Tutorial: Bronze smokey eye!

Up untill now my tutorials have been very day-friendly and generally extremely wearable. As most girls who are into make-up, I sometimes like to kick it up a notch. The most worn look when going out to clubbing or dancing, (not that I do those things anymore. Boy that sounds old, I'm only 25!) is a dark smokey eye. Personally I opt for a shimmery bronze instead of black as black usually just looks bad on me, really. I'm too pale for it. The trick then is to keep the rest of the face and lips very understated to keep it from looking overdone.

It's a very picture heavy tutorial but I didn't feel like sacrificing resolution on making collages, so I kept them in a smaller setting, but just click them big!

Let's get to it, then!

As usual here is my naked face. I'm only wearing the Smashbox Photofinish Primer and Too Faced Shadow Insurance.

As this would be makeup for a night out, I applied thicker layer than usual of foundation. I used my Max Factor Facefinity 3-in-1 foundation in the colours Light Ivory 40 and Nude 47. I blended this into my skin with a damp Beauty Blender sponge.

I then concealed all my problem areas with the Catrice Camouflage Cream in 010 Ivory. I first applied it where needed with my finger and then blended it in with my Beauty Blender. My "problem areas" are generally around my nose, under my eyes and my chin! Women have hormones that make the skin around our noses prone to turning red during the day, so I always conceal there!

For my eyebrows I used an angled liner brush and Urban Decays "Buck" from the Naked (1) Palette and my Hema Eyebrow Gel in Brown. If you want to make sure your eyebrows stay "on" all day, run a bit of eyeshadow primer through them before application and remember to use a setting gel. This works for any kind of brow-application, whether you prefer pencil, powder or both!

To make sure the colour of the eyeshadow is intense, I applied a dark base to my eyelids and blended it slightly with my finger. This can be either just a regular pencil eyeliner, a gel eyeliner or a product meant for these things, such as seen above. This is a NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in the colour Dark Brown. These are very soft pencils, perfect to use as a base under eyeshadow, but in my experience cannot be worn on their own. If not worn with a base under them and a powder on top, they crease like mo-fos. But when used right, they can help you achieve just the look you're going for!

As a transitional colour in my crease, I used my Body Shop Honey Bronze Bronzer in shade 3. Applying this first really helps blend out the darker colour I'll be putting on the lid and also helping to blend in the dark Jumbo Pencil I've already got on the lid.

For my lid colour I used this dark golden-bronze by Inglot. I don't remember the number of this, but it's a stunning colour. The gold/warm tone of this eyeshadow also really helps bring out the blue in my eyes, which I like a lot! I patted this onto my eyelid using a flat shader brush by Sigma and blended it using a crease brush. The general trick to any smokey eye is: Apply and blend, apply and blend. Just do that untill you achieve the look you want, in between blending you may need to change brush or spotclean your brush. Eventually if the brush has too much shadow in it, it won't blend anymore, just move shadow around.

To make the look a little more intense I applied my Urban Decay Glide On Pencil in Demolition on the inner rims of the eye and also on my upper and lower lash line. I also used the dark bronze shadow on the lower lash line just to tie everything together.

Curl lashes and apply a generous coat of mascara! Dark smokey eyes have a tendency to almost swallow up lashes, so if doing this look when going out I'd definitely advise false lashes. If you're not a fan of falsies, just plenty of coats of a good mascara will do. I'm sure this is getting boring by now, but I used my Tweezerman Lash Curler and my Maybelline One by One Waterproof mascara.

To finish off the skin I applied Rimmels Stay Matte Powder in 003 Peach Glow. It's very matte powder, but I like a very matte skin when going out, especially if dancing is going to be involved! As the eyes are obviously the focus of this look, I kept the skin very simple and just applied my Honey Bronze Bronzer on the outside of my face: Along the hairline, under cheekbones and jawbone. It helps make my face look a little slimmer and also just brings a little colour into my skin. I obviously have a lot of redness in my face so with a look like this, I just totally skip blush. If you have completely even skin, a touch of neutral blush is definitely advised, to avoid "dead looking" skin.

