Blix Look

This weeks challenge in Never Too Much Shimmer -group was to do a look by Blix from Glitter is my Crack. I chose this look. Since I don't own any of the same products she used, I just improvised with different neutral and browns I had. Not surprisingly, my look doesn't really look anything like her's ;P Her colours any more intense and darker, and the outer crease colour is a redder brown than mine. I still like the result!

I used:

Urban Decay Primer Potion

Fyrinnae Moon child

Fyrinnae Beholder

Concrete Minerals Doe-Eyed

Mschic dark brown eyeliner pencil

L'Oreal Beauty tubes mascara

H&M false lashes

Evil Shades Hardcore Lips Roue

The colour is a bit uneven, looks better in real life!

Cut my bangs today!

Seems like my lashes have a different opinion as to where they should be.

I think I did pretty well considering I only had one brush to use (the others were all waiting to be washed, I just forgot)!

My Hair History

I've tried lots of hair colours during the years, here are pics of some! I've never had fully black hair, I've kept to other colours to be able to change it easily.

This is my hair now. Dyed the bangs black because they faded too fast for my taste. Slanted bangs are new and I might cut them back to a straight model, because I'm having a hard time cutting them nicely myself.

Full purple, this is Directions Violet dyed over faded cotton candy pink. I've had one side of the head shaved for years, my hair is so thick you can't really see it when I wear my hair down.

Faded purpley-pink hair with some purple streaks on the bangs, a mix of Directions Lilac and Carnation pink.

The same color as above, only in better light and not so faded. You can also see me about to Rick-roll.

Carnation Pink and Lilac with some clip-in extensions in the same colours.

A light pink with darker clip-in streaks. This was my entry for Grey's Sakura contest. Directions Carnation Pink mixed with conditioner half-and-half.

Cotton candy pink. This is what the diluted Carnation Pink faded to. 

Carnation Pink with less conditioner and freshly dyed. I have a  fall made of cotton candy pink kanekalon mixed with some white and dark pink, it was really close to my hair in colour.

Here you can observe my lovely natural colour in action! It's a light cold greyish-brown and super blah. It would lighten into blonde if I spent enough time in the sun, but I still don't like it.

Dyed with undiluted Carnation Pink here, I felt it was too bright.

I dyed the ends of my bangs for Lumous Gothic Festival 2010 to match the Colinette wool extensions I made.

This wonderful bathroom shot with a hairdryer growing out of my head might be actually after the dyed bangs, not sure. I kept my hair platinum for a long time because I was fed up with dyeing the roots of my previous pink colour. My natural colour is cool and so light that I could get away without doing my roots for a few months.

A short venture to Directions Turquoise. I had this colour only for  about a month and went back to platinum because I thought this didn't go well with my wardrobe.

Another shot of the platinum colour. I really loved that wallpaper in my old apartment <3

Working towards the platinum, this was a more natural blonde colour. That's a chinchilla fur hat in my mouth in case you are wondering.

Directions Rose Red on top part of hair and black on bottom part.

I think this is Rose Red or Flamingo Pink over faded purple or brown. I hated short hair!

I'm missing the cotton candy hair, but it was really hard to keep looking good. I don't seem to have older pictures on my computer (the oldest is from 2005, so it's pretty old still), but I've also had dark brown hair, red hair, and purple and pink highlights on brownish-purple in my wild teen years. So far I haven't had any hair disasters (*knocking on wood*), my hair is quite thick and strong and it's naturally quite light so I don't have to bleach it to death to prep it for bright colours. The ends are a bit dry, but they are still holding up fine.

I re-dye the purple about once a month and don't bother to bleach the roots every time, because the dye sticks okay to my natural colour. Every few months I bleach the roots and slap purple over them. Light colours look better on me, because dark ones make me look like I'm going bald when the roots start growing ;P

Waiting For Spring

After surviving the Global Game Jam, I'm concentrating on waiting for spring. Days are getting longer an there's more light but it's still too damn cold. In a few months I'll plant some seeds, watch them grow and then forget to water them and find them dead. Such is life.

