St Paddy's Day and a green smokey eye

Happy almost St. Paddy's day guys!

My " 'Sup??" face! haha!

I love holidays...all of them! I love being festive...I love all the silly little decorations and I love wearing festive holiday appropriate colors! I've always been that girl that has to wear red or green on Christmas, green on St paddy's day, pastels on easter, and red white and blue on the fourth of july. As I've gotten older I've stayed true to my color coded holidays but I like to try to find new, slightly more subtle, ways of doing it and one of my favorite ways to do that is with makeup! This year on St. Paddy's day I'll be working all day and in all black so I decided a green smokey eye was going to be necessary to keep the Irish spirit alive! Lots of people on YouTube have fun St. Paddy's day eye tutorials but mine is a little darker and a little more subtle. Whether you like a bright crazy look or a more subtle one I hope you like what I've done! 

BTW: I wanted to do a St. Paddy's day makeup look for you and I was going to do a video but I just couldn't get it to work! So sad :( So instead I took lots of pictures and I'll walk you through what I did and what colors I used. Here we go!

I don't look too excited here but i am, really, I promise! haha!

So the first step is to take a big fluffy brush with a nude/beige color of your choice and put it all over the lid. I used this pinky beige from my Victoria's Secret palette

Next take that same big fluffy brush and wash a bright green shadow all over your lid concentrating the color at the lash line

This color is "Kelly" from covergirl. MUCH brighter than it looks here.

I should have taken a picture of this next step so instead I'll send you to a video by makeup goddess Kandee Johnson here! She is doing this technique with a purple eye but its exactly the same idea. 

Take a creamy black eyeliner (I used my elf eyeliner and shadow stick) and color in the outer "V" corner of your eye up onto your brow bone and into your crease a little. This will look messy but don't worry! This is an awesome technique because you can really get precise about the shape you make and end up with.

Next take a smaller flat brush or a small blending brush and with a little bit more of the green start blending out the black liner you just put down with little circle motions. You'll be amazed at how gorgeously the black blends. Build the green on top of the black and blend until you're happy with the color.

If you want you can take a lighter green, I used a very pale pastel green again from my Victoria's Secret palette, and brush it onto the lid with a fluffy blending brush to brighten everything up a bit and to give you a little more green.

This is a gorgeous pastel green! I'm so sad the color didn't come out in the picture!


Take a light beige, gold, white, or light pink (whatever works best with your green and your skintone) with a big domed blending brush and blend out the edges of the color all around. You can also use this color to highlight under your brow bone and in your tear duct.

Next line your eyes and waterline with a black eyeliner. For this look I stay very close to the lashline and only go about halfway in.

To give your face a finished look fill in your brows with a brow powder of your choice.

I'm using my elf brow palette and a small angled brush.

Curl your lashes....

put on a little mascara...

and we're done!

 

I finished off my look with a little tan colored blush and nude lip gloss. You dont want too much color on your cheeks or lips when you're doing color on your eyes.

I will work on doing another video soon but for now I hope you liked this look and I hope it works for you when you try it at home! Comment below if you have any questions or comments! 

with shamrock earrings, green smokey eyes and lots of love, 

Katie

ps: Here's another fun green look you might like. Enjoy!

a different kind of beauty

a warm spring day, sunshine, cocktails, appetizers, shopping, wonderful friends...

Today was about a different kind of beauty.  Today I was reminded of one of the most beautiful things in life... our relationships with others. What would life be without those we love surrounding us, encouraging us everyday, reassuring us when things go wrong? laughing with us? crying with us? telling us when we are being ridiculous or completely unrealistic? We'd be lost. At least I know I would!

I spent my day today with two wonderful friends at a dinner table, in a dressing room, taking shots at a bar in between buying dog biscuits and lacy underwear. These are the days we remember. The moments that make us smile...that make our hearts grow...and our wallets diminish just a little :) But in the end its not the bank statement we'll remember, its the day. The sun shining and the friends smiling. 

This lenten season I have many goals the first of which is to open my heart. I want to open my heart to my friends and to my family. To my acquaintances, my colleagues, my peers, and especially my enemies. I want to learn to be humble and to let God enter my heart and my life.  I would never push any kind of religious agenda on you but I did want to share the beauty that I experienced today in my life and to say that I saw God in it. And for that i am grateful. 

with love and humility your friend, 

Katie

a case of the mondays

Leave it to a Target excursion and a new minty flavored nude lip gloss to pull me out of my funk today! Haha, sometimes I feel like I am so predictable :) I have to learn to stop spending money when I have nothing else to do or, more likely, when I have no motivation to do any of the things I need to do!

