EOTD; Golden Gaze ♥♥

I just received a long awaited big order from Coastal Scents, including my brand spankin new 88 warm eye shadow palette, so I just had to play around! This is what I came out with this time..
Sorry for the less than preferable lighting!

Everyone loves a neutral golden look! These tones look lovely on blue or green eyes especially in my opinion, but it would definitely look great on anyone. I think I may do my first video tutorial on this look, since it's fun and easy, but it includes a lot of fun little tips and tricks. I'll also be coming out with a brow tutorial, since everyone has been asking me about my brows. Lots of fun stuff to come! Don't forget to follow to keep updated (:

Thanks so much for checking out my blog, until next time!

Dylan♥♥

NOTD; Dark Treasure ♥♥

I didn't quite know what to do today, so I just kinda grabbed some colours and played around. This is what I came up with!

I'm falling back on my white nail art polish.. I gotta branch out more, I don't wanna get predictable! =P Here's the breakdown:

-OPI's colour So Hot it Berns (red)
-OPI's Rising Star (gold)
-Orly Instant Artist nail polishes in Jet Black and Crisp White\
-Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat

Enjoy, and thanks for following and reading my blogs! (:

Dylan ♥♥

Back to Basics! Colour Theory: What Compliments You? ♥♥

Looking for the perfect shade that's going to set off those eyes of yours? Have a blemish that you just can't conceal, no matter how you pile on the products? Have I got the blog post for you!

Today I'm going to be talking about colour theory. I'm sure you've all seen a colour wheel before:

This little baby is useful for so many things. A colour wheel is something every artist of any medium will have engraved into the back of their mind.

The first thing a colour wheel is useful for in the cosmetics industry is selecting eye shadow colours to suit a client. For example, if you look at where blue is on the colour wheel and look at what is directly opposite, you'll see orange. Orange is blue's cross-complimentary friend. If you mix these two colours together (or any cross complimentary colours) you will make grey. However, if you place orange or an orange toned eye shadow on blue eyes, it will make them stand out and brighten like crazy.
Likewise, for green eyes, you'll see the complimentary colour is red. Now obviously most people won't use red eyeshadow, but anything with a red or warm tone to it will look gorgeous.

Of course, saying that doesn't mean everything that isn't orange toned looks bad with blue eyes. That is simply the colour that will make them stand out the most.

Another thing that colour theory is useful for is concealing. Many of you may have seen sets of colour correctors in the store, kind of like this:

I get questions about these all the time when I use them. Regarding the cross complimentary theory, the green covers blemishes and redness, the yellow counteracts purple in the skin (so under eyes and any darkness, sometimes around the nose), and the purple helps to highlight. Using these before you apply your foundation will balance out your skin tone and make your face look even more flawless.

These two examples are only the beginning of what a colour wheel can do for you. They can help you with your clothes, your hair, painting your house, buying furniture... there are no limits!

Thanks so much for reading my blog and following along with me. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comments or on facebook! (:

Have a fabulous, colourful day!
Dylan ♥♥

NOTD;; Grape and Orange Crush! ♥♥

Hey everyone, sorry I disappeared for a week there, I was on vacation with no wifi! But I'm back, and equipped with my camera after a little bit of forgetfulness... let's get on with it!

Fun, right? I really wanted to try out this orange, I've had it for a while and it's my favourite colour, so I figured why not! Here's the breakdown:

-Orly Nail Lacquer in Orange Punch
-OPI Nail Polish in Pamplona Purple
-Orly Instant Artist in Crisp White
-Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat

Super fun, I love the purple against the orange.
If any of you guys have requests let me know in the comments! I'll be buying a new camera that I can record good quality video on very soon, so I'll be setting up a youtube channel so I can actually do tutorials and talk to you guys! thanks so much for following and checking out my blog! Have a fabulous day, see ya real soon!

Dylan ♥♥

Nails of the Day; Frankenpolish and Arrowheads! ♥♥

I'm blogging this from a train right now, on my way to Quebec for a week of fun and fabulous times! Due to my excitement about my vacation, I did my nails blue and white for Quebec. Here's the shot!

