Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Beauty Tutorial: Cheerful Chartreuse

Here's a wild color that love, but wouldn't think to use: chartreuse.  Yep, neon tennis-ball green!  Heck, I'm wearing all sorts of crazy colors left and right these days, so I decided, why not?  I felt that the best way to wear it for every day would be simply, since it's such a high-impact color.  As usual, let's start with a primed eye.

Oh, but guess what?  I just got a new primer from Urban Decay.  They've changed the packaging so that you can really get the most product for your money now, yay!  Back when the packaging used to look like this:

I actually had to saw the bottle open with a knife to scrape out the leftover product, which was more than 50%.  Very inefficient packaging.  Now, however, the packaging looks like this:


They changed it to a great, squeezy tube design, probably after plenty of customer complaints.  It took a few years, but I'm glad they got around to it!  Urban Decay's Primer Potion now comes in a wide variety of finishes: Original (invisible finish), Eden (matte nude), Greed (gold shimmer), Sin (champagne shimmer)  My current favorite is Eden.  Because of the lighter, matte finish, it really makes shadows stand out.  I even like to wear it alone with winged liner for a simple, classy look.  And because of the new packaging, a little product goes a long, long way.  I wouldn't be surprised if this lasts me a year.

naked eyelid primed with Eden
We'll do a monochromatic color wash with a shade of chartreuse.  I got this one a few years ago and only used it twice, both times very sparingly.  The brand is Covergirl and it's from their Eye Enhancers collection.  I couldn't find the name of it on the packaging though.  I think it may have been a limited edition, but I'm not sure.  It's probably not hard to find a shade of bright lime green as a substitute if this one isn't available.


It's such a flourescent shade of light bright green that it nearly looks yellow.  Using a medium flat shadow brush, I simply applied an even layer from the lid line to the brow bone.


No need for a highlight shade.  Eden doubles as the primer AND the highlighter.  Cool beans, yeah?  So we can skip straight to eyeliner.  I lined the top and bottom lid with black pencil liner.


To set and smoke the liner, I layered black shadow over it with a small smudge brush.  I also swept a little bit of chartreuse shadow right below the bottom liner to make the whole look more cohesive.


For a clean look, I layered liquid liner over the top and bottom lid lines, winging the top lid liner for a more stylized look.


Curled lashes and a couple coats of mascara to finish.


To complete the look, I chose a peachy blush with golden shimmer (Milani Blush in Luminous) and a sparkly pink gloss (MAC Dazzleglass in Extra Amps).


And there you have it, a bright, cheerful look for a sunny day in May.  My husband took me out for a fancy ice cream cone after I'd finished the shoot.  What can I say?  It was a perfect day today! (wow, I sound so rhyme-y...too lazy to fix it though.  it's past my bedtime so I'll just leave it at that. lol)

3 comments:

  1. nice color..perfect for the spring time :o)

    however..it looks like the weather is turning kinda poopy again :(

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  2. Pretty! I like how the eyeshadow matches your shade of lipstick. Its a really cool and outlandish color! How difficult was it to find something to wear that matches with that shade of green?

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  3. Thanks Linda! Surprisingly, it seems to go well with blues. I wore a blue floral print dress with it that day. If you look at the honeymoon photos that Steve took, it's the dress I wore while standing on the cliffs overlooking the sea, my hair swirling around my face. My "Miyazaki" picture. Looked great with the makeup, I got a lot of (hopefully) admiring stares.

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