Mastering Your Makeup: February 2014

#BOBBlogChallenge Week Four 'Pamper Products'

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Mememe Cosmetics and Me! The Comp that saw the blog soar!!

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To Wax or Not to Wax?! A very different/difficult post ;)

I am Irish, pale and pasty white but with the very unfortunate situation that I have extremely fast growing dark hair on my legs/bikini line.

Yep this is a completely different type of post but I was interested in a new product, have tried it and it’s time to blog about it!

I had seen on twitter there was a call out by Waxperts Wax for bloggers to try their wax and write about it….

I got in touch with the lovely Trish from Waxperts Wax and we planned a trip to a salon for a full leg and bikini wax in the Wax It Studio in Greystones with lovely Lisa Collins.

A bitta waxing info for you on Waxperts Wax. They are an Irish company based in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin and you can see them here on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Waxperts/304709887324

https://www.facebook.com/WaxpertsWax

Waxperts Wax is a purple substance and is stretchier than normal wax and can be heated to a lower temperature for comfort. We all know that waxing can be an extremely painful process but Waxperts have made it as easy to your skin as possible, only attaching to the hair and not to your skin. It is suitable for sensitive skin. The have a full range of hot wax, strip wax, cleanser, pre and post waxing products.

Waxperts Pads are another fab product they have developed and these are used post waxing to keep you smooth and to take care of any ingrown hairs you may have from the wax. I was sent a pot of these as well and I really like them.

Courtesy of The Beautiful Truth Blog

https://www.facebook.com/TheBeautTruth

So back to me…

As I said not only am I pale with dark fast growing hair but I also have very sensitive skin. This is where I felt the waxperts wax might be perfect for me. If I shave I will have bare legs for only one day and quite dark pores on my legs, I never feel that real clean shaven for too long as in I would have stubble growing the next day and need to shave again but if I did this for smoothness then I would hurt my skin and end up with red marks all over my legs like a razor rash which can be very irritating.

Now don’t get me wrong, shaving is just so easy and convenient it’s what I always do, I have only ever had my legs waxed maybe four times in my life and this was for pure holiday purposes. I hated the feeling, literally feeling weak coming out with horrible red marks all over my legs, sore and sensitive for at least 36 hours and my bikini line even longer!

I had read about Waxperts Wax and after emailing Trish I was linked in with Lisa Collins from Wax It Studio Greystones which you can check out here on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/WaxItStudioGreystones

I arrived on time to my appointment at 11:30am last Saturday having grown my hair for three previous weeks, I felt like a werewolf walking around and I think with the storms I had more heat than most haha!

Quite nervously I explained to Lisa about my fast hair growth and also my sensitivity and she put all my worries at bay.

Lisa has been working in the beauty world for over 13 years. She has worked in several high profile salons in Dublin and set up her own studio, Wax it Studio in Greystones over a year and a half ago. She is a local girl who loves her community and working with other local people. She is based next to the Roches Clinic and she is currently the only clinic in Co. Wicklow dedicated to specialise waxing.

One of the unique aspects to the Wax It Studio is a policy where there is no ‘double dipping’ of the spatula when waxing. This is great for minimising any risk of bacteria or germs getting into the pores or the wax pot and ensures a clean and safe wax each and every time.

I have to say at this point, Lisa is amazing!! I was so nervous and literally for the first while kept talking about how sore I find waxing, how I hate it and why I don’t see it works for me and each time Lisa was able to calm me down and explain all the benefits of waxing and especially for someone with skin and hair growth like mine.

So the gist of the waxing situation for me is with my sensitive skin and fast hair growth I will be left with a second growth from my first wax which I always noticed after waxing I was never ‘totally hair free’, my second application will then take that second growth and my first waxing regrowth so really it’ll be from my third waxing that I will see a clear hair difference but also a pain difference. Pain is key really with waxing and I don’t think it is ever going to be pain free for me but it will certainly be lessened according to Lisa and she deffo has my trust.

Lisa has fantastic customer service, we chit chatted about all things blog and beauty while I was there and she made a very good point, you need to build a relationship with your waxer as you would your hairdresser and it was from all her kind words and positivity that we have decided to go on this waxing journey together.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not pain free but it was deffo less painful than other experiences I have had. I liked how the wx wasn't overly hot, the peeling of the strips was not fast and severe, still quick enough for you to get over it fast enough and the pain really does ease after a few seconds. The bikini line was done with what can only be described as glupy wax. You do not use to use a strip for this and it peels off. It's much thicker and it really takes most of the pain out of the bikini line which we all know can be quite bad. I was relatively surprised by how little pain I felt on the bikini line.

I will absolutely be sticking with Waxperts Wax and with Lisa as I am already booked in with her again for March 15^th. We are determined to be clear legged for this summer!

