Guest Post! Valentine's Date Night Makeup Tutorial

Valentine’s Day Date Night Makeup

I just wanted to thank Tara for having me as her featured blog post for Valentine’s Day! It has been so wonderful to collaborate with her. When I read her profile and perused her blog I immediately fell in love with all of her cute posts. I noticed that we had a lot of similarities and so this was a great way to share our knowledge with eachothers’ subscribers. :)

 Hopefully, this look will provide you all with some inspiration for your date night or “singles awareness” night with your girlfriends. I wanted to do a sultry and sexy look that would be perfect for going for a night on the town :)

Products Used:

MAC Painterly Paint Pot

 Milani Brow Fix Brow Kit in “Light”

NYX Slide On Pencil in Pure White

 “Mauve” from the Lorac Pro Palette

“Light Pink” from the Lorac Pro Palette

 MAC eyeshadow in “Stars N’ Rockets”

MAC eyeshadow in “Fig 1” 

Maybelline Eye Studio Gel Liner in Black

 Milani Glitter Eyeliner in Purple

L’Oreal Power Volume “Black Smoke” Mascara in Black

Directions:

 1.)   Take Painterly Paint Pot and place all over the eye from the lids to the arch of your eyebrow. This primer will ensure that your eye shadow doesn’t crease and will make the pigments appear brighter.

 2.)   Fill in eyebrows with Milani Brow Fix Brow Kit powder. Filling in your brows with frame and shape your face.

 3.)   Using the NYX Slide On Pencil, draw under the arch of the brow and in the inner corner of the eye to bring light to the eyes. This will also make you appear more awake and will give the illusion of larger eyes.

4.)   Using windshield wiper motions, take a fluffy brush and sweep “Mauve” from the Lorac Palette in the crease of the eye. This will provide the transition color for the rest of the shadows and will make the eyes look deeper set.

 5.)   Take “Light Pink” from the Lorac Palette and pack the color onto the lid of the eye just until it hits the bottom of the crease.

6.)   Take “Stars N’ Rockets” and sweep this eyes shadow slightly above the mauve color. Blend together using a clean fluffy brush.

 7.)   Take “Fig 1” and place in a V Shape in the outer corner of the crease

 8.)   Take the purple Milani glitter liner and draw from the outer corner of the crease just to the middle section of the crease.

 9.)   Draw winged out liner on the top lash line with the Maybelline Gel liner in Black. Do a smaller wing underneath the bottom lash line.

10.)   Apply Mascara  to the top and bottom lashes

 And Voila! You’re looking gorgeous for a romantic/fun night out!

 If you would like to see more makeup tutorials and product reviews, please stop by my blog:

www.beautybooklove.com

 Love,

Anne-Marie

The Beauty Book

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Mauve & Taupe. Taupe & Mauve.

Have you ever despised a color (probably because it reminds you of some hideous furniture or style from your 80s & 90s childhood) and then realized one day it was your new fave? Um... I hate to admit it, but I sure have. I bet you can't guess what they are...

MAUVE & TAUPE!

So, mauve... Growing up my parents had a satin mauve sofa. Yes. I said it. Satin. Mauve. Sofa. Disgusting. It was even more disgusting after my brother and I vomited on it as children often do on satin things. So, I think I developed a mental block against all things mauve. I mean, if you're a child of the 90s, you probably swore you'd never wear a scrunchie to avoid ever resembling Blossom. And yet, they're back...

You can imagine my shock and chagrin when I began to truly understand what colors (or colours, for my fellow Anglophiles) go best with my albino pale skin, blue eyes, and pink undertones; and mauve was one of them! At first I balked and refused. Then I received a gift from my grandmother. She had purchased an Elizabeth Arden set of glosses that she gave me. One of the shades was Radiant Mauve. After learning that I needed to mostly sport cool tones I wore it once, then twice, then used up the whole sample size. Then I re-purchased. Do any of you feel that any time you actually purchase something you tried as a sample that it must be absolutely epic? Well, I do! I hardly EVER do that...

The down side to this gloss is it's smell. It really does rather stink. It also isn't as creamy and thick as it was in the sample pot... :( I'm not as happy with the full size as I was with the sample. Nevertheless, I still love the shade & will keep using it.

About that time I realized my Lorac Pro Palette contains a Mauve shade that I'd never worn... not once.

Now I love it with a little Lt Pink and Taupe or Sable with some Nude under my brows and in the corner of my eyes. It compliments my blue eyes and cool undertones really well! 

My most recent mauve purchase was Sonia Kashuk's Mauving it On Up Nail Colour. (She spells it correctly!!) Love this stuff!

I'm not always a fan of pink... or purple. So, mauve, you fit the bill for my girly, cool toned fix. 

Now on to taupe. I'm a huge fan of all things grey. (And black... I should have had a career at Victoria's Secret). So, taupe just seemed like the red headed stepchild of colors. It's not brown and not grey. But it is both. It's kind of dirty and boring. Until now...

Taupe is my new skin-complimenting friend, and I'm so sorry I'd ever ignored or forgotten you. It all started when I stumbled upon this wonderful concept of Highlighting and Contouring (HAC). MaskCARA suggested using a taupe colored pencil to contour down your nose and under your bottom lip. I didn't have a pencil, but I discovered the Taupe shade in my Pro Palette (again)! How had I never used that one, either? That and a liner brush became my contouring friend. Seriously - try it! Just a little under your bottom lip does wonders!

Can you tell the difference between this picture with contouring and the last without?

