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HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

New year, new start.

If the new year was an indication of how the rest of 2010 will be like, I spent most of it at home, eating and nua-ing in bed watching Zombieland. Haha.

New Year’s Eve was slightly different. My New Year’s Eve was spent doing some cardio.

Dancing is always good to burn up the extra calories from the festive eating.

And then making monkey faces to say good bye to 2009.

Of course, going out on special occasions always means a great excuse to dress up. I made me a special pair of bling eyelashes and I got to wear them out!

Eye of the day
M.A.C Paint Pot in Rubenesque
M.A.C Mineralise eyeshadow Gilt by Association
Kate Gel Eyeliner
NARS eyeshadow in Pandora

They matched well with the theme that night: Black with a Touch of Gold. Thank goodness for all the inspiration from monoxious.com. Spending all that time with them, gave me loads of ideas how to dress up that night.

Following in the footsteps of one of the hottest trends for the Autum/Winter 09 season, I decided to try my hand at being vicious, Lid Vicious that is.

After attending the M.A.C Autum/Winter Trend Presentation, I couldnt help but drool over the images and demonstration by Gregory Arlt. I definitely picked up a couple of tips from watching the master at work.

Looking to the runway, here is an example of what it’s like to be Lid Vicious. Various fashion brands including Dsquared2 turned to the dark side for their runway shows.

The girls look like they lived in their makeup overnight! The smokey, smudged effect is something I personally think is wearable on the streets. Very apt when we want to invoke the rock chick in us.

The trick is to line the bottom lids with eyeliner AND then BLEND the line out with a dark eyeshadow in a similar colour.

My take on it.

Face
Rare Minerals SPF 30++ in Medium

Eyes
Kate Gel Eyeliner in Black (must have!)
NARS Eyeshadow Duo in Pandora (shimmer white/matt black) (must have!)
Top lash: Maybelline Define-a-lash mascara
Bottom lash: Maybelline XXL Waterproof mascara
Falsies

Lips
DuWop Lip Venom

My second attempt at underlining my bottom eyelids and hey, I’m liking it! Remember, do keep the rest of the face clean if you’re sporting strong eyes.

After that long picture post of all the girls, here’s the face I sported for the day. We had to do our own makeup for the videoshoot and I got to put my brand new makeup items to good use, including the Too Faced Shadow Insurance I just got. I’m pretty proud of my improving makeup skills. Hooray for a large stash of make up items!

Face of the day

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I am a sucker when it comes to smokey eyes. Although my daily makeup routine is pretty fuss-free and consists primarily of light makeup, I do like to indulge and go a leeeeetle over the top when it comes to events and partying. It was thus hard to resist the Too Faced Smokey Eye Palette when it was dangled in front of me with a discounted price of $49.

I’ll tell you what happened.

I walked into Sephora hoping just to chill and look at the pretty colours that deck the shelves of the various makeup brands one fine and dandy day; I had no intention of shopping for anything. And then, I realised that Pop Beauty was having a 50% off their eyeshadow wallets. Okay… Breathe, I said to my already excited little heart. Let’s go see if they’re worth checking out.

Lo and behold, they were p r e t t y awesome.

For a 24 colour eyeshadow wallet (they’re called wallets cause they’re flat and long and well, duh, like real wallets) whose original price was $65, $32.50 was a pretty good price for that number of eyeshadows. And convenience came in the form of the wallet which had everything – eyeshadows, blushes and lipsticks sans foundation. Imagine going out in the day without makeup and having a last minute meeting scheduled for the afternoon. What do you whip out? Your makeup wallet of course. Just slap on some lipstick, blush and maybe some eyeshadow if you have time. Sounds really inviting to a lazy bugger like me.

“Okay, let’s think about it”, I told myself. Afterall I really had no intention of buying anything and wasnt going to go on a spur of the moment shopping spree. Whilst walking around and browsing the pink shelves of the Too Faced counter, the salesgirl approached and whipped this out.

HOLY COW!

Smokey eyes in a beautiful black and purple packaging! And check out the gothic font.

It was hard to resist. I can feel my inner goth rock chick slowly creeping out.

So I succumbed. I bought it.

There were three different types of smokey eye colours (9 colours in total) in the palette: day smoke, classic smoke and classic smoke. Perfect for use in all different occasions.

Had my brother’s 21st dinner party last night and I decided to break out the palette. So here’s my face of the day with the Classic Smoke from the palette.

Isnt it gorgeous!?

The colours really stand out on camera and is soooo pigmented.

