Just a quick post today to wish everyone a Happy Pride! It’s World Pride this year in Toronto and the streets of the gaybourhood have been alive with people and music for the past week. The bigger events take place this weekend and I’m looking forward to a lively weekend!
Happy Pride Toronto!
Last month I did a “Four or More: Lips Edition” post, and this month I thought I’d bring you the Eyes version of that. So here are quick reviews on eye products that I happen to own four or more products!
These Maybelline Color Tattoos are beloved by almost every beauty blogger, beauty YouTuber and many a person I know IRL. And while I own a lot of them, I just never really fell in love with them like everyone else did. I really did try to – clearly I did, I kept on buying them – but on me they seem to make my lids really “crackly-looking”. I know that’s an odd description, but it’s the best way I can think to describe it. They also don’t blend out as well as I want them to. And they definitely do dry up over time, even though I store them top-down. They do have insane lasting power however: I wore Edgy Emerald and Tenacious Teal while swimming in the ocean by accident once while on vacation in Florida and they did NOT budge. I will say that I bust these out if I need a really quick eye colour that I don’t want to fuss with, but I’ve put myself on a Color Tattoo no-buy because despite the pretty colours, I just don’t use them as much as I should given how many of them I own.
I love these so, so much. L’Oreal‘s Infallible Eyeshadows are amazing. Very smooth and incredibly pigmented. They’re essentially loose pigments pressed down by a stopper to keep them from sloshing about. You get the benefit of the pigmentation of a pigment, without the horrific powdery mess that inevitably ends up EVERYWHERE. My absolute must haves from the line are Amber Rush and Hourglass Beige
(called Iced Latte in the US – I think you guys got the better name on that one!). But the best one out of the lot is that amazing darkened, shimmery red second from the left. It’s called Golden Mahogany and was only available in Canada for a limited time. I happened to find a complete ratchet one at Walmart about a year ago and snagged it up because that particular shade is completely gone from the line now. Regardless of your colour preference, these are worth picking up just to test out and see how you like it.
Fluidlines are MAC‘s term for a gel liner and a product I always come back to. I’ve been through a few pots of Blacktrack, and continue to repurchase it when I run out. These stay surprisingly creamy for a very long time. That brown shade, Dipdown, is roughly four years old and is still as creamy as when I first received it. There’s something about MAC‘s fluidlines that just make them go on the lashline a lot smoother than any other gel liners I’ve tried. Other liners can tend to skip on me, but these flow on like BUTTAH. The brown and black shades are in their permanent line, but the dark blue (Midnight Blues) and green (Dark Envy) were from their MAC Me Over collection from 2011. Highly, highly recommended – though I will point out that they are not waterproof.
Oh baby do I ever love Sleek and their 12 pan eyeshadow palettes. So much so that I’ve picked up six of them over the years whenever I’m in the UK.
The pigmentation on these is incredible for a drugstore brand that is relatively inexpensive. My favourites are the two matte palettes – the bright one and the dark one. It can be hard to find mattes at the drugstore in a variety of colours, never mind actually finding bright vivid ones as well! Hands down Sleek has the best drugstore palettes that exist. If only they’d come to Canada! (That being said, the shipping from the UK to Canada is incredibly cheap, so it’s worth ordering some palettes online if you would like to check them out.)
I went through a phase of loving MAC‘s Mineralize Eyeshadows, but have stopped collecting them in more recent years. On me, these are best applied wet in order to bring out the pigmentation and shimmer (water works just as fine as MAC‘s Fix+ does). While the duos are easy enough to get your brush into, I will say that the trio get to be a nightmare when you wear down the middle strips. You end up needing smaller and smaller brushes to get just that single pigment and it can be tedious to do so. My favourite of the lot? Of course it’s the red-tinged one: Heat Element.
That’s my round up for Four or More: Eyes Edition. The only thing not mentioned were my MAC eyeshadows/palettes as I’ve already done a few posts on those. You can check them out here:
I’ve seen this on a few people’s blogs, although I can’t remember which ones exactly. It’s supposed to be a “get to know me better” kind of post, but if I’m honest, all of the questions are extremely superficial. So uh… glean whatever insight you can! 😉
1. Is your hair naturally curly or straight?
Straight way moreso than curly, but it’s not “nice” straight. The top half gets this really weird kink in it if it’s allowed to air dry, and the ends just go kind of pin straight. So it’s just really messy/weird looking if I leave it to dry.