This led to my googling "pale skin contouring" with bronzers being, by nature, too warm for me. That one google session resulted in my newest blog obsession: Estee over at Essie Button is as fair as me, and she suggested NYX's Powder Blush in Taupe. NYX isn't carried in my state, so off to Amazon I went! I've used it mostly for contouring, but it's also a great blush for days I don't want to use my pinks or peaches.

Essie Button also turned me on to cream shadows... I've never used them. Read my lips - NEVER. I believe after trying it once when I was much younger it creased, and I was over that. That was before primer. Now I religiously prime with Lorac's Behind the Scenes and this next product stays on for days.  

Maybelline's Color Tattoo 24 Hour eyeshadow in Tough as Taupe is more grey than the more-brown Lorac, but it has just that right pigment that makes it better than boring old grey. I really love how this cream shadow makes building shimmers or an intense eye easy! Or you can just wear it solo with the liner of your choice, and you have a carefree daily look.

What do you think? Are there any shades you've steered clear from that you might revisit? Any new, unexpected likes? How about you other pale ones out there - what shades work well for you that could help this sister out?

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Is LORAC Underrated? The LORAC PRO Palette Reviewed.

Is LORAC Underrated?

The LORAC PRO Palette Reviewed 

I've always been curious about Lorac's eye shadows after becoming addicted to the Behind the Scenes primer. But, after I purchased this relatively affordable palette ($42) I wondered why there wasn't more hype on the beauty blogosphere. I see so much about UD's Naked palettes (which is not paraben, sulfate, GMO & petrochemical free - all VERY important things to me), but not much on this one. So... here goes!

The packaging is sleek and compact. It's great for tossing in a makeup bag. (I'm definitely no MUA, so I do have most of my products in a bag thanks to my small detested pedestal sink with zero room on it). Packaging is smooth but sturdy and tends to get dirty. You'll see in just a sec... And I've used mine for months, so this is after much use. I also LURV how it comes with a large mirror! A lot of times these sleek palettes lack one, so it's definitely a huge perk!

Here you can see the relatively large mirror.

I REALLY appreciate so much about this palette besides the packaging. Here are my favourite (& not so) things about it!

16 shades!! I mean... WT(glorious)F? I spent more on the Tarte Femme Naturale Eye Palette & only got 12. (Not to mention they're chalky & not as pigmented/long lasting. You don't know how much it hurts me to say that, as Tarte is probably my #1 (or #2) go-to brand @ Sephora).

See the dirty?

Thank You, Lorac! It has shimmer AND matte! PTL!! (If you don't know what that means, you didn't go to enough church camps... :)). CHAMPAGNE is the only shade I'm not thrilled about... It's the one "glittery" shadow in the palette, and it goes on more like loose glitter than the rest of the shimmers. I don't have time for all the pixie dust fallout on my face, so I don't hardly use it.

Let's be honest, sometimes using ONLY shimmery shadows can be annoying. I'd like to be taken more seriously at work (I manage 32 people at an institute of higher learning... come on now!) Soooo, the matte options are perfect! They ARE ultra pigmented and last ALL day (especially with the primer, which is one of my "library*" items).

{Side bar: I looooooove reading & books - hence "Bibliophile." You'll learn... So, if I say something's in my library, it's because I don't buy the full size or have a 2nd go until it's been tested & really impresses me. I'm not typically loyal to many products, but there are a few... I'll do a post on that in the future. Same goes w/ my books. If I say it's library-worthy, than you know it's d*mn good, and the only allowed copy is hard back copy.}

Ok... 'nough of that. Let's continue:

I love (Xs 3) to use NUDE as a brow and inner eye highlighter. It goes on soooo creamy (as do all the colors) & pops! If I'm not in a shimmer mood I use WHITE for the same purpose. I started doing that after Essie @ Essie-Button raved about how much she loved her depotted (brand forgotten) white shadow.

For a while I didn't use TAUPE, but a life changing (ok.. exaggerating) video MaskCARA did here helped me see new ways to use it (as a contour along my nose and under my lip!) and almost the whole palette. If you're like me, you get stuck in a rut, using the same shades over and over, and I'm gad she shook it up for me! I love using GOLD as a liner & PEWTER is my favourite crease color. I layer it over Maybelline's Eye Studio Color Tattoo Cream Gel Shadow in Tough as Taupe.

(Yes... I like Taupe. I also have the NYX blush in Taupe as a contour powder. When you're as albino pale and cool toned as me, you can't use normal bronzers to contour.)

Time for the dark end. I'm super pale, as I mentioned already, and I don't typically use dark shadows for anything. But this stuff is awesome as a liner; I never used to use shadows as liners, but Lorac converted me! I actually haven't used a real liner in weeks. And that's crazy talk. 

I also didn't use GARNET once until watching MaskCARA's video. Now I do. I sometimes feel like having such pink undertones warm colors like garnet, coppers, etc don't work on me, but it does if done right! I also use SLATE all the time. LOVE it.

To wrap up - GET THIS PALETTE. It's creamy, pigmented, paraben free, affordable, has MANY colors, texture and function options and sets like super glue on the Behind the Scenes primer that comes along. 

Any other palettes you gals love? Anyone converted to Lorac now? :)

***Edit on 12/30: Since posting this I had a wonderful recommendation come to me via @AimeeJAdore on twitter that I should try the CHAMPAGNE wet. I did just that, and it worked GREAT and stayed on all day long! No fall out and deep, rich pigment. Thanks, Aimee!***

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