This was done last Friday; I finally took a day off from work because I had been feeling tired and awful all week. This was an awesome way to cheer up, much like the fantastical song for which it was named.
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Lid: GC Companion Cube topped with AL fanclub
Crease: TANF Earl Grey
Lower lash line, from outer edge to inner corner: SM Shocking, AL Almost Midnight, Fyr Bite Me, AL agentorange, GC Continuum, ES Wyvern, WnW silver glitter liner (just in the very innermost part)
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I loved wearing this and I'm hoping I'll keep ballsing my way back to this sort of makeup. I really miss it!
This was a super lazy semi-smoky eye for a day of grocery shopping and reading. Awesome day, I wish I could have those more often.
Lid/upper lash line: Sassy Minerals Vendetta Lid and crease: Sassy Minerals Psych Crease: matte caramel brown from the Wet n Wild Vanity palette Lower lash line: Evil Shades Wyvern, something else Glasses: only for driving! Or when I'm trying to cover really dark circles under my eyes.
**EDIT** When I took these photos they looked SO NICE, all crisp and clear and stuff, and then they turned craptacular. This makes me miss my old phone. Samsung GSIII, you have failed me.
Ambition is being reserved for painting future BabyMango's room; a lion driving a yacht is involved. Instead of doing eyeball makeup I pulled out a sheer red lipstick and called it good enough. . Lips: Jordana Easy Shine lipstick in Sweet Strawberry
Back in March or so I decided to try out the Maybelline Great Lash Lots of Lashes mascara. I was feeling frisky and I've had pretty good luck with Maybelline mascaras in the past so it seemed like a safe bet.
The thing that surprised me about this product was the brush; I knew it was going to be small and kind of funky-looking but I didn't realize how small until I pulled it out of the packaging and started playing with it. Look at those tiny nubs!
I found the formula to be rather wet (tends to stick lashes together) but very dark and easily workable; it doesn't keep pulling product off when swiping the brush through already-coated lashes, nor did it blob ALL OVER the eye. I only applied two coats and I didn't notice significant clumping.
It doesn't really lengthen lashes much, but makes the natural length more noticeable--that is, it coated the entire length of each lash and emphasized it rather than leaving the tips slightly bare, which is something that I've experienced in other mascaras. This may be due to the slightly thinner/wetter formula. It holds curl nicely.
My thoughts: I dislike the brush. Fo sho dislike it. The narrow inner portion made the lashes along the inner corner of my eye stick together something fierce, probably because the 'bristles' are so short that they deposit too much product without combing through the lashes . The thicker outer portion provides much better separation to the outer half, and the overall effect is a flared outer corner with stuck together, albeit thicker looking, inner lashes. I love the way the longer bristles separate but I found that getting my lashes to look the way I want them to took much more time than I'm willing to spend on a mascara---doing this swatch took me around three minutes, which is too much time for me to spend on mascara. I'd rather just pull out the eyelash curler and leave it at that. At least the brush isn't so fat and huge that it stabs my eyeball.
This mascara actually works pretty well on the lower lashes if you're careful and take your time. I'm usually not into time-taking and I blobbed mascara under my eye when I first tried it, but it was easy to wipe away with a damp Q-tip.
Other pros: washes off pretty easily, good solid BLACK-black instead of a wimpy grayish color
Other cons: maybe it was just my tube, but this thing flaked on me within the first week of opening it. This was enough to turn me off forever.
I just don't think this was the right product for me. I like thick, dark, dramatic lashes with a NON-waterproof formula that does not flake, and I understand that this can actually be pretty hard to find. If you have full, somewhat straight lashes that take well to curling mascaras, OR like a natural yet defined look, this might work well for you. It's cheap enough that you don't have to feel bad if the product makes you want to break a chair, and I've found that Maybelline is actually pretty darn good with their mascaras. Some of them might not work as advertised but I rarely have a truly awful tube, just one that doesn't give me what I want.
These are mostly oooold makeups. The last two are from before I moved out of the apartment three months ago, which in internet time is probably a few centuries. I just wish my eyebrows looked that clean and shapely anymore---I've found myself getting lazier with my eyebrow upkeep in the past couple of months, even as I've started paying more attention to facial skincare and body/hair products. It's like forgetting to mow the lawn or water the flowers in front of a gorgeously maintained house. Things just start looking a little shoddy.
