Face

Hi, Refined Golden! Can I Get a Lift From the Flecks of Golden Glitter in Your Gorgeous Golden Bronzer? Yes, Yes I Can

May 21st, 2013 by Karen 20 Comments

Here I’m wearing MAC Refined Golden Bronzing Powder just below my cheekbones…

Like Tabs the Cat, star of screen, stage and glossy magazines, MAC’s $25 Refined Golden Bronzing Powder does it all, deepening tans, thereby allowing me to live out my bronzed beach surfer babe dreams (irrespective of the fact that I spend most of my time with my butt in front of a computer), and sculpting cheekbones like Michelangelo sculpted marble and clay. We’re talkin’ real-deal contouring here.

To my eye, it’s the darkest and most intense of the Temperature Rising collection’s four powder bronzers, making it ideal for skin tones NC42-ish and darker.

Flecks of golden glitter spice up this pan of deep golden tan, which I probably would have liked even without the glitter for the color itself, which never looks muddy, ruddy or dirty on my skin, perhaps due to the golden undertones.

Did you say, “hrmpf!” when I said, “glitter?” Not to worry. MAC didn’t go overboard with this glitter (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with going overboard on glitter). This isn’t Bollywood-caliber shimmer, which I also like.

MAC Refined Golden Swatch — MAC Refined Golden on NC42 Skin

[Continue reading…]

Unsung Makeup Heroes: Bobbi Brown Peach Corrector

May 20th, 2013 by Karen 25 Comments

I’ve been having one of those Mondays where everything’s been going…great!

Don’t you just love those?

They’re few and far between, let me tell ya, but I’ll take it. Some Mondays I don’t feel ready for the weekend to end or for the workweek to start, but I’ve been in in a pretty good groove so far today.

I don’t know, maybe it’s the heat… It’s almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Novato right now!

Seriously, I think it’s making me loopy because I’m smiling from ear to ear… 🙂

I was watching a mama bird feed one of her little ones in the oak tree by my window this morning as I applied under-eye concealer and randomly started singing, “The hills are aliiiiive, with the sound of musiiiiiic!”

The concealer was Bobbi Brown’s bad@ss Peach Corrector. My dark under-eye situation has been triple-rainbow intense lately. I’m officially in my (gulp) late thirties now, and the purplish, bluish dark circles under my eyes have become something of a mainstay of my looks, haha.

Shoot, last night I even got 10 hours of sleep — 10 GLORIOUS HOURS! — and I still woke up with dark circles.

Thank goodness for Bobbi’s $23 miracle working Peach Corrector…

A creamy, opaque color-correcting concealer designed to be layered beneath your go-to under-eye concealer, it’s great if you get those real deal, Uncle Fester-caliber dark circles like moi. I use Peach, one of 16 shades in the line.

SHAZAM! It’s like waving a magic wand over my face. When I add it to my mix, I think I definitely look refreshed and considerably less tired, and that whole under-eye sitch looks brighter.

Most of the time I just wear it on its own with powder dusted on top (versus underneath another concealer), and it neutralizes the purple action. Heck, when I use it I think I even look a little younger (says the girl turning 38 in a few weeks, le sigh!).

[Continue reading…]

MAC Sun Dipped Bronzer Bakes Warm Tones Into Skin Like 20 Minutes on Waikiki Beach

May 17th, 2013 by Karen 8 Comments

Sure, I’ll take a dip! A MAC Sun Dipped Pro Longwear Bronzer ($30, from the new Temperature Rising collection).

The following is an excerpt from an actual email conversion between blogger and makeup/cat enthusiast Karen and her longtime friend and surf buddy Cindy that took place on the morning of Friday, May 17, 2013.

Immediately following this exchange, Karen swept MAC’s new Sun Dipped Pro Longwear Bronzer on her face…

KAREN: When was the last time we went surfing together?
CINDY: I don’t know. Hawaii in 2006?
KAREN: That can’t be right.
CINDY: Yeah, I think so. It was right before your wedding.
KAREN: Seriously? Why are we so lame? We have to fix that.
CINDY: You could always go with me to Ocean Beach. 🙂

[NOTE: Ocean Beach is cold. It runs along the Great Highway on the west/Pacific side of San Francisco, and it’s so cold that just thinking about it is making my fingers and toes numb.]

