Green and Gold LOTD with MAC and Sugarpill

My other half suggested a green coloured look and who was I to say no? I used Sugarpill Midori as the main colour for this, which just goes to show that even though Sugarpill colours look bright as all hell in the pan, they can be toned down really easily as well. Of course, that really goes for all colours – if you’ve got a good neutral palette with colours that suit you, you can make the scariest, brightest shades work on any level.

 

Eyes: MAC Old Gold Pigment, Sugarpill Midori, MUA Undress Me Too palette to blend/highlight.
Lips: MAC Subculture lipliner and Viva Glam Gaga 2
Cheeks: Sleek Suede, e.l.f Gotta Glow

I was so annoyed it was dark that day as I couldn’t capture how nice this look was. MAC Old Gold looks wonderful with greens and I was happy I managed to find a way to make VG Gaga 2 work for me. I really need to step it up with my makeup – I’m not allowed to wear coloured makeup to work anymore and it’s really making me lazy in the evenings and weekends!

What are your favourite green and gold shades?

Quickie Review and LOTD: e.l.f Studio blush in Gotta Glow

e.l.f recently had one of their nifty 50% office sale (I picked up some of my favourite brushes which you can see here) and I decided to throw ‘Gotta Glow’ into my basket to see what all the fuss was about. Famed for being an inexpensive dupe for NARS Albatross which I was drooling over instore with Rachael recently, I was really excited to try it out. I love golden highlighters, and the ones I had before this were either a really warm, yellow gold or more of a champagne-gold, and this one is more of a white-gold.

 

 

You can really see where the NARS comparisons come in! The compact had a decent heft to it and doesn’t feel cheap. The small mirror is a little pointless in my opinion – I wish it took up the whole lid, but then I do like that you can see the product without opening the compact.

 

 

 

I’d click to enlarge those photos and see the product close up, but as you can see, it’s actually a really lovely and subtle highlighter! I was initially worried at first that it would be too ashy or chalky on the skin it kicks up a lot of powder when you swirl your brush in the pan, but luckily that didn’t translate on my cheek. I’ll hazard a guess you don’t get that with the NARS version but I don’t have a problem with it really, especially for the price point. It also builds quite nicely into a stronger highlight if you want to double it up on the inner corner of the eye.

All in all – a lovely highlighter and a lovely bargain! I’m tempted to try some more of e.l.f’s blush range if they’re all this pretty– any recommendations?

The studio blushes cost £3.50 from eyeslipsface.co.uk

Quickie Review and LOTD: MAC Nocturnals Green & Teal Pigment and Glitter Set

I normally don’t even bother to look at MAC’s holiday sets, but this one really caught my eye as I’ve wanted several of the colours for a long time. This is a pigments and glitter set including Reflects Gold glitter, Old Gold pigment, 3D Gold glitter, Deep Blue Green pigment and Just Before Dawn Pigment. Reflects Gold is part of the permanent Pro range, Old Gold and Deep Blue Green are part of the permanent core range, 3D Gold isn’t permanent as far as I can tell but gets released with various collections and is easy to find elsewhere online. Just Before Dawn is limited Edition.

I’ve tried MAC glitter before but never the pigments so I was excited to have a play around. These are in smaller pots than than usual with a gold and white colour scheme on the lid which is also printed on the box they came in as well. I think the presentation of these vials is really chic for a winter collection and certainly much more pleasing on the eye than plain old black. The set comes in a glossy black box with the same white-and-gold motif around the edge, but it was so shiny I gave up trying to capture it, to be honest!

 

Pigments over bare skin, glitters with Lit Cosmetics glitter base.

L-R: Relfects Gold (white glitter with gold sheen that looks champagne in some lights, as you can see here) , Old Gold (bright gold with an olive sheen), Deep Blue Green (blackened teal), Just Before Dawn (deep grey-taupe), 3D Gold (almost chartreuse holographic gold).

 

Old Gold on the lips with Inglot Duraline), 3D Gold on the lips with Lit Cosmetics glitter base. Here you can really see the greenish tone that Old Gold has and how vibrant 3D gold looks! Apparently 3D Gold isn’t lip safe, but personally I don’t care.