Monday is my day off so I'm generally very productive. Running errands, cleaning house, etc, etc. But today I have had a very unproductive day... I just couldn't get myself to do, well, anything! I did manage to wash and fold a couple loads of laundry and do all of ten minutes of a workout DVD before I got frustrated and gave up. I just had a bad case of the mondays!

I finally gave up trying to workout and trying to clean and got my butt off facebook and off the couch into the shower around 6 oclock. Terrible I know! Once I showered and did my makeup and hair I felt much better but still had nothing to do. The bf was at work and I just HAD to get out of the house. After wrestling with the idea for a while I gave in and made a totally unnecessary trip to Target.

I spent more money than I should have but I did get three new fun beauty products! Hooray! I will have to make a video using them to show you but for now you just get pictures and me rambling :) So first up in my Target makeup haul is...

Covergirl's Wetslicks Amazemint Lipgloss in number 635 

"no care bare" (shown on the right).

I don't remember where I heard about this...Marie Claire maybe (I'm a magazine-a-holic) but I wanted to give it a whirl. It's infused with crest peppermint oil and so claims that it "provides a minty-breath sensation while the gloss itself gives a dazzling high shine without all that "sticky." My analysis? Totally true! I'm not usually a lip gloss girl but this one goes on so smooth and does not leave my lips sticky or gritty at all and the peppermint oil definitely does leave me in amazemint! hehehe :) I'm also always on the hunt for anything that gives me a beautiful nude lip and this color is PERFECT! A little taupe-y a little shiny and a lot gorgeous! Can't wait to do a video and show you!

Next I got the Studio Eyebrow Kit from e.l.f. (in medium)

This kit has a dark pigmented wax to fill in brows and to hold them in place, a lighter podwer to set and soften the look of the brows, a double ended brush and a mirror for application ease. I played with this a little when I got home but I already had stuff on my brows so I have yet to see how it really works. If this is anything like the other e.l.f. products I have gotten it'll be great! I have been looking for a cheap eyebrow kit of sorts at the drugstore for a while now and NO ONE i mean NO ONE had one! It was starting to drive me crazy! I finally looked at e.l.f and lo and behold they had this in multiple colors. E.l.f. is quickly becoming my favorite drugstore makeup line especially with most products being $1, $3 or $5 dollars! If you haven't checked them out yet go do it!

My third beauty purchase was also an e.l.f. product (which stands for eyes lips face cosmetics by the way) I got their Studio Cream Eyeliner in "Midnight"

This is a gorgeous dark blue cream eyeliner that comes in a supercute little glass looking container with its own little liner brush. Using dark blue eyeliner might be my favorite makeup tip of all time. Blue makes white pop so by using a dark blue eyeliner your eyes look bigger, whiter, and even, in my opinion, a little sparklier. I usually pat a dark blue eyeshadow over my black eyeliner when I feel like my face needs a little pick-me-up so I'm really excited to skip this step and use my new cream liner. Yay!

So there you have it. Fun new makeup cures a bad case of the mondays. Check back in the next few days for a video using all three of my new products! 

Happy Monday guys! Hope yours was more productive than mine!

loooooove, Katie

how i miss curly hair & my first video

For years and years I permed by hair.  It was probably terrible for it and I know I made my poor hairdresser slave away for hours wrapping my tons and tons of hair in perming rods... oh the hours I spent, the money, the smell! But man was it worth it! I loved my curly hair!

I feel at home in curly hair! 

I think it suits me (and my beautiful sister of course).

 But alas... my hair dresser no longer does perms and the older I get the more brittle my hair becomes and the less easily it seems to bounce back from such harsh things as chemical processing and so I deal with the bland straightness. Perhaps my hair will decide to be naturally curly like my sister's one of these days but until then I can only remember it fondly and attempt to recreate it with products and tools. 

This brings me to my first ever YouTube video! 

This is a very basic tutorial on how to use a diffuser to make your straight hair wavy or, for those of you lucky ladies with naturally curly/wavy hair, how to use a diffuser and product to define and enhance your curls. I hope you like it...I hope its not too long...and I hope I can do more (better) videos like it in the future. 

Let me know what you think and if there are more things you want me to do a tutorial video on!

love and curly hair dreams,

Katie