Friday, April 27, 2012

Wet n Wild Swatches

So, it only took me a very...VERY long time to get these swatches up.  I actually had them done not to long after I bought all of the palettes but I didn't like the photos once I uploaded them and saw them in iPhoto.  I finally had the time (and the sunlight) to do these swatches properly and they came out a lot better.  All swatches are done on my bare forearm, with no base and in natural light (I tried not to do direct sunlight).

Starting with the Greed palette:

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Meredith Gentry Character Inspired Series: Doyle



Doyle (pronounced like Dole fruit) is the Captain of the Queen's Ravens, the Queen's guard.  He is sent by the Queen to fetch Merry.  In the books he is described as having black skin (not brown, or dark brown, or chocolate...black) with blue highlights.  There is a point in the story where he tries to bespell Merry and she she's a rainbow of colors, not necessarily a rainbow, but lots of colors.  Doyle has pointed ears (a distinct characteristic that marks his as not full-blooded Sidhe royal) and he has no shame in showing them, keeping his long black hair braided so his ears show all the time.  In his ears and one nipple he wears silver jewelry, always.

I used those three things to create this look:  black skin with blue highlights, rainbow colors when bespelling, and silver jewelry.  I didn't want to use navy blue as I felt it would be more, well, blue than anything so I went with blue then black over that.  I used a chromalust from Sugarpill called "Stella" for the lid.  Stella has a jet black base with rainbow glitter mixed in.  And for the silver I used Sugarpill's "Tiara" applied wet to the inner corners.  Here is the look (warning - this will be picture heavy to show different aspects of the look):


Saturday, April 21, 2012

Meredith Gentry Character Inspired Series: Queen Andais



Ever since I got into makeup I've wanted to do looks inspired by the characters from Laurell K Hamilton's Meredith Gentry series.  The series is told from the viewpoint of the mortal Princess Meredith, who fled from Cahokia, IL to Los Angeles, CA because people were trying to kill her.  She has been called back to Cahokia by her aunt, Queen Andais, for reasons unknown.  Merry herself appears "human" enough but her race of faerie, the Sidhe (pronounced "she") tend to look very exotic and one characteristic of Sidhe royals is tricolored irises.  For this look I chose to do Queen Andais whose irises are described as being charcoal, stormy grey and a very pale grey.  Here is the look I came up with:


Thursday, April 19, 2012

Smokey Neutral Work Look



Here lately I've been opting for a slightly more dramatic neutral look for work.  My bosses don't really mind when I wear color but I tend to lean more toward neutral colors because our population of patients tends to be older and not everybody is so open to color.  So to be neutral but a tad more dramatic, I've been taking Sugarpill's Bulletproof and adding a touch of that to the outer corners.  I'm planning on doing a video of my "tried and true" long wearing products (most of which are drugstore) because I reach for the same stuff over and over again for work.  Here are some photos the products that I used for this look:

Sunday, April 15, 2012

2-1 Daytime to Evening Greens



My boyfriend's brother recently got married and they chose a camo color scheme: them men wore camo vests and the bride's maids wore different shades of green gowns.  I had originally wanted to do AliciaD372's Berry Blast makeup then I remembered the camo theme.

During Mardi Gras, Magnolia Makeup had 50% off all of their green, purple and gold pigments.  I took major advantage of this sale!  I'll hopefully have swatches of everything up eventually.  Anywho, one of the pigments I purchased was Reptile.  Sadly this is already one of the pigments that's on their "last chance" list!!  It's a gorgeous medium, yellow-green with some green and gold flecks of glitter in it.  Green is my favorite color but I can honestly say I don't own any other color like this!  It's so unique, sparkly and pretty and bright and...anyways.  On to the look:

Monday, April 2, 2012

Misc thoughts...

I already have a website/blog:  www.beautybytaime.com  I haven't really kept it up to date though because I don't really find wordpress to user friendly for someone who isn't really tech-saavy.  I was using blogger before with my old username and I really liked how easy it was for me to navigate and personalize.  I really wanted a .com (who knows why!!) so I purchased a domain from wordpress.  I don't really want to renew something that I don't use on a regular basis.  So here we are, on blogger, again!

Katniss Everdeen-Girl on Fire-District 12-The Hunger Games Inspired Look



If you've never read these books (I highly recommend them) they are a series of 3 books about a post-apocolyptic world, Panem, which is composed of 12 Districts and the Capitol.  Each district has a different specialty to generate revenue for themselves and ultimately provide luxury for the people of the Capitol.  Anywho, Katniss Everdeen is from District 12 and their specialty is coal mining.

I'm not quite sure if I will take this through all 12 districts (xsparkage has done this on her YouTube channel), but I definitely have looks for other characters in mind.  We will see.  In the book/movie, Katniss is known for being "the girl on fire" which is a reference to her dress (you'll have to read the books or watch the movie to find out why ;) ).  I tried to incorporate both the look and colors of fire as well as smoldering coals (orange, red, yellow, black).  This look also gave me a chance to use my Sugarpill Burning Heart palette!!  I am absolutely in LOVE with this company, from their products to their look (I will post a review/haul/photos later).

There were a few bumps in the road while filming this tutorial.