can we talk about make up?

[sporadicus]

Can we have a thread about make up like the nail polish thread?

I'm just feeling ... like I need some new ideas and new things to do with make up.

I wear it almost daily and I love to do dark smoky eyes and lots of eyeliner, but lately I'm just wondering what I can do to change it up.

I also have some situations coming up for which I need to look professional but also cool and fun (academic professional), which means I can't do my usual smoky eye thing but which also means I am at a loss for fun, interesting make up ideas.

Surely I can't be the only one who wants to talk about make up? Post your questions, what you're liking lately, your newest finds, etc ...
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Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. - Paulo Freire

[PurpleDoor]

Well, I am intrigued and perpetually flummoxed by liquid eyeliner. I'm not even sure it would really suit me, but I'd like to know how to put it on properly so I can figure that out. So...pointers?

As far as makeup I use, I really like everyday minerals. I do find, however, that it works best when my skin is already in pretty darn good condition--it's definitely more of an "enhancing" than a "covering stuff up" kind of makeup (at least, the foundation is). I like them for blush and eyeshadow too, because you can get a few fun shades to try out for not too much money.

I am also a fan of the smoky eyes, but they are definitely too much for a daytime professional event. I usually use either a lot less liner (just at the edge of my upper lid), and/or use a more subtle color, like gray or brown.

Another thing I keep thinking I ought to try out is white liner.

Basically my makeup routine is 99% eyes, minimalist on everything else.

[oohlala]

I need help with covering my dark undereye circles please.

[madgeylou]

yes let us talk about makeup! i love makeup and have been watching millions of tutorials in the last few months!

sporadicus, for day, i agree that the big smoky eye is too much. sometimes though, i do a smoky eye with matte gray that i think works quite well for daytime. i leave off the eyeliner, except maybe just a smidge right along the lash line, pat matte gray on my lid, and blend it out in the crease with a matte light brown. (it's the 3rd look in this makeup geek video.)

makeup geek also has a great video with 5 work looks -- i especially love the green one, which i have done successfully with purples and blues and pinks as well, and the charcoal liner with a berry lip.

during the day i like color on my eyes, but only as a sheer wash, or just on the outer part of the lid (like the green look in the video above).

i'm also a big fan of cream eyeshadows -- it's dead easy to just swipe a bit on the lid and be done with it. i just got a set from buxom/bare essentials that has 4 colors of creaseless shadows for like $30 from sephora -- the pale champagne one is really nice (i think it's called whippet).

maybelline also seems to have just come out with a line of creamy shadows and i picked one up today in silver. looks pretty good and is only like $6 if you want to try it.

the creme de la creme of the creams is this amazing chanel eyeshadow, which i swear does not come off until i tell it very clearly (with eye makeup remover) to come off. i have the goldy/greenish color and it's lovely. i may splash out on the purple-y color, too, with some money i got for christmas.

purpledoor, did you ever try white eyeliner on the lower waterline with just your everyday makeup? makes your eyes look huge.

and oohlala, i have the massive dark circles problem too and unfortunately, i have found nothing that will cover them completely. benefit's stay don't stray is an eyeshadow and concealer primer, and it actually works fairly well as a concealer on its own. i've also been experimenting with makeup forever's lift concealer, applied with a flat concealer brush, but so far it seems only okay.

i will always love marlena, and jane from the hairpin has some great tutorials, too, but lately lisa eldridge has been my favorite makeup tutorial guru. her looks are pretty and modern and she has a lot of great ideas.
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Specializing in dresses and sanity

[BlueJedi]

[SlipperyShade]

For covering my dark circles the girl who did my wedding makeup didn't use regular flesh-toned concealer. Since my dark circles tend to have a purplish cast, you can counteract it with a concealer that has a hint of yellow in it. I think she used something from Sephora, but I'd have to ask for specifics. Your complexion may vary, though.

I love that green eyes look on the 5-look page you posted, madge!
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You can't be giving up sandwiches in the name of style.

[Chupacabra]

[petunia_843]

I haven't worn makeup on a regular basis in about 3 years. I have a small train case full of makeup. I have a lot of MAC stuff, Burt's Bees, some cheapo stuff too. It's so hard for me to get motivated to wear makeup. I had a job interview 2 weeks ago that I wore makeup for. I don't know, I want to wear makeup, I used to love makeup, but it's so hard. I work in an office full of women, a lot of whom don't wear makeup, either. I think makeup can be an outer expression that you care for yourself, and you are expressing yourself and putting your best face forward. I don't know, I'm just not there yet.