So this freakin gorgeous dark blue colour is attribute to two different polishes.
-Base coat of Rimmel 60 seconds polish in Night Before (navy blue with a green undertone)
-Orly nail lacquer in Lunar Eclipse
-Triangles and lines done with Orly Instant Artist in Crisp White, as usual.

I love this blue!! Lunar Eclipse is definitely a great colour, but this mashup is definitely one of my new favourites.

If you have any ideas, inspirations or suggestions for nail art or a blog post, let me know in the comments! Thanks for tuning in!

Dylan ♥♥

Summer Foundation: How to Avoid a Meltdown! ♥♥

During the summer, everyone and their mothers experience problems with keeping their foundation from slipping, melting off or sweating away. I'm going to let you in on a few tips and tricks that I use in order to keep my foundation from abandoning me in a time of need!

Just to be clear, I have normal/combination skin and don't experience too many breakouts, but I sweat a lot in the summer.

Step 1: Cleanse, Tone, Moisturize

A good base is essential for a good application. Make sure to cleanse your face with a face wash that works for you. Before applying makeup, I prefer to use a face wash that isn't oil based, so as not to introduce any unneeded oils to my skin.

A lot of people don't even know toner exists. Here's a quick 101!

Basically what toners do is remove any excess debris from your skin, as well as returning a natural pH level to your skin. Naturally your skin is more on the acidic portion of the pH scale, and when you wash it with an alkaline soap it will throw off the balance. Using a toner will help to counter act that so that your skin's natural cycle won't be thrown off and it will help reduce redness and breakouts.

The toner I have recently come across that I LOVE is The Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil Toner. This toner is great because not only does the tea tree oil help to reduce redness and blemishes, but it also contains corn starch, which helps to mattify the skin.

After toning, moisturizer is essential to retain the state that you've set your skin into with your cleanser and toner. I use Aveeno Fresh Essentials Nourishing Moisturizer SPF 30. It's got a lovely scent thanks to its southernwood extract, and the SPF helps to keep my skin undamaged in the sun.

Step 2: Primer

Using a primer is going to help guarantee that your coverage is going to stay in place and go on smoothly. There are tons of primers on the market, ranging from low end (Rimmel Fix & Perfect) to higher end (Benefit That Gal Brightening Face Primer) that will boast different effects on the skin, like minimizing pores, brightening complexion, mattifying skin and smoothing out fine lines. Choose one that you feel will work best for your situation.

Step 3: Coverage

Depending on what kind of coverae you need, try to minimize the amount of products that you use. it's nice to have as little as possible on your face in the heat, but you still want that nice flawless face. Here's what I personally use, in order:

-Urban Decay Primer Potion on the eyelid and under eye

-Garnier Fructis Anti Dark Circle Under Eye Roller (for a good base and coverage)

-L'oreal True Match foundation in problem areas. If they need more coverage, I will layer this foundation to conceal more.

-Maybelline Dream Matte Powder with a powder puff to set in place.

To set the foundation and everything, I use the powder puff and roll on, not sweep, the powder everywhere I put product. After brushing away the excess powder, this gives me a little more coverage, as well as setting the foundation well in place and giving me a flawless finish.

Step 4 (Optional): Setting and Finishing Sprays

If you need that extra boost of setting power, you can buy a setting spray, such as Urban Decay's All Nighter Makeup Setting Spray. This sprayed over top of your foundation will help seal it in, as well as giving a nice sheen to your skin. Even if you just want a spray to help avoid cakeyness and a powdery look (which can happen with the powder puff technique), you can buy products like MAC Fix+ and Aveeno Thermal Spring water Spray to accomplish that. They will not help the makeup last longer, like the Urban Decay product, but they are great finishing sprays, and feel lovely in the summer, especially if you put them in the fridge!

Okay, that's everything for this totally long winded blog post! If you got this far, thanks for reading, I really appreciate it, and I hope you learned something from this! Have a fabulous, streak-free summer!

