Face

Warm Up Your Skin and Add Color to Your Cheeks With the New Bobbi Brown Brightening Bricks

February 13th, 2015 by Karen 14 Comments

I wish my house was made out of Bobbi Brown Brightening Bricks.

Never mind that they aren’t adequate building materials (Lego would probably be sturdier), but at least when the homies rolled up I’d have a great conversation starter.

“Um…what kind of walls you got there?”

“Bricks.”

“Those don’t look like bricks…”

“They are bricks. They’re Bobbi Brown Brightening Bricks.”

“OK. So, basically, your house is made out of makeup?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then.”

The housing situation would be precarious at best. Cold nights would force me to snuggle closer to Ryan Gosling (darn), but I’d always have access to a good-looking blush.

Sweet! 🙂

Bobbi Brown Brightening Brick in Coral — Brightening Brick in Coral

Recently released with Bobbi’s spring collection, the Brightening Bricks are like toned down Shimmer Bricks, but instead of containing strips of highlighting powder, they’re part blush, part warm bronzer. And they’re $46 each (which seems a little steep for Bobbi Brown, or is that just me?).

Bobbi Brown Brightening Brick in Cranberry — Brightening Brick in Cranberry

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Rouge Bunny Rouge Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses: It Would Be a Sin to Miss These Original Skin Blushes

February 12th, 2015 by Karen 19 Comments

Rouge Bunny Rouge Delicata Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses

Oh, for the love of roses!

Apparently, along with the recent revelation that I’m more than willing to “Mrs. Robinson” Nick Jonas, I’ve also realized that I’m going to need more makeup storage space for MOAR RBR BLUSHES.

Are you familiar with RBR’s $29 Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses powder blushes from their permanent line?

Um…kinda phenomenal! Like, so phenomenal that they make Chanel Malice shake in its go-go boots. Like, you could go months before wanting to wear anything else.

I’d never tried them before, but I finally got around to it this week, and I’m so glad I did.

I mean, yeah, if you’re going for ’80s-style unblended blush racing stripes down the sides of your face, these probably aren’t the best blushes for that; however, if you want natural-looking cheeks to go with your Victoria’s Secret angel wings and hair, you’ve come to the right place.

Rouge Bunny Rouge Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses in 033 Delicata — 033 Delicata

The name “Original Skin” is totally apt. Think hot cheeks after boom-chicka-wah-wah, if you know what I’m sayin’.

Come on, don’t make me spell it out. 🙂 This is a family show.

The way these fine powders bind to skin is almost hypnotic. They cling so close that it’s hard to tell where your skin begins and the powder ends. At first glance, you don’t even realize it’s there, and then you do and you’re like YES.

Rouge Bunny Rouge Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses in 036 Orpheline — 036 Orpheline

And the flawless finishes will have people wondering if homegirl actually wakes up like that. The mattes border on satins (so they aren’t too stark), and the sheens lovingly do not invite all of the pores in the neighborhood out to play.

Rouge Bunny Rouge Original Skin Blush For Love of Roses in 038 Habenera — 038 Habanera

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With the Right Brush, Everything’s Coming Up Roses for Milani’s New Rose Powder Blushes

January 26th, 2015 by Karen 21 Comments

Wearing Milani Rose Powder Blush in Tea Rose on my cheeks — That’s $7.99 Milani Rose Powder Blush in Tea Rose on my cheeks

Everything did not come up roses the first time I used Milani’s Rose Powder Blushes…

I made the mistake of using a cheek brush with a small, dense brush head to apply one and ended up with so much color on my cheeks that I looked like a Harlequin clown doll/vaudeville performer.

Milani Rose Powder Blushes from the left: Coral Cove, Tea Rose and Romantic Rose ($7.99 each) — The Milani Rose Powder Blushes from the left in Coral Cove, Tea Rose and Romantic Rose ($7.99 each)

The three available shades are preternaturally pigmented and matte, and therefore forgiving (pore issues, yo!), but they can look scary intense (think painted circles of bright pink) if applied willy-nilly with the wrong brush, i.e. blush brushes with a small, dense head. Same goes for large, fluffy blush brushes.