[sporadicus]

[sobriquet]

If someone could explain to me how to put on foundation without looking like the cryptkeeper, I'd be interested to hear it...

My new favorite things are those new "natural" lipglosses that T-a y*lor S *w-i* ft advertises. The poppy color is awesome on me.
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"all that beige minimalism makes my penis soft!" - madgeylou

[WorkAndPlay]

Hell yeah, a make up thread! Only my favorite topic EVER (...after FASHION)! And I thought Christmas was over!

BlueJedi, I love that tip about adding highlighter under your concealer! I tried it, and I can now stop buying expensive Benefit Ooh La Lift, since a bit of Highbeam underneath Erase Paste (two products I currently already use on a daily basis) produces pretty much the SAME EFFECT. This is going to be such a money-saver!

oohlala, I hear you on the dark circles. Mine started turning up pretty much on the day of my 31st birthday. Like I needed a reminder that I'm not 20 anymore! Meh. But I just wanted to let you know that apart from covering them up (see my response to BlueJedi above to see what I will be using from now on), I've started to use a good eye cream and a roll-on unpuffy-making doohickey, and it really helps a lot. Since I've been a really good girl last year, I am now using the Clinique stuff Santa brought my girlfriend and I, but I was using a decent quality, middle tier, drugstore brand before (Olay) and that helped, too.

sporadicus, I think Madge had a lot of great ideas for daytime make-up looks. I've been experimenting A LOT with ways to vary my daytime make-up that don't make me look like a clown, like I just got home from a rave, or like I am desperately trying to act "young" for my students. The result is that I've spent quite some money on a collection of really great palettes that consist of mostly neutrals + a few pops of color to mix in for night time (or, you know, those raves) (or dates with ex-students, haha!).

Up until now my favorite palettes were two palettes by Too Faced, the Naked Eye and Romantic Eye collections. I say up until now because my girlfriend got me the Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV (she is the best girlfriend EVER!!!) and there are some really amazing neutrals in there too, plus a bit of glitter to make it all more fun. The Too Faced sets have some really awesome matte shades, which the UD collection is sorely lacking. SO I guess my first tip is to invest in some pretty but neutral shades, and don't assume that "beige is beige" - you can do really cool things by mixing different shades of beiges/greys! My second tip is to definitely always use an eye make-up primer! The subtle shimmer and the depth of undertones in neutral shades come across far better if you use a primer - you really need that added vibrancy, I think. My third tip is to add drama only on one or two areas of your entire look, including your outfit. Stilettos + red lips means the rest needs to be really toned down. Bright coral lips need to be softened by surrounding them with beige/grey/taupe tones. Etcetera and so on.

I kind of alternate between a few looks that can be done in different shades, and that mostly rely on creating depth, or by adding only a slight pop of color. For the more neutral looks, I think it is really about using more subtle shades to create dimension, for the looks that use color or sparkles it's about balancing that all out so it doesn't look too night-clubby:

1. "no make-up" look: a shimmery beige all across lid, highlighter across brow bone and in inner and outer corners of eyes, matte darker taupe in crease, only a bit of kohl and mascara. The idea is to use shades close to your skin tone, so your eyes look like they are shimmery all by themselves. I combine this with my brightest coral lipstick in the summer, or a deep red in winter.

2. a softer smoke: just like a smokey eye, but using lighter, very shimmery shades. This looks the best in a shade that contrasts with your eye color. My eyes are blueish/greenish/grey, so I use a warm, taupey brown with lots of shimmer. With brown eyes, a cool bluish grey would look pretty.

3. underground colorfest: On a neutral eye (either matte or with a little bit of shimmer) add a pop of color (either shimmery or matte). Some of my faves are (not all together!): matte dark purple along outside of bottom lash line and on outer 1/5th of lid to go with a very neutral shimmery lid/shimmery teal all along lower lash line with a bronze lid/very lightest electric blue as highlighter in inner corner of eye/monochromatic green all over eye, with rest of face kept as nude as possible.

4. work appropriate sparkles: a simple medium-darkness matte eye shadow + highlighter in appropriate place, NO DARKER SHADE IN CREASE, instead a light, sparkly shade applied to inner half of lid + in inner corner. I dab the lid with some vaseline first (after applying eye shadow) and "stick on" the glittery eye shadow to make the glitter stick better.

5. labor of darkness: fuck it, sometimes it is totally appropriate to wear a full-on smoked out eyes to work. Make it black and hold back on the glitter, then (this is KEY!) wear the most minimal outfit possible! And no black or glitter or shine near the face AT ALL. Smokey eyes with a crisp white button down shirt and dark denim + simple stiletto pumps = hot work outfit, but not TOO hot, if you catch my drift.

