July 4th look?

I copied this look from another journal.  I doubt it was inspired by our independence day, but it would be a great look for that anyway.

I changed a few things, but mostly tried to copy the look exactly.  I didn't have any blue false lashes, so I just drew them on.  I also added some glitter liner.  This took forever, and I wasn't sure it would look right on my eyes, but I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Christmas party

I did this look for my office holiday party.

I used Sugarpill's LOVE+, my 88 palettes and some glitter liners from NYX.

2011-11-17

I used Sugarpill's Dollypop and Wet n Wild's 521A lipstick (with some clear sparkle gloss over).  They are really almost a perfect match for each other.

Recent look

Since I have a few new followers, I'm making an effort to do more posts.  This is my look from 11/11/11.

Jem!

I dressed up as Jem from Jem and the Holograms for Halloween.  I used Sugarpill's dollypop eyeshadow.  I know the wig isn't really right, but it's the best I have.

Some more looks

Here are some looks I've done over the last few months.  I have all the products recorded, but won't bother to list them unless someone asks.  My eyebrows were shaved in some of these pictures, so that's how I did the pink and purple eyebrows.

4th of July

Happy 4th of July :)

inspired by Alex Box

The title pretty much says it all.  I suspect a lot of her work is done with an air brush, which I unfortunately don't have.  Anyway, here is my pressed powder attempt.  I mostly used Bulletproof and Poison Plum by Sugarpill, and the 6 pan blush and contouring palette from eBay.  I also used some colors from the 88 shimmer palette and some elf eyeliner to highlight.  The lips are some pencils and gold gloss from NYX.

Urban Decay - Beauty in a Box

I got this kit for Christmas, and followed the instructions to create this look:

This is probably not a look I'd come up with on my own, but it's not bad.  I did this back in January, so I don't remember much about using the kit.  As I recall, it was pretty straight forward to use, and I didn't have problems with any of the products.

Recent looks

These are actually from a few months ago, but I just got around to sorting through the pictures I took.

This is supposed to be an Eye of Horus or Eye of Ra.  I think I might want to try it again sometime though.  I don't really like how I positioned the tails.

If anyone wants to know what products I used, just ask.  I think these looks could be done with pretty much anything, so I haven't bothered to write up what I used.

Wet'n'Wild I Got Good Jeans

Here is a look I did using Wet'n'Wild's I Got Good Jeans trio:

I used it pretty much as directed.  I used the brow highlight color as an inner eye highlight as well.  I also used elf's black cream liner and MUFE mascara.  I think the lip color is some mixture of OCC lip tars.  I have four of these trios, and this is by far my favorite.  It was much more pigmented and easier to apply than Cool as a Cucumber and I'm Feeling Retro (which I've also tried and and will post photos of soon).

Wet'n'Wild Blue Had Me at Hello

Here is a look I did using column 2 of Wet'n'Wild's Blue Had Me at Hello palette:

I used column 2 pretty much as directed.  I used the brow highlight color as an inner eye highlight as well.  I also used elf's black cream liner, some blue glitter liner from NYX and MUFE mascara.

This is probably not a color combination I would have picked myself, but I thought it turned out pretty nice.  The lid color did crease on me after a few hours even though I used Primer Potion, but a lot of shadows do that.  I used the dark blue crease color on my lid for another look, and it creased too.  Still, I think this palette's pretty good for the price.

Wet'n'Wild Blue Had Me at Hello

Here is a look I did with Wet'n'Wild's Blue Had Me at Hello palette:

I used column 1 pretty much as directed.  I used the brow highlight color as an inner eye highlight as well.  I also used elf's black cream liner, some silver glitter liner from NYX and MUFE mascara.  I made the red lipstick from various TKB ingredients, and my lips are lined with a black NYX eye pencil.  I used Sugarpill's LOVE+ and poison plum as blush.  I use these shadows as blush much more than I use them as eye shadow.

I had thought that the crease color would be a dark blue, but it turns out that it's black with blue sparkles.  Only the sparkles don't really show up, so it's basically just black.  So there really isn't any blue in this look.  In column 2 there's a black with silver sparkles, but they don't show up that well either, so it's pretty much just black as well.  And the definer color in column 1 is a matte black.  Which means that 3 of the 8 colors are pretty much just black.  Which kind of sucks, because I already have several black eye shadows.  I really like the silver though.  The highlight color doesn't seem to show up very well in the picture.  It's kind of sheer and grainy.  It's very sparkly, but not very opaque.  On the whole I do like this look, but I think I could have done it with products I already had.  It's nice to have a small compact that I can carry around with me though.  Most of my pressed eye shadows are in big palettes that aren't convenient for traveling.

