Navy Eye Liner - Shouldn't Work But Does

Ray Morris's book and Robert Jones Color Theory for Makup video and lots of other makeup experts say I should be able to wear navy blue around my eyes because it will do nothing for my greenish hazel eye color.

Well they are wrong.

Navy blue around Eyes; Should work, but does

I love navy blue around my eyes. It works better than purple, because purple brings out the un-pretty shadows near my inner eyes and under my eyes.

Why does navy work?  Take a look and see if you can tell me. I think it has something to do with the golden undertones of my skin.

You can really see the blue here, which I sheered out

Here's what I used:

Skin:

• Skynn Iceland Eye Pen under eyes
• Embryolisse Lait Creme Concentre

Face:

• Skin79 Hot Pink Super+ Beblesh Balm Triple Functions

 Cheeks:

• NYX butt naked palette terra cotta blush
• NYX butt naked contour shade

Eyes

• UDPP (except this is starting to get cakey on me. How about you?)
• Cover Girl Ageless Concealer in second lightest shade
• Smashbox Photo Op Palette: lashline to crease—Butter; V on outside of lid—Peacock; At lashline and below eyes—Azure; in crease—Sable
• Liner 1: Picasso gel eyeliner from the Smashbox Photo Op Palette applied with flat wide tight lining brush
• Liner 2: NYX slide on glide on pencil in Sunrise Blue, drawn on and sheered out with short flat smoker brush
• NYX butt naked fawn shade on brows with angled Real Techniques brush.

Lips:

• NYX Red lip pencil, filling in the outer third of the lips
• NYX Lip Gloss in Salsa. Why is salsa a nude pink?

Which brings me to a bone of contention: Naming of Shades

So, Smashbox.  Here are the shades I"ve used so far from your gorgeous lovely, Holy Grail Phopt Op Mega Palette:

• Butter: a soft yellow cream.  Good. No problem with that. It says what it is.
• Peacock: a cool Samsonite '50s luggage blue with a silvery finish. Huh? Have you seen peacock feathers? They have intense deep blue greens, ranging through teal blues, to irridescent purples. This shade is not at all peacockish.  It's lovely, but misnamed.
• Azure: A deep greenish navy, matte. Again, lovely, but what does Azure mean? It means blue, of course, but its a Romance Language word, which means the Ancient Romans spread it around. Along the Mediterranean we have the Cote D'Azur in France, and in Elba we have Porto Azzurro.  Been both places, thanks to Mom the Travel Agent. So I'm going to tell you that the water there looks like this (See Below.) It's much lighter and more intense than this shade. The Blue Grotto in Capri is Grotto Azzurro in Italian. Again, a greeny intense saturated blue. Not a navy.

Bermuda on the South Shore—see the pnk sand?
Azure is that deep greeny blue shade in the middle out toward the reefs, which are deep navy blue in this shot.

 So I quibble with manufacturers about color naming. I do. It's really really important. A great shade name can evoke your dreams, your fantasies, your dirty little secrets. A bad shade name can be hard to remember because it just doesn't make sense.

NYX made the same mistake with their royal blue eye pencil, which they called Sunrise Blue, which I would expect to be a lot lighter in shade and less saturated. And Salsa lip gloss shouldn't be this awesome shade of nude pink that goes with everything.  It should be a hot orangey red, like salsa is, maybe with some yellow or green shimmer to evoke the cilantro and onion needed to make the stuff.

See what I mean?

Which shade names just don't work for you? Which ones are so awesome you can barely stand it?

Have a great day, everyone!

Today I'm going to try more of those awesome colors in the Smashbox Photo Op palette.

:)BeautyJones

Quickie: Why I Wear Makeup

BEFORE

AFTER

Any questions?

:)BeautyJones

Quick Bike to Work look

Some days when you bike to work it goes a bit pear-shaped.

Yesterday it was Monday, I was a bit behind, and my hair as I blew it dry in my office with the door shut, just refused to come together.

I guess the same thing could happen on any day, but it's particularly stressful when my office is doubling as my dressing room/vanity area, and I can hear folks outside starting to get about their day.

Anyway, my weapon of choice makeup-wise was still the NYX nude on nude palette, but I did a simple brown tone all over my eyelid up to the crease and faded it toward the brow bone with a touch of highlight color. This is the deep brown that has a bit of golden sparkles in it. The basic shape is a 20s style dark pool eyelid, which is kind of the Jazz Age gramma of today's Smokey Eye.

