Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

MAC Flamingo Park Collection | Overview, Swatches

January 21st, 2016 by Karen 28 Comments

There should be a video right up here in this post, but if it isn’t appearing for any reason, you can click here to watch it on YouTube.

GIRL, you know how I feel about flamingos! Those beautiful pink and coral feathers…that graceful neck…those long legs…that stylin’ beak! They’re my second favorite animal behind teh kittehs, and if there were such thing as a “Crazy Flamingo Lady,” I’d qualify, no doubt.

I’m happy to report that said beautiful bird is front and center in the new spring MAC Flamingo Park collection.

Behold…

mac flamingo park powder blushes — MAC Flamingo Park Powder Blushes

mac lifes a picnic blush — MAC Flamingo Park Powder Blush in Life’s a Picnic

mac pink swoon blush — MAC Flamingo Park Powder Blush in Pink Swoon

mac lets be friends blush — MAC Flamingo Park Powder Blush in Let’s Be Friends

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Neutrals or Brights? (Assuming That You Have To Pick One or the Other)

January 20th, 2016 by Karen 42 Comments

Quick! Just go with your gut… Don’t overthink it, because, ya know, with hard-hitting makeup questions like this one (totally kidding), your first reaction is usually the truest, best one.

Anyway, SURPRISE! — I’m gonna have to go with neutrals, only partly because I’ve been wearing them so much lately, but that’s just a phase. I do also wear brights, just not as often lately.

I have to be in the mood and the right mindset for brights, but I do like a jolt of bright color, especially when it’s set against neutrals, like a bright teal liner or a hot pink lip in combo with beiges and browns elsewhere.

What about you? Neutrals or brights? (Assuming that you have to pick one or the other.)

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. OK, WOW! Your applications for the MBB Maternity Leave/Blog Internship? There have been more than 100 applicants so far (!!!). Friday (Jan. 22nd) is the last day for submissions, and then I’ll start going over all of them closely with Tabs, which will probably take me about a week.

I’m doing this whole thing because I’ll need your help during my first few months with Baby Girl, but I’m also committed to helping you, however I can, in your blogging/vlogging endeavors, whether that means helping you come up with topics for your blog, photography tips, how to come up with post titles, discussing secret (not that they’re secrets) blogging tips, helping you maximize your blogging income, answering technical questions for you, or just being a second opinion — someone off of which to bounce ideas.

My time will be limited early on, but we’ll make it work, if you’re interested, and I hope you are. I’m sorry if you’ve asked me a question by email regarding your application and I haven’t replied, but I’ll try to soon. If for any reason there’s been a problem with your resume/application packet, like an attachment not getting through my email, don’t worry. We’ll work it out.

MAC Unsung Heroes: Satin Taupe Eye Shadow

January 19th, 2016 by Karen 21 Comments

What’s an unsung makeup hero? For me, it’s an oftentimes underrated makeup morsel, a permanent collection product that scoots under the radar screen of many makeup lovers but regularly rocks my world. The long-running Unsung Heroes series features some of my favorites.

I swear, you just can’t go wrong with the classics. I wore MAC Satin Taupe Eye Shadow the other day for the first time in months. It’s a shimmery grayish purple in the MAC permanent line, and it’s been around since the days of the dinosaurs!

OK, not that long, but it has been around a while. It was one of the very first MAC shadows I ever picked up, and, and it wowed me from the start…

It’s just so dang pretty!

I didn’t do anything fancy with it this week — just the same standard-issue Satin Taupe look I’ve been doing for, oh, the past zillion years.

I needed to put on some makeup to record a video, so I lined my eyes with black liner, then took that same liner and smudged it on my lids and lower lash lines. Then I buffed out the black liner with a MAC 217 before patting Satin Taupe directly on top and blending everything together. A quick sweep of cool matte brown MAC Omega in my crease, and that was it. All done.

Easy, elegant and damned fast — which led me to think, “Dude, Karen! Why do you make things more difficult than they need to be? You should be doing this all the time!”

It was one of those “Doh!” forehead-to-palm moments when I question my life choices, LOL!

Anyway, with Satin Taupe, we’re talking must-have (yes, it’s that serious). You’ve probably seen it around in limited edition palettes here and there… Here it is in a couple of recent ones (MAC Brooke Shields Gravitas and the MAC Nordstrom Naturals palettes), but you can also find it as a single in the permanent line.

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What’s Your Favorite Blush Formula and Why?

January 19th, 2016 by Karen 44 Comments

There’s a Saturn-sized world of blushes out there (says the girl with a messy drawer of pink blushes that needs to be organized), and a galactic gaggle of blush formulas — powder, cream, liquid, mousse and more — but do you find yourself gravitating toward one blush formula more than others?

I totally do. For me it’s mostly powder blushes, with the occasional excursion into the Land of Cream Blushes, and the main reasons are ease and convenience.

Powder blushes are just easier for me to apply than the others. I can swirl them on my cheeks, blend the edges and be done, and the same goes for creams — a pat here, a blend there, and voila! All done.

I also like how easy powders and creams are to layer with my other face products (especially compared to liquid blushes). For the most part, I don’t have to worry about powder and cream blushes breaking up my foundation or face powder, but that is NOT always the case with liquid and mousse blushes (at least not for me).

So, my blush-loving friend, what’s your favorite blush formula and why? It’s Tuesday; let’s tackle this very important question. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The Cargo Venice Enchantment Eye Shadow Palette: Venice, Here I Come!

January 18th, 2016 by Karen 14 Comments

One of the good things about the post-holiday period: the sales! They’re a good reason to wait to make some purchases until after the holiday shopping madness mellows, because sometimes you can find things like holiday makeup palettes marked down.