I've done a no-shopping January and did okay, I only bought a sofa, half of a vacuum cleaner and shopped on one weekend (which I had promised myself in December! So it's not cheating!). I'm thinking of trying to buy only ten items in February, but I already have a long list of stuff I want...

Like some more false lashes! I'm looking for something like the third pair from top, something full but not too long. Maybe some cheap ones from ebay, or if I'm feeling rich I'll shop at Madame Madeline. Last time I got  a latex-free glue by Revlon and I've been really pleased with it. 

Picture from mystylebell.com

Cool shoes! These are by DSquared and are waayyy out of my price range, but they look awesome. I have my eye on some replicas, if I can find ones that look decent and don't fall apart the instant I put them on my feet.

Melissa Amazonas shoes have been on my wish list for some time. I have purple flat peep toe shoes by Melissa, but they are a bit too small for me and haven't stretched at all. The material is very nice so I might splurge on the Amazonas in black once summer arrives.

Also on my list are some Lime Crime lipsticks. I wouldn't touch their eyeshadows and the new upcoming palette doesn't interest me, but the lipsticks in Styletto (black) and Chincilla (grey) look nice. I'm also fond of the packaging. I don't own anything by Lime Crime at the moment and might look into finding some other good black lipstick as a substitute. I have one from Evil Shades, but it's gone dry because I didn't close the cap tightly enough :(

I'm also drooling over Detrivore Cosmetics eyeshadows, I have to have Livor Mortis!

Bonus pics from the Game Jam! Here I'm giving a pecha kucha presentation on lolcats. The subject was free and I only had two days to prepare, so in the end I chose kitties because everyone loves kitties! 

Lolcats make me lol

A picture of the game we made. We had five people working for 48 hours and we did an epic sledding game for Windows Phone, it's called Samuel L. Jackson's Super Sledding '86. The inspiration was Nintendo era sports games which usually had some sports celebrity's name on the cover but the games was just regular golf or basket ball game. Well, our's has Samuel L. Jackson all through it! His face is on the could, on trees, he's sledding and giving commands. We had tons of fun!

 You can download the Windows version here: Samuel L. Jackson's Super Sledding '86 It's super easy, because the game is optimized for the phone, but I thought it was still quite fun.

Samuel is doing an awesome stunt

Outfit of the Day

Shirt - Second hand, H&M

Skirt - Second hand, Seppälä

Please note the large amount of cat hair on the skirt, the kitties really know how to use their spare hair! I guess it could keep me warm. The skirt has nice pocket to keep hands and other valuables in and I put a woollen top underneath the shirt to keep out the chill.

I finally had some light to take pictures because I'm packing my bags for the Global Game Jam 2012. It's an event where people make games in 48 hours. I've participated the last two times and had lots of fun!

Hello Kitty Look

I wanted to do a look for Toxid-lotus.net's make-up challenge. The theme for this week was Hello Kitty, and as it happens I like Hello Kitty! I drink my tea every day at the office from a cute Hello Kitty mug. I felt like I should use a lot of glitter and pink, so I did a look with Sugarpill's Chromalust loose shadows.

What I used:

Sugarpill Magentric

Sugarpill Birthday Girl

Sugarpill Hysteric

Sugarpill Darling

Sugarpill Lumi

Evil Shades Mixing medium

Isadora Kajal 79 Bright Turquoise

I used Magentric and Birthday Girl on the lid and crease, Hysteric on lower lid, Darling as a liner and a dash of Lumi in the inner corner. Birthday Girl kind of vanished under Magentric after blending and I should have used Hysteric with a wet brush to get more intensity, but the Darling liner came out really nice! I mixed the shadow with Evil Shades mixing medium and painted the line with a thin brush. I haven't quite masted the medium, since it tends to stay sticky on my lids (that's why you can see some of the lining has transferred to the upper lid), but it might just need a bit more of eyeshadow in the mix. I used a turquoise kohl pencil on the waterline.

