With the new Tarte LipSurgence Lip Crèmes on my lips today, I’m feeling Empowered…
And Serene…
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Tarte Summer 2015 Poppy Picnic Collection LipSurgence Lip Crèmes: Chubby Pencils With Powerful Pen Names
Chanel Summer 2015: Le Vernis Nail Colour in Lavanda
Why hasn’t my love for Chanel’s summery vivid violet Lavanda nail lacquer translated into love in my closet?
One of life’s great mysteries, I suppose…
I rutted around in there this morning to find something to wear with Lavanda (I’m wearing two coats in these pics, by the way), and the only thing I could find was this romper.
Actually, I know why I don’t own many purple pieces of clothing (and other bright colors). It’s the cat hair. My wardrobe has progressively grown more gray over the past few years to match the tabby fur that I’m almost constantly covered in from head to toe.
I’ve been trying to re-colorize lately, but there’s still a ways to go. Today is a good step, though.
Top — romper by Leifsdottir (here’s something similar)
Necklace — Loft (something kinda similar)
Nails — Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour in Lavanda
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. What are you wearing on your nails today?
P.P.S. Guess who’s going to see the New Kids on the Block, Nelly and TLC tonight!? YES! My friend Marisol got us tickets. I may even wear a Band-Aid on my cheek like Nelly did back in the day!
Just kidding. I’m very excited though. 🙂
Stuff I’ve Cooked: Raw Rainbow Pad Thai
A lot of people don’t know this, but it’s a proven fact (not really). Rainbows taste like pad thai.
Yeah! Who knew? 🙂
I got a bag of crazy yellow and purple carrots (the carrots are buried down there in the bowl somewhere) at Trader Joe’s and thought they’d be perfect for this Rad Rainbow Pad Thai recipe I found on — yup, you guessed it — ohsheglows.com.
I’ve made this a few times now. Sometimes I’ll have it as is, and sometimes I’ll add a protein on top, like I did a lightly fried tofu a while back, and that was really good. Another time I cooked some frozen shrimp in TJ’s Sweet Chili Sauce — also delicious, and cooking the shrimp only took about five minutes. El Hub’s favorite was the time I added Trader Joe’s Ginger and Soy Cod Fillets, which I baked in the oven. The ginger-soy flavors go really well with the pad thai veggies.
You gotta give this one a try. It’s SO nom.
It looks like pasta in there, but it’s all veggies.
The Make Up For Ever Artist Palette Vol. 2 Colors You Crave: Nine Pigmented Pans Make This a Good Special Event Palette
Current cravings:
- A Pink Power Smoothie, even though I already had one today for breakfast.
Is there an unwritten rule I don’t know about against drinking two of the same kind of smoothies in one day?! #deepthoughts.
- A hug from Tabs, because I haven’t seen him since I fed him gravy this morning.
He usually “supervises” me in my office during the mornings because he likes the sun in here, but I think he’s afraid of the new pink shelves, so he’s hiding.
- The poppin’ pigments in Make Up For Ever’s new $42 Artist Palette Vol. 2 Colors You Crave
May brings us two new Artist Palettes from MUFE — Vol. 1, Nudes You Need, which I played with yesterday, and this brighter one here, Vol. 2, called Colors You Crave.
Now, if my stomach rumbles through these next few paragraphs in this post, I apologize. You see, I am currently craving lunch, in addition to these colors. 🙂
The palette houses nine pans, which are arranged into color-coordinating columns of three (or rows, if you turn it sideways), of Make Up For Ever eyeshadow in their incredibly soft, crazy creamy gel-[dash]-powder formula (they reformulated their eyeshadows last year).
So, how soft are they? Well, this morning El Hub stopped by my desk to loiter as he sometimes does and asked what I was doing. Before I could answer, he reached out and touched the palette.
Of course, he gouged a big divot into one of the pans just by brushing his Tarzan hand against it, so you have to be a little careful with these… All of that is just to say that they’re very soft. They almost feel like a cream, but they’re not. They aren’t wet at all. They’re still powders, but they’re squishy powders.
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Nails of the Day: Essie Petal Pushers
Ah, push it… Puh-push it real good!
Seriously, I’ll take any excuse to quote Salt-N-Pepa, even if it’s only marginally related to what I’m talking about. 🙂
Nails of the day! — yesterday and today, because I applied this yesterday, but it’s still hangin’ tough (LOL, NKOTB). I’m wearing two coats of Essie’s creamy gray Petal Pushers from the Flowerista collection.
I love pairing light gray with mint… I think that when you wear certain lighter shades, like mint and some pastels, it’s good to toughen up your whole ensemble by throwing a more serious color into the mix, just to keep everything from going overly sweet, ya know? That’s what I’m hoping these nails are doing for this mint top and necklace.
Nails — Essie
Lips — Make Up For Ever Artist Plexi-Gloss in 103
Top — Loft
Necklace — Forever 21 (here’s something similar)
Bag — Kate Spade (here’s something similar)
P.S. They’re still pushin’ it! Pushin’ it real good…
I love that commercial! I would have no problem with Salt-N-Pepa showing up in an elevator with me. 🙂
Outfit of the Day: Mint Madness, and Awesome Jeans From LOFT
Do all boys love mint chocolate chip ice cream? I swear…I think they do.
