I enjoyed digging into beauty this year. I loved that we embraced colour, texture, prints or anything bold. It was ok to colour block or to dress with some opulence. I love that these trends will continue into 2012. I’m over all-neutral looks.
So here’s what I loved in 2011 (in no particular order):
I love this product! I have it in Peach and it is probably the easiest blush to apply. Super smooth texture and it just melts into the skin making to colour look like it came from within. Works on all skin types. A must have in all seasons!
One of the hardest things to do is to find the perfect red. A lot of women of colour avoid the most coveted lip colour of all time. Red is the colour of the season and sultry glamour is back! Various textures and finishes, it doesn’t matter. Red is it!!! Truth be told, I had to make a conscious decision to start buying reds. It is really a matter of trial and error to find reds that work with your skintone and personality and the engineer in me loves this!!!
So here are some the reds that I have collected recently. And for the record, I don’t know where I have been but M.A.C.’s Ruby Woo bessssssss!!!!! I don’t know what they sprinkle on that lipstick, and it’s a matte too!! It is a gorgeous, stunning true red and the finish/texture of the lipstick also makes it unique! No one looks bad in this one. I think this is as close to a sure bet as you can get! If you would like more detailed swatches/info on a particular colour, let me know. I will be doing a review on the NARS items. Check out my review on the NYX Lip Cremes here. I’m NW45 with red undertones but my arm is a little lighter.
Swatches (L to R): Succubus, Strutter, Chaos, Amsterdam, Monte Carlo, Fiery, Russian Red, Ruby Woo, Moulin Rouge, Vesuvio, Dragon Girl
So as I previously mentioned, I did a little damage at IMATS and picked up a few items from Stila Cosmetics.
So the first things I went for were the Long Wear Liquid Lip Color. Felicia from ThisThatBeauty rocks Fiery, a deep red matte lip colour ALL OF THE TIME! And it looks great on her, so course I had to have it. I met Bethany Townes and she was wearing a gorgeous fuschia colour and it turned out to be Caprice. Here are the swatches:
That’s pretty much what I said when I heard that the International Makeup Artist Tradeshow (IMATS) was finally coming to NYC in 2011. In L.A. and Toronto, it is usually a must-go event and I was excited! I love going to these shows for a number of reasons,
I get shop a lot of different makeup brands, especially those that are usually online only, at a discount.
I get to meet fellow bloggers and vloggers that I ‘stalk’ on a daily basis
And…I get to take classes taught by some of my favourite celebrity makeup masters.
So I attended last Sunday, which ended up being a great idea as I heard that it was just chaos on Saturday. I got to SoHo early so I was able to browse the booths with ease. Even though the show was hosted on multiple levels, there were less vendors than I expected. There were many of the most popular brands that were not there like M.A.C. and Make Up For Ever. I think that the organizers played it conservatively and limited the number of attendees and vendors.
I had a short shopping list and as soon as I get there, I headed to those specific booths. Here’s my mini haul!
