NARS

Springy and Smokey! Smokey Brown and Purple Cat Eyes and a Bright Coral Lip With New Makeup From Benefit, Dior and Smashbox

March 3rd, 2015 by Karen 27 Comments

The sun’s out, I’m not wearing socks (FOOT FREEDOM!), I am wearing coral lipstick, and the eye look I tried this morning did not result in a complete disaster…

Yeah, it’s been a terrific Tuesday so far. 🙂

Today I felt springy and, I dunno, kinda smokey, so this purply brown smokey eye with soft cat eye liner happened.

Note to self: do this liner more often! It’s fairly easy — just black eye pencil with a dark shimmery purple shadow blended on top with a pencil brush — and it takes about half the time as a super crisp black cat liner, otherwise known as “the time-suck of my makeup existence.”

As a side, am I the only person who regularly attempts black cat liner when there’s, like, absolutely no time to get ready, and then inevitably ends up with their two tiny kitten flicks morphing into huge, unsymmetrical bat wings that don’t match?

Yargh.

Siri, remind me to wear soft cat eyeliner like this the next time I need to be saved from myself.

Oh! — this look was also an excuse to try a few new products from Benefit, Dior and Smashbox.

Some quick notes…

Benefit’s new Roller Lash curling mascara — This stuff is black, and glossy, and it lifts and curls lashes, but you absolutely, positively must comb out your lashes while they’re wet; otherwise, they’ll stick together like mean girls in the cafeteria.
Dior’s Nude Air Serum Foundation — This lightweight, medium-coverage hybrid skin care serum/foundation looks amazing on the skin. My homegirl at Sephora hooked me up (‘sup Nini!) with a fatty-bo-batty sample in shade 040, and when I finish it…I’m probably gonna throw down 53 large ($53) for a full-size replacement.
Yeah, that good.
Smashbox Double Exposure Palette — Yep, these gorgeous, mostly cool-toned shades are a dream to blend.

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‘Cause One Can Never Wear Enough Neutrals: A Face of the Day With the Nude Dude Volume 2 Eye Palette By theBalm

February 27th, 2015 by Karen 38 Comments

I feel like every girl (and every boy who loves makeup; yes, I know you’re out there, and I love you!!!) has a default makeup look they turn to whenever they need to feel just straight-up pretty…and that’s definitely what I needed this morning because I woke up tired today, dude!

For real, I got like two seconds of sleep last night. The wind was crazy loud and howled all night long (“Awooooo!”), which fired up Tabs, who consequently spent the entire evening running circuits around the bedroom, knocking stuff off the dressers, climbing all over my boobs and generally doing naughty tabby things.

That darned cat! If he wasn’t so adorably squishy, I’d be raging mad at him right now. 🙂

Needless to say, I needed a pick-me-up this morning, so I figured, heck, why not do something makeup-wise that I really like to wear, so I ended up doing my favorite look to wear in the whole wide world — brown smokey eyes, pink cheeks, pink lips.

Yep, mah standby. 🙂

Key products worn in this look, including thebalm Nude Dude Volume 2 — Key products I’m wearing in this look

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I Get All the Feels From The Texture of These New NARS Dual-Intensity Blushes…

February 23rd, 2015 by Karen 43 Comments

As Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock so eloquently put it, “It takes two to make a thing go right… It takes two to make it out of sight.”

Truer words were never spoken, particularly as they pertain to the new NARS Dual Intensity Blushes ($45 each). 🙂

Yeah, even though I braced myself for it, I still freaked out a little when I opened one of these compacts for the first time and saw, not one, but TWO blushes within it with the same pattern on the pans as the NARS Dual-Intensity Eyeshadows (which I love, and these feel very similar).

Hearts may or may not have shot out of from my eyes.

