Flattering Eye of the day

I wonder if I should find something else to call these besides "eye of the day" because I rarely post them on the same day I wear them. Maybe... eye of two weeks ago? Doesn't have much of a ring to it. Maybe it's just a look. An eye look. I dunno.

Still feeling under the weather and have no energy to swatch new stuff or edit photos. I would love to post the Orly Cosmic FX polishes but I'm just too exhausted!

So, here's an eye look I did a few weeks ago that I thought really made my eye color look nice.




See?? Doesn't it make my eyes look really brown? I think they look fabulous.

This was (to the best of my memory...)
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Fyrinnae Leopard Print Galaxy applied wet on lid
The dark half of the L'oreal HIP Gilded Duo in crease
I don't remember what was on the lower lashline
Fyrinnae Nijiro highlight
Urban Decay Liquid Liner in Oil Slick
Urban Decay Zero 24/7
Cover Girl Lash Blast

I love green eyeshadow on my eyes because it seems to bring out the color and make it look rich and golden instead of just black like they normally look. However, green doesn't always mesh well with my skin tone, it seems to bring out redness or weird yellow/orange tones. Same thing happens with green polish, too. However, I love green so it rarely keeps me from wearing it. This combination wasn't bad on my skin. Pretty close to perfect.

Leopard-Print Galaxy is spectacular. It shifts colors at different angles and it has lots of little iridescent sparkles. I'm addicted to these Fyrinnae Arcane Magic shades, they're so fun and interesting! Despite the complexity and sparkle of Leopard Print Galaxy, this was still a fairly subtle look.

Eye look with L'Oreal HIP duo in Charged

Charged is my favorite of the HIP duos I've tried. It's so perfectly perfect I can't believe it's a drugstore product.


I tried to capture the sparkle of the glitter and the sparkle of the eyeliner I used but I don't think I quite succeeded.


I don't know what's up with that dull looking area in the crease... I didn't notice it in real life, I have no idea what it is!

This was:
MAC Painterly Paint Pot
L'Oreal HIP duo in Charged, copper on lid and darker shade in crease and on lower lashline
Milani Crystal Eyez in Glamorously Glittering on lid (over the copper)
Fyrinnae Monarch Butterfly wet as liner
Lancome Ornate as highlight
The very last of my Milani Liquif'eye in Black
Cover Girl Lash Blast

I love this duo so much. The copper is so smooth and shiny and it's super pigmented. It's like a toned-down MAC Copper Sparkle, with that shiny liquid metal finish. The darker shade has so much depth, it looks smoky and dark but then glints of super bright shiny copper show through, a little like Fyrinnae Fire Opal, the smoky with gleaming shimmer type of look.

The Milani Crystal Eyez is one of those "holographic" shadows I talked about before... which are sadly not holographic but more like plain glitter gel. Which isn't a bad thing, but I totally wanted some holo glitter eyeshadow. I've been meaning to review all the shades I have, I even took pictures! I just keep forgetting to post it every time a cool new polish or eyeshadow comes along, heh.

Oh, and I did try to use the HIP duo in Darling... it was a dud. I gave up on it. It's not the metallic formula like these, it's called 'crystal' I think? It was hard and flaky and had no pigment. It's the only one I haven't loved so far. I picked up the Sassy duo on clearance at Target last week but I haven't tried it yet.

Eye of the Day, HIP shadow duos and holo/duochrome layering

I am still way behind on my nail polish posting, but posting little pictures of my eye of the day and doing makeup reviews is refreshing. It's made me feel somewhat recharged and more excited about blogging again. I still have to finish my OPI Switzerland swatches and I do feel kinda bad about not getting the Nubar Venetian Glass or Misa Mardi Gras collections posted yet, though. But I will. So. Anyway. Makeup.

This was my eye of the day on Wednesday. I wanted to try out the HIP Gilded duo and this is what I ended up with, which I think turned out rather pretty:




This is:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
HIP Gilded duo (gold on lid, dark shade in crease and on lower lashline)
Fyrinnae Nijiro to highlight
Fyrinnae STFU (how awesome is that?) with MAC Water Based Mixing Medium as liner
Urban Decay 24/7 Zero
Dying tube of Cover Girl Lash Blast
And I think I used Urban Decay Lash Primer Potion too but I can't remember for sure.

The gold is really excellent. Like the silver it's soft, smooth, pigmented and very shiny/reflective. Perfect gold metallic. Very impressive. This is more of a yellow-warm gold, though, and while I do love this one I'd also like a lighter neutral gold too. Maybe they already have one, my local HIP displays are really disheveled and picked over.

The other half of the duo is very nice with the gold, a perfect compliment. It's a... dark... I'm not sure... I want to say it's blackened green. It looks greenish, but mostly black. So a blackened green with little flecks of gold shimmer. Very pretty. The gold flecks don't show up that well, though.

I picked up a few more of these L'Oreal HIP shadows cause I think I love them. That, and they were buy two get $5.00 off at Meijer. Here's what I have now:

Charged, which is fecking AMAZING. It reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite shadow duos of all time- MAC Heat/Element. This is different, but also... better. The copper is so shiny and perfect and the darker rust shade is absolutely perfect with it, it reminds me of Fyrinnae Fire Opal a little because it has a smoky deep base with glints of metallic red/copper gleaming through.


Darling. I haven't used this one yet. I tried to use a little of the lighter shade the other day but it didn't seems as nice or silky like the other ones. It seemed a little hard and flaky. When I do use this I'll report back.

