My first guest post! Woohoo!

I was a child raised on Disney and still love Disney (who doesn’t?). Naturally, I follow a fantastic blog on all things Disney, Disneyways.com.

The blog creator of Disneyways (Krista) and I started chatting one day and realized that we have some things in common – we love Disney (obviously), we love beauty (she has a history in the beauty biz), and we’re pumped for the new Oz movie coming out March 8th. One chat led to another, and multiple chats led to…drumroll please…my first guest post! Huzzah!

In anticipation of Oz the Great and Powerful, I’m creating good/bad witch looks using Urban Decay’s Oz palettes. Head on over to Disneyways.com tonight to check out my Glinda tutorial and leave me a comment letting me know what you think of the look! Also, continue to check back for the next look using the Theodora palette, which is currently in the works and coming soon.

And, of course, a big thanks to Krista for letting me post about Disney beauty on her wonderful site  🙂

Naked Eyes, Urban Decay Style – Another Shadow Tutorial

I know the Naked 1 palette has been out for quite some time now and I’m sure all you beauty junkies have been playing with it forever since its big debut. I still love it to pieces. Literally, to pieces – the case on mine is starting to look a smidge battered, but I try to keep it pretty.

This post came about for a few reasons…

1. I love this palette and use it almost daily. It’s my go-to for both simple and complicated shadow looks.
2. Ladies at work ask how I do my shadow half the time I wear this palette – I show them the palette and do some demonstrations and they usually leave with it in hand. I credit the amazingness of the palette for this rather than myself.
3. My skin is going batsh*t crazy right now so I don’t want any posts involving the majority of my face. Which limits things a bit.

Ready to check out my warm, yummy Naked eye look? If you have the Naked palette, go grab it and a mirror and follow along! Ok, here we go –

1. Prime those babies. Primer is a Godsend, trust me.

2. Buff some Naked into the crease – it will help shades transition later. It really is naked on me but I swear it’s there!

3. Pat Half-Baked onto the inner half of your eye and lightly line the inner half of the bottom eyelid with it.

4. Put Smog on the outer half of your eye and lightly blend it with Half Baked where the shades meet.

5. Put Dark Horse on the outer v of your eye, making it darker around the very edge. Then line the outer half of your bottom lid with it. Blend the shade where it meets Smog (top lid) and Half Baked (lower lash line).

6. Buff Buck into your crease, blending it out into the Naked shade you put on earlier. Lightly blend your lid again so that the shades transition seamlessly into one another.

7. Line with your eyeliner of choice, top and bottom – I used UD’s 24/7 Glide-on Eye Pencil in Zero, then smudge it out with Creep.

8. Highlight your brow bone and inner v with Virgin. Some people do this step first – it’s up to you! I flip the order I do it in back and forth.

9. Slap some mascara on (I used L’Oreal Voluminous False Lash Mascara) and you’re done! Hooray! See, it’s not hard.

Before…

And after! Whoa!

Have you found any go-to looks with the Naked palette? This is one of my fall-back looks!

Half-Moon Mani’s Made Easy (Say that 5x fast!)

I posted a picture on Twitter not too long ago of a half-moon manicure that I wore for Mani-Monday. If you don’t do Mani-Monday already, I think you should hop on the bandwagon with me. Just sayin’. Anyways. I went to work that week (as one should hope, right?), and got a lot of people eyeballing my nails and asking how on earth I did an upside-down French Manicure without making it a big, sloppy mess.

First up, if you have no idea what nail style I’m referencing, here is the picture I posted to Twitter –

I used OPI Goldeneye and Essie Bobbing for Baubles for this look. Plus a base and top coat, of course! ‘Cause I’m a good girl when it comes to nail painting. Most of the time.

Anyways. I love french manicures, standard colors and otherwise…but I feel like I see them all the time. Half-moon manicures are a little different, and I like that. This style takes the swoop of color at the top of the french manicure and puts it at the base of the nail, where some people have a white “moon” or half circle spot on their natural nail. I spotted this in a magazine or something forever ago and gave it a whirl freehand – what an epic disaster. It was as if I had handed my nail polish to my 2 year old niece and said “here, do my nails for me.” Shrinks could have used my “half moons” for Rorschach (ink blot) tests. I knew there had to be a better way to go about this.