I love mint, too, but not so much the ice cream (I’m more of a dulce de leche/pistachio gal). I’m all about the wearable forms of the color. 🙂 There’s just something so fresh and springy about mint clothes and accessories.
I actually wore this outfit yesterday, so officially it was my outfit of the yester-day, and not my outfit of today (I’m still decided on that). I wore it to the doctor’s office (clean bill of health, woop-woop!), and now that I think about it, the mint in the lacy top slightly resembles the color of the scrubs I used to wear when I interned at a hospital about a billion years ago…
I’m also wearing my new favorite jeans in this pic, the terrifically soft, uncommonly comfortable LOFT Modern Skinny Jeans. The fabric has a bit of stretchiness to it, and it maintains those stretchy powers as the days wear on, so by the end of a long day, the jeans are still effectively stuck to my bum and not hanging off it (always a good thing).
I also like the moderate distressing on the thighs.
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The $32 Clinique Sculptionary Cheek Contouring Palettes: Three Shades, Three Jobs, One Coordinated Mission
Like Kevin Federline circa 2005, highlighting and contouring are having a moment. You literally cannot escape them. They’re the Alcatraz of the makeup world right now.
The new Sculptionary Cheek Contouring palettes by Clinique have that highlighting/contouring trend in mind. Three shades, three jobs, one coordinated mission — to sculpt and shape yo’ cherub cheeks! They’re $32 each and available now in six oil-free shades at Clinique counters and online.
Use one of the mid-tone shades as blush for your cheeks, the deeper shades for contouring, and the lighter shade for highlighting. Or, mix them however you’d like to create a custom blush color for the apples of your cheeks.
I think these are really fun to mix, especially if you use them as blushes and highlighters…
I love me a customized cheek color! 🙂
Here I’m wearing the Defining Nectars palette. I mixed the mid-toned and darkest shades together by tapping my brush back and forth between the powders. Then I swirled the powder on the open lid to mix them together (you can also do this on the back of your hand or in your palm) and applied the combined color to my cheeks as a blush. Then I cleaned off my brush, loaded it with the lightest shade and swept that on my cheekbones to highlight.
If you’re going to be mixing these, I think it’s important to use a small face brush because the individual pans are pretty petite (the entire palette fits in the palm of my hand). I like the Contour Brush by Real Techniques; it’s small enough to pick up the colors separately.
As for contouring, I probably won’t be using these palettes to do a true contour as all of the darkest shades have shimmer, which really doesn’t do a lot in terms of chiseling my cheeks. Plus, I’m kind of afraid of things looking a little too ’80s with the colorful contour.
Totally go there if it’s your thing, though. You do you! That’s one of the things I love about makeup. 🙂 There’s an endless number of ways to interpret a look.
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The Make Up For Ever Artist Palette Vol. 1 Nudes You Need: Especially if You’re a Beauty Beginner, These ARE Nudes You Need
Eyeshadow… It’s what’s for dinner.
LOL! Not really, but my stomach just rumbled, and that’s what popped into my head because I’m looking at this new eyeshadow palette. 🙂
It’s the $42 Artist Palette Vol. 1 Nudes You Need by Make Up For Ever.
But enough about rumbly tummies! — if you frequently forget the difference between a tapered blending brush and a domed eyeshadow brush, read on…
Heck, even if you do know the difference, keep reading, because this palette could end up saving you precious moments, as in time, when you put on le war paint.
So, what are we looking at here? An eye palette with nine neutral MUFE Artist Shadows in what are billed as universally flattering shades, the Artist Palette Vol. 1 is one of two $42 collectible Artist Palettes released this month by Make Up For Ever (the other one has bold shades). They’re available now online and at Make Up For Ever counters and Sephora.
OK, but what can this palette do for you/me? Well, if you consider yourself utterly and completely hopeless when it comes to blending, this eyeshadow palette will help you look like you know what you’re doing. You’ll have to practice, of course, but it’s easy to get the hang of blending with the help of these eyeshadows.
MUFE’s Artist Shadows have a super soft, almost gel-like powder formula packed with ultra-fine pigment particles. Creating gradients and doing layering with them takes very little effort because the powders feather out with just a few flicks of a brush.
In these pics here, I’m wearing a taupe-ish brown daytime eye look incorporating diffused cat liner, and it didn’t take much time to do, thanks to these Urban Decay-caliber blend-able shadows. I didn’t have to spend forever and a day swiping back and forth with my blending brush, and I noticed very little fallout, too.
My kind of look, yo! 🙂
Does anything set this palette apart from the pack of neutral eye palettes on the market? “Another day, another neutral palette…”
What is this, the one hundredth one!? There are a ton of them out there, but this one’s ridonkulously easy to use because of the colors (they’re true neutrals in terms of color temps) and the formula. Basically, it has no learning curve at all, so I think it’s one of the better ones for beginners.
If this is going to be your first neutral palette, I suggest also grabbing a pair of matte single eyeshadows in brown, one lighter than your skin tone, and one slightly darker, since most of the shades in this MUFE palette have some level of shimmer or sheen. You’ll be able to use the other mattes as transition shades, to blend out the edges of your shimmers, and to deepen your crease. It’s those finishing touches that take your eye looks to the next level.
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