Off to Beijing!

Hello! I'm on my way for a short holiday in Beijing! This means I will not be able to update the blog for a fee days, but I can promise you lots of pictures when I come back. Wish me luck, it's my first time in China!

Dark Eyes

I found these two nice shots stashed away! I'm a sucker for dark, dramatic eye make-up with a splash of glitter, paired with dark lips and bling. The necklace is by Lumissa's Purple Octopus, earrings by me and bindi from Claire's.

Notoriusly Morbid Mystic Matte Lipstick in Arcane

I had no tried Notoriously Morbid cosmetics before, but I saw their matte lipsticks in many pictures on Facebook's makeup groups. I'm a huge lover of liquid to matte lipsticks and always on the lookout for cool new shades, so I ordered a few. So far I'm very impressed with the quality and the shades are just gorgeous! Here's Arcane, a dark purple.

Mystic Matte Lipsticks are liquid-to-matte products and come in tubes with generous amount of product. They are applied with a doe-foot applicator and dry to a matte consistency. The formula is very light on the lips but opaque with just one layers, which is excellent! Arcane is just my type of shade, dark and purple. After 4-ish hours the lipstick tends to feather a tiny bit on the center of the Cupid's bow (center upper lip basically) but it's barely noticeable and the little feathering can be wiped off with tissue paper easily. The lipstick leaves very light marks on glasses, but nothing like regular lipstick. Re-applying is not a problem, this formula does not crumble like many others. I really like how light it is on the lips, barely noticeable, and still gives great coverage and is easy to touch up. A great product and it costs only 9 dollars, well worth it!

Arcane in the tube.

Doe-foot applicator.

Notoriously Morbid Mystic Matte Lipstick in Arcane

Buyer Beware! Beautiful.Mess Dreads Follow Up

I promised some pictures of the falls and here they are. See for yourself if these look like 90£ falls to you. I'm currently working on a claim through my credit card company, so it's still possible that I'll get this mess resolved. Beautiful.Mess has banned me from their company page and blocked my account from their personal account (through which she wanted originally to communicate) even when I've been nothing but polite.

I still have received no apology for the late shipping or anything, but she did unblock me to provide me with the return address I had been asking for on several occasions. I consulted my credit card company and they told to me not return anything before PayPal has reviewed the dispute, so the falls are packed and ready to go but waiting for the resolution.

The falls

This picture tells more than a thousand words. The falls are not the same length, the ends are blunt and the ribbons don't match. Both seem to have roughly as much hair, so I'm unsure how they can be of different lengths. Both feel equally curly and even if I try to arrange the hair so it would lie similarly on both falls, they simply are not the same length.

The ribbons

One is purple and one very bright pink. The elastic is okay, personally I prefer wide elastic that's less likely to tangle with hair, but I didn't specify that so thin would have been okay, if it just matched.

Blunt ends

To my knowledge squiggly dreads usually have tapered ends, like in Beautiful.Mess page's pictures. These do not look the same to me. I'm not sure if the ends are cut or if these are just the ends of the dreaded hair, but all of the dreads I've ever owned have had tapered ends.

A close up on the ends.

Falls worn.

I tried the falls on to take a few photos and you can tell even from the pictures that the length is not the same pretty easily. This is not something that I could hide when wearing the falls. Below is a screen capture from Beautiful.Mess Facebook page to show off her work. My falls don't look like the ones in the pictures. The blunt ends make mine look a bit unfinished. I ordered the falls based on product photos like these and I'm disappointed that I received something I don't feel matches the quality I was expecting. Most of all I'm sad and disappointed that Beautiful.Mess could not meet the deadline we agreed upon, did not notify me on this and never apologized, even when I tried to resolve the situation politely many times.

Screen capture from the Beautiful.Mess Facebook page.

800 Readers Giveaway!

I'm a bit late with this giveaway, but I wanted to get an amazing prize because you are the best readers ever! When I started the blog in 2012, people warned me that blogging means getting nasty comments and that it would be hard to get in touch with readers. My experience has been the opposite. I can almost count the rude comments with my fingers and people comment often, which is great!

I love getting to hear from you guys and I'm grateful for each an every comment. You say the most amazing things and it makes writing a blog very rewarding. So to everyone reading this, thank you!

And now on to the giveaway! Bought this Urban Decay travel pencil set from a Sephora in Seattle. I got one for myself too and I really like it. The set has a basic black liner, Zero, an awesome purple, Voodoo, and a shimmery medium brown, Corrupt. Voodoo is exclusive to this set and can't be bought separately.

This lovely set (it's naturally unopened, the pencils next to the box in the pictures are my own) can be yours if you just comment on this post. I'm thinking of doing a new cosplay costume, so share ideas with me :)

To enter giveaway, comment on this post and tell me what characters you would think would suit me well, or just which characters have cool looks!

