Friday 22 July 2011

Help me win some stuff!

Hey! 
Sorry for my poor posting performance lately, I've had a lot going on; my boyfriend's been ill, I bottomed out of uni, and I've not been feeling so great myself, which leads to not wanting to put make up on or take pictures, and I've had no money to try new things and write reviews on. I'm currently waiting on my July GlossyBox in the post, which will be late because of a mysterious problem with payment, and then I'll be writing about that, and I'm gonna be working on some game related posts as well. I'm hoping that writing will get me out of my funk.

You might remember me talking about one of my favourite bands, King Lizard, and how awesome they are. They are running a competition right now for some signed goodies and free tickets and things. Basically, the more people click my link, the better chance of me winning. I have long had the status of King Lizard's number one fan, and I want to cement my title.

They won't ask you to fill anything in or click anything else, or direct you to any other surveys or buy anything or sign up for anything. Just a click and you're done. No extra clicks though, it won't help.

I have 11 days and the person to beat has 77 clicks. At present, I have 12. If you could tweet my link or put it up on your blog, I'll totally be your friend forever.

TTFN

Hell Thirteen xoxo

Saturday 2 July 2011

My birthday week in collages.

Hello you beautiful things.

I have been ever so busy over the last couple of weeks. My birthday week was non-stop, one event after another, and like an idiot I've lost the charger for the camera and only took pictures on two days.

First off, due to mutual boredom Kayleigh and I got together on the Saturday preceding my birthday and started messing around with looks. It's always great when she gets to try out the things I've been writing about, I like to see if she agrees with my opinion and she can make sure she likes something before she buys it for herself.

Anyway, I did a pretty awesome purple cut crease using a mixture of MUA's shade 9 eyeshadow and SugarPill's Poison Plum for the purple, and then I covered it in purple glitter from those Collection 2000 glitter and gel duo things. It didn't seem like enough, so I added black glitter to the crease (my black glitter is by Lanmei, bought from eBay) and some holographic glitter to the brow bone (Collection 2000 again).

Then we got to talking about Kayleigh's skin. She suffers from dry skin in places, and in others she gets a lot of spots. There are a number of reasons why these spots can show up but they cause a personal hell; trying to cover them up is difficult and often makes them worse, and even if you conceal the colour, you can't conceal the change they make to the surface of your skin. The little bumps create highlights and shadows on your face and the ones that have burst one way or another (it doesn't always happen through picking, spots can be itchy and absent minded scratching can cause them to burst) get little scabs on them or the skin around them dries up, which collects foundation or concealer in a way that makes it look pretty bad. There are things that can be done to trick the eye so you don't see most spots, and particularly for photographs, there are ways to make them invisible.

We decided to give it a go, with before and after shots. Here they are:
It looks like a flash has been used, because the make up is reflecting the light away from the blemishes, making her look brighter.


I started by introducing Kay to the Soap & Glory Fab Pore hot cloth cleanser to help reduce the occurrence of spots (after a while of regular use). She then met the Simply Pure Light Moisturiser from Superdrug, which she later told me she rushed out to buy the whole range soon after (as well as the Fab Pore!)

Kayleigh already uses, and raves about, the e.l.f. Mineral Infused Face Primer, because it smooths over her dry patches and helps smooth the surface over her spots, helping her foundation and concealer to better do their job.

Using a thicker, water based foundation with a high coverage helps to cover without clogging her skin full of more oils, like an oil based foundation would. Make sure your concealer is also a water based concealer, otherwise it won't blend. I find stick concealers to be terrible, and usually quite greasy, so avoid them. Using a brush, apply a liquid concealer like e.l.f's tone correcting concealer, and then set it with a mineral concealer. Again, I use e.l.f.

Using blusher and bronzer to contour and add a little colour will break up the flat colour of your foundation and help to disguise any flaws along the surface of your skin.

Finally, use a good powder, preferably a High Definition powder like the one from Urban Decay, used here, or e.l.f do a £6 one. These are very finely milled and help to reflect light away from the skin, blurring the edges of any blemishes.

It all sounds like mumbo jumbo, doesn't it? Well in truth, the human eye can often pick up the signs of a covered up spot, especially if they are looking for them. Most people, however, aren't looking; and your skin will always look a lot better than it did.

Now, a collage.


Fast forward to the next Saturday, and we're together again getting ready for a night out at a goth gig. It all ended up going horribly wrong, and we improvised, ended up going to Slimelight, and actually ended up having a really good time, but before all that we were getting dolled up, and because we were horribly late, Kay did her own make up (sans contouring, as she's new to it and hasn't quite got the hang of it yet).

Kayleigh went for a black angular shape on the eyelid, covered it in black glitter (Lanmei again) and added red glitter (Fierce by GlamourDollEyes.com) above the crease and along the lash line.
This was paired with a red lip stain by Maybelline.
I ran some mousse through her hair and blow dried it upwards for a spiky bedhead look without the need to back-comb.

Here's her result:


I went for a blue eye to match my corset, mixing a lot of pigment samples from GlamourDollEyes starting with Melancholy on the center of the lids, working outwards into the sparkly Blueberry Lush, up into Tattooed in the crease and Mingles on the brow bone. I had to add some glitter, so I used Techno, Casino and a little bit of Rave.

Here's the two of us all dressed up and ready to go!


Unfortunately I didn't take any proper close ups until I got home at 6 or 7am, and my make up had creased quite a bit, but considering how hot and sweaty I got dancing the night away, I think it did alright! I loved my star tattoo transfers!



TTFN,
Hell Thirteen
xoxo