Eyes

Neat and New to Me: Tom Ford Metallic Mink Eye Defining Pencil

October 20th, 2015 by Karen 25 Comments

Neat and New to Me

Unlike my Unsung Heroes series, which features permanent collection products I’ve known and loved a long time, the Neat and New to Me series showcases permanent collection products that slipped under my radar for a while, but then I discovered them! — and now I think they’re neat and new to me.

The answer, my friend, would be yes. A thousand times yes!

If a roving band of performance artists stopped me one day on the sidewalk in downtown Novato and asked, “Excuse us, miss [yes, they’d say ‘miss’]? Would you mind if we poured this bucket of melted Tom Ford Metallic Mink eyeliner on you to cover your entire body from head to toe like a fabulous coat of golden purply bronze?” I’d say yes, even though it would be hard to clean up, ’cause it would look fabulous.

tom ford metallic mink swatch — Tom Ford Eye Defining Pencil in Metallic Mink

All I have to say about this eyeliner is “Get outta my dreams; get into my car! — and grab me a backup while you’re at it, yo!” Metallic Mink looks SO lovely smudged along lower lash lines, especially with reddish browns or purply brown eyeshadows on your lids.

It’s a shimmery golden bronzed brown eye pencil with a slight essence of purple that comes through every once in a while, and it’s the closest thing I’ve found to BECCA’s fabled Cabrera liner. Although it’s not an exact dupe, it’s close enough to warrant a ticker-tape parade and a pair of naked baby angels playing harps. 🙂

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How to Do a Smudgy Liner Daytime Smoky Eye | Tutorial

October 16th, 2015 by Karen 28 Comments

Ah, smoky eyes… How I love, love, LOVE thee.

I love you for your telenovela-style drama, of course, but more than that — I love your gymnastic-caliber flexibility. There are so many ways to creatively interpret smoky eyes, and one of my favorites is this daytime eye look with smudgy liner.

It’s easier than it looks.

No, really! You won’t need a quadrillion brushes or eyeshadows. Just four brushes — a flat eyeshadow brush, a domed blending brush, a tapered blending brush and an angled eyeliner brush — and four eyeshadows, and for the shadows I suggest choosing a progression of colors from darkest to lightest in any finishes that move you from matte, to shimmer, to satin, etc.

For daytime smoky eyes, I do prefer mattes, though, more than shimmers, because the flatter finish says to me, “Let’s set a meeting to work on the fourth-quarter TPS reports,” as opposed to, “Let’s meet at da club to freak on some hot dudes.”

As for your colors, you’ll need a light shade to highlight your brown bone, a slightly darker crease color around your skin tone or one or two shade darker, a color slightly darker than that for the “smoke” on your lids, and then another even darker shade to smudge the eyeliner we’ll be using.

For this look, I went with four shades from the Urban Decay Naked Smoky Palette, namely light beige Thirteen, which I’m using as my highlight shade; peachy taupe Combust, which I’m using as my crease shade; dark brown Whiskey, which I’m using as my lid shade; and dark gray Password to smudge the liner.

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MAC Holiday 2015 | Enchanted Eve Eyes/Warm Eye Shadow X 6 Palette

October 14th, 2015 by Karen 11 Comments

mac enchanted eve eyes warm k — Wearing the MAC Enchanted Eve Eyes/Warm Eye Shadow X 6 Palette ($39.50) on my eyes

Have you ever heard the sound of makeup heartbreak? It sounds like broken pieces of eyeshadow sliding around in a MAC holiday palette… 🙁

mac enchanted eve eyes warm — MAC Enhanted Eve Eyes/Warm Eye Shadow X 6 ($39.50)

Yes, this happened.

But I didn’t let it stop me! To paraphrase the great Celine Dion, “My heart will go on…using these shadows with my makeup brushes.”

I finally took the new MAC Enchanted Eve Eyes/Warm Eye Shadow X 6 Palette ($39.50) from the MAC holiday 2015 collection (coming to the MAC website Oct. 18 and MAC counters and stores Oct. 22) out for a spin this week in the hopes that it would perform a better than the Navy version, and the verdit?
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The MAC Holiday 2015 Enchanted Eve Navy Eyeshadow X 6 Palette

October 12th, 2015 by Karen 40 Comments

mac enchanted eve eyes navy — The MAC Holiday 2015 Enchanted Eve Eyes/Navy Eyeshadow X 6 Palette ($39.50), one of three Enchanted Eve Eyeshadow X6 palettes in the holiday collection

Henceforth, 2015 will be forever etched into my memory as “The Year MAC Did Bladerunner Cell Phone Meets Atari 2600 Packaging for Their Eyeshadow Palettes.”

mac enchanted eve eyes navy 1 — Mercury Alpha Corporation (M.A.C.) Digital Transponder or MAC Holiday 2015 Enchanted Eve Eyes/Navy Palette? You be the judge…

Gotta love the retrofuturistic vibe!

Buuut, as far as the eyeshadows themselves? Well, I was wondering…is it just me, or does it seem like some of the MAC holiday palettes have fallen short over the past few years? Like they just haven’t risen to the same level of quality as the singles in the permanent line?

