Tutorial : Brown-eyed girl

I had my first email request *punches air* :) I'm a geek, I know.
If you have any requests just email 'em over to apriliachica@hotmail.com
I was asked for a tutorial on an easy to wear neutral eye. Neutral for me is brown so here you go Lydia, hope you like it!

I did have a photo of the products I used but for some reason it hasn't downloaded properly off my camera :( boo!

Products used:

• Urban Decay Primer Potion
  
• Avon Big Colour eye pencil in Golden Glamour


• Too Faced shadows from the Smokey Eyes palette (all of the everyday smoke)


• MAC shadow in Ricepaper


• MAC shadow in Carbon
  
• Bobbi Brown Gel Liner in black


• MaxFactor False Lash Effect Mascara (this is the UK version of Covergirl Lashblast)

I applied a base, my poison is UDPP. The Avon colour pencil is probably enough as a base on it's own but I always use UDPP just in case!
I covered my whole lid in the AVON Golden Glamour pencil (they're a bit like MAC Shadesticks/NYX jumbo pencils) to give the Too Faced Shadows more pop.
I applied The lightest of the two shadows from the Too Faced Palette to the middle of my lid and then smoked it out with the darker colour. To blend out you take a smudging/blending brush - my favourite is by the Body Shop - and pack colour along your crease in a windscreen wiper motion, dragging it down into the colour you've put on your lid.
I then took MAC's rice paper and applied this from the inner corner of my lid, blending it into the light brown Too Faced shadow.
I lined my upper lash line with Bobbi Brown gel liner and used MAC's carbon on the outer half of my lower lash line.

Et voila!

Review: MAC Grand Duos

Grand Duos

This collection has been out for a while now and I've been able to have a good play with these to give them a half-decent review.

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There were 7 altogether in the collection -

Light over Dark - Orange/brown

Moon River - pale pink

Love Rock - bright pink/plum

Grand Duo - mid pink/plum

Earth to Earth - bronze/copper

Intenso - rose/red

Hot Planet - Copper/mid plum

- -
I wanted all 7 because I really love blush but I thought that was a few too many (lol) so bought the two that I thought were the most interesting - Intenso and Grand Duo.

I really liked Moon River, which seems to be their most popular shade (apparently people were going crazy over this one in Asia) but it reminded me quite a bit of the MAC Mineralise blush in Dainty, it looked lighter in the pan but the swatches came up pretty much the same on my arm so I left it.

Anyhoo onto the ones I've actually got!

These blushes are seriously stunning!

Grand Duo is the most wearable, it's a really deep plum shade on one side and pale pink with orange/coppery veining on the other. The coppery side makes a fantastic highlight and matches the plum perfectly. Grand Duo is pigmented enough to suit darker skintones and a light enough plum to look good on paler skin.

Intenso is a little more difficult to pull off on my skintone, I think perhaps I was being a little ambitious! It should be more wearable when I tan in the summer. This shade would suit any skintone from medium up, I can't wait to try it out then! As it is I have to wear it only when I'm doing a neutral eye/lip combo.

One word of warning - if you only like matte blusher then avoid this like the plague. These are just as shimmery as the MSFs which for me is LOVE but won't be to everyone's tastes.

Click to enlarge the swatches:

Intenso on the left / Grand Duo on the right

Chica's rating out of 10: 8.5