Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Walkthrough)

Eye makeup is so difficult.

Ever since junior year prom, I’ve been wanting to rock the rock-n-rolla smoky eye, but like Lindsey’s recent tweet, I’ve not been able to capture this look without looking like I just beat myself up. My sister, who is no novice when it comes to this “girly” stuff, bought me a bag full of items needed to achieve this aesthetic dream, so armed with this bag of tricks and a google search for “smoky eye makeup tutorials,” I locked myself, the laptop and the camera in the bathroom until this happened:

It wasn’t even that hard, and the other great part is everything I used can be purchased at Target on a college drop-out budget.

 

This guy is your starting batter. “Dark Angel” by Rimel. Use a smudge brush the black color at the bottom and cover your entire lid. Go back with a brush and makeup remover to smooth out the edges if you’re not so good with the “tools” like me.

 

The next step is to use this slate color in the top left corner to go from the black on your lid up to just below your eyebrow. This part of my eye seems to be a lot bigger than the models that MAC was using for their videos, so I had to be a little innovative. Like, twice as innovative as I usually am. I used a medium soft shadow brush.

 

This is the part where you start to think, “I look like I’ve been decked,” but I think this next step makes all the difference. I took the brush with the chiseled end (what the heck is this called?) and used it to put the electric purple color in the crease of my eyelid and underneath my lower lash. This took all the bravery in the world, let me just tell you that up front.

The two girls in the MAC video were white like 90’s Calvin Klein model in December and they were using red and brown instead of purple. My skin is already red/brown plus that purple color looked so enticing, so I deviated from the professionals and went with it. The next parts are easy-peasy lemon squeezie and you’ve probably been doing them since the seventh grade. A little bit of white or in this case, “Bling Bling” (who comes up with these color names?) in the corners of your eyes, top and bottom. Use the same color to highlight the brow.

 

A very thin line of liquid black eyeliner and mascara and you’re done, happy as whatever the opposite of a 90’s Calvin Klein model is!

It helps if you have a black-and-white scarf. It also helps if you’re already kinda hot. So now I’m interested to see everyone else’s makeup tutorials. I’m looking at you, Estella Sullivan, Holly Robbins. How about someone posts a walkthrough for fire-engine red lips?

Last year.

2009 was a particularly tough year and I’m glad it’s over. Since it did suck with the weight of a thousand suns, I’ve decided not to do the Top 10 Worsts of 2009 like I normally do, just the Bests. And it’ll probably be 5 instead of 10 for no reason at all. Without further ado…

The Five Best Moments of 2009

5. Discovering that I don’t just like Thai food, but I actually like it better than Chinese.

4. The girls getting to move back with us.

3. October Ramp.

2. Baptisms in November.

1. Macenzie Joseph Bradshaw, Jr.

The Five Best Songs of 2009

5. Heartbreak Warfare – John Mayer (sucker.)

4. Use Somebody – Kings of Leon

3. The Fixer – Pearl Jam (long awaited.)

2. Audience – Cold War Kids

1. Uprising – Muse

Pilgrim’s Progress

I see myself now at the end of my journey,

my toilsome days are ended.

I am going now to see that head that was crowned with thorns,

and that face that was spat upon,

for me.

A few things

1. I really admire people who are moral, as opposed to preference-based, vegetarians. No offense PBVs, I’m sure you guys are great, too.
2. Of all the things I’m jealous of, I think Russell Brand’s hair cracks the top 3.
3. I sat in on a meeting of evangelical, middle-aged ministers this weekend talking about the relevance of social networking in the context of the Gospel. The word “tweeter” was tossed around a lot, but I was touched by the sincerity.
4. I can laugh at Tyler Perry movies if no one else is in the room.
5. Because I waited so long to start my Christmas shopping, my brother and sister will have to settle for a vs. Cornell game. Sorry, guys.
6. My niece is an open-mouthed, tongue-kisser. She’s 13 months old.
7. Sometimes, I’ll start to leave a comment on a blog that I stalk like, “Congratulations on your engagement!” or “I can’t wait to see your baby!” or the like, and then I realize, “This person has no idea who I am.
8. Working ten hour days is something I never thought I’d be doing.
9. I’ve never really felt 24. I have almost 5 months of being 24 left, but since day one I’ve just decided that 24 is too close to 25 to not be called 25.
10. I have four baskets full of clean, folded laundry in my dining room that will probably never be folded or put in a drawer. Just one of the luxuries afforded to me by my single lifestyle.

Rate the following for tolerability on a scale of 1-10. 1 being “I wanna go home” and 10 being “I wanna light myself on fire.”

• Having to improvise with whatever odd or end may be in your car that could possibly get the ice/snow off your windows
• Someone leaving their clothes in the washer well past the time that you’re ready to start the evening’s laundry
• Snow
• Listening to Winona Ryder narrate a movie
• Listening to two stupid people have a conversatolion
• Traffic
• Deciding what’s for lunch/dinner
• Colored Christmas lights
• Losing your camera
• The word “guesstimate”
• The smell of food when you’re not hungry
• People who end every sentence with “so… yeah…”
• Myspace
• Split ends

The Single Life

My plan for this evening since it was cold, dark and rainy outside and I’m a little broke (exhibit A) was to clean my apartment. Like, moving out clean, except for all my stuff would still be here. I was also hoping to toss some of that stuff in the dumpster and/or the big green “give your clothes to the needy” thing right next to the dumpster.

Since I obviously didn’t feel like cooking (exhibit B) on cleaning night I stopped at Godfather’s on the way home.

(Sidler: I ate a piece in the car. Does anyone else do that or is it just me?)

Upon my arrival, I grabbed an armful (exhibit C) of unsorted clothes (exhibit D) while balancing the detergent and fabric softener and ran downstairs to throw a load in the washer. I came back up the stairs, queued up a good hour and a half worth of music on Grooveshark and started in the kitchen – addressing the box of pizza on the counter first. Reasonably.

So anyway, if you’re wondering just exactly what brand of loser has a refrigerator that looks like this:

Not pictured: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, baby carrots, left over frosting from halloween cookies, Arm & Hammer baking soda.

you can be confident it’s the same kind of loser who, based on the pictures and evidence as itemed above, has no one to be responsible for but herself.

I’m gonna miss this one day.

 

 

Discoveries

1. Edamame is a really good dinner.
2. Since Twitter, I can barely blog 100 characters at a time.

Fan Service

My blog stats report the weirdest thing: I get anywhere from 25-68 hits a day on “dove tattoo.” Alright, buddies… here she is:

And here’s Amber’s just in case you were looking for something a little more hardcore:

 

Both done by an amazing (and in my case, amazingly patient) artist at FOB in KC.

August did not get the memo that it’s August.

Jack White

I have three dads:

my biological father,

God and Bob Dylan.

– Jack White