Finished it out with some mascara and black eye pencil, and a pink lip. To add some summer feeling, I went a bit heavier on the bronzer/contour.

I have to say, I'm really liking the way my brows look when I use a taupey brown eye shadow with an angled brush instead of a pencil, or the whole wax, stencil and two tones Anastasia thing. The stencil and wax thing does have its place, but I've learned I like free-handing the brows. It's more artsy, and I am a designer. If you don't feel as comfortable doing that, then try that Anastasia Brow Express kit. It really is wonderful to have the stencil helping you find that nice Liz Taylor sculpted brow shape.

Just bought this pink sleeveless dress from Title 9. Love the breezy summer shape and the pretty hot pink color. The material is so cottony soft.

Cheers! Hope some of you are biking to work this month. It's good for you, and for the earth, and for the air.

BTW, my biking has me a little over a pound away from my Weight Watchers goal weight. How 'bout that?

Cheers, all!

:)BeautyJones

Face Chart Favorite: Gold Eyes, Fuchsia Lip

My Thursday Look, A bike to work one!

Gold eyelids, neutral gray-brown crease, matte ivory on the browbone,
and fuchsia lip, with lots of contour

 Now that I'm biking to work 3 days a week -- something I'm doing in May, and some of June, it's a special challenge to change it up with my makeup. I only have a few little palettes at work in my desk.

The NYX nude on nude palette is great for this, though, because not only are there loads of neutral colors for the eyes, there are lots of glosses, which I have been mixing together on my lips, too.

For this eye look, I used the gold on the bottom row on the lid to the crease, a touch of the sparkly brown bottom row, second from right, and the top row left ivory shade on the brow bone. Some Maybelline Great Lash and some MAC Graphblack pencil finished the eye out. I even used one of the browns on the top row to define my brows.

For the lip I used the second shade from the left. It's brighter than it looks in this picture.

Closeup on the eye.

I was wearing a Little Black Dress with this, so the bright makeup shades helped me not look washed out.
Still waiting for a bit more color to my skin. The summer and triathlon workouts at Zuma Beach will take care of that!

How I look biking to work, except with a helmet and gloves

• My folks were in Amsterdam and bought me this amazing Assos jersey. Each panel is a different kind of technical fabric, and it feels feather-light. So so pretty! 
• My knickers are Giordana--my most comfortable yet. Expensive bike wear really is much nicer, especially if you ride a lot, and comfort become key! 
• I wear a headsweat under my helmet for comfort and wicking the sweat away from my head.  Speaking of that, turns out a little sweat is one of the best hair styling products ever!
• I wear a Road ID with all my key info on my ankle, just in case.
• My shoes are Louis Garneau with 3 velcro straps on each, for easy in and out. For the chamois, I recommend Hoo-Hah Ride Glide for women. Cyclists will know why!

 Would you ever ride a bike to work? Has it been way too long since you had that "Whee!" feeling? There are other ways to get that, of course, but riding a bike is a reliable and healthy one! It still feels like it did when you were a kid!

Happy Bike to Work Month! Ride safe--and pretty--out there, Ladies!

:)BeautyJones

Pink Manicure of the Week

I love vivid nails, and since I'm committed to only pink while the Giro d'Italia is on (the Tour of Italy, a bike race like the Tour de France, but in Italy, so even prettier to watch, if that's possible), I'm psyched I found such wonderfully bright colors that harmonize and pink it up together!

Pink nails can be conventional, but this combo is not!

Here is Julep's Portia layered over OPI's La Paz-Itively Hot. I'm holding my new bike-riding sunglasses by Smith in ice blue. I love blue. I love shiny things.

Julep's Portia is a pale cyan blue jelly with small flecks of multi-colored glitter.

From Julep Maven April Box: From Left, Penelope and Portia. See that pretty glitter?

OPI's La Paz-Itively Hot is a hot flamingo pink with a blue-purple irridescence.

The Julep glitter jelly made the blue sheen of the OPI even bluer. Together they make me think of the tropics. Rio as the sun goes down just before Carnival. The hot pink is a great 50s shade, but it gets a little 70s disco gleam with that blue-violet sheen. The glitter takes it up into the stratosphere.

Yay!

What's your favorite pink nail look? Comment and let me know which pink shades you rock.

