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
I haven’t had a peach Gummi in years, but now I kinda want one… The Too Faced Sweet Peach Spring 2017 Collection is practically an ode to peach Gummies (the round ones that look like doughnuts).
I’m wearing the collection in this video. I’m wearing the eye palette on my eyes, the standalone blush on my cheeks, the face palette with the bronzer, highlighter and blush on top of the other blush on my cheeks (there’s a lot happening on my cheeks), and Peach Tease gloss on my lips.
Sure, you could snuggle up on your couch with your cat/s, your S.O. or your favorite cuddle baby/buddy and do it without wearing a stitch of makeup on your lids. I mean, you’d be fine. Your hot cocoa will still taste hot cocoa-y, your Christmas tree lights will still sparkle, and your holiday candles will still smell holiday candle-y.
That said, if you do perform said snuggling while also wearing eyeshadow on your lids, you’ll be selfie ready, and you never know when you might want to take a selfie. 🙂
Here are three new-ish neutral eyeshadow palettes that are perfect for a Christmas cuddle session on the couch. Sure, you could rock a glittery smoky eye with a pair of double-stacked false lashes on the couch, but when I think of cuddling under warm blankets and sipping hot cocoa while watching holiday movies with strings of twinkling lights in the background, I think of cozy neutrals like the ones in these palettes.
The first one is theBalm Appetit, and it’s $39.50. It comes with nine neutrals, some of them cool-toned and some of them warm.
There’s a lot of shimmery foiled goodness happening in this palette, so if you like your neutrals on the shiny side, this one will be fun.
theBalm’s super soft eyeshadow powders are on finer side (comparable to Bobbi Brown’s), so it’s easy to get the colors to merge into each other without getting muddy. They’re great for detailed looks with well-defined sections of color in the crease, in the outer v and on the lid.
I love the smell of two coats of Frida Kahlo Nail Polish in the morning (not really tho). It smells like…victory!!
Yeah, I found ’em. 🙂 Last night. They were in these random bins on the outer edge of the beauty section near the registers, of all places, at the Novato CVS!
It wasn’t a big display. It was actually semi-hidden among tiny bottles of hand sanitizer and travel-sized tins of Bag Balm (which is udder-ly fantastic, bah-dumdum!).
Thank you, girls, for helping me track these down. Your suggestion to check the availability feature on the CVS website worked like a charm. 😉 That’s definitely a tip to file away for future reference.
The store didn’t have all the colors — only four of the nail polishes and five of the lippies — and they were $8.49 each instead of $7.99 like it says on the website, but I grabbed the blue, the hot pink and the coral nail polishes and a few of the lipsticks. And because I have #noselfcontrol as it pertains to these things, I painted my fingers with two coats of the blue shade as quickly as humanly possible (although I did make it home first).
I blazed through my mani with these in my living room last night, and the room was kinda dark, so I couldn’t really see what I was doing. I also only gave my nails about 15 minutes to dry before I started doing things, so I expected my polish to look significantly worse for wear when I got up this morning, but noooo! It still looked smoother than a tabby’s tum and opaque — like a pro did them at a salon, instead of me, in my dark living room. Sweet!
“Kamat wimings!” said Allora, tapping Artemis on the shoulder with the Wand of Skunkrillis. Instantly — POOF! — there was a burst of twinkling golden magical ✨ energy, and a pair of raven’s wings sprouted from the black cat’s back.
“Mrow,” said the cat, unfurling his new appendages to stretch them out.
“Good kitty,” said Allora, scritching him under his chin, and the cat-raven purred in delight.
Makeup is a kind of magic. Our eyeshadows and lipsticks and blushes are modern day potions, and our makeup brushes are like magic wands. And when we sit down to put on our face, in a way, there’s a bit of actual mysticism involved, because there is that aspect of transforming oneself. I think the coven of cosmetic lovers at Rituel de Fille probably also see it that way.
Rituel de Fille (pronounced “ritoo-el-day-fee”) is a fairly new indie makeup brand. They’ve been around since 2015, but in that time, they’ve done some really cool things.
Their approach to makeup? — minimize ingredients (99% natural and no fillers) and maximize the pigment, so there are plenty of punchy colors and products with short ingredient lists. Their makeup is made without synthetic dyes, fragrances or parabens, and it’s all cruelty-free. They aren’t a vegan line, though, because some of their products do have beeswax and lanolin in them.
They list all of their ingredients on their website, which is cool because a lot of brands, especially bigger brands, aren’t always transparent about that kind of thing.
The brand is available all over the U.S. now, as well as online at ritueldefille.com and credobeauty.com.
I get a witchy, astrological vibe from them, and I think that’s what they’re aiming for. The founders are three sisters (they call themselves “The Ramos Sisters”).
Here’s a picture of them from their website pouring what looks like magic fairy dust…
They look like three super cool gals who listen to Stevie Nicks and have probably seen The Craft a hundred times. Perhaps they have a secret room in their house where they keep all of their love potions (because in the story I just made up in my mind, they all live together in a ramshackle Victorian, obviously).
I’ve tested a few pieces from the line, and the Ash and Ember Eye Soots ($38 each) really stand out. They’re pigments held together with a touch of oil, so they have a consistency somewhere between a cream and a powder.
They come in jars with an opening that’s about the width of a fingertip, which is great, because they’re designed to be applied with a fingertip (or a flat eyeshadow brush or angled liner brush). You just press down to pick up some of the product, but because the opening of the jar is narrow, you’re forced to apply downward pressure, as opposed to swiping your finger back and forth.
