Christmas Eve makeup

Hello!

I apologize for the odd shadows but I am visiting my 'proper' home for the holidays and I could not find a spot with decent light conditions.
I do love to look all fancy up for Christmas Eve dinner (I get my presents on the 24th, ha!) even if I'm wearing slippers under the table :) I've been feeling cool purples a lot lately and all my brushes are dirty with purple shadow  . The matted magenta lip was a bit out of my comfort zone but I warmed up to it.

I hope that your December has been great. I ate tons of things I shudder to think about (while binge-watching seasons 3 & 4 of Once Upon a Time) and that is absolutely fine since I had fun times and pleasantly slow days. I've also read a bit into Die Herren von Winterfell (Game of Thrones) in German and I am extremely proud of myself for that.

Have you tried something new and scary this year?

Devil costume makeup

I volunteered to play a she-devil for my department's St Nicholas Day's party. (Allegedly St Nicholas comes to children while they sleep accompanied by an angel and a devil and leaves them treats if they behaved well in that particular year. We were doing this as a goof for the first year students.)

I only have group photos where my costume is visible but it featured a very cheap red wig and a horned headband :) 

Makeup-wise I went for heavy red facial contouring, some painted-on undereye circles, a few inconspicuous pairs of facial horns and a gradient lip. I never ever wear red lipstick as I feel it should match an article of clothing and I have no red clothes (except this one blouse) becase that would clash with my hair.. oh well.

While I felt quite extravagant and out-there creating this look, most people didn't even realize I was in costume from afar ;)

Buy a paisley shirt they said, it will be fun they said

Very little can be seen of my awesome 70s-type burgundy-and-grey paisley shirt here, but oh boy is it HARD to incorporate in outfits.

I used to wear this silver and black eyeshadow combo daily for absolutely years and then abandoned it in favour of more colourful looks. Wearing it again made me regret not doing it more often, it seems quite sophisticated considering how little effort goes into its creation.
(Retrospectively I haven't the slightest idea what I wore on my lips that day. I have cca 15 lipsticks in this tone anyway :D )

Have you rediscovered a past staple look recently?

Lavender FOTD

Since I still haven't found a way around my facial asymmetry and any attempts at close -up makeup pictures turn out reaaally skewed and horribly angled, have a full face shot :-) I was ridiculously pleased with how well the lid shade matched my new (I mean second-hand-acquired but new for me) lavender shirt which I see myself wearing often in the future.

I tried to mute my look somewhat for the occasion as I was celebrating my cousin's electoral victory as the mayor of our city district. The family gathering was adequately traumatizing.

I am wearing two of the eyeshadows I bought in the trio that you can see swatched in my previous post, and the lightest lipstick from that haul, which makes me slightly uncomfortable by how 'normal' it is :-)

How do you feel about family parties? 

Simple makeup (yeaaah right)

Understably this would be considered a/an 'evening/goth/overdone/heavy/holiday' makeup in the real world but we pay that no mind over on this blog :)

This was one of my favourite and fully satisfying in-a-rush (or possibly can't-be-arsed) looks. As a historical moment I used no more than three eyeshadows on that day! That is, a matte white to highlight, a shimmery pink all over the lid and a dark grey matte to define the crease and the lower lashline. 

On my lips is the Dermacol Seduction lipstick in 06 which I will cherish until my dying breath as the perfect corpsey nude.

Locally Available Beauty Products Haul

I splurged a little today, combining a trip to a DM drugstore with collecting a webshop delivery. See below for results.

Left to right, top to bottom: 

• Brische Lux hydrating lipstick in the shade 9
• Brische Barra del Labios Liquida liquid lipstick in No 12
• Paese Manifesto liquid lisptick in 910
• Six Jewelry earrings
• Paese Kashmir Eyeshadow Trio in 682
• Avon Care 3in1 Oil Control Cleanser, Toner and Moisturizer
• Balea Dusche & Shampoo for Kids in Pferde
• Dontodent sensitive intensive-Schutz Mundspuelung mouthwash
• Essence All about Matt! blotting sheets
• BrushArt Eye Brush
• Essence Powder Brush
• BrushArt Eyebrow Brush
• Rimmel Stay Matte pressed powder in 001 Transparent
• Monster High wet wipes
• Das Gesunde Plus Halsbonbons (sore throat remedy) in the litchi & green tea flavour

I haven't tried all of the products yet although some are repeated purchases. I loosely grouped the goodies up for more close-up pictures.

The sore throat hard candies were quite disappointing. At 0.99 cents I have no significant regrets over buying them, however, given my current state of health I would have liked something that actually worked. They seem to contain no menthol/eucalyptus or any symptom-relieving ingredients I could identify. They taste pretty off-putting so they won't double as candy either.

On to the Balea kid's shampoo: I LOVE this stuff and this could easily be my twentieth bottle. It is one of the most readily available SLS-free shampoos in Slovakia, costs 0.99 cents AND has fun animal facts in German on the back. My hair trouble would be enough to fill a whole anotherpost, so to keep things brief, this shampoo provides the best cleansing action vs colour protection balance. The primary surfactants listed are Coco-Glucoside, Sodium Coco-Sulfate and Cocamidopropyl Hydroxysultaine. This particular edition is horse-themed and for once actually smells pleasant.

