Pastels for a stormy day

Purple and pink are fun on a gray day! Pop Beauty Lavender Love on lids.

The LookBag December 2012 Opening

Here's an opening video on a sample subcription you may not know about. It's called The LookBag, and it offers a variety of nice stuff. In fact, I prefer it to my Glossybox and my Birchbox, so check out my video if you'd like to see what I got from them in December.

Thanks for watching, and don't forget to subcribe to my channel on YouTube, give this video the thumbs up, and follow me on Bloglovin', Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more of my adventures in makeup and beauty.

Cheers, Beauty Fans!

Limecrime Alchemy Palette

Greetings, Beauty Fans!

Just recently picked up this palette online at a Black Friday sale, and although it was billed as all duochromes, I'd say maybe two of these shades are actual duochromes. And by duochrome, I mean, having more than one distinct shade, and changing shades in different kinds of lighting. Actually, my Tarte We Wish You Wealth palette has more true duochromes than this baby, but can you buy that anymore? Nope. Sorry, guys.

The purple one from Limecrime Alchemy, aka Love Potion #9, definitely is. And so is the green one, Lucky Charm. I love duochromes, and I wished it had been as advertised, but I still say this is a nice palette with some cool shades. I put together this quick look using spellbound and divination on the lids and Divination in the crease. It's a little unusual, and probably needed a bit more grounding with some dark eye liner at the lash line, but who isn't pressed for time when getting out the doors during this busy holiday season?

I must say, Limecrime's packaging is ridiculously cool, and I adore the way it looks all Harry Potter and magicky. Bully for them, and thanks for feeding my inner aesthetic dragon. You have a fan for life, Limecrime! Have I failed to mention I love magical and occult lore? Well now you know.

Hope you enjoy my photos of the thing itself, swatches and my look below!

Love, BeautyJones

Divination on my thumb

On my lips: Adore Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain

Smize, Baby, Smize!

Daylight

Unique LA Haul

Hey, kids--

Unique LA is an awesome holiday gift show in downtown LA. Check it out and get on their mailing list so you too can be an LA hipster. And if you don't know what the heck that means, it's a good thing! It's your life, maybe, just add a fedora! So here's what I bought there.

McGlynn Family: Spoiler Alert. One of my crappy gifteez is in here, so don't watch this until later, or skip through. If you happen to watch this, we'll do our best to camouflage our gifts with no hip wrapping, no paper with bacon or meat on it, or scary clowns, etc. But watching means it's on you, just sayin.'

For more on Unique LA, go to StateofUnique.com



Happy Holiday, Beauty Fans!

Here are links to a few of my faves from this video:

BesameCosmetics.com
SoapFarm.com
ArtintheAge.com
MaidenVoyageClothing.com

NaNoWriMo: I did it!

Greetings, Beauty Fans!!! Happy Happy Friday!!!



Finished my 50k words today, right on time. Still only halfway through my novel, but wow, what a cool and fun thing to do! I barely remember November, but it was a historic one for me!!! Check out National Novel Writing Month if you want to get involved.



Did I mention, Yay, Yay, Hooray, Hallelujah, and Yay, Yippee!!!

Palette Porn: Urban Decay Vice

Hey, Beauty Fans--

Sorry I haven't been posting so much this month. If you've been reading, it's because I've been participating in NaNoWriMo, which is also known as National Novel Writing Month, and it's a movement that supports people in writing a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. This means I've been writing at least 1667 words per day, which isn't a lot, if you don't have anything to do.

But I am also working full time, singing with my employee choir, singing at a friend's party, beauty blogging and YouTubing, and training for the Tinker Bell Half Marathon. You can donate to fundraising efforts for the Team to End AIDS in conjunction with that race here.

Phew!

I'm almost done with my 50k word novel, and November's almost over. So far I'm ahead. You can see my progress on the widget up to the right. I already ordered my winner's tee shirt, so I intend to finish, even though I've got stuff to do pretty much all the time until the finish. It's amazing how much you write when you are busy and you carve out an hour at a time.

So to keep things simple, I started a new YouTube series called Palette Porn. Sometimes I just like to look at palettes. Here's one of my newest faves, the blogger's darling, the Urban Decay Vice palette. Enjoy, Beauty Fans!

Maddstyle Cosmetics

Recently I found a new YouTube beauty guru called Killer Colours, who introduced me to Maddstyle Cosmetics, and I bought a set she recommended on her blog. She was actually doing a giveaway, but I wanted to get these shades for sure. They are so interesting.  Here's my look, and tons of photos. Hope you like!

 Thanks for reading, Beauty Fans!

:)BeautyJones

October Favorites, A Bit Tardy

Hello, there, Beauty Fans!

Here's a video I finally got around to editing last night.

