Flashback Beauty Friday 91: Stila Pivotal Skin

Post does not contain affiliate links or PR gifted items.

Sticking with foundation again this week after the genie bottled Urban Decay Surreal Skin last time. I've been rummaging again and discovered yet more great things for these posts. I really need time to photograph everything so I can then sort through and decide what can be thrown out and the things that regardless of age, I just couldn't part with (i.e. the covetable and collectable). Why I was still hanging onto this one, I don't know.

Flashback Beauty Friday 82: Stila Striking In South Beach

Post does not contain affiliate links or PR gifted items.

Unfortunately I don't have the post I spoke about last week (the one with lots of photos) as I still haven't had time to edit them, but I do have a cute wee palette for you today. Last week, I shared a couple of eyeshadows from the MAC Alexander McQueen collaboration, if you missed those.

Flashback Beauty Friday 22: Stila Pussycat Dolls 4 Pan

Hello lovelies, hope you're all alright. Back to Friday and our usual jaunt down memory lane with some old limited edition or discontinued beauty products. Last week I picked a No7 highlighter and this week, it's a special Stila release.

Flashback Beauty Friday 5: Stila Sakura Face Powder

Post does not contain PR gifts or affiliate links.

Another beautiful piece for Flashback Beauty Friday this week, but I'd like to start by wishing you all a happy and healthy new year. "Lang may yer lum reek" and all that! Last week, I picked the fabulous and very tiny Lancôme Precious Carat, this week I have a very unusual Stila powder.

Lipstick Swatches: Dior, Stila & Clarins Haul

After all the gnome-excitement yesterday and today, I eventually decided it was time to get some work done. That is, after I played with 'Major Morgan' that belonged to my sister, that Mum found in a clean-up. I'm telling you, HOURS of fun on that thing! We're still going full steam ahead for the renovations and I feel if I sit still long enough, I might just end up packed away in a box too! It's quite astonishing the amount one (or 5 of us) could accumulate over the years. I also found some of my art notebooks from school (OMG I was soooo excited), I might share some of it with you later in the week. For now I have a few swatches of the makeup items I purchased with this massive skincare haul from Escentual.
Click that link if you need to familiarise yourself with the other items I bought. The Clarins Energizing Emulsion was half gone after a couple of weeks, so I've bought another one and tried to be a little less obsessive with it! I've religiously been using the water sprays and sadly the La Roche-Posay 'Effaclar Duo' really didn't work for me. I hadn't realised at first that it was causing issues and continued using it for weeks, but it's left my skin in a huge mess. Spots in places I don't normally get and I'm still working hard to get rid of them, it's been terrible. Anyway, I'm about to start using some of the cleansers as my Lancome Baume Eclat is almost finished (sob). The only makeup item I don't have pictures of is the Stila Glow Lip Color. It glows under UV light (whoop whoop), but it was a present for a friend and as much as I deliberated to get one myself, I decided I would never be anywhere to see it glow, so it wasn't worth it. I'll start with the other Stila item, the Long Wear Lip Color.
This was a complete impulse purchase after I searched google for swatches of something else and saw this. It looked GORGEOUS! It was a beautiful taupe, although sadly it's not like that on my hand/lips or in the tube!

In The Nude is a warm, light brown. Nothing very special or unique.  I've got all the swatches at the end of the post for you. I haven't worn this one yet...I admit I was a little disappointed with the colour from what I'd been expecting.
Next is Dior Addict Extreme in 316 Incognito. You'll maybe remember I received a little mini one in a different shade that spurred me on to try another.
Incognito is another shade that I expected to lean more greyish or taupe-like than it does. There is a slight element of that in it. I wore this the other week for my Lipstick Challenge and it's a pinkish beige.  It swatches much lighter than it looks in the tube...it's quite a unique colour.

Finally, Clarins Joli Rouge in 724 Simply Nude. This one comes in such a weighty case!
The colour is so pretty in direct sunlight as you can really see the micro-shimmer.
It's a yellow-tan and the shimmer isn't visible once swatched. I think it's the prettiest of the three, although I haven't worn it on my challenge yet.
I took the swatches without the flash but in different lights as the colour can vary.
I've still got another two Escentual orders to show you, that I snuck in before my discount code expired along with a big Clarins haul! I'm also going to try and put together a review of where I think it went wrong with that LRP moisturiser. There were many good things about it, so I was sad it didn't work out. Back to basics for me again!

