FOTD: Purple Smokey Eye + NEWS: Dior Hydra Life BB Cream is Coming to Belgium!

Hey everyone,

Today I’m sharing the look I did on Monday with you. This is a little bolder than what I would normally wear, but since I was on a beauty blogger mission to Givenchy, I thought it was the perfect excuse!

For my eyes, I started out by putting Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-on Eyeliner in Rockstar as my base. Since I don’t own a synthetic smudger brush (or any smaller synthetic brush. I don’t think natural brushes will quite rise to the challenge here), I used my ring finger to blend out the edges. It would have been cleaner and more precise with a brush though. And then I blended Urban Decay Purple Haze all over my lids, going lighter the higher I went. I highlighted my inner corners and the inner third of my lids with MAC All That Glitters. I then proceeded to lining my eyes with a gel liner before smudging the line out with the third color from the left in my Clinique Plum Seduction quad (I’ve owned it for about 8 years now. I’m still madly in love with the colors, but the quality of this quad is no longer satisfactory after trying the better eyeshadows I have). Some mascara later I was done!

You can definitely make this more dramatic by using a black base, and/or blending some black eyeshadow into the outer corners. However, it was after all daytime, and I didn’t want to really scare the passers-by!

For my lips I had the most genius idea. Since I can’t really wear Incognito on its own, I layered it over Chanel Rouge Coco Mademoiselle. That turned out to take the color down a notch and gave me nice nude-pink lips!

For the rest of my face, I used some Tarte Blissful and Bobbi Brown Bali Brown. Voila, it is not super tricky, and even though it’s not office-appropriate, I wouldn’t say it’s too shocking to wear this during daytime (or maybe it’s me).

Here are a couple more pictures so you can see it better (psst I saw the fluff in my hair only afterwards. Sorry about that!):

I was wearing my first Lavand dress (which is pretty significant since it started my Lavand addiction lol). The neckline doesn’t work with a necklace, so I wore a pair of earrings instead. I’ve owned them for a long time, but I still love them a lot!

In other news, Dior Hydra Life BB Cream is coming to Belgium! It will be available from April 18th. Here are the promotional images if you’re curious:

According to Dior, the Hydra Life BB Cream targets young women (aged 18-30. *gasps* In a couple of years I’ll fall out of this category lol) who want a one-step product that will give them a radiant glow and preserves the youth of their skin. I can’t really say more at the moment, because I still need to test it out, and base makeup takes longer than for example a mascara. I will definitely let you know what I think though!

That’s it for today, dear peeps! I am going to review the Erborian BB cream and Fairy Drops Platinum Mascara for you before the end of the week since these two are highly-requested. I have many photos that are taken and products I have finished testing, but I still need time to sit down, sift through the photos, and write the reviews out. There are also so much I’m still testing out, so please bear with me. I do also have a work deadline to meet by the end of the month!

Would you wear a colorful eye look like this at daytime? What are the BB Creams you have tried and liked/disliked? If I have very up-to-date PR information about something I will be testing out, would you want to see it or do you prefer to just wait till I’m ready to report my experience? Please let me know. Your opinions are more than important to me!

Sunny, your beauty culture translator xx

FOTD: Embrace Your Monolids with Smudged Cat Liner!

Hello everybody, how’s your weekend so far? I met my friend N for a drink last night, and thought I’d experiment with makeup for a bit. I saw this smudged cat liner tutorial on Jen’s site a while ago and have always wanted to see how that works on me. This is my second copycat attempt of the week, but Jen’s tutorials are just SO easy to follow and I love her take on monolids, so please bear with me!

List of products and breakdown:

Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation in 53 Light Beige
NARS Stick Concealer in Custard (swatch and review coming soon)
Tarte Smooth Operator finishing powder
Bobbi Brown Sable on eyebrows

For my eyes, I first put Bobbi Brown Sable down in the contour area. Jen used Buck from the Naked Palette, but I wanted to see how Sable works as an eyeshadow. The result wasn’t bad. It’s darker than Buck so my contour area was a little more “contoured.” If I want a softer look I’ll go with Buck next time, but otherwise Sable rocks as a contour shade! I then did the first half of my lids with MAC All That Glitters. It’s a nice everyday shade to have, but it’s not earth-shattering per se. I appreciate how it is slightly more understated than Urban Decay Sin for example though! My brow bones were highlighted with Bobbi Brown Bone, and inner corners with Urban Decay Virgin.