KAREN: That’s not happening unless we’re being chased by zombies and the only way we can escape is by surfboard.

You know that moment when the water drips down the back of your wetsuit? Yeah, I hate that.

Okay, now I’m freezing cold. BRB! Need to put on some bronzer.

These are days of my life…

Don’t you feel warmer after putting on bronzer? Or is that just me…?

A light dusting of MAC’s new $33 Sun Dipped won’t turn Ocean Beach into Waikiki, but I think it does make me look tanned and toasty and gives me a sunnier outlook, too.

It can’t only be the power of suggestion, either. Sun Dipped has a sunny secret weapon: red tones!

Of the four powder bronzers in the MAC Temperature Rising collection, it’s by far the reddest one, and the one that most naturally simulates 30 minutes of fun in the sun.

MAC Sun Dipped Bronzer swatch — A swatch on my NC 42 skin

[Continue reading…]

Stick Blushes With a Dewy Twist: The Tom Ford Illuminating Cheek Colors in Blush Guilt and Bronzed Amber

May 17th, 2013 by Karen 12 Comments

Oh, hai! It’s Tom Ford Beauty Illuminating Cheek Color in Bronzed Amber. I’m wearing it here on my cheeks atop MAC Face & Body Foundation.

I like makeup.

This probably comes as no surprise if you’ve been here before…but I’m particularly fond of blushes and highlighters that come in stick form.

Especially ones that leave my face looking all sweet and angelic, like I should be floating high above the earth on a bed of billowy clouds, sunlight dappling my skin, while a heavenly chorus sings, “Ahhhhhh!” The more people wondering if I had wings tucked beneath my blazer, the better. 🙂

Tom Ford’s two new summer 2013 Illuminating Cheek Colors ($58 each, OMG!) are the latest examples of this particular makeup weakness/obsession of mine.

Dewy, is that you?

Pinky peach Blush Guilt and Bronzed Amber represent TF’s take on cream stick blushes with an interesting twist. They give a sheer, glistening, almost wet look to cheeks.

Tom Ford Beauty Illuminating Cheek Color Bronzed Amber — Bronzed Amber

It’s as if the team in charge of the finish part of this equation went on a week-long spa trip to Canyon Ranch and never quite recovered, because when I wear either of these colors, I feel like I look like I haven’t got a care in the world…like my only concerns are whether I should have a hibiscus or a peppermint tea between my facial and my 120-minute shiatsu massage.

Seriously, my cheeks just glow. 🙂

The texture’s the balm!

Tom Ford Beauty Illuminating Cheek Color Swatches — Blush Guilt on the left and Bronzed Amber on the right

[Continue reading…]

Tom Ford Beauty’s Fire Lust Skin Illuminator: Candle Power or Five-Alarm Blaze?

May 10th, 2013 by Karen 15 Comments

Is Tom Ford Beauty’s $65 Skin Illuminator in Fire Lust more like a candle or a five-alarm blaze?

Hmm…

Well, let’s just say that it’s a little like trimming your bangs…if trimming bangs had anything at all to do with liquid face illuminators. 🙂

Put another way, it’s a subtle effect that won’t hit someone over the head, but if you point it out to ’em, they’ll probably say something like, “Oh, yeah… I can see it now. Kinda.”

Tom Ford Fire Lust Swatch — Unblended on the left and blended on the right

[Continue reading…]

Supersized, Hold the Orange: Bobbi Brown’s Nude Beach Face & Body Bronzing Duo Is a Big Pan of Tan

May 7th, 2013 by Karen 28 Comments

Surf’s up, brah! Channeling an endless summer with the new Bobbi Brown Nude Beach Face & Body Bronzing Duo, $42

Bobbi Brown’s Nude Beach Face & Body Bronzing Duo ($42), a new super-sized bronzing powder duo, does NOT mess around.

