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

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

MAC Hint of Sapphire-Inspired Water Marble

Hi everybody!

I'm bursting with excitement right now to share this manicure! It's been in my head for weeks and I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

If you keep up with cosmetics, you may already know that MAC's summer collection, due out in July, is called Semi-Precious and will feature mineralize blushes, mineralize skin finishes, cream sheen glasses, and other products. What really caught my attention, however, was the mineralize eyeshadows. (Check out beautezine.com's post of the full press release of the Semi-Precious collection from MAC.)

Now, I don't know too much about MAC and the only MAC products I have were a gift, so I'm not going to pretend I know the difference between a creamsheen glass and a lustreglass (if you know, please share!), but these eyeshadows look just plain gorgeous in the pan. I mean, how could you stand to use them?! The colors swirl together beautifully and compliment each other to a T, and there are some really unique color combinations in this collection.

So when I saw the press release for the Semi-Precious collection on several beauty blogs and I saw the eyeshadows, I was reminded of watermarbled designs for nails. The eyeshadow that stuck out the most to me was Hint of Sapphire. Here's a look:

Image Credit:  beautezine.com.

Seriously beautiful. These things are truly a work of art. So I let my creativity flow and set out to create a water marble that utilized the colors in this particular eyeshadow. MAC describes Hint of Sapphire as a "melange of pink, violet, teal, copper, blue." Respectively, I used Zoya Perrie (even though Zoya describes Perrie as purple), China Glaze Spontaneous, Color Club Age of Aquarius (on loan from my sister), Pure Ice Iced Copper, and Sally Hansen Blue It. The combination is awesome! Take a look =]

Left Hand

Right Hand

Left

Right

My favorite nails:

Left Index

Left Pinky.

Right Ring

Before you can say it, I did go overboard on the pictures. I wanted to do this manicure justice and I think I did =] And pardon my shoddy cleanup job.

The contrast of all these colors really pops on my nails, and in my opinion the copper just makes this look. And, if you're wondering how I did this, click HERE for my tutorial on how to water marble!

I'd like to do another watermarble based on one of the other shadows from this collection, but I'm not sure which one. I was leaning toward another multi-colored one, but do you have a preference? Let me know!

Swatches of this collection are starting to circulate, so tell me, are you getting anything from the Semi-Precious collection? Any eyeshadows? If you are, would you actually use them? =P What do you think of this manicure?

Thanks to Jessica of beautezine.com for letting me use her picture of Hint of Sapphire! =]


Thanks so much for reading!

Janna

Beauty-full Gifts

Helloooo!

Another Christmas-related post...these are some gifts I generously received for Christmas!






My first NARS polishes =] Drop Dead Gorgeous Set. (Arabesque, Chinatown, Saratoga, Candy Darling)



OPI Set: Tease-y Does It, Sparkle-iscious, Body Shimmer



OPI Set: Tiny Black Purse, Color So Hot It Berns, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous. Gift from my boyfriend's mom along with a $25 Ulta Giftcard. (Yes, I already had LLM, but now I have one for you guys =] Slowly compiling a giveaway...)



OPI Set: Bring On The Bling!, Rising Star, gold bag




Crystal Nail File adorned with Swarovski crystals =] came in that cute case!


Orly Winter Wonderland




MAC Makeup set. My first MAC products EVER. Adorable bag including Teal Pigment, Mascara, Gel Liner and brush, and I also received a lustreglass =] from my boyfriend's brother.

There you have it =] A very successful Christmas. I'm so thankful for everything in my life!

Thanks for reading. I'm almost at 100 followers! I'm overwhelmed.

Janna