There is some damn indie band from San Diego stealing all my urls. Grr!
- For a cream, try a MAC Cream Colour Base in Pearl or Hush, or Fresh’s Satin trio. Or even a jumbo pencil highlighter, for the girl on the go!
- For a liquid, take a look-see at Benefit’s ever-popular High Beam or Moon Beam (I personally prefer the finish of Moon Beam), LORAC’s Oil-Free Luminizer, or Stila’s All Over Luminizing Liquid. Which doesn’t have a cute name but is slightly cheaper than the Benefit ones with more product in the bottle. So I guess it’s okay.
- For a loose powder, give MAC Vanilla pigment a go — like a liquid, it’s very multi-use. Like a cheap hooker but way better, this gal will add a glow to anything and anyone. And hey, they even cost about the same!
- For a pen-dispensed liquid, check out something like Dior Skinflash or YSL Touche Eclat. I don’t know how to get that accent and I’m too lazy to look it up. (WIN!) Don’t worry if the price scares you — it scared me too — as there are lots of drugstore dupes for these. Also note that these are more of a natural hilight, almost a blend between a highlighter and a sheer concealer.
- For a powder, seek out the super-hyped Guerlain Meteorites, Smashbox Soft Lights, a MAC MSF, or a Bobbi Shimmer Brick – all with a fan brush or something similar (with precision). I use a Quo All-Over Eye Brush for most of my hilighting (with a very light hand) and it’s wonderful!
- Something limited-edition. If you know you can’t re-buy, you won’t want to waste a single minute of wear! Givenchy’s gorgeous new Gloss Poetique should fit the bill quite well.
- Something high-pigment… if biting into that doughnut will smudge your gloss and make you look like a psychopath or Pam Anderson, you may pause and rethink your decision. Stila’s soon-to-be-released Lip Enamels would be perfect for this! Until then, Dior’s Crème de Gloss has your back.
- Something golden. No, serously. YSL’s Golden Gloss may come in quite a number of shades, but wearing 24-karat gold flecks of shimmer? Perfect.
Applied under the brow, down the nosebridge, just above the arch of your brows, on the tops of your cheekbones, on the cupid’s bow, and sometimes on the temples, chin, and occipital bone, highlighters are pretty damn multi-functional. It doesn’t matter what you go with — cream, pencil, gel, liquid, or powder (my fave) — they all do pretty much the same thing: brighten up your face by adding luminscence and depth to specific points.
Choose your perfect product by trying it on, optimally! But if that’s not an option, don’t fret. Highlighters are low-pigment high-sheen, which means that most of them only come in one or two shades anyways. If for whatever reason you do have options (lighter than your skintone, matching your skintone, and darker than your skintone,) though, choose the one that is lighter than your skintone — if it matches, you won’t get as much depth, and if it’s darker, you’ll be counter-productively “pushing” those hilighted points back into your face with shadowy darkness.
If there are multiple ones lighter than your skintone, go with your gut. I would never use a white-white highlighter on my sister, for example (she’s about a NC20) — I’d maaayyyybe use a white hilight in the winter on myself, but ivory ones on her. (And light beiges on my mother, who has tanned to a stunning NC35ish this summer as she’s been outdoors a ton!)
Recommendations
(I know my recommendations list always looks like it’s a foot long, but once you choose which type you’re looking for — which is personal preference! — it’s really only one or three products.)
Please check back at 2:00 for the next and final installment of “get your glow on”! Also, I’d appreciate it if you held questions until then… I may answer it in the next post!
The comment I get a lot is that I have “really great skin”. Though I may not agree with this entirely (or at all) I do know why people say it (though I had to interrogate countless civilians to get this answer).
I glow.
No, not in the disturbing-Twilight-the-movie-CG kind of way, but in the “healthy skin” kind of way. I attribute it to the fact that (read: blame it on the fact that) I’m still young — at this age, if your skin doesn’t look healthy, I think there may be a problem. I am raising my brows at you. We’re like fat little babies with rounded faces, skin plumped with collagen that hasn’t yet broken down and stretched just the right amount over bones without calcium loss.
Matte as can be!
(god I loved the makeup in from this catwalk.)
(Why yes I am deathly afraid of getting old. Why do you ask?)