Gilded, which is what I used. Perfection.


Platinum, also perfection.

I think I posted a picture of the Electrified duo already. That one rocks too.

I took this picture in blinding sunlight and I thought it turned out kind of cool. I'm in the process of blinking, kinda goofy but I think it looks neat.

I'm thinking Nijiro is a little to light and frosty for a highlight color for me. Must experiment more.

And just so it's not all makeup, here's a really old nail of the day picture. I think this might even be from last June O_o


It's one coat of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Garnet Lapis over OPI Designer Series Glamour. It's a holo-duochrome! This looks really amazing in real life, you have to try it. Layer any sheer duochrome (Sally Hansen Nail Prisms and Ozotic duochromes are perfect for this) over a nice strong holo polish. Mesmerizing. Too bad I couldn't catch more of the duochrome (and yes, 'duochrome' is used loosely) effect in my pictures.

In a pyromantic way, I'm her slave....

Living for her to ignite.

My eye of the day today:

Natural light.


Flash.

This is:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
HIP Platinum duo (Silver on lid and lower lashline, black in crease and lower lashline)
Fyrinnae Nijiro to highlight
GOSH Holographic loose glitter all over lid and crease
Fyrinnae Pyromantic Erotica with MAC Water Based Mixing Medium as liner
Urban Decay 24/7 in Zero in waterline and to tightline
Cover Girl Lash Blast Mascara (this tube is on its last legs apparently... yikes)
Urban Decay Brow Box

The liner is duochrome and I think the pictures captured it a little bit. It goes from orange to yellow gold to green and it's pretty amazing. I only have a sample of that shade but now I need a swimming pool full of it!

I'm really disappointed that the GOSH holographic glitter doesn't show up very well in pictures. You'll have to click the pictures to enlarge them and see the little rainbow speckles. It's pretty obvious in real life, especially right now as the sun is setting, it's freakin' AWESOME. I love this stuff. Again, can I have a swimming pool full of this stuff?

Extremely impressed with the HIP shadows... The silver really is the smoothest, shiniest most pigmented chrome silver I have ever used. Better than any MAC or Ben Nye or Urban Decay I've ever used. It's so smooth and silky and super shiny!! Best silver EVER!!!

Yesterday's Drugstore Haul: HIP and Physician's Formula

Since I was pretty bummed out about missing out on Stereo Rose again, I decided to check out what sort of cheap thrills may await me in the health and beauty department while out grocery shopping.... And came home with a couple things for less than the price of the damn MAC frosty blush that I know I would probably never wear but for some reason can't stop thinking about! Ugh!

Here's what I got:

HIP by L'Oreal eyeshadow duo in Electrified. It's my first HiP item, actually. I was never really interested in the line until Eve gave me a massive lemming for this yesterday afternoon... Lucky for me it was under $7 unlike most of my lemmings.


Here it is swatched on the back of my hand indoors (indirect/ambient light) and outside in full sunlight. The left half is a very shimmery/metallic champagne gold with a touch of taupe and the right half is a shimmery deep smoky red-toned plum purple. I'm actually rather impressed with the texture and pigmentation of these. Maybe I should try something else from this line to see if everything is the same quality.

And here's a super fast look I did with it, just playing around and trying it out. Flash and indoor/ambient light. I used MAC Painterly as a base, both the shadows, a little black eyeliner and some mascara, no other products. I am really rather impressed with the gold color. It's very luminous... I've been looking for metallic/shiny looking shadows lately... I can't seem to find exactly what I'm looking for, but this one is really nice and totally worth the cost of admission.

The other thing I picked up was this Physician's Formula shimmer palette. I wanted to get a ton of their stuff, but I hesitated... I remember how much I used to dislike their eyeshadows about ten or so years ago... I remember them being really frosty and chalky. I did used to love their Virtual Eyes duochrome eyeliners, wish I could still find those somewhere. But yeah, I was wary so I only got this... but now that I've used it I might have to try out the rest of the stuff I was drooling over. There was this set of gel eyeliners that Phyrra reviewed and I *almost* got them... A green, a purple and a black. Anyway... what was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the palette. This is supposed to enhance Hazel eyes, which I do not have, I have boring dark brown-black eyes.... but it still seems to enhance them anyway...


Here's the goofy package it comes in. It's a box with a wing/flap/extra side... so it forms a corner shape... very unusual... Interesting, but so much extra cardboard!


The palette itself. They all seem to be part of one long eyeshadow, the lines in between the shadows are really shallow and don't seem to really separate the colors all too well. Reminds me of a Shimmerbrick.


Swatched on my arm indoors and outside in full sunlight. They're a little frosty and the pigmentation isn't that great, but it's nowhere near as bad as I remember.

And another quick look, just testing them out:


I used Painterly as a base, the fifth and sixth shadows (from top to bottom with the silver on the top) and a little of the silver on the inner corner, black eyeliner and mascara. Very subdued but still pretty.

The thing about these types of palettes and colors is that they're really quick to use. You don't have to think about them at all, just slap it on and go. Both of these looks took me less than five minutes to do. And I mean an actual five minutes, not the "five minutes" that someone says to get you to wait for them while they're getting ready but always turns out to be like, half an hour...

I have a bunch of makeup stuff I want to post but I never feel like my makeup pictures/swatches turn out very good... Maybe Karla can teach a makeup swatching class for the swatch-challenged people like me!

Cause, yeah.... I love makeup... a whole lot... Which is why I started blogging in the first place... I'm obsessed...