Writing a novel in one month is no joke, let me tell you, but that's what I decided to do when I took up the challenge of NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and it's really fun to finally be hitting this lifetime list item! 1667 words per day, people! For a month! I'm doing it, and I think it's altering the pathways in my brain because I really feel different. For more info on this amazing process and how you can be a part of it, click here.

Enjoy my October Favorites!

Happy Thanksgiving Week! Do you think this video upload is a little late? Well, since I probably need to film my November Favorites like next week, pretty much, yeah. Oh, well!

Love, BeautyJones

Glossybox Late October Opening

Hey, Beauty Fans--

There were some quite nice things inside my Glossybox that arrived in Late October, and there were some things that were less than thrilling to me. Want to see what I got? Click below to watch the video.


FYI, if you haven't heard of it, Glossybox is a monthly beauty box subscription. It currently costs $21/month, but there are discounts for signing up for 6-month and 1-year subscriptions.

Thanks for watching!

Love, BeautyJones

Rainy Day Blues FOTD

Maybelline Eye Studio Color Tattoos are a great way to go with your eye look when you don't want to wait for your eye primer to dry. They act as their own eye shadow bases, but with color, so you can use them to anchor powders. I have these in nearly all the colors, except for the orange one, the purple one, which I saw on a few videos gets a bit streaky.

Maybelline has put some fun tutorials on their site to show you how to use these, and you can use several of them for one eye look as I did here. Here are the steps I took for this look. You can use brushes or your fingers, but be careful with these. They set quickly, so you'll want to have something ready to blend out the edges, be it a q-tip, or a brush.

1. Put the Limited Edition Teal, or plain old Tenacious Teal only in the center of your lids up to the crease.
2. Put Too Cool, the frosty white color, on the inner third of your lids and over your tear duct area.
3. Put Too Cool on your browbone.
4. Put Audacious Asphalt, the gray one in a wedge shape on the outer edge of your eyelids
5. Blend the edges of everything gently.
6. Pick a doe brown to put in your crease and blend this up toward the Too Cool on your brow bones. The soft brown color anchors the blue and makes it much more wearable for day. This is a pretty dramatic look, but the brown makes it not totally cray-cray. Blend, blend, blend.
7. If you'd like, put a shimmery blue over the top of the Teal to give it some extra excitement, although please note, I have hooded lids, so most of the time you only see what's in my crease and right at the edge of the lash line. The blue here is kind of a peekaboo color that is a fun little flash of brightness. Your makeup-loving friends will notice and say, ooh. Other folks will just say, oh, you look pretty and a touch more creative than usual. That's the idea, anyway.
8. Line your eyes with a deep blue pencil and blend to soften.
9. Whack on some black mascara.
10. Apply the base and blush of your choice. I picked my mauvey La Femme one, which is a cool-toned blush, and then contoured under my cheekbones to tone it down and, well, to provide contour to my face.
11. Lips are a warm pink shade called Cherish from Revlon's Just Bitten Balmstain line. You know I love these because they are glossy and they stain and the color lasts.

Hope you find this look fun. As you can see, I paired it with lots of cyan blue because it was a rainy day, and I wanted some brightness.

Thanks for visiting my blog! Please comment below, and subscribe using Bloglovin'!

Love, BeautyJones

Neutrals and a Strong Brow Bring out my Eyes

This morning, I used the Nuance Medium Blonde
Brow Pencil to really emphasize my brows

 Heavy dramatic brows, carefully sculpted, seem to really make my green eyes pop.

I started the look with Make Up Forever's Aqua Color in 13, a shimmery pale peach all over the lids. I used this as a base. It anchors powders very well, but creams, not so much. The concealer I put in the inner corners of my eyes creased a bit.

I kind of went to town with my Sedona Lace 28 Neutral palette, a palette full of subtle neutrals.

• Lids: Make Up Forever Aqua Cream in 13
• Outer half of lids: Sofia, which has some shimmer
• Crease: Po
• Lash Line: Fresco
• Crease, center to the edge: Fresco
• Lower Lash Line: Fresco
• Browbone: Puck (it's got a goldy-green shimmer!)
• Black liner gel from Tarte We Wish You Wealth palette pushed into lash line
• Smashbox Full Exposure Mascara

 Face:

• Embryolisse Lait Créme Concentrée moisturizer
• Olay Wrinkle and Line Filler as primer
• 2 BB Creams mixed together: skin79 Triple Function Orange and Missha BB Cream in Beige
• Concealer: It Cosmetics Bye-Bye Under Eye, and Cinema Secrets light peach concealer

Cheeks:

• Palest and brightest of the 4 Tarte cheek stains in my We Wish You Wealth palette 

Tarte We Wish You Wealth Cheek Stains, Lippies, Eye Base, Liners and Highlighter

Lips:

• Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain in Cherish

What do you think? Do you do strong brows sometimes? How do you like it?

Cheers!

