30 Day Makeup Challenge: Day 15, Blue Eye Shadow

 Blue eye shadow is notoriously hard to wear for day. I think there were some moments in the nineteen sixties and seventies in which is was perfectly fine. I can picture some ladies with big hair and nipped in waists in the typing pool on Madmen wearing it, but those days are gone.

So color me bold when I put on this matte cool French blue on my lids. What's really nice about having hooded eyes is that when you look straight ahead, mostly folks can't see what color is on your lids. So you can create a dramatic surprise by adding unusual shades and finishes to that area. I like to put some shimmer, some sparkle, one bright color, or even a bunch of colors there as a little gift for folks who are paying attention.

 As you can see, this look is a bit gentler in artificial indoor lighting. I like the way the purple tones come out here.

So here's what I used:

Eyes:

• MAC Soft Ochre Paint Pot as primer
• Urban Decay Vice Palette Chaos on Lid
• Urban Decay Vice Palette Disruption on Crease
• Urban Decay Vice Palette Lace to blend Crease Color up into browbone
• Maybelline Eye Studio felt tip eye liner on lash line
• NYX Slide On Eye Pencil in Navy on Water Line
• L'Oreal Voluminous Mascara in Carbon Black

Here are some tips on working with blue eye shadow:

• Ground the blue with a neutral in the crease and blend them together there
• Finish it off with black eye liner along the lash line
• Blend the shadow a lot, and then pack on more. Sometimes blue shadows aren't as pigmented as we'd like, so they can get patchy. If you really want to be sure to get full coverage, start with a white or, even better, a black sticky base like a NYX jumbo pencil or some other creamy shadow base.
• Go smoky and put something dark, a blue, gray or brown, in the water line
• Restrict the blue to the eyelid if you want to go a bit more stealth on it, and avoid the crease
• Use a nice light concealer under the eyes to make your smoky lash line stand out, and to avoid the sense that it's just the veins and circles under your eyes showing through instead of some nice blue eye liner that you chose to rock today
• Keep the rest of the face pretty neutral, both to feature the eyes, and to avoid an overall clownish appearance
• Since blue eye shadow can be a bit old lady, but it can also be a little Rock n' Roll and glam, wear stuff that fits the Rock n' Roll style - like the black leather jacket I wore here

So what do you think, Beauty Fans? Comment below.

Thanks for coming by my blog!

Love, BeautyJones

30 Day Makeup Challenge: Day 13, 4 Colors on Eyes!

I'm not going to lie. This one scared me. Wearing four different colors on my eyes, I worried, was going to make my colleagues at work give me some pretty strange looks.

I could have worn four different neutral colors, I suppose, but that seemed to me like cheating. And not nearly as much fun. A day look with four different true colors? Now that's a makeup challenge, people!

I have to take my hat off to the color wheel, and my art teachers throughout the years who told me about using harmonious colors. Harmonious colors are the ones that are next to each other on the wheel. They play nicely together. I picked some from the warm side, from the golds and oranges, reds and pinks.

1.Matte purple crease. 2. Shimmery bronze-orange outer lid.
3. Shimmery antique gold in center of lid. 4. Matte ellow toward the tear duct.

I wore neutral gray clothes with all this color on my face.

Here are the colors I used from the Crown Brush Kaleidescope 180 Palette, which really comes in handy for these challenges. I love knowing I do have pretty much every color of the rainbow.

Crease Color

Inner Lid and Tear Duct

Top: Outer Lid.
Bottom: Middle of Lid

Looking straight ahead, who can see those colors?

Colors! A black flick finishes it off.

Last thoughts:

• Going to the Makeup Show LA today and scared and excited! Scared I'll spend too much, but won't get the right things. Excited to see my fellow beauty fans and gurus there. I'll have plenty of stuff to show you from there, lovely readers!
• Loving L'Oreal Voluminous Mascara in Carbon Black. Wondering, does it come in waterproof so I can wear it for swimming?
• Signed up for the Nautica Malibu Triathlon again this year. Year 5 or 6 for me. Can't remember.
• Started cross training instead of just running on Thursdays nights. My quads are killing me and I can feel my abs. Not that they are now rock hard are anything, it's just that I can feel them. 

The next big thing in this Makeup Challenge is my zombie makeup look. That will take some doing. Hmmmm. Not wearing that to work, that's for sure!

Have a great day, Beauty Fans!

Love, BeautyJones

30 Day Makeup Up Challenge: Day 12 Your Choice

Since today was my choice, I decided to use a product I have hardly every used, although I love it! The Naked Cosmetics Harvest Moon Collection.

I used #06 all over my mobile eyelid—you know, the part that moves, that covers your eyeball. In the above picture #06 is in the middle, but this picture is pretty good because you can see that its base is a warm sienna brown, but it has a green gold shift. I applied this with just a touch of water, so it looked pretty strong and foiled. Kind of like that dragon fly wing color I love. The rest of my eye was neutrals from the Mehron palette, and then I finished it off with a pink Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain.

Hope you like! I love duochromes!

Tomorrow, the 4-color challenge! Come back and check it out.

And don't forget to use the buttons up on the right to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, to my Twitter feed and Like my Facebook page.

Thanks for dropping by, Beauty Fans!

30 Day Makeup Challenge: Day 10, Nude Eyes, Nude Lips

Sorry for how long these blog post titles are getting. I much prefer short and sweet, but there's lots of info to convey.

So today's challenge was nude eyes and nude lips, which isn't so hard for me, and probably not for you, either, since nudes and neutrals are kind of the usual daily makeup look for those of us who do wear the stuff.