Dylan ♥♥

Batty for Lashes: My Top 5 Mascaras! ♥♥

So I'm a bit of a mascara junkie. I find my lashes are one of the better features on my face, and I love to play them up! In this post, I'm gonna go briefly over my top 5 mascaras, what they do, how well they do it, and what my opinions are. Let's just jump right on in, shall we?
(Prices may vary from store to store)


#1- Estee Lauder Sumptuous Bold Volume Lifting Mascara

Price: $21.00

This is my Holy Grail of mascaras. I've always described it as maximum output for minimum effort. This mascara really helps to lift the eye and make you look more awake, on top of separating and volumizing every last lash you've got in stock with its extremely precise wand. No flaking, so easy to remove, and so buildable. Good job Estee Lauder, no notes for you.





#2- Benefit BADGal Lash

Price: $19.00

Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. This mascara is SO BLACK, and it delivers so much fullness it's crazy. My lashes look so luscious and thick with this mascara, and they get so long that they nearly hit my brows. My only beef with it is that because the brush is so huge (like, gigantic) it can be hard to get your inner and bottom lashes, and it can get difficult to avoid getting mascara on your skin.






#3- L'oreal Voluminous Million Lashes

Price: $9.00

This mascara is very true to name. Once applied, you could swear you've got a million lashes per eye. It delivers a very natural look, lots of separation and great volume, and you can build it up easily to get a much more vamped up look. I definitely prefer this over the original voluminous.




#4- Covergirl LashBlast Volume

Price: Around $8.00

Lashblast was the first mascara I ever bought, and I'll readily say that I still love it. It's a fabulous every day mascara that gives you a very voluminous finish and wakes up your eye. My only problem with this mascara is that it flakes throughout the day, which is not preferable if you're working 8 hours. I like this mascara for my off days when I'm just going out and about for errands and whatnot and I don't really need a long lasting mascara.







#5- MAC Studiofix BoldBlack Lash

Price: $14.00

This mascara came out with the MAC Fashionflower collection a while back, and I msut say that for a MAC mascara (which I've never been to big on) this one is a contender. It delivers almost a spikey finish (not in a bad way though!) and is pretty easy to work with for the first coat, due to its streamlined wand. My only problem with this mascara is that if you're not careful, it can clump up fairly easily, and two coats or more begin to look very false and gets even harder to keep from clumping and the lashes sticking together.






So those are my top 5 mascaras from my collection! I hope this helps any of you readers out there figure out which mascara might be best for you, or maybe it introduced you to some new ones! If you want a more in depth review of any of the mascaras, let me know in the comments and I'll get right on it (:

Love and lashes,
Dylan ♥♥

Nails of the Day; Newspaper Camouflage? Naw, it's ZEBRA! ♥♥

I know what you're thinking.

"Seriously, Dylan? How many times a week do you change your nails?"

Well, a lot.

More so recently, due to boredom, perfectionism, and needing amazing nails for Pride. I usually do them once every five or six days, but it would appear I've been on a bit of a bender lately. Anyways, here's the breakdown, pretty simple this time:

-Essie Nail Polish in Waltz (I really don't like this white, it's streaky and ill pigmented, but it's the only one I have at the moment)
-Orly Instant Artist Nail Polish in Jet Black
-Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat

Nails of the Day; Concentric Electric & Review of Silk Line Nail Art Pens.♥♥

Today I went on my facebook and asked what colours I should do on my nails, and the very first person said purple and yellow. This is what I came up with!

-OPI Pamplona Purple as a base
-Orly Instant Artist Nail Polish in Crisp White
-Silk Line Polish in Yellow
-Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat

So I'm going to tie this Nails of the Day in with a review of the Silk Line nail art pens. These pens come in a tall, thin bottle. Pulling off the cap reveals a pen tip, but if you put the cap back on and unscrew the whole black part on top, you get a really nice script brush.

We'll start with the pen. I personally can't stand using the nail art pens for anything but dots and really small, precise work. I tried using the pen part to make the concentric design on my nails, and it was so messy I felt the need to go back in with the script brush and tidy up. It fixed it up quite a bit, but the lines are still a tad bumpy. They say you have to squeeze the bottle to make the product come out; I don't know if I got a badly sealed bottle or something, but when I uncap this pen it just starts oozing out of the tip and requires constant tidy-up.

As for the script brush, of the three brands I've tried I like this one second best, tailing behind the orly Instant Artist nail polishes. The brush is so thin and precise, I love it for getting the best quality line possible. The only reason I like it second to Orly is because the Orly product is water based and it dries SUPER fast!

