Casual + Cute Glasses Makeup

I recently had to update my glasses prescription which meant I needed to get some new glasses.
So, I bought two new pairs from Tijn Eyewear (not sponsored), one with my new prescription and another pair that I use for school that has blue light protection since I use my tablet for note taking and homework. I recently have gotten a bit paranoid about blue light eye damage so I've been eyeing protective eye wear for awhile.

With wearing glasses everyday, I've had to modify my makeup to avoid some new annoying realities that come with constant eye wear.

The thing I like to avoid most is foundation or concealer getting smudged on the bottom edge of my glasses! It bothers my peripheral vision and it makes me feel sloppy.

So, to get around that I've completely nixed foundation and liquid concealer from my daily routine. Also, since I tend to start my day straight from the gym, I wear less makeup than I used too~ just enough to look rested and polished.

I always start the day off with clean and moisturized skin, since I forgo foundation, I want any visible skin to look as fresh as it can~

My next step is applying a pore minimizing primer that has UV protection. I like Hera's lavender primer as my skin has been getting quite tan and my concealers are now a bit pale for me, the lightly tinted primer helps to blend the colour of my makeup to my skin without extra coverage.

To help my under eyes look less sallow, I use Tatcha's Pearl Tinted Eye Illuminating Treatment, in Moonlight, to add some brightness back into my skin, not only does it add a bit of colour but it also helps to reduce discolouration and fine lines with prolonged use.

A small secret product I've constantly had in my life for the past 10 years is La Bella Donna's Loose Mineral Foundation,  in Nicoletta. La Bella Donna's mineral foundation was created and used for use in post facial surgery offices, safe to use on healing and sensitive skin. It also was created to cover healing and textured skin too~ I've usually kept a stash of this foundation for emergency days when I had horrible break outs. Recently though, I've been using it to spot conceal areas and to keep my skin looking makeup free but covering up areas of hyperpigmentation. 

Also, since it's a powder, any pigment that might be under my glasses don't get picked up by my frames, keeping my glasses looking clear and clean!

^With applied concealer and brows~

I also like my brows to be low maintenance, and smudge free. I've recently been using PMELtete's Tint Dual Eyebrow. The formula of the pen is similar to a stain and lasts all day! (I've accidentally got it on my hands before and it is a pain to try washing off completely). The pen has a brow gel on it's opposite end and it's pretty good... Not my favourite, but it does it's job. It's just conveniently there, and I can't complain.

To finish off my makeup, I draw a very thin winged eyeliner with my favourite Jill Stuart liquid eyeliner in brown, and tap on some of my go to YSL Lip Stain, in 220 Nude Steam, on my cheeks and on my lips (it's the exact colour my cheeks flush after the gym so it looks amazingly natural on me!). Then finish off with a spritz of Tatcha's Luminous Dewy Skin mist, which helps to meld everything seamlessly into my skin and give me a believably real dewy finish that makes any makeup look like it is my real complexion.

If I want a bit more oomph, I tap a bit of YSL's Touche Eclat Glow Shot onto any high points on my face I want to emphasize.

A quick and simple look for every day~ and it only takes me a few minutes to do so I have more time for studying and getting tasks done!

With my prescription lenses, there's a polished and casual feel!

If I want to dress up the look more, I can easily add some light but eye catching additions.

Since I will be adding eyeshadow, I want to fully conceal my under eye bags. I keep going back to Hera's liquid concealer since it's the perfect in-between shade, close to my skin tone and slightly lighter to brighten up my under eyes.

For the sake of staying compact and simple, I am using my Jill Stuart Pajama Party palette. Also, because I always use the pink shade from this compact as it's the only pink that doesn't give me an allergic reaction. (I have a precious review on this palette here).

In addition, I absolutely adore Etude House's Wonder Fun Park pigment, and use it to make the look more sparkly.

I use the Jill Stuart palette on my crease, lash line and under eye. Then, I tap the Etude House pigment onto the center of my lid, and applied on the inner corners under my eye.

Admittedly, the look isn't for everyone, but I really love the simple and slightly distressed feeling this style of makeup gives. The look falls perfectly into step with the makeup the models I admire seem to wear on the daily. I may still be heavily influenced by Larme styles!

To finish off the eye looks, I use brown false bottom and top lashes.

The Romantic Minnie and Daisy series lashes from Shobi, that I love, now come in a brown shade! So, I have a ton in my collection now!

