Mellow Yellow: Face of the Day

With the entire country in a sort of soft-lockdown, with self isolation and social distancing orders in effect, it’s the perfect time to delve back into just playing with makeup. And with nowhere to go, the rules kind of just go out the window. I’ll admit that I’m not really that girl who is too shy to wear more out-there styles or colour combinations (hello, navy lips!) but today’s look was a liiiittle more different and I haven’t decided yet whether it’s actually outside my comfort zone.

The photo turned out well though so there’s that.

Ignore the fact that I was on struggle street with my brows a little bit. But here’s my face of the day, although I kiiiinda washed it off in favour of a nap after a couple of hours.

For the base I started with The Ordinary’s High Adherence Silicon Primer, and honestly it’s not my favourite. I’ll do a full review sometime later but I’m having mixed success at best using this primer. Today, for example, it stuck to parts of my foundation and clumped and moved together, leaving a bit of patchiness on my cheekbones.

Next I used MAC’s Studio Fix Fluid foundation (shade NW10), with Jeffree Star’s Magic Star concealer blended under my eyes (shade C5). That’s it for the face so this was a pretty half assed face of the day... mostly I wanted to play with eyeshadow and everything else was secondary, but the eyeshadow wouldn’t have looked good on an otherwise bare face, so here we are!

Brows are Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade in shade Taupe, and let me just take a second here to tell you that yes I am attempting to learn to use Dipbrow for its intended purpose of drawing individual hairs and oh my god so far? Not so good. So I do what I can and trust me this is P R O G R E S S from even two years ago. So I guess, go me!

Anyway back to the point! For eyes I primed with MAC’s Paint Pot in shade Painterly, which is the perfect shade for my skin tone and has been my go-to for a solid decade. For colour I dipped into the Anastasia Beverly Hills Alyssa Edwards palette because I knew I wanted to do a pop of colour. And this palette didn’t disappoint! With a fluffy brush I swept the fuchsia shade Unicorn Tribe all over the lid, up to and above the crease. I kept the edges soft and well blended, and set down a few layers to build up pigment all over. Then with a pencil brush I buffed yellow shade Brick Road on the lower lid, keeping fairly close to the lash line but blending out.

Add some winged liner (Morphe’s Felt Tip liquid liner) and a coat of mascara (Misslyn’s Lolita Lashes) and the eyes were pretty much done! Easy peasy lemon squeezy ;D

The final touch was lips and I wanted something that complimented the eyes but didn’t draw away from them too much. For that reason I didn’t want to go for something dark, but I wanted more colour so stayed away from nude as well. So I figured, hell I might as well give this yellow lipstick a shot!  I applied Velour Liquid Lipstick shade in Queen Bee by Jeffree Star Cosmetics, straight from the tube and without any liner or brushes to complicate things. It’s been unused for some time so the formulation is a bit thicker than normal, but it still went on comfortably and nice and opaque.

Then as a final touch I took some Queen Bee on a small flat brush and added just a touch to the lower waterline to brighten it up and blend into the yellow eyeshadow.

And that’s it for today’s look! I like it a lot more than I thought I would, and I really like the contrast of the colours next to each other without so many shades to complicate things. I’m not convinced whether I’ll wear stark yellow lips out of the house just yet but hey, it’s not like I’ll be going anywhere anytime soon anyway!

So what do you think? Are you a fan of colour blocking in makeup? Would you rock a yellow lip??

Until next time!

~V

REVIEW: Peter Thomas Roth Pumpkin Enzyme Mask

I’m something of a skincare connoisseur.  I’ve tried a lot (like, a LOT) and I stick with what I like and what works.  But I’ve changed up my skincare infinite times in the last several years, because even if I find something that I like well enough, if I don’t LOVE it then I’m always on the look for something bigger and better and more effective for my own skincare woes. 

Said woes are myriad, but my primary concern has plagued me since my preteen days when hormones crept up and an effortlessly perfect and poreless complexion became a thing of the past.  Dryness, coupled with frequent dehydration.  What this means for my complexion is a rough, dry, almost bumpy texture and flakiness if I don’t make sure to stay on top of things.  And forget trying to put makeup on top of that; it just doesn't work.  

