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Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict

Karen

Makeup Tutorial: A Peach, Brown and Green Eye for Summer

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The look I did for work today draws heavily on products from the Lancome Color Design Artist Palette in Couture Warms ($70). Lancome knocked it out of the park with Couture Warms, ladies. It’s an amazing palette, but you can always duplicate this look using similar products from other lines.

Couture Warms

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Top colors from left to right

  • Strut – jade green shimmer
  • Designer – moss green shimmer
  • Pose – gold shimmer
  • Positive – beige matte

Bottom row from left to right

  • Couture – reddish-brown matte
  • Model – bronze shimmer
  • Vue – peachy pink shimmer
  • Daylight – white matte

Products I used for this look…

  1. Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer
  2. Lancome eyeshadow – Positive
  3. Lancome eyshadow – Vue
  4. Lancome eyeshadow – Couture
  5. Lancome eyeshadow – Strut
  6. Lancome Le Stylo Waterproof eyeliner – Noir
  7. MAC eyeshadow – Concrete
  8. Lancome High Definicils mascara – Black
  9. MAC Select Moisturecover – NW 25
  10. Laura Mercier Secret Brightening Powder – Number 2
  11. MAC Cremestick Lip Liner – Sublime Culture
  12. Chanel lipstick – Leopard
  13. Laura Mercier Oil Free Foundation – Suntan Beige
  14. Laura Mercier Translucent Powder
  15. MAC Loose Beauty Powder – Natural Flare

lancome-couture-warms-products

Brushes and tools I used…

  1. Shu Uemura eyelash curler
  2. MAC 239
  3. Sonia Kashuk large eyeshadow brush
  4. MAC 224
  5. MAC 217
  6. Sonia Kashuk angled eyeshadow brush
  7. MAC 226
  8. MAC 194
  9. Billy B Paintbrush 13
  10. Sonia Kashuk powder brush
  11. Shu Uemura 20 brush

Here’s the basic layout of the eye products:

  1. Too Faced Shadow Insurance
  2. Positive eyeshadow
  3. Vue eyeshadow
  4. Couture eyeshadow
  5. Strut eyeshadow
  6. Noir eyeliner

The eyes

Begin by blending an even layer of Too Faced Shadow Insurance onto the surface of your eyelid with a MAC 239 brush.

Using the Sonia Kashuk large eyeshadow brush, apply Positive eyeshadow to the browbone.

Next, apply Vue eyeshadow to the lid with the same brush.
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Tuesday Beauty Tips, July 8

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Your Dreams

Find a pretty notebook, and write out your hopes and dreams for the future. Think about where you’d like to be in a year, two years or ten years. The crazier and more outrageous the dream, the better. Keep your pen moving across the page, and try to avoid self editing while you write — nobody ever has to see your list, so don’t worry about grammar or spelling. Let the words flow unbidden.

Just try to get those dreams down on paper. The simple act of writing things down helps bring them to life.

Inspiration

Study orchids, other flowers and even photographs of beautiful things to inspire your eye makeup color combinations. Hold onto an image of something beautiful in your mind as you try different looks. Remember, makeup washes off.

Buy or make a card for someone special in your life. Make it something you can send by snail mail. Inside the card, write a quote from a song or show that reminds you of this person, along with an invitation to coffee or a movie.

Schedule tea time with yourself. Clear off your desk or your kitchen table, and serve tea from a teapot with a proper cup. Find something uplifting to read while you sip slowly, and let your mind wander.

Listen to Nina Simone during a summer rainstorm. A few choice cuts: I Think It’s Going to Rain Today, Feeling Good and Sugar in My Bowl.

Share

Look for beauty everywhere, and share what you’ve learned with others. What inspires you to feel more beautiful? Please share your tips in the comments. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

MAC Makeup Rewind: Some of My MAC Favorites

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I’ve got MAC on my mind today. A quick check of the MAC site revealed that all three new collections are now available for purchase, woot! I guess they couldn’t wait for Thursday. To celebrate one of my all-time favorite makeup brands, here are a few posts from the archives.

Good morning! I had a nice anniversary dinner with El Hub last night and ate a ton of sushi. I feel like I should give the man a trophy or something for putting up with me, LOL. How’s Tuesday so far? Got anything exciting planned for today?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

MAC Cosmetics New Collections: Ready, Set, Mineralize!

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Electroflash

Three new MAC Cosmetics releases (yes, girl, THREE!) arrive at MAC counters this Thursday, July 10. The Electroflash, New View and Sonic Chic collections feature Mineralize products — baked mineral eyeshadows, blushes and powders distinguished by the veins of shimmer running through the pans.

Detailed information about all three collections is available on the MAC website, but here’s a basic rundown of what we can expect to see later this week.

Electroflash – nine Mineralize eyeshadow duos; four lipsticks and lipglasses
Sonic Chic – nine Mineralize blushes in gold, pink and bronze shimmer shades
New View – five Mineralize powder duos, each with one matte and one shimmer shade

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Sonic Chic

I’m a raving fan of MAC’s Mineralize eyeshadow duos, so I’m really looking forward to Electroflash, especially the Fresh Green Mix and Love Connection duos. I’ve also been foaming at the mouth over the Sonic Chic blushes.

