A lookbook, representative of my basic makeup doings (cough snort) during my blog hiatus. I've chosen to include only looks featuring products I haven't shown you before, with reviewlets, since the life unbeautiful is taking up way too much of my brainspace right now to allow for the usual rambly reviews proper. Try to contain your gusty sighs of relief....
(If you're a member of makeupalley, you may have seen these posted over the last few months, but please point your fingers / scratchy GWP brushes of Blame and Shunning at those fellow MUAers who told me to just go and blog them already / anyway. :P)Consider yourselves forewarned, and scroll straight down to the end for recompense. By which I mean PIE.
The products:
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| clockwise from compact: Rouge Bunny Rouge At Goldcombe Bay powder bronzer, Shu Uemura Tint in Gelato AT03 Fantasy Orange, Jill Stuart Lip Blossom 08 Pretty Poppy, Benefique Theoty Lipstick Melty-Touch PK-06, Addiction Pastel Love lip gloss, Etude House Play 101 Pencils 15 and 39, Dior It-Lash It-Purple mascara, Guerlain Kiss Kiss lipsticks in Sugar Kiss and Red Love. |
Look 1: orange, high-contrast
The combination of bright lip&cheek tint (Shu Uemura Tint In Gelato AT03 Fantasy Orange) with coloured mascara (Dior It-Purple It-Lash) perfectly suited my minimal-effort-maximum-impact approach to simple summer makeup, in no-brainer complementary tones of yellorange and blurple.
This mascara shares the excellent formula of its pink sister, but reads as less vibrant on my black lashes than in the tube, so I smudged some Diego Dalla Palma Storm Violet shadow [review] along lashlines to help it along, blending out with the blue-white from Suqqu Hisuidama [review].
The Shu tint blends out to a a soft glow-from-within matte on my cheeks and, layered more thickly (and worn over balm), as a satin on my lips, where, owing to its high silicone content, it's surprisingly kind to vertical liplines. In pigmentation, blendability and scent-freedom(!) this formula has been and will remain a summer staple for years to come, displacing the Becca Beach Tints in my heart. I like best to pair its modern matte finish with fresh, glowy-but-not-dewy skin: here courtesy of Shu Uemura Underbase Cream Pink set with loose Guerlain Meteorites in Mythic (discontinued).
Look 2: orange, low-contrast
Another staple look took the opposite approach to create a soft monotonal gradation of tones -- my favourite this season has been orangey peach, to 'summerize' the rose tones of my 'no makeup' look. In common with that basic recipe, the eyecolour here is a wash of one of Etude House's Play 101 pencils (#15 is one of the 'glossy' shade, with no shimmer, which adds dimension naturally as it catches the light, obviating any need of further shading/highlighting procucts), and Rouge Bunny Rouge powder bronzer replaces blush in a 'W' placement (over bridge of nose as well as cheeks). Addiction lipgloss in Pastel Love works as un-makeup for my lips: its jelly texture conceals and evens out out my dry areas and fine liplines [I've shown you this formula in action before], while its warm peachy-beige tint cancels out their corpsical blue-mauve tones.
Here's a swatch comparison between the Etude House Play 15 pencil, THREE Love Satisfaction duo [review] and Kiko Colour Kajal 104 Red to illustrate the glossy finish and pinky coral tones (vs. the pastel tangerine and primary red of the other two oranges) which make it such a good 'neutral' orange for me.
And a look at how the Rouge Bunny Rouge At Goldcombe Bay powder bronzer compares to their liquid offering, which I've finally used up after three happy years together: in short, the powder is slightly paler and cooler-toned, and blends out to an even more exquisitely airy skin-flattering satin texture.
Intermission: this year's jellies
Last year confirmed that a jelly finish looks most flattering on my dry, dehydrated and lined lips in an alternately boiling/aggressively air-conditioned climate. Having a decent wardrobe of them from last year, I only added two new products: Benefique Theoty Melty-Touch lipstick PK-06 (a warm pink to replace the Addiction Psychadelic gloss and Coffret D'Or RD128 I'd finished, and more pigmented and truer a jelly than either); and Jill Stuart Lip Blossom 08 Pretty Poppy, a glossy warm red that sits in between the slightly cool-toned Lunasol Cherry Red and more orange Chicca Amaryllis. (All the shades named here were featured in last year's jelly roundup.) Unusually for Japanese formulas, both of these are scented: a clean tea-rose for the Benefique and candied peach-and-floral for the Jill Stuart.
