Stila Smudge Sticks

 I love Stila's current line of packaging that's all art-supply themed. I don't know why I'm so into it, because I'm not an artist (well, not a paint and colored pencils sort of artist, obviously dance is art), I just think it's really cute and clever. I resisted for as long as I could, but Ulta had a special on this Smudge Stick set last month and it was a really nice selection of colors, so I decided to treat myself. Turns out it's on sale again, so if you like what you read about it, now's a good time to buy!

 The included colors are Stingray (basic black), Lionfish (sparkly medium brown), Aubergine (shimmery medium orchid), Navy (basic navy blue), and Emerald (bright and shimmery Color of the Year emerald). They come in this cute tin, but if you want to keep them with the rest of your makeup it feels like the plastic insert would be easy to remove and then you could use the tin for something else.

I wore Stingray last night, but foolishly forgot to get a good close-up so you can see it. Anyway, it was easy to apply and gave a pretty good fine line which I was then able to smudge out a bit. It wore well. Above, you can see all of the colors swatched in the order I listed them. They all look pretty nice.

I'm disappointed to say that my Navy stick was broken off at the tip so it's completely flat. This is the sort of liner where the product is inside the plastic and you twist to bring more up and it makes a small fine tip. I don't know how I'm supposed to sharpen this flattened liner? At least it's the color I'm least likely to wear, and since I got it on sale for $15 for the set that makes it $3, but if I had paid full price or it had been a color I really wanted, I'd be really annoyed.

Over all, I feel like if you're already pretty happy with your current selection of liners, there's probably no reason to also get this one. But if you're in the market for some good go-tos, this would be a good investment (especially while it's on sale!). Stingray and Navy are good classic basics, Lionfish would look great with the rose golds that are hot right now or with my favorite olive greens, and Aubergine will come in handy for looks inspired by the 2014 Color of the Year Radiant Orchid. I think most people will find Emerald hard to use. Even as a green lover, I don't know how often I'll use it as I usually go towards dark instead of bright. I am tempted to wear it for day makeup just because I think it's a fun color, but I don't know if I will use it for performance makeup very often.

Urban Decay Black Market Pencil Set

When I saw this new Black Market 24/7 Pencil Set from Urban Decay, I knew I had to have it! I have no lack of eye liners, but this set of mini pencils has some really stylish Autumn colors that would fill some gaps in my collection.

The colors include West (sparkly brown), Desperation (matte grey), Black Market (sparkly black), Riot (sparkly purple), Apathy (sparkly olive) and Ink (sparkly blue). They're the standard UD mini pencil size, which means you can throw all of them into a travel bag easily, or put your favorite in the pencil slot of a palette.

Oh hey, did I mention that I'm in NY and it is COLD out here? So here's my eye look for NYC, using West and Apathy and a few colors from the NYC themed Book of Shadows, plus a warm, fuzzy scarf.

 Eyes closed. Not my best blending job, I only had a few minutes to do my face.

Swatch! Displayed on my arm in the same order they're packaged in. You can see that it's a nice range of dark neutrals and pops of color that will carry you through fall and winter.

I use 24/7 pencils in various colors for dance makeup all the time, and they hold up well. Not quite as bold a line as a good gel liner, but I also don't have to worry about waiting for them to dry, or having the entire pot dry out before I can use it because I live in a desert. Plus they're really portable and it's easy to take a bunch of colors on a trip with you. You can smudge them if you want or leave them as-is. The travel-sized pencils will last you a good long while, I haven't even used up half of my basic black Zero pencil and it's one of my go-to products.

Three Eyeliner Pencils

 If you've ever wondered what I look like after dancing four numbers at Open Stage and then dancing to awesome live music on a night that happens to be over 100 degrees, well, here you go. I have got to remember to take my makeup pictures before my gigs. That look on my face says "What? Do I really have to take a picture before I wash my face and go to bed? And why did I take my false lashes off first?"

 Anyway, last night's look involved three different eyeliner pencils. I really like buying pencils, I think it's because they remind me so much of colored pencils and crayons. I loved to color when I was a kid! Plus eyeliner pencils are a really easy way to add a little more color to an eye look that's just not quite popping for you.

Here are the three pencils I used:
1. Sephora Flashy Liner Waterproof in Flashy Blue. I think they discontinued these so this review doesn't do you much good. Sorry!
2. Kat Von D Waterproof Autograph Pencil in Black Metal Love.
3. Sephora Nano in Pure White which is currently out of stock. I am just striking out today!