Winner will be chosen randomly. The giveaway is open internationally, I will cover the shipping fees. Giveaway is open until 30.9.

Pencil swatches. Zero, Corrupt and Voodoo.

The pencils are travel size, cute and small!

ColourPop!

I haven't shown you my ColourPop goodies! I did an order with a friend using Shipito shipping service to get these babies. I had trouble choosing just a few, as ColourPop has an excellent selection and everything looked so pretty!

In the end I settled on trying out many types of products. I got two eyeshadows (Fairfax and Girl Crush), two highlighters (Lunch Money and Monster), two lippie stix (Leather and Feminist), one lip pencil (Feminist) and three ultra matte lipsticks (Trap, Lax and Zipper).

The whole bunch!

First of all I have to say that the quality differs between shades. The pressed products are very interesting, they have a sponge-y texture which minizes fall off when applying, but also makes the product harder to pick up from the pan. The pressed products are designed to be applied with your fingers. It is an interesting take, but especially for the dark shades on light skin, applying with fingers can be tricky. None of my favourite brushes work, so forget fluffy, soft brushed right away! You need a stiff, flat brush to apply these products.

On my skin it takes a few layers for the eyeshadows to build up. The shades are lovely, Fairfax is an intensive, red based brown and Girl Crush the perfect greyish taupe. Both are matte shades, but mattes are usually the hardest ones to get right, so I'm impressed!

Fairfax. The shadow is a bit darker IRL.

Girl Crush. As this is a light shade and needs a few layers, you can see that it looks more used than Fairfax. The nice pattern on the surface rubs off fast but it just makes the product easier to use, as you now have a large, smooth surface to swirl your brush or finger on.

The super shock cheek highlighters are new products for me. When I need to look my best, I usually do light contouring with a very light concealer and a matte taupe eyeshadow. The Colourpop highlighters are shimmery and quite sheer, very different from the liquid concealer I'm used to. I did some research when picking the shades and ended up buying a warm and a cool tone to make sure that one of them at least would work on my skin.

Lunch Money is a pale golden beige with golden shimmer. It's very sheer and mostly shows as a golden shimmer on your cheek bones. Monster is tricky to photograph, but it's a very light beige, almost white, with a pink/red sheen. I'm still trying these out and finding new ways to use them. The effect is very light, but maybe with several layers the highlight would show better. The highlighters have the same sponge-y texture so I have applied them with my fingers.

Lunch Money

Monster. The camera doesn't pick up the interesting red sheen this one has.

The lippies vary a lot. Of the Ultra Mattes, while Zipper stays very nicely on my lips and Trap performs well, Lax tends to bleed after a few hours. All of the shades have a good texture, not the thinnest matte lipsticks I've worn, but no the thickest either.

The lippie stixs (is that the right plural? ;D) also seem to be a little hit and miss. Leather is a gorgeous purple and stays on well. Feminist was the shade I really was excited to try, but it goes on blotchy and bleeds even with the matching pencil and a primer (I use Mac's lipstick primer). Luckily Feminist is basically a dupe for Mac Cyber, which I own and love. Cyber and Feminist are both mattes but like night and day. Then again Feminist costs 5 dollars and Cyber more along the lines of 20 dollars, so I can accept this.

The lip pencil is something I cannot recommend. For my skin at least the pencil is just too soft, it melts away fast. I tried it with Feminist lippie stix, with Mac Cyber, with Mac's primer and without and still with the same results. Other shades may perform better but Feminist is a lost cause for me. On the bright side the colour match is nearly perfect with the lippie stix, which is great! Whenever possible I try to use a matching pencil, on my small lips there's no room for different shades.

I love the packaging of the lippie stix, they are simple to use, the lid stays shut tightly and the product is easy to get out. Ultra mattes have a nice applicator and the lids on the pressed products seem secure and sturdy. I love how all of the packaging matches and the foil lettering gives it a nice touch. For the price the quality is very nice, if you can allow for the occasional product that doesn't behave well.

From left to right: Feminist pencil, Feminist lippie stix, Leather lippie stix, Zipper ultra matte, Trap ultra matte, Lax ultra matte, Monster highlighter, Lunch Money highlighter, Girl Crush eyeshadow and Fairfax eyeshadow. 

Feminist pencil, Feminist, Leather, Zipper, Trap and Lax

Monster, Lunch Money, Girl Crush and Fairfax

La Splash Untamed

If someone had told me year ago that I would love a brown lipstick, I would have called them crazy. But guess what? La Splash Lip Couture liquid lipstick in Untamed is a wonderful deep, dark brown! It makes my skin look very pale and it's not too red like many brown lipsticks. The formula of La Splash lippies differs a bit between shades, but Untamed is the best of the bunch I got. The consistency is thin and the product lasts well on lips.

