make up for ever

For Statement Lips That Last (and Last): The Make Up For Ever Aqua Rouge Liquid Lip Colors

August 20th, 2012 by Karen 51 Comments

make up for ever aqua rouge review

In a way, Make Up For Ever’s 12 new Aqua Rouge liquid lip colors are like Terminators.

Perhaps Kyle Reese said it best: “It [the lip colors] can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop…”

But unlike those metal monsters from the future, these $24 lip colors just want to hang out with you…for a really, really long time.

make up for ever aqua rouge product shot
From the left: #1 Nude Beige, #8 Red, #7 Pink Brown, #10 Raspberry and #15 Pink

make up for ever aqua rouge swatches
Swatches from the left: #1 Nude Beige, #15 Pink, #10 Raspberry, #8 Red, #7 Pink Brown and the clear gloss

They have a creamy liquid lip color with a doe-foot applicator on one end and a clear, non-sticky gloss with a brush on the other. Layered beneath the glosses, the lip colors, which pack full-tilt pigment, maximum opacity and a mirror-like shine, last on me from 4-6 hours, assuming I sip or nibble on something during that time, and a whopping 6-7 hours if I don’t.

make up for ever aqua rouge 8 red
#8 Red
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Not Even Michael Phelps Handles Water As Well As New Make Up For Ever Aqua Brow

August 14th, 2012 by Karen 34 Comments

make up for ever aqua brow

Where’s home base? For my eyebrows, most of the time it’s at the corner of MAC Concrete Eyeshadow and the 266 Small Angle Brush, but over the past couple of weeks, the new Make Up For Ever Aqua Brow ($20 and available in seven shades) and I have stamped some pretty impressive locations in our makeup passport, from a series of treadmill sessions in a sweltering room, to a blisteringly hot blacktop parking lot where a pack of food trucks roam, to a humid East Bay afternoon.

No matter how hot, sticky or overheated I got, Aqua Brow didn’t budge, even when I was bathed in sweat from head to toe after ~~daydreaming about Jeremy Renner~~ a rough 6-mile run.

make up for ever aqua brow product shot
From the left: #25 Ash, #35 Taupe and #40 Brown Black

Make Up For Ever made this brow-filling gel for makeup artists, but you and I can use it, too. 🙂 Designed to fill, define and intensify brows with a concentrated waterproof formula able withstand hot summer days and sudden thunderstorms, it comes in a tube and dries to a powder with a satiny finish.

A tip for the three dudes who read MBB (bless your hearts!), you can use Aqua Brow to fill in mustaches and sideburns, too.

MUFE claims the essential oils and carnauba wax (palm wax) they used render Aqua Brow virtually melt-proof.

All seven shades join MUFE’s permanent line next month, with #10 Light Blonde, #15 Blonde and #25 Ash heading to Sephora stores (but they’re available now online) and Make Up For Ever Boutiques; and #20 Light Brown, #30 Dark Brown, #35 Taupe and #40 Brown Black coming exclusively to Make Up For Ever Boutiques.

So far my brows and I have tried #25 Ash, #35 Taupe and #40 Brown Black. I think that Ash, while a tad lighter than my natural brow color, matches my dyed hair pretty well, and if you’re a brunette, it should work well for you, too.

make up for ever aqua brow swatches
From the left: #25 Ash, #35 Taupe and #40 Brown Black

make up for ever aqua brow before and after
Before (left) and after application of #25 Ash (right)
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The Make Up For Ever Black Tango Palette Will Let You Have This Dance, But Only If You Make It Quick

August 9th, 2012 by Karen 29 Comments

make up for ever black tango palette

Dear Roger Ebert,

First of all, can I just say — I love you, man! I’ve been reading your movie reviews FOR EVER, and all this time, after all these years, you still find new ways to get me excited about movies.

With your reviews, I never feel like I’m reading a boring laundry list or some critic’s attempt to dazzle me with their erudite vocabulary. You’re always passionate, honest and open-minded, which is amazing to me after the thousands of movies you’ve seen.

Mr. Ebert, you’re one of my writing heroes.

Sometimes, just for fun, I try to write my own movie reviews, and when I do they usually go a little something like this:

“Saw Fool’s Gold last night. Was surprised it wasn’t completely dumb.”

