So this is me right now. The fucking idiots over at Host Rocket suffered a “catastrophic hardware failure” this morning resulting in “complete data loss”.

AKA my web site is gone.

Totally gone.

SO THAT’S FUCKING AMAZING.

However, thankfully Google Cache is a thing (as my husband has blissfully discovered), and I’m going to start rebuilding all the posts I had on here. This will take a long, painful amount of time but I am totally determined to get everything back up and running. I am totally heartbroken (although less so now that I know my posts are cached somewhere). 🙁

Shawna over at Spill The Beauty was asking me about how I press my pigments one day and I thought I’d just go ahead and dedicate a whole post to the process. If you’re like me, you find that pigments are a freaking disaster to deal with.  They’re unnecessarily messy – I often end up with more pigment on my furniture, than I do on my lids! To solve this problem, I press all of my pigments.

The key ingredients to pressing any pigment are plain old rubbing alcohol (I bought that enormous bottle for something like $3), an empty shadow pan (this is from an old MACeyeshadow I had finished), a couple of quarters, a few heavy books to press the actual shadow, and a clean dish towel. And of course, whatever pigment you’d like to press! In general, I find that shimmers are the easiest pigments to press. Mattes can go a bit dusty (although it’s still feasible) and glitters are a total no no.

Alright, let’s get to it! Take your empty shadow pan and clean of any remaining dusty shadow particles.

Pile your pigment high into the pan. The more you can get in there, the better. We’ll be adding alcohol to this and it’ll soak down the pigment. The shot above shows you how much I put in initially, but that’s barely enough for half the pan. You need far more pigment than you think you do to press one into such a tiny pan.

I then add rubbing alcohol via a dropper directly to the pigment in the pan. There’s no rhyme or reason to this and unfortunately I don’t have an exact measurement. I will say that you want your pigment to end up slightly chunky. In the shot on the right, you can see the texture is quite thick and the powder has dropped down in size. At this point I’ll start adding more pigment or more alcohol to get the right consistency. Do not let your pigment get “thin” or super runny – it means you’ve got way too much alcohol in it. If that happens, add more pigment until it gets thick again.

I typically take a cotton bud, snap off the end, and use that to mix up the pigment with the alcohol. Since the alcohol is the binding agent, you want to make sure the entire pigment is thoroughly mixed with the alcohol. The shot on the right (above) shows the best consistency: It’s a bit thick, can hold some form, but is still somewhat liquid.

From there, I pick up the pigment pan and drop it lightly a few times. This levels off the pigment so that you get a flat surface.

Tada! A level surface! At this point, your pigment is too wet to press, so you have to let some of the alcohol evaporate. I’ll generally leave it alone for an hour or so then come back to press it.

We’re almost there! Once your pigment is soft to the touch, but not sopping wet, take a tea towel, place it over pan, then slot in two quarters on top.

Add a heavy book or two on top of the quarters and let it dry completely overnight.

And there you have it, a freshly pressed pigment that won’t cause you so much grief! Keep in mind that whatever tea towel you use, that’s the imprint you’ll end up with on the pigment.

I hope this helped! Let me know if this works out for you. 🙂

Hi everyone, I’m MizzJ from JustJ.ca, a Vancouver based beauty and lifestyle blog! I’m really happy to guest post today for Chelle for this month’s CBB guest post theme, which is pastels. I love doing makeup look posts, so of course I had to attempt doing one for Chelle, who is renowned for her eyeshadow prowess! Since Chelle is such a pro, I knew I needed to up my makeup game, so I decided to do a look inspired by one of my favourite spring flowers: sakura.

I’m very fortunate in that my street is lined with cherry blossom trees and right now, it’s literally snowing outside with pink petals! So romantic right? To create this look, I also took inspiration from a few Asian beauty trends, namely dewy skin, under-eye or “Momoko” blush, and gradient lips. These trends are all designed to give the wearer that fresh-faced, innocent look and is perfect for capturing that pretty, glowy spring feeling.

For my pastel/sakura inspired look, I decided to capture the pinks and greens of the cherry blossom tree. The focus here is the eyes, but also on a bright pop of color on the cheeks. After two failed attempts, here is the final look!

And now, here is how you can recreate this at home…

Face

The key here is to create a flawless, radiant base. I started off by using a moisturizing primer, like the Moisturizing Foundation Primer N from Paul & Joe; this primer contains a hint of shimmer and provides a smooth base for makeup. Next, I applied a full coverage foundation to smooth out any bumps and cover any discolouration. TheBeyond Perfecting foundation + concealer from Clinique is perfect for this purpose and photographs beautifully. Instead of setting this with powder, I wanted to keep the dewy thing going by instead dusting my face generously with the Hourglass Ambient powder in Dim Light.

The last two items I used here for my face was blush and highlighter, which I applied after I did my eyes in case there was fallout that I need to clean away. For the blush, I really wanted a rosy-pink color that emulated flushed cheeks and the Guerlain Meteorites Perles les Blush Angelic Radiance fit the bill. To create this youthful, Japanese blush look, generously sweep the blush right under the outer-half of your eye, sweeping it up and around to your temples and always keeping it at the top or above your cheekbones. Lastly, sweep a shimmery highlighter along the tops of your cheekbones to provide light and to eliminate any blush that may have crept downwards.

Eyes

Next is the funnest part of doing makeup – the eyes! First, I applied Revlon’s Photoready Eye Art Lid + Line + Lash in Fuchsia Flash all over my lid; it’s a frosty cream shadow that doubles as a great base. Then, I took the golden shimmer shade Trick from my Urban Decay Naked 3 palette and applied it from lash line to just above the crease. Next, I needed to apply my green accent, so using my fingers, I liberally applied the middle shade from the Bourjois Trio d’Ombres A Paupieres trio in Les Verts to the outer-half of my eyes. I’ve always loved how Temptalia lines the bottom rim of her eyes in a contrasting colour, so I decided to do that here, with a bright purple liner from Almay. I then went over that liner with a lilac glitter shadow from the Jill Stuart Eternal Platinum trio palette. Lastly, I topped off my peepers with two coats of black mascara.

Lips

Last, but not least, were the lips. To create a gradient lip, blank out your lips with concealer; I just used the leftover bits of foundation on my buffing brush to do this. Then, very carefully, dab on a strawberry coloured lipstick to the centre of your top and bottom lip. I’d recommend using a lipstick brush for this as it’s pretty tricky to keep the color just to the center otherwise. Finally, top lips with clear gloss, again using a lip brush and working from the outside in, so as not to smudge your colour. This was my first attempt at creating a gradient lip and I found it pretty tricky, but the overall effect is so pretty, I’m definitely trying this again.

I hope you enjoyed this look! Have you tried any of these Asian makeup trends before? If so, I’d love your tips and don’t forget to visit me as well on my blog!

Chelle’s Aside:

Isn’t MizzJ’s eyeshadow application beautiful? I love how it just whispers spring to me. However, one of the most standout parts of this look has to be the undereye blush. I *love* how this looks on her! It’s so different to how I apply my own blush – I really want to give this technique a shot. It may not come out nearly as lovely on me, but hey, at least I’ll be trying something new, right?

Totally agree about the contrasting colour on the lower lash line as well. I’ve seen more and more people doing it lately and I feel it adds depth to any look.

Thanks so much for putting together such a beautiful look for my blog today!