I have absolutely no experience with the facial wash and the mouthwash yet. Both were under two euros.

 Next I grabbed some blotting papers after discovering that the handy package contains 50 pieces. I used to think there were about three or five per package for some reason. I yet have to put them to a difficult test against the oily monstrosity that is my nose.

The Rimmel Stay Matte powder is pulverized gold and the ultimate solution to the aforementioned nose problem. It is not entirely transparet, however, I am happy to report that it is actually lighter than my skin and slightly yellow-toned. I prefer to combine it with a higher coverage pink-toned powder to create an almost neutral colour balance. 

Obviously I got the wet wipes primarily because of the brand. I spend excessive amounts of time in the children's cosmetics aisle in DM; I want everything! (Btw the Monster High shampoo is a very good SLS-free shampoo too.) I like to carry these in my bag for all sorts of emergency clean-up. 

 I badly needed a replacement for my disgusting shabby handle-less powder brush and I thought that upping my eyeshadow game is a life-long process waiting to be aided by some more eye brushes.

 Quite randomly I popped into a Six Jewelry shop and saw these earrings for two euros! I've had this exact same pair before and worn them almost daily for about nine months until the metal parts oxidized into oblivion. They feel very lightweight and are the ideal length for my preference.

The rather well-colour-coordinated picture above captures my 'colour' makeup aquisitons. I would not have bought any of the lipsticks in an actual shop: the online swatches depicted them as true purples. At least I'll  have something to challenge my comfort zone :) It must be nevertheless noted that the quality of the liquids ( in terms of opacity, pigmentation, precision of application, scent and taste etc) is superb.

The eyeshadows feel extremely luxurious considering the ludicrous 1.39 euros I paid for the whole trio. Despite their heavenly smooth, velvet-like textures, they did give me impressions of the chalky kind. 

Above: a swatch of the lip products under natural daylight.
Below: eyeshadow swatch under natural daylight.

 

Would you like to try any of these products?:)

Love,
Maggie.

IstroCon makeup

Last weekend I went to IstroCon & ComicSalon 2014 in Bratislava, Slovakia ^^

The event was fantastic with over 12 000 guests from all over the country and some seriously amazing cosplay artists. Sadly the official pictures haven't been published yet and I wouldn't have felt comfortable asking people to pose for me. Everyone was incredibly nice, polite and beautiful and lots of time was spent exchanging compliments.

I wenť as myself :)

The confusion of the uninformed civilians' faces as several hundred people donning face- and bodypaint, DIY armour, green wigs, prosthetic horns and wings and brandishing giant (although harmless) battleaxes stormed to the nearby mall for a quick lunch was almost as spectacular as the attendees themselves :)

There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class

Why don't you have some lab pics! I've collected these this last semester in my Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory Practice classes. Sadly I do not recall what all of the substances in the pictures are because the prettiest ones were ridiculously complicated coordination complexes but I'll caption what I can without my notes.

Immature humor anyone? This icky tin of gross horror contains Ramsay grease (a glassware lubricant) and six months later I'm still not over the joke as I ADORE Gordon Ramsay.

Next up are some notes and drawings. My teachers demand that we do a LOT of our assignments by hand including apparatus sketches and graphs. The latter I hated with a burning passion but the former easily became a cherished part of lab study/prep time.

 Below: malachite in aqueous solution and vacuum filtered. Possibly contaminated by turquoise (the mineral!) as a byproduct.

Below: a more sophisticated apparatus which a friend helped me set up as I have zero spatial intelligence and  I am not to be trusted with translating schemes and designs into 3D objects.

In the bottom left corner you can see a mesmerizingly blue solution being filtered at atmospheric pressure and a very stinky ammonia compound in the moment of its creation. Both products were funky-named complexes I can't pinpoint from memory.

 This fills me with tons more joy and aesthetic pleasure than it probably should. Yves Klein Blue is my favourite colour in this world and- I mean, look at it. I'm pretty sure I wore matching nail polish on that day.

Pictured below is basic-as-hell blue vitriol (copper (II) sulfate pentahydrate) recrystallisation.

Some more malachite prettiness.

And easily my favourite picture in which a layer of indigo product forms atop a deep green solution. Magic.

Not pictured: a chemical burn, multiple regular burns, a pair of tights dissolved in concentrated sulfuric acid, a hole in the toe of a shoe, classmates in diving/welding goggles as emergency eyewear solutions, and pretending to be in the Hogwarts dungeons.

Meet Maggie

Hello humans!

I am possibly the most passive person on the face of this Earth and I don't expect to have much going on in life in the following months. For that reason I daren't estimate a direction this blog might take for now, but cool sciencey lab pics are always a saver, right?

For now, have some of mah face and have a LOVELY day

Love, Maggie.