Long Time No See

I've been sick and very very busy at work, so that's my excuse. Sorry I've been away for awhile. I'm preparing for a trip to France for two weeks.

Going to Paris and cycling the Loire Valley. Please comment below and let me know what you'd like to see. I'm thinking of doing a simple travelogue, and, of course, in Paris, there will be some makeup and some fashion, because that place is modelopolis twenty-four seven - lots of eye candy everywhere.

Here is a collection of looks from the last two weeks, and some products I hadn't gotten around to photographing, and my little depotted palette of lippies for your viewing enjoyment!

 I've had this Sleek cream base palette for a while and am finally getting around to using it. Thinking of taking it to Paris, but I'll be test driving it first. Planning on putting it over my MAC Soft Ochre paint pot to see if it will crease or not. I love the variety of colors in there!

 On this day I was wearing a cherry-colored cardigan, so I thought I'd pull the blue out of it and onto the center of my lids with some irridescent Naked Cosmetics Twilight action. This Twilight collection has lovely iridescent cool tones. I used the darker periwinkle in this set. These pigments are lovely and I haven't heard enough about them. Go check them out at nakedcosmetics.com.

 This was a burgundy eye look using Naked Cosmetics Urban Rustic collection. I just love using burgundy on my eyelids for a bold look. It's a strong look, and yet takes fewer steps to achieve. This kind of round filling in of the eyelid reminds me of the look of silent film stars. It has some mystery and romance. I did very little else on my face, but I think this would look so cool with a similar lip shade for evening.

 Hooded eyes hide the burgundy when I'm looking at you.

 I love this black velvet jacket. I got it at TJ Maxx a million years ago, but it's going to Paris with me.

 This aqua blue shade on my eyes is also from the Naked Cosmetics Twilight set. It's a warmer blue, slightly dreamy and tropical, but I just use it as a sheer wash here. I'm pretty sure I used the NYX jumbo eye pencil in Milk to get this look.

 And here's a neutral eye look with some warm browns in the crease. These kinds of shades are easy to find, but I must say, I'm still totally in love with my Mehron naturals palette. The shades are so true, matte, pigmented and blendable, and I can do an entire eye look with one brush - my bdellium 776 in the yellow bambu collection, which is a dupe for the MAC 217 brush.

 A warm pink lip shade brings out the warmth of this neutral eye look.

 Here's my Zpalette with all, and I mean ALL of my Revlon Just Bitten Balmstains depotted into it. Each of these little tins is metallic, so you can rearrange the shades to your heart's content. And I used a candle to gently melt the product into the tins, once I'd scraped them gently out of the tubes.

I also mixed together 2/3 Revlon Cherries in the Snow and 1/3 Revlon Fire and Ice for the one in the upper right hand corner. Top Left is Milani's new lipstick in Red Label.

I don't think you can do Paris without a few Red Lip days, do you?

Anyway, thanks for dropping by. Please let me know what you are up to in the comments below, and see you sooner than later, this time, Lovely Peeps!

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

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

I'm Baaa...aack! FOTD with Lovesick BalmStain

Hey!

Back to Business...and Basics, a FOTD

When I first started this beauty blog, FOTDs, or Face of the Day, was almost all I did! And I still just love putting on a fresh new face in the morning, photographing it, and writing down how I did it.

Back from the big trip to Europe, and I didn't want to be depressed, like, poor me, I have to go back to work, so I put on the brightest dress I own right now, this hot pink number from Title Nine. It wicks and it's comfy, but it makes a splash.

And, although I'd bought all this cool new stuff, I had an unopened Revlon Just Bitten Balmstain in Lovesick in one of my drawers. The hot pink lip! Great for Fall, said one my September magazines, so here goes. It's pretty bright, which means, I love it!

Whee!

Since I couldn't take it on my trip, I thought I'd break out that trusty Anastasia Brow Express kit with the little stencils. Stencils are good when your hand might be a bit jet lagged, along with the rest of you. The Brow Express kit has a great shimmery highlight color and a slightly darker matte shade of shadow so you can create just a very subtle eye, like one Marilyn might have used with a bright lip.

I deepened this with the Wet n' Wild Petal Pusher palette, the Eyelid, Crease, and Definer colors on the right side.

Wet n' Wild Petal Pusher Eye Palette

These eye shadows have a buttload of fallout, but the colors are so pretty. All you have to do, in order to deal with the fallout, though, is not to put on the your foundation and concealer before you are done using them. One small adjustment. So worth it, with all that pigmentation for like five bucks!

Ooh, yeah!

So here's the looking down shot!

Yay! You likee? I love the way the super-bright lip makes the burgundy shades on the eye seem almost neutral.

Good to be back! Thanks for reading!

<3BeautyJones

Too Faced Lip Insurance + Revlon Kissable Balm Stain = Power Pout

I figured out how to really make Too Faced Lip Insurance work. With Revlon Kissable Balm Stain in Smitten, it lasted almost through the entire work day.

Too Faced Lip Insurance

Revlon-Just-Bitten-Kissable-Balm-Stain-in-Smitten

Revlon-Just-Bitten-Kissable-Balm-Stain-in-Smitten

Revlon-Just-Bitten-Kissable-Balm-Stain-in-Smitten

 So here's what you do:

• Apply a thin coat of Too Faced Lip Insurance and wait for it to dry. It will start to feel tacky.
• Put the lippie of your choice over the top.
• The Just Bitten Balm stain in Smitten worked really well with this!

I really hope this works for you as well as it did for me.

Try it out yourself and see how long your lip color can last! Let me know how it goes, and comment below. Tell me what you used.

Do you use lip primer? What works for you?

Cheers!