Anyhow, while I could wax poetic about why skin looks less luminous as we age, skin cycles, and soft keratin… I won’t. I know that none of you would appreciate that in the least, because it is BORING AS HELL for most people (or so I have been told.) Just accept that it has to do with layers of skin and granules and light. Nod and look like you understand.
(I SAID NOD AND LOOK LIKE YOU UNDERSTAND!! NOW!!)
So, to compensate, the cosmetic industry has come up with two great things: area highlighters and all-over luminizers. (Those are not the “technical terms”… one company may call a hilighting pencil a “luminizing pencil”, and that is not wrong. I’m just using these terms to differentiate between the two within this post! Also, though I don’t mention them in this post, there are both highlighters and luminizers for the body as well, the latter being more common and the former usually reserved for special events or photoshoot/film work.)
Even the shoulder is luminized! Pretty, right?
The golden rule for all of these things?
Glow, don’t glitter.
(Particles should be small enough to add luminescence without obvious chunks of shimmer or glitter. Check this in the sunlight and in flash photography as well, as they are what will make glitter the most obvious!)
Now, this post suddenly became super-long as I wrote it, so we’re doing another three-part series… check back at ten and two o’clock for the next two installments! See you then!
The title’s pretty self-explanitory. Here are some tips for monolids, double lids, and anything in-between!! (Sarah… *poke*)
Tip one! Continue with your lashes – get as close as possible to your lash line as you line the eye, then extend the line following the curl of your lashes, so the line and your lashes “blend” when you’re done.
Tip two! Use a pencil – you know that eyebrow thing, where they line up a pencil (or other flat thingy) with your nose and eyebrow? Try doing that, and using it as a guide for where to draw your line.
Tip three! Draw dots – one on each side – before drawing the wings. By using them as a guide, you should end up fairly symmetrical!
Finally, tip four. Use tape in the angle that you want your cat eyes. Draw in the line on both sides, remove tape, and touch-up afterwards.
That’s all for now!! Does anyone else have any cat-eye tips?
Image from Sephora.com
So aside from eating great food and seeing wonderful things, there was one thing that I did a surprsing amout of in Quebec: makeup! It was unexpected and wonderful (and awful, because I didn’t bring any of my kit with me) — here are the results!
Expect to see a lot of before/after makeup shots over the next few weeks — there are four different “makeovers”… unfortunately, I didn’t get to take photos of everything/everyone.
As for today, here’s the only set of makeup shots that I took of myself in Rivière-du-Loup. There was a semi-impromptu ill-planned masquarade one night, so here’s my “mask” after about three hours of hysteria and dancing. (The latter of which I do not do well, and the former which I do all too often.)
Sarah: this one’s for you! Sorry it took me like three months to post x.x
Anyhow, here’s a simple smokey blue-grey tutorial for monolids. See, we can totally wear shadow without it all “hiding” in our creases! This is the night-time clubbing version of this eye… a version that I haven’t worked up the guts to wear out of the house yet!
Materials
I didn’t keep a list for this one, but here are some guesses based on the colours and what I usually use:
MAC Pearl CCB or UDPP as a base
Senna Kinetic and Blue Note shadows (I’m pretty sure about these)
Aura Science Char Grey liner or MAC Blacktrack
1/2 lash (full lash seen here; shorter inner half used.)
Smashbox 6, MAC 217 brushes
Instructions!
1) As always, start with a base. Use foundation or concealer as well if your lids are less-than-flawless… I know mine are!
Tape under your eye (scotch tape; make sure you de-stickify it on your hand or arm first!)
Fill in brows if desired.
2) Apply a silver shadow (Kinetic) to the inner 2/3 of your eye with a flat brush, pressing the shadow into your skin and tapering as you move towards the inner corner.
Add a dark blue or grey shadow (Blue Note) on the outer 1/4 to 1/3, winging it slightly.
3) Blend with a domed brush (217) or pencil brush (219).
4) Reapply shadows, intensifying each and adding more shape and definition (especially in the wing area.)
5) Remove tape. Blend fallout to create a smudgey look on your lower lashline (219). Define inner corner with a bit more silver shadow using a small, flat brush. (The mini eye brush from The Body Shop’s travel brush kit is great for this!)