When I was younger, I swore by that old St Ives Apricot Scrub, and in all honesty it probably didn’t do my face any favours.  Then when I eventually swore off of it in my early twenties, I discovered my holy grail facial scrub at MAC – Microfine Refinisher, which was discontinued a few years later and frankly it was devastating.

Because basically what I always felt like I needed was the equivalent of a belt sander for my face, to remove the layers of dead and flaky skin that build up and leave the baby soft skin underneath on show.  And that’s essentially what I was getting in the physical exfoliants I had been using back then – super fine scrubs that would leave my skin red raw.  After the MAC scrub was discontinued, I spent a very long time trying to find an exfoliant that would give me what I wanted, that raw and sensitive lobster realness. Only ExfoliKate gave me that feeling I was after, but it was way too pricey to justify for a small tube of the stuff (not to mention it was hard to get a hold of here in the UK at the time).

Of course that was several years ago and now I find myself older and, arguably, wiser.  Now I know that many physical exfoliants can be damaging, both to the skin and complexion but also to the environment as they’re full of non-biogradeable tiny plastic beads which are mistaken for fish eggs and eaten by aquatic life.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

LookFantastic £37.50 | Peter Thomas Roth $60.00

While on a brief and tumultuous trip to Paris with my best friend (which is in itself a long story, maybe I’ll write about it another time) we happened across a tiny little Sephora right across from the Starbucks where we were eating lunch.  And while there, I finally made a very pricey purchase I had been thinking about for a while: Peter Thomas Roth’s Pumpkin Enzyme Mask.

And let me tell you; it’s almost four years later and I still love this stuff. I’ve repurchased it in spite of the steep price point (generally in the region of £40+).  Frankly it sounds a lot but I justify buying this because in practice it’s not that expensive in the long run – a 150ml tub of this can last me a year easily, using it 1-3 times a month.

It’s actually changed the way I think about skin care because prior to using this mask, I was incredibly dubious about chemical exfoliation vs physical exfoliation.  I always felt like I NEEDED a harsh scrub to literally wear away the entire outer layer or three of my face.  But these days I don’t really use physical exfoliators anymore.  And if I do, it’s maybe once or twice a year.  However I’m a firm believer in chemical exfoliants now - and have a couple others in my arsenal that I’ll review here in another post.

The thing I love about about the Pumpkin Enzyme Mask is that it’s potent – it contains pumpkin enzyme, AHA, and aluminium oxide crystals to completely smooth and resurface your complexion.  The aluminium oxide crystals are a physical exfoliant, but in truth I don’t find myself scrubbing this into my skin like I would with my old face scrubs.  Instead, I apply it to my face in a thin later, and only rub at it when I’m washing it off (usually with a muslin cloth). 

When you apply, it tingles and kind of stings a little bit sometimes, but if I’m totally honest I enjoy the sensation.  It *feels* like it’s working, I don’t know how else to explain it.  But I would absolutely say to patch test this if you were wanting to give it a try, because I’m not sure how pleasant it would feel on really sensitive skin.  I have a tolerance to the tingling sensation and I like it, but not everybody will.

And ultimately, for me at least, this is very effective and gives me the results I want; a softer, smoother, brighter skin texture.  After a serum or two and a moisturiser, my skin really does feel like it’s brand new.  It feels overall much nicer and smoother than before, and if I do wear makeup in the following days, sits so much better afterwards.  Plus it’s a joy to use because the mask itself smells like spiced pumpkin, which I absolutely adore.

All in all I would highly recommend this mask to anyone who has hardy enough skin to withstand the stinging sensation from the pumpkin enzyme and AHA combo.  I definitely urge you to shop around online too, because you can save yourself more than to £10 by checking a few different retailers – at time of posting Cult Beauty is selling for £50 and LookFantastic for £37.50. 

Which may still sound expensive but I think about skin care like this; If I happily spend over £20 on a foundation, what’s the point if that foundation is sticking to dry patches and highlighting texture issues and flaking away over here and getting sucked dry by my skin over there?  Furthermore, it takes more foundation to cover up problematic skin, and I use a lot less product on my face when everything sits smoothly and I have fewer sins to cover up.