LOTD: Modeling is work

Last night I covered a shift for my friend and boy do I now understand why she hated what she had to wear for it! Unfortunately I was given my attire for the night upon arriving at the venue so I don't have photos of it, which is a shame since it was a relatively nice gold dress. Although if you are wearing a gold dress (with a sash that says 'REWARDS') and walking around a casino...well you get a lot of comments along the lines of "ho ho ho, whoring out tonight" or "hooker" or "I'm getting rewarded tonight for sure!" and other obscenities. Luckily I was working with a very nice guy so needless to say I stayed by his side towards the latter part of the night.

Anyway, the look I decided to do was a purple look with no hint of black (other than my eye color, hair and heels, d'oh) - I wanted to be different as I keep doing a black liner, eyeshadow look every time I model or a neutral look so I thought color would be good to go with the gold. Plus it had to be OTT - ah, casinos, they are such interesting places.

LOTD: Trying to keep myself from falling asleep

 

Yesterday was such a stressful day for me: I had three major assignments due! Eurk, and I did an all-nighter to finish a 50% essay (yes, I know, I will probably get a dreadful grade) so in attempt to look more alive I thought I'd do a bit of a fun neutral look in order to look a little more awake. I love Psyche Minerals' Durran, such a pretty purple!

 

(The next photo looks like a close up of the previous one but it is a different photo entirely! I just felt like sharing that little tid bit with you.)

Today, a little more awake (and yes, still in the same top but I actually changed mid-way yesterday seeing as it was so hot and my college top is hardly bearable when it comes to hot weather) and while going through my bookmarks I realized I meant to try doing this amazing look by Blix and so I did! This is no where near as beautiful as her look but I like the combination and holy moly Darling Girl does some amazing glitter liners!

This is the first time I have used it admittedly since my tiff with it so I am so pleased it has made up for its bad behavior!

 

Seriously in love with that glitter liner (which is called Little Twin Stars).

LOTD: Been ages since I have donned make up

It truly has been ages since I have ventured near my make up and hence why I have not been blogging as well but that is another story for another day. Here is my look for today, I got out my Psyche Minerals samples more willing to use them seeing as I am getting some full sizes soon - especially of my most loved shade Molly makes, Orion Slave which is on the outer corner of this look.

 

I used Babble all over my lid hence why Orion Slave has more of its greener side showing through. I love how much it morphs! Definitely the best shade to get and currently it is Psyche Minerals' Color of the Week so instead of its usual price of $3 you can get it for $1.75! Hurry and get it before the COTW changes!

LOTD: The good days where we do not need much

This is not exactly my current look of the day as I did this a while back (if you are really acute, you will notice these photos were taken in the temporary room I was in prior to moving into my permanent room - and if you were with me last year, you will recognize it as the same room.) but I do this look frequently as it involves two of my favorite daily colors: Darling Girl Snuggle and Fyrinnae Okapi.

This photo makes me realize just how much I need to get my bangs trimmed...

I am so on a neutrals kick it is insane, I never even liked neutral looks to begin with: if going for a neutral no make up sort of feel then why bother with make up to begin with? Hence why I feel the black eyeliner gives my neutral look a good edge.

Shiro Cosmetics: Order and LOTD

So after hearing about Shiro Cosmetics from every single person out there and listening to the ranting and raving of how great the products are...well obviously I had to get on the bandwagon and get some samples of my own to rant about.

I ended up getting a selection of purples and neutrals...because that is how I roll. I do not do greens or blues or silvers or blacks (how many blacks do you need at the end of the day? You get one and you have them all for goodnessakes!) because the easiest looks for me to do are either a purple-ish mess or a neutral barely there look. Or sometimes I even combine purples with neutrals, shocking I know.

Anyway, the free samples I got were right on par with my whole no other colors but purple or browns. Although Midna is a suspicious gray from the looks of it...

I may not approve. It sort of kills my whole firm stance on not having other colors but purple or neutrals. Kidding, I do do other colors but around the time I placed this order I was on a neutrals kick for the most part and of course I ordered purples just because you can never have too many purples.

I ordered all samples because to be honest I do not need so much make up and I feel like it will be a waste to get jars I will end up leaving to collect dust. No, samples are good because you use samples more. Somehow I find I do anyway, oddly enough I hate having to deal with baggies but I use samples more than my full sizes. I am a little strange like that...

So all the hype over Shiro Cosmetics? To be honest I am kind of not bowled over. Sacrilegious I know, stake me now, but honestly they have gorgeous colors and have some great products in their line but that sort of fits them in with some other companies out there. I refrain from doing comprehensive reviews these days because what can you say? The same thing pretty much.

Plus, I am not a certified beauty blogger and never will be. I blog about everything and if I feel the need to say something, I will. Hence this entry.

