Face Paint Friday: Blue-Based Smoky Eye

Hey everyone! This is a scheduled post so as you're reading this, I'm moving into my on-campus apartment for my senior year of college!

If you're a long-time reader of C&C, you'll probably remember that I very rarely post during the semester because I'm super busy all the time, but I've been saving posts that I should have been making this week with the intent to use them throughout the coming weeks. As always, thanks for your support, your comments, and sticking with me even if I'm not the most consistent blogger. You're all so awesome =]

Anyway, back to what this is supposed to be about: smoky eyes. The term "smoky eyes" can either make people extremely excited or extremely nervous. For example, upon hearing someone say they wanted to do a smoky eye for prom makeup, my dad said, "Isn't that what they do on Jerseylicious?" My father only knows that because of my mother and my slight obsession with that show. That would be an example of being nervous! Hahaha.

Every time I try to do a smoky eye, I stop and think, "This needs to be darker; it's a SMOKY eye, right?" and I keep piling it on until I look like I'm dressed up as something frightening for Halloween. These were a little easier to do and less harsh-looking. Here's what I came up with:

The main shadows here are MAC Parisian Skies and Palladio Teal (applied wet with a liner brush to the lower lashline)


As a brown-eyed girl, I love using blue whenever I can. Usually it's in the form of a tiny bit of teal on the lash line, but MAC Parisian Skies changed everything I used to think about using blue on my eyes. This is gorgeous and classier than what comes to mind when you think of blue eyeshadow.

So, I learned that I should go for the gray or any muted, grayed out shades when I try to pull off a smoky eye and instead of looking like I just got into a fist fight, I could maybe look a little bit sophisticated. Hmm, who know?

So that's my post for today! I hope everyone enjoyed it. What's your opinion on smoky eyes or blue eyeshadow?

Thanks for reading,

Janna

Super Quick Rainbow Liner!

Hello everyone!

I have a short post for you today because I should be sleeping because I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow! I'm so excited =]

I'm bringing back Face Paint Friday with this post. Here's a super quick cool-toned rainbow eyeliner look I did recently. I've really been into using bright eyeshadows on my lashline as liner lately. I love the effect =]

I started with a base of my bright teal liquid eyeliner, a no-name brand that I got in the clearance bin of a Mandee's. The stuff has incredible pigmentation and staying power. While it was still wet, I layered green and purple eyeshadow on either side and added some yellow to the inner corner. I love the gradient effect. This is a great way to wear bright colors if you don't want to be obnoxious or feel self-conscious.

What are your favorite bright eyeliners? I'm on the search!

Thanks so much for reading,

Janna

MAC Lipglass Swatches

HI EVERYONE!

Well I'm embarrassed. I haven't done a quality post in a while, but that's about to change. I'm getting better at managing my time and hopefully I won't leave you all hanging next semester. I'll be working less than 15 hours a week, that's for sure, even though I'm upping the number of credits I'm taking a little. But somehow I ended up with class only on Monday and Wednesday! I didn't even try....so I'll have three glorious days of no class next semester (but of course, I'll be working).

Today I'm going to do a post for my Face Paint Friday series that I started way back when, featuring the products from my first-ever MAC order. I don't have a lot of pricey cosmetics, and I consider MAC pricey, so these have a special place in my collection.

This is the order I placed shortly after the Bloggers's Obsessions Collection came out. Actually, come to think of it, all of these products are from that collection. What can I say? I like to support my fellow bloggers (as if I'm even close to being on their level) and of course these were limited edition, which draws anyone's eye - if I'm going to spend $14 for a lipstick, it's gonna be a freaking amazing one that only the lucky ones will be able to get their hands on. Anyway, this was an awesome collection! I kept it small though and settled on MAC Sonoran Rain and MAC Caqui lipglasses as my first MAC purchases (even though I received the Tartan's Tale set as a gift last Christmas).

MAC Lustreglass in Decorative, and MAC Lipglasses in Caqui and Sonoran Rain

Oh, and before I start with the lipglass swatches (Meep! My first ones ever!), I wanted to add that I'm not entirely sure about my skintone, but I know for a fact I'm not cool-toned. I don't think I'm completely warm-toned though either, since I look good in a variety of shades. Perhaps I'm some sort of olive/neutral-undertoned freak. Who knows. Either way, if I were to guess my MAC foundation shade, I'd say NC 20, but I've never checked to be sure. Thought that'd be important for you guys to know; on to the pictures!

Sonoran Rain is a red lipglass with some really pretty metallic shimmer and gold sparkles, or in the words of MAC, a "deep coal-red with gold and silver pearl." I suppose it is a bit warm in the tube but I don't think it'd look bad on cool-toned folks (then again, what do I know?). This one is awesome and came out to play during Halloween when I dressed up as Snow White. I love the shimmer in this; it's an attention-grabber for sure. I've also read on many blogs this is many bloggers's favorite red lipglass ever from MAC! It's definitely red even though my pictures aren't showing it too well. I did a pretty light swatch too as I don't like super dramatic lips.