Haaaaaaaand swaaaaaaatch! The picture probably doesn't show it well but the Flashy Blue is nicely metallic. I like it a lot and wish I had more than two colors from this line (the other is a green, surprise I know) and the Black Metal Love has lots of silver glitter (which is why I bought it, because I have more plain black pencils than I can ever use, thanks for that UD). The white is a plain ol' white. My thoughts on each one:

1. This is a great accent color. Held up well under my eye all night. Most of it came off easily when I removed my makeup but there was one spot under each eye where I had some blue staining.

2. Applied really smoothly, held up well, came off easily at the end of the night. $10 is a bit much for such a small pencil but I might buy more colors especially if I have a coupon.

3. Nano liners are a good deal at $5. I tried this on my waterline to brighten my eyes and make them look larger. I think it helped? However, the white pencil picked up the black and blue liner really easily, so next time I should plan ahead and do the white first rather than making up my eye look as I went along. Did not actually look white in waterline, just brightened it, but since it looks white on my hand it will probably look white when used around the eye. Could make for fun accents.

Over all: I'm sorry if this shatters any of your images about bellydancers being glamorous, but I sweated a LOT last night and my eyeliner stayed in place. I wore these for about 6 hours, danced a whole lot, adjusted my fake lashes and my liner still looked fine. So any of these would be good buys for a dancer.

Never enough eyeshadow!

 That's right, I am reviewing more eye makeup because I can never have enough! What's more, it's GREEN eye makeup. I've been told that the eye can differentiate between more shades of green than any other color. Isn't that cool? I try to test this fact by owning all of the green beads and eye shadows and costumes that I can afford.

Today's products are the new Urban Decay Moondust Eyeshadow in Zodiac and Make Up For Ever Eyeshadow in 171 (Iridescent Acid Green). These two colors look great together and I think I will be combining them for a lot of different looks!

 I decided to get fancy with the hand-swatch this time! From left to right: no primer, dry application; no primer, wet application; primer, dry application; primer, wet application. One light later of each color. Also, I need to moisturize. Yikes.

 Before I show you the look I created, I'd like to take a moment for a little PSA. Do not, under any circumstances, ever get UD's 24/7 liquid liner in your tearducts. Oh my goodness it hurt like a motherbeast. And then I had eyeliner everywhere from screwing up my eye from the pain. What a mess!

So now let's look at the other side of my face! Ahhhh, much better! I think when I use these colors together in the future I may put them over another color, and I will definitely blend them out so it's less of a harlequin look (it wasn't so delineated before I decided that I needed another layer or two of glitter).

After first putting down a layer of primer potion, I applied the MUFE wet with a loose eyeshadow brush, and following UD's advice, the Moondust was applied with my finger (also a little wet). Using my finger I had pretty much 0 fallout. I then took this look over to a spin jam and spun my fire fans. Tiny bit of fall-out but otherwise this makeup has stayed in place pretty well.

I am really excited about this Moondust shadow! It's such a pretty dark green that will go well with a lot of colors I already have, and it's super glittery. I want to apply it over my entire eye and then line it with metallic emerald gel liner. Plus it is compatible with the UD "Build Your Own Palette" tins!

I think that both of these colors will see a lot of use from me and I will be picking up other hues from these collections. The eyeliner, on the other hand, is on probation!

The Epic Emerald Review

Are you ready for this? Are you ready for the fruits of a Sephora shopping spree and two days of makeup testing? Because here it is... My review of a significant chunk of the items in the Sephora + Pantone Universe Color of the Year Emerald Collection. The only item in that pic that didn't make it into the review is the green glitter eyelashes because I am saving them for a special occasion.

First let's look at some of the items from the big Color of the Year box set. You can buy all of these individually, but if you want most of the items it's probably worth buying the whole box. 

 Here's the color grid block in Bionic. I love how it's packaged! Those are little magnets in each corner, so you can have it all stacked up, or flip the lid and mirror out. Clever! There are two other color grids available and this was actually the least-interesting one to me, but it came in the box and I wanted everything else in the box, so there you have it.

And this is Color Code Prismatic Shadow Block, with a bonus mirror picture of me and my sparkly phone. I actually didn't use this on my first day of testing for reasons that will become obvious when we get down to the swatch.

Here's the Graphic Sculpt Waterproof Jumbo Liner, a big fat liner pencil. This is one of the few items I wasn't going to buy separately, because I wasn't sure what I'd do with it.

