My Look: Golden Holiday

Merry Christmas to all my readers out there! 

      I meant to get this up yesterday, but I just haven't had anytime. Lots of holiday happenings around here, and today I just wanted to spend time with my family. 

     This was the look I wore on Sunday for my family Christmas gathering, and I wanted to share it with you all. I think it could be amped up a bit for a New Years look too.

Products Used:

Revlon Colorstay Whipped foundation

Maybelline Mineral Power concealer

NARS Laguna Bronzer

Tarte blush in Exposed

Maybelline Color Tattoo in Gold Rush

Wet n Wild single in Brulee'

Too Faced Natural Eye palette:

Velvet Revolver (crease)

Heaven (brow)

Honey Pot (lid)

Sexpresso + Cocoa Puff (outer corner)

Milani Liquif'Eye in Gold (lower lash line)

Milani Liquif'Eye in Black (waterline)

Milani Eye Tech liquid liner (upper lashline)

Milani mascara

Wet n Wild lipstick in Cherry Picking

Revlon Lip Butter in Cherry Tart

Palette Series: Urban Decay - Original Naked Palette

    

   Hey guys! I have another look for you using another one of my palettes. You can see the video on my youtube channel (link!) This was the look I wore to the family Christmas party at my mom's house. Just an easy, neutral eye and red festive lips. Here is a list of products I used to complete this look, hope you enjoy!!

Swatch & Comparison: New Maybelline Color Tattoo - Barely Branded

     Yesterday I put my foot in my mouth about the new gold Color Tattoo, and also the beige one. If you missed that post, you can click here. I wanted to do a swatchy swatch of Barely Branded today, and compare it to it's counterpart: Barely Beige. 

     I still stand by my original statement that if you missed out on Barely Beige, run out and get this new one. I said RUN, not walk. Go get it it, NOW. ;-) Both of these are very creamy champagne shades. I'd say that Barely beige may be a tad bit pinker.

Oh, and before I forget.... this just happens to by my 300th blog post. Pretty awesome :-)

Barely Beige  /  Barely Branded

Barely Beige  /  Barely Branded

Swatch & Comparison: New Maybelline Color Tattoo - Gold Rush

     Well friends, today I eat my own words. When I looked at the new Maybelline 24 Hour Metal Color Tattoos (what a long name!) the other day I decided the only one I needed was Inked in Pink. I use the word 'needed' loosely here. I thought it silly for them to release yet another gold shade. You have Bold Gold from the permanent line, there was Gold Shimmer in the fall collection, and now Gold Rush. I also thought I didn't need to pick up Barely Branded because it was so similar to Barely Beige from the fall collection also. Well the makeup addicted junkie in me looked up swatches of these new Metal shades and decided I needed both. 

    Gold Rush is VERY different from both of the other shades. In comparison, the other 2 don't even look gold. Gold Shimmer is more of a green tinged antique gold, and Bold Gold is more of a murky gold. 

    First up will be a swatch of Gold Rush, then in following photos will be comparisons to the other gold shades in the line.

Maybelline 24 Hour Metal Color Tattoo - Gold Rush

Bold Gold  /  Gold Shimmer  /  Gold Rush

Swatchfest: Benefit High Beam & Sun Beam

Hey dolls!

I'm back with some more sample swatches today. For your viewing pleasure I have Sun Beam & High Beam liquid highlighters today.

    High Bean is a beautiful iridescent pink color. I found this one is good for everyday wear. It blends out to be a beautiful sheen on the cheekbones. When you open the bottle, it is very much like a nail polish: it has a brush for applying. I find it best not to apply directly to the face with the brush. I put some on the back of my hand and tap it on with my finger.

    Sun Bean is more of a golden bronze color. While I think it's gorgeous, it's really only useful in the summertime when we all tend to have a bit more color to our faces. It can tend to be a bit much color wise on my pale face right now. 

The first swatch is applied directly from the bottle, second swatch is blended out.

Left: High Beam  /   Right: Sun Beam

High Beam   /    Sun beam

Palette Series: theBalm - Balm Jovi

   I'm trying to do a series on my YouTube channel (link!) where I do a look with each of the eyeshadow palettes I own. I have quite a few, as I am a palette hoarding freakazoid. 