2. Do you dye it yourself or go to a salon?
My hair colour is natural. It bleaches out in the sun throughout the summer. Bright sunshine will make it appear far more vibrant blonde than it does indoors.
3. Do you wear the same style everyday, or do you change it?
I change my hair style pretty often. Braids, ropes, curls, straight… anything goes!
4. Do you do your own mani/pedi or go to a salon?
I have never had a manicure or pedicure done at a salon – it just doesn’t appeal to me to pay money for something I could just do at home!
5. How often do you change your nail polish?
Every week or so.
6. Do you polish your toes in the winter or just the summer?
I keep my toenails covered in glitter polish year round!
7. How long does it take for you to put on makeup?
On workdays I’ll do my makeup from start to finish in about 20-30 minutes. On the weekends, or if I’m going out at night, it’s closer to an hour or an hour and a half. I like actually doing my makeup, so I tend to draw it out as long as possible.
8. What do you do first? Face or eyes?
I have never, EVER understood doing your face first. There isn’t a powder eyeshadow in this world that doesn’t have fall out, so why would you do your face first? So for me, eyes first ALWAYS, then face.
9. Do you collect makeup or just buy what you need when you need it?
I don’t collect it in the sense that I’ll buy it and not touch it, but I certainly own way more than I “need”. But then again I also NEED variety, so to each their own!
10. How often do you wear false eyelashes?
Two to three times a month – only for going out at night if it’s a club night or something.
11. Do you do a full face of makeup everyday?
Depends on the context of “full”. To me, a full face of makeup means I’ll use foundation. I only wear foundation maybe 3 out of the 7 days in any given week so, in my book, I only wear a full face 3 days a week.
12. Do you wear makeup when you’re home alone or with family?
Definitely not when I’m at home. As soon as I get in the door I’m swiping off the makeup as quickly as possible. I love makeup to pieces, but I also love taking it off and feeling fresh again. I’ll wear it around family if we have the intention of going out that day. If we’re just staying at home, there’s absolutely nothing going on my face except moisturizer.
13. Will you leave the house without makeup?
I do pretty often considering I spend a lot of time at the gym, playing a team sport or out for a run. I don’t feel the need to wear makeup, so I don’t if I don’t want to. That being said, I like playing with the stuff, so I’m more likely to put something together if I’m leaving the house for any kind of social gathering.
14. How many high-end products do you have?
Oh jeez, who knows. It’s probably a 50/50 split amongst my makeup stash between high end and drugstore.
15. Do you plan your OOTD every night or decide when you’re getting dressed?
I decide when I’m getting dressed.
16. How often do you change your handbag?
I don’t use one!
17. What time do you wake up and go to sleep?
My bed time ranges from midnight till (at a push) 2 am throughout the entire week. If I’m waking up for work, my alarm is set for 6:45 am, but I usually snooze it constantly for about thirty minutes. If I’m waking up on the weekend, it’s anywhere between 8 am and 10:30 am.
18. How often or when do you workout?
Almost every single day of the week. I play various sports about three times a week and I try to run 3-4 times a week, on top of weightlifting.
19. Left handed or right handed?
Right.
20. How tall are you?
5’3″
21. Do you speak any foreign languages?
French. It was my first language growing up, but over time I’ve become far more comfortable with English than French which is a bit sad.
22. How many pets do you have?
One kitty – Nemo!
23. How often are you on Blogger?
Errr the platform? I have no idea, I don’t pay attention to what platforms people use for their blogs.
24. Do you read comments posted on blogs?
I tend to read comments on Temptalia as there can be a lot of insight on there. And if I know a blogger personally, I’ll read the comments sometimes to see what they have to say to other people.
25. Do you keep a list of products to try as you see other posts?
Yeah, I’ve got a scratchpad of items I want to pick up at some point. Although I feel like I make multiple lists and they end up scattered everywhere.