<3BeautyJones

Tinkerbell Halloween

Had some fun on Halloween as Tinker Bell. Got a costume at Ozzie Dots in Los Feliz (Hollywood Blvd. just east of Vermont, north side of the street) in no time because they are so organized and well set up for Halloween.

Used my Anastasia brow stencils to do an eyebrow with teal and green colors from my Wet n' Wild party palette and my Crown Brush 180 palette.

Put on my blue-spotted feathery eyelashes. The eye look overall was gold and teal blended carefully into the crease with a neutral matte faun brown shade. The lip was Revlon Just Bitten Balm Stain in Honey with some highlighter from my NYX "butt" naked palette, the pinky-white shade.

Used Skindinavia's fix spray to keep the whole thing lasting all day long!

The best thing was talking to the kids during trick or treating. They were so cute. It felt like really being Tinker Bell!

Happy Halloween!

:)BeautyJones

Glossybox and Julep Maven Box Opening Early October

Check out my latest box opening video!


Let me know how you like it!

:)BeautyJones

MS Bay to Bay Bike Ride and Rainproof Look!

Hi, Beauty Fans! This post is going to be fairly different from my usual Face of the Day or sample-box-opening video. When I started getting back in shape physically after, well, forever, I did it by signing up for athletic events through my company. My company is very committed to community outreach and volunteering, so the athletic events I did had a fundraising and charitable element to them.

Through this one event, I got to know other folks who did other events, and I came to join friends to do the Ride to End MS, aka the MS Bay to Bay, which is one of many many events, including walks, runs and bike rides that take place all over the USA to raise funds to fight MS, a terrible debilitating disease.

This is my third year doing this ride, and although it’s 100 miles of biking in two days, it made my legs burn like crazy, and I was bone tired at the end, it was so satisfying. Not only is it a very worthy cause, it is a beautiful ride, even in the rain. The sun came out just as we were reaching the prettiest of the oceanside vistas. The volunteers are so wonderful, cheering us on, and reminding us why we are doing it. I recommend you check out this link to learn more about helping fight MS: nationalmssociety.org.

Face:

• Neutrogena Sportface Sun block – ha ha. No sun until the last hour, so oh, well!

Cheeks:

• Jouer Tint in Bronzed to contour under cheekbones 
• Make Up For Ever Aqua Cream in 9, a bright peachy coral, on apples of cheeks

Eyes

• Make Up For Ever Waterproof Aqua Cream in 15, a bronzey Taupe
• Make Up For Ever Aquacolor black pencil smoked out over the bronzey Aquacolor on lids and 2/3 of the way from outer corner in on lower lash line, and tightlined on upper and lower lash lines. Blend, blend and blend!
• Jane Iredale mascara sealed and waterproofed on top with lots of Anastasia Lash Genius. 
• Milani Brow Pen in 01

Lips:

• Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain in Adore, three coats applied, and blotted in between to make the color last

Here are my photos and, as you can see, this look lasted for 40 miles of biking on Sunday!

Freshly Applied

At the Top of Torrey Pines climb

Cheers, Beauty Fans!

xxxooo, BeautyJones

Dress-Up Looks

Had some more fancy occasions lately, so I've been playing with pretty purples that shimmer on my eyelids.  What do you think? I love blues and purples on the eyes with more neutral or warm lip colors.

Wedding look using Maybelline Color Tattoo Audacious Asphault and Tenacious Teal

Add caption

Based on Maybelline Color Tattoo Pomegranate Punk, with lots of Sedona Lace neutrals,
for going to an Italian food festival

I like this one, with its mauves, golds and bronzes on the eyes.

Look to go hear jass, based on Maybelline Color Tattoo in Fuchsia - Full Sun

...And inside

Random notes:

• Still have to edit my latest Glossybox and Julep opening. Glossybox refused to send a replacement BB cream in a color closer to my skin tone, but it turns out my new orange Skin79 BB cream is too pale, so I've been using the Misha one to mix with it so I don't look so very white. They did send a replacement for the lipstick, which is a nice pink.
• Getting ready to do the MS Bay to Bay ride, so lots of training on the bike, and lots of prep this week. Riders go from Irvine to San Diego in 2 days (there are shorter rides, too) and raise a minimum of $400 for MS research. Click here to learn more.
• Been biking to work twice a week, which really saves on gas! At work, as I have to pull myself together very fast, I mostly use Wet n' Wild's Walking on Eggshells palette, with its frosty pink eyelid color, warm shimmering brown in the crease, and eggshell color on the browbone. It goes on so quickly and blends just with your fingers. Get this one, if you don't have it already! It is strong enough, but can still work with a brighter lip shade. Yesterday, I wore a bright corally red. Gotta say I still prefer a brighter or bolder lip on me.

So more to come, Beauty Fans! Stay pretty out there!

<3BeautyJones