I also did the column 2 look as well as some looks combining the two columns.  I'll be posting that soon.

Aromaleigh

This is from a few months ago:

The eyeshadow I'm wearing is called Destination Unknown by Aromaleigh.  The bizarre thing about this shadow is that it's sky blue in the jar, and then starts turning purple as soon as I put it on my skin.  I haven't done any checking to see if it's supposed to do that.  Weird.  And kind of annoying since I like the blue color.  But I like the purple too.  The blush is Aromaleigh's gothic lolita rouge in dolly.  I really like it now that I think about it, but I don't think I've used it since.  The lips are a mixture of OCC lip tars with some lip gloss.

TKB Trading DIY lipstick

I already posted a swatch of this fluorescent pink lipstick I made.  Here is a full picture:

At some point I'd like to do some fluorescent face makeup.  I'm not sure how much of a pain this stuff is going to be to work with though.  I also need to find somewhere to actually wear this stuff :)

Doda's Arab Makeup - Dramatic Rainbow Eyes

I followed this tutorial to get this look:

I wasn't 100% sure about this look before I started, but I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I went ahead.  It turned out looking better than I expected, and I was very happy with it.  In person I thought the colors looked very opaque and vibrant, but looking at the photos I wasn't quite as impressed.  They looked a little sheer and dusty.  I used the 88 Matte palette as directed in the video (except for the yellow, which is Sugarpill's Buttercupcake), but I think it might look better with nicer shadows.

Here's another shot with my eyes open:

I think the lipstick is one of my NYX crayons.  Maybe Hera?  I like the NYX crayons a lot and am planning to try some of their lipsticks.

Sugarpill

This is a look from a few weeks ago.

I used Sugarpill's LOVE+, TKB's Black Amethyst and Aromaleigh's moire (I think this is one of the pigments she will be selling in bulk as opposed to a finished eye shadow).  The lipstick is the TKB Trading DIY lipstick I made that is labeled 1-2 in my previous post.  Even after I retouched it, it still looks a little uneven, but I didn't want to make it look completely fake.

88 Shimmer and NYX

Here is a really simple look I did with my 88 shimmer palette:

I used a NYX jumbo lip pencil (Vixen I think) on my lips.  I got six of these jumbo pencils off of eBay.  I had read some reviews of them that were kind of so-so, but I really like all the colors I got.  I'll probably be trying some other NYX lip products soon.

Jangsara: bright colorful arab eye

Here's another tutorial look:

I used my 168 palette, elf cream liner and a MAC eyeliner called Undercurrent that I splurged on and then never used.  It is very pretty, but I don't find myself needing a teal eyeliner that often.  I'm very happy with the 168 palette.  Pretty much every color I've tried so far has worked great.

Miss Chievous Vegas

I wasn't feeling too creative today, so I followed this tutorial for this look:

I used my new 168 palette from eBay, Sugarpill's LOVE+ and a bunch of NYX stuff.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Gone2RehabBRB was kind enough to ask me to do a guest post. This will be on her blog as well. She sent me a few questions to answer, so I'll start with that.

- The story behind creating your blog. Does the name of it have any significance?

There isn't really much of a story behind this blog. I've had a blog on livejournal and an account on deviantART for years where I've posted my fashion and modeling pictures (Illeryana is just my internet modeling name that I picked when I started a ModelMayhem account). After getting into makeup I thought I'd start a blog for that too. Since all the makeup blogs I was reading were on blogger, I decided to start my makeup blog on blogger. I wanted to do a sort of 365 makeup project - post a look every day - but I got really behind on editing my photos. I still try to do a look every day and photograph it though.

- What kind of blogger do you strive to be?

Ideally I'd like to get back to posting more looks and maybe adding a bit of commentary about them. I'd like to maybe add some reviews and some instructions for DIY makeup. Especially with all the trouble that a lot of indie internet makeup companies have, I think more people should look into just making their own makeup. I always try to find good deals or ways to do something for less money, so this blog will definitely be more focused on cool makeup on a budget rather than talking about high end products.

- What was your biggest make-up fiasco back in the days when you were first learning how to apply make-up?

I don't know that I've really had any makeup fiascoes - more disappointments. I watch a lot of tutorials, and I used to try and recreate a lot of the looks. Most of them didn't turn out very well. I think the main reason for this is that my face and eyes are shaped very differently from the people I was watching, and this makes a huge difference. My makeup started looking a lot better when I stopped trying to recreate exact looks and started trying to figure out what's most flattering for my face. Then I could take inspiration from other looks I saw, but adapt them to look good on me.

- Any beauty words of wisdom your gran taught you?