Brown false lashes, give the volume of false lashes, but give a softer look to the face. I absolutely adore how they give a glam yet youthful appearance, nothing too intense but still alluring!

I am also trying  new contour, Mochi Pact by 16 Brand~ It's something quite interesting, it's something in between a cream and a powder, the pouf it comes with has a soft mochi texture that feels great on the skin and leaves a thin film of the colour where applied.

I've been playing around with different types of contour since I've been leaving my skin looking bare~ so far this contour looks the best since it's so sheer and buildable. Plus, it doesn't leave any trace of product, only leaving behind a slight pigmentation so it lets my skin show though, keeping it looking natural.

I apply a bit of my YSL Tint-in-Balm to my lips, and the look is finished! 

A Soft cute natural look! 

Topped off with my blue light protection lenses, and the look is nicely complimented~ The touch of shimmer peeks through the lenses and my eyes can stand out past the unique frames.

I know the natural looks are very different from my usual makeup, but it's been fun to play around with what I can do with bare looking skin. Also, figuring out how to happily wear glasses after decades of resenting them has been it's own mini adventure!

Hope this week has been treating you kindly! It's been stressful for me, but I'm trying to take my stresses in stride and to learn from my mistakes and improve myself~ turning my negatives into some type of positive! Phew~ but, I'm very satisfied that I've been managing to keep up with my blogging!

<3CarisseIris !!

Fixing over plucked and over arched brows: Tutorial

Actually, this was a requested tutorial, but a good idea to share! I will be sharing two different ways, one doing your brow with pencil and one using powder. The style I'm going to be doing my brows in is a more typical [and natural] asian brow, which tends to be thicker and less arched.

As you can see with my brows [not looking at how one is higher than the other; long story short, I tried raising just one eyebrow at a time, which doesn't come naturally to me, and my muscle got stuck and it hasn't come down since...] I over plucked them when I was younger and they never fully grew back in and my brow hairs are very sparse... But before just filling in your brow you need to understand how to measure your brow for the right shape to frame your eyes and the direction the hairs grow.

To measure where your brow starts [depending on your preference, your starting point will be your nostril or outer nostril] Start from the nostril and go straight up. To measure where your arch will be, start at your nostril again and angle towards the outer edge of your iris and on the angle/line that's where your arch should be. As for where your brow should end, once again start at your nostril and angle towards the very edge of your eye, along that line is where your brow should end. Now as for how high and how arched you want your brow, that's all up to you. 

Since I'm going for a more straight brow I won't be going crazy and making my arch quite shallow.

Now, as for how to fill your brow, you can choose to fill it out by colouring it in... But, as stated above, I want to go for a natural look, so I prefer to fill in my brows with short quick flicks in the direction my hairs grow, above [3rd picture] I've mapped out in pink the typical direction brow hairs grow you can see they start almost vertical, and as they reach the arch they get more slanted ans at the arch they can get almost horizontal, and they taper slightly downwards near the tail~

How I will be correcting my brows to fill them out is to fill out the top of the brow to be horizontal  lining up with my arch, creating volume that was missing.

Then I will be very slightly filling in under my arch and towards the tail too to balance out my brow and to create the shallower arch to my brow, not only thickening it but creating a totally different shape than my original eyebrow.

Pencil:

 When using pencil, I like to have my pencils sharp.
For brunette hair, I prefer using a taupe or a brown that doesn't have a red tint to it.. [black can be used occasionally but only to fill in sparse hairs... I find that black creates a very unnaturally dark brow that can overpower the face]
For blondes, I love taupes and even greys.. Anything overly yellow or orange will look very fake.
I like using 2 pencils, one lighter and one darker, I find it give more dimension to the brow and helps to  give the illusion that the brow isn't mostly drawn on.
I like to use the pencil to map out my brows like in my drawn example so I know where to start drawing and where to connect my lines.

First I go in with my taupe [the lighter colour] and using light short strokes create and fill in the start of the brow following the direction the hairs grow [first picture]

Next going in with the darker pencil, I fill in the space under the arch, I don't fill in much it's roughly the space of one or 2 hair rows and I fill in the tail darker also [second picture] 

Then I will go through with the darker pencil and flick in some hairs where I may have sparse hair growth or needs to look thicker.

An optional step, and a more in trend step is to have brows that fade from light to dark starting from the head. So, I take some of my face powder and slightly dust a bit in the very beginning of my brow.

