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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Naked 3 Makeup Tutorial!

Hey Everyone!!!

I have been absolutely DYING to do a makeup tutorial using the new Urban Decay Naked 3 palette! This palette is gorgeous and I love the rosey/gold tones of the shades that UD decided to use. I chose to do something simple but still glamorous and it would be perfect for any Holiday parties you may be going to! I hope you all enjoy this tutorial and have a great Holiday!





Face:
Sephora Ultra Smoothing Face Primer
Revlon ColorStay Liquid Foundation 150 Buff Chamois & 180 Sand Beige
MAC Pro Longwear Concealer NC15 & OCC Conceal Y2
MAC Studio Fix N5
Tarte Blush in Darling
Tarte Bronzer in Park Avenue Princess
Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light
MAC MSF in Whisper of Gilt

Eyes:
MAC Painterly Paint Pot
Naked 3 Shadows: Strange, Burnout, Limit, Nooner, Liar, & Darkside
Maybelline Eye Studio Gel Liner in Blackest Black
MUG Corrupt to set liner
Tarte Lights Camera Lashes & Maybelline Big Eyes Mascara

Brows:
Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz in Brunette
Anastasia Beverly Hills Clear Brow Gel

Lips:
Maybelline Color Whisper in Lust For Blush

Sigma Brushes used in this tutorial:

F63: http://tinyurl.com/p9hthdm
E48 & E38: http://tinyurl.com/qhcrlhc
E57: http://tinyurl.com/pdumevt
E21: http://tinyurl.com/qxbqke3
E17: http://tinyurl.com/lvlcfmq
E46: http://tinyurl.com/nyjvj8f

Use the code DEC2013 for 10% off your entire Sigma purchase!

-Alicia

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Review: .em Michelle Phan Cosmetics!


Hey Everyone!

I have quite the blog post for you today! Just to warn you, there are a TON of pictures haha! A few months ago I was contacted by .em Michelle Phan Cosmetics and they asked if I would be willing to try out some of their products for review and I couldn't turn down the offer! I really wanted to give their products a try since I have seen a few videos and blog posts throughout the beauty community and I figured I would see for myself how the products performed! .em allowed me to choose a few of their products that I was interested in for review so I decided on a Life Palette, two lipsticks, and a mascara.

I will be showing you the products that I received and what my personal thoughts are of each of the products!

How about we get started!?

To start off, I want to talk about the Life Palette that I chose, which was the Night Life palette. The palette comes with 36 total products: 24 shadows, 8 lip products, and 4 blushes. I absolutely love the shadows that are in this palette. The majority of them are very pigmented and are easy to apply and more importantly, BLEND! This palette comes with a nice blend of mattes and shimmer/satin shades.

The only issue that I had shadow wise, were with the purple shadows. I suppose it comes along with the territory that purples are one of the more difficult to work with and get good color payoff, so as I sort of expected, the purples aren't fantastic in my opinion but they are workable and definitely not the worst purples I have come across by any means. I just find that they take a little extra work to get them to blend and apply evenly. 

This palette also comes with a sheet that has each of the 4 quadrants separated and looks that you can do using each quadrant. I thought that this was great to include and perfect for those just starting off in makeup and looking for ways to pair the products together!








I also wanted to swatch some of my favorites out of this palette. Now, the palette does come with names for each product on the back of the palette, but it's so small in person that the wording wasn't big enough in picture form. But there are product names, which is AWESOME!


Can we please just talk about this matte black for a moment?! It's soooo incredibly pigmented and rich, I was PLEASANTLY surprised with how awesome it is! I also love the two shadows next to the black, the deep purple and taupe/purple/brown, I always use them in my crease and outer V. The gold is just spectacular and one of my "go to" shadows for all over the lid! These shadows last all day with no creasing!

As I said before, there are 4 blushes that are in this palette. Now, I find it hard to actually say that they are all truly blushes. Two of the shades are very light and I would consider them more of a highlight than an actual blusher. I also find that the more brown/tan toned blush would work okay as a bronzer. The only true blush in my opinion is the pink, but I honestly mix the pink and the bronze shade to create my own blush color and it works well! I find that these blushes last all day and are fairly pigmented.


Left to Right: Light pink/champagne blush, pink blush, light tan blush, deeper tan blush
Now on to my least favorite part of this palette, the lip products. It's not that these are poorly made products in the least, I just cannot stand when cream/lip products are put in the same palette as a powder product. It's inevitable that the powders will have fallout into the creams and it just creates a huge mess and ruins the color of the creams.

This palette comes with a mixture of glosses and lipsticks. The lipsticks are more of a matte finish and the glosses are quite thick and slightly sticky (but tolerable)! I find the glosses to be quite comfortable on the lips but they don't have the best staying power for me. I was able to get about 2 hours wear with them. The lipsticks are more of a dry formula and I found them to be a little uncomfortable on the lips. The red lipstick was a bit patchy and wasn't the most pigmented red I have worked with. The glosses and pink lipstick were pretty decently pigmented. I was able to get about 4 hours wear out of them.


One thing that I was very happy about with this palette was that it comes with a smaller travel size empty palette. This palette gives you the ability to swap out shadows for daily use or take certain products from this bigger palette for travel! I was so happy to find out that they provide the smaller palettes for FREE when you purchase a Life Palette! So handy! The larger palette comes with a little tool to remove each product to put it into the smaller one! Way to go .em!



I know you are all wondering the price of this huge palette. The cost of the Life Palettes are $75. Yes, I thought it was a bit steep when I first saw the price and still kind of do think it's a lot. I do wish that .em Cosmetics would take out the lip products and just leave it with the blushes and shadows; making a more reasonable price point and possibly making the palette even more appealing to customers.

Next, I would like to talk about the lipsticks that I received! I LOVE the formula of these bad boys! I was able to get the cream formula, which is always my favorite formula anyways, but these are amazing! So comfortable on the lips and they last quite some time! I was able to get 4-5 hours wear, which is a lot for me, so I was very pleased! They are not drying on the lips at all and are extremely opaque! My favorite of the two is Misty Mauve (you have seen this already in a few tutorials of mine)! The lipsticks are $16.50.


Left to Right: Love Me! & Misty Mauve
Lastly, the mascara! I chose the Dramatic Volume Mascara and I ended up being sent the waterproof version, which I was bummed about because I am not a fan of waterproof, but that's okay! I really enjoy the formula and found that it yields amazing volume and slight length! I liked to use it paired with other mascaras as I normally do that anyways! If you are a fan of waterproof mascara, you will love this one! It's almost impossible to get off and it holds a curl like a mother! I was very impressed but not so much when I tried taking it off haha! I did find that I lost some lashes while removing it so just keep that in mind, but otherwise it's a fantastic product. The mascara costs $20.



I really hope that you all found this extremely lengthy blog post to be helpful and if you have tried out .em Cosmetics, let me know how you like the products! I overall really enjoy the products that I received and my favorites are the shadows and Misty Mauve lipstick!

You can purchase these products and more here






-Alicia


**DISCLAIMER** Some or all products in this post have been provided by the brands stated for review or use. All opinions are my own and it is my obligation to give my readers an honest review of any products received, whether positive or negative.