Like this one from Cargo, the Venice Enchantment Palette. It was originally $34. It comes with 12 powder shadows, a black liner and a dual-ended brush.

The $34 wasn’t too bad to start with, but it’s marked down now to $27 on Cargo’s website.

Even better.

Cargo likes to take a travel angle with their whole philosophy on makeup, and it makes sense.

I mean…they’re called Cargo, after all. 🙂

This palette here was inspired by the rich, romantic opulence of Venice, and I WANT TO GO TO THERE.

The wines, brassy golds, olives and the burgundy shade go a step beyond the usual beiges and browns. They’re like “new neutrals,” and I can see myself wearing a lot of them, especially the olives and the burgundy, with the neutrals in my collection. I also like the amount of shimmer here. It’s juuust right for what I like to wear on my lids.

cargo venice eye shadow palette swatches — Swatches from the left in Canal, Magic, Carnival, Murano, Gondola and Mask

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Dew You Want Glowing Skin? If You Dew, Try New BECCA Aqua Luminous Perfecting Foundation

January 18th, 2016 by Karen 18 Comments

Do we like new BECCA Aqua Luminous Perfecting Foundation? Yes, yes we dew-y. Because — oh, my goodness! — the finish is so dewy and so glowing that I’m crediting it for almost singlehandedly lifting me out of my mid-winter funk and propelling me toward summer.

Aqua Luminous is the latest foundation in BECCA’s permanent line and, as you can probably tell from its name, it’s one of those thin, serum-like foundations with a watery consistency that have been muy popular at the moment.

Typical of foundations with this kind of formula, it comes in a glass bottle with a dropper, but BECCA tweaked that idea a little by giving this one a special cap. When you twist it, a button pops up in the middle, and pressing it dispenses the product from the dropper.

Ooh! Fancy!

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Makeup and Beauty Blog Monday Poll, Vol. 357

January 18th, 2016 by Karen 25 Comments

You might be wondering, “So what in tarnation is this Monday Poll thing anyway!?”

Well, it isn’t exactly a poll. It’s more of a constantly evolving (devolving?), somewhat random list of questions I’ve been putting out to readers every Monday morning for the past seven years. (It’s like a kickstart for your brain.) I’ve always enjoyed reading your answers in the comments, and I hope you enjoy reading mine.

Have you ever sent someone a lock of hair (or have you ever received one)?
No on both counts because, um…it seems kind of weird to me. Strangely enough, though, I’d be totally fine with Tabs sending me a lock of his fur through the mail, LOL!

Yeah, let’s just go ahead and file that under “Weird Things Crazy Cat Ladies Say.” 🙂

How old were you when you started using email?
Dude, I was in COLLEGE. Maybe a sophomore or a junior? And it had something to do with a statistics class I was taking…

Speaking of “the good old days,” sometimes I do miss the privacy and general simplicity of life before email and social media. There were fewer distractions everywhere, but I don’t miss other things about it, like having to deal with car trouble. That happened to me a few times pre-Internet and cellphone — cars stalling — and it always took, like, half the day (or sometimes ALL of your day) to deal with. Catching the bus or finding a ride, getting a tow, having to walk literally miles to the nearest pay phone. Now it only takes 15 minutes to get a tow truck and hail an Uber. Amazing!

It blows my mind that Baby Girl is gonna grow up not knowing what it was like to live without email or the Internet, or the feeling of constantly being connected to the entire world. It’s just weird to me…

Do you do vests?
Not since the ’90s! I remember having a cropped denim vest from The Gap, and I thought I was hot sh*t in it at the time, but now when I see old pics of myself wearing it? Hmm… I looked pretty silly. I don’t know what I was thinking!

How do you like your chocolate-chip cookies?
1) Soft and chewy with slightly crispy edges, or 2) thick and moist.

I don’t have time to mess with that thin, crunchy business, because they’re gone in like two bites. I like it when my cookies make me work a little…

Is your wallet neat or messy?
Surprisingly neat. I can tolerate a certain degree of messy chaos in some aspects of my life, but I just can’t do it with my wallet, and my biggest pet peeve is when there are eight million receipts up in there. So, I try to go through it every week and file away my receipts. Then I put the spare change in a basket in the living room that we call “The Genie Jar,” and re-stock my business cards.

Your turn. 🙂 Just copy and paste the following questions into a comment with your answers. I look forward to reading ’em!

1. Have you ever sent someone a lock of hair (or have you ever received one)?
2. How old were you when you started using email?
3. Do you do vests?
4. How do you like your chocolate-chip cookies?
5. Is your wallet neat or messy?

It’s a holiday here today, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and a lot of people have the day off from school and work. I have a few things I wanted to get to — chores and baby arrival prep-type things — but it should be a pretty lazy day.

I hope you’re having a good one. Talk to you soon. 🙂

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

Sundays With Tabs the Cat, Makeup and Beauty Blog Mascot, Vol. 381

January 17th, 2016 by Karen 11 Comments

Dear Diary,

Pack your swim trunks, rash guard and your puka shells because we’re heading to Hawaii! YES!!!

Sometimes I affectionately refer to Hawaii as “the motherland” because my male assistant is from there, and because I go there so much. I might as well be part Hawaiian!

This one is mostly a work trip — like, I have to check on several possible beach shoot venues for my upcoming kitty swimsuit calendar, and I also want to stop by and visit the kitty models that I manage on Kauai. They’re part of the Hawaii branch of my modeling agency, which I’m very proud of, and the team there has made some big strides over the past few years.

But I’ll also be going for play, so of course I have to meet up with some of my surf buddies, like Kelly Slater (not to drop names or anything) — you know, to do some surfing and hanging out, just enjoying the islands.
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