A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
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.
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.
“Is that the girl Kiera Knightly calls to get her beat face?”
With BECCA’s Ombre Nudes Eye Palette ($40) in your makeup bag, peeps will wonder if you’re a celeb makeup artist. The palette makes it a whole lot easier to create professional-caliber, super-blended eye looks, even if you’re totally new to makeup.
Seriously. If I gave a four-year-old hopped up on Oreos and Cherry Coke a couple blending brushes, this palette, a blindfold and my face, that kid would create hella tight makeup looks at least some of the time. 🙂 It’s that good.
The palette houses five matte brown neutral eyeshadows, some of which only vary slightly, and they all have subtle gray undertones. Some of the shades are so closely related that they wouldn’t even be allowed to marry in some states. 🙂
Because the shades are so similar, they’re very easy to transition into each other, making them absolutely fabulous for hazy, blown-out eyes with subtle gradients.
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I’m afraid my pen of Rouge Bunny Rouge Nocturnal Ink Satin Liner in Blue Roan is about to start avoiding me because I’ve become totally obsessed with it. Pretty soon I’ll be knocking on its door at 3 in the morning yelling, “Blue Roan! I love you! Don’t you see?! We’re meant to be together forever!” Neighbors will call the cops and sh*t and complain about the wild-haired woman declaring her love for a liquid liner, but then I’ll just cut out a bunch of words and letters from a magazine and use them to make this note: Karen + Blue Roan = 4 Life!!!
Yeah, this dark navy blue liquid liner is le bomb, and not just because it survived season four of The Gilmore Girls (which I may or may not have marathon-ed in a single day).
The liquid flows smoothly and evenly from the flexible felt tip. This pen creates thin and thick lines and flicks faster than you can say, “Karen, you need professional help.” 🙂
The long-running Unsung Heroes series features some of my favorite permanent collection products from a variety of bodacious beauty brands.
I’ve never seen, nor do I want to see, Snakes on a Plane.
But if there were a movie called Dogs in a Truck, I’d be all over that! 🙂
I met these two cuties today. They were just chillin’ in a truck outside my condo.
The blonde was totally feeling me and gave me tail wags and lovie eyes for days, but the redhead? Not so much. She was too busy guarding the truck.
Apparently, truck guarding is very serious work.
You know, I realized today while applying one of the lip glosses in the new $28 Endless Kisses Lip Gloss Set by Sephora that I’ve never left a kiss mark on a mirror.
This shocked me, as it’s something that seems like it would be both cute and kinda psycho, which is totally my style. 🙂
Only the universe knows why I haven’t gotten around to it yet…
Should I decide to rectify this situation anytime soon, I’m sure this new lip gloss set would be up for it.
Most of the glosses in it, like the fuchsia, the purple and the golden peachy pink (which is kind of like NARS Orgasm), are so pigmented that they could totally star in their own movie and play liquid lipsticks. I mean, if I were to smooch a mirror with one of these on, yeah, you’d definitely be able to tell that Karen was here.
For the record, I do not recommend living a secret sneaky makeup double life.
Bolting out the door to school without so much as a stitch of lipgloss on your lips, only to covertly cosmeticize yourself from start to finish before the first bell rings, is initially a thrill, but it gets old fast…
Trust me on this. Half the time I’d be in algebra class with one sloppy purple-rimmed eye and little else. I did this for three years until, at age 14, I was given the official “OK” by my mom to wear makeup to school.
I did learn a few things, though, during those secret squirrel makeup days, like how to appreciate makeup that’s easy to sneak in and out of the house. It’s one of the reasons I was interested in the eyeshadow sticks from Bobbi Brown’s new $38 Mini Long-Wear Cream Shadow Stick Trio.
Each of the little minis fits nicely in the palm of my paw.
Perfect for covert makeup application. 🙂
There’s a shimmery pastel rose called Pink Sparkle, a shimmery heather mauve called Smokey Topaz and a shimmery blackened charcoal that goes by the name, Espresso Bean.
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Ding! Thank you for flying Uslu Airlines. Have a colorful day. 🙂
Today I’m wearing two shades from upstart Berlin beauty brand Uslu Airlines. The dark creamy oxblood shade is called NMA Namangan, and the metallic rose gold is BGX Brazil.
The names are kind of funky, right? They’re actually airport codes, like SFO is for San Francisco International. Isn’t that cool?
So, Uslu Airlines, their thing is that each of their pieces takes you on a different trip to a different virtual destination, except without the delayed flights, baggage claim and narrow airplane aisles.
Ooh! I would love a collection baed on places I’ve been. Hello, note to Uslu Airlines — whom do I talk to about that? 🙂
The brand has their own makeup (lipsticks, glosses, powders and concealers) and nail polishes.
They’re also damned hard to find here in the US right now, which is both a blessing and a curse. It makes them more exclusive, which, ya know, I like, but then there’s whole not being able to find them thing…
They do have a few shops in Europe (Colette Paris, Departmentstore im Quartier 206 Berlin, Apropos Cologne, 10 Corso Como Milan, and Stefano Saccani Parma), but that doesn’t exactly help me, LOL!
And they also sell their products through their website. The nail polishes go for €19,00 each, or about $23 US.
There is another option. Some of their polishes and lipsticks are available from netaporter.com for $16 and $25 each, respectively, although I don’t see the two shades I’m wearing here…
Happy hump day, my friend. Tell me — what are you wearing on your nails?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
The gold that graces each product in MAC’s new 14-piece Prabal Gurung collection doesn’t just make the packaging gorgeous. It fashions a world! It creates an experience! These pieces look so fancy that they could pass for pendants hanging from a famous rapper’s gold chains.
They could also probably pass for real gold bars.
No, seriously. These little bricks are heavy! — so heavy, in fact, that if I were to drop one on my foot, I’d probably need stitches.
Or, to put it another way, if I were to put all of them in a purse and swing it around, it would make one hell of a fine medieval weapon.
That the pieces could potentially double as weaponry is just one of many things I like about this new collaboration between MAC and fashion designer Prabal Gurung…who, I should say, was probably aiming more for elegance, sophistication and grace than hip-hop jewelry.
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