Just Before Dawn all over the lid and lower lashline with Deep Blue Green in the outer V. Reflects Gold in the inner corner and Old Gold and Deep Blue Green to line.

Reflects Gold on the lid.

Just Before Dawn in the crease and on lower lashline, Deep Blue Green on the upper lashline.

Overall, I really love this set! I think pigments work well together and that the glitters are a really fun addition that work with the pigments nicely too. 3D Gold might be a bit much for some, (especially as I’m sure it’s not technically eye or lip safe) but Reflects Gold is a really nice, “subtle” glitter than I think most people could get use out of. Personally the stand out for me is actually Just Before Dawn - I love the deep grey look it has and just think it’s a really sexy colour. I’m excited to work out what fun things I can do with 3D Gold as well as I’m a huge fan of the 3D silver glitter! I do find the name of the set odd – there’s not a true green shade in here at all and there are two gold shades? 

I was concerned the vials would be too small to get a brush into as they’re  slim openings on the jars, but I managed to get my application and blending brushes into the top, and can just about use the lids to swirl the excess products away. It’s not the easiest packaging to use but it’s not the worst, and there’s also a small plug on top of the opening to keep things a bit neater which is nice.

The set costs £25.50 from maccosmetics.co.uk. With one pigment from MAC costing £17 for 0.15 ounces (these pigments are 0.09 ounces or 0.14 ounces for the glitter)  you’re getting a pretty decent amount of quality product for your money. For a makeup lover, I think this is a really nicely presented gift!

 

 

Do you like MAC pigments? What do you have your eye on from this years holiday collection?

LOTD: Knickers In A Twist

I tidied all my pigments the other day and was instantly sad that I neglect them so much as I have some beautiful, beautiful colours! I threw on a couple for a warm, autumnal kind of look.

Eyes: Lid, OCC Loose Color Concentrate in Triptych. Crease and lower lashline, Fyrinnae Knickers In A Twist. Liner, Maybelline gel liner in brown (waterline), Collection2000 24/7 pen liner in Black. Lashes, Eyelure Naturalites.
Cheeks: Sleek Suede, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter, with Soap and Glory Bright Here Bright Now as a base.
Lips: NYX Round Lipstick in Saturn, blotted (thanks Kathy!)

I’ve waxed lyrical about OCC Triptych before. Go and get it.

And just for fun, here’s the outfit that I wore that day too. I was on a lovely shoot and wanted to look cute. The t shirt is from Hot Topic and is a present from my lovely friend Rachael who knows me all to well. The shoes are Topshop, cardigan/jacket is really old H&M and the leather swing skirt is from a random little ‘market’ shop.

 

I love this outfit and makeup and having worn literally nothing all week on my face and nothing exciting clothes wise, it felt good to throw on some lashes and some sparkly shoes!

Golden Hour

Have you SEEN the amazing crystal brows created by Alex Box for Illamasqua’s The Sacred Hour campaign? They’re stunning. While I have neither the skills or materials to get even close, I wanted to try something similar. I vaguely flirted with the idea of making something with latex and glitter and tissue but I’m an exceedingly lazy individual and ended up using gold leaf instead, a material which I actually hate due to it’s massive overuse and how fiddly it is (and being asked time and time again by photographers to use it. Sorry peeps, ain’t gon’ happen.)

 

Skin: Illamasqua Skinbase shades 3 and 1, MAC Whisper of Gilt, MUA Undress Me Too palette.
Eyes: Maybelline Eternal Gold Colour Tattoo, Barry M Black Dazzle Dust w/ Inglot Duraline, MUA Undress Me Too Palette, Illamasqua Emerge Liquid Metal, ancient Girls Aloud festival lashes from Eyelure, gold leaf applied with Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy.
Lips: Illamasqua Emerge Liquid Metal, MUA Undress Me Too palette.

 

I really like how this came out seeing as I wasn’t really thinking much about what I was doing. I wish I used creams to contour instead of powders and thought about the brows a little more. I think it’s still missing something but overall, not bad. And Illamasqua retweeted my photo of it which made me *really* happy!

Will you be getting anything from Illamasqua’s new collection? I’m eyeing up the beautiful polishes…and the palette…and everything else to be honest!

