Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Featured YouTube Guru: Fashionista804


Watching YouTube videos is one of my favorite past-times. I love watching them because I learn so much, and it is fascinating for me to see so many talented people literally create masterpieces with makeup. I'm not the most creative person when it comes to makeup, and watching videos gives me insight into so many looks I never would have put together on my own. I absolutely adore seeing gorgeous hair, gorgeous smokey eyes, gorgeous lips, everything just looking flawless. And I love to see how that gets created. 

So you can imagine my absolute delight when I stumbled upon Fashionista804's YouTube Channel. She. is. awesome. She is. She's cute, fun, doesn't take herself super seriously (but doesn't try really hard to be silly either like some gurus), and most importantly she's crazy talented. Her name is Sophia, and she is Korean-American and a MAC makeup artist (legit!). I believe she lives in California, and she just puts together a lot of gorgeous looks. She's the kind of girl you see on the street and you're like ! Her hair! Her nails! Her outfits! Her MAKEUP. How did she do that?! and take mental notes so you can look up everything you liked later. 

Her strengths: 
-Insane blending skills
-Great eye for color combinations
-Really helpful in terms of crease work technique, because she does a lot of crease work in every video
-Stylish OOTD videos AND OOTD MAC videos (crazy interesting to see how a MAC artist dresses for work!) 
-Friendly, nice, not irritating or grating (at least to me. She can be a little dramatic but in a way where it's just genuine quirkyness)
-Her nails are amazing. She always has some amazing glitter on them, or polka dots on one nail, or just mixes it up. It's the kind of thing where you try to glimpse what she's wearing on her nails because they look so amazing and bejeweled and beautiful, and there's just so much amazingness going on that you can't figure out exactly what it is she did or has on them, but you just know its amaze-balls. The shape is fierce, and they just always look so damn cool/glamorous/gorgeous
-She considers all skin tones and recommends products for deeper skin tones, like in her nude lips tutorial, or in her contouring tutorial, which is something I have rarely seen another guru do
-Ummm she dyed her hair red... and that's just awesome? Most people think a brunette (especially an asian girl) dyeing her hair such a bright color is insanity, but she's just one example of an asian girl who works it and looks fabulous! I take it as inspiration <3 (thinking of going red!)
-She actually sings really well. I prefer the little snippets of her singing at the end of makeup tutorials or during as opposed to the few videos she has of whole songs. It's just nice to hear a burst of "Oh shit she can sing"

So without further ado here I will paste in some of my favorite videos from her. I'll try to give you a sampling of a good variety of the videos she has on her channel. Definitely check her out!





Monday, February 27, 2012

NYX Cosmetics Glitter Cream Palettes in Ice Queen & Royal Violets

I first found out about the NYX Glitter Cream Palettes when watching a Katy Perry California Gurls-inspired makeup tutorial on YouTube. I immediately bought the purple palette (Royal Violets) from the video because the result I saw was stunning, and the guru I had watched was raving about that specific palette. So I was really excited to get my hands on it. At a later point I purchased the Ice Queen Palette.

I have to say that overall, I'm quite underwhelmed by these glitters.

I really love the way they look in the packaging, but on the eye it just becomes kind of a headache for me to try and work with. I would recommend this palette only if you want to spread a little bit of glitter over an eyeshadow, and advise you to gently pat it on at that. However, if you're looking to get a really gorgeous glittery eye, I would say to look elsewhere :( I find that these cream glitters do not pick up easily with a brush or your fingers, and it takes a lot of digging around in the cream to pick up glitter, since all the glitter is suspended in a clear gel (though upon looking at the palette it would seem that each well is chock full of glitter). Aside from the application, I find that they tend to clump together and goop on the eyelids, and separate really very easily. Even when applying a sealer base underneath (an adhesive for glitter to stick to) it still creased, separated, clumped, and just wouldn't go where I wanted it to. However, if you're in a pinch, really want at least a LITTLE glitter in your life, and want something cheap and can only afford to spend $5 at the moment, then I would say go for these. They are nice to look at, to have as part of your collection, and if you go out wearing this for a night out on the town I don't know how noticeable the creasing would be. To me it becomes quite noticeable quickly, but no one ever tends to get really up in your face. Hopefully all they'll see is a flash of glitter every time you blink :)

Pictures:





After generously digging my finger in the well of glitter to see how much I could pick up- believe me I tried:
 Equals this much when applied to skin (imagine trying to pack this onto your eye):

How it wears:

Initial Eye Look (which took a good 10 minutes to layer on using 3 of the different shades in the Ice Queen Palette, with a lot of pushing the product around with my brush and sticking it onto areas of my lid... nightmare, but as you can see if you want to you can make it look halfway decent (for a while))



Literally 10 minutes later:


Thursday, February 9, 2012

Glitter Overload!

It's true- I'm a glitteraholic. I love love love love all things glitter, ESPECIALLY nail polish. So any time I see an undeniably beautiful glitter polish, I make sure to take the opportunity to add it to my collection, or mark it in my mind to pick up when I have the money. Obviously I want to collect all the Deborah Lipmann Nail Lacquers, but until I have the moolah to order them, I satisfy my glitter sweet tooth by checking in at Sephora, Ulta, and drugstores.

Recently I saw HRH Collection's Shanghai Haul video, and was completely overwhelmed by her beautiful glitter tipped manicure. I really wanted the same look on myself, and remembered passing by the new Essie Luxeffects Collection at Ulta. When I went back, both the silver and pink glitter polishes I wanted were gone :( But then I checked in at my newly revamped Duane Reade just in case, and they had the whole collection, fully stocked! I bought the pink, the silver, AND they had the Nicole by OPI "Rainbow in the S-Kylie" nail polish from the Kardashian Kolors Kollection, which features polishes created by all the fabulous ladies of the Kardashian family- Kylie, Kendall, Kris, Khloe, Kourtney, and Kim.


So I picked up three polishes in total from Duane Reade:
Nicole by OPI Rainbow in the S-Kylie (Rainbow Glitter) $8
Essie Set in Stone (Silver Chunky Glitter) $8.50
Essie A Cut Above (Pink Chunky Glitter) $8.50
Without further ado, here are pictures!









How beautiful are these? I'll do future NOTDs so you can see swatches of these polishes up close :)