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Hey, surfer girl, hey.
Sure, have a seat next to me on the towel. You can put your board over there by the Surf Palette — yeah, that one with the linen packaging and the four glittery shadows, three shimmer shadows and beige matte shadow inside.
It’s cute, yeah? All of us in the group have one… You should totally get one, too!
Cat lady surfer says what meow?[/caption]
I’m about as rock ‘n’ roll as a porcelain cat figurine sitting on a lace doily, but I’m not gonna let that stop me from releasing my inner headbanger!
Rock, rock, rock, ROCK!
No, really. ’80s Billy Idol would totally hate me. He’d, like, sneer at me because I’d want to go home early because “I have to be in bed by 10.”
Actually 9:30. OK, 9.
But maybe he’d hate me less if I were wearing the new Too Faced Rock N Roll Palette ($36)…
One of three palettes in the Too Faced Smitten Kitten collection for fall 2014 (the others are Country and Cat Eyes), Rock N Roll has a couple things in common with its siblings. Like the others, it houses nine eyeshadows in three rows, with each of the rows corresponding to a different makeup look — day, classic and fashion.
With a focus on jewel tones, Rock N Roll’s shadows are richer and more intense than the others, so if you like the way you look in jewels, and particularly if you have a medium or darker skin tone and don’t want to spend eternity packing on shadows to get them to show up on you, this one is definitely swatch worthy.
I’m thinking it. You’re thinking it. We’re all thinking it. So let’s just come out and say it. 🙂
These are some very UD-like colors — a deep green, a dark blue, an intense purple, and glitter for days.
That said, there are far worse things in life than channeling Urban Decay.
Rock N Roll’s colors have a harder edge to ’em, but at the same time, I think they’re still very girly. It’s glam meets pretty — something I think Too Faced does exceptionally well. Perfect for a Too Faced Cosmetics girl going to a Metallica concert with her metalhead boyfriend, ya feel me?
[INSERT SIGN OF THE BEAST HERE, AND TRY NOT TO CONFUSE IT WITH “I LOVE YOU” WHEN YOU’RE IN HEAD-BANGING MODE.]
Think tough with a little tenderness to it. Even with the more intense shades, the darkest you get is navy blue Heavy Metal, deep green Punk and dark brown Ska, which, by the way, is like a shimmery version of MAC Brun (LOVE!). I’m wearing it in the crease in these pics.
Even then, the colors aren’t too harsh or dark.
Let me put it this way: these shadows easily last through the encore. Same goes for the other fall palettes. With Rock N Roll, I get 8-10 hours with just a bit of fading starting around hour 8.
Giddyup, girl! Let’s get a move on! Go grab your cutest dress, and I’ll get your boots, because we’re double-dating in Music City tonight!
Well, I mean, figuratively… Not in the literal sense, although I wish, right?! I’m referring to the new Country Nashville Nudes Eye Shadow Collection ($36) of nine powder shadows by Too Faced Cosmetics, the brand’s latest palette for fall.
This one’s all about country charm and the glamour of Nashville.
It’s a versatile mix of beige, gold and pinky nudes peppered with deeper blues, purples, brown and gray — mostly in neutral and cooler color temps — but not so cool that warmer-toned vixens won’t also be able to wear it.
Eight of the nine shadows contain varying levels of shimmer and glitter, while the other shade, a sheer, cool-toned peachy matte, adds a touch of contrast.
Compared to Rock ‘n’ Roll, its counterpart palette also released this fall, Country seems sweeter and more delicate to me — perfect for everyday glam (see: wearing wedding makeup on a random Wednesday).
The nude shades here have a subtlety about them, and even with the darker blues, purples and brown, there’s nothing too hard-edged about this palette. The colors shouldn’t appear overly harsh, not even on the lightest lasses. That said, I think Country will rock hard on cooler toned cowgirls with light and medium skin tones.
Ragdoll, Siamese, American shorthair, tortie — whether you’re a sassy alley cat or a purebred princess, there’s something in Too Faced’s new Cat Eyes Palette for you.
Upon this new fall palette, Too Faced bestowed nine new shades, each with a kitty-themed name (aww!). Inside the leopard-print packaging hide six powder eyeshadows and three powder eyeliners, which you can use wet or dry (you can also use the eyeliners as eyeshadows), to create a variety of cat eye looks.
There’s more than enough here to take you from pampered house kitty to prowling jungle cat — phht! phht! — in a few swipes of your paw.
The palette contains some warm and cool shades, with a mix of neutrals (beige, bronze, brown and black), and a catnip sprinkling of purple, pink and metallic blue gray.
Your cat nephew Tabs, also known as my boss, insisted that I wear the palette for a couple days before divulging my thoughts. I asked him this morning what he thought of the wearable daytime cat eye I did with the brown, bronze and black shades (Leopard, Tiger’s Eye and Panther), and he replied, “Mrrow. Meeee-ooow!”
Sadly, I am not fluent in cat, but I ran the phrase through Google Translate and got: “You look less to’-up than usual. I approve.” 🙂
I like the variety colors in this palette, and in my eyeshadow experiments with it I’ve found that it really lights up my lids. Most of the shades have a metallic, frost or glitter finish, which makes for beautifully glowing eyes.