And I was right! Introducing the half-moon manicure’s best friend – hole punch protectors!

Image courtesy of staples.com

See that white sticker protecting the hole punch? Yes, that handy office supply can pull double-duty and also be used for nail styling. Go buy a pack of those for a couple bucks. Then follow these directions –

1. Base coat it up.
2. Apply the polish that you want to be your “half moon” shade. In my photo, I applied OPI Goldeneye to my entire nail. You could apply it to just the bottom but you might end up with some unevenness by the end of your manicure. Let this dry completely. One-coaters are best for this because you don’t want your manicure to be like a 6 or 7 coater by the time you’re done.
3. Snip a hole punch protector in half and apply this to the base of your nail on top of your half moon shade. Press gently to make sure it’s well-adhered so that no polish can leak under it and give you a wonky half moon. Place more of the sticker on your nail for a bigger half moon, less for a smaller one.
4. Paint your whole nail with your main polish – in my photo, that shade is Bobbing for Baubles. The only exception here is if you put your hole punch sticker higher up on the nail and you have a gap at the bottom where your half moon shade is peeking out – don’t paint that because obviously you want it to match the rest of your moon, right? Right.
5. Wait a minute for your polish to become a little tacky, then gently and carefully pull your sticker off. If you wait until your polish is completely dry, you’ll get a dividing ridge between the colors.
6. Carefully go over any patchy or streaky sections of the main nail again with polish, being extra careful around the half moon.
7. Top coat!

Voila! You’re all done. Your nails look fabulous, even on the right hand because you used stickers instead of free-stylin’ with your non-dominant hand (assuming you’re a right-hander like me). I knew you could do it.

Urban Decay Oz Palette, Theodora – Spring eyes for a winter day

Today is gross – it’s winter and I’m ready for summer. I woke up this morning, peeked out the window and saw…snow. Womp, womp, womppp. Gray mornings make me want to stay under the covers all day, which is cozy but means I get nothing done. Today I had things to do and have work later, so I dragged my rumpus outta bed and decided to perk myself up by using my brand-spankin’ new UD Oz palette for springtime eyes.

For this look, I used my UD eyeshadow primer, Good Karma brush, and (obviously) my new Theodora Oz palette. The site format likes to shrink photos so, as usual, click to enlarge.

Start with naked lids –

Nothing on except some bothersome contacts (hmph).

Prime your eyelids and let the primer set for a couple seconds. I prefer UD but it’s up to you. UD’s shadows work well even w/o primer, but the product helps your shadow last longer and not crease. It also lightens your lid a little so colors pop more.

Primed and ready to go!

I like to highlight next. I swiped Broken along my brow bone and the inner corner of my eye.

You can’t see too much of a difference, but it’s there!

Jealous is a dual-shade – the pot is split between light and dark pearl green shades. I wet my brush and applied the lighter shade on the inner half of my lid and along the inner half of the bottom lash line (which my lashes are hiding from you).

You can apply dry, but I found the wet brush gave me more of the pigmentation I was looking for

Spell is also a split pan – half dirty gold, half glittering black. I wet my brush and applied the golden shade to the other half of my lid.

Next up, the crease! The darker shade of Jealous is darker than the lighter shade it shares the pan with (obviously, right?), but isn’t as dark as I wanted it for this. I swept the black shade of Spell along the outer corner and crease of my eye and blended, then went back over it with the darker green of Jealous. Sneaky, sneaky.

With flash

Without flash

Time for liner! The liner included in Theodora is Zero. I love me some black liner, but it can make your eye look smaller so I only use it on the outer halves of my top and bottom lids – that way it lines but doesn’t make your peepers look quite as small as it can if you line the whole shebang. After I lined with Zero, I smudged it some with the black shade in Spell and then curled my lashes and put on mascara.

Easy peasy! The end result, eyes open, with and without flash –

Without flash. I need to start holding my camera farther away so I don’t look verging on cross-eyed…

With flash

I don’t usually wear greens, but I just love something about this Jealous pan. Maybe because it makes me think of a mojito. And I’m liking the springtime smoky look. It’s not in your face, but still outside my usual eye looks. Maybe this is the start of some more adventurous shadowing for this girl? I mean, I do own the Vice Palette, so it’s entirely possible. Hmmm…

Have you snapped up your Oz palette yet and found some looks you love?