I love what Shiro Cosmetics has to offer and I certainly recommend their purples. Enough said. Here is the look I did using Lance the Dragon Trainer and Ganondorf - told you I mix my purples with neutrals sometimes. Actually this was an accident. I have no idea what encouraged me to mix purple and brown together...it hardly feels rights. Oh well.

Face Candy Couture: Review and LOTD

When I received my free samples from Face Candy Couture I was dying of curiosity! The samples came in unique teeny-weeny baggies and the colors were outstanding! I am stingily keeping my samples and will not swatch them as I want to use them for special looks. When I am a little richer (come on lottery and money tree growing in the garden!) I plan on investing on some full sizes of these babies.
I received the following colors:

Now, with the following looks, all I can remember is that I used Cinnamon Swirl and for one look I used Wonder as a crease color and for the other I used Mystery instead. Terrible of me to forget which look is which but ah well, I never go in-depth with my looks anyway. All I can say is Cinnamon Swirl is worth while to have in full size!

LOTD: Psyche Minerals - Finally!

I finally got around to cleaning up my Psyche Minerals samples and did a look! This is a quickie but I used Durran and Orion Slave - the latter is such a beautiful color, gah! I love it! And of course Durran is a beautiful purple I can see myself using daily.

LOTD: Intimate Adventures of a Call Girl

When a lovely girl by the name of Magenta gave me 'The Secret Diary of a Call Girl' series, I went out and bought the book to see which I preferred - book or television series. This is a usual habit of mine. I am still reading the book (surprisingly; I usually finish books within a day but have little time for books these days sadly) and so far I feel perhaps the television adaptation is more fun whereas the novel (by Belle de Jour) is more "snippty-snip" and has too many shortened forms as characters that it is hard to follow. Perhaps that conveys the life of a call girl come to think about it but at the same time I have little patience for books that fail to captivate me. And this is about sex too, how shocking that it is dull! But enough about that, I will do a more detailed review later perhaps...

Ironically enough I happened to do a look that I later thought looked quite like 'The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl' book cover. Anyway I quite love this color combination but unfortunately I did this look using a Lancôme travel palette which makes me unhappy.

Lancôme used to be my favorite brand of all time but when I discovered they test on animals it killed all love I had for them. This turned out to be a conflict though as I have quite a few of their products - some I have given away to people who are not troubled by this sinister side of Lancôme and fair enough, if they can stomach it then I have no issues with them using Lancôme products. However in terms of other more used products I either threw them out (some people would kill me if they knew I threw out full Juicy Tubes) or left them to collect dust. However, with this travel palette I could not bring myself to do either as my father had bought it as a special present and so I brought it to Adelaide with me and have kept it in my make up collection fondly without throwing it aside.

I am a softie when it comes to my father, terrible I know.

Anyway I figured if I used this palette in a "I-could-not-care-less" attitude as I would with daily products then maybe it would be just in a way? Treating a high end brand as though it is merely a junk bin brand seems good enough punishment, no? Still, it disgusts me using Lancôme products now. Sigh. What a messy break up.

 

What I did for a day look was use a dark purple and a lighter gray-ish purple shade...

...and then for my night look - I was to go to the pub with some friends - I darkened the inner corners and left everything else the same.

I tossed on one of my favorite bracelets of all time: a friendship bracelet my best friend Kiwa and I made together. We bought the same bracelet and then bought numerous other bracelets, charms, etc. to add onto the bracelet making it a charm bracelet, just not really! You cannot see it in this photo but I have a lot of pendants on it too like one with a dolphin, etc.

Normally I go to the pub with Scott but seeing as he was not around I refused to wear my usual attire of a short dress and heels and went instead with a jean and tight top look. Plus heels, I can never not do heels for nights out, I say pfui to flats. If you are to go out at night then let the heels reign. That said, I am notorious for wearing heels during the day as well. Just not in Adelaide, you get into too much trouble for doing so.

And I finish with some gorgeous apricots the lovely girl by the name of Magenta gave me. So yummy and straight from her garden!

The week of a homesick model

(I vant to suck yer blood a la Hannibal Lector style)

If you follow me on twitter then you will know I am very much alive and have been neglecting my blog since arriving in Adelaide a week ago. Sue me (get it? Get it? No? Oh well...), but I have been busy indulging in my oh so glamorous life of moving back into college, photo shoots and being homesick.

Leaving home was quite difficult (as I have repeated over and over) but I am glad I will at least get to see my family again at the end of the year. I quite miss my little terror of a Prince but at the same time I am quite glad my fingers and toes are spared from his incessant chewing and clawing...

A quick glance at the airport in Malaysia. It was my first time in it and I was quite impressed at how closely it resembled Singapore airport - not at all architecturally but efficiency and atmosphere wise.

