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.