FOTD: Bright lip city gonna set my soul on fire!

I've been going through a bright lip phase at the moment which is something that I never thought I'd be doing.  These colours aren't fantastically bright but they're bright enough to allow me to strike the balance between bright and work appropriate.

My lips are pigmented and the top lip is darker than the bottom.  All three of these products mask that problem and apply uniformly to both lips.  The Korres tub is standard lipbalm size, the ELF tub really is that big. 

FOTD: Bright lips and strong brows

This is going to be my signature look this summer.  No fuss, no muss!  What exactly does muss mean?  And my boss is adamant that it's no muss, no fuss.  Anyway..I digress.

Even though my eyelids are pigmented, I'm not really insecure about them as I have other things to worry about.  And I'm quite impressed at how clear my skin is..that's all down to The Sanctuary's skincare line..

The plan was to use a mascara which gave me a nice thick set of lashes and a little liner.  The lips were going to originally lipstick and lipstick alone but I wanted something a bit more glossy so the lipgloss came out.  Full lashes also failed as my mascara was on its last legs.

Products used were..

• ELF Eyebrow Kit in Dark
• MAC Full on Lust lipgloss (typically, this is LE and mine is running dangerously low)
• Revlon Colourbust in Peach

I had a right old time with the ELF Eyebrow Kit.  When I first used it, it was late at night..  I thought I looked fine until Simon started drawing comparisons to Groucho Marx.  You can kind of see that he was right as this photo demonstrates:

I tried it again the day after whilst getting ready for work in the best lit room of the flat and he still thought I had too much on.  I didn't, I quite liked how my brows looked.  What does everyone else think about them?  I could really do with some help.. 

I'm not sure why the brow looks like it has dandruff, it didn't look like that in real life.  You can also see the stray hairs, I didn't want to tame the whole brow down just incase it looked a bit too fake. 

This photo also makes me realise that I have finished yet another mascara as my lashes look a bit crap whereas before, it made them look brilliant.

Does anyone know how to shade brows in properly? Let me know!

Face charts/How to get the look

I never knew how people managed to emulate the makeup looks from collections by companies until I was made aware of these magical things called face charts. Now I've been on Specktra for a little while now and I always see people produce knockout looks and I was bemused as to how some of these people achieved them. That's not saying that everyone relies on face charts, many of the stellar looks I've seen are based on pure imagination.

Face charts are illustrated beautifully by the face chart link up there, they are basically a drawing of a face "coloured in" with products which have been used to achieve a certain look. Now face charts are well known to people who love makeup and do a lot of FOTD's etc but outside of that world I don't think many people know they exist. I only found out they existed when I saw them on Specktra and I was amazed by them.

I've decided to do a series of FOTD's which are directly copied from looks championed by Urban Decay. I found the face charts for the looks on Sara's magnificent blog (thanks Sara!) and I have saved them onto my desktop.

The first look which I intend on doing is this one because I LOVE the intensity of the colour and now I know how to get it so watch out for it.

I hope the look turn out ok and that I manage to translate the looks over successfully to Indian skin so that other women of colour are able to copy the looks as well.

It will be quite a challenge as I have forgotten my Box of Shadows II at my parents' house and have only three shades with me here (Foxy, Chopper and Illegal) so I will be doing the look with dupes and hopefully it will work out ok, fingers crossed!

It appears that the face chart link above doesn't let you click on it so I've uploaded these:

FOTD 1

This is a semi FOTD I did the other week, it's not really a full FOTD, it's more like an EOTD and LOTD but such is life.

Any CC is welcome, you know I need the help!

Products I used:



Makeup:

Bobbi Brown Long Wear Gel Eyeliner in Black Ink

Bobbi Brown Basics Eye Palette, I used Heather Mauve which is the third shade along from the left

Maybelline The Colossal Mascara

Diamond Kajal

Rimmel Vinyl Lip in Velocity

Tools:

Ruby and Millie Eyeshadow Brush (not pictured but can be found here )

Bobbi Brown Mini Gel Liner Brush

I had had mediocre success with the gel liner in the past, I had finally figured out how to get a straight-ish line going on but could never ever get the flick right on both eyes, on one eye I would get the flick and on the other it would be a thick line just being dragged. I tried to use this kinda brush but it didn't really work out (although I've only used it once so may try again). Anyway, I'm rambling, this day I decided to give my BB brush another bash and I got the exact line I wanted so it turned into a FOTD and here's me showing off my basic skill:

Eye eye captain:



I'm quite impressed with how I managed to get it looking so smooth, usually it's really bumpy and you can tell where I've stopped and started. I've got all my eye products on in all these photos. The Heather Shimmer looks pretty light on my lids compared to how it looks in the pan which is why I was surprised that my every day shade looked so unusual.

Eyes wide shut:


With flash:

Both eyes:


Lip service:

Any tips for improvement, readers?