    For the first look, I used the new Balm Jovi palette from theBalm, as it's my newest palette and I had a few requests for it. What palette would you like to see a look from next? Leave your requests in the comment section :)

Products Used:

Maybelline Dream Smooth Mousse foundation

Maybelline Instant Age Rewind concealer

NYX Stay Matte, Not Flat Powder

ELF Golden Bronzer

Revlon Lip Butters in Cupcake & Sugar Plum

Lorac behind the Scenes eye primer

Milani Shadow Eyes pencil in Champagne Toast

theBalm Balm Jovi palette:

The Stroke (dark blue)

Iron Maid-in (gold)

Adagio + Allegro (blender colors)

Don't You Want Me? blush (Frat Boy)

Solid Gold highlighter (Mary-Lou Manizer)

Ulta liner in Indigo

Maybelline Mega Plush mascara

Rimmel Scandal-Eyes mascara

Watch the video here:

Swatchfest: New Maybelline Color Tattoo - Inked in Pink

     I read on Nouveau Cheap blog that Maybelline will be coming out with new Color tattoos to add to the permanent line (I believe). These are called 24 Hour Metal, so they are all metallic shades.

    The good news is, for those of you who missed out on the LE fall Color Tattoos, there is one in the line called Barely Branded, that is pretty much identical to Barely Beige. There are 5 new Color Tattoos in total: Barely Branded (beige/champagne), Silver Strike (silver), Inked in Pink (metallic soft pink), Gold Rush (bright gold) and Electric Blue (electric blue, obvi). 

I found these new shades at my local Walmart for about $6. they were in a new end cap display with the new Rocket Volume Express mascara.

    The color I choose was Inked in Pink, which reminds me A LOT of the eyeshadow Sin from Urban Decay. The texture of this was super super creamy, more so even than some of my other Color Tattoos. It applies very nicely and evenly. You know how I feel about these COlor tattoos, I think they are AMAZING.

This is all the same swatch, I just showed it at different angles and lighting so you can get the best idea of how it looks.

Are you as excited as I am about NEW Color Tattoos???

Swatchfest: Benefit Coralista blush

      As you may know if you watch my videos, for my birthday I picked up a Sephora Favorites sampler kit. At the same time, I also cashed in some points for a sample, and bought another little sample kit. Basically I have tons of samples I need to get swatched and put on the blog.

      I'm going to start today with a blush from Benefit called Coralista. I picked this up in a little set called 'Coral My World', which also included a sample of Sun Beam, for $12. 

      This blush is obviously a coral color, but over powering. It's a light, wearable coral shade. I find that these Benefit blushes have a very pleasant scent, and they are very easily blend-able. The blush looks super bright, and a tad scary, in pan. It blends out to be such a gorgeous shade, and I think I'll be wearing this a ton more when warmer weather comes back to me. 

Benefit boxed powder retail for $25 full size. Like I said earlier, if you want to try it out before committing to a large one, pick up the kit for $12. I found it in the section near the registers, and I've also seen it online. 

Nail Swatch: Revlon 'Girly'

   You will have to excuse all the nail swatching lately, but I haven't done any in so long. I have so many cool nail polishes I want to show, so I'm trying to be better about taking pictures as I wear them. 

   This particular polish I first heard about on Nouveau Cheap blog, and had to go find it right away. This polish is called Girly, and it is part of Revlon's new collection called "Bubblegum Days & Urban Nights". I am not exactly sure when this collection first surfaced, but it had to have been very recently as I hadn't even heard of it before a few days ago.

Girly is a bubblegum pink jelly base, packed full of different sized glitter in a few different colors. The most prominent glitters colors I can detect are: silver, fuchsia & purple. Swatches below are 3 coats (it really was fine with 2 coats) and topped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat. Dry time is a big slow, but I did have fairly thick layers, so that does factor in a bit. 

Have you seen this collection? Do you love this color as much as I do?

My Look: Khloe's Kardazzle

      

As promised yesterday, I have a look using the Khloe's Kardazzle palette today. This look turned out alright, but it took a lot of product to get it to what it is. 

Products Used:

Mac Painterly paint pot

#1 on brow bone

#2 as blender/ transition color

#3 in the crease

#4 on inner half of lid

#5 on outer half of lid & lower lash line

Milani Liquif'eye in black on lower waterline

Maybelline Mega Plush mascara

Rimmel ScandalEyes mascara

blush, bronzer & highlight from palette

Swatchfest & Review: Khroma Beauty - Khloe's Kardazzle palette

Hi Dolls!

     I was pretty excited when I started seeing this palette pop up in blogs and youtube videos. Not because I'm a huge Kardashian fan or anything (although I must say, I think Khloe is hilarious) but because it looked like such a pretty little neutral palette. You all know, I am a neutral whore. I was really drawn to the Khroma Beauty Khloe's Kardazzle palette because it seemed nice an compact, and it's a full face palette. Besides containing 8 eyeshadows, this palette has a slide out drawer with blush, bronzer & highlight. It comes in plastic packaging. So that's a quick rundown of that palette, let's get more in depth to how I actually feel about it.

Keep reading for more info and pictures!

Haul: Milani Prize!!!!