Random Makeup Series: Textured Lips

A slightly better combination than my first post! In case you didn’t see, I recently made up a jar of words which I could use to create looks with when I had no inspiration, and this time I got ‘textured’ and ‘lips.’ Luckily for me, I got some gold leaf in the post this week, so I decided to use that with some glitter and little gems. Normally I’m not really a fan of gold leaf in makeup looks but I’d not tried using it before and this series is kind if about trying new things!

So I started with a green-teal eyeliner (Jungle by Rimmel) and used that to line the lips. Then I tapped a little of Fyrinnae’s Digital Faerie eyeshadow on top which looked gorgeous! I’m going to wear this combo soon for sure. I then added some little gemstones with eyelash glues, and I’ve seen a couple of looks where products like this were applied outside the lipline and I liked it, so I put most of them off my lips. I then mixed up a little of Darling Girls Golden Child glitter with a mixing medium and dabbed it on, adding some blue glitter with Collection 2000’s Glam Crystals in Le Freak. I liked the texture of the glitter – it went a little clumpy, but not in a bad way. It looked great!

After that, I simply tore off some gold leaf and stuck it on willy-nilly with some mixing medium. I have to say I don’t like the gold leaf effect much so I kind of stopped rather than trying to make it work. I do like how it looks with the blue tones though!

 

One more random combination bites the dust!

Double Whammy: Lip Art with Sugarpill and Illamasqua

A cold grey weekend calls for fun, bright makeup! I had a couple of lip art idea I wanted to play with today and chose to use Sugarpill and Illamasqua as they never fail to make me happy and they both make such lovely vibrant products.

 

Illamasqua Lipsticks in Welt and Kontrol, Illamasqua Liquid Metal in Electrum

I wrote about this effect recently for Hi! Magazine but I haven’t actually used it in a while – its so, so easy to do! Just apply your lip colour as normal, pucker your lips really tightly and then dab a metallic cream or lipstick over the top. It looks great over really matte lipsticks and that helps the metallic product to stay. This actually lasted fairly well on me and I think if I had sealed it I could have gone out wearing it for sure! And don’t Welt and Kontrol look amazing together? (Yessss. I know I smudged my concealer in the corner of the lip. Doan curr.)



Sugarpill Royal Sugar, Darling, Decora. Illamsqua Intense Lipgloss in Galaxy, Inglot Sleeks (clear gloss)

This didn’t do quite so well as the other one. I still like the overall effect, but it was a bit of a nightmare. I really wanted to pair the rich blue of Royal Sugar with the silver gloss, but using dry eye product around the lips didn’t quite work – it was really hard to not move my mouth and crack the line and still get the rest of the products on my lips! I mixed Royal Sugar with a mixing medium and I think something more fluid and less dry like a gel liner would have served me better here. It was also hard to get a fine line with Galaxy as it’s basically made of small microglitters and it’s quite a thick formula. Theeeeeeen I had trouble with my clear gloss – I used my favourite Sleeks gloss from Inglot as it’s so shiny and wonderful, but it seeped into the dryness of the blue liner right away and looks nasty – luckily that doesn’t really show here! And theeeennn I has trouble tapping the loose shadows on to my top lip, which I had to re-do because I made a mess. Anyway, if you don’t look very closely I still think it’s kind of cool!

If you’re an Illamasqua noob, I’d check out their sale now! They’ve got great stuff starting from a measly £5 including lots of their lovely polishes!

Shall I do more lip art? :D

Gold Medal LOTD

On Wednesday this week my fiancé and I finally made it to the Olympic Park in Stratford to soak up some Paralympic action! We were both pretty excited and I knew I couldn’t really wear anything other than a gold look!

 

Eyes: Lid/Lower lashine, Darling Girl Honey Pot, brown from MUA Glamour Days. Crease, Silk Naturals Chequered. Highlight, No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter
Cheeks: Darling Girl Aloha, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter
Lips: Sleek True Colour lipstick in Vixen

The full face shot with flash is much more colour accurate – this was really bright in real life! Sadly there weren’t any gold medals for Team GB that night (although we scored a silver and a bronze!!!) but it was a fantastic evening. It was really awesome to see everyone getting behind the Paralympics – every athlete who did a victory lap after their event, no matter what it was or their nationality, got a standing ovation from the crowd! It was fantastic seeing Oscar Pistorius run and even better that our own Johnny Peacock whipped his butt!