For the past month and a half I've been extra lax on makeup, altogether skipping it most days. Part of this is due to the heat---somewhere between the triple digit heat, the humidity, and all that schweating skin makeup would just melt right off my face---and the other part is because of some insane breakouts from the respirator I'm required to wear in certain areas of the plant. It looks like a standard half gas mask and it's almost strictly to prevent exposure to proteins that may cause allergies. That's about it. It kind of sucks because wearing it caused huge, painful breakouts right along the mask contact areas (chin/smile line area) and there was no way to cover them. I mean, it's good that they require that because it's a safety and health thing, but that safety comes at a pimply price.
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Afternoon at home and grocery shopping! I wish I could remember what I used for mascara because my eyelashes look smashing.
UD 24/7 liner in Bourbon on the upper lashline, L'Oreal lip caresse thing in Violet Chiffon, conceeeealer
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Some random post-work makeup derp. I did one eye and got all kinds of lazy, and I don't think I remember anything used here.
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I am 75% sure that this was done using colors from the Kat von D Gypsy palette for the lid/crease/inner corner and ... maybe the NYX eyeliner pencil in Moss for the lower lashline. All I know is that I love that lid color (Frankie from the Gypsy palette) so, so much.
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Old makeup is old! This was before graduation, waaaay back in late April this year. I absolutely love the yellow, though. And I know what I used for eyeshadow, so that's kind of neat! Or something! Exclamation?
Lid: WnW Nutty
Crease: GC Continuum
Highlight: crappy WnW white pink that was discontinued years ago
Mouth (see below): clear lipbalm, possibly Brambleberry Rose lip balm (which smells like everything good in this world)
Awesome pie earrings: made by one of my friends from engineering! Girl be all kinds of crafty.
Yeah, there's the sexy face we all know and love. And by we I mean maybe my mother.
I wore Darling Girl REM to work today and, upon coming home, decided to play with it. It's a little weird but I feel like I look more like myself when I'm wearing more makeup. I love having color on my face (BEAUTIFUL COLORS) and I feel more productive or something, like I've been armed for the day.
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Primer: TFSI (oh how I missed thee <3)
Lid: DG REM
Crease: REM mixed with AL Almost Midnight
Inner corner: AL Alyssum
Upper lashline: PF Eye Booster liquid liner
Lower lashline: NYX slim eyeliner pencil in Moss, SM Dreamy
Lips: L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse lipstick in Violet Chiffon
Just restating my current status: alive, wiggling, doin stuff.
Recent events include
Moving into (and painting) a house
Adopting a second cat
Said cat crapping on the new white rug because he's too scared of the water softener to use the litter box
Getting babyfied
Death in the family
Helping two of my brothers and a gf move into an apartment
The biggest thing is arguably the fetus, tentatively named Cletus. I've been quiet about it because I wanted to tell my boss (and make sure I still had a job) before internetting it. Thankfully all is cool on that front.
The unfortunate side effect of gestating is that I'm sleepy all the time, and have been avoiding makeup in an effort to get more snoozes. I've started slapping face on now that I've been developing some acne flare-ups, so that's both nice and totally crappy.
This seems to be something galloping around the makeup blogs these days, but this is just a quick update on my life explaining some circumstances that have led to lower blogging rates.
The first thing, which really isn't life-related, is just a quick change to the blog's appearance. I missed the simple, clean layout I had before (and the seagulls) so it seemed like a good time to sit down and fix that. I've also added contact information to the 'about' page (really just an email address strictly for this blog) and to a widget on the sidebar.
Some of the things that have kept me extra busy lately include
-finishing senior projects for classes, which are just time consuming
-preparing for graduation (finally)
-purchasing a house with Mr. Mango and starting to pack some of our things to ease the move
-job hunting
-job getting
-secret projects
So there have been quite a few changes that will have permanent, or at least lasting, effects on my life. I'll be an engineer working at Novozymes, which is a Denmark-based company that makes enzymes for lots of stuff. The facility I'll be at focuses on biofuel production---basically making things that help make ethanol and other things like that.
