Day 163. Brush cleaning [tip]

I am a brush junkie. I have tons and tons of brushes, ranging from the cheapest to the expensive. Since I have so many brushes, I tend to use new brushes every morning, especially for my eye make up.
I run out of clean brushes to use about every two weeks, and today was the day I decided to clean all my brushes to have clean ones to use tomorrow.

Day 156. Urban Decay eyeshadow cheat sheet [tip]

I am a big fan of Urban Decay eyeshadows. I am the proud owner of several of their palettes and I covet more. But I find hard to keep track which eyeshadows are in which palette.

Image from Urban Decay

Since I want to buy a few more shades from UD and their palette are such a good deal (in comparison to single eyeshadow pans), I decided to compare the shades from the single pans available at UD and the ones contained in their palette.

So I am sharing the resulting table with you.
On the row, you'll find the palettes, on the column you'll find the single shades of eyeshadow. You'll notice that UD has been really careful to put in each palette only one or two eyeshadows from other palette.

As a result, I own 2 Foxy shades, 2 Half Baked shadows, and 2 Blackouts; I also know now that I own half of the new Dangerous palette thanks to me having the 15th Anniversary palette.

It's quite handy. So without further ado, here the link to the table

Urban Decay eyeshadow Cheat Sheet

Most of the single pan eyeshadow are in one or more palettes, so think carefully and check the "cheat sheet" to see if you don't own the shade you want already or if purchasing another palette may be cheaper.

The table (cheat sheet) is currently on Google Docs and I'll work to keep it updated and I'll try to make it easier to read.

Hope it helps!

Day 135. Homemade/DIY Tinted Moisturizer [tip]

It's spring and I find that my usual foundation is a bit too heavy for my skin in this weather, but it's still not time for my BB Cream. Since I still have ton of my foundation, I thought I'd do a tinted moisturizer myself, so I could use it up and not buy another product.

Since a tinted moisturizer is nothing more than a hydrating cream with some pigmentation, this is what I came up with and it's working fantastically for my.

What you need:

1. a empty jar (I used a empty loose powder eyeshadow container similar to this one)

2. foundation (I used my N°7 Stay Perfect Foundation)

3. Moisturizer/Hydrating Cream (I used Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Gel)

optional ingredients:

4. serum (I used Dior Essential Skin Boosting Super Serum)

5. Mattifying/SPF cream (I used Dermalogica Oil Free Matte SPF 30) 

Basically just mix together all the ingredient within the jar. Proportions between ingredients are really up to you: I did two pumps of foundation and one of moisturizer and mattifying cream each, 2 pumps of serum (it's a 5ml sample bottle though). 

Foundation can be liquid or loose powder, it works pretty much the same. Just mix the powder really well or you'll get streaks of color on your face from unmixed pigment.

I would not suggest using a gel based moisturizer as I did, since it's a bit harder to mix with the other ingredients, but that's what I had and I made it work. 

As I was saying, proportions depends on your preference/aim: if you want a moisturizer with very light coverage, use more more moisturizer than foundation (I'd say the ration is 2:1) or do the opposite if you want coverage with a little bit of more hydrating power.

I added the serum to have an extra hydrating factor on my skin and a bit of mattifying cream with SPF to add protection and control the shine on my t-zone. You can also use something brightening if you want, such as the MAC Strobe Cream. 

What I got is a very hydrating, light tinted moisturizer that has light coverage but last quite a while on the skin. 

With the proportion of ingredients mentioned above I get enough tinted  moisturizer to last me about a week. I prefer having to mix the ingredients every week than doing a larger batch of tinted moisturizer because my storage solution (jar) is not perfect and I don't want to waste too much ingredient in case the moisturizer somewhat spoils. 

It took me a few tries to get the result I wanted, so don't give up if your first try does not have the perfect shade or coverage! Start with a small amount of products to avoid wasting them if you don't like the results! the trick is to keep trying!

Day 112. Make Up Addict Problem a.k.a. How I Choose my Make Up Daily [tip]

As many make up addicts I own a lot of cosmetics, especially eye products. At one point, I noticed that even though I had the choice between a lot of products, I always ended up using pretty much the same things, as I think many of you do. This also made me feel guilty, as I was buying stuff I was using. So I decided to find a solution that would (sort of) force me into using all my eye products. What I figured was that I needed to randomly select a product or two everyday to use. I wanted something like a make up lottery.

Picture by gabetarian

Day 45. Travel makeup bag

Quick post today to show you what I bring with me in my travel make up bag when I go away for the weekend.
Since I usually have to get on a plane everything must be hand-baggage approved!
So I travel light and with a lot of mini-sizes and sample bags that I collect during the year.

The only full size products I have in my travel makeup bag are:
- Mac Prep+Prime Transparent Finishing Powder (and a Essence blush brush to apply it)
- Clinique Airbrush Concealer in 02 Medium
- Erborian BB Crème Au Ginseng in Dorè
- Essence Stay All Day long lasting eyeshadow in 03 (Steel the show)
- Carmex Lipbalm stick
- Kiko  Urban Look eyeliner and kohl in 04
- Elf Mineral Primer
- Sephora Express Cleansing Wipes

Then I have a series of mini and travel sizes of skin care products
- Dior Iconic Overcurl Mascara (mini-size)
- Dr. Hauschka Mint Toothpaste (mini-size)
- Dr. Hauschka Cleansing Cream (travel-size)
- Dr. Hauschka Day Cream (travel-size)
- Weleda Skin food cream (mini-size)
- Shu Uemura Depsea Hydrability moisturizing emulsion (mini-size)
- Weleda Wildrose Day Cream (sample)
- Dr. Hauschka Rose Body Moisturizer (sample)

I won't bring any other make up with me because I always end up buying something but sometimes I bring with me a Sleek MakeUp palette, since they are small and compact.