The War Of Highlighters…

Hi Ladies! 

Sorry I have been MIA for a while, I was busy with my family these past few weeks but now I am back with a few great products that I have had the time to test these past weeks. One of the hardest things to find is a good highlighter one that will not wash you out, one that is not to strong, and one that just emphasizes your best features. So many people have the belief that you need to purchase a tiny tube of pink or yellow product at ridiculous prices but I have found a great alternative for all of you with a pink undertone to your skin. 

WHY IS HIGHLIGHTING SO IMPORTANT: 

• Highlighting will basically illuminate the best areas of your face. If you start to choose the right shade to highlight with (either a pink, yellow, or salmon) your skin will look healthy, your eyes will look awake, and the overall appearance of your face will become more youthful. It’s just as important to match a highlighting pen to your undertone as it is to match your foundation to your skin. Finding your undertone is easy, one of the most simple ways is to look at the veins in  your arm  and if you have blue veins you are cool (red & pink) but if you have greenish veins then you are warm (yellow). If you also just Google how to find your undertone there a million of tests you could take at home to see your true undertone. Highlighting in this sense is not using a shimmery powder or illuminater, it is using some kind of product with no shimmer to put on either over your concealer and foundation or used solely as your concealer. While I give you two great options of highlighters it is important that you go to the drugstore or beauty store and test some out for yourself, mine are simply suggestions but everyone may not like them the way I do. 

 

MAC Radiant Rose: 

• If you shop at MAC then you know about two of their most popular products, their highlighting pens. There are actually three pens but everyone seems to gravitate towards either the yellow shade or the pink shade (there is a salmon shade but I would recommend that to people who have extremely dark skin tones). I chose the Radiant Rose shade because I have more of a pink undertone but in reality I am just very neutral in my skin tone, I chose pink most of the time those because I like the way it makes my under eye look. I really enjoyed this product, it is currently my second tube of it and honestly it lasts me for about 4-5 weeks when I am using it everyday either as a light highlight or a full face look. This product can be used on top of your makeup or you can put it underneath as a primer to add brightness from within to your makeup. I like to do my foundation and concealer, then I take the pen put a triangle under my eyes all the way to my hairline (you always want to continue your concealer and highlight to your hairline because it is like a mini face lift) then I add a triangle in the middle of my forehead and drag it down my nose half way, then I add a line on my cupids bow and a triangle on my chin… Depending on how you feel about your face you can alter this, I like to highlight these areas but if you feel that you have a large forehead then skip putting it on your forehead and so on for the rest of your skin. This product did not crease, and my concealer settled well with it. For $25 though, I felt that I could find a more affordable product to use everyday and a product that would provide me with the same results. 

Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Dark Circle Eraser:

•  I started using the normal concealer version of this product a few months back (this is a highlighting product but they have concealers also) and I really liked the concealer it was comparable to MAC Pro Long Wear but honestly I liked the way the Maybelline one sat on my skin. When I went to purchase more concealer I found this new product and I do not think that I could tell you enough good things about this product. You twist the product up from the bottom and it comes up into this puff ball and then you drag that onto the areas you want to highlight (don’t love that idea, but you could simply take the puff ball off and apply the product to the back of your hand). This product blends in like a dream, it has no shimmer and mixes well with all kinds of concealers and thick concealers. It was so simple to use this product and I felt like I had a steal because of the price I paid for this but I enjoyed it more than the MAC pen. The color is a bit darker but that’s just because I got the wrong shade but they have a wide variety of pink shades and also yellow shades. For $8 it seems crazy that I would ever pay for the MAC product again because Maybelline not only provides you with a great drugstore product but also one that beats a high end highlighter. If you just want to experiment or use some different shades I would say purchase this product, also if you want to stop paying almost $30 every few weeks then please check out these highlighters, their amazing. 

XOXO

Here you can see the MAC pen on the left and the Maybelline on the right.

Blending Brush Dupe…

Hi Ladies!

Recently I did a post on a foundation dupe and it got me to thinking, do we really need to spend so much money on makeup brushes? If you’re like me, there are some things when it comes to makeup that just have to bite the bullet on and invest in. I personally can not live without some good quality brushes but today there are so many brands out there that have affordable brushes, these brands do not get the attention they deserve and honestly they are just as good if not better than our expensive brushes. 

I kind of found this dupe on accident. I’ve been doing the same eye makeup look everyday recently which is a dramatic cut crease with a copper color and some liner but to achieve the perfect crease, you need a really good blending brush. I keep all of my brushes in jars on my makeup counter and when I went to grab my usual MAC 217 brush I accidentally grabbed my Crown Brush C433 Pro Blending Fluff brush. After I finished with my makeup and was totally happy I went to darken the color a little bit and that’s when I noticed that I had been using the Crown Brush, at first I checked in natural lighting for streaks, patchiness, and just blotchy color but to my surprise I didn’t find any. In the photo you can see that the brushes are almost identical, they are both sleek black brushes with cream bristles. Both of the brushes are an oval shape with densely packed fibers making them easy to really pack on the colors. I’ve always thought that the MAC 217 did all of the work for you, you barely had to blend it at all and it always looked perfect. I found that with the Crown Brush it also did the work for me, the only difference was that the head of the brush was a larger oval so if you want a thinner crease you need to be careful to not pack on to much color onto the brush. Although I would recommend the MAC 217 to someone who is looking to get a thinner cut crease look, you can achieve the same look with the Crown Brush if you use a lighter hand. The MAC 217 brush is $24 and the Crown Brush is $6… So I say save your money and order the Crown Brush, you will not regret it.

XOXO

 

 

Some Great Lashes

Hi Ladies! So recently I told myself that I would start experimenting with some makeup techniques that I’m not used to so that I can just learn the ins and outs of makeup. One of the first things that I made myself start doing was applying false eyelashes. For me, false lashes have always been so complicated and annoying but recently I have been wearing them every day because of the amazing effect that they have on my eyes. A few months ago I bought a pair of the accent lashes from Ardell which are just lashes that you apply to the outside part of your eye (they give you are very cat eye effect). Applying these shorter lashes is so much easier than applying a full lash strip and not to mention faster. Yesterday I took the Ardell 138 lashes which are very dramatic lashes and basically cut each lash in half leaving the outside edge a little longer than the inside (these are full lash strips) then I applied the longer strip to the outside of my eye, let it dry and applied the next stip right on top of that lash but on the very outer corner of my eye. This seriously gave my eyes such a beautiful shape. I added some drama by doing a dark brown cat eye also which is usually covered my the lashes but it still adds to the shape of your eyes. As you can tell, there are no false lashes on the inner corner of my eyes which is something that I like but if you have never tried this kind of false lash it will take some getting used to. This obviously is not your average everyday look but I don’t mind it being dramatic. These kind of lashes are perfect for everyday (you don’t need to double them and you can purchase more natural looking lashes so you only get a slight cat eye look) because they are quick to apply and you don’t need to worry about that inner corner coming up or having the lashes feeling super heavy on your eyes. I definitely recommend this style of lashes to someone who has watery eyes because the inner corner of your eyes are left free of any glue of lashes so the water will not undo the glue. 

It’s totally about how you feel when it comes to the shape of your eyes but I would really recommend try this look. 

XOXO