My Wishlist... droooooool

Lately, I have been going through these Makeup and Beauty blogs for product reviews and have zero-ed in on quite a number of favs. I intend trying them out as soon as I can lay my hands on them and of course as soon as my pocket allows me to ;) So here goes...

MY WISHLIST :)
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1. ColorBar I Glide Eye Pencil: Rs.325/-
REVIEW: http://makeupandbeauty.com/colorbar-i-glide-pencil-review/

2. Urban Decay Primer Potion: NOT AVAILABLE IN INDIA :(
REVIEW:

3. Charlie Red by Revlon [Perfume] -> Rs.350/-
REVIEW: http://makeupandbeauty.com/how-to-choose-the-right-perfume/
Very good review and for Rs.350/- I dont mind trying it ;)

4. Pond's Age Miracle Tinted Moisturizer -> Rs.215/-
REVIEW: http://www.glitterglamourgrace.com/2010/08/ponds-age-miracle-tinted-moisturiser.html

5. Maybelline Dream Mousse Blush -> Rs.180/-
REVIEW: http://www.makeupalley.com/product/showreview.asp/ItemId=65978/Dream_mousse_blush_in_soft_plum/Maybelline/Blush

6. ELF Mineral Eye Shadow Primer -> NOT SURE IF IT'S AVAILABLE IN INDIA :(
REVIEW: http://makeupandbeauty.com/elf-mineral-eye-shadow-primer-review/

7. LOTUS Herbals Hypnotica Eye Contour Definer -> Rs.199/-

The list you see is in no way exhaustive... I intend adding to it as often as I come across rave reviews about products that catch my fancy... Till then... Ta da... :D

Blush Blush...

Having been a fan of making up my eyes for effects ranging from sheer drama to pure innocence, I decided to experiment with other parts of my face... Now you see I have been gifted with really thin lips and so experimenting with them isn't really a welcoming idea to me. So I zeroed in on BLUSH. Yes yes yes blush that makes you look "oh so fresh", "oh so rosy", "have you just been pinched" pink... And it sure did turn out to be a good idea :D

I am not ashamed to say that I did try being cheap and initially used a pink eye shadow as blush. And voila! It turned out to be a success. BLUSH actually suited me! So I have finally gone ahead and have bought a propah blush for myself. It is STREET WEAR Smoothwear blush, the shade being "Pink Blossom". I bought it for Rs.190/-. It is turning out to be pretty ok, nothing very noteworthy, well what did I really expect out of Rs.190? It imparts a pink flush to my cheek and that's about it! Oh but yes, it is extremely long stay :)

The brush applicator that comes with it is now worth mentioning. It's horrible! It's a plastic flat brush which is extremely rude to my skin and so I have been forced to use a proper blush brush... I like the sound of it! The BLUSH BRUSH!

How do I apply it? Well.. All I do is make a fish face and apply the blush to my cheek bone all the way up to the corner of my face.

I plan to go blush shopping today to check if I can get my hands on some "ooh" "aah" inducing blush :)
Wish me luck! ;)

EYE SHADOW: a start...

“Your eyes are the windows to your soul” is what someone great had said. If it is true then we have got to get our eye makeup right ;) Isn't it? So here we go discussing eye shadows in this blog. Before I start... Ladies please feel free to write your comments and give me some feedback as how we could together make this blog more and more helpful for make-up junkies like us ;)

Further, in order to structure the blog such that it is easy to absorb info, I have divided the section on eye shadows in three different posts. Each post shall deal with the nitty-gritties of achieving beautiful eyes using eye shadows.

Eye shadows can make or break a look and it is very important to strike the right balance between under-dramatic and over dramatic eyes. Eye shadows not only add color to the eyes or highlight them, but they also help in changing (virtually), the shape and size of your eyes.

Before we go ahead, let us go through some rules that I swear by and most beauty and make-up blogs and articles also stress on. The rules are as follows:
1. Thou shalt not highlight the eyes AND the mouth at the same time.
2. Thou shalt not extend the smokey-eye look up to the eyebrows.
3. Thou shalt always use shadow brush and not the spongy applicators that come with the
shadow.
4. Thou shalt apply eye shadow according to the type of eye thou has been gifted with.

Jai Kajal ki Jai Ho!

On Friday I ran out of my Revlon kajal :( Just to refresh your memory, it was the one that has the perfect "jetness" of black and is extremely smooth as described in my previous post at: http://confessionsofamakeupoholic.blogspot.com/2010/08/kajal-kohl-surma.html
So anyways, now that I had run out of it, the only logical solution seemed to be was to go in search for it. And since I was travelling to Mumbai the next day, I needed it really fast. But of course you don't always get what you want and Murphy's Law struck... My "blackness" personified Revlon was not available anywhere! They were all out of stock... (Hey! Is everyone out there buying it?). And it is 9:30 in the evening with all stores shutting down!

