Spring Thing

We need not have feared the dreary weather report, at least not today, because it turned out to be a stunningly beautiful day. After playing outside with the kids and doing some yard work, we decided to take everyone to lunch at a nice place by the water. I wanted a little color, but nothing too heavy, and I didn't want to get all matchy-matchy with my purple top or look too costume 80s. A touch of sheer green on the eyes did it, plus a nice bright pink on the lips and a glowy blush.

Foundation--None! Just used a bit of MUFE HD concealer under the eyes, with my usual teeny drop of Smashbox primer and a little MUFE translucent powder.

Blush--Urban Decay Afterglow in Score.

Eyes--MAC Paint Pot in Painterly as a base with NARS Nomad cream eyeshadow on the lid and MAC Rosemary & Thyme eye pencil on the lower lid. Touch of Almay One Coat mascara.

Lips--NYX Xtreme Lip Cream in Bonfire.

Perfume of the Day--BPAL The Fairies (apple blossom, white clover, huckleberry wine, dandelion sap, milkweed, primrose, thyme, pink moss, thorny thistles, and opium pod)

Am I Blue?

I will confess to a propensity to go more matchy-matchy than is currently fashionable. Since childhood I've often dressed in one (or coordinating) color down to my underpants. Sometimes I'll start to get dressed without having thought through what to wear, only to find I unconsciously grabbed for underwear that matches everything else I'm wearing. What can I say, it is a sickness. I associate smells with colors too, so sue me.

So when I put on this pretty blue sweater today, I had to stop myself from rifling through all the lovely blue eyeshadows I've acquired but rarely wear. Instead, I grabbed MAC pigment in Blue-Brown, which just adds a layer of teal shimmer to a red-brown shadow, and blended that with a little Bootycall from the Urban Decay Naked2 palette.  I added a touch of a blue-violet pencil in the outer V and black mascara. Blush is MAC Dainty and lipstick is MAC Viva Glam VI.

OK, I see I look slightly deranged in that photo, but I'll post it anyway. I bet you all look like it's the end of the week too. Just keeping it real.

Perfume of the Day: BPAL Womb Furie from the 2012 Lupercalia collection. "Snake Oil and three types of honey." Sanke Oil, BPAL's creator's signature scent, is really growing on me. When I first tried it I thought it was too heavily resinous and musky, but now I've come to appreciate how rich it is and how it dries down with a lot of depth and vanilla sweetness. It's extra great in this blend with honey.

The Eyes Have It

I spent Sunday happily engaged with my best friend, Ms. Cake, in sampling, testing, and sharing a gigantic heap of Black Phoenix imps and NYX eyeshadow pigments. First, though, she had to play several rounds of Foosball with my 5 year old, a cutthroat Foosball player.

It got so that I had a different perfume oil approximately every four inches up and down both arms. We had a can of espresso to sniff to try to clear our palates, but eventually the cacophony of smells was overwhelming. So we switched to eyeshadow.

This was fun -- a number of months ago, some pathological wave came over me and I managed to convince Ms. Cake that what we really needed to do was order and split a full set of NYX loose eyeshadow pigments offered up for sale in two batches on the discount website HauteLook. The deal was something like for $55 each we'd have about 100 eyeshadows between us and could divvy them up. As it happens, we have completely opposite coloring. I wear gold tones and she wears silver. So we got them, and they sat in bags, along with a heap of little jars and spoons and mixing medium and magnetic palettes and whatnot that we'd ordered from Coastal Scents in order to be able to press our own eyeshadow pans. See, it's not just makeup, it's CRAFTS.

With the "help" of the 5 year old, we traded gold tones for silver tones, as applicable, and for those colors we both thought we could use, we split the powder between containers. So now instead of 50 (or however many) jars we each ended up with a number of full jars of certain colors and another 30 or something of partial jars. So now I have approximately a million little jars of eyeshadow pigments jammed into a little cabinet I use for makeup, in every color you can imagine. Just click that NYX link and see the assortment of colors and their often wacko names (Lemon Drop for bright pink? 3 Wise Men? WTF?).

So what have I worn on my eyes this week?

Why, NEUTRALS, of course! Monday I used Urban Decay in Virgin and Naked to create a gently shadowed pale eye with black liquid liner. Tuesday I splashed out with some gray, using Urban Decay Gunmetal with Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon jumbo pencil in a charcoal. Today I went with Wet 'n' Wild Nutty and Brulee, two real workhorses in my collection, with a touch of gray liner. I went wild and added the smallest touch of bright violet liner in the outer V, which added with the gray gave a nice toned-down blue-violet.

I've also acquired a new batch of BPAL testers, so will be playing around with those in the weeks to come. Naturally, that means I've been keeping to my usual scent wardrobe of Blue Morpho, Aelopile, and 51. I really live the life, don't I?