I didn't take a full face shot because my flat iron broke and my hair is totally not co-operating without it! And I couldn't decide what to put on my lips ;)

Green Look With Sugarpill

Hooray, natural light! The sun came out briefly this morning so I sprung to action and took a few pics of my green smoky eye look. I came across this excellent tutorial for eyeliner on the Makeuptalk forums and decided to give it a go. I used Bulletproof on my lashline to do the lining.

I first put Vanilla on the whole lid to make blending easier, then added Midori on top from the lashline up above the crease. Then I put Bulletproof on top of Midori on the lid and blended it a bit. Added some Tako on brow bone and inner corner of the eye.

I put ELF liquid lipstick in Pink Lemonade on my lips not to have them bare and added some Evil Shades China Doll blush on my cheeks.

What I used:

Eyes

Urban Decay Primer Potion

Make-up Store Vanilla (on whole lid as a base)

Sugarpill Midori

Sugarpill Bulletproof

Sugarpill Tako

Lips

ELF Pink Lemonade

Cheeks

Evil Shades China Doll

My first lip shot! Sorry about the messy piercing, I forgot to wipe the ball clean.

Full face, you can barely see the blush!

Neutral Shades Look

Here's my make-up today! I didn't have much time in the morning (I'm terrible at getting up early) so I went for a simple neutral look. I'm sorry about the blurry pics, I had trouble taking photos because there's so little light that the camera doesn't want to focus :( The indoor lighting washes out the taupe, but I'll promise to take better pics in natural light. I want spring to come already so I can take decent pictures and plant some seeds!

What I used:

Face
MAC Studio Sculpt Foundation
MAC Select Cover-up (undereyes)
MAC Strobe Liquid Lotion (only on cheekbones and chin)
L'Oreal Smoothing Resurfacing Primer (only on my forehead)
Lumene blush Sweet Blush

Eyes
Urban Decay Primer Potion
MAC Yogurt
Geek Chic Cosmetics The Pointy End
MAC Fluidline Blactrack
Random soft kohl pencil for waterline
False eyelashes

Lips
Evil Shades lipstick Primrose Path

Eyes only

The Pointy End is a shimmery taupe from Geek Chic Cosmetics' Win or Die collection which is inspired by George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books. I love the books and the Pointy End is one of my favourite colours partly because Arya is one of my favourite characters :) MAC Yogurt doesn't really show up on my skin, just evens out the tone, so I use it as a base for other shadows. Primrose Path by Evil Shades is one of my favourite natural coloured lipsticks, it has a nice amount of shimmer and is very close to my natural lip colour. It also has a yummy candy smell to it!

The MAC foundation works really well, in the pictures I've been wearing it for over eight hours and just lightly blotted the shine off my forehead before taking pictures. The lashes are a bit too long for this look, but I didn't have any that looked like I wanted so these were the closest match.

Whoops, wonky eyeliner and a blurry picture!

Black & White Look

I wanted to do a look for Never Too Much Sparkle group's this weeks make-up challenge. Colours with high contrast are really hard to work with for me, I'm no that good at blending but I hope to learn! I decided to do a really simple look, since I hadn't ever tried anything with just black and white. I think black is usually too harsh for my light eyecolor, but this look turned out nice and wearable. I suck at black lipstick since my lips are so small and I think I should have added false lashes to make the look complete, but no one is perfect :)

This is what I used:

Face
MAC Strobe liquid primer
MAC Studio Sculpt foundation
MAC Select Cover-up

Eyes
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Sugarpill Tako on the whole lid
Sugarpill Bulletproof on crease
MAC Fluidline in Blacktrack for lining
Random L'Oreal mascara in black

Lips
Evil Shades lipstick in Fateful
Black eyeliner as lipliner

Cheeks
Lumene blush Sweet Blush

MAC Haul

I visited the only MAC counter in Finland on the weekend to spend a voucher I got for Christmas. I googled some products that I wanted to try beforehand, and I had purchased a sample of Fluidline in Blacktrack and a metallic purple shade. The purple wasn't nice, but it might have dried a bit already when I got it. I was recommended that the lip products were good.