26. How did you come up with your blog name?
I thought I was being ingenious, but there are a lot of other blogs out there with the same name which is kind of sad to me now. 
But it came to me while I was trying to “make up my mind” on a blog name. It was obviously half makeup oriented, but I thought it was funny because it was taking me forever to come up with a blog name!
27. What kind of camera do you use for your photographs?
Nothing good. A Canon PowerShot ELPH 320 HS and my Samsung Galaxy Gio phone (which can take surprisingly good photos sometimes despite being practically a relic now). I use my phone primarily to take full face shots at work (in the bathroom no less – I feel ridiculous if someone suddenly comes in and I’m busy taking 25 selfies in a row trying to get the right lighting/angle).
28. How often do you clean your house?
Once every two weeks maybe?
29. What’s your favorite color?
Green
30. Do you swear?
A lot. It’s a bit of a problem. I try to cut back sometimes but I often end up reverting back to just casually swearing all the time.
31. What are you doing with the rest of your day?
I just finished a 5K race this evening (spoiler alert: I did really well! The post about that race will be up next Friday.) and it’s about 11:30 PM right now… so the only thing left in my day is preparing this post for tomorrow (Friday) and then watching a pile of YouTube videos!
When I came back from vacation in March (and bought that hoard of makeup), I realized I’d picked up something crazy like 26 lip products. So I dropped them all in a bucket and determined that I’d work my way through the whole lot of them. That didn’t end up exactly happening since I ended up using other products I loved as well, but I thought I’d record my progress in pictures as I went along. The result of that process is the following picture: A full month record of what I wore on my lips throughout April.
The month of May was pretty forgettable in terms of makeup for me. I had a few repeat offenders (which you’ll see in this post), but for the most part I tried a lot of new looks and didn’t stick to a lot of the same products. The only consistent pieces were the ones in this post, and they really kind of took me by surprise!
I knew at the start of the month that I wanted to use a different bronzer, and I wanted one with shimmer in it. So I busted out NYC‘s Fire Island Tan and was reminded of how much I like this product. It does have an orange tinge to it, so make sure you blend this sucker in very, very well. There is also some gold shimmer throughout it, so if you’re not keen on shimmery bronzers, leave this one at the drugstore!
This blush by Tarte is just stunning. Charisma is a peach/coral with golden shimmer. It’s perfect for the warmer months when you want to just feel like you’ve got a sun-kissed glow. I really like this in coordination with the bronzer I mentioned above since the gold shimmer running throughout them really ties them together. It might be a lot on the gold shimmer, but hell if I care! As with all Tarte blushes, use a stiffer brush to apply this since it does have a harder consistency. (And btw, does anyone else seriously dislike the new packaging? I wish they had remained in the old packaging like the one above!)
I picked up this Bite Beauty lipstick to figure out what the hype was with this brand. At $28 CAD, this is by far my most expensive lipstick in my collection – so I was really scared I wouldn’t like this product and would have wasted the money on it. However… Fig is a lovely, easy pink shade and it’s a colour I can pair with a lot of eye looks without worrying if it’ll clash or not. It’s also worth mentioning that I really didn’t like the scent of this lipstick when I tried it on the first time. But I’ve found that over time the scent really grew on me. I don’t even know how to describe it – it’s not specifically anything, but it’s something I’ve grown to really like over time. Also, random note, the Bite Beauty lipsticks contain the same amount of product as a MAC lipstick, but because the bullet is fatter, it makes them look a lot shorter. I actually really like the look of the wider bullet, although at first I thought I’d been shortchanged on product!
I randomly stumbled on this combination in the last month or two and I came to really like it when I noticed just how well it photographed on me. With Wet n Wild‘s 903C as a base layer, and NYX‘s Tiramisu gloss on top, this has really become my failsafe lip look. It’s currently replaced my “dead nude” look when I’m wearing a really dark eye look. I still like the really nude, paled out lips look, but I feel like that look is slightly easier to wear in the winter. With this combination, it adds just the right amount of colour punch without overdoing it. Regarding the swatches above, from left to right it’s the lipstick, the gloss and then the two of them layered.
And there you have my monthly roundup! I wonder what the month of June will bring?