More information on secret projects will come later, but at this point I feel more comfortable staying quiet because it may affect other things in my life.
The nice thing about all of these changes, mostly related to no school and yes work, is that I'll be feeling more inclined to blog and actually do stuff with my life instead of making engineering models. The unfortunate thing is that I may be tired more frequently, and with a conservative engineering workplace in which a whopping 17% of employees are female (which is actually a pretty high rate) I'll be stuck with quieter, more conservative makeup for a while. Thankfully I've been keeping it pretty simple with school makeup anyway so it won't be a struggle to adjust.
Lower lashline: GC Continuum on the inner half, GC Inevitable Betrayal on the outer half
Liner: UD 24/7 liner in Oil Slick
Mascara: NYC Show Time, non-waterproof
Pretty sure I didn't wear any blush or lip products that day (aside from lip balm, naturally) so, all in all, a rather simple look in spite of the strong lower lashline.
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Unfortunately this was the only clear photo I could get that day. I don't know if it was me or the lighting, but something was off.
Lid: GC Bad Wolf
Outer corner/crease: very small amount of GC We Are Coming
]Liner: possibly Milani Infinite liner, which I do not like
**This post has been edited to correct the awful automatic formatting done by Wordpress. Green nails for spring. SPRING, I SAY! And with a nonsense title, to boot. I will admit---I was a leetle influenced by the annual St. Patrick's day frenzy, but I probably would have done green anyway because it's pretty much my favorite color, aside from all of them.
Unfortunately my camera was being a douche and decided that focusing on the bottle would be a better idea than getting a clear shot of the nails. I'm not sure if this is related to the use of flakies, but it gets frustrating. Fo sho.
This last picture was taking with my hand next to a window to get a different angle on the flakies. I love the way they look against this shade of green. I'm not sure if the base of Hidden Treasure has any tint to it, but I found that the green polish looked a lot warmer on my nails than it did in the bottle, as shown above.
2 coats of China Glaze Four Leaf Clover 1 coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure 1 coat of magical Supply Source top coat (I have a massive 16 oz bottle of this stuff and I love it)
First I want to make you listen to this. It's a complete recording of Smokescreen by Willis, aka the song from that sexy Fiat commercial. This woman has an amazing voice. It's like vaporized sex.
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Makeup time! Mostly old things from late January and all of February. It's high time I got caught up on things so I can start sharing all the lip products I've been sampling.
Hint: it's really not THAT much for a typical makeup blogger but I never thought I'd have so many lip thingies.
Lid: probably WnW minty green (nearly identical to ES Wyvern) over Pixie Epoxy and NYX Mermaid Green on the outer half over the cruddy ELF Eyelid primer
Crease: the powder portion of the ELF Eyebrow Kit thingy (a matte, ashy brown that isn't quite taupe)
Lower lashline: ... TKB Trading Mermaid Gold on the inner half and more Mermaid Green on the outer, methinks
Cheeks: probably NYC Smooth Skin Bronzing Face Powder (whew!) in Sunny
Check out my sweet hat.
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I have no idea when this look happened, but I know that it's the last of those awful ELF primer looks. I feel bad smack-talking that product because it wasn't so awful when I STARTED using it. It mysteriously turned to utter crap after a few months of use, which isn't too bad for something that cost a dollar.
Lid: lots of Pixie Epoxy topped with TKB Trading Mermaid's gold on the inner half, TKB Trading Taurus Orion
Crease: WnW matte black, found in several of their palettes. Yeah, it looks like THIS over the ELF primer. SUCH A SHAME.
Liner: UD 24/7 liner in Oil Slick
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Finally, something with a properly functioning primer! I've started using CoverGirl Intense Shadow Blast in Beige Blaze. It's a cream shadow-primer hybrid and I really, really like it. G of Nouveau Cheap posted a review on this product last year.
Lid: Morgana Cryptoria Crow's Nest over CG Beige Ablaze (henceforth my primer in all things eyeshadowy)
Liner: also new! Physician's Formula Eye Booster 2-in-1 Lash Boosting Eyeliner + Serum (whew!)