I know what you’re probably thinking… Cats are the most incredible animals to have ever walked the earth.
Wait — that’s not what you were thinking? Oops! Sorry, my bad. 🙂
After seeing my eye look in the top pic, you might be thinking, “Good grief! Another neutral eye palette, Karen?”
OK, fair enough, but before you leave to pet your cat, who for unknown reasons decided to grace you with his presence today (SHOCKER), hold on a sec.
This new Smashbox Full Exposure palette is like the mullet of neutral eyeshadow palettes! — and I mean that in the best possible way — except that instead of being all party in the front and business in the back, it’s party on the top and business on the bottom. Equal parts play and work.
We’re talking major possibilities.
Full Exposure and I spent last weekend together. Just the two of us (and El Hub). On Friday night, we did a cool-toned smokey eye (like what I’m wearing in these pics) and went out to dinner. Then on Saturday we did a nude shimmery lid with a little liner, stayed home, did laundry and watched Game of Thrones (the palette is not a fan of House Lannister). I whipped up this warm brown cat eye while unsuccessfully trying to stop Tabs from jumping into a pile of clean shirts and jeans that needed to be folded…
On Sunday I just kept things simple with a nude matte lid and a smidgen of brown liner along my upper and lower lash lines.
So many possibilities!
And with all of the looks I tried, I still always felt like me, and not like “me with a sh*t-ton of eye makeup on,” if that makes any sense.
Full Exposure is one of those palettes that packs just enough pigment to define and call attention to my lids, but not so much that I feel like a rodeo clown…
Hahaha! I just totally made myself laugh. 🙂
Dust off that stick of MAC Costa Riche liner (or any of the warm reddish brown eyeliners or eyeshadows in yo’ collection, for that matter), because the new NYX Suede Palette ($15) wants to make magic with it.
This new palette of shimmery, pearlescent jewel-toned eyeshadows is like the partridge to a warm reddish brown’s pear tree. I’m thinking a warm reddish brown with a matte finish…a la MAC Costa Riche, Swiss Chocolate or Embark.
Because all eight shadows in the palette have a shiny finish that borders on metallic, incorporating a matte to contrast with the shimmer should balance with the shadows quite nicely. For these pics here, I used good ol’ MAC Costa Riche on my water and lower lash lines, but I think I’ll sweep a matte brown in the crease as well next time I try this.
These shadows sure are easy to work with. Hardly any fallout at all, lots of pigment, AND they’re easy to blend. The only issue I’ve really had with any of them at all is with my eyes watering — not a lot. Just a tad. My eyes must be super sensitive today because my left eye got a little teary after I smudged the dark blue teal along my lower lash line.
Technically, Mercury doesn’t enter retrograde until June 7 (I know this because I’m all over Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone like sweat on Daryl Dixon’s biceps), but man, oh man! — it feels like Mercury is already retrograding all over mah face!
I don’t know why, but for the past couple days, Murphy’s Law has ruled my makeup life with an iron fist. Anything that can go wrong with my eye makeup has gone wrong with my eye makeup. Uneven liner, botched blending, cray-cray clumpy lashes — you name it. It’s been a hot mess, so I’ve decided to stick to nudes and neutrals until whatever this is passes.
Until then, I’ll just chill with neutral palettes like the NYX Dream Catcher Palette in Golden Horizons.
This $15 cutie is one of three limited edition NYX Dream Catcher palettes released earlier this year. Each one comes with 10 baked eyeshadows and its own personal outlook on neutrals.
Compared to Dusk Til Dawn, the other Dream Catcher palette in my collection, Golden Horizons is heavier in the matte and satin departments, as opposed to shimmer.
I think it’s a little tamer because its shadows aren’t as pigmented as the ones in Dusk Til Dawn, but that could be a good thing if you don’t want to deal with blending drama, and/or have a legitimate fear of your lids looking like an unfinished painting from Picasso’s Cubism period (#thestruggleisreal).
El Hub asked me if I wanted to go get a slice of pizza with him for lunch today, and I said…
LOL! Sometimes you just really need a slice of pizza.
On the way to the pizza joint he noticed some glitter on my cheeks.
“It’s like Miley Cyrus,” I said, referring to the glitter. “Can’t stop, won’t stop.” 🙂
Between the MAC 3D Glitters I was wearing earlier and the Lancome eyeshadow I’m wearing now, the theme for today is definitely looking like glitter.
Which is all up in the mix, by the way, in Lancome’s new $51 six-pan Azur Chic Color Design eyeshadow palette.
But it’s cool. As long as I don’t forget to tap my brush to unload some of it before applying, very little of it ends up on my cheeks.
A few flecks do make their way down there, though, especially with one or two of the shades, particularly the deep bronze I’m wearing here on my lash lines and in the crease.
Its teensy, tiny flecks of gold glitter don’t really show up in swatches, but they do show up on my lids when I buff things out.
And, uh, because of the amount of sparkle we’re talking about here, you might want to throw one of the matte shades from your collection into the mix for contrast. For the bronzy gold look I’m wearing here, I used warm reddish brown MAC Texture in the crease to balance out the shimmer.