Monster High Monday: Swim Class Venus

Hello! A sunny day today, so I was looking for a bright and cheerful look. This one was sooo tricky though! The application was simple, but finding the correct eye colour was so difficult and in the end I just had to make-do with something as close as I could get. I own a lot of greens, like hundreds, so I never expected to run into trouble colour-matching.
The main problem was that Venus has this bold, intense colour but with no shimmer. 99% of green eyeshadows or at least in my collection are frosty, shimmery or glittery! The majority actually have quite a strong gold sheen to them, so in certain lights this made the colour totally change and look nothing like the doll. The hue itself was also hard to match because my shadows either leaned too green, too lime or too olive/khaki. Venus seems to have a combination of all three. In the end I had swatches all over my hand, my wrist and I'd started moving towards my elbow when I decided I'd spent long enough trying to match!
The lips I thought might be difficult to colour match, but I literally pulled out the first two lipsticks I could think of and their combined shade was spot-on. Funny how that happens.
So starting with my base, I applied BeneFit The POREfessional under Lancome Teint Miracle foundation in 005. I used Dainty Doll concealer in 001 under the eyes (with YSL Touche Eclat in shade 2) and 002 on blemishes. I finished with a light dusting of ELF Studio High Definition Powder in Translucent and applied a little MAC Fleurry blush with Don't Be Shy over the top for a pinky-peachy cheek.
I applied Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion as a base and combined Stila Kiwi with the green shade from MAC's Suedette 6 Intense Eyes Palette. Both do have shimmery finishes, but Kiwi made the MAC one that little bit brighter green and actually slightly toned down the sheen.
It looks very pale in the photo above just because of the light and no-flash, but it was much brighter in person. Venus has this huge flicked liner look, but Monster High eyelashes are usually pretty exaggerated too, so it kinda looks like she has this two-prong liner deal going on (which you can see when she's turned to the side). I decided to emulate that with a two-flick liner approach! I used YSL Waterproof Eye Pencil for the thick line, then Lancome Artliner for the flicks. On my lashes in YSL Baby Doll mascara.
For the lips, she's wearing a purple-pink, almost dusky or mauve toned. So I used Kiss Australia Lip Liner in Cashmere and mixed MAC lipsticks in Purple Rite (Frost) and Naughty Saute (Cremesheen). The latter is bright, bold pink and the former a frosty purple, so they combined to form the perfect colour.
As if I wasn't clashing enough, I decided to wear turquoise and peach today! Yeah...someone didn't think that one through! This look totally grew on me, even halfway through I thought it was going to be a complete disaster but it turned around in the end. Who knew finding an eyeshadow this shade would be so tricky though? Can anyone think of a similar one in their stash?

Monster High Monday: Dance Class Howleen

You'll have to bear with me while I catch up on posts I've missed this week. My little sister and I bought tickets ages ago for The Big Reunion tour (the show on ITV2 that reformed 90's bands) and so we set off on Tuesday and stayed overnight in Glasgow and got back yesterday. Can you believe it was the first time I've been away since I went to my friends wedding in Aberdeenshire 3 years ago? I definitely don't get out much, so it was a nice little break. I'm pretty shattered and sore from the trip, but keen to get back into a routine. Monster High Monday was pretty much a disaster this week though. I woke up on Monday feeling fine, then within an hour I started sneezing. Not just once or twice, about 60 times in 20 minutes. Sneezing constantly is exhausting! I wasn't sure whether it was allergies or the cold, but then my nose started running and I figured it was the worst possible moment for me to start feeling ill. I couldn't breathe, my nose was blocked, but running like a tap, I sounded choked up and I was still sneezing. My nostrils were so sore and all red, that the last thing I felt like doing was putting on makeup and getting dressed to go out. However I did. Strangely enough I still felt sick on Tuesday morning, but it subsided throughout the day and other than being left with a sore nose, I have no signs of a cold whatsoever. Must be my temperamental hay-fever which disappears for years and shows up when it feels like it. Anyway, besides feeling like poo, I completely stuffed up the makeup on MHM. I thought Howleen would be easy to emulate because it involved a lot of neutrals and looked simple enough. How wrong was I? I spent around 20 minutes on Sunday colour matching and thought I'd come up with close enough shades.
 