In case I haven’t stressed it enough, these blushes are VERY pigmented, and I get the best, most natural-looking results when I chill out and use a medium-sized, moderately dense duo fiber brush.

But I think a fan brush would also work well.

The flat finish looks divine in pics, and I dig the colors, which remind me of beloved shades I wear all the time, like MAC Blushbaby (01 Romantic Rose), and Chanel Malice (05 Coral Cove).

If these blushes didn’t have a logo or any branding, I’d assume they were from Sephora or Nordstrom and quite a bit more expensive (they’re $7.99 for a 0.60-oz. pan). There’s also no funny business with the fine powders. They sit on top of my skin, don’t require a lot of buffing, and last all day long.

Romantic Rose is a matte pinkish beige, Tea Rose a matte neutral rosy pink, and Coral Cove a warm poppy.

You might remember Coral Cove from last spring. This new version is more or less the same, but Milani added rose oil (although I don’t detect a scent).

Milani Rose Powder Blush in Romantic Rose — Rose Powder Blush in Romantic Rose

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NARS Soft Velvet Loose Powder: I Got 99 Problems But This Powder Ain’t One

January 23rd, 2015 by Karen 18 Comments

These days, my pores run the show. They drive the car. They’re the CEOs of my face, and every face-related product I use, from foundation to primer and powder, like the one I’m wearing here, new NARS Soft Velvet Loose Powder, has to keep the CEOs happy.

And $36 NARS Soft Velvet does.

What is it exactly?

Honestly, it’s a loose powder. It does not exist to bring about world peace, but it will, however, set your foundation and concealer (and it does so without appearing thick or heavy), blur those pores (yea!), smooth the texture of your skin, and soak up that pesky oil patch in the middle of your forehead. You can wear it all by itself on bare skin, or on top of other products.

My skin always gets dry this time of year, so this isn’t the best time for me to assess an oil-controlling product, but I’m guessing that if I were in one of my oily skin phases, like when I could fry egg rolls with the grease on my forehead (throughout my teens and early 20s), this would have laid a decent smack-down, although it probably wouldn’t have gone home with the championship belt.

Before NARS Soft Velvet Loose Powder

The before shot: Wearing NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation on my face — The before shot: Wearing NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation, but without powder.

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NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation Is a Lightweight, Long-Lasting Jill-of-All-Trades

January 22nd, 2015 by Karen 28 Comments

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation costs $48, and with a $48 foundation, you basically want that scene from When Harry Met Sally. Like, you want to feel that way when you use a $48 foundation, and then you want the lady next to you to say, “I’ll have the foundation she’s having.”

I mean, I wouldn’t actually pretend to have a big O in the middle of Sephora or anything, because hello! — we live in a digital age of smartphones and video, and knowing my luck, I’d blurt out “It feels like I’m hardly wearing anything at all! Yes, yes, YES!!! It’s so natural looking on my skin!” inevitably, some pervert would be filming me, and it would get around on the Interwebz, and my mother would see it…

The way NARS describes this foundation, you’d think you’re reading about the invention of time travel in Scientific American. With new “Even Tone Technology,” one drop/pump is supposed to deliver 16 hours of weightless, oil-free full coverage, and with long term use, it’s also supposed to make skin tone appear more even.

It’s an all-encompassing Jill-of-All-Trades foundation without SPF (meaning that it shouldn’t produce a white cast in pictures with a flash), and it’s available in 20 shades.

So, how well does it really work?

Pretty well. It’s not the CERN of foundations or anything, and the claim to offer full coverage from a single pump seems like a stretch to me, but you can build it up for more coverage (with a caveat, which I’ll get to in a minute).

I’d say it has one foot in the medium-coverage pool, and the other foot in the full-coverage pool. Of course, “full coverage” is open to interpretation, and one person’s full coverage is another person’s medium. My definition might be skewed by Laura Mercier’s Flawless Fluide, one drop of which covers every. Single. Thing on my face.