 Lightspeed Glitter Dust. Aw yeah! This is one of the things I was most excited about. Green. Glitter. Microglitter! Shown here with Medusa's Makeup glitter base, which I will totally review another day because it is also awesome.

 Color Cube Lid Stain. I don't know what "lid stain" means but as far as I can tell it's a gel liner, and I love gel liner and I love this color. I guess you can also use it as a shadow, so this will require future experimentation.

 Hand swatch, hand swatch! I swear I rotated this picture, but Blogger rotated it back, so whatever. We'll go top to bottom instead of left to right.

As you can see, the silver color in the Bionic block is almost invisible on my hand (but it's actually pretty nice in real life, a shimmery white/silver that really brightened the corners of my eyes), the blue is really "meh" and the emerald green is a spot-on match for the Pantone color.

Then there's the Prismatic shadow block. Ok, this is NOT emerald. It's a nice color, and I like it, but it has way too much of a yellow tone compared to the very blue emeralds in this collection. I had to save it for Day 2.

Graphic Sculpt liner looks pretty good! It's like coloring with a crayon. I decided it would probably be good for under-eye, so that's how I ended up using it, as you'll see soon.

Lid Stain. Oh wow, look at that yummy metallic green. This is one of my new favorite things.

Lightspeed Glitter. Kind of like a mineral eye shadow. Will require future experimentation. Lots of experimentation.

 And here's the look I made with those items (minus that not-emerald eye shadow). Looks pretty good with my eyes open! I threw on a little black mascara to complete the look.

Eyes closed, you can really see how weak that blue is. Yuck! This was applied over my usual Urban Decay primer, which was just not enough to make that color stick. But also look at that lid stain liner. So pretty!

And how did it hold up? Well, I wore it for about 6 hours, which included going to dinner and then two hours of dance class. By the time I got home, my emerald and blue eyeshadows had become one and I had naked patches on my eyes. Not pleased. Not pleased at all. I have received a lot of advice on Facebook on how to possibly get the colors to be more intense and last longer, but you know what? That Bionic block retails for $26. At that price, I expect it to be comparable with my Urban Decay and MAC shadows, not some department store cheapy.

 Hey! Let's take a break and talk nails! I bought the three pack of Mini Graphic Effect Lacquers. There's a shimmer, which is pretty nice and simple and looks great. There's a glitter, which is more of a shamrock than emerald green and has a slight green tint to the base. I want to try it over other colors for sure. And then there's what they labeled as a metallic, which is more like a semi-matte opaque with lots of glitter. I like how that one looks but it feels kind of chunky. I applied them over a base coat, but since I was in a hurry I didn't use a top coat and I used the quick-dry drops. My left hand (with all three colors) is holding up fine, but my right hand (with just the "metallic") is already chipping a lot.

 Please take a moment to admire the awkwardness of this picture where I tried to show all three bottles and all three colors on my nails.

 Heyo! Back to the big box! Here is the Graphic Lift Liquid Eyeliner. It is a pretty metallic emerald green but you won't be able to tell until you get down to the swatches because this is a bad picture.

 Oh, you like eyeliners, you say? Well how about we also take a look at the Glitter Strobe Eyeliner Set, which contains four different mini-tubes of emerald liquid liner with different effects, similar to the nail polish. I am super-excited about this!

By the way, this release is heavy on the eyeliner. Look, I bought 7 liners and there's still one more I didn't get. And that's not counting the liner pencils that were already available in emeraldish colors. So basically what I am saying is that if you want emerald green eyeliner, they have you covered and then some.

 Hey look, swatches! Yep, all those liners are different. There's a nice plain opaque and a few different metallics and glitters, for whatever sort of look you want to do. I also swatched that eyeshadow again so you can see how it doesn't really go with any of these but I'm using it for this look anyway.

 Lastly, here's some Color Watt Highlighting Mascara which I did not swatch on my hand, because I don't want to know how many tiny, tiny little hairs grow on the back of my hand, OK?

 So what's a girl to do when she has five different eyeliners to test in one go? SWIRLY LINER! Ha ha. I'm like a green Goth. Actually, this was kind of fun and I could see doing it for an over-the-top faerie or mermaid look. The brushes that come with them are a little soft, so you'd probably want to use your own prefered liner brush for drawing the swirly lines a bit more precisely. I also went back to that gel liner and used it to do more water line.

