FOTD: Parisienne Chic + My Beauty Diary Facial Mask

Traditionally, I am not a "red lip" girl. Bright warm colours tend to make me look more sallow and yellow so I usually avoid reds and corals. However, recently with a slight tan at the beach and lighter hair colour, it turns out that the perfect red lip complements a Parisian outfit. I was so excited when I found all my bags full of makeup nice and unmelted from the drive from Oklahoma and the year-long storage. I was so sad without all my lippies and nail polishes and now I have finally been reunited with them :D

This is the brightest red lipstick I have - Lancome Rouge Baroque that I stole from my mom a long time ago. She has such amazing skin - no acne, never dry, never oily, goes with absolutely any shade. I unfortunately only look good in certain shades but I find that over the years I have become more daring, and for me, daring is good. The consistency of Lancome lipsticks is very nice - not too creamy, not too dry, perfect pigmentation.

I dug out a Clinique shadow that I had handy in my rediscovered box - Foxy. It's a nice taupe-silver good for slightly smokey eyes. Complete with eyeliner and a cute beret recycled from my last Parisian chic outfit, I was ready to head out the door for my outfit photos. I have been using Revlon Photo Ready for all my photoshoots lately and it holds up pretty well. However in person, it's not the prettiest -looking foundation and I glitter disgustingly. I will write a review of it soon.

A few hours before the shoot, I did my first facial mask ever. Sweet Nikki sent me a My Beauty Diary facial mask in her love package and I finally let my skin be pampered with some serious TLC. It is the Yogurt one and is slightly soapy to the touch but not in a gross way. I am such a mask nub that when I took it out and unfolded it I wasn't really sure what to do about the plastic thing haha. I just put the unplastic side on and later peeled off the protecting layer, but not before having some fun with photos xD I let the mask soak for about 10 minutes and then peeled it off and washed my face. Afterwards my skin felt a little hard and dried actually but to my delight, I found that my pimples on my forehead had dried yay! I still have to experiment with different masks I guess but this was a fun first time!

I found that the bathroom in my new place is a great makeup photo-taking place. The wall is a nice green colour and if I open the door but don't turn on the light and use flash, it creates a great flash lighting result. Yay! Additionally, there's lots of nice white counterspace for product reviews : ) Lighting is slightly yellow but liveable.

Products used:

Anastasia Brow Wiz in Medium Ash

Clinique Eyeshadow in Foxy

ELF Studio Creme Eyeliner in Black

ELF Studio Blushing and Bronzing Powder -
blush on apples of cheeks, bronzer along hairline, under jawbone, on cheekbones

Revlon Photo Ready Foundation in 04 Nude

Lancome Lipstick in Rouge Baroque

Geo Angel Violet contact lenses

Flash:

 I'm terribly awesome I wore this bright red lipstick on my teeth for half the day. There was a stain about 2 inches across. When my dad came home he asked if I had eaten something alive HAHA fail xD

Lancome Rouge Baroque swatches (btw uploaded these to Imageshack because Blogger is the WORST at washing out photos!)

Just for comparison, this is what Blogger did to these photos T__T (Update: my bf just told me that these look exactly the same to him. He uses Opera on Windows 7. Will you lovelies tell me if the colours look the same below compared to the above photos and include your browser and computer operating system in a comment? Is it a super vibrant red or just kind of? That would be so sweet of you! ♥ I am using Firefox/Safari on Mac OS)

Bathroom lighting: No matter what hosting site I use, it won't keep the brightness of the lipstick. This is extremely frustrating. Perhaps this is my internet browser's issue? The swatches above are super vibrant as they should be but these photos below are washed out. Any techies/photography aficionados - I would love your help!

Onto the facial mask!

I'm a Jabberwocky! Hahaha I borrowed one of my brother's hats and pranced around like an idiot. It was the hardest 10 minutes ever because I kept laughing every time I tried to say something serious while wearing this mask

So, maybe bright red lips aren't totally out of the question for me. I think that fact that I was wearing a beret made it all appropriate :D Today was a pretty uneventful day - I woke up abysmally late and spent most of my evening moving boxes from the apartment. I did manage to cut up my DIY shorts pretty well and tomorrow I will throw some bleach on it before styling my outfit yay! I can't believe I only have 6 days left in Cali! When I head back to school, my friend and I vowed to dress to strut style because life is too short to melt into the background. This is going to be crazy, but I'm going to finally let my inner fashion geek out to play on campus *fingers crossed* I also wonder, where the heck am I going to take outfit photos outside without gathering a crowd of onlookers? I always get embarrassed when my "irl" friends point out that they've been following my blog :3 "So this is how you spend your time..." Wahhh! Give me courage lovelies to come out of my fashion closet this fall xD