If you don’t like pictures look away now but I suppose it is only fair that you see the before and after of the process! Poor me :(

As I said before, it's quite bad so please be kind with comments

I had my jeans on because I forgot a direct after pic but all good now

It's not easy putting yourself out there into the blogging world but that's what this is all about. My love of make up has been generated by my want to learn to cover up things I don't like (like my spots) and to look and feel great. I really think this summer could be different for me to get my confidence up and get the legs out.

It's really tough when you feel personally things are worse than how others may view them, for me the hair on my legs was the cause of bullying when I was in primary school, one horrible boy wrote on my school shirt at the end of 6th class 'bye hairy legs' so to say I have a slight complex is an understatement. Even going to get them waxed has been really hard because I would always think the waxer would laugh or think they're horrible. I am so glad to have found Lisa who I felt really put me at ease and I trust completely she will have me looking and feeling great.

I hope to anyone else out there who likes their waxing and just wants to try something new will try out Waxperts Wax or if like me you need someone to help you get over the hair worry and get your feeling better, try get to Lisa in Wax It Studio Greystones and you'll see why I've fallen for her charm and now a dedicated waxer!

Have a wonderful weekend ladies...

Emma x

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#BOBBlogChallenge Week 3 Make Up Must Haves

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Inglot Make Up Ireland Beginners Course Week 3 Blanchardstown

So this was my final week in Inlgot and I was so excited to bring in my model and get to work.

Before we started with our full makeup application, Julie took us through the application of both strip and individual lashes. I am a huge lash lover and have tried three or four different Inglot lashes and I love them because they create such different looks.

So here are some tips I learned on the last night in relation to lashes;

Strip Lashes

Carefully take them out of the packaging, use your thumb and press down on the whole lash to remove it from the holder, if you tear them off from side to side you risk ripping them.
When you do have them out and held either in your fingers or in a tweezers, be sure to measure them to your/ your client’s eye.
When you are cutting lashes, cut from the outside and not the inside so that they can still look full but natural.
Always only use a thin layer of glue when applying lashes and preferably DUO Glue works best I find. You can start with putting the glue on your hand first and then other the lashes, you can use the end of a make up brush for this or glide the lashes through the glue if you don’t have shakey hands.
Leave the glue to get tacky- this means, give yourself a minute to let the glue stick to the lashes before applying them to yourself/a client.
Place the middle of the lashes on first and then press down the two edges. You can use a tweezers for this or your fingers again whichever you find easier but for a client, I would suggest learning to use a tweezers and not your fingers.
Clamp your own lashes to the false lashes using the tweezers.
After a minute, tug the strip to be sure it has stuck all along the lash line and fix with a small amount of glue if needed.

Individual Lashes

First tip with individuals is don’t get glue on your tweezers, it’ll make it extremely difficult to apply the lashes as they will stick to your tweezers.
Make sure to have a good clamp of the lash which you have picked up, try to grab all the hairs on the lash so as not to break it.
Place the lash piece in between your own lashes (into the little gap)
If you want to add a little flutter to the end of your own lashes, leave a gap between the applied lashes and your own, then if you want a fuller look you can add more.
When placing individual lashes, dip the end into the glue directly and apply straight away.

So that was the start of our lesson and then it was time for the fun stuff… A full makeup application!!

My model was my friend Karen who I had never applied makeup to before but is a makeup lover quite like myself so knows what she likes! (tough time for me) Just joking, it was so lovely having a friend to work on because I was a nervous wreck!! Our mission to apply a full face with either a day or night shadow look on the eye and lashes. So in total that’s;

· Primer
· Foundation
· Concealer
· Powder
· Contour
· Highlight
· Blush
· Brows
· Eyeshadow
· Eye Liner
· Mascara
· Lashes
· Lip Liner
· Lipstick/gloss

We were given a host of tools to use including some of my fave brushes and then you had free reign in the shop to choose whatever you wanted to work with… I loved that part!

Karen has quite a pale complexion like me when she has no tan on so matching the foundation, powder and concealer was easy to match. I followed all steps from week one on the basics of the face. You can view these here at http://masteringyourmakeup.blogspot.ie/2014/02/inglot-beginners-course-week-one-basics.html Karen was in the process of growing out her brows to take on the HD shape so they were a little more filled in then what she was used to but she liked them for me J

I was trying to use as much as my knowledge on colours to choose what to use on Karen. As she is blonde, slightly pale and blue eyes I decided to pick burnt oranges, browns and creams to create her smokey look.

I really had to take my time with the shadows to see what would work best so I was playing with colours and brushes for ages!! Once again ladies the 6SS brush was like gold dust to me here so I really would advise all makeup lovers to invest in this beauty!