So, out of sheer desperation I go to "Hanuman Stores". It is you know a "kirane ki dukaan" as in a General store selling groceries, cosmetics and the like. I apprehensively go and ask "Bhaiya aap kajal rakhte hain kya" (Bhaiya do you keep kajal). He says yes. Wait! what? did he just say yes? YES? Really? Oh my! My hopes soar and I ask more confidently this time "Kaunse kaunse hai?" (Which ones do you have)? He gives a curt reply "Jai Kajal". WTF! JAI KAJAL. What the hell is that? My soaring hopes dash :( But I am making myself feel better by saying that I can always buy one later...

I leave the store and tell my sister about it and she asks "Jai Kajal?". I say yes, sensing that she has more to say. I am praying for some hope and then she says "You know didi, a friend of mine uses this local kajal, which comes for 7 bucks and it is the black-est kajal I have ever seen." What? Will you please repeat it? What did you just say? All i heard was the "blackest kajal". I want it now! I am a sucker for black kajals... The blacker the better. I rush into the store and say with a smile "Bhaiya, woh Jai Kajal hi de do" (Bhaiya, gimme the Jai Kajal that you have). I buy it for 10 bucks.

I can't wait to reach home and try it! I am praying to God to be kind and to please bless me so that the blackness of Jai (no racism here!) wins me over. Once home, I hog the mirror, scrub my face. You see I have this weird logic that if your face is scrubbed the kajal looks doubly black (yeah right! whatever!). I take a matchstick and smear it with the kajal and apply it on the inner rim of my lower eye (sorry for the details!). Ok... My first reaction- it smells like camphor! Second reaction- my eyes are feeling a cooling sensation and weird.. Is it the camphor reaction? Third reaction- Dude! It's black. It's the black that God created! It's the exact color that God wanted black to be. It's heavenly! and wait does it have a "wet look" effect? Oh God! Really? Thank you God... Thank You so much for making me find this.

But wait what about the smell of Camphor? I turn the container and sure enough they have listed Camphor as the first ingredient! I am thinking "If they have so confidently mentioned camphor in the list of ingredients, it couldn't be bad... or could it?" I google it... I type "Camphor Eyes" in the Google search bar and Voila! According to AYURVEDA, camphor cools the eye and relieves traces of stress and strains. I think incredulously "Is it really good for the eye?” I have found what I was looking for, for all these years and that too for 10 friggin bucks! THERE IS A GOD!

The EYELINER

A friend of mine is getting married soon and the girls that we are, ended up having a trial make up session during one of our night outs! We wanted to try out different looks so that she ends up looking dramatically different on every occasion. We Indians you see have our weddings stretch for an average of a week with loads of functions ranging from plain boring to awesome fun to energy sapping-ly tiring... So we wanted something that was pretty as well as practical. Lolz... Like that's even possible! ;) (But you can't blame us for trying babe...) And that's when I discovered how powerful eyeliner is :)

Well in a loose sense eyeliner is anything that lines the eye, could be kohl like colored pencil, could be in a powdered form or in a liquid form. What really helped us were liquid eyeliners for drama and precision and colored eye pencils for soft definition, though I prefer a liquid liner as I live in a tropical country and colored pencils spell smudgy disaster for me :D

I have used eyeliners in the past because I have always felt that the effect of kohl is never complete without an application of liquid eyeliner. But that night opened a whole new world of opportunities for me to experiment with one's eyes and I have a newfound respect for eyeliners ever since.

So, for starters we searched Google (thank God for that!) and found some interesting links and sites explaining us the various types of do(s) we could opt for. I have compiled the most interesting and most doable ones here in this blog of mine... You guys better try it out and have FUN!

Here goes...
1. BASIC:
    This is as natural as it can get! This is for when you need your eyes emphasized without 

    looking conspicuously made up.
    This includes lining both your lids with a steady hand from the inside of your eye to the 

    outer edge.   

    I would recommend a liquid liner for the upper lid and a pencil liner for the lower lid.
    You may apply white liner in the inner rim of your lower lid to give an appearance of 

    bigger eyes.

2. BOLD and the BEAUTIFUL:
    This is essentially an evening look and you need to skip the pencil for it. Itís the liquid 

    liner all the way...
    This can be achieved by first lining the eye from the middle to the outer corner and then
    drawing a second line from the inside of the eye and joining the previous one. Make sure
    that the outer line is thicker than the inner one.

    Jewel toned colors work very well with this look!

3. CATTY:
    This is one of my favorites and results in a really dramatic look.
    Using a liquid liner line the upper lid; starting from the inside of the eye keep extending 

    the line upward towards the outer corner of the eye. For the lower lid line only the 

    outer three quarter of the eye should be lined.

    For a better finish you might want to kohl rim your eyes and then apply the liner.

Some color preferences based on my personal experience...
LIGHT EYES can be enhanced with browns, bronzes, dark golden, plums and purples.
BROWN EYES look best with greens.
GREEN EYES can be dramatized with silvers, browns and blacks.
BLUE EYES look mesmerizing with reddish browns, golden and black.
BLACK EYES are fortunate to be able to try any jewel toned colors from Emerald greens to Midnight blues to Black and Purples.

Also, I always never match the color of my eyeliner with my clothes! That spells plain AMATEUR! ;)

The KOHL

Kajal, Kohl, Surma... Call it whatever but today, women world over swear by it. Traditionally used since some infinity years in South Asia, Middle East and Northern Africa, the credit of making it a popular cosmetic perhaps goes to CLEOPATRA.