New View hasn’t piqued my interest like the other two pending collections have, but, hey, we’ll see if that changes once I see it in person.

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New View

If you’re new to MAC Mineralize products, you may find these posts helpful. They’re from last year’s Antiquitease collection.


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Be a Bronze Bombshell with Clarins Sun Blush

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The beauty world’s buzzing about new fall makeup collections, but we can’t forget about summer. Please pass the iced tea, and let’s see what Clarins has been up to.

The Clarins Summer Fever line continues to impress me. Sun Blush ($27.50), a shimmery loose powder, perfectly complements the vibrant teal, purple, pink and orange eye and lip product colors from their Waterproof Eye Pencils, Wonder Mint Mascara and Sun Lip Balms.

clarins-summer-fever-sun-blush-copper-sun

Sun Blush is a warm, terra cotta brown with lots of bronzy shimmer. It has a fine, loose powder texture that reminds me of wonderful Shu Uemura blushes like M Brown 73 (a warm, peachy brown matte) and P Gold 93 D (a shimmery golden pearl).

Applying it to my cheeks for the first time was, um, interesting. The product comes packaged in a cute travel pot that includes a mirror and puff. The puff is great in theory but takes a little practice to use correctly. It tends to pick up and deposit too much product unless you tap away some of the loose powder onto a tissue or the back of your hand. I forgot to do that when I first went to use the puff and wound up looking like one of those crazy ladies who can’t lay off the rouge. As a matter of fact, I would probably skip the puff entirely and, whenever I have one handy, apply Sun Blush with a blush brush like the MAC 116.
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Makeup and Beauty Blog Monday Poll, July 7

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  1. Mood: Very much in love. Today is my second wedding anniversary. 🙂

  2. Lips: Clarins Sun Sheer Lipstick in Paradise Papaya

  3. Fragrance: Bath and Body Works Green Clover and Aloe Body Lotion and Body Splash (the Body Splash is currently on sale at Bath and Body Works for only $4)

  4. Food craving: A plain butter croissant from the French bakery across the street

  5. Makeup craving: A few eye duos: NARS Eyeshadow Duo in Rated R and Chanel Irreelle Duo in Emerald Coast

  6. Song of the day: Ruler of My Heart, by Irma Thomas

  7. Jewelry: White dangling earrings and a white beaded bracelet, both from H&M

  8. Hair: A hot mess! I need to get my roots done because the ends are terribly unruly. I’m wearing it in a loose, messy bun today.

  9. Reading for the week: Rick Steve’s Paris travel guidebook

  10. Goals for the day: Make a long-overdue appointment to get my hair done, to have a good day at work and to do some push-ups

Girlfriend, you know what to do! Just copy the list, insert your answers and leave ’em for me in the comments. 🙂

Le list

Mood:
Lips:
Fragrance:
Food craving:
Makeup craving:
Song of the day:
Jewelry:
Hair:
Reading for the week:
Goal of the day:

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Sunday Face of the Day: Pink and Gold with a Dash of Green

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Yesterday afternoon I zipped into the city to help my friend Jen shop for bridesmaid dresses. She’s getting married this November, and we’re getting down to the wire. Most of the dresses we looked at were solid pinks or golds, accessorized with sashes of contrasting colors. The sashes created pretty focal points, and that’s the idea I had in mind today when I did my makeup.

Gold dress with pink sash by Simple Silhouettes

I blended together a pink and gold for the color I used on my eyes, cheeks and lips and then added a pop of green to the eyes (a sash) for contrast.

There aren’t a lot products or much blending involved in this look, and the colors are muted and subtle, so it didn’t take a long time to do — about 10-15 minutes. All told, I used products from Chanel, MAC Cosmetics, Lancome and Laura Mercier.

First, since I wanted the green on my eyes to really stand out, I applied MAC Cream Color Base in Pearl on the eyelid and just into the crease. Applying it beneath eyeshadow colors is a quick and easy way to ramp up their intensity.
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Lippmann Collection Lady Marmalade Is Like Barbie Pink Goodness

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Watching old black and white movies on TV the other night, I felt compelled to add some color to my life. I applied three coats of Lippmann Collection’s Lady Marmalade nail polish ($15), a shimmery coral pink.

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I think it’s a playful, youthful shade, even though the name is also the very grownup hook of a song that goes “Voulez-vouz coucher avec moi, ces soir.”

Maybe the Lippmann folks chose the name based upon how the shade looks in the bottle — like a scandalous red — but on my nails it’s a warm-toned strawberry pink, something Elle Woods would have worn before she left for Harvard.

Despite having the trademark Lippmann polish durability and thickness, Lady Marmalade is a bit sheer in comparison to Lippmann’s matte polishes. It took me three layers to really make the color pop.

Once applied, nail polish shades can look completely different depending on your skin tone and the opacity of your fingernails, so even though Lady Marmalade looks more strawberry pink than coral on my nails, you may see more of its coral and gold tones.
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