NYX Born to Glow Liquid Illuminator in Sunbeam

NYX has come out with a liquid illuminator that is supposed to be lightweight and gives the skin "a refreshed glow and beautiful highlight". I am willing to try just about anything, so of course I saw it and picked it up. Someone on MUA said in a comment that it was a dupe for Benefit Highbeam, and because I am a cheap bastard I decided I would try this first. Because that totally makes sense, amirite? If I could find the comment I would and award them gold because I swatched these back to back in the store and it is an extremely good dupe for Highbeam, so much so I actually don't feel like I'm missing out, which is wonderful because now I don't have to go spend the $26 on High beam. Hooray.

Anyway, the packaging for the NYX illuminator is is rather small at 0.6 fluid ounces. It's plastic but not flimsy, thank goodness, so I feel like if I were to throw it across the room in a rage for whatever reason it wouldn't break apart. It's finals time, it could happen. The top part is pinkish and semi-duo toned, I suppose to mimic the inside product. The cap is twist off and the product inside dispenses when you squeeze it.

And a slightly better picture

It's got the traditional cutesy NYX hearts on it, which I like. It's really quite nice, and the product is very easy to control. 

It's hard to notice unless you put a gob of it on, which I think is good? Because I mean that's sort of the point of highlighter. BUT IT'S SUPER FUCKING SPARKLY SO WATCH OUT.

Here's a swatch of it:

With flash, blended and unblended:

Without flash, blended and unblended:

Yeah you can sort of see how easily it would turn into a glitter bomb.

Now here it is on my face. I apologize for the yeti brows. I've since had them done.

You can't really notice it, I suppose, but it's in a C shape around my eyes, on the tip of my nose, and on my cupid's bow.

Givenchy Le Rouge #301 Magnolia Organza

Or why I spent $36USD on lipstick. It isn't that ridiculous. Guerlain charges $51USD on their space dildo (aka Rouge G Guerlain Jewel Lipstick Compact) lipstick which I have, somewhat shamefully, seriously considered buying. 

And honestly? *Spoiler alert: It was totally worth it.* It's almost everything I could want in a lipstick.The only thing it doesn't do is buy me more makeup, which I guess I can forgive.

It comes in a swanky box that mimics the leather outer casing of the tube itself.

In case you're confused, it's on the left. 

The tube itself is decently heavy, which I adore. It's actually 3.4g, seemingly a lot heavier than my other lipsticks. It makes me feel like I'm carrying some precious cargo, which I am, or like I'm carrying around a secret spy gun. I miss you Burn Notice :( It has little blunt spikes on two sides, with the house logo on top and the name brand up a silver-looking stripe on the side or front, depending on which way you look at it.

The bottom of course has the house brand name on it, and the label of the lipstick.

And now for the good part- the lipstick itself. Oh god, the color. Here's the color next to the packaging.

It's so. fucking. pigmented. And bright and pretty and I fucking love it. Sephora describes it as a "bright reddish pink", and I would say that's accurate but on my MUFE N115 skintone it leans more pink than red.

As you can see, the house logo is printed on the lipstick itself. Luxe all up in this bitch.

AND NOW SWATCHES.

Swatch with flash, one swipe:

Swatch without flash, one swipe:

And here's me wearing it:

April Ipsy

Usually, when I know my Birchbox and Ipsy are coming, I await my postwoman like a rabid dog hell bent on destroying her legs. Because I knew I was getting an Urban Decay pencil, this was doubly the case. As I usually do, I will save the best for last in my review of my April Ipsy bag.

First, here's the bag itself:

Thank you Ipsy for letting me know BEAUTY ROCKS. I have been informed by them and their oddly designed bag I would not have picked up even in high school. I feel like their bags are becoming worse over the months, but I also may be becoming more crotchety, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

Demeter Jasmine Roll On Perfume

This shit is awesome. It literally smells like jasmine in a perfume. I mean, what else can you ask for. If you don't like jasmine, then I am very sorry if you got this. Night blooming jasmine is one of my favorite scents after gardenia and lavender, so this perfume is right up my alley. Good jorb Ipsy!

Elizabeth Mott Pop! Goes the Shadow in Champagne

I'm not 100% sure why Ipsy keeps sending me champagne eye shadows. I'm have about a million of them now, and I think all of them are better than this one. This one, if it were a Harry Potter O.W.L., would get a grade of Dreadful from me, and I almost gave it a T for Troll but I have to save that for the lip gloss. It literally got into my eyes with fallout even though I used both eye shadow primer and fancy implements to put it on. No, thank you Ipsy.

Dr. Brandt Microdermabrasion Skin Exfoliant

I feel like the picture of a guy who is looking at wood and says "Yup, it's wood" only with this, it's a exfoliant and I used it and simply said "Yup, that's a skin exfoliant" and left it at that.