Cleopatra may have used kohl to protect her eyes from the sun's glare but today it has become an essential in every woman's vanity pouch. I for one cannot let a single day go by without kohl-ing my eyes.

We may use it for varied purposes, but the main purpose for a kohl to serve as a cosmetic is to emphasize and dramatize the eyes. I have been using kohl since the past 9 years now (yes I started young and no I am not old!) and can say for sure that I have finally found the method of application that suits me best!

Yes ladies... you all heard me right! It took me 9 long years... And no I am not slow or dumb. I have always liked the effect that kohl has had on my eyes but I could never find a way in which I was actually satisfied with its effect! And I am sorry to say that 90% of the women I see with kohl-rimmed eyes actually fail to impress me with their kohl-application. Ha ha, I know I know I have no right to be condescending but ladies... do you really not want to hear what I have to say?

Ok here I go... first it took me some experiments and hence loads of expenditure to zero-in on the form of kohl that suits me best. Yes you heard me right. The form of the kajal is important :)

My first tryst was with a waxy stick in a plastic-ky casing shaped liked a FAT PENCIL...Yes yes! you guys guessed it right! It was the LAKME KAJAL! Sad to say, it didn't really work for me. I didn't find it smooth enough and it smudged too :( But for the pocket money that I received while I was in school, it did see me through... Next i tried experimenting with a Kajal shaped like a conical crayon... I am sure you can imagine it... THE HIMALAYA KAJAL... Nah! It smudged a lot! And again it wasn't smooth enough or even black enough for me. I was starting to get a bit disillusioned here, but alas I did start earning some money by doing fashion shows for my college and yippee I bought my first internationally acclaimed brand's "kajal pencil". It was from CHAMBOR! It wasn't black or smooth enough for me (am sure you guessed it by now) but it was smudge proof! Yay! yay! Finally I get a smudge proof kajal pencil... But if there is a God, which I was sure of, I would soon find a kajal that'll be smooth/black enough! And soon enough when I tried a kajal pencil from another very very expensive brand I found the black and the texture that I was looking for. Thank You REVLON! I very happily wore it to an office function and AAAARrrgghhhhh by the end of the day it had run all over and I looked like a Raccoon :( Dude! What a disaster!!!

For a long time I alternated between my expensive smudge-proof CHAMBOR kajal and the super expensive smooth one from REVLON. I used the CHAMBOR one for when I was travelling or when I knew I'd have looooong days at work and used the REVLON one for cocktail parties and other such short events. But one day lighting struck! A storm brewed! And Voila! I had the perfect solution :) Yay Yay Yay! I knew the way out! I was fed up of choosing between smudge proof and perfect color and now I had the key to enjoying both... Yipee...

So finally all that was required was lining the internal rim of my eyes with REVLON's jet black kohl and using the CHAMBOR kohl to dramatize my eyes by applying it under my lashes and below my eyes :) The result? Super defined eyes and that too smudge proof :D

I Met Gemsmaquillage & FleurDeForce!

As many of you will already know, on Monday 16th August, Gemma and Fleur hosted a little meet-up in Manchester, just outside the main doors of Selfridges. I went along and met the girls (which was sooo wierd after watching them on YouTube for so long!) and we headed off to Starbucks for a Coffee and a bite to eat :) I brought my boyfriend, Zach along so he was nominated the photographer of the day ;) thank you sweetie! <3 Click on the photo's to enlarge them...

Below is a photo of Fleur, Gemma and myself as we met for the first time! Love this photo :)

We then walked back to Selfridges and browsed the beautiful makeup counters as well as the "posh ladies clothes" (hahaa!) There was so many lovely things I could have bought but we all seemed to just browse and I came away empty handed :( probably the best thing for my credit card right now though to be honest! Woops. Oh, and who can resist a photo in the huuuge mirror? Not us ;)

 After shopping, we thought that the obvious place to spend the rest of the day was the Champagne Bar. A wise choice made by all. Me and Boo went for the very nice yet very expensive Pino Grigio, whilst Fleur, Gemma and Caroline ordered their Rum & Tonics "with a dash of lime" - which were yummy! The photographer/my boyfriend ordered the manly choice: Beer.

We all had so much to talk about and it almost fealt as if we had known each other longer!

Here is a picture of me with the gorgeous girlies, Fleur and Boo :)

All of the girls I met that day were so lovely and the whole experience was different from anything I have done before. I guess I am so used to hanging out with the same group of friends, it was nice to be refreshed with a group of new girls, and new conversation topics. We had so much in common with regards to YouTube and our general love for the internet the the conversation topics were flowing!

The day really inspired me to have my own meet-up, giving me the chance to meet these girls again, as well as meeting more of my own subscribers! So, I was thinking of having one on Saturday 4th September (this year! haha) in Leeds! I will crack on with organising it now and write up a whole blog post as well as making a video on my YouTube channel about it so that you can get all the details :)

I wanted to thank Gemma and Fleur for a lovely day and I can't wait to see you again soon!

Love,  Sara