Soften lines on the top of the shadow/wing with a shadow close to your skintone, if desired. Use a fluffy brush and blend like mad!
Line waterlines (upper and lower) with a dark grey or light black pencil or cream liner. Taper/blend as you move towards the inner corner.
Apply lashes and/or mascara.
Ta-da! You’re done. See? Totally painless!
In response to Natalie K’s comment on this post — I did not mean to insult anyone, and I’m really sorry that you took offence, hon! I figured I’d post on gloss as it’s one of my anti-snacking “tricks”, not because I think losing weight is mandatory, or that women who want to lose weight need a gloss to do so. (I snack a lot, but wearing lip products, keeping super-busy, or munching on fruit keeps me from eating the “bad stuff”.)
But hey, while we’re on the topic, I may as well say it: Rae gained almost ten pounds on her Quebec trip and is trying to lose it. I know what a slippery slope this is (especially as I pretty much had an eating disorder in the past) but it’s something that’s important to me. I’ve set a limit (I will not dip under 100lbs again) and I hope that I can get to a weight where I feel comfortable and stop there.
/end tmi
Alright. I need someone to tell me WHAT IS GOING ON HERE. How in the hell do you take two gorgeous women and do… this… to them?!
If you ask me, these ads are lacking in colour. And a good photoshop artist. And you know what? While we’re at it, what the eff is going on with the hair?!
Possible solutions for Mariah: a less contorted body. I mean, how uncomfortable does the poor girl look?! Exactly. Honey, you look like you’re bracing yourself for something, and the teeth-clenching is not sexy. It’s just awkward. Almost as awkward as that sophisticated-gone-slutty-because-it’s-TOO-SMALL dress.
Possible solutions for Scarlet: Oh, honey. I adore you, I really do. But I don’t know what the artists working on you were thinking… I’d appreciate a less-opaque coral lip and more definition in the hair. I know it’s supposed to be classy-Gatsby-time-period hair, or something, but I think the stylists missed that by about forty years and a hair brush.
Images via BellaSugar.
So I found out about Pebble.com recently, an up-and-coming site in the same strain ans things like Shopzilla. And I was a little hesitant — another shopping site?
The answer is yes. And no.
What makes Pebble different is that it’s part-forum based, meaning that you can ask, answer, and read questions on the products. Rae’s interest => intrigued! I love a site that lets the consumer talk about the product (re: Sephora post-revamp. I love you, Seph.) and ask all of our questions, no matter how confusing our questions may be ^^
I lost a part to my ice cream maker recently*, so let’s start there. Enter stuff into the search bar, as you normally would, and feel free to refine on the left hand side.
Now here comes the part that Pebble says makes it different — customers. Let’s click on this “top rated” one.
From there we have a further breakdown, and it shows us different sites that sell the item.
Now that the basic stuff is over…
The good
I like that you can ask questions and get answers. I have to admit, that’s pretty nifty. I also like that it’s kind of like Amazon, showing ratings when they’re there and letting you know which seller has it for the cheapest. The super-comprehensive search refining is great too, with options designed for each product rather than a general set with only price range, store, etc.
The bad
Pebble still needs a lot of refining — see the image below to find out why!
The verdict? I’ve never been too thrilled about shopping sites, mainly because I like to shop in person. (I need to feeeel things!) However, for a shopping site, this is a pretty darn good one. Shopaholics out there: anyone want to back me up on this?
*the, uhm… stirring bit -.- I know, brilliant, right? So now all we have is a large frozen bowl.
So here’s the question that you’re all dying to know the answer to (or at least, you should be curious) — why not “long-wearing” gloss? You’d think that if you’re going to spend a small fortune on something, it should be long-wearing.
The answer? Not if you’re trying to lose weight.
Hold it. Before you have me institutionalized (I LOVE YOU SARAH CONNOR) let’s hear some logic.
Too heavy -> wants to lose weight -> applies expensive gloss -> refrains from snacking because she doesn’t want to eat off her gorgeous lippie.
I know. The logic is flawless, right?
So there you have it: the case for splurging on an expensive normal-wear gloss.
Recommendations
Anyone have a splurge-worthy gloss they want to tell us about? That’s what the comments are for, ladies!