As you can see, I lack your way with words, I think because of how easily I get distracted…

OOH! — look at that shiny bauble! 🙂

I mean, I try to focus on the important things, like the dialogue, pacing and character development (and male shirtless-ness), but I usually end up pondering things like how the secret treasure in Fool’s Gold looked so much like the new Make Up For Ever Black Tango palette ($45).

make up for ever black tango fall 2012 open
Black Tango Palette

In the unlikely event that you find long-wearing waterproof cream eyeshadows as intriguing as I do, you might want to check out this particular fall palette, which includes four new limited-edition shades of Make Up For Ever’s popular Aqua Creams.

Along with three shimmery gem-like colors — an amethyst, emerald and a sapphire — that could have come from a Medieval queen’s jewel-encrusted scepter, the palette also features a shimmery ivory for highlighting, and each of the shadows comes in its own self-contained pot (don’t forget to close the lids tightly so they won’t dry out).

For some reason, these shadows set in a flash, quicker than the other Aqua Creams I’ve worn in the past — something I figured out while watching Fool’s Gold the other night.

make up for ever black tango palette visual

I wanted to recreate (or come close to) the killer purple smokey eye in the Black Tango promotional picture using just the colors in the palette, but for the life of me, I couldn’t do it. The shadows dried so unbelievably quickly that I couldn’t effectively blend the shades.

make up for ever black tango swatches
Swatches from the left: Black Tango Palette Aqua Creams in Purple, Green, Blue and Ivory; Aqua Rouge in #8 Red, #1 Nude Beige and clear gloss; Aqua Brow in #25 Ash unblended and blended

make up for ever black tango palette
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It Takes You to Tango With the Make Up For Ever Black Tango Palette for Fall 2012

August 7th, 2012 by Karen 22 Comments

make up for ever black tango

I tangoed this afternoon for the first time in 20 years, and my partner was Make Up For Ever.

No, not tango in the ballroom style (“slow, slow, quick-quick, slow!”), although that always looks like so much fun. This was more just me dancing away the late afternoon with some pieces from MUFE’s new fall 2012 collection.

make up for ever black tango fall 2012

Ironically…my metaphorical dancing today was much more fun than the first time I tried the real tango.

It was the spring of my senior year in high school… My friend Alex and I had taken a ballroom dance class together after seeing the movie Swing Kids (5-second synopsis: a group of teenagers in Nazi Germany band together to dance to forbidden swing music from the United States).

Yup, that’s young Christian Bale in the middle

We started out hell bent on getting good enough to do the cool aerial tricks, tosses and lifts, so every Thursday after dinner Alex would pick me up in his rickety Dodge Dart, and I’d spend the 10-minute drive to the dance studio joshing him and his ride (“Dude, if this thing breaks down, you’re gonna have to flash your hairy leg on the side of the road and pray someone pulls over to help us, ’cause there’s no way I’m pushing this boat in these heels!”).

Then we’d shuffle across the dance floor for 45 minutes, with both of us spending most of the time looking down at our feet, to learn the basics of ballroom dancing with some of Union City’s sassiest seniors.

I don’t know what we were thinking, to be honest, because we were really, really terrible. Like the worst couple in class. Alex was over six-feet tall, and I barely cleared 5 feet, even when I was stepping on his toes, LOL! Seriously, if the class had given an award for crashing into other couples and stepping on feet, that’s the only award we would have won.

As bad as we were, though, the tango was sort of our specialty, and I still remember sailing across the dance floor, repeating “slow, slow, quick-quick, slow” over and over to myself.

“Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow!” I tried to get Tabs to dance with me this afternoon, but he wasn’t in the mood… Thankfully, the new Aqua Rouge Lip Colors ($24 each), Aqua Brow ($20) and new Black Tango Palette ($45) were. 🙂

make up for ever black tango palette closed
Black Tango Palette

make up for ever black tango fall 2012 open
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Bright Time Is the Right Time With the New Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams in Acid Green, Yellow, Pastel Blue and Summer

June 20th, 2012 by Karen 33 Comments

make up for ever aqua cream 23
Wearing the new Make Up For Ever Aqua Cream in 23 Acid Green

I feel like in summer we should all get passes to go completely buck wild with our eye makeup, no matter what we’re doing or where we are.

