face of the day #1

Welcome to madeleine says’ FIRST “face of the day” post. I’ll be posting these every week to show you what looks and products I go to for all the different happenings in my life.

Today was a pretty boring day, a ran a few errands, had my dishwasher replaced and mostly sat on the couch job-hunting… and yes you guessed correctly, after being in Florida for a month I’m still unemployed! YAY for jobless adventures? Anyways, I digress. So for my makeup I kept it pretty simple. I used my favorite foundation of the moment, Benefit’s Oxygen Wow (my shade is “im so money, honey”). It has a natural, glowing finish with great coverage. I used my favorite beautyhack, Maybelline Dream Fresh BB cream in “medium/dark”, to warm up my face and add a subtle contour (see the beautyhack post for more on this!), and then went in with my Garnier roller ball to conceal and brighten my under eyes and the high points of my face. Didn’t feel like setting with powder today so I just added some color to my cheeks with Benefit’sDandelion blush. For my eyes I used one of my favorite palettes, the Lorac Pro Palette. From it I mixed “white” and “cream” for my all-over lid color and put “light bronze” in the center of the lid. Then I just put “taupe” in the crease, the outer corners and along my lower lash line. I finished the eye look off with one coat of the CovergirlBombshell Volume mascara in “ very black”. For my lips, I just put on some Burt’s Bees Wax Lip Balm.

And there it is! Hope you liked it!

FOTD Breakdown:

Base: Benefit Oxygen Wow Foundation // Garnier Skin RenewAnti-Dark Circle Eye Roller

Color: Maybelline Dream Fresh BB Cream // Benefit DandelionBoxed Blush

Eyes: Lorac Pro Pallete // Covergirl Bombshell VolumeMascara

Lips: Burt’s Bees Wax Lip Balm

Tools: Real Techniques: Blush Brush // Expert Face Brush // Contour Brush // Base Shadow Brush

:) ttyl,

madeleine

beautyhack: bb cream contour

Now I love a good contour just as much as the next beauty junkie, and there are a ton of different ways you can achieve a contoured face. You can use matte powder bronzers, cream bronzers, darker foundations and concealers etc. I have tried everything and realized there are pros and cons to all of those options. While they all give you the chiseled cheek bones, powders can tend to look unnatural in texture on your skin, especially in daylight. I’ve noticed a few crème bronzers look a bit orangey or muddy, and that using a dark foundations or concealers can cake up your face. So I’ve gone in a slightly less conventional route in the search for a natural looking contour that will let my skin breathe and that I can wear in the sunlight without feeling insecure.

This is when I noticed a bb cream in my makeup drawer that was too dark for my skin tone and a little light bulb shaped like a well-defined cheekbone went off in my head. Using a bb cream is perfect for a more natural contour because it’s meant to be a subtle tint of color without heavy coverage. It wont cake up your face or leave a powdery and unnatural finish on your skin. It just blends in perfectly, but creates the shadow affect you want from a contour. I use this everyday as either just a bronzer for my cheeks and forehead or use a little more product and concentrate it where I want to create a shadow and chisel out my features. 

The BB cream I’ve been using is the Maybelline Dream Fresh8-in-1 Beauty Balm Skin Perfector ($7.59) in the color Medium/Deep. It gives the perfect tint of color without caking up my face. The brush I used to apply was the Real Techniques Contour Brush. Its the perfect size to concentrate the product in the small contour of your cheek and the tapered synthetic bristles blend the product out to a beautiful and natural finish (the brush comes as a part of their "core collection" set of 4 brushes for $18.00).

Shop the rest of the brushes. They're all perfection! http://realtechniques.com/

:) ttyl,

madeleine

a wee walmart haul

As per usual, while food shopping in Walmart I took a little detour down the beauty isle and picked up a few things. As you can see I got a nice variety of both new and older products. Expect too see reviews on all these soon. Have any of you tried these out? Tell me what you think and we can compare notes!

Covergirl Bombshell Volume Mascara (very black) $8.94
Maybelline Color Elixer Lip Color (085 Hibiscus Haven) $6.94
Freeman Charcoal & Black Sugar Face Polishing Mask $1.97
Real Techniques Expert Face Brush $8.98



:)ttyl,
madeleine