:)BeautyJones

Eye Look: Warm and Cool Neutrals Mixed Together

Unii Palette in Turquoise, Clockwise from Top left: Bobbi Brown Shimmer Brick in Rose, Sephora Trio in Blues, Pixi Pans, Round Lancome Quad, Revlon 16-Hour Palette in Siren, L'Oreal HIP in Striking

My skin undertown is neutral--pink cheeks, warmish tones in the skin,
so I can use both warm and cool colors on my face.

My Outfit: Target Pencil Skirt, Save the Queen Shirt bought in Positano, Italy, Violet Scarf,
Sandals with a black denim ankle detail. Can I go back to Italy? How about right now, please!
And here's why you turn off that flash when using a mirror! Doh!

My Unii Cosmetics palettes are so awesome! I love being able to put exactly the pans I want into the palette and the mirror is so big. Very useful. As you can see in the top pic, I've put a variety into this turquoise one. The bright yellow is the only one that couldn't be called a neutral.

But such a variety of neutrals! I bought the Revlon Siren palette  because I loved the way each gray varied not only in value (darkness or lightness) but warm or cool. The lightest gray has a touch of green-blue. The next darker shade has subtle red and green shimmer (crazy, right, but look at that first picture and see if I'm wrong). The next darker one has lots of lavender.

For this eye I used the Lancome rose gold on the lid to the crease,
and then put that medium gray with the lavender shimmer into the crease,
and finished it off with the Sephora white from the blue trio.
This white has a smattering of bright tiny white glitter in there, above the very soft pearly multicolored shimmery white.
It's not quite what you expect, and I love that!

Lips: Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Sweet Tart, neutralized by Pink Truffle.
A warm pink balanced out by a cool brown-based pink.

NYX "butt" naked palette cheeks. I know, I use this like every day when I'm doing the makeup at home.
But I do that because it's awesome!!! This is my favorite contour, bar none. It's a perfect shade.

Results:

• Using warm and cool neutrals on eyes adds a bit of interest, and gives you another way to make things project or recede. Warm pops forward, and cool recedes. Thus endeth the art lesson. But seriously, if you've taken basic art class, the knowledge really does translate very well into makeup!
• Mixing two lipsticks is a great thing to do to fine tune your lip. Here I was going for pink, but I wanted the lip to balance the eye, not upstage it, as I would if I was going for one of those Mad Men looks I did a few weeks back with the Revlon classic shades. Sweet Tart is a pretty bright shade. Pink Truffle was too subtle. Together, they were just right! So mixing warm and cool on the lips can get you just where you want to be.

Bike to Work: NYX nude on nude FOTD

Doesn't look like I biked to work today, does it?

My company has many incentives if you want to carpool, take public transportation or bike to work, and several years ago, I joined the company's Triathlon team to get healthy and fit and make friends across different divisions. It is a very rewarding thing to do! We raise money and have fund raising events throughout the year for a local charity.

The upshot is that I used to bike to work a lot, and then because of lots of nighttime commitments I stopped. But now if you bike to work 3x per week you get this really cute bike jersey. Want to know how to motivate me? SWAG!

Simple neutral eyes and a pink lip, just from this one palette, the NYX nude on nude palette,
plus a little MAC graphblack pencil around the lash line,
Maybelline Great Lash Mascara,
and Anastasia Brow Wiz in Ashe Blonde on brows.

Better view of the eye look

View showing blush and contour

My Unii Palette in Lavender. These are my most basic neutral shades, all depotted. Great for work!
I used the circular blush in the center on my cheeks.
For contour I used the Aveda three-pan on the upper right.

NYX nude on nude palette
All over the lid and on the browbone I used the soft pale taupe top left.
In crease and on outer edge of eyelid in V I used the blue-gray top row, second from right.
On lash line I used the charcoal black top row, all the way to the right.

My Bianchi Brava - My Commuter Bike

Lips:

• I only used the frosty pink gloss third from the left from the NYX palette. You can't tell from the photo, but it is the frostiest of all of the pinks of the 5 on the left. It lasts longer and has the same taste as their lip glosses.

NYX nude on nude palette

Results:

• I like that there are some warmer and cooler options in the NYX palette eyes. The photos make the colors more vivid than they are. Really it's a neutral palette with a few warmer and cooler accent shades.
• The lip palette is particularly useful. I wish it included a darker berry shade, but mostly, it's got you covered.
• Biking to work makes me feel better all day long. I'm just way more cheerful. I'll be doing this a lot more.

How do you commute to work? Need any tips on how to bike to work and still look cute at work? I've got drawers stuffed with useful things in my office.

Happy Bike to Work Month!

:)BeautyJones