benefit shadow blender

A Dashing Duo: Benefit They’re Real Shadow Blender in Bombshell Brown, and One of the Best Musical Duos of All Time

February 13th, 2017 by Karen 9 Comments

benefit bombshell brown — Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Bombshell Brown and They’re Real Double the Lip in Fuchsia Fever

All I have to say is this: golden brown deliciousness. Of the three new Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blenders I’ve tried so far, Bombshell Brown is my favorite.

I think the two shades in it have the loveliest finishes.

benefit bombshell brown fuchsia fever — Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Bombshell Brown and They’re Real Double the Lip in Fuchsia Fever

I am *so* particular about shimmers and shimmery products. I’ll admit it — sometimes I’m a frost hater, especially when the shine comes with gigantic grains of powder. But the two shadows in this duo are much more satiny than super shiny frost.

benefit bombshell brown eyes down — I’m also wearing Chanel Noir Petrol Stylo Yeux on my lash lines and Hourglass Radiant Bronze Light Bronzer and Radiant Magenta Blush on my cheeks

This duo really makes my eyes look bigger and sexier, and I’m a big fan. By the way, I keep trying to use the round sponge applicator it comes with, but it ends up a hot mess, so I just use regular eyeshadow brushes instead.

I dunno… Maybe I can re-purpose the sponge brush and use it like a mini beautyblender for the inner corners?

benefit bombshell brow closeup — Bombshell Brown has a light golden beige (I want a HUGE pan of this color. It’s perfection!) and a mid-toned golden brown, and both are totally my jam.

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A Dashing Duo: Benefit They’re Real Shadow Blender in Easy Smokin’, and the Awkward Double Date With the Vanilla Ice Mullet Brothers

February 7th, 2017 by Karen 20 Comments

benefit theyre real easy smokin — I’m wearing Benefit’s They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Easy Smokin’ ($24) and They’re Real Double the Lip in Criminally Coral ($20)

So, what do I know about double dates? Well, I know that they’re awkward…(but more on this in a sec), and I know that I thought about them a lot today because of the new $24 Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Easy Smokin’ (one of six new duos available now), which has — not one — but TWO eyeshadows geared to give you bigger, sexier eyes.

I feel like Easy Smokin’ is more elegant than Sexy Smokin’, the duo I wore yesterday. It has a warm, dark bronzed brown coupled with a light and warm shimmery peach, and the powders seem more finely milled. Thank goodness, too, because the shimmery light shade in Sexy Smokin’ was giving me a complex (frost is not kind to my fine lines).

By the way, when you mix the two shades in Easy Smokin’ together, it creates a beautiful bronzed peach, which is how I’m wearing it in these pics. I blended them together, and then I also lined my lash lines with warm bronze MAC Teddy liner (I bet MAC Costa Riche would totally work, too).

benefit theyre real easy smokin swatch — Swatches of Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Easy Smokin’ and They’re Real Double the Lip in Criminally Coral

This reminds me of the time my best friend Jen and I went on a double date together with these two boys who were brothers (we met them in marching band). Basically, it was not the most awesome time in the whole world.

I dated the older brother, who had a Vanilla Ice mullet, and Jen dated the younger one…who also had a Vanilla Ice mullet, and the four of us went to a community theater musical presentation of Camelot.

I can’t remember who’s idea it was… What I can remember is that it was four hours long, and I was starving! I can also remember that because it was a musical, we couldn’t really talk to each other, and I got very antsy about halfway through. I wondered why we didn’t just go to Great America or grab a pizza instead, because at least then we would have been able to talk, but I digress… (Plus, I wouldn’t have been starving to death for four hours!)

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A Dashing Duo: Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’, and the Unwritten Rule of Middle School Dancing (Circa 1989)

February 6th, 2017 by Karen 22 Comments

benefit theyre real sexy smokin — Wearing the new Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ ($24) on my eyes and They’re Real Double the Lip in Pink Thrills on my lips

Middle school dances were the worst. I don’t know why anybody thought they were fun.

Well…I know that there were some kids who probably had fun, like the kids in the popular clique who planned the dances. I bet they had a good time, but I never did. I always felt awkward sitting there in the bleachers, wringing my hands and tap-tap-tapping my lace-less Keds.

This was before it was OK to dance with a group of your girlfriends out on the dance floor, so you had to wait for someone to ask you, ugh! So painful. Nobody I ever actually wanted to dance with would ask me, which wasn’t a big surprise. I mean, I was beyond shy and awkward and nerdy.

I did get asked a couple times…which leads me to the unwritten rule of middle school dances (circa 1989), which is that two is the magic number.

I’m thinking about this because I’ve been all about “the twos” today. I’m rockin’ a new eyeshadow duo and a new lipstick duo from Benefit — They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ ($24) and They’re Real Double the Lip lipstick ($20). They’re part of Benefit’s new spring collection (available now at Benefit stores and counters), which is all about duos.

With the eight neutral powder eyeshadow duos and the eight lipsticks, and they’re basically um… the whole deal is they make your eyes and lips look bigger, instantly.

The shadows have a funky round sponge applicator, which you swipe across the pan (the pan has the two shadows stacked on top of each other horizontally). You swipe the funky sponge across the pan, and then across your eye, with the darker shade closest to your lash line.

The idea is to make your eyes look bigger, brighter and schmexier with just one swipe.

And you do something similar with the lipsticks. They have a teardrop-shaped bullet, with a slighter darker color at the tip, so that when you swipe the tube across your lips, the darker edge makes the lighter part in the center pop.

So your lips look bigger. ?

benefit theyre real duo shadow blender — The eight new They’re Real Duo Shadow Blenders ($24 each)

I plan to do a full review of the whole collection soon, but today was all about Sexy Smokin’. It’s a dark, satiny, cool-toned brownish taupe, and a shiny, silvery taupe shimmer.

I’m all about the darker taupe, and when I wore it with my NARS primer last Saturday, it stayed put all day long.

So, back to the unwritten magical rule of twos… It was one of those things that nobody ever told my me or my friends. Ever.

You know how there were things that your friends never told you, and you had to figure out on your own? Well, one of them was that back in the late ’80s at middle school dances, you couldn’t just move your arms and feet to the beat however it moved you. There were, like, actual dance moves that the kids in my school did, like the snake, the running man, the kid ‘n’ play and the robocop #datingmyselfsohardrightnow. And the unwritten rule was that when you were dancing with somebody, you couldn’t just do one of these dances… You had to do two of them. Two dances.

benefit theyre real sexy smokin pink thrills — Swatches of Benefit They’re Real Duo Shadow Blender in Sexy Smokin’ and They’re Real Double the Lip in Pink Thrills

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