An Experiment in Colour: Hot Flash Nails of the Week!

I really wanted to play with my yellow silk line polish with the script brush, and I took a chance and decided to go with red and a touch of orange!

Base Coat: OPI Colour So Hot it Berns
Half nail: Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear polish in Crushed (In hindsight, I would have done two coats of this half nail for intensity)
Yellow: Silk Line nail polish in Yellow
Top Coat: Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat (Favourite by far!!)

I'd never tried this combination of colours before, and I'm pleased with the finished product. It's not something I'll be keeping on because I'll be changing them for Pride for SURE. The yellow pop is pretty fun though, I think I'll try it with a dark blue next time.

Stay tuned for what I'm going to do for my nails for Pride, and a tutorial on choosing your perfect lip colour!

Dylan ♥♥

This is my Teaching Face! (:

Today I taught some really cool kids/people my age how to prepare their faces for the stage. The look was basic, pirates with a very bronzed face and black eyes. I didn't want to get complicated due to time crunches and the fact that a lot of them were young, and didn't need that much, nor would I want to teach them anything complicated that they might forget later.

I taught them the basics of foundation- priming, application with sponges or fingers, setting powder with a puff and brushing off the access for a really well set base. The eyes were simple- black liner all over the lids, set with a black shadow to blend and intensify. Then LOTS of bronzer- They are in the sun all day as pirates, you know!- And minimal colour on the lips with chapstick. Only a few of them wore lipstick or gloss to amp up their character.

All in all it was a really fun day, I can't wait to see them actually performing on front of a crowd (: Drink up me hearties, yo ho!

Dylan ♥ ♥

Sun Kissed Summers: A Bronzer Tutorial

During the summer a lot of people will tan to get a healthy glow to their skin, but a lot of us are firm believers that getting too much sun can be detrimental to your skin and health. Therefore, we like to fake it with bronzer!

The technique I'm going to show you today is very widely used and very simple to accomplish. Many people know it as the "E and 3" method.

All you need is your favourite bronzer and a medium sized fluffy brush. I'm using Rimmel's Sun Shimmer Maxi Bronzer in 003 Sun Queen with a Quo blush brush. This bronzer has a lot of shimmer primarily, but they're mostly on top, and once you sweep them away the bronzer is quite a bit more matte and very good for bronzing and contouring.

Basically what we'll be doing is sweeping the bronzer on the sides of the face in an E and 3 shape, to darken the outskirts of the face. This will create a natural bronze flush to the skin and create a slimming effect. So you start at the temple...

...And then you continue down to the cheekbone. If you have trouble finding your cheekbone, you can line up your brush from your mid ear down to your mouth, and that should give you a good line for your bronzer.

Don't put the bronzer all the way up to your mouth! This can really drag down the face.
Blend the bronzer onto the cheekbone, making sure to sweep in a C motion around the eye to connect the temple to the cheekbone.

From the cheekbones, sweep down in that C motion again to continue underneath the jaw line. Blending the bronzer down the neck is a good way to make the bronze tone look more natural and consistent. This completes the 3 (or E, depending on the side) on the face. Be sure to blend everything well! We don't want any harsh lines.

Add a touch of bronzer to the chin, forehead, and the sides of the nose- Anywhere your skin would get naturally sun kissed. These steps should be subtle, so you still have a darker effect on the outer parts of the face.

Switch to a smaller brush is you wish- I'm using a small angled blush brush for my nose. Blend blend blend!

And voila! You've accomplished the look of natural, sun kissed skin without burning yourself or streaky tanning lotions! Thanks so much for reading this tutorial, hope it helps you stay fresh and fabulous this summer! Be sure to follow my blog and comment if you have any requests!

Dylan♥♥

Nails of the Week! ♥♥

Hey everyone, here's my first Nails of the Week! I love doing nail art, and when I recently picked up this dark green nail polish from NYC, I just had to try it out!

Base colour: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Colour in Ivy League
Dark Green: NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish in Flat Iron Green
Lines: Orly Instant Artist Nail Polish in Crisp White
Top coat: Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat

The dark green was pretty streaky the first coat, and the second coat left a few translucent areas, but it's nothing too serious. Overall impressed, and love the colour!

Thanks for reading, have a fabulous day!
Dylan♥♥

Review: Benefit Confessions of a Concealaholic Palette

For any of you that have tried any of Benefit's concealing products and loved them as much as I did, you will love this palette and how much money it will save you.

A- "That Gal" Brightening Face Primer- 75mL

B- "Boi-ing" Concealer in 01- 13g

C- "Boi-ing`Concealer in 02- 13g

D- Erase Paste in no.2 Medium- 32g

E- Eye Bright- 0.9g

F- Lemon Aid- 0.9g

Any one of these products is something that I have bought for myself in the past. The fact that they`ve been combined into a convenient palette- with a mirror no less!-  is just too fabulous. It`s even got labelled brushes for each of the products. This is something I use practically every day, and can take with me if I`m staying the night anywhere. This palette retails for $36.00.