To make it more interesting for myself, I decided to use Mr, Wayne Goss's technique from one of his recent videos called "How to Blend Eye Makeup Like a Pro". I subscribe to his channel because his videos are brief and full of helpful info from a pro makeup artist. I also like his British accent, and he's pretty darned cute, as well.

The surprising tip in his video is to apply your crease color with your eye open so that you can really find the right groove. This is not terribly attractive, but it does work. And so that's what I tried for my eyes. I ended up with a bit darker application than I'm used to, but I like it. What do you think?

Eye Shadow, in order of application:

• MAC Paint Pot in Soft Ochre on upper and lower lids all over
• Lid: Mehron Natural Wheat
• Crease: Mehron Cocoa and Espresso
• Lid Outer Third: Mehron Black
• Upper Lashline: Mehron Black
• Lower Lashline: Mehron Espresso
• Brows: Mehron Cocoa

For the nude lip, those of you who follow my blog a lot will probably able to guess what I did. Yes, it's Revlon's Just Bitten Balmstain in Honey! It's a slightly pink nude, but I prefer that. With my small lips and my age, I need some contrast between my lip color and my skin color.

I used my Mehron neutral eye palette for this, and I finished the look off with my black felt tip pen liner, the Maybelline Eye Studio one, which is my favorite at the moment. I'm finding as I look at my pictures I notice I like how this looks, and without it, my eyes just don't look finished.

I have started using Revlon Colorstay Oily/Combination Skin Foundation in 220 Natural Beige. Not only does this color match my skin way better than my Tarte Maracuja Oil foundation, or any of my BB creams, but this seems to have a more seamless look on my skin. It doesn't seem to move and get patchy or settle into lines like other foundations I've tried. And it's a drugstore foundation. I love it!

I like using Mehron Cocoa on my brows when I'm using the other shades from that palette on my lids. It gives the eye look a nice unified feel. Plus I find shadow and an angled brush help me get a more natural but well-defined brow.

I'm going to The Makeup Show LA this weekend. I'll be there at 9 or a little before on Saturday, so I hope to see you there. Remember you need some kind of pro credential to get into this event. I had a great time at this last year, so I'm really looking forward to it. I just figured out that Viseart is going to be there, so I may walk away with this long-lusted after item, the Viseart Eye Palette #1, a favorite of Nickie Tutorials, whom I adore. I also want to pick up some Inglot, some Make Up For Ever, and so on, and hopefully I won't go too crazy. The deals are awesome, and the vibe can be intense.

So that's it, Beauty Fans! More 30 Day Makeup Challenge stuff coming tomorrow!

Love, BeautyJones

30 Day Makeup Challenge: Pink Eye Shadow

I love pink eye shadow, but I know that it needs to be anchored with browns or grays in order to avoid that irritated or diseased look. I just love pink on my skin. I think it works because my skin has a golden tone rather than a pink tone, so there's a contrast.

I created kind of a mosaic of pink, starting with my Maybelline Color Tattoo in the new limited edition pale pink shade, using my Inglot rainbow pinks, which are matte, then adding Toasted from the Urban Decay Naked Palette on the outer edge of the lids, and Cocoa and Espresso from my Mehron palette in the crease and along the lash line. Finally, I used a bright pink on the inner half of the lids from my Crown Brush Kaleidescope Palette. This was one of the brightest shades I have. Not Sugarpill Dollypop bright, but pretty bright.

I used my Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain in Honey on the lips, and my Sleep Makeup Face Form in lights to do contour, blush and highlighter.

With Flash in Daylight

Hope you enjoy this look! More tomorrow!

30 Day Makeup Challenge: Day 9, Green Eye Shadow

Here's my green eye shadow look, using my Mehron Neutral palette, and an aqua green from the Crown Brush 180 Kaleidescope Palette, the one I named Astroturf (see below).

The color scheme makes me think of the backgrounds in Bambi. There were so many different ways I could have gone green on the eyes. You could try something shimmery, something teal, bright kelly green, or emerald, like the Pantone color of 2013, but I thought I'd try matte colors, and a soft early springtime kind of green.

I think I could have deepened the eye liner with some warmer brown. Any kind of green or blue can bring out the blue tones around the eyes, and I have those a lot.

Crown Brush Kaleidescope 180 Palette, with my names because stuff should have names!

The invaluable Mehron Neutral Palette - Best Mattes Ever!

But what do you think? Would you try something like this? Comment in the bar below!

Random Notes:

• On a shoot a makeup artist told me she uses Estée Lauder's Camouflage makeup as a concealer, and she showed me how it covers better than a MAC studio concealer, so now I gotta get that stuff!
• Bought myself some Revlon Colorstay Oil-Free Foundation in Sand Beige and tried it today, just a light cover mostly on the T zone. I love the way this color matches my skintone, and I am surprised how well it does! Got to try a heavier coverage soon. I also got the cream version to see how that felt. I really have combination skin, and as you can see, it's aging skin, so it's hard to know what will work best.
• Got L'Oréal Voluminous mascara in Carbon Black and tried it today, and it's way nicer than that Maybelline Plush one, that just gets all over the place and clumps like crazy. More on this when I post today's 30 Day look, which is pink eye shadow. I had some fun with that one!
• For a while I had no bloops and smears under my eyes. But this week they are back. I don't think I can do pencil around the eyes without it moving. I keep trying to seal it, but it doesn't stay sealed. And I seal the concealer with powder. Harrumph! I'll keep trying to find the magic method, and when I do, you'll hear about it.

Love, BeautyJones