Face of the day

Face:
Everyday Minerals mineral foundation in Olive Golden Medium (my holy grail!)
Benefit Dandelion blush

Eyes:
Too Faced classic smoke in Smokey Eye palette
Kate Gel Eyeliner
Beauty Buffet eyebrow pencil
Maybelline XXL Waterproof mascara
L’oreal Voluminous mascara

Lips:
Maybelline Fruity Jelly lipgloss

Get the look here.

I’m still alive. Swamped under work, but still barely breathing.

The past 2 weeks have been exhausting although my temporary workload didnt require me to be on my feet as I normally would. Im actually glad that post Chinese New Year festivities, I resume duties back in school. Under-stimulated is an understatement. The 6 week break off from school, however, gave me the chance to bond very well with my colleagues over buffet lunches in the office. Anyhoos, with a new classroom structure for school next week, but retaining the same teacher with the same routines, Im looking forward to working closely with the team and ensuring a positive and fluent environment in the classroom.

On to a less boring topic, our superb project is really manifesting itself, though of course, there are the little nitty bitty details that need to be ironed out. And the impending long weekend is certainly a welcome relief from the whirlwind madness of everything, although I seriously doubt many of us will be getting much rest during the first 2 days of the Lunar New Year.

The opportunity to go out despite all that, means I get to experiment with make up again as I have been recently! YAY! My most recent attempt was for the vPost Nuffnang Christmas Party. I did kinda do my makeup for it in a bit of a rush, but was nonetheless pretty satisfied with the final results. I might need a stronger mid-colour. Oh and did I mention I won an OSIM uSurf for my scrapbooking efforts in the Most Promising Blog Journalist contest.

FIRST PRIZE BABY!

Anyway, as I was saying, the Soccer Player makeup I put on for the night.

Eyes
Inner colour: Artistry Eye Colour Palette in Discreet
Outer colour: Victoria Secret Beauty Rush Luminous Shadow in In the Mink
Kate Gel Eyeliner in Black

Do up the rest of your face the usual way and viola!

The face of a real soccer player may not necessarily always look like that. Haha.

We’re taking a break from reviewing mascaras for a bit and moving on to other exciting stuff like GEL EYELINERS! There isnt much of an abundance of gel eyeliners available here in Singapore save for the 2 major makeup brands that I know about. Maybelline just hopped on the bandwagon and introduced their gel eyeliner here, and I couldnt help but feel that it took a stab at the Kate eyeliner packaging and concept by also packing the brush together. Can you believe my incredulity when I saw their gel eyeliner several days after I came back from BKK on a high?

Anyway, the Kate Gel Eyeliner wasnt readily available in Singapore but I still managed to get my hands on it! Ever since my excitement at finding them in MBK Watson, I have been looking for the perfect excuse opportunity to open my gel eyeliner and use it. Then came the chance.

Now, remembering that I’ve always been using pencil eyeliners and/or liquid liners, I surmised gel eyeliners to be the in-between. If I could “rank” them, I’d say that pencil eyeliners are for beginners because you can draw lightly (ie. sketch) before deciding to apply more pressure to your desired line, while liquid liners should be handled by users who generally have better control over their brush/tool. Thus, gel eyeliners are for people like me who arent exactly new to eyelining, yet arent as skilled and still sometimes make mistakes when it comes to drawing the perfect line.

I judged the gel eyeliner on its ease of application and it’s staying power. My problem with pencil liners was that it would transfer to my upper eyelids owing to my naturally oily eyelids AND hidden double eyelids, thus leaving me at the end of the the day with well, hardly any eyeliner left.

Kate Gel Eyeliner’s staying power, despite also having this transfer problem, was very much bearable as compared to using a pencil. At the end of a long day, the line was still visible, though not that much fainter, and someone most likely would still be able to notice that you took the trouble to line your eyes.

Ease of application was such a breeze. Just dip the accompanying brush into the pot, brush out a little bit of eyeliner, touch the brush head to your lids, draw and go. The line was precise, consistent and there was no worry about dragging/pulling your eyelids. You know what they say about applying too much mechanical stress to your delicate eye area. It takes me about 2 minutes to draw both my eyes and this amount of time I can afford when in a hurry to get to work early wanting to beat the morning peak period traffic. If you have the extra time, wiggle on some mascara and your eyes are pretty much dressed up for a casual day at work.

For gel eyeliner noobs like me, you may want to consider this gel eyeliner if you’re graduating from your pencil liner. It definitely helps that the brush is a square flat brush instead of them long skinny types. Say hello to eyelined eyes from now on.