I mean, we can do that now — wear whatever we want — but there are social mores, workplace policies and dress codes, and those are what the passes would cover. 🙂

Want/need to run to Trader Joe’s for an emergency box of Mango Bars, but you glance in the mirror and notice that oops! — you’re wearing bright yellow eyeshadow all over your lids? No problem, because you’ve got the pass.

When I started getting into eyeshadow in my 20s, I only wore two colors, brown or beige — unless I was feeling extra adventurous, in which case I’d spice things up with a soft seashell pink, haha.

Hello, change. My name is Karen.

The old 20-something me probably wouldn’t even recognize the 30-something me who groans like a brain-hungry zombie and makes grabby hands in the air when she sees bright products like the four new Make Up For Ever Aqua Creams in 23 Acid Green, 24 Yellow, 25 Pastel Blue and 26 Purple ($23 each).

“Brains! Brains! — No, I mean shimmer! SHIMMER!”

Please tell me you’ve experienced the nirvana that is the mighty Aqua Cream. If you have not, joy awaits.

These potted creams, which first appeared back in 2010, are some of my absolute favorite products in the Make Up For Ever line. They come in a ton of colors and finishes now, too — some for Eyes and Cheeks, others for Lips and Cheeks — and all of them have the same special ability.

Once you get them on your skin, they DO. NOT. MOVE.

Special evaporating oils help the pigments stick to skin, rendering them smudge-proof, waterproof and sob-proof.

make up for ever aqua creams 23 24 25 26
Clockwise from the yellow pot on the lower left: 23 Yellow, 23 Acid Green, 25 Pastel Blue and 26 Purple

Seriously, you could have a nervous breakdown at an ATM machine, not that I’d know anything about that (“Holy crap, did you just eat my card?! A Windows blue screen — are you kidding me? FREAKING MICROSOFT!”), and your shadow would still look as fresh as a daisy.

So yeah. Love these things. 🙂

These four new summer shades, all of them for eyes and cheeks, might look a little cray in their pots, but babe, the second I got that first batch of swatches on my arm, I wanted to smear them all over my body like a technicolor tart (I suppose this is how some folks feel at Burning Man after one too many special brownies in the body painting tent).

To be blunt, they’re beyond bright!

make up for ever aqua cream swatches
Swatches from the left: 23 Yellow, 23 Acid Green, 25 Pastel Blue and 26 Purple

make up for ever aqua cream 26
26 Purple
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It’s Prime Time for Bright Eyes With Make Up For Ever Eye Prime

June 19th, 2012 by Karen 28 Comments

make up for ever eye prime

I was lying awake in bed the other night, nestled like the insomnia meat in the middle of an epic El Hub/Tabs snoring sandwich, when I thought, “It’s bad enough that El Hub snores, but when did Tabs start?”

As I lay there, wide awake, I wondered a great many things…like are there Breathe Right strips for cats? And if there are, I bet they look pretty funny.

It occurred to me that maybe that’s what I could do when I grow up, be the inventor of Kitty Breathe Right Strips, because I still don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Purr right strips I started ticking off a list of things I know to be true. 1. Tabs loves gravy, 2. Nutella and asparagus taste terrible together, 3. the world really didn’t need a sequel to Honey…

I must have dozed off somewhere around 3-4 in the morning, only to wake up a few hours later, more than a little cranky and with zombie-fied eyes.

Some serious eye-brightening action was in order.

I grabbed my iPhone (“Siri, remind me to research cures for insomnia!”) and peered into my makeup bag…

That’s when I saw it — Make Up For Ever’s new nude brightening Eye Prime ($22), the brand’s very first eye primer.

A magical brew of waxes and fixing polymers that, according to MUFE, creates a smooth, long-lasting base upon which to apply other eye makeup products. The supposedly universally flattering nude shade (for every skin tone) is also supposed to brighten while amplifying eye makeup colors and reducing creasing, and it’s designed to work with everything, from powder eyeshadows, to cream eyeshadows, liners, and basically the whole gamut of eye makeup deliciousness.

Well, hello, bright eyes. 🙂

Turn around, bright eyes… Every now and then I fall apart! And I need you more tonight! And I need you more than evuh!

(Sorry. Spontaneous ’80s sing-a-long moment.)

make up for ever eye prime in hand