I think the picture makes Untamed look a little bit more red than in real life.

Here's a full face shot! I paired Untamed with some Sugarpill and Urban Decay shadows :)

Lip Service at Club Bella Morte

Yesterday we had club Bella Morte at Doris, and it was great! I was supposed to get a pictures of my outfit, but the whole day was super busy, I barely had the time to eat and take a quick nap so I could hope to stay awake until 4 in the morning.

I recently bought an old Lip Service gown off an online flea market. It's the Bride of Frankenstein dress from Houses of the Holy collection from 2004 in black colourway. It was really cheap because the dress has been worn a lot and the PVC is very worn. It thought I could get a few evenings of wear from it, and possibly a photoshoot or two. I was unsure of how I'd like the dress, but gave it a go anyway. Turns out it's just perfect!

I took a picture when trying the gown on and posted it on Instagram, and was very excited a few days later when Lip Service had re-posted the picture! It's also on their Facebook page, here's a link to it.

My current plan is to wear the dress as long as it stays intact, then cut it apart and draw patterns from the pieces so I could sew a new one :)

Toilet mirror pictures from the club ;D

The dress in Lip Service catalogue.

The dress has handy sleeves with zippers. So when the venue started to get hot, I opened the zippers. Photo by Ari Rantanen.

I'm really fond of older Lip Service pieces. It feels like the designs these days are a bit more toned down, or maybe they just don't make gowns that often. I love dresses that I can just put on and be all done, without having to worry about matching a top and a bottom. Especially when I only have half an hour to do my make-up, dress up and test my DJ'ing computer, like yesterday! And I have to say that for an 11-year-old dress the piece is just perfect!

Urban Decay and Sugarpill Look

I've been way too busy lately! Barely any time to take pictures or play with make-up. But today I finally took some time to get to know my new Urban Decay eyeshadow, Psychedelic Sister. I chose the eyeshadow at the Urban Decay launch party, and I have to say the lighting there was such that I wasn't sure what I'll get in the end ;D Luckily Psychedelic Sister is just my kind of a purple shade: dark, deep and fairly neutral. I wanted to try it out in a look and felt it went well with Sugarpill's Sparkle Baby palette, as the palette does not have a dark purple.

This is the result!

Sugarpill Frostine on tear duct, CandyCrush on inner part of lid, Hotsy Totsy on the outer part of the lid and Urban Decay Psychedelic Sister in the crease and lower lid. Brows are done with Aromaleigh Obsession. The liner is Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-on Eye Pencil on Zero and a Mac concealer pencil on the waterline.

Opi Color Paints Help?

Have you tried water colour nail polishes? I got myself a mini set of OPI Color paints, partly because I was interested in trying them, and partly because the tiny bottles are just too cute <3

I like how all of the colours work together, but after a few tries I still have not come up with any nice looks. If you have any favourite tutorial or looks, please let me know so I can try some!

Silver base colour that can be used under the sheer paints.

The set consist of yellow, orange, pink, purple and teal sheer nail polishes, and a normal silver polish.

Black and Petrol Liner Look

For this look I wanted to try something I don't often do: fully lining my eyes. My eyes are quite small, so I usually just add liner to the outer lash lines to give some definition. For this look I used a black eyeliner pencil to fully line my eyes and added petrol gel liner on the waterline for a dash of colour. I think next time I'm doing a fully lined look I might go for gel liner to get a bit thinner, more elegant lines, but I do like the style and especially how the petrol looks. I need to re-do this to get better at lining!

This look was done with Inglot petrol gel liner and Oriflame liner pencil. Lips are done with Mac Cyber, my only Mac lipstick!

So Shiny and Chrome!

For Tracon Sunday my other half and me donned on Mad Max: Fury Road inspired costumes. I can't remember the last time I've gone to see a movie more than one time, but Fury Road had me hooked and I just had to see it in both 2D and 3D. I just love the visual style and how open and unexplained the world is left, there's lots of room for my imagination!

So this is what we came up with no time to make any new props or clothes, with just what we had in our closets. WITNESS ME!

I put this outfit together by grabbing a super cheap Primark top, my other halfs old scarf, Lip Service leggings, Artifice shrug, New Rock boots, a glove, a pair of goggles and a knee pad from my other half's stash and let him choose a couple of airsoft guns to go with the rest of the outfit. 

The make-up is Sugarpill Bulletproof and a camouflage wax paint stick my other half had. The stick is perfect for adding smudges on skin, but too oily for my face.

This is us!

Serious business ;D

I really like how the outfits came out! They are a bit generic, not belonging to any faction shown in the movie, but that's kind of nice. Maybe later I could make something resembling Furiosa's belt or a respirator, to tie the outfits better to the world. But for just using what we had, these are a great achievement!