Shadows actually turned out to be the easy part as my troubled past with gel liner reared it’s ugly head again! Thank god for Maria and Julie, my patience were really wearing thin and I felt I was ruining all the work with the shadows I had just done but the girls were so good to help me.

As I have described previously, gel liner can be very difficult. A great way to tidy up your gel liner is to use a really small flat brush such and a drop of duraline to drag the line out and also to tidy up the bottom and top of the line. This took a lot of time but we got there in the end and created a really good look.

Applying the lashes was great for me as I have been using lashes for at least the last three years. Applying strip lashes to someone else is actually easier for me. Karen has beautiful long lashes and especially on her bottom lash line, I was extremely jealous of these as it set off her look perfectly.

When we chose the lipstick, I initially went for a bold pink but this really didn’t suit the eye look we had created. Choosing a nude lip colour having created a dramatic smokey eye is a really good idea, it can be hard to pull off both and maybe even matching the colours properly can be difficult so keep an eye out. As always all the girls, Laura, Julie and Maria were on hand to help you pick out what you thought would work or even to tweak what you had picked.

As you can see from my photos the look I created really came out beautiful, Karen looked amazing! As I have said before in my posts, I discovered the ‘beauty mode’ on my Samsung s4 so I had to take some shots using this. The makeup in Inglot will leave you flawless but not like a doll ;)

So that was it ladies my three weeks in Inglot Blanchardstown and I loved every single minute of it!! If you have a good interest in makeup and really want to learn essential skills then I would say invest the money in Inglot. The girls were so kind and helpful and the 20% discount has given me a huge amount of new treats for my kit. Yes I’m calling it a kit now as I planned to be fully qualified by the end of the year J

Here is a few snaps of all I bought:

Here is a picture of my certificate which arrived a week or two after the course ended:

I would like to say a huge thanks to Jane who got in touch with me when I won the voucher to the course, to Laura, Julie, Maria and Rebecca for their fantastic teaching and for all the good fun we had on our Tuesday evenings and also to my beautiful friend Karen for coming straight from work to help me out on the last night.

If you have any questions about the course, the people or the products please feel free to mail me or tweet me all links are beside this post and please please check out Inglot Make Up Ireland on;

Facebook :https://www.facebook.com/pages/Inglot-Make-Up-Ireland/153416228012372

Twitter: @inglotireland

Instagram: inglotireland

A lot of the amazing MUA's have their own Instagram and Facebook pages so get hunting for them you wont believe how talented they are and what they can do with a little makeup!!

Emma x

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#BOBBlogChallenge Week 2 HairCare Heroes

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Inglot Beginners Course Blanchardstown Class 2 Eyes

Oh there's a miserable morning out there! Tea and a read is what you need...

The second week of the Inglot beginner’s course was quite different from the first. The second weeks was dedicated to the eyes. The eyes are a feature most people want to learn about, they want to be able to really enhance a client’s/ or their own eyes, making them stand out and look great and of course we all want to create a fab smokey eye.

Laura could not be with us on the second night so instead with had Rebecca, Julie and Maria. In my final post on Inglot I’ll show you all my shopping list and link in any of the girl’s Facebook or Instagram that I have. These girls are true artists and I would love to be able to create some of the work they do.

A lot of the lessons I have gone to follow the same technique of creating a smokey eye and the key is always blending with a clean blending brush. Ladies you cannot use your fingers for eye shadow and expect it to turn out lovely… you just can’t!!

We began the class looking at the different shaped eyes. Hopefully you can see the picture I took but it was a basic description on matching what type of eye your client has and how best to shadow it.

Examples of celebs eyes;

· Deep set eyes; Reece Witherspoon

Angelina Jolie

· Drooping eyes; Jennifer Lawerence

· Close set eyes; Taylor Swift

Sarah Jessica Parker

· Wide set eyes; Jessica Alba

Kate Moss

The next thing we moved onto in the class was the colour wheel. For people who haven’t seen this before it might sound complicated or extremely obvious but I will try to briefly explain it as easily as I can. When you think of your eye colour you need to think what colours would be opposite that on the colour wheel….

So see what your eye colour is and what's opposite is what's best

Blue eyes should wear Copper, Orange, Brown tone eye shadows to enhance the blue tones.

Green eyes can wear purples to really exaggerate the green but can also be very daring in mossy greens.

Brown eyes are the luckiest bunch of all and can wear whatever they like!! J

We then went on to talk about brushes and as you can see here I did purchase a few during the course. I will do a shopping post as my 4^th and final post on Inglot so I will go into more detail on the brushes then.