As for the colour payoff, it's respectable. I did have to go back in to touch up a few places, but it wasn't a full blown have-to-redo-this-immediately ordeal.

Thanks you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! If you've tried these silk line polishes in the past, please comment and let me know what you think of them! Have a fabulous week!

Lots of love,
Dylan ♥♥

Give 'Em Some Lip: How to Choose the Right Lip Colour for You! ♥♥

I got a request from a lovely friend of mine to help her figure out the best lip colour for her. This blog is going to be all about helping you figure out your undertones and how to use them effectively!

The first step to understanding what colours are right for you is figuring out your undertone. There are three options: warm, neutral, or cool. Figuring out which one you are has to do with hair colour, eye colour and skin tone.

Warm Tones
Skin
People with warm tones have skin that has a peach tone, like ivory, light tan and chocolate brown. These colours all have a predominantly yellow undertone.If you wanto to figure out your skin tone easily, just look at the veins in your wrist. If they have a more green or yellowy colour to them, you have warm toned skin. If you cannot decide easily, take a gold piece of fabric and lay it against your skin to see if any yellow tones will be reflected in the skin.

Hair
Your hair will  be more golden in colour, ex. golden blonde, coppers, chestnuts and creamy greys.

Eyes
Warm toned people's eyes are generally brown or green, but blue-green and blue-grey are also considered in this section.


People with warm toned skin want to look for lipsticks with warmer tones. Reds with more orange tones will look more flattering, as well as more reddish pinks and plums.

(In case you were wondering, I have a warm tone)

Cool Tones
Skin
If you have more pink or blueish undertones in your skin, this means you are cool toned. Colours like alabaster, rosey pale and charcoal brown are all examples of cool tones. You can try the wrist technique to decide this as well, but try using a silver piece of fabric instead, and look for the blue-green tones.


Hair
If your hair is platinum blonde, more burgubdy red, black, brunette or silvery grey, then your hair is more cool toned.


Eyes
People with cool tones will generally have eyes that are clear blue, blue/green, reddish brown or brown black.

If you have a cool tone, lip colours that suit you will generally have a more blue undertone, like berry colours, pinks or violets.

Neutral Tones
It is much more rare to find someone with a neutral skin tone rather than warm or cool, but if it's difficult to figure out if you are warm or cool, or you find you have a combination of both of the tones (eg. porcelain skin and chestnut hair), you may be neutral. You are lucky, because you can pull off just about anything! Make sure you test yourself well before going and buying out the MAC counter, okay? (:

I hope this post will prove useful to all of you, send me a comment telling me if it did and what your findings are!

Much love and best of luck!
Dylan ♥♥

Nails of the Weekend! Pride 2011 ♥♥

Pride this weekend was absolutely fabulous! It was my first one (I know, I'm a terrible gay!) and I must say I was not disappointed. Apart from the small amount of drama, but life is never without its dark side, right? You can't let it get to you! There were so many happy, celebrating people, the vibe of the entire thing was so light and positive! I danced the weekend away!

Anyways, back to my nails! Here's the breakdown:
-OPI natural nail base coat
-Rimmel 60 Seconds Polish in Silver Bullet (to fill in the spots where the glitter does not)

Then I did the colour on each nail, which are as follows, from thumb to pinky:
-OPI Colour So Hot it Berns
-Orly Nail Lacquer in Orange (The only one I had to do two coats of)
-Silkline Polish in Yellow
-Sally Hansen's Xtreme Colour Polish in Blue Me Away
-OPI Pamplona Purple

-3 coats of Sally Hansen's Disco Ball sparkle polish on each half nail. It sounds like a lot, but this polish dries fast, and I wanted SUPER GLITTERY NAILS!
-Black lines done with Orly Instant Artist Polish in Jet Black
-Two coats of Revlon Extra Life No Chip Top Coat
-OPI Drip Dry

And there you have it! Fabulous, colourful, super sparkly nails for Pride! If your city hasn't had their Pride yet, this would be fabulous to wear, or even if you're just really into nail art like me!

Have a fabulous week, stay proud!
Dylan ♥♥