They say that it’s the best way to get the product out of the packaging and onto your lids.
I’m glad I gave this look a try, even though I don’t think I look nearly as cool as the girl I based it on from Nylon magazine…
Seriously, I look like I just grew a second pair of eyebrows, LOL! — purple glittery sparkly eyebrows, though. Which are beautiful in their own way, right? Maybe?
So this is what I came up with for my first look based on the bookmarks and Post-It notes I did in those magazines the other day. I’m giving myself 30 days to recreate different looks that are out of my comfort zone, and this was one from Nylon with a sparkly minimalist purple cut crease.
Before I started, I spent a few solid minutes just looking closely at the model, and here are the things that jumped out at me (other than her purple cut crease)…
With these things in mind, I rifled through my makeup collection and came up with this sparkly, glittery cut crease.
First, I started by kind of sketching out the shape of the cut crease (a.k.a. my glittery second set of eyebrows) on my lids with Urban Decay Heavy Metal Glitter Eyeliner in Metalhead, which is a liquid purple glitter liner and, once I had a good amount of that on, I dipped my favorite NARS #47 angled brush into a purple glitter shadow from the Urban Decay Moondust Palette, wet it with Make Up For Ever Mist & Fix to amplify the glitter, and then pressed it right on top of the glitter liner.
I did that a few times until I got the cut crease this shiny, glittery and intense.
For my big, fluffy brows, I filled them in with the current love o’ my brow life, MAC Brow Sculpt Brow Pencil in Brun, and then used a boat load of Benefit clear brow gel to push and fluff them up, especially at the front.
I mean, I did as much as I could… The model’s brows are incredible! Mine don’t look that full, but I tried.
Next, for my skin, to get that dewiness, I used MAC Matchmaster Shade Intelligence Compact (my shade is 4.0), which is MAC’s cushion cream compact. It’s medium coverage and has a satiny finish.
This is how badly I need — yes, need — these Republic Nail Frida Kahlo products in my life.
I’ve currently embarked upon a systematic search of every CVS store in the Marin County area to find these products!
My online sleuthing seems to indicate that they’re only available at actual physical CVS stores.
WHY?! Why aren’t they also available online??
I found out about this collection from my friend Lily on Instagram (hey, girl!). She posted a pic she found of some of the items, and the moment I saw it I was like, OK, yeah, I can’t live without them.
Well, I mean…I could live without them, but it would be really, REALLY nice if I could try that mint green nail polish on my nails. 🙂
The polishes are $7.99, as are the lipsticks.
Oh, and apparently there are also sets out there, somewhere, that have both the nail polishes and lipsticks in them. I saw them on the Republic Nail website (not for sale, though — just the info), but I haven’t spotted them for sale anywhere at CVS.
I think they may have been available on the CVS website at some point in time because they have the reviews, which are really good, but now the website just says that they’re available in stores only.
If you happen to see these in a store anywhere around here in the Bay Area, please let me know. I’d hop in my Mazda and get there SO FAST.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I’ll be the first person to admit that I get stuck in makeup ruts. Smoky, neutral and/or brown — any of the above, and I’ll wanna wear it.
I’m gonna fall back on human nature as my excuse/explanation… I think it’s just human nature to do what you think you’re pretty good at and what you’re comfortable with.
Right now, though, I’m on a mission to challenge myself in my life, and not just with makeup, so here’s to trying new things, yay! 🙂
This morning I sat in bed with the new issues of Allure and Nylon and a stack of Post-Its and bookmarked every look that caught my eye; I wrote down all of the little details I like about the looks on the Post-Its.
My plan is to try all of them over the next 30 days. (I recently came to the realization that I do better with projects when they have concrete deadlines… Yeah, the things you learn about yourself in your 40s!)
Some of the looks are trademark Karen Makeup Crack®, like this one with smoky taupe gray, but I also picked some looks that are well out of my comfort zone, like the Chanel look, which seems deceptively simple, but that black line on her upper lash line is so perfectly precise that I can already tell that it’s gonna take all of my willpower to NOT smudge the living crap out of it.
I also took of some colorful looks that I would normally never think to try, like a glittery minimalist cut crease…
As a beauty junkie, I realize that the last thing I “need” is another more limited edition palette…but does that ever stop anyone worth their weight in duochrome glitter shadow?? HELL NO.
Introducing Deck of Scarlet. They’re a new beauty palette delivery service — yup, you read that correctly. You sign up on their website, pay $29.95, and every other month, they send you a new limited edition palette designed by whomever is their current Artist in Chief (a.k.a popular YouTuber). The palettes are $29.95 each, and shipping is free.
If you’re ever just not into one of the palettes for whatever reason, you can skip that month, and you won’t be charged.
All of the makeup is cruelty-free, paraben-free and made in the USA.
The services only started in November, and their very first palette, Edition 00, is a collaboration with YouTuber Kelly Strack. It comes with three powder eyeshadows, a powder blush, a cream blush, two cream lip colors and two pencils (one eyeliner and one lip liner).
I haven’t worn this yet, but I’m really looking forward to it. The idea of a palette delivery service seems kind of awesome in a wacky way that probably only makeup lovers could fully appreciate.
From swatching the colors, the eyeshadows and powder blush feel softer than kitten paws… They’re so soft that when I went to swatch them, I almost accidentally took out a huge chunk out of the pan with my finger because, FYI, I’m the Hulk Smash of swatching!
The powder products, though, could stand to be a little finer. They remind me of NYX.