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I'm sure I could talk about makeup forever (I got THIS close to starting to do picture tutorials just for the heck of it), but I have questions too!

1. What are your favorite tools for applying eye shadow?

I have a pretty serious (as in: expensive) collection of eye shadows right now, and my brushes are on the "meh" side of the spectrum. However, I am also broke (for real: girlfriend just lost her job, half of mine got cut). I could of course sell half of my make-up, but they'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. SO instead I am asking you for the very best value-for money deals on brushes. I need..everything. Mostly an applicator brush, a blending brush, and one of those precision brushes. Sephora has two-sides brushes that look promising, are they any good? MAC brushes are out (I'd have to take out a mortgage), and UD's brushes aren't sold anywhere in the NL. So what do I get instead?

2. lip gloss. What happened to it? Is it still popular? I kind of hate it, since it's so tacky and sticky and just YUCK. I've never met a lip gloss that lasts through a lecture, and I don't really see myself rubbing shiny sticky goo on lips with 150 pairs of 20-year-old, hormone-fueled eyes on me. But I kind of miss the shininess!

Are there any new interesting products that combine the best of both the shiny world of lipgloss and the non-gooey world of lipstick? [/b]
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[sporadicus]

W&P, I love you for so many reasons, and your post just now added a few more, but for this I'm pretty much willing to go to the ends of the earth for you:

[caropop]

I am afraid of a smokey eye. It's partly because I wear glasses, but I've always just been afraid of wearing too much makeup and feeling like I look trashy. I wear glitter out for fun times and will do eyeliner in the evenings, but rarely even wear that during the day. I have a lot of lashes—it’s not uncommon for people to assume that I’m wearing falsies—and so a little bit of drama on the eyes goes a long way. Plus I’ve just never figured out how to do it myself.

I read somewhere once, that despite what those eye-enhancing shadow kits say, the best thing to make your eye color pop is to wear shadow in a contrasting color. I started experimenting with that and it’s true. I wear coppers and golds and even orange. I have some oranges that are my go-to daytime color, behind my orange glasses, no less. I have played with some Nyx shades of ORANGE, but I generally go for some more subtle peachy oranges. My favorite is an old Stila color that’s been discontinued and which I will cry about when I use my last bit—it’s a bit glimmery (a little bit of shine) and it’s a blue-toned orange. I love it. It’s not neutral, but it’s still subtle. That, over a pale copper/gold sweep of my whole lid and mascara is my daytime eyes. I’ll add eyeliner to be a little fancier, but I rarely do that for work.

For eyeliner I love Too Faced’s Liquif-Eye. It’s the clear liquid that you use to turn any shadow into eyeliner, but the consistency and the shape and size of the brush is perfect to make putting eyeliner on easy. I’ve never played with putting liner on the inside of my lashes. Tell me about that…

I’m also a blush girl. I love a good pink blush. Or a peach one. I possibly have more blushes than I have eye shadows.

In response to W&P’s question about lip gloss—I abhor it. Too sticky. But, one new thing that I am gaga for is the Burt’s Bees Tinted Lip Balm (I don’t know how available it is outside the States). It’s $7 for a lip balm, but the colors (I have both the Rose and the Dahlia) are gorgeous. They provide a sheer color that is really noticeable and it feels really nice. I’m terrible about reapplying when I wear actual lipstick. I want to wear it but I know I am about it. I have a nice lip color to start with, but sometimes it needs more. I will wear also wear lipstains although those can be really drying. I love the Pixi brand at Target because it doesn’t feel like it sucks my lips dry, which I know is pretty much US only. It is a lower-cost version of a higher end line, so maybe there is something similar available to you. Even with a stain that’s not drying, it’s still good to wear a lip balm or something to give a little bit of shine, unless you just like the matte look. I do also like the balms that sobriquet mentioned.
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[caropop]

[ruggedchick]

W&P, I have had great luck with Sonia Kashuk brushes. They are pretty high quality for the price. They are sold at Target, I'd be happy to procure some for you if you'd like.

As far as putting on foundation without looking like a crypt keeper, my two suggestions are to mix the foundation in your palm with a drop or two of moisturizer to make it more sheer, and/or to apply with a damp cosmetic sponge. That will sheer it up too.

I would also like to use this space to tell you all that I love love love Tarte Cheek Stain in Blushing Bride.
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beefy and confused.