The Too Faced Sugar Pop palette is a relatively new purchase for me. I couldn’t refuse the discount that the recent Sephora VIB sale offered so in to my cart this went. A Challenge Week for this palette will be up tomorrow!
Enjoy the swatches!
As beauty bloggers, we take a lot of pictures of ourselves. Way too many really. Hell, we probably average around a hundred shots a day between our makeup, our products, our face, our eyes. Every now and again you end up with a shot that you feel is just YOU. The lighting is right, your makeup is right, and you looked at the camera in *just* the right way. This is *that* shot for me.
And it was all done for a guest post over on Vancouver Eyeshadow Addict! Come check out what I used to get the look above. 🙂
Loads of Makeup Geek (no surprise there), MAC and some Colour Pop thrown into the mix this week!
My absolute favourite YouTuber – Sharon Farrell – does some ridiculously stunning makeup tutorials. She often has neutral makeup, but she knows how to bust out a bright look too. I fell in love with her Desert Sunrise tutorial when she posted it in January, but never got around to trying it out. I finally did, and I loved the results!
Eyes
I tightlined my inner lash lines with Urban Decay‘s Black Velvet liner and used the same product to line my upper lash line. I applied Make Up For Ever Smoky Stretch mascara to my lashes and then added in some individual Ardell lashes.
Rest of the Face
I pulled out this “traditional” look because I was headed to my cousin’s baby shower and wanted to wear something flattering (the eyeshadows) while still wearing a really bold colour on the lips.
Eyes
I created the wing with Catrice‘s Dating Joe Black liner and applied Make Up For EverSmoky Stretch mascara to my lashes. I then added in some Bombshell lashes by House of Lashes (my first time wearing House of Lashes… and holy crap I’m in love!).
Rest of the Face
A quick re-post for posterity… I did this pastel rainbow look for Workaday Ramblings for April’s guest post.
Eyes
I used MAC‘s Blacktrack fluidline to create the wing and then tightlined my upper waterline with Urban Decay‘s Black Velvet liner. I coated my lashes with Make Up For Ever‘s Smoky Stretch mascara.
Rest of the Face
Jill of Beauty Vixen was headed off to Mexico, so I helped her out with this look that was inspired by the flag of Mexico.
Eyes
I created the wing with MAC‘s Blacktrack fluidline and then tightlined my upper and lower lash lines with Urban Decay‘s Black Velvet liner. On my lower lash line I applied MAC‘sStrike While Haute eyeshadow and blended it out the edges with Makeup Geek‘s Creme Brule. On my lashes is Make Up For Ever‘s Smoky Stretch mascara.
Rest of the Face
Stop the presses! I have been after a neon red eyeshadow for a very long time. A lot of shadows have come close, but have never really quite hit the mark. Then came alongColour Pop‘s Erotic, and suddenly my search is over! Technically it’s a pressed pigment, but that’s never scared me away from using a product on my eyes. Erotic is incredible – it’s a neon red that has tiny specs of orange and pink glitter.
Eyes
So the eye look is easy on this one – the only shadow I’m wearing is Colour Pop‘s Erotic! I then created the wing with Kat Von D‘s Tattoo Liner in Trooper and lined my inner rim withUrban Decay‘s Black Velvet liner. On my lashes is Make Up For Ever‘s Smoky Stretch.
Rest of the Face
Oh boy. Okay so… I don’t contour my face. I never have, simply because I’ve seen a lot of bad contours in my day and I *don’t* want to be the woman on the street with terrible unblended streaks on her face. So when I was sent the Real Techniques Sculpting Brush to try out, needless to say… I was slightly intimidated.
HOWEVER! I spend sooo many hours of my day watching makeup video after makeup video on YouTube that I feel like I’m armed with enough information to give this contouring business a try.
Where do we start? Well, a brush is as good as any. The relatively newly released Sculpting Brush from Real Techniques has the basic shape to get you off on the right foot.
It’s a fat, dense brush, but it’s pinched neatly so it can get into the crevices of your cheekbones. It’s not so stiff that it’ll give you grief while blending, but it’s not so floppy that you can’t get any definition. In my eyes, this makes this brush perfect for newbies like myself.
Essentially, the idea behind contouring is to make your face look more gaunt. It helps to slim out our features, pop out our cheekbones and recede anything that we don’t want to draw attention to on our faces. The best way to do this is to use products (powders, creams, etc.) that have a natural grey-cast to them. Ideally, you should be contouring with a product that is darker than your own skin; one that can cause the effect of a natural shadow. Shadows aren’t orange or brown in colour, nor do they sparkle, which is why bronzers are not recommended for contouring. That’s not to say they can’t be used, but orange and glitter definitely don’t scream “shadow”, do they?
So here’s what I did: I took Makeup Geek‘s Barcelona Beach eyeshadow on my Real Techniques Sculpting Brush and drew a line along the areas I wanted to recede. This included my jaw line, the hollow (not that I have much of one) UNDER my cheekbone and, because I forgot what I was doing, the sides of my forehead (an area I normally bronze. Oops!).
Using the lines as a guide, I then blended upwards and downwards to soften the streak I had created. This is highly necessary, otherwise you end up looking like a badly done up drag queen.
And here’s how it came out. Seeing myself with contouring for the first time is very weird. My first reaction is that I feel like I overdid it, or that it wasn’t blended in enough. As I look at the pictures more over time, I get used to looking at my face like that and it seems less stark than I had originally thought it was.
On a side-by-side comparison, I can see how much it chiseled out my jaw bone and created a definite recession underneath my cheekbone. I’m not a huge fan of the forehead business, but I can live with it. Amazingly, I don’t think it makes me look dirty either, which is something I half expected to see.
I don’t see myself contouring my face on a regular basis as I just don’t feel it’s a step that I need (or want to do!) on a daily basis. I can see how much of an impact it can make though! I’m really happy that the Real Techniques Sculpting Brush made this a relatively simple job to do. And I mean that, I don’t think contouring my face took more than 3-5 minutes, which is pretty good for a total rookie.
So how do you guys contour? Or do you not bother with it?
The Original Sleek palette. I can see why this company got off on such a good foot, and developed such an amazing reputation, if it all started out with this palette! As this was amongst the original palettes, none of the shades have names and I have the old waffle-cut version – I believe they now come pressed flat.
Take a look at the swatches, it’s really hard to not be impressed by them!