Come Monday, I felt my colours weren't as perfect as I'd thought and it turns out I'm not much of a brown eyeshadow fan (always knew that), so I was struggling to find something close enough. I have a neutral drawer of colours and besides looking through every eyeshadow in that, I refused to start sifting through mixed-palettes for the correct colour. There's literally thousands of eyeshadows to check through and off the top of my head, I couldn't even think of any and there's only so many hours you can dedicate to finding the right products. Now you see why I rarely use palettes! Add to that the fact I don't think I even got the lips right, this week felt like a fail for me. I might just write it off or maybe try it again some other time if I ever have the patience to find better colour matches.
So starting with the face, I applied Yves Saint Laurent Le Teint Touche Eclat in BR10 with Dainty Doll Hot Pour Concealer in 001 Very Light under the eyes and on blemishes. I finished with Clarins Ever Matte Mineral Powder Compact in 00 Transparent Opal and also used a little MAC Legendary powder blush on the cheeks. Although Howleen doesn't wear a cheek colour, I needed it and it's a light enough peach to not detract too much from the rest of the face.
Now is where it gets complicated and I use a lot of colours, so I'll break it down. Howleen has a highlighter/sheen shade along the lower lashline and under the brow. She has what looks like a very pale pink on the lids up to the crease. A black thin line along the crease and then a reddish brown between the crease and highlighter shade. So that's four different shades. For the highlighter I used the pale pink shade from Lancome Ombre Subtile Duo in 351 Rose Garden. It didn't look quite frosty enough, so I applied some Lancome Poudre Superbe in 02 Argente over the top, which is a shimmer powder rather than eyeshadow.
For the pale pink lid shade I used the bottom left colour from Givenchy Prisme Again! Eyes in 3 Purple Emotion. For the black line in the crease I applied The New Black from my Lancome Color Design palette and decided it wasn't quite intense enough, so added a little Barbie Loves Stila Smudge Pot in Little Black Dress. My eyeliner is YSL Waterproof Pencil with Lancome Artliner for the flicks and mascara is Rimmel Lash Accelerator Endless.
So far, not too bad, but it was the warm red toned brown 'crease' shade I struggled with. Colours were either too bronze or brown, not enough red, too light, too dark, too shimmery. So I ended up applying a pale but pigmented peach shade from Versace Eyeshadow Duo in V2038, then applied Givenchy Prisme Again! Eyes in 1 Zen Pastel (the top right colour) over that. It's a peachy, mauvey brick reddish colour, but I felt I was lacking the brown base. So over them I applied Prisme Again! Eyes in 2 Brown Caress (the top right shade) which is brown.
I still can't say I'm happy with the outcome, it was a little too orangey and less tan than Howleen. Plus it was shimmery looking and Howleen's is matte, but the finish was the least of my worries to be honest! At this point I got Mum to come and kill kindly release a huge spider (thankfully I didn't freak too much because I thought it was a couple of really black moths or a beetle or something) that was wedged between the pleats in the top of my curtains. I got a 'you can barely open your eyelids because they are so heavy from all the makeup you're wearing' comment from Mum and knew it was time to finish up!
For the lips, I'd found a couple of close-enough shades on Sunday that I thought I could mix together to get the right colour. They were both MAC lipsticks, so I applied Colour Crafted (Frost) as a base and Creme Cup (Cremesheen) over the top and my liner was MAC Naked Liner. I'd describe the colour on Howleen as a dull peach, but I found in reality it leaned either too coral or too nude, it was really difficult to find a balance between enough colour but not being too bright. I can't recall what I thought at the time of my finished lips, I think it was that they were lacking in the coral shade, but in the photos it's come across as much brighter, lighter and more colourful than real life (like a lot) but actually looks to be a perfect match to Howleen here. Again, my lips looked really shiny and on the doll they look matte, but she's painted and I'm using real makeup, so that's my excuse!
I have no plans to revisit this anytime soon, but would like to re-attempt it at some point. I think I mismatched my colours and finishes and my nose was red-raw and I couldn't pose for photos without having to stuff a tissue up my nose!  I have a hilarious uncropped eye close-up where you can just see the tissue blocking my runny nose! Attractive (!) I'm definitely finding a trend of those dolls that look complicated turning out to be easier than I thought and the simple looks being difficult to replicate. How do you think I did this week? Howleen certainly lived up to her mischievous and troublesome nature!