Makeup Withdrawal

Day 25: Inspired By Fashion

Friday, February 10, 2012

I buckled down last night to finally finish my Nail Challenge. It's taking way longer than I thought, but I've been extremely busy and plagued by nail breakage and an inability to finish any great undertaking that I ever start.
Story of my life.

image credit

Today's nails are inspired less by current fashion and more by a figure of fashion. Alexander McQueen made such great contributions to the runway, and I feel sad whenever I hear his name and think about how a man with such vivid ideas took his own life.

image credit

I used images from his Fall 2009 show to inspire me. A contrast of red, orange, white and black with bold lines, striking patterns with some interesting found objects, feathers and bondage gear thrown in.

image credit

I used Milani Techno Red, and painted the design with acrylics.

*sniff sniff* This makes me all sorts of sad.

Have a great weekend, folks!

Some Ways To Get Your Daily Fix

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

I'm sure that with the death of Google Friend Connect, many of you readers are turning to new ways to follow your favorite blogs. Even though I'm a Blogger user, I still think it's kinda awful that Google would do this. I know that numbers aren't everything but I can imagine that if you're a Wordpress user, the sudden drop down to "zero" followers may make it feel a bit lonely! Never fear, luckily there are some great ways out there to keep getting your daily dose of your favorite blog, no matter what blogging platform they use.
I thought I'd try to help by pointing out a few new (and old) features here on this blog!

I've had a Bloglovin' icon for a really long time, on the left hand side of the page. I like that Bloglovin' is quite simple and elegant to use, easy to keep track of your favorite blogs' most recent posts.

hellocotton's little friend widget is a new thing here on MakeupWithdrawal. Doesn't it look quite a bit like GFC? You get to see all the friendly faces of the followers. What I like about hellocotton is that the site really seems to encourage interaction between readers and bloggers. It's like a little community, where you can see what others have to say about the post without ever leaving the page.

Of course, if you're all fancy and great with feed readers (in other words, not me) then you can always subscribe to the RSS feed with your favorite reader. I know that many people like Google Reader but I've heard that it has a limit of 2500 blogs (who has time to read 2500 blogs?!)

Last but not least, we have the old standby- email. This sends you an email of each post so that you can be sure that you never miss out! The only drawback to this is that it doesn't update instantly, you usually receive my complete post in email form about 8-12 hours after I've published it. You can cancel your subscription at any time (why would you? wouldn't you miss my happy little face? No?). Doesn't a little dash of beauty sound great in between your work emails?

Anyways, no matter what you chose to do, I hope you stay in touch! I'd love to hear from everyone, how do you follow your favorite blogs?

FOTD

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I really wanted to do something with green eye shadow today. My CosmoProf just released the newly redesigned line of TIGI cosmetics and they have the most incredible, pigmented green I have ever seen in pan form. Ever. All of the shadows that I swatched were so sinfully saturated and smooth, I had to try my hardest not to walk out with a palette or a quad. Anyways, I came home and decided to bust out my Wet'n'Wild I <3 Matte palette again.

I didn't have class or work today, so I decided to go a a little darker in the brows and more intense with the eyeliner.

I used:

Brows: NARS Bali shadow, NYX Brow Shaper

Eyes: LORAC Behind The Scenes Eye Primer, Wet'n'Wild I <3 Matte palette, Urban Decay Secret Service shadow, La Femme sealer, Kiss Me Heroine Make Volume + Curl mascara, MAC Gel Mixing Medium

Face: Laura Mercier Foundation Primer, Mary Kay Medium Coverage Foundation, MUFE Full Cover Concealer, Milani Minerals Compact Powder, Rock & Republic Foreplay blush

Lips: BECCA Gisella lipstick

Max Factor Max Effect Fantasy Fire

Monday, February 6, 2012

Today I received the most amazing package in the mail. I squealed the entire time it took to cut open the package then realized how awesome my friend Jian is, from Pinkfish Tart. Not only is she sweet and sent me extras THAT SHE HAD NO BUSINESS DOING but without her, I would not have my hands on the prettiest color I have ever seen in a bottle.
I would write Jian a haiku... but I'm horrible at poetry.

Here is two coats of Fantasy Fire over Sally Hansen Purple Pizzazz. I took these pictures in various lighting conditions and odd angles because I wanted to capture that amazing rainbow color shift from red-violet through copper, gold, yellow green and finally green (oh Clarins 230, how I wish I owned you) that Fantasy Fire has.

As you can see, Fantasy Fire is very sheer and definitely needs some matching underwear. I bet that it'd look the best over a indigo or purple jelly finish. The only down side to this polish is that in comes in a scant 4.5ml bottle that costs £3.99. This is my smallest polish I've ever purchased, and probably the most expensive one if you do a $/ml comparison.

Totally worth it.

Thank you again Jian, for helping me obtain this beautiful, distilled unicorn pee color!

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

I Love Your Blog

Sunday, February 5, 2012

The lovely Lacquered Lady tagged me for this award. I thought it'd be a nice change to let you readers a little more about me since in my two and a half years of blogging, I haven't really brought up much personal likes and dislikes.

1. What is your favorite fashion magazine?
Er, I haven't read any fashion/beauty magazines in the longest time. I became pretty tired of the same beauty advice regurgitated to me over and over again as well as the product placements. I much rather read blogs!

image credit

2. Who is your favorite singer/band?
I started loving Muse almost six years ago and I doubt I'll ever stop. I also like Rammstein, Lykke Li and have a strange fondness for Nicki Minaj which I really don't understand.

3. Who is your favorite YouTube guru?
I honestly do not watch any YouTube gurus, for many reasons. Some have voices that put me to sleep (Michelle Phan), some are truly awesome and talented like the sisters Pixiwoo or Lisa Eldridge but I can't understand (I have an extremely difficult time understanding English accents). Of course, there's other "gurus" that are 16 years old and somehow spend more in one haul than I can afford in six months. Those videos just leave me somewhat appalled.

image credit

4. What is your favorite makeup product?
Right now, my favorite item is my Clarisonic Mia that my boyfriend gave me for Christmas. It has really done wonders for my skin and I'm so incredibly happy that it was given to me.

5. Where would you like to live?
California. I'm not big on living in crowded L.A., but a place like Sacramento would suit me just fine. Only a few hours away from the beach and mountains, yet close enough to some great shopping. Oh, not to mention I'd be living much closer to a certain fine fellow that I know!

image credit

6. What is your favorite film?
Have you ever seen Pan's Labyrinth? It's an extremely dark, somewhat disturbing film that I love all the same. It's in Spanish, so you'll have to read subtitles, but I actually love doing that.

7. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
I think only about eight or so. Sadly, I spend about 50% of the year in orange Gizeh Birkenstocks. They're not the cutest thing out there (far from it, I know) but they have great arch support and are quite practical.

8. What is your favorite color?
Scarlet. Not red, not orange, but scarlet.

I'm not so great at tagging, so I'll just end on this note- if you write a blog, then I love it. I love that people are willing to spend the time to make a little piece of the internet their own. So feel free to tag yourself !