To keep the lips simple and nude I used this Round Lipstick by NYX in the colour Circe. It's a warm beige-nude and the formula is creamy enough that it doesn't need a gloss on top. 

And here's the full result!

Tadaaah, I'm ready for a night on the town!

What do you think of this look? What kind of makeup do you wear when going out? Let know in the comments below!

Thank you for reading and untill next time!

XXX

Review: Hema Cosmetic Brush Cleaner!

A while ago I made a post about cleaning make-up brushes, using shampoo. This is obviously not for everyday, but for a deep cleaning once a week or so. If you want to clean your brushes in between uses or you want to re-use your brush for another colour, then what? That's where brush cleansers come into the picture! Many brands make these, the most known one by MAC.

Recently the most Dutch store of them all, Hema, released their own brush cleanser: Hema Cosmetic Brush Cleaner. This pink fluid supposedly cleans the brushes and dries very fast. Perfect for cleaning between uses!

First off, as I opened the bottle, I noticed that the opening was huge. This made me a slightly sad panda, as it does make the product a little harder to work with and will most likely make for waste of product, but for € 4,50 I am not going to complain TOO much about packaging really. I think the bottle in itself looks good, very sleek and of course being pink only makes it better in my book.

Time to test it out!

Here are 4 of my most used make-up brushes. A dual-fiber stippling brush that I use for blush application, a flat eyeshadow paddle-brush, a crease brush and a fluffy blending brush. As you can see they are in dire need of a cleaning!

I did the exact same to all the brushes: I put some of the brush cleanser on some toilet paper (textured is better as it creates friction and helps get all the dirt and grime out of your brushes) and just swirled the brush in the product untill no more came off the brush.

This was the dirtiest of the brushes and as you can see it is not "clean" but it didn't give off anymore colour, so ready for use with another colour or for another day. This is the point of a brush cleanser, they are not for deep cleaning, but for in between, so I am actually pretty impressed, especially for that price.

Here are the brushes afterwards. As you can see the white bristles are still sort of "stained" with colour, but none of them gave off any. They were all dry and ready for use in less than 30 seconds.

Pros:

• Readily available (in Holland) as it is sold in all Hema's throughout the country.
• Dries quick, no water needed.
• Pricepoint: € 4,50
• Does the job without too much hassle.

Cons:

• The opening of the bottle is too big to be practical, so I will probably decanter mine into a small spray bottle for easy use.
• The product has a bit of a sweet smell, which can annoy some people. It doesn't linger on the brushes, so I don't find it offensive.

Conclusion: I'm happy with my brush-cleanser. It's not an AMAZING product, but it does work and I can get more uses out of a brush before having to wash it. If you are looking for a decent brush-cleanser, this is definitely worth trying out!

How do you clean your brushes? What's your favourite method and products for doing so? Let me know in the comments below.

Thank you for reading and until next time!

XXX

Tutorial: Summertime!

Springtime has finally reared it's head here in the Netherlands! Which means I get to break out the bright colours, eyeshadow and lipstick. Generally I tend to wear darker and more neutral things in fall/winter and for summer/spring I go bright. Nothing suits a great pair of sunglasses better than a bold, bright lip.

Since I was inspired the wonderful sunshine, I decided to show how I implement bold colours into my make-up without it being "too much". Now the term "too much" differs from person to person, obviously, but I am a lover of neutrals when it comes to eyes, yet in the warmer months I try to incorporate some colour.

Let's get started!

Here's my naked face! Or well, not completely naked, it's moisturized and primed with the MAC Prep + Prime Skin Base and my eyelids are primed with the Catrice Prime and Fine Eyeshadow Base. Especially in the summer months, primers make or break a make-up look. I have oily skin, and I -need- primers to keep the oils under control, so it doesn't ruin my make-up.