Redder than it looks here.

And since personally I think reviews of lip products are roughly 1370 times more helpful with full-face photos, here I am!

Caqui is described by MAC as a "persimmon orange." And like I said before I'm definitely not cool-toned and I find orange/peach shades much more flattering on me than pink, so orange is one of my favorite colors for makeup. I had to have this! It's very creamy and has some red undertones for sure. I must confess though that I might love this just a tiny bit more if it had some pretty pearl like Sonoran Rain, but I still love it. This could pass as your Pantone color of 2012: Tangerine Tango. I can't wait to see what other orange products come out this year! Would you wear this?

And lastly I have to add my only other MAC lip product, which is a Lustreglass in Decorative. This came in my Tartan's Tale set and it looks super scary in the tube; it's a deep purple with really pretty sparkles that look gold and pink. It's so shiny and sparkly but it's not completely opaque which makes it super wearable. This wasn't part of my MAC order, but now all of my MAC lippies are swatched in one place.

All together now! These are very color accurate.

Top to Bottom: Sonoran Rain, Caqui, and Decorative.

Sorry for the long post! I hope it was informative. Next Face Paint Friday I'm going to feature the products I ordered during my second MAC purchase, and spoiler warning: they're from the same collection. I got Parisian Skies and Hocus Pocus, because of course Jealousy Wakes is sold out. I was going to add full swatches and review here but that'd make this post insanely long, so I'll add pan shots, just in case you want to order them before they are sold out forever! If you go to the MAC website, you'll see a link that says GOODBYES. These are all the limited edition shades that are going away forever, so if you see something you like, grab it! That's what prompted me to make the second order in the first place. As of now, 1/6/12 at 10:30PM, the products are still available. Unless someone requests swatches, I'm not going to post them until next Friday, and they might be sold out by then, so check around online for swatches. Let's be honest, they're probably way better than mine anyway.

Hocus Pocus (Dark sooty gray with silver pearl, satin finish)

Parisian Skies (Muted gray-blue, satin finish)

Hocus Pocus is warmer and Parisian Skies is dustier than it appears.

Gorgeous! I'm so happy with these. Do you have any cosmetics from this collection? What do you think?

Thanks for reading! Please give me some feedback as these are my first lip swatches and I'm pretty new to swatching makeup in general.

Janna<3

Face Paint Friday - Have Makeup, Will Travel

Hello!

Two days til my Spanish adventure! I still really need guest bloggers, so email me at paradise423@gmail.com or tweet me at @cleverncolorful to let me know if you're interested! Nail, makeup, hair, skincare...any beauty related things are encouraged!

So for this week's Face Paint Friday, I'm going to show you the makeup I'm bringing on my adventure. My trip is 3 days in Barcelona, then 3 days in Madrid, then 4 weeks at the university at which I'll be studying, so there's a lot of moving around. I actually think while I'm at the university I have to change dorms halfway through as well. My favorite makeup product is eyeshadow, and at home I use many different palettes when doing a look, but it seemed impractical to bring a lot of small palettes with me across the world, and I didn't seem to have a bigger palette that included all the colors I use (pinks, greens, purples, browns...occasionally blues and smokey colors). I also couldn't bear to think of what would happen if I brought one of my favorite palettes and it BROKE in transport. **shudders**...the horror.

I went to CVS to try and find a big palette with enough shadows in it to keep me from wearing the same eyeshadow shades for 5 weeks (can you imagine?). I almost bought a Maybelline 10-shade palette, about the size of a playing card, until I found this:

This is a beauty pack from The Color Workshop. It includes 3 eyeshadow palettes in compacts, 4 eyeliner pencils, 4 nail polishes, two lipglosses, and 3 palettes that have 1 blush and 8 lipgloss shades. It cost me a whopping $10.

Here are some closer pictures!

The eyeliners. Black, Brown, Gray, and another Black. They're not crazy pigmented but they'll work. They're also really smooth and creamy, no pulling or tugging. I also love how big they are!

The eyeshadows, which were the reason I even looked twice this package. I did very quick finger swatches that I don't have a picture of, but I can tell you these aren't terribly pigmented. But, my Sephora eyeshadow primer will be with me to solve those problems. My favorite thing about these three palettes is the packaging. They each ave a mirror, they close very tightly and take some force to open....I found this really surprising for the price. They'll be great for travel! Also, imagine these much brighter, and anything that looks blue is actually purple.