The Stadium with our mascot Mandeville photobombing!



Me in front of the stadium – it changed colour at night! Not pictured: massive bag of Olympic swag.





And here’s some of the mascots that have been dotted around central London... there were over 80 of these suckers painted with different designs and costumes and we managed to find them all apart from one who got ‘taken to hospital.’ It took about 8 hours, but we’re sad acts and it was free, so we were determined!

Have you been enjoying the Olympics/Paralympics? Link me to your Olympic inspired looks if you’ve done one!

Stay Beautiful Showcase: Darling Girl Golds

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a girl in possession of eyes and a couple of quid must be in want of a good gold eyeshadow. Darling Girl is one of my favourite indie companies for many reasons, but I really fell in love with them when I ordered Honey Pot, which is now my favourite gold eyeshadow. Susan of Darling Girl makes fantastic other golds as well, so let’s have a butchers…

”Luxe”

An easy, soft everyday gold – perfect for slapping on in the morning, as I’ve done so sloppily here! This is still super sparkly with lots of gold glitter in, so it’s a great way of getting a glitter fix without being too cray-cray if you have to wear work-safe makeup. I think everyone should have a gold like this in their collection.

“Mayor’s Daughter”

From the “Only One Can Win” Hunger Games collection, which I was lucky enough to help create. This is a lovely warm gold with pinky/purple glitter, which show a little better in close-up but MUCH better in real life. If you like warm golds and sparkles, you’ll love this. It looks awesome with purples. It was re-branded from “Whiskey on a Sunday.”

Pixie Sprinkles “Golden Child”



Sorry for the ropey application here, I did this super quick as the light was going. Pixie Spinkles are cosmetic microglitter blends – very fine indeed , so you can really pack them on for opacity. This is an absolute stunner – it looks like liquid gold, or as if you’d smoothly applied a gold leaf to your eye. It’s such a bright and happy gold! Sadly, it’s not on the website at the moment, but I hope it makes a reappearance because it’s just so wonderful.

“Honey Pot”

A very old look, but shows off Honey Pot very well. SERIOUSLY HOW GOOD IS THIS? CAPS LOCK GOOD, THAT’S HOW GOOD. This is so rich, so vibrant, and applies beautifully. It’s the sort of gold that grabs you by the balls, kicks you in the fanny, smacks you round the head and says “HEY MOTHERFUCKER, DID YOU SEE HOW GOLD I AM?” Foiled as a liner, it’s stunning. Tapped over hot pink lippy, you’re on trend with some easy lip art. Basically, if you have eyes and you haven’t got this in your collection, get it. It’s my favourite gold ever.



Other notable non-Darling Girl golds are Hi-Fi Cosmetics Mornings of Gold (no longer available sadly), Fyrinnae’s fabulous Polar Bear which I don’t think anyone should be without and the reigning queen of the blogosphere, Sugarpill Golidlux.

What’s your favourite gold makeup product?

Disney Collaboration with Fierce Nerditude: Mickey Mouse

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! Everyone loves Mickey Mouse, right? (Except my Granny.) I gave VIjaya her favourite Disney girl, Mulan to do, and I’m really excited to see what she came up with and I’ve been listening to the Mulan soundtrack all this week, ha ha! Anyway, I have a cheeky one-eye look for you today, hope you enjoy!

Lid: Sugarpill Love +. Liner, Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Gel liner. Gold liner, Darling Girl Honey Pot. Bottom lashes, eBay, top lashes, Primark.

I wish my liner was neater on the ears part,  but this gel liner is on it’s last legs and you know when you keep tidying your liner and it ends up massive? Yeah. That. Anyway, this was really fun to do and I actually think it looks quite cute!  I’d totally wear this look out without the ear parts – or if I was at Disney I’d totally wear it with them! I missed the Never Too Much Sparkle Disney showcase, but there’s tons of fun Disney looks up here.