As for the mascara, I put it on over black. It doesn't show well in the pictures but it is an obvious green accent in real life. Probably more ideal for situations where you'll be right up in the audience's face instead of a stage production, which pretty much seems to be the case with colored mascaras. Stick with colored false lashes if you want to be seen from a distance!

LOOOOOOOOK at the SWIIIIIIRLS! Also notice that the green eyeshadow is weak-sauce. I noticed myself losing color already when I started applying the liner. What the heck? I hadn't even started dancing yet. And in fact, I had sprayed my face with setting spray in hopes of gluing that stuff in place. I am pretty disappointed because it's a nice, shimmery, sparkly shade of green that isn't really represented in my collection yet, but I am obviously going to have to work hard with this and with the emerald in the Bionic block if I want to actually make use of them.

Anyway, I did a bit of dance practice in my house and built up a bit of a sweat, and I found that my liquid liners had transferred a bit to my crease, which seems to happen to me a lot. I should probably set them with powder in the future. The other liners all stayed in place and the shadow didn't fade too much more. Also when I tried to remove the swatches from my hand with a little lid wash on a cotton square, they lingered! I removed the top layer but there are still five distinctly green lines on my hand and some green smudging, even though I've also since washed my hands. So I think they'll hold up to a little sweat. They might even hold up if the fire sprinklers come on in the middle of your palm flame performance.

Over-all impressions? The liners are probably all good buys. The shadows are NOT. As a wise friend said, with emerald being the color of the year, most lines will be releasing their own versions if they don't have them already, so go buy from a brand that is more reliable. The polishes and mascara also seem like fine investments. I only used the glitter sparingly, but I didn't get any fall-out even from all the dancing I did on Wednesday night, so it's probably a good choice, too. I'll likely revisit it in the future.

What do you think? Will you be rocking any of these new products for St. Patrick's Day and May birthday parties? Or do you think that the Pantone collections are just an excuse to sucker us into buying shoddy eyeshadow and more eyeliner than we really need?

Urban Decay Theodora Palette Review

 I wasn't going to buy this palette, really I wasn't. I already have two large UD palettes, two small ones, and a collection of their single shadows. And that's not even getting into what I own from other brands. Also, while I probably will eventually go see that Oz movie, I'm not so excited about it that I feel the need to buy promotional tie-in items. Above all else, I am trying to cut down on frivolous purchases to save up for Tribal Fest. But then I saw the early previews of the product and I really had to have it!

Inside the box of the Urban Decay Theodora Palette you will find the following items: the palette tin itself (containing 6 shadow pans and a liner), a lipstick pencil, and an instruction card detailing how to copy Mila Kunis's look from the movie. The funny thing is that her look does not use the eye colors I am most excited about! But it is a pretty nice brown smoky look which could be used for a night out, or dressed up with a little glitter to match a brown costume for a performance.

One of the big selling points for me is that this palette comes in a build-your-own box, so you can take the shadows out, put others in, transfer them into the smaller 4-pan build your own, and replace them with something else if you run out. The colors are (clockwise, starting from the upper left), Broken, Beware, Bewitch, West, Spell (duo shadow black glitter/gold glitter) and Jealous (due shade medium green/light green). These are all NEW colors and these Oz palettes are the first time UD has used duo-color shadows like this. It also comes with the new, exclusive super saturated lip pencil in Theodora (quickly becoming one of my favorite things ever) and a 24/7 liner pencil in Zero, aka the color that UD puts in everything when they can't think of a different color, I guess. I mean, if this is your first palette it's great to get a black eye pencil with it, but I must have 4 of these pencils now.

ARM SWATCHES! Thank you, Dawn Sehar, for explaining to me why beauty bloggers like arm swatches. This one shows the liner, the lip pencil (I drew a heart for you all because I did this on Valentine's Day), and then the shadow colors in the order I listed them above. As you can see, Broken is almost the same color as my skin, the browns all show up nicely, and the glitters and greens did not show up too well. This was done without any sort of primer, by the way. I'm running low and didn't want to use it all on my arm.

And how does it look on my face? Well, I didn't think I could fit ALL THE COLORS on my eyes without looking insane, so I focused on the four colors not used in Mila Kunis's look (so both shades of Spell and Jealous). I put the darker Jealous all over my lid and applied the lighter one up towards my brow bone, making a nice green gradient that looks really good with my fair skin, hazel eyes and red hair. I did a bit of dark Spell in the outer corner of my eye, and the light Spell in the inner corner and under my lash line. I wasn't too thrilled with the darker version of spell... it didn't really deliver much punch. But the golden one looked really nice, especially with the greens. I lined it with the Zero pencil, added some Super Curl mascara from a different UD palette, and colored my brows in with my UD brow box. Oh yes, and this was applied over Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion, because I love that stuff.