Here are the lipsticks. They're really pigmented and creamy. The pink is a true fuschia I'd say, and the other one is a weird mauve/champagne frost. I like these (well, the pink)!

The blush/lipgloss palettes. I wasn't crazy about the possibility of getting powder blush all over the lipglosses, but I'll deal. I really like the color selection in these as well. I wore a blush yesterday and it was 75% missing after three hours, but I didn't set it so that might be why. I'm not crazy about blush anyway so it's not a big deal to me. I do have to admit I'll miss my dear Benefit Sugarbomb, but I'm so afraid to ruin it. Also, all of these are much brighter in real life. Those purple and pink glosses in the top picture are almost neon! I didn't have time to edit these because it's almost not Friday anymore!

I didn't photograph the nail polish, but they're a standard red, fuschia, dusty pink cream, and pink shimmer. If anyone wants pictures I can do that.


So this is most of the makeup I'll be traveling with. For $10, I won't care if it gets broken or cracked. I won't mind if I accidentally leave it in a hotel or lose it in transit. I'll also be able to buy makeup there if this stuff isn't doing it for me, so I'm not too worried. It is completely worth the price.

The other makeup I'm bringing is my Ulta Extreme Wear Mousse Foundation in Pure Beige (love this stuff), a tinted moisturizer (Ulta brand unless I find another one somewhere), Ulta Amped Lashes Mascara (again, unless I find another), my setting powder, colored liners, and concealer (also Ulta brand....see a pattern?), and a bunch of lip products including Wet n Wild tinted lipbalm and lipstick, Ulta brand gloss, my MAC Sonoran Rain and Caqui, and probably some others. Wow, that sounds like a lot....maybe I'll cut down =P

I will mention that CVS carried another kit like this from The Color Workshop. It had the same eyeshadow colors in the same arrangements (only in my kit, the shadows have circle stamps on them and in the other kit the shadows had no print on them), but it had 2 palettes with 2 blushes each, 4 lipsticks instead of 2, and the eyeliners were actual pencils (is that called kohl liners?) instead of the creamy pencils. Oh, and the nail polishes in the other kit were stout and round and the ones in mine had flat, squoval-shaped bottles.

So what makeup do you bring when you travel? Five weeks is a long trip, so I think I'm bringing more variety than I would on vacation. Also, I'm blanking on what nail polishes to bring. I seriously might go grab a bunch of Wet n Wilds and NYC polishes in case they break. =P

Would you buy this kit? Have you already? Let me know! Thanks for reading!

Janna

Face Paint Friday - Wet n Wild Mega Eyes

Hello everyone!

I decided to start an installment on my blog called Face Paint Friday. Before I go on, I wanted to point out that I thought of this idea without seeing it anywhere else, and I am unaware that something called Face Paint Friday exists elsewhere. If you know of another blog/site/anything that uses "Face Paint Friday," please let me know and understand that this is an unintentional coincidence.

Every Friday, if I post on a Friday (not sure that it'll be every week), I'll make posts regarding different makeup products instead of the usual nail posts. These posts could range from an eyeshadow look to a face primer review to a new favorite lipgloss or my top makeup products of the moment.

Please let me know what you think of this idea, and if you'd like to start posting your makeup looks on Friday also, feel free! I've been getting more and more into makeup since I've discovered the blogging world (you're enablers, all of you!), and it's so much fun to paint myself up. =D

So for this week's installment, I'm going to show you a green eyeshadow palette that I bought from Wet n Wild almost 5 years ago, so it might not look familiar. It's called Amazon Greens. I think the Wet n Wild Mega Eyes trios have been discontinued, but at the time of this post there are very reasonably-priced listings on eBay. Here's a picture of the trio:

I love the mirror on the side. For reference, these trios are exactly the same size as the current trios.

Here are some pictures of the look I did.
























To create this look, I used the pale green shade on the inner corner, the brown shade in the middle and the dark green shade on the outer corner.

Taking eye pictures is so hard! I give all of you beauty bloggers major credit. Any tips for a girl with a simple camera on how to take better eye makeup pictures? My "macro" setting is just a Close Up setting that is designed to shoot from 28 inches, which isn't a close-up shot if you ask me.

I will say that these are brighter in person, even though I did edit them a bit to try and bring out the color. It reminded me of the makeup version of Chanel Peridot, gold to green. See, I added a nail polish reference in there somewhere!


I added a quick poll in this post because I know most of us read through a reader. I'd really appreciate your feedback!

What do you think about Face Paint Friday?
	I think it's a great idea and I want to participate, too!
	I think it's a good idea and like reading through makeup posts as much as nail posts.
	I don't mind it, but I prefer nail posts.
	It doesn't interest me at all.
	Other - I'll explain in the comments.
pollcode.com free polls

That's it for now! What do you think? Thanks for reading!!

Janna