For a good smokey eye you will need:

1. A flat brush for your eye shadow base and base colour.

2. A flat brush for your lid colour.

3. A blending brush for the crease.

4. A second clean blending brush for all blending.

5. A small blender to add the darkest colour on the edge of the eye.

These are the brushes I bought over the course

After we went through our sheets, Rebecca then created a day look eye and a night smokey eye on the model. The steps are similar to all masterclasses I have been to in Inglot and after we watched the demo we when then again put into pairs and recreated a look on each other. As we were missing a person on the night I got to work on Julie the fab Inglot MUA.

Basics of the eye;

Day look:

Eye shadow base €10 in Inglot was applied with a flat brush all the way up to the brow.

Set the base with a cream matte shadow powder and the same brush.

Apply a light brown (no.337) all over the lid with the 29po brush. (Brush this into the crease also)

We then added a peach colour using the 6ss blending brush to blend out the edges along the crease.

Build up your colour with a new 6ss brush with a warmer toned brown using the no.52 shadow. Blend this into the socket 3/4 way into the eye. Use circular motions and always start with a little colour and you can add more.

Taking more of the peach colour on a 4ss brush, blend out the edges once again.

Use a matte colour under the eye, don't use shimmer and it can sit in the small lines under the eye, only apply this colour to the tip of the brush.

Using an 11ss small brush place a dark brown shadow onto the top lash line to act as a liner.

This is Julie and the day look I created on her

Moving to a night look:

Using a 6ss brush with colour on the tip of the brush, a mix of two burgundy colours, blend into the crease, leaving the inner eye clear and tear duct also.

*when you apply a light colour like a highlighter into the tear duct, it can really open up the eye.*

Now that you have added the burgundy colours, be sure to blend out with a clean 6ss brush.

*If there is fall off, don't worry you can clean this with a small amount of concealer.*

To emphasise the smoked look, add a small amount of a darker colour onto the edge of the eye. This can be difficult if you are not used to smoking out the eye, so take care and use as little product as possible and go back in a number of times if needed. Again you need to blend out this darker colour.

*This look sounds like it takes a lot of brushes, but if you have a spray brush cleaner, give your brush a quick clean and use the same blender. I find I like to have on hand two blending brushes for eye looks.*

Under eye concealer from Inglot comes in a range of colours and is very light yet conceals loads so you can use this to tidy up the outside and under eye area if you have any fall off from your eye application. You can use a flat concealer brush but I also found using the 4ss brush is brilliant.

Fantastic under eye concealer

Gel liner: Now I have to be honest I struggled so much with this. Creating a flick is very difficult but it takes practice and I'm sure in time i will grow in confidence so take your time and there is a fab product that can give you a helping hand... Duraline!!

Use a small brush either angled or pointed to apply gel liner. For me, I use the 23t brush from inglot. Scoop out a little of your gel liner into the lid and add a drop of Duraline beside it. Dip your brush firstly into the duraline and then into the gel, you want to be sure your brush is a tight as possible so your line will be straight. Take your time to apply the liner. Remember, if you are doing this to someone else they may want to blink loads so do it in very small steps, allow them to blink and go back in and continue the line. There is no point in rushing liner as it can ruin all the good work with shadow you have already done.

To create a good flick; get the client to look straight ahead. Using your brush, mark out where the flick should go y placing your brush from the corner of the nose to the brow and this is where the flick should go. Where the two lash lines meet is where you place the flick. Once you have marked out the flick, get the client to look down and fill in the top gel line.

This is where the tidying starts.... Using a small flat brush and a drop of Duraline, dip your brush into the duraline and drag it against the edges of the flick, wipe your brush in tissue each time and slowly but surely you will create a beautiful dragged out flick. This take ages but it is starting to come on so practice makes perfect :)

When you want a night look smoked eye, be sure to line the bottom lashes with your dark shadow and bring it down under the eye from the lash line. If you have a client who wears contact lens, it might be best not to use gel in the waterline but use a pencil instead.

Get a bright highlight colour like the no.393 on the top of the brow bone and also in the tear duct.

This was the gold/bronzer night look I created on Julie

The colours I used on Julie

After Julie had created this look on Maria, we were then given the opportunity to work on each other. We were short numbers on the night so I got to work on Julie. I was quite nervous but it was good fun. The gel liner was a nightmare and I needed a lot of help with that but I enjoyed giving it a go. I hadn't created a smoked look on someone else before so I think for a first time it was a great attempt. Julie was very patient and such a good help.

My attempt at a clean flick

I went a bit spend mad that week so I will get the post up real soon. Below is a pic of the shadow palette I started on week 2 of the course. I loved the burgundy colours Julie used on Maria so I decided having blue eyes I would love them also.

Love my 10 palette still have space 2 :)

Work has been so busy lately that blogging huge posts is not that easy but we are getting there ladies :) Hopefully I will be back to blogging as much as possible in the next couple of weeks.

If you have any questions on week 2 in Inglot please feel free to mail me emmajosephinesheehan@gmail.com

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