Here's the pic for reference:

Mary Kay @ Play lipgloss in Berry Me

There are so many things I dislike about this product, let me count the ways. Firstly, I dislike Mary Kay a lot. I don't like semi-pyramid schemes, and I don't like pushy sales people (I will be the first to say not every Mary Kay rep is like that though). I don't like products with internet symbols on them. I 99% of the time HATE lipglosses, and this is literally the worst lipgloss I have ever had the misfortune to meet. It's everything that lipgloss should not be: tacky, 0 color, an awful pun for a name that sounds vaguely threatening, and made by a vaguely shitty company. I put my foot down on this one Ipsy.

Last but not least, Urban Decay 24/7 Liner in Black Velvet

Ah, a breath of fresh air in this bag of weird shit. Don't get me wrong, the perfume was awesome, but this.. this is the crowning glory of my bag. It really does go on super smooth and somewhat stay there. It's supposed to be a smudgier eye liner than your usual run-of-the-mill eyeliners, which I can see now that I've used it a few times. It will give you the best smokey eyes of your life. But be warned, it will come off your water line after a few hours, unfortunately :(. It's ok UD, I still love you

The Wayne Goss Foundation Method- A How To

Yeah it's been forever- literally a month since I posted. Sorry =/ On the bright side, I've taken lots of pictures to post so maybe I'll get around to actually doing that.

So Wayne Goss posted this video and the makeup world collectively shit its pants: http://youtu.be/EyQsVyGadbY

Essentially, you prime, powder, then foundation, which is a different formula than the regular prime, foundation, then powder. The biggest kicker is- it actually works. Trust me, ever since it got posted I've been trying it every which way, trying to figure out just how to fuck it up and I've figured out that 1) it is semi-hard to fuck up and 2) it works amazingly well. 

So I'm gonna teach you guys how to do it. Realistically, you could just watch Mr. Goss' video and learn, because honestly he is about a million times the makeup artist I could ever think to be, but I already took the pictures and I've already written this much, I might as well post some damn pics to go with this much text.

Also I'm trying not doing a break now. So now you don't have to click to look. Yay!

First you put put on your primer, like so:

I generally do this, and then spread it all over my face. The reason for this method and looking slightly insane for about a minute is it keeps the primer evenly distributed so it isn't all concentrated in one corner of your face, and you actually end up using less primer (or at least I have found I do).

I used Hourglass Mineral Veil Primer.

This is my face post-primer, it has gotten noticeably paler, which is fine:

Next, you put on a light layer of powder. This time, I used MUFE HD Powder:

 As Mr. Goss says, you want to use a very fine powder. For the purposes of the tutorial, I used the MUFE powder because it's the only actually loose powder I own, but I've found this method works also well with Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders as long as you don't over powder your face.

And now, foundation! I'm going to use NYX's BB Cream and Real Technique's Expert Face Brush:

As you can (hopefully) see, my foundation looks pretty damn good if I do say so myself. There's almost no shine and it hasn't clung to my dry patches. A word of advice- while this method does work well with NYX BB cream, it works best with "true" foundations, aka Guerlain Lingerie de Peau and MUFE HD Foundation, the two I've been able to test it with. I've found I had to blot after maybe 4 hours with the NYX BB cream, but I didn't have to blot at all with my other foundations. 

Now we add some eye shadow, liner, mascara, contouring, and brows, and we're done!:

Smashbox Eye Shadow Trio in Autochrome - Review

Lately I've just wanted everything to be purple. My nails and my makeup, mainly. I'm blaming this on binge-playing Diablo 3 and it's extremely dark color scheme (wouldn't that be more red though? Whatever.)

Luckly for me, Smashbox's eye shadows are extremely pigmented and I only have to go down to Sephora or Ulta and pick them up to get my fix. I got the Autochrome Trio, and was immediately blown away by it's awesomeness. 

Here's a picture of my face with it on, and then the review is after the cut as per usual:

I'm wearing a bunch of other shit in the photo, if you're curious what it is comment and I can tell you.

March Ipsy

I subscribe to Ipsy and Birchbox monthly, because to me it's like getting a nice surprise in the mail every month. I don't always like what I get, like last month which sucked, but usually I'll at least get one or two things that are at least decent.

This month I am actually pleased with both my Birchbox and my Ipsy, but this post is only about Ipsy because lol at writing that much in one post. This month from Ipsy I got an eye shadow quad, nail polish, face primer, and lipstick. I like all of these things. So here's what I got:

MAC Limited Edition Dreaming Dahlia Lipstick - Review

Sometimes I get in this funk where I'll be like "Hey, I just got the Lorac Pro Palette, I'll totally post about it!" And then I'll realize it's 16 eye shadows and I'll get completely overwhelmed and just not do anything because I'm secretly actually 12 or some shit. On the bright side, I actually did get the Lorac Pro Palette, and the Pro to Go palette, thanks to my fiance, so hopefully I'll stop being a child and review those soon.