I hadn't ever shopped at a counter before, so I was afraid they'd just look me down because I don't quite fit the normal beauty standards, but I was very happy to find a lady who not only found the perfects products for me, but was also very nice and told me she liked my hair and had used to keep hers a shock red color! I tried some lipsticks but couldn't decide on a a colour, so in the end I went with a foundation, concealer, primer-tihngie and the gel liner. I had never had a professional pick a foundation for me, so this time the colour really fits me well. I've tried all the products already and I like them a lot!

Studio Sculpt SPF 15 Foundation - A foundation with sunblock. I got this in NW15 which is the second lightest shade. The sales person recommended this shade as it was less yellow than the lightest and I think it blends really well with my skin. The formula in moisturising and not too thick to my liking.

Strobe Liquid Lotion - This is not technically a primer, rather a shimmery lotion that can be put underneath or on top of foundation, or even mixed with it. Gives a dewy complexion with not too much shimmer. On it's own it shimmers blueish, but strange thought it sounds, doesn't look bad on skin. I've tried it under the foundation and it gives a really pretty glow. There's also a cream formula available, but the sales person recommended the lotion to me because my skin tends to get oily. The bottle has a clever mechanism of keeping the pump from moving during storage, the bottom part of the cap slides left and right, you can see it in my picture below.

Select Cover-Up - A concealer intended for use under eyes. Has a really nice formula and covers dark circles under eyes well. Mine is in NW20, a bit darker than the foundation but the sales person was of the opinion that this avoids the inverse raccoon look that comes with too light concealer. It works well on my skin, so I think she was right! It dries to a matte finish and doesn't need powdering, so avoiding drying the tender skin around the eyes. I find it stays a bit sticky for a long time, so I recommend adding this last when doing eye make-up, especially if you are working with dark loose eyeshadow. Otherwise you might have quite a mess!

Fluidline in Blacktrack - The famous gel liner. Also famous for drying up easily, so I'll try to close the lid tightly after every use. It's creamy and glides on well. I use it with a thin eyeliner brush. I really like how liquid the consistency is, it's easy to fill in gaps between eyelashes, and the gel still has so much pigment that you don't have to go over the same spot twice. I fell in love with the sample I used up earlier, so I hope the liner will stay good for a long time. I also tried a purple shade, thinking I might do my brows with it to go with my purple hair, but it was less pigmented and I hate trying to go over gel liner lines again, it's so hard not to mess it up. So I took only the black liner and will keep looking for the perfect purple one!

I liked shopping at the counter, the ladies were very helpful and nice. I'll be sure to visit it again in the future and maybe purchase one of the lipsticks I tried!

A picture of my very moderate haul!

I also did some more shopping and got a new skirt and a top, and these super cute tins for my kitchen! They fit so well with my turquoise and white dotted apron (which I almost never use, my other half does the cooking) and the pink table cloth I got last summer. I shove all kitschy stuff in to the kitchen and it's finally starting to look nice! The tins cost 15 euros a piece. I had drooled over these in some foreign web shop before so I was very happy to come across them!

For sugar!

I don't drink coffee so I filled this one with cocoa for hot chocolate

Since I still had time, I went to check out the new exhibition at the museum of modern art. I've always liked the place, the building looks cool and I've yet to see a boring exhibition there. This one was about music, pop-culture and fans, it had lots of video art in it. My favourite was a video that only showed dance house dancing in slow motion (think of jiggling butt cheeks), performed by dancers wearing silly leggings, Sami national garb and PVC-panties. I have no idea what the artist was trying to say, but it was hilarious! So everyone in Helsinki, stop by Kiasma to see the exhibition if you like silly dancing and music!

When I got home after two hours on the train, I concentrated on watching TV and giving my feet a nice warm bath after all the walking. I topped it off by painting my toe nails with a Depend mini polish in shade number 54. It's maybe a bit too bright for me, but it still looks nice and makes me happy :)

My poor feet after hours of walking