A- "That Gal" Face Primer

This is one of my favourite primers. It's so light and almost has a whipped texture that smooths onto the face and provides a beautiful base for concealers. Plus, it also smells like rockets! You can't lose!

B&C- "Boi-ing" Concealer in 01 and 02

This heavy duty concealer was one of the first things I bought from Benefit. The regular sized product alone sells for $18.00. Get two of these and you've got the price of the palette! This buy is definitely more bang for your buck.

As for the product, it boasts being an industrial strength concealer, and it's not lying. Not  to mention that it doesn't feel heavy or caked on on your skin. With a bit of setting power, this product will last you a good 6 hours, without touch up, in my experience.

D- Erase Paste

This concealer is advertised as good for underneath the eyes, but I personally prefer the boi-ing concealer for that and this for problem spots on the face. It's very creamy and blends out very nicely, and a little bit goes a long way. I like this little jar it comes in too, it's great for throwing in your makeup bag for touch ups without taking up too much space.

E- Eye Bright

This bright purple may be daunting at first, but it's a wonderful highlighting product for your brow bone, tear duct and cheekbones. This bright colour blends in with your skin tone and adds brightness with little to no effort.

F- Lemon Aid

I LOVE this product for undereye darkness. My undereye circles are less than preferable, and this product combined with the Boi-ing concealer provides amazing coverage and lasting power for me. Yellow, as colour theory tells us, counteracts purple, which is great for the eye area due to thinner skin, as well as around the nose and over any broken capillaries.

And the brushes?

They're alright for on the go. I personally prefer a slightly bigger brush or just my fingers.

So overall I give this palette a 5 out of 5! There's nothing about it I don't like about this product. If you are a concealaholic like myself and are looking for everything you need perfect skin wrapped up in adorable packaging, this palette is for you!

Thanks for reading, love and rockets for all!

Dylan ♥♥

My Perception of Beauty

For my first blog (apart from my intro) I wanted to talk about my personal perception of beauty. Having grown up a very feminine boy, it was very difficult for me to accurately define myself, and it took a lot of time, trial and error and stumbles along the way to find out where I fit and what my definition of beauty is. Magazines fill our heads with these pictures of size zeros and flawless, airbrushed faces and tell us that that is real beauty, when this so called real beauty is half computer generated and nearly impossible to measure up to.

What I've realized in my travels is that everyone is like a snowflake; no two are the same, and in that respect, no two definitions of beauty is the same. To me, real beauty is being comfortable with who you are and realizing the fact that you can't please anyone, so you have to please yourself first and foremost.

I found this out the hard way- I came out of the closet at the age of 14, and I was the only openly gay kid in school at that age. Naturally, this got me a lot of attention, especially from the jock boys.

I can clearly remember many times when I would look at myself in the mirror and consider just dropping it all. I could just dress in drab clothes, forget the nail polish and makeup, cut my hair short and start sinking into the background. But then I realized, what good would that do? Those boys would probably just keep making fun of me, if anything even worse because they would know that they had broken my spirit. So I would buck up, don my sparkly purple nail polish and get back to who  really felt I was.

Being who you are takes a lot of strength, and it's that character that separates you from the crowd. As time went on I became supremely comfortable with who I'd grown to be, and people responded to that positively. Before the year was done the number of people bullying me was drastically reduced, simply because I didn't let it get me down and I never sacrificed my personality. I can proudly say today that what I did back then shaped who I am now, and I don't think I've ever felt more proud of who I've grown to be.

I'm putting this post out to anyone who will read it, to tell you that you are beautiful, in your own special way, and I love you for it. If we were all the same skinny, airbrushed, model sized people, then no one would stand out, would they? You need only to believe in yourself and let your sparkling personalities shine through (:

Embrace yourself, and the rest will come easy.

Lots of love purple sparkly nail polish,
Dylan

Welcome to my blog!

Hello there! If you've by chance stumbled upon this blog, welcome! My name is Dylan, and I am an aspiring makeup artist. I received my first makeup artistry diploma recently in December 2010, and I am currently working retail and working on building my makeup artistry portfolio, and I thought it might be fun to blog about my adventures, so that not only could I share what I know about beauty products, but also so that I could learn from you guys!

I love playing with makeup and learning new techniques and products, and am a nail art fanatic. I change up my nails once or twice a week, and if they don't have more than 2 colours on them, there's something wrong! =P

I love sharing what I learn with my friends and loved ones. Hopefully I can find some new friends and loved ones through this blog! If you would like to join me on my adventure, please subscribe to my blog so we can play and discover together!

Cheers and lots of love! (:
Dylan