So, MAC's Spring 2014 collection is called A Fantasy of Flowers, and as is fitting with the theme all the shit in the collection is named after flowers. I was shocked, I hope you are too. There's tons of stuff in it, which you can see at Temptalia's website which I am not going to buy. But I did buy one of the lipsticks. 

And of course, surprise surprise, it's the coral one.

I have this thing for coral lipsticks. They're like chocolates to me- I could have a million of them and someone would say "Yo, you want this chocolate bar?" And I would reply "abso-fucking-lutely I do". So it was a surprise to say when I went to buy my 2nd ever MAC lipstick, I wasn't actually looking for a coral. I was actually looking for MAC Syrup, a nice neutral pink.

And then I saw it. I asked the SA what it was, and of course she had to mention it was limited edition. It's like she read my mind. So about 5 minutes after walking up to the MAC counter, I walked away with my new delightful lipstick: Dreaming Dahlia!

Armani Eyes to Kill Shadow Quad #8 Parma - Review

Sometimes I do stupid shit like buy makeup without reading reviews first. Usually this doesn't get me into any trouble because it's drug store stuff under $5. One time, I bought the Armani "Eyes to Kill" Palette in 08- Parma without reading any reviews because I thought "It's fucking Armani, what can go wrong?!".

Turns out, a lot can go wrong. I'll preface this by saying I like my eye shadows like I like my sex - intense, life changing and.. very pigmented? That analogy didn't get very far, sorry. Either way, I was pretty damn disappointed with this quad because for the price, USD $60, it was nothing I wanted. 

It looks chic on the outside and inside, like all Armani products:

It even has a little compartment under the shadows that holds some sponges that I discovered that made me feel like a super secret spy! (I've been binge watching Burn Notice. Don't judge)

The sponges even have the logo on them, which I was like "whoa that's super neato. GG Armani!"

But unfortunately, something was rotten in the state of.. Armani. I'm really off my game tonight :(.

Onwards to the review.

Skin 79 BB cream - a (badly written) review

I have 'decent' skin. I get pimples if I don't wash it. I have to do a detoxifying mask at least once a week, and a hydrating mask once a week, or I get at least one cystic pimple. I have a cystic pimple now because (spoiler alert!) I didn't do my masks as I'm kind of a lazy fuck. 

So of course I'm always on the look out for things that say they'll clear up your skin, contain sunscreen, improve your non-existent wrinkles, and will bring you breakfast in bed. I've seen around the internet that Skin79's BB cream, specifically the pink one (I dunno the specific name?) does almost all of these. It did not bring me breakfast in bed though. :(

So today I am trying it out. I obviously won't be able to tell if it clears up any acne I have, as I'm only using it for a day. But I can tell you how it applies, whether it sinks into my pores, whether it oxidizes (hint: It does), etc. 

I bought the sampler pack of their 4 most popular products. It looks like this: 

If you decided to skip my insane ramblings, I'm going to talk about the hot pink one 2nd from the left. 

ONWARDS ADVENTURERS

Contouring with Powder Products

I made a video where I showed how I shittily contour with powder products!

I uploaded it to youtube and all that shit, and so here it is!

I have the products used listed there, but in case it doesn't show up, it's:

Too Faced 16 Hour Bronzer

theBalm Fratboy Blush

Guerlain Lingerie de Peau Foundation in 02 Beige Claire

NYX Matte Lip Cream in Addis Ababa

Annnnnd back to getting achievements in WoW.

FOTD

So I'm going to Sephora today despite the Snowpocalypse (yeah, we actually had like 1/8th an inch of snow!) so I decided to put on some makeup. 

Here's a before and after:

I'm gonna sort of show you how I did it, or at least explain wtf I did in case you really want to look like a clown slapped you upside the face and/or you love pinkish red lips. Though my brows look fab, thank you Benefit Brow Bar!

PS: Yes my nose is crooked, I dunno why, but it's my nose and I love it.

ONWARD:

MORE NYX LIP THINGS

Well, yes, it's been forever, but on the bright side that means I have lots of shit to post about I guess. 

Some of that stuff is from NYX, one of my favorite brands of lip products :3

Today I have a round case lip stick, lip gloss, and matte lip cream, all of which I actually really like though they don't all do what they say they'll do (I'm looking at you, moodmatcher lip gloss).

Also, I really gotta stop buying pink and red lipsticks. It's becoming a problem.

Ok on to reviews!