NARS designed these new blushes, which arrive March 4 as six $45 duos, to 1) look and feel weightless on the skin, and 2) to create two completely different looks. Applying them with a dry powder brush paints your cheeks with bold color, while a wet brush seduces your skin with a softer watercolor-like effect, similar to what you’d get from a cheek tint, and you can wear the shades separately or mix them together.

The one called Frenzy fuses a sparkling pinkish gold highlighter with a shimmering bright tangerine…

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Frenzy — Dual-Intensity Blush in Frenzy

While Fervor partners a shimmering soft pink with a deep, sparkling coppery rose…

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Fervor — Dual-Intensity Blush in Fervor

And if you’re craving a trip to the tropics…Craving combines a sparkling seashell pink highlighter with a shimmering beachy bronze.

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Craving — Dual-Intensity Blush in Craving

WARNING: Do not panic when you see Panic…which is the brightest duo of the six. It contains a shocking, shimmering fuchsia and a shimmering orangey pink.

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Panic — Dual-Intensity Blush in Panic!

If you’re just plain partial to pinks in general, you might adore Adoration, which pairs a soft, sparkling baby pink with a shimmering hot pink.

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Adoration — Dual-Intensity Blush in Adoration

Last, but certainly not least, there’s Jubilation, yay! It partners a sparkling hot gold with a soft and shimmering nude peach.

NARS Dual-Intensity Blush in Jubilation — Dual Intensity Blush in Jubilation

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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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The NARS Eye-Opening Act Spring 2015 Collection: There’s Smoke in the Eye of This Storm

January 21st, 2015 by Karen 29 Comments

Wearing new limited edition spring 2015 items from NARS: Matte Velvet Shadow Stick in Flibuste, Eyeshadow Palette in Yeux Irresistible and Illuminating Multiple in St. Lucia — From the new NARS Eye-Opening Act collection, I’m wearing the Matte Velvet Shadow Stick in Flibuste, the Eyeshadow Palette in Yeux Irresistible, and the Illuminating Multiple in St. Lucia, all available now at Nordstrom stores and online.

Lo! What manner of marvelousness do I see before me? ‘Tis a smokey eye lover’s dream!

New from NARS, the new Eye-Opening Act spring collection is freakin’. Gorgeous.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to push myself out of my smokey eye comfort zone, but dayum, girl! — this launch is not making that easy.

With a focus on eyes…

Did you get that? “…a focus on eyes”? Ha! You know what they say — a bad pun a day keeps the dentist away. 🙂

NARS Spring 2015 — Seven of eight pieces in the new NARS Eye-Opening Act collection

The eight-piece limited edition release is, for the time being, available now exclusively at Nordstrom (as if I needed another excuse to shop there!), but it also arrives at NARS boutiques and the NARS website March 15.

If the thought of waiting till two days before St. Patrick’s Day pains your makeup-loving heart and you want to jump on these products meow, here’s the gist: two powder eyeshadow palettes (one warm, one cool), a brand-spankin’ new line of creamy stick shadows with a velvety matte finish, and a new shade of Illuminating Multiple.

NARS Yeux Irresistible Eyeshadow Palette and Filbuste Velvet Shadow Stick on my eyes, St. Lucia Illuminating Multiple on my cheeks and lips — From the Yeux Irresistible Eyeshadow Palette, I’m wearing All About Eve (my brow bone and inner corner), Jezebel (lids), Brousse mixed with Coconut Grove (crease and lower lash line), Colombo (center of the lid); I’m also wearing the Velvet Shadow Stick in Filibuste in the outer corners.

Yesterday I wore the $48 warm palette, cutely named Yeux Irresistible, and here’s a testament to how bomb NARS powder eyeshadows are: I was already wearing my foundation and concealer when I started the smokey cat eye portion of the look I’m wearing in these pics…

As you can tell, dark shades are in the house, like the warm brown in my crease, the shimmery sable/coppery red on my lid, and the dark black in the outer corner.