One pump of NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation gets rid of any redness around my nose, cheeks and forehead while unifying the skin tone all over my face, but I still have to do some spot concealing on the freckles around my eyes, and I can still see the patch of skin above my upper lip that appears gray on camera unless it’s fully covered.

You can build the foundation up for fuller coverage by using more product, but then that interferes with its natural-looking mojo…

Being a curious kitty with an inquisitive nature, I’ve tested this in a number of ways — atop one primer, atop two primers (which is what I usually do with Laura’a Flawless Fluide), by itself, with a powder on top, applied with my fingers, applied with a Beautyblender, applied with a foundation brush, and at the end of the day, the simplest way works best. Just the product all by itself applied with fingers on bare skin (well, bare skin prepped with my skin care). That’s it.

Before NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation in Stromboli…

Before applying NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation in Stromboli

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Get Flawless Skin From a Weightless Formula With New Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer

January 7th, 2015 by Karen 24 Comments

Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealers from the left: Medium Light Neutral, Medium Neutral and Medium Dark Warm — Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealers from the left in Medium Light Neutral, Medium Neutral and Medium Dark Warm

So, one day last weekend when I wore Urban Decay’s new Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer ($28, coming this spring to the permanent line), I got into a big tiff with my parents, and there was lots of crying involved.

(Long story, but it was a misunderstanding, and everything’s fine now.)

When El Hub and I got home later that night, I went to wash my face and saw that the concealer I’d been wearing was still intact…10 hours later!

Granted, it didn’t look perfect, especially around my fine lines, but considering the buckets I’d cried a few hours earlier, it looked pretty good.

Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealers from the left in Medium Light Neutral, Medium Neutral and Medium Dark Warm

Before Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer…

Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer Before shot — The before shot: yeah, I know, I look tired…

And after Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer…

Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer in Medium Dark Warm — And after: wearing Medium Dark Warm underneath my eyes

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I Raise My Glass to BECCA’s $38 Shimmering Skin Perfector Pressed in Champagne Gold

November 13th, 2014 by Karen 14 Comments

Just FYI, keep your BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector Pressed in Champagne Gold ($38) away from any flocks of wild canaries, because they could potentially mistake it for one of their own.

BECCA Champagne Gold — BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector in Champagne Gold, $38

Don’t worry, this highlighter isn’t for the birds. Yeah, it looks jarringly yellow in swatches and the pan (at least I thought so at first), but it’s a totally different story on skin.

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Bobbi Brown’s New $45 High Light Powders in Pink Glow and Bronze Glow Work Like a Portable Fireplace in Powder Form

November 11th, 2014 by Karen 14 Comments

Bobbi Brown High Light Powder in Pink Glow — Wearing Bobbi Brown’s High Light Powder in Pink Glow ($45) on my upper cheeks

What’s that? A new highlighter? Yeah…sometimes when it comes to highlighters, I feel like I’ve seen and worn ’em all, from your subtle sheens to your full-blown glitter-fests, so when a new one comes along (you must whip it!) that successfully combines some of my favorite things about highlighters, I sit up, tie my hair into a high pony and get down to business.

Ms. Bobbi Brown, friend to women who like to wear makeup while still looking like themselves, recently revealed two of the snazziest highlighters I’ve seen in a while, her High Light Powders in Pink Glow and Bronze Glow ($45 each), which combine some of my favorite things about MAC’s Mineralize Skin Finishes and Chanel’s Highlighting Powders.

Bobbi Brown High Light Powder in Pink Glow and Bronze Glow — Bobbi Brown High Light Powder in Pink Glow (left) and Bronze Glow (right)

Almost creamy, like a MAC Mineralize Skin Finish powder (which makes them a breeze to blend), Bobbi’s High Light Powders do not, however, have the same glazed high-shine finish. Instead, they exude an ethereal, dreamy luster with a finespun finish that totally reminds me of Chanel.

Bobbi wanted to recreate the look of skin illuminated by a cozy fire (ahh…), with the same warm, buttery colors, and that’s what I see when I wear these highlighters.

Bobbi Brown High Light Powder in Pink Glow (left) and Bronze Glow (right) — Pink Glow (left) and Bronze Glow (right)

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