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| preposterous J-brand packaging is an added bonus -- and check out the flip-up mirror lid on that JS |
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| Benefique PK-06 |
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| Jill Stuart 08 Pretty Poppy |
However, I did add two shades from the new Guerlain Kiss Kiss lipstick range to my stash: 343 Sugar Kiss (cheery coral pink) and 324 Red Love (softened strawberry). Evonnz has great lip swatches of the various offerings in the line, which, as is customary with Guerlain, vary quite a bit in terms of pigmentation and finish. Both of mine are medium-pigment crellies (or maybe, considering the texture and candied violet scent, fondants), with greater creamy glide than the usual Rouge Automatique or Rouge G formulas, but surprisingly superior lasting- and staining-power to the Autos.
Swatched with the samples from my blister pack: see the squishiness?
The soft red of Red Love went well with not-quite-true blues (muted by grey just as the lipstick is warmed by strawberry) for a vaguely retro look i.e. the three right-most pans from Lunasol Vivid Clear Eyes EX-02 [Rouge Deluxe's review], Rose de Versailles Oscar black liquid liner and GOSH white kohl. Sheer application of Canmake CL01 Clear Red Heart cheeks.
On the other hand, I liked to wear the perennially sweetly-pretty-for-summer coral Sugar Kiss with an oh-so-SS-2014-dahling mixed metal haze on the eyes: here the complex olive-bronze Etude House Play 101 Pencil in 39 blended out with the coral-pink glitter from THREE Tranquil Oasis [swatch]. Blush is my favourite nude, Chicca Flush Blush 01 Baby Girl [review].
Admittedly, my interpretation of the mixed metals trend was more or less 'wear this Etude House pencil with all of the things all summer long', because it is basically the complexparkly lovechild of two of my beloveds: RBR Abyssinian Catbird, and THREE Eye Rock pencil, closer resembling the AbCat the more you blend it out, while applying at full strength with a depth that rivals Eye Rock.
While the Etude House Play 101 pencils had more misses than hits for me (in particular the 'matte' and 'creamy' formulas dragged like chalk across my dry skin), this one was an absolute standout -- buttery, pigmented, and blendable, applying intensely without looking crepey on my lids, and without the fallout issues I experienced with several other 'glitters' in the line. It's now working beautifully as an eyeshadow in autumn, with some black waterlining for a sultry smokey eye -- the only issue being that its opaque twist-up mechanism makes it hard to gauge how much I have left.
(In the last two looks I'm wearing Shu Uemura Whitefficient pink/purple mousse, set with Paul&Joe bird balls as base, and my last tube of Fasio Full Dynamic Volume mascara :'( In all looks, Burberry Sheer Touch concealer 01 and Suqqu brow pen 01 or 02.)
(In the last two looks I'm wearing Shu Uemura Whitefficient pink/purple mousse, set with Paul&Joe bird balls as base, and my last tube of Fasio Full Dynamic Volume mascara :'( In all looks, Burberry Sheer Touch concealer 01 and Suqqu brow pen 01 or 02.)
Finally, if you've made it thus far, here's an autumnal afterword. Can it really be that I'm blogging something I did last weekend instead of three months ago? :O
Rosemary pecan pie, by Ruby Tandoh (she of last year's Bake Off), with the modifications I make to all pecan pie recipes to dial back the sweetness: substitute walnuts for half the pecans in the filling, unrefined molasses sugar (I like this) for regular brown sugar, and a glug of bourbon for the vanilla. And add extra salt, water retention bedamned. The rosemary in this recipe added the perfect smoky savoury depth, and I can't recommend it highly enough. [You may find, as I do, that using molasses sugar requires a slightly longer baking time at a lower temperature (45 mins at 170C), preparing to throw a sheet of foil over the pie for the last 10 minutes if the nuts on top seem to be burning.]
I am in full-on autumn mode now, and hope to actually post some looks and reviews while this season's still...seasonal. Thanks to everyone still reading for your patience, and do let me know what's been going on in your makeup lives lately :)