Now the star of the show, namely eyeliner! I lined my upper lash line with Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Gel Eyeliner in Blackest Black, and my lower lash line with whatever was left on the brush and not all the way in. As I have mentioned before, those with monolids are more than likely to benefit form not lining their lower lash line all the way in, as it might close their eyes. Then I took my Urban Decay Zero to add a line on top of the gel line, proceeded to smudging it out with a Q-tip (cotton bud for the non-Americans lol). I smudged the lower lash line out with Darkhorse, and the upper lash line with Creep. The twist is dragging this line out at the end, the way you would do a more dramatic cat cat, and then softly bringing the line back so that the angle doesn’t look too sharp.

Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes (review coming soon)
Tarte Exposed on my cheeks
Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess Soft Matte Bronzer to contour
Chanel Rouge Coco Mademoiselle. Since my lips were a bit dry, I layered it on top of a lip baln, which also softened the look a little.

Here are some close-up photos so you can see the eyes better. Excuse the tiny bit of fallout at the outer corner from Creep. I didn’t see it till it was too late!

This is a very friendly way to wear cat eyes, because the line Creep creates is soft enough. I particularly recommend this to gel liner beginners. Even if you can’t create a crisp line yet, it’s OK because you will have to smudge it out not once but twice, and that covers a multitude of sins. The only thing that might be a little tricky is how to wing the ends out. The trick is to follow the angle of your lower lash line. Sometimes I line my lower lash line before I do my upper lash line for this reason. It is a very good indicator as to where your wing should go.

Some more pictures so you see it from different angles:

My hair isn’t as curly in these photos because I didn’t use mousse. I normally only do it after shampooing my hair, and then I let it be till I shampoo next! Pretty lazy :p

That’s it for today. If you want to see more monolid looks (whether it’s me being a copycat or tricks I’ve figured out myself), remember to follow Mostly Sunny on Twitter or Bloglovin’. I hope you guys are enjoying your Sunday! Stay tuned because I have some pretty exciting posts coming up (budget-friendly professional-quality brushes, NARS Spring 2012, just to name a few)!

Sunny xx

Swatch, Review, and Comparisons: MAC All That Glitters (Veluxe Pearl) Eyeshadow

It’s true that all that glitters is not gold, because MAC All That Glitters is more like a shimmery pinky beige on me. I put this on my MUA swap wish list because Karen from Makeupandbeautyblog.com raved about it, and when the opportunity came along it became mine.

Like the other veluxe pearl eyeshadows I own, the texture and pigmentation of All That Glitters are top-notch. I don’t consider myself a crazy fan/collector of MAC eyeshadows (or MAC anything to be very honest), and I’ve had more disappointing than positive experience from playing around in the MAC store. However, All That Glitters does not disappoint. The texture is soft, it applies like butter on my lid, and the pigmentation is generous. I don’t think I can do this better than Karen, so if you’re interested in this eyeshadow you should check her post about all the eyeshadows that will work well with All That Glitters. To be honest though, when I go over my collection of eyeshadows, I can hardly come up with any that would be a definite no-no to pair with All That Glitters. On my NC30 warm-toned skin, it’s shimmery, pinky, and slightly coppery.

To help you guys a bit more however, I pulled out two other shades that I thought would be similar to All That Glitters, namely Sin from the Naked Palette and the eyelid shade on the left column of Wet n’ Wild Comfort Zone.

In pan they look similar enough, but on swatches you can tell they are quite different from each other.

As you can see, Sin is a lot frostier than All That Glitters, and it is also almost “whiter” because of the frostiness. The eyelid shade of Comfort Zone leans more orange than pink especially when you compare it to All That Glitters.

Bottom line: this shade is of great quality and very versatile. It’s not frosty so it doesn’t scream “look at me,” but whether you pair it with a bold or subdued crease shade I’m sure it’ll do well. If you’re building up a starter kit, you might want to look into it. If you’ve already I do encourage you to swatch it before purchasing though, since this is a shade that looks WILDLY different on people with different skin tone and undertone. I can barely recognize it on a lot of swatch pictures I found online, so don’t rely entirely on them! The same goes to finding a dupe. You have to first know how this shade looks on you before you can embark on the dupe-finding mission.

That’s it, folks. Keep it real and have a nice week!