To even out my skin, I first used the Catrice BB Allround Foundation (010 light), which I applied with a Sigma Flat Top Kabuki brush. This gives lighter coverage than using my Beauty Blender and sometimes you don't want a lot of makeup on and this is perfect! To conceal redness, dark circles and other discolourations I used the Catrice Camouflage Cream (010 Ivory, buffed in with a soft blending brush. This particular one is from Hema! I powdered it off with MAC Studio Fix Powder (NC20).

For my brows I used a mixture of Naked 2 and Faint from the Urban Decay Naked Basics Palette with an angled liner brush and set it into place with my Hema Eyebrow Gel in Brown.

Before applying eyeshadow I applied my Urban Decay Glide-On Pencil in Demolition along my lashline and smudged it slightly with an angled liner brush. Applying this under eyeshadow gives soft definition to the eye and generally just makes your lashes look thicker. Hooded lids like mine lend themselves more to this type of lining, instead of a harsh line which only makes your lid look smaller and would hide the small bit of shadow you see when I have my eyes open.

Time for the eyes! For most of this, I used my Sleek Storm Palette, you can read my review for colour references! With a fluffy blending brush, I softly defined my crease with the light, matte, warm brown colour. I usually apply this type of colour first, it just helps whatever other colours I use on the eye blend in better and helps my crease colour fade out better. To define the crease I used the matte, dark brown in the palette with a crease brush. All over the lid I applied the champagne/gold colour with a flat shader brush and patted it onto the lid.

As you can see, blending is key! To me a look is not done untill everything is blended seemlessly. (Where it needs to be, of course!)

To highlight my inner tearduct I used the lightest colour in the Sleek Palette on a slightly fluffy paddle brush. This just pulls a look together, if you ask me. A tearduct highlight makes you look more awake and generally brightens up your eyes.

For a little more definition I applied the dark bronze-y colour from the Stom Palette along my upper lashline and blended it up slightly. This just helps create more depth and definiton and adds a little more shimmer, which shows up great in sunlight!

With a large eyeshadow brush I used a light pink, matte Inglot shadow to highlight under my brow and if you'd want to, you can end the eyelook here. Slap on mascara, lip and blush of choice and you're done!
But as I stated in the beginning this look is all about brights, and thus we're going to take it a little further!

And here it is! This shadow is by Maybelline New York, a younger (cheaper) sister to regular Maybelline. The colour is 637 and is a bright turquoise with cool toned shimmer run through it. It is HIGHLY shimmery, so you need to apreciate that, but you can do this "pop of colour" trick with any colour, really. A gold, silver, purple, green, you name it! Anyway... I applied this on my lower lashline with a small pencil brush, making sure not to blend it too much, to make sure the colour kept it's intensity.

Time to curl lashes and apply mascara. I (as usual) used my Tweezerman Lashcurler and my Maybelline One-by-One Waterproof mascara. I always use waterproof, otherwise within a few hours I have mascara halfway down my cheeks. And let's be honest, that's not a very sexy look. I like mascara, I like a lot of mascara and this one is very buildable without being too clumpy, on me at least.

And that's the eyes done! A white or flesh coloured liner on the waterline would brighten the eyes a lot, but my eyes were bothering me and my lenses were annoying, so I chose to skip the liner.

On my cheeks I used NYX Powder Blush in Angel and my Dior Rose Diamond Shimmer Powder. I skipped bronzer, although you can definitely do it, I just wanted to keep the cheeks fairly lowkey.

And this is the look before the lips are done! Now... With the lips you can do several things, to keep things calm you can go for a tinted lipbalm or a gloss OR you can go full out and do a hot pink or fuschia. I show some of the options below!

This is just a very light pink gloss, it's from a Catrice Limited Collection, but I don't remember the name. Any pink gloss does the job, really.

And now... My favourite!

This is the Rimmel Apocalips Lip Laque in Apocaliptic. A darkened, bright pink which is just gorgeous! As said above a bright fuschia would totally work as well, but I felt like this one today. And that concludes this tutorial.


Do you try to incorporate more colour into your looks in the warmer months? Which and how, let me know below!


Thank you for reading and untill next time!
xxx