No one else in my family that I know of is all that interested in fashion or makeup, so I'm pretty much on my own.

I'll end with a recent look I did.

I got an email from MAC or Sephora that said orange lipstick is in now.  I made this by mixing together red and yellow OCC lip tar.

Recent looks

Now that I have some followers (2!) who might potentially read this, I thought I'd post some recent stuff I've been doing.  Some of these looks are copies from tutorials and pictures I've seen.  Some I just made up.  I don't have any product information with me right now, but ask if there's anything you want to know.  A lot of the shadows are from TKB Trading or palettes from eBay.  You can click on the images to enlarge them.

 

TKB Trading DIY lipsticks

I recently purchased some materials for making lipsticks from TKB Trading.  I got some uncolored lipstick base, a sampler set of all the colored bases, the natural dye lip liquid kit, blue-1 lip liquid and a bunch of wheels to put my lipsticks in.  I already had tons of micas that I'd bought to use as eye shadows.  So far I've made 22 lipsticks.  I've only photographed these six so far though.  All of the following pictures are straight off the camera and completely unretouched.  I'm showing them in the order that I made the lipsticks.  I'm not very creative with names, so they're just numbered.  Also, these all look much better in person and not so super close up.

1-2: This is the second lipstick I made.  The base is Autumn.  It's a little splotchy because I didn't realize that you can and need to put in tons of mica to get good opacity and pigmentation.   I also used some blue and yellow lip liquids and Dragonfly mica (but not very much).

2-1: This was made with Wild Cat base, 2 drops of black liquid, and lots of Glitter Bordeaux mica (I don't have a small scale, so I don't have actual amounts of how much mica I used).  For some reason lipstick never looks that great on my lips - especially in photographs.  I thought this looked about as good as a lot of commercial lipsticks look on me.

2-5: This is UV reactive pink.  It's made with Moonlight base and Strong Fluorescent Pink powder (I'm pretty sure it's not a mica).  It looks nice and opaque and evenly applied under regular light, but it was pretty much impossible to get it evenly applied under black light.  I wonder if commercial (Kryolan) lipsticks have the same problem?  Anyway, I thought it looked great as a regular lipstick.

3-1: This is UV reactive orange made with Bella's Kiss base and Fluorescent Orange Blaze powder.  As I was reheating (always good to reheat it a little just before pouring to make it flow out better) this after adding and stirring in the powder it started getting all weird and thick and lumpy.  None of the other lipsticks I made were like that.  I don't know if I added too much powder, or if it just doesn't disperse well or what.  But heating it actually seemed to thicken it up instead of melting it.  You can see the little gritty blobs on my lips.  Still, it's not too bad.

5-1: This was made with Bella's Kiss base, carmine and yellow liquid and Tangerine Pop! mica.  I wanted to make an orange like the UV orange but without the granules.  But since Tangerine Pop is so shimmery, it came out very metallic, instead of matte like the UV orange.  Ironically I think this is the best looking photo of the lot, but I thought it looked the worst in person.  It's so metallic and shiny that it doesn't look like it's applied evenly even when it is, if that makes any sense.

5-2: This was made with Cupcake base, lots of carmine liquid, a little white and blue liquid, and tons of Green Sparks!  In daylight (this was taken in the bathroom with incandescent light) you can actually see a hint of green, and up close you can see the sparkles.  But mainly it just looks very metallic.

So that's it.  In my next order I'm getting some versagel and glitter to try making some really sparkly glosses.  I'm also getting some matte colors because most of the micas make for very shiny, metallic lipsticks.

Sugarpill

I used Sugarpill's LOVE+ for most of this:

The rest was various NYX pencils and some red glitter from Aromaleigh.  The gold dots are Virgo from TKB Trading.  The red lips are Strumpet from OCC, but I'm sure any red lipstick would have worked.  I really like this style of makeup and plan to do more in the future.

Real Colors

This is a look I did with a product called Real Colors baked metallic mineral palette that I got from the Sally Beauty store:

I think it was around $8 or $9, and it has ten colors.  It's very much like the Sally Girl baked eye shadows that I got before.  The colors go on best with water.  I used some of Sugarpill's Stella at the outer corners and black eyeliner from elf.

88 Shimmer Palette

I haven't posted in a while, so now I have a huge backlog of makeup pictures.  This is from a week or so ago:

I bought one of those palettes off of eBay - the 88 shimmer palette in this case.  For about $15 it's not bad.  I'd seen in reviews that they're very pigmented, and I don't really agree.  I had to put a lot on to get the colors I tried to really show up.  But again, for the price, it's not bad - definitely better than some drug store eye shadows that aren't all that cheap.