And then there's the lips! OK, this pencil is the number one reason why I bought this palette. I was planning a vintage pin-up inspired look for the party last week, and I saw this color and I knew it was just right for my lips. It did not disappoint! This candy-apple red with a hint of sparkle just looks so good on me -- and I say that as a girl who started out her make-up wearing like sure that she would never enjoy wearing red lipstick. This color really minimizes the yellow in my teeth. I don't know if it actually makes them look less yellow, or if it's so in-your-face bright that my teeth just fade into the background, shamed by the awesomeness that surrounds them.

Am I saying that a lip pencil is worth spending about $50 on a palette? No. But I am saying that if, like me, you were teetering on the edge of indecision, it might be what pushes you over.

But wait... this is a cosmetics review by a dancer, for dancers! So how does all this hold up for dancing? Well, I have worn the lip pencil for two gigs and have been pretty happy with how it's held up all night. It doesn't wear off easily and it doesn't come off on your teeth and it's not too sticky. As for the eyeshadows and liner, I did not test this particular look with a gig, but I almost always wear Urban Decay shadows and 24/7 Liner and I am happy with how they hold up, as long as they're applied over a primer.

I am admittedly a little disappointed by the lack of color intensity in the two due-color pans. I think that if I was going to use Jealous for a performance I might have to add another, darker color. The black Spell seems to be a total wash, though it may prove itself after further experimentation. The gold Spell does seem pretty nice, and despite complaints on-line I didn't really notice too much glitter fall-out... but then again, I just wore it to dinner and Target, I wasn't working it too hard.

Glitter Liner/Mascara Review

 Welcome to my first cosmetics review! I find that traditional beauty blogs just don't answer all the questions belly dancers have about our makeup, so I'm here to provide opinions by a dancer, for a dancer. As such, it seems appropriate that I start with GLITTER! Specifically, the Sephora Collection Glitter Eyeliner and Mascara.

I was inspired to try this product after seeing Brandye in Skirt Full of Fire rock some glitter mascara. The brand she was wearing is only available at Wal-Mart (or at a significant mark-up on Amazon), so I decided to give Sephora's version a try. I like the fact that theirs doubles as a liner. I chose the Sunset Copper which is a nice brassy golden color.

 You can see that this product has an unusual brush that is part mascara roller and part fine eyeliner brush. This means you have to be careful when applying it as a mascara, or you'll get streaks of liner on your face. I learned this the hard way! But both parts of the brush serve their intended purpose well.

Here's the obligatory beauty blogger hand swatch. Why do bloggers swatch everything on their hand? I'm not going to wear it on my hand, I'm going to wear it on my face. I feel like if a company is send you cosmetics for free, the least you can do is show me how it looks when worn as intended. Now, I spent my own $13 on this product, but I'm still going to show you how it looks on:

Too bad that the poor lighting in my bathroom means you can't actually TELL how it looks! If I'm going to be a beauty blogger, I need to buy some nicer lights. Sheesh. So let me give you my impression of how it wore... The liner is nice and bright! I applied it under some winged-out black for a nice POP, which compliments the gold shadow I'm wearing under my brow-bone. I also applied the gold mascara to my false lashes. It's a subtle effect. I feel like Brandye's Wal-Mart brand gave more glitter, but maybe she applied it heavier or chose a better color. I'm going to experiment some more. Either way, I don't think the mascara shows up well in pics. I wouldn't recommend it for photos or for a big stage. This is definitely one for when you're going to be close enough for the audience to really appreciate your lashes! Great for restaurants and parties where you're mingling with the crowd.

I wore this all night, and while I admittedly didn't get too sweaty because it was a COLD night, it held up well. I didn't get much glitter fall-out and the liner didn't run or smudge. Removal was pretty easy, but I found that it lingered on the false lashes. If you're going to apply it over falsies, either use a cheap pair that you don't mind throwing out, or plan to always wear this shade of glitter with them.

Over all, I'd say this is a good buy at $13 and could be a good staple for a dancer of any style. The pretty wide variety of colors means there's something for everyone (though I am of course highly disappointed by the lack of a true green). And let's face it, we're all always looking for new ways to add glitter to our faces.