Forty-five minutes into the eye look, I realized something…

There was hardly any fallout. Like, almost none at all. And these are fairly intense colors — the kind that almost always leave at least a little fallout under my eyes — but I hardly had to do any cleanup at all, so two big paws up to NARS for that.

NARS Eyeshadow Palette in Yeux Irresistible ($48), aka “the warm palette”

NARS Eyeshadow Palette in Inoubliable Coup D'Oeil ($48) — NARS Eyeshadow Palette in Inoubliable Coup D’Oeil ($48), aka “the cool palette”

The two palettes in the release aren’t just gorgeous. They’re also easy to blend. Plus, they leave behind almost zero fallout, which adds up to a NARS dream come true if you frequently have a hard time figuring out which shades are warm and which shades are cool.

The collection also marks the launch of an exciting new line of matte cream shadow sticks. You can use the new Velvet Shadow Sticks ($28 each) in a variety of ways, including as a base on your lids, upon which you apply other shadows, or use them as straight-up eyeshadows, which is what I did in this look. I’m using Flibuste, the black shade, in a cat eye shape in the outer corners.

NARS Velvet Shadow Sticks clockwise from the far left: Reykjavick, Glenan, Flibuste and Nunavut — Velvet Shadow Sticks clockwise from the far left in Reykjavick, Glenan, Flibuste and Nunavut ($28 each; four of five are shown)

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The New NARS Spring 2015 Collection Is Hot and Cold About Nudes

January 15th, 2015 by Karen 34 Comments

Wearing the NARS spring 2015 collection on my eyes, cheeks and lips

Spring. NARS. 2015.

A pendulum swings back and forth between two nude worlds — one, a realm of cool-toned silver, and the other a roiling river of warm-toned coppery caramel.

My pulse pounded as I gazed at the new NARS Spring 2015 collection on the floor in front of me. Staring wide-eyed at the color palette, I thought, “Yeah, I’ll be able to rock this.”

Um…yeah, that’s where the story got weird, because the pieces proved to be a little more challenging than I thought.

This one’s a study in extremes.

It’s a small release, only seven pieces, but for me, that’s not enough. I will most definitely need to include some other products in the mix to make the most of these.

The word “dissonance” comes to mind, the concept in music where you purposefully play two notes at the same time that aren’t intended to be harmonious. That’s how I feel about what NARS has done here with the cool tones butted up against the warm. Yeah, nudes have been done to death…but not in this way. It’s very, vary NARS.

Why stop at pink nudes, peach nudes and brown nudes when you can also have silvery nudes? Maybe that’s a question NARS asks here, because there’s a lot of silvery shimmer in the house, which is kind of unusual for nudes.

I’m also getting a strange concealer vibe…

The 7 piece NARS Spring 2015 collection, coming to January 1 to NARS boutiques and online at narscosmetics.com, and February 1 to Sephora, NARS counters and online — The seven-piece NARS Spring 2015 collection is available now online and coming February 1 to Sephora and NARS counters.

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Satiny Lids, Red Lips and Soft Black Cat Liner: A Friday Face of the Day With the NARS Dual Intensity Eyeshadow Palette

December 12th, 2014 by Karen 37 Comments

The sun is out there…

Somewhere…

It’s out there somewhere behind the oppressive soup of (now) light gray clouds over our little hill here in Novato, but at least it isn’t raining! 🙂 By no means am I hanging out on the deck in a pair of booty shorts and drinking a margarita or anything, but it looks like Stormageddon 2014 has at least temporarily paused.

Compared to yesterday’s monsoon, the current minor gloom is welcome. I also tried to inject a little more brightness into the vicinity with my makeup, a glowing neutral lid with soft black cat eyeliner and a bright red lip.

I started this look with the new NARSissist Dual-Intensity Eyeshadow Palette ($79, coming to NARS Boutiques and the NARS website January 1, 2015; on counters February 1)…and I apologize in advance if I blabber and ramble when I talk about it because it drives me wild (I’m also thinking that the lines on the pans are hypnotic).

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