I’m pretty tan to begin with, courtesy of the Pacific Islander gene pool, but when I wear this bronzer — daaaayum! — I look hella bronzed, brah, like “Hook me up with the kama’aina discount because I’m local!” 🙂

It’s gotta be the lack of orange undertones…

Nude Beach just doesn’t have ’em. There’s a reddish, pinkish brown with a matte finish on one side and a brick reddish-like brown with a subtle sheen on the other. Both colors contain a lot of red and could pass for a natural tan. With these, whether worn separately or together, you’ll look like you’ve been surfing every day for six months!

For a faux endless summer tan that lasts all day long, on the parts of my face where the sun naturally falls — my forehead, around the edges of my face, across the tops of my cheekbones — I lightly dust a 50/50 blend of Nude Beach’s two bronzers using Sonia Kashuk’s Brush Couture Powder Brush (a great drugstore dupe for Bobbi’s $50 Bronzing Brush).

[Continue reading…]

Super Charged Pigments and a Naughty, Frosty Finish Set MAC’s Hot Nights Powder Blush Ablaze

May 3rd, 2013 by Karen 16 Comments

The new MAC Hot Nights Blush from the Temperature Rising summer collection, $23

MAC Hot Nights Powder Blush is for those times when you want your cheeks to look like they’re “glistening” (let’s not call it sweating; it’s not nearly as cute), like after some hot hubba-hubba action or a seriously vigorous elliptical session at the gym.

Got time? I hope so, because I wouldn’t even bother with this berry pink unless I had a few extra minutes for blending. That’s how pigmented it is. But I think it’s worth every second, especially if the theme of your evening is, “huntress on the prowl…”

Where Ripe For Love, the other blush from the Temperature Rising collection, can pull off naughty or nice, Hot Nights can’t.

Because it’s straight up naughty (which is nice). 🙂

MAC Hot Nights Blush swatch — Howdy, pigment!

[Continue reading…]

15 People or Things You’ll Resemble When You Wear MAC Strobe Liquid Lotion in Golden Elixir

May 3rd, 2013 by Karen 51 Comments

Here I’m wearing the new MAC Strobe Liquid Lotion Golden Elixir ($31) from the limited edition MAC Temperature Rising summer collection

When you wear MAC’s Strobe Liquid Lotion in Golden Elixir ($31) you’ll look radiant and golden like…

A Grecian goddess soaking up the last rays on a summer day
J. Lo after running a 5K in Christian Louboutin pumps and a gold lame catsuit
A sequined Oscar gown on the Best Dressed list
A Beyonce-themed Christmas tree
Jeremy Renner’s glistening arms after saving a family of stray kittens from drowning
A mega millions lottery winner the moment right after she tells her bosses to suck it and walks out of the room in a dramatic exit
An extra in a Britney video circa the golden years, aka BF (Before Federline)
A proud kitty stage mom who just found out her baby cat won the award for best actor in a gravy commercial and is dabbing tears from her eyes with a lace hanky
A reflection in a mirror after easily slipping into those goal-weight skinny jeans that you’ve been holding onto for months
A room full of Skarsgards
A room filled with 1000 birthday cakes, each cake miraculously calorie-free (so you can eat as much as you want!) and topped with 1000 candles
MC Hammer after he tried on his first pair of gold Hammer pants
Someone who just discovered Nutella
A girl on vacation laying on a beach towel in Kauai reading The Great Gatsby
A lightning bolt tattoo streaking across Channing Tatum’s tanned stomach

Babe, you know I love me some MAC Strobe Cream, so I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life for Golden Elixir. It’s a lightweight, golden liquid highlighting lotion that you can wear on bare skin and/or layered underneath or on top of makeup (foundation, blush, face powder, bronzer), and it’s bomb for getting that dewy, golden Cat on a Hot Tin Roof type of glow without looking too metallic.
[Continue reading…]