     A couple weeks ago (right around Thanksgiving) Milani was having a giveaway to celebrate their 10th anniversary. You could enter on Facebook, which I did everyday with no luck, or on Twitter. I only figured out you could enter on Twitter the second to last day, so I did, and I WON!! 

My prize came today, and of course I dug right in! I was super duper excited about this, as there were a lot of products in it I've really been wanting to try out.

Let's take a closer look at what Milani sent me! Keep reading!

Nail Swatch: Revlon "Royal"

Hi Dolls!

      I'm back again today with another nail polish post. I picked this beauty up on clearance at Meijer for $2.99! I hear this is also available in the CVS Beauty Clearance Sale, but I couldn't find any Revlon Top Speed polishes at my CVS. Like I posted before, I've found pretty much all the same items on clearance at CVS also on clearance at my local Meijer. I believe this polish is getting discontinued, which is a shame because this is a much loved polish in the beauty blogging community.

      Revlon 'Royal' is a deep dark, yet bright, blue. It has almost a jelly look to it. Very pretty polish, and I received many compliments on it while out and about today. I applied 2 coats, and topped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry top coat. 

I am attempting to figure out better photo taking for the 'ole blog, so bear with me though trial and error.  This polish is much deeper than I could capture, but the pictures are pretty close to real life. 

Nail Swatch: Milani 'HD'

   If you read my post a few days ago about the CVS Beauty Clearance Sale, you will know that I picked up a beautiful Milani polish for only $1.37!! This is in the Milani 3D Holographic line. I only picked up the silver polish, because none of the other colors interested me much.

       These pictures were taken pretty late night, and I had to rely on artificial light, but I edited them as close to true color as I could. The first picture is in full focus, and the other 3 are just fun, so you can see the holo goodness ;-) Also, being a holographic polish, it's really hard to capture anyway. You really need bright bright sunshine to get the true effect. This is seriously an awesome polish, and I highly recommend it!

My Look: I Blue It

       I have come to the conclusion that I am much, MUCh better at applying gel liner than I am at liquid. It doesn't matter what type of tip it has, how fine it is, I just suck at liquid liner. Gel liner is so much easier! 

     You may also notice that I dyed my hair brunette. I wanted to cover up the pink, as it was fading pretty quickly. Well let me tell you, I destryoed my beautiful blonde highlights for nothing! My hair is now a pinky purple color underneath! It also has an ashy green tint to it from being blonde before. I couldn't win for anything this time around. We'll see what happens after I wash it a few times. 

Keep reading to see what I used for this look!

CVS Beauty Clearance Sale

     If you are unaware, twice a year CVS has a big beauty clearance sale. They get rid of things that are being discontinued, or need the stock rotated. Most things are usually 50%- 75% off. The thing is, prices and items vary store-to-store. Also, some CVS locations don;t put stickers up on anything, so you wouldn't even know it was on sale by looking at it. This is where the awesomeness of the internet comes in. Nouveau Cheap (awesome blog, if you don't follow her, you SHOULD) writes up a Master List every time the sale comes around. Readers let her know what they find on clearance at their stores, and she compiles it in one easy place. You can read the Master List by clicking it. If your CVS does not have any signs or stickers up, take the items you want to the red scanner, and check the price. That is what I had to do. 

To make a long story short, I wrote down the couple of things that interested me, and headed off to CVS this afternoon. I was really hoping to find the Revlon Colorburst lipstick in Soft Nude on sale, and some of the Physicians Formula gel liners. So what did I end up getting?

Revlon polish in Blue Lagoon - $1.49

Nicole by OPI (Kardashian Kolors) in Paparazzi Don't Preach - $3.99

Milani 3D Holographic polish in HD - $1.37

Revlon Colorburst lipstick in Soft Nude - $2.49

Wet n Wild bronzer in Princess - $1.49

PF Gel Liners for Blue Eyes - $5.49

I also had a $1 off Revlon coupon, bringing my total to: $16.36 (including tax)

I want to also mention that a lot of things on clearance at CVS are also on clearance at Meijer, plus a lot of other great products. So if you don't find what you are looking for at CVS, go check your local Meijer! I picked up the NYC polish in Python from the 2012 Fall Collection for only 44 cents today! I also saw a bunch of L'Oreal Infallible shadows for 20% off at Meijer.

Do you have a CVS? Did you pick up any clearance items? What did you get??

Fall Eye Look: Go For Green!

Products Used:

Urban Decay Primer Potion

Maybelline Color Tattoo in Mossy Green (lid only)

Wet n Wild single in Brulee' (crease to brow for easier blending)

Wet n Wild single in Envy (lid & lower lash line)

Wet n Wild single in Nutty (crease)

Essence Long Lasting Liner in Think Khaki (waterline)

Jordana FabuLiner in Black (top lash line)

Maybelline Mega Plush mascara

Essence No Limits mascara