I wore the Enchanted Eve Navy Eyeshadow X 6 Palette today ($39.50; limited edition and coming to the MAC website Oct. 18 and to MAC stores and counters Oct. 22) and spent what felt like an unusually long time building up the colors. The powders feel harder and rougher than the eyeshadow singles in the permanent line, and it leads to choppier application and just generally more difficulty blending.

mac enchanted eve eyes navy k — Wearing MAC Enchanted Eye Eyes/Navy on my lids and lower lash line; lips are MAC Pro Longwear Lip Pencil in Double-Time with MAC Lipstick in Creme D’Nude

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Try This Nifty NARS Neutral Combo With NARS Abyssinia, Sophia and Bengali

October 8th, 2015 by Karen 21 Comments

nars abyssinia sophia bengali — NARS Pro-Palette Single Eyeshadow Refill pans from the left in Abyssinia, Sophia and Bengali ($18 each)

I’ve been lovin’ this NARS brown-based neutral combo lately with Abyssnia all over my lids from lash line to brow bone, Sophia in the crease and Bengali in the outer corners.

It’s been giving my mainstay brown MAC combos a break…

It’s a good one! You should totes give it a try.

nars abyssinia sophia bengali swatches — Swatches from the left of NARS Abyssinia, Sophia and Bengali

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MAC Unsung Heroes: Constructivist Paint Pot

October 6th, 2015 by Karen 11 Comments

mac constructivist paint pot — MAC Paint Pot in Constructivist ($22)

The long-running Unsung Heroes series here on Makeup and Beauty Blog features some of my all-time favorite permanent collection products.

When you’re on your second pot of MAC Constructivist — wait, I think this might be my third? — it’s probably time to put flowers in its hair, stick it on a float, and throw a parade for it (don’t forget the brass band). Or, you could give it the Unsung Heroes treatment. 🙂

Dude, what a snazzy little Paint Pot! This pearlescent reddish brown cream eyeshadow is a $22 member of the MAC permanent line, and we’ve been hanging out even more than usual lately.

If you love brown eyeshadows as much as I do (and I know my girls are out there; I can’t be the only one!), Constructivist is absolutely must-have, especially if you’re also a MAC fan and a lover of neutral shadows.

Flexibility is Constructivist’s super power. You can wear it by itself (which I do all the time), or use it as a base under other powder eyeshadows, and hello! — it looks lovely with so many different shades, but I’ll talk about that more in a second.

mac constructivist paint pot 2 — MAC Paint Pot in Constructivist ($22)

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Neat and New to Me: NARS Cordura Duo Eyeshadow

September 30th, 2015 by Karen 12 Comments

Neat and New to Me

Unlike my Unsung Heroes series, which features permanent collection products I’ve known and loved a long time, the Neat and New to Me series showcases permanent collection products that slipped under my radar for a while, but then I discovered them! — and now I think they’re neat and new to me.

Aaaaaand in tonight’s startling new episode of “NARS Neutrals I Never Realized I Needed Until Right Now,” Cordura Eyeshadow Duo… It, along with Isolde, have been my top two neutral eye loves lately.

I don’t even know where to start, because I think there’s so much to like about this duo. How about the colors? On one side, a warm, mid-toned golden brown with a light luster; on the other, a neutral-toned deep coffee brown that, on most people, will probably come across as a deep golden coffee brown, but on my warm skin tone, with my yellow undertones, it reads almost like a plummy chocolate.

I lurves it.

Yesterday when we were chatting about Isolde, I think I mentioned how much I’ve always liked the way NARS toys around with finishes, and they’ve done it again here with Cordura. Both of its shades have the subtlest of shimmers — so subtle that my fine lines are like, “Hey, girl! That’s what’s up.” 🙂

Most of the time I’ll start at my lash line with the lighter shade, then take that up to the crease, fading as I get closer to my brows. Then I’ll smudge the darker brown at the outer corner of my lower lash line, do a messy black or dark plummy liner on my water lines, smudge whatever ends up on my lash lines, then mix the two and also blend them on my lower lash line.

Then mascara, of course!

Seriously, it takes all of five minutes to do a daytime smoky eye with this that looks like it took a lot more time to do.

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Neat and New to Me: NARS Isolde Duo Eyeshadow

September 29th, 2015 by Karen 22 Comments

Neat and New to Me

Unlike my Unsung Heroes series, which features permanent collection products I’ve known and loved a long time, the Neat and New to Me series showcases permanent collection products that slipped under my radar for a while, but then I discovered them! — and now I think they’re neat and new to me.

OK, so, I was expecting to Google the word, “Isolde,” as in the NARS Isolde Eyeshadow Duo, and find out that it’s the name of an exotic island in a far-flung corner of the world, because that’s how NARS usually rolls when it comes to naming their colors, but nooo! Turns out that it’s the name of a character in a German opera by Richard Wagner called Tristan und Isolde.

Random! Makeup, you are my teacher, and I’m your willing and eager student. 🙂

Isolde… Aah! Can I just say, “Hello, autumnal makeup jam?!”

Part of the NARS permanent collection, Isolde has recently taken up residence in my Large NARS Pro-Palette. Why I waited so long to try it, I’ll never understand…because it’s so beautiful (especially if your skin has warm undertones)!

You get a shimmery, coppery peach on one side and a shimmery warm copper on the other, and neither side is frosty, which I like.

These colors force me to think of autumn leaves and cozy scarves. And pumpkin spice lattes. And matte lips and boots. In other words, fall.

NARS has literally dozens of beautiful duos, but I think Isolde deserves a shout-out, first, because it’s intensely pigmented (one or two layers should do you just fine), and second, because of the powders, which are so soft that they almost feel like creams. Using them, I hardly notice any fallout, and they barely fade at all after eight hours.

And then there’s the finish, which comes close to being a frost, but doesn’t quite get there, and that’s one of the things I love about NARS. They play with shine in such interesting ways that I never expect.

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