Lime Crime Wicked Review

I'm on the Wicked bandwagon guys! I drank the kool-aid and had to give it a go. I've never bought Lime Crime products before but was slowly falling in love with the gorgeous matte burgundy shade I'd been seeing on several beauty blogs and Youtube videos. A little digging and it turned out they were all Lime Crime's Matte Velvetines in Wicked.  

The normal retail price is $20 but I actually ended up buying it off of the Urban Outfitter website during a sale with 20% off which I was pretty pleased with. It has been sold out on the LC website for weeks so I was glad to be able to buy it elsewhere as I was hoping to try it out for holiday parties. 

When it finally came, the color was everything I'd hoped for. It's a gorgeous deep burgundy red that's very wearable and not TOO dark to come off as overly vampy. Pair it with an understated eye and your look is instantly glamified. 

The website describes it as being a matte burgundy-red and claims to be a "ground-breaking formula that goes on liquid and dries completely matte. Claims to be touch-proof, transfer-proof, long-wearing and utterly addictive."

The Pros: 

Once again, the color. It's a perfect fall/winter shade. Wear it every day with a simple eye look or glam it up by pairing it with a smoked out eye. 

It sets pretty quickly from liquid to matte and isn't too drying for your lips. 

Paired with a lip liner, is pretty long-lasting. 

The Cons: 

It's really not THAT long-wearing, especially if any liquid touches your lips after it's on. I played around with it a bit and had some trouble keeping it on my lips especially near the inner center where I got the dramatic color/no color when it rubbed off a bit between my lips. I fixed that by wearing it over a lip liner and once completely dried, wouldn't transfer, but if I took even a sip of water it would start moving around and transferring to the bottle or anything my lips touched. What worked best for me was applying it over lip liner and blotting it a tad with some tissue to make sure any excess formula was removed.  

The feeling on the lips isn't the greatest, it isn't especially drying but sort of feels like it is. It gives the grainy-don't try to move much feeling.

(wore this to Thanksgiving dinner, showing off the eye look I went with too!)

Overall I do really love the color and that alone is enough for me to continue wearing it, but it's a pretty difficult formula to get the hang of and feel comfortable in. I think if I were to wear it on a regular basis I'd get used to it, but I know I'd always be concerned about it transferring or smudging off my lips if I made any slip ups. 

I'd say comparing it to some other long-wearing formulas I've tried, I like the Make Up For Ever Aqua Rouge stains (which I made matte by blotting) more for staying power but would choose Lime Crime over the Sephora Luster Matte Long-Wear Lip Colors as it's got a better applicator making it less messy and easier to control. 

Final thoughts, is it worth buying?

Yes-ish. The color is to die for, but the Sephora lip colors mentioned above would definitely be a comparable less costly dupe if you don't mind working with the clunky applicator.

And our lovely little family all ready for Thanksgiving dinner! 

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

XOXOXO

Smokey Rose Eyes

Not much to say other than I love this makeup look! I was trying out a few new things this week when getting ready for work and got the idea for this after using Mushroom as my liner. At the time I didn't pair it with a warm shadow, but thought the contrast would be pretty, and voila!

I hope you enjoy!

 

Electric Blue Eyeliner Makeup Tutorial

I've been desperate to get in the swing of spring lately. Minnesota winters are brutal and this one especially. I just placed an order of dresses and flats/sandals to get ready for warm weather, and wanted to do a tutorial on a look that would be perfect for the summer. 

I love "pop of color" looks and since blue is my favorite color, I decided to show it off. Blue can be a tricky color on the eyes, because the last thing you want to do is overdo it and look like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. 

Yet when done right, blue eyes can be drop dead gorgeous. I'm a huge fan of using deep or electric blues yet keeping the look as a whole very bright. 

I decided to use a blue liquid liner for the upper lid and blue mascara on the lower lashes. Blue on all the lashes would definitely be too much, but by keeping it subtle, you can highlight your favorite color and still keep it classy ;)

Enjoy!!

 

Shimmer Rose LOTD

So I haven't done a look of the day in quite a while, and felt like changing that. I once again highlight some of my favorite shadows in the Naked 3 Palette. Enjoy :) 

I cover my lid with Strange, which is probably one of my favorite colors in the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette. It matches my skin tone pretty perfectly and I just use it as a wash so the rest of the shadows have an even base. 

Dust + Magic Eyechange mixing medium. Adding a mixing medium with this shadow helps avoid fallout and applies the glitter/shimmer to the lid in an even layer. 

 I apply it all over the upper lid and along the outer half of the lower lash line. 

Next I take Darkhorse with a flat brush and apply it to the inner and outer corners of the lid, blending out any edges. 

I line my waterline and lower lash line with Urban Decay's 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Empire. This is a muted plum color. 

I curl my lashes and apply a black mascara. Here I'm using one of my favorites, Maybelline Mega Plus Volume Express in Blackest Black. 

I use Clinique's soft pressed powder blusher in New Clover on my cheeks. 

Last but not least, I use the NYX Mega Shine Lip Gloss in Nude Peach. 

And that's my finished look! 

Happy Belated Valentines Day!

Per my usual, I'm posting this late :) HAPPY BELATED VALENTINES DAY!!!

I 

My Favorites of 2013 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Years everyone! 

To kick off the start of a (hopefully) amazing new year, I decided to make a video highlighting my favorite things about last year. 

I didn't follow any tag or set format, I basically just thought of a few things I super loved in the last year and talked about them! 

I apologize for the length, I have a tendency to ramble, but if you're interested in the beauty products I LOVED and other misc favorite things from the last year, check out my video!

 

XOXOXO

Naked3 Swatches & Tutorial

Dun dun duuuuuuuun!