Powder:

Same as I stated above with how I prefer brows to be coloured, I use taupe for my brunette brows. 

But since powders are lighter than a pencil, I use a black powder to fill in sparce spaces.

With my powders, I also use 2 different brushes.

I use a thin angled brush for my taupes, and a very fine eyeliner brush with the black shadow.

[if you want to use one brush, I recommend using the thin angled brush.]

 Once again, I start with mapping out my brows.

Using the lightest taupe, I fill in the start of the brow with short and light strokes working my way through the brow almost to the arch. Then going into the darker taupe I fill in the top part of the brow to make it thicker and to create a straighter brow using my natural arch as the marking point on how thick I make the upper part of my brow[top picture].

Also using the darker taupe I then start flicking in and filling in under my brow and the tail of my eyebrow, like I said in how I use the pencil, I only fill in a space that's roughly 1 or 2 rows of hair.

Then going into the black, I fill in where I need a bit more thickness, and places that may be empty then, I go in under my arch and do a few flicks of black to create the illusion that there are actually hairs there and that it's not just drawn in [third picture, finished]

With eyebrows I highly recommend practicing a lot. It takes a bit of work to get it down and to create a brow that looks good with your face. Also, depending on your face shape experiment with how much to arch your brow and the thickness of your brow... [I'm always playing with my eyebrow shape! Though so far this is my favourite~]

If you have very thin or sparse brows having multiple colours and filling in your brows with flicks rather than just filling them in will help aid you in creating a more believable natural brow.

I hope I covered everything I needed too...

Also, how is the new layout for pictures? Should I number pictures or is it pretty clear what I'm talking about? Are the little decorations too distracting? 

[The program I use to edit pictures just updated their software and I'm able to collage things now and have a bit more fun with it..]

<3CarisseIris

Mini brow tutorial~ My brows and the basics...

To start, you'll need:

Brow pencil that matches or complements your hair colour.

[A universal brow colour is taupe~ you may want to use 2 different colours and blend them for a better matching colour] I use blonde to match the tips of my hair. I use Dolly Wink in 'Honey Brown'

Spoolie brush [for blending and combing hairs]

Optional~ Brow gel or mascara. I use Dolly Wink in 'Milk Tea'

First, you will want to map out your eyebrow~

[please look straight ahead into a mirror]

You will be measuring from your nostril straight up, that will mark the start of your brow.

Then a straight line starting at your brow and skimming the edge of your iris, will show you where to place your brow arch.

Finally, from your nostril and lining up with the edge of your eye will guide you to where the tail of your brow will end.

Please look at the graphs I've shown on myself and under.

I like to mark the points with my brow pencil as a guide.

Now it's time to fill in your brows~

It all depends on how thick or thin you want your brow.. If you have a more petite or thinner face you can get away with thinner eyebrows, a more voluptuous face and features you may look better with more defined and thicker brows. Or you can just fill them in with your desired preference... I like mine a bit more natural and bushy.

The brow shape may differ but it all has the same straight vertical start, continues to the arch with a same even width, then at the arch tapering down at the tail.

 When filling in the brow, I like my pencil to be sharp and I fill it in with short and light brush strokes mimicking the way my eyebrow hairs grow~ To exemplify, please bring your attention back to the drawn graph and the bottom pictures. The eyebrow hair grown vertically near the start then slowly angles and when at the eyebrow arch starts growing in more horizontally.

If you are using two colours, I would go in first with the lighter colour then sporadically placing the darker colour in light strokes to give it a more natural look.
I then follow the process by brushing my hairs into place.

If you feel like you've gone a bit heavy in a place, brush that spot into and against the hair growth to blend it in.

As my makeup teacher told us.. Brows are not symmetrical, they're like twins and might be a little different but with similarities... So try your best to make them as even as possible but they don't have to be carbon copies of each other...
[One of my natural eyebrow arches is higher than the other one and I have to slightly over compensate to make them look similar]

 The optional step is to use brow gel or brow mascara to set your brows into place or to colour the hairs. Just like normal mascara, brush the mascara/gel into your brows in the direction of the growth. With brow mascara, I like to go over it a second time to make sure all of the hairs are coloured.

 That's it!
I recommend to experiment with it and practice to get the technique and feel down.
But that is the basics and a little overview on how I create my eyebrows~

I hope it was helpful!
[By the way, sorry for the lack of makeup... It's sweltering here and I was sweating SO much... I really didn't want to cake my face in makeup....]

<3CarisseIris