fathoms Deep Extra Dimension Eye Shadow (permanent)
Technakohl Liner in Graphblack (permanent)
False Lashes Mascara (permanent)
All are full size

mac nutcracker sweet eye bags — The MAC Nutcracker Sweet Eye Bags with an iPhone 6S Plus for scale

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Unsung Makeup Heroes: Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Loaded

September 30th, 2016 by Karen 8 Comments

urban decay loaded — Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Loaded ($20)

The long-running Unsung Heroes series here on Makeup and Beauty Blog features some of our all-time favorite permanent collection products.

Today I’m wearing Loaded from Urban Decay. It’s one of their liners. It’s this really deep green that almost looks black when you put it on your lash lines, and that’s why I love it. It’s perfect for fall.

Fall always makes me think of dark greens and really rich jewel tones on the lash line.

I mean, I don’t even really try with Loaded. I just, like, sharpen it, run it across my upper and lower lash lines a few times, and then maybe I’ll smudge out the edges if I’m feeling ambitious, but that’s it.

I love the 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencils. They’re just so smooth and silky, and easy, because there’s no fallout drama (not like with the eyeshadows).

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LORAC Mega Pro Palette 3: An Emoji Review ?

September 28th, 2016 by Karen 25 Comments

lorac-mega pro 3 palette swatches — Wearing the new LORAC Mega Pro 3 Palette on my lids

Who was the genius who decided that this needed to be white?

I mean, I had it open for about two seconds before there was eyeshadow all over the packaging, all over the inside of it, the outside of it, all over me. I don’t even know. It was a mess!

I really like it, though. There are so many colors, and it has this rose gold theme, which feels kinda 2013, but eh — I’ll go with it. I think the best things, by far, are the first two rows. They’re all mattes! (All matte errrthing.) And these mattes are just so freaking juicy, soft and super easy to blend.

This whole grunge thing happening on my lids? (Well, I’m also wearing a couple shimmers. Let me just throw that out there.) I did it in like 10 minutes.

Maybe instead of writing the rest of this review, I’ll just use emojis, since that’s where we’re headed anyway. Why even bother with the English language? Just use emojis. That’s how Connor will probably communicate with me in the future anyway. Might as well get a jump on it. 🙂

Eyeshadow texture: ?
Pigment: ?
Fallout: ?
Shade selection: ?
Blending: ?
Mattes: ?
Shimmers:?
Packaging: ?

PRICE: $59
AVAILABILITY: Limited edition and available now at LORAC counters and Ulta
MAKEUP AND BEAUTY BLOG RATING: ?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen