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!: