Dramatic Smokey Eye

I did some makeup yesterday for a friend's mom and wanted to share! She was attending a traditional Indian wedding and wanted some very dramatic makeup. Here is the before photo:

I think she looks great before! She's also wearing her outfit for the wedding. Here is after!

I ended up being very happy with the results. She wanted dramatic, and she got it! For the eyes, I used Urban Decay's Naked 2 palette. The lashes are by Mac. The brows are Dipbrow by Anastasia and Gimme Brow by Benefit. Here are a few more angles and her complete outfit:

Kylie Jenner Challenge

Hi Pretties! Today I'd like to demonstrate how to make your lips appear bigger a la Kylie Jenner. No, I'm not going to promote bruising your lips inside a bottle or shot glass. Because there's a better, less painful alternative! Here goes.

First, start off with bare lips. You're going to want to use some sort of lip scrub (I love the ones by Lush) to get all of the dead skin off your lips. This gives you a smooth canvas to work with so that everything you put on your lips afterwards will look nice and pretty. I also like to dab on some Burt's Bees chapstick, but this is optional.

Next, you'll want to use a concealer with a thicker consistency to essentially make your lips disappear. Use a cream or stick concealer to achieve this. Here's what it looks like and, fair warning, it's super creepy.

The reason behind this is so that you can overdraw the lines of your lips. The concealer makes the skin around your lips and your lips the same color which makes it less obvious that you've overdrawn your the line.

After making yourself look like an alien, use any lip liner to overdraw your lips. Only overdraw them by up to the width of the pencil. This may be a little too dramatic on some people, so you'll need to play around and see what works for you. Make sure you fill in your lips with the liner as well. This makes everything the same color so you avoid drawing attention to the fact that you've overdrawn your lips, and it also helps with staying power.

Finish up by applying the lipstick of your choice and dabbing a bit of clear gloss in the middle of your bottom lip. This helps utilize light to make your lips look plumper. Here's the finished product!

That's me doing my best to pull a Kylie Jenner face. Here's the before if you're curious.

Lorac's Liner

Today's post is going to be quick. I just wanted to give a real life example of the Lorac liquid liner pen I talked about in my previous post so that you can all see how amazing it is. So here is my eyeball for proof! The liner for this look only took about a minute, give or take a few seconds.

Liquid Liner Pen

Hello All! Today I'm here to talk to you about liquid eyeliner, everyone's favorite beauty tool. If you're a hardcore gel potter, then this post isn't for you (unless you can be persuaded to switch it up). I want to share with you my very favorite liner pen. Here it is!

It's by Lorac and comes in three colors - black, charcoal, and navy. The line pictured here doesn't even nearly do it justice. You can make it much thinner and the color is so much more concentrated than that. What's so special about this fabulous pen is that instead of a felt tip like a marker (think Stila's pen), it's got bristles like a paint brush. I also feel like it comes to a much sharper point than your average eye liner pen, and on top of that the bristles are somehow both more firm and more bendy than a marker tip pen. The only way you'll ever understand what I mean is to try it for yourself. I get the smoothest and most precise line with this pen, and I've never had it wear off throughout the day. It's absolutely phenomenal. It also lasts forever. I think I've been using this liner for around two years (maybe even a bit longer) and I'm still only on my second pen, though granted I don't use it every single day. The only drawback to this pen is that the liquid dries a little shinier than I'd like, but it's really not too noticeable. On the days I really want to take my time and put on some flawless makeup I dab a little bit of matte black eye shadow on the top of my liner to take away any shine. All in all, I really couldn't expect too much more out of an eye liner. It earns a big, fat A+ in my book.