I'm back! And I'm the proud owner of the gorgeous, perfect Urban Decay Naked 3 palette. When I saw the teaser images for this palette, my little heart skipped a beat... 

I'm happy to say I'm absolutely in love with every single shade in the Naked 3 palette. Where the Naked palette was aimed at golds and warm neutrals, and Naked 2 was silvers and cool neutrals, the Naked 3 is all about rose gold! Every shade has a slight pink or mauve undertone to them, and I love the way it works with my skin tone. 

Here are the swatches! I took the descriptions from Urban Decay's site.

Strange: Pale, neutral pink matte-satin

Dust: Pale metallic pink shimmer w/ iridescent micro-glitter

Burnout: Light pinky-peach satin

Limit: Light dusty rose matte

Buzz: Metallic rose shimmer w/ silver micro-glitter

Trick: Light metallic pinky-copper shimmer w/ tonal micro-sparkle

Nooner: Medium pink-brown matte

Liar: Medium metallic mauve shimmer

Factory: Pinky-brown satin

Mugshot: Metallic taupe shimmer w/ slight pink shift

Darkside: Deep taupe-mauve satin

Blackheart: Smoky black matte w/ rosy red micro-sparkle

Like I said, I'm in love with every single color. They're all amazing quality, as is expected with Urban Decay shadows, and all of them are pretty accurate to their descriptions. Blackheart is a little misleading just because if apply the color normally, you really won't catch any of the red glitter in your look. It is pretty much invisible, even in a swatch, but may possibly stick out more if you use some kind of mixing medium or something like that. It's still a beautiful color, just don't expect to notice the glitter when your actually wearing it. 

I have been using this palette for the last few weeks as I've had all my other makeup boxed up for our move. We just bought a house (pictures to come eventually!) and I've had very little time for makeup, but have used this palette for my daily eye looks. It's very versatile and I've come up with a ton of beautiful new looks. I did a tutorial of one of my favorites!

Woo for silly face :)

Until next time!

XOXOXO

Top 5 Favorite Foundations for Pale Skin

I'm BACK!....(back-ish...)

Once again, a LOT has been up since my last post. After the wedding Steve and I got right to house hunting, which has pretty much taken over our lives since the end of September. 

We found a house, our offer has been accepted and (hopefully) we'll be moving in by the end of this month! This means busy busy busy and little time for filming, but I really wanted to get one done that I've been meaning to do for months now. 

I've attempted putting this video together a few times now and each time I've failed miserably for reasons unknown... I finally took the time to get it done right and voila! My Top 5 Foundations for Pale Skin vid! 

I know for me its always a challenge to find a foundation that actually suits my skin since I'm so damn pale, o I decided to put this together to show you my favorites for the shade/formula/finish/etc. For all you pasty girls out there, I hope this helps! Please don't forget to drop a comment and like the video! I'd love to know what foundations/products you love :) 

Enjoy!

 

Best News Ever

...well maybe not EVER, but pretty awesome news! So I was at a Target in Fridley, MN on Mother's Day and while taking a peek in the makeup isle, I found.........

 

When the hell did Target start selling NYX!? So far Fridley is the only store I've seen it in but it's only a matter of time until it's in every store! (I hope...) NYX is one of my favorite makeup brands ever and to be able to get it at 15% off?? (w/ my employee discount) WOO!!! Heaven! So that was a lovely little find. I didn't actually buy anything because I was in a rush but I really hope to find it in my stores soon!

 

****UPDATE****

They added one in the Knollwood, MN store! WOO!!

 

I DID get this month's Glam Bag in the mail (www.ipsy.com) and I must say it's probably my favorite one to date. It came with some really great products and a bonus full size Urban Decay Stardust shadow in Space Cowboy.

 

The other products that came were a Mirabella lip tint, a gorgeous soft blue Zoya nail polish, a Yaby concealer refill, a Juice Beauty reflecting gloss and lastly, a St Tropez self-tanner.

 

 

I really love the shade they sent for the Mirabella lip tint. It's packaged like a lipstick but it's not extremely opaque and just gives a really pretty glow of color on the lips. I love the UD Stardust shadow I got. I already had a sample from ages ago in violet (can't remember the name) and it seems like they've reformulated it since then. The color is really pretty and subtle, but gives a nice pop of glitz over any look. Again, I LOVE the nail polish and have been a long time fan of Zoya polishes, so no complaints there. I'd never used Yaby concealers before but I tried it on my under eyes and it seemed to do the trick fine. Had good coverage without being too heavy and didn't set in any of my fine lines. The shade was just a bit too dark for me for every day use, but I would consider buying it full size in my shade in the future.

 

The only 2 products I wasn't crazy about was the Juice Beauty gloss and the self-tanner. I don't tan, so nothing against the product itself, but I'll probably be giving that to one of my friends as a gift. I didn't really like the consistency of the gloss. Since it was promoted as a "reflecting" gloss, I'm assuming it wasn't meant to have a ton of color payoff or be used alone, but it basically just felt like water on my lips. I tried it alone and on top of a lipstick and it just felt like it made my lipstick slip around. It also didn't seem like it had enough shimmer/glow to it to be used strictly as a "spot of shine" for the lips either, so unless I figure out how to work with it, I probably won't be getting much use out of it.

 

So that's about what I've had going on makeup/beauty wise. I did also finally order the Nude-Tude palette from the Balm which I'm really looking forward to. I ordered it off Hautelook for 50% off, so its taking a while to ship. Once it's in I'll be sure to post pics/swatches and 1st impressions!

 

Lastly, a random Instagram pic! Datenight selfie fail! :)

 

 

XOXOXOXOXO