I will go as far as so say that I find Malaysia airport's architecture more pleasing than Singapore airport. Is that a crime? I apologize but I was won over by the star-like lighting that looked magnificent as night settled in. The openness of it all with the glass cage effect was refreshing especially when one is in transit for so long.

I was fortunate enough to get free hotel accommodation for my eight-hour transit. While the room may not be up to par with some finicky individuals I found it pleasing that the bathroom was clean and there was a big bed waiting to be laid on. Needless to say, I loved being able to board my seven hour flight back to Adelaide all clean and somewhat rested.

 

Nothing like traveling but from now on I protest at the idea of not traveling with Scott, just because it is convenient having your boyfriend on a long flight to be a bodyguard and pillow. Being completely honest!

I had a photo shoot lined up for the week I arrived back to Adelaide with a lovely photographer from Sydney who flew here to do the shoot. We went with a demon-angel theme and shot at a cemetery and church.

I do not want to disclose much about the shoot until I get the photos but how strange is that plant or shrub or whatever it is growing in the middle of the cemetery?! I was so intrigued by it and it is unfortunate I had no chance to pose with it...albeit it would have terrified me to do so.

So now ensues the photo whoring. What? I got snap happy, you would too if you did your own makeup for a photo shoot and for the first time ever got to do something more than just neutral colors and you also got your hair done in a very Adam Lambert inspired style!

 
The makeup inspiration the photographer gave me used pink in the look instead of gold but L (the photographer) wanted to use gold instead so I used Darling Girl Cosmetics' Plunder which is the most beautiful gold in the world, it reminds me of the gold treasures you find in Ancient Egypt.

For lip color I used Revlon's Colorburst in Raspberry (my favorite wine red color) and slicked on some Fyrinnae Indies on top to dirty it up.

 

Also, I tested out Revlon's PhotoReady foundation in Natural Beige for my other photo shoot (I got a sample packet from a magazine and had no other foundation...criminal yes?) and found I liked it a lot so I went and purchased it for this shoot only to find that it contains...shimmer? What? That was not what the sample was like! So I am a little peeved because I had no intention of channeling - no matter how subtle - a disco ball but in the end I grumpily made do. Given the opportunity, I think I will go back to repurchasing my Dior foundation though.

Unfortunately, upon going to the hairdressers, I realized I had forgotten mascara and some eyeliner. D'oh! But this was quickly forgotten when I proceeded to slam my thumb in L's car door. Ouch. Mega ouch. I had to spend ten minutes outside the hairdressers with my head in my lap as I was on the verge of fainting.

You do not know pain until you either drop a suitcase on your toe (as I did a few years ago) or close a car door on your thumb (as I did a few days ago). If you do not believe me, try it for yourself but do not come running back to me with a lawsuit because I told you and it was your own idiocy that had to test it out.

After much labored breathing as though I needed to give birth and the amazing work of Cherrilee (who will become my future hairdresser in Adelaide due to being able to handle my temperamental hair with ease, hooray!) I ended up with a...very intricate hairdo? And, yes, the whole up-do uses my real hair. No extensions, no additions.

Just a whole lot of hairspray as the sunlight indicates. As well as bobby pins (which the sunlight fails to bring to light).

Upon returning back to college (what? Was not aware of this schedule change...) to wait for L to pick me up for the shoot I thought why not redo my makeup seeing as I originally did a rush job (refer back to schedule change I was unaware of) and mistakenly used She Space's Believe in the Good! which is more blue-black than black.

Plus I had to swipe on some mascara and get some eyeliner on. Still used Darling Girl Cosmetic's beautiful Plunder but used Emily the Strange black eyeshadow which is very pigmented in real life.

 

I quite liked the look with the hair although the makeup was not as dramatic as L's inspiration had been but I thought it worked better with the outfit in the end. Plus, L should have gotten a makeup artist if he really wanted professional makeup!

Also, just to brag a little...how spectacularly angled and not at all sparse and even do my eyebrows look? I tried. Using eyeshadow too. Leave me alone. I normally have a fringe to cover my eyebrows so. there.

So what did I look like when I returned back to college well after 9:30pm and wrestled all the bobby pins and hair ties out of my hair?

Why, like this of course!

How amazingly freaky do my eyebrows look after a days work? I quite dislike filling them in I think, although it suited the concept of the shoot rather well: demonic. They look like malformed triangular slopes...

Just to be creepy and over share, here is my very bare and temporary room at college which also happens to be Scott's former room. No, of course I did not request this room just to indulge in the memories of last year to sustain me for the next six weeks until I am reunited with him...and no, of course I did not sniff around the room trying to find a spot where his scent still lingers...

As you can see, I need to clean up and personalize this room a little more. Seeing as I will only be here for about two more weeks though, I think I will pass on the latter.

What was that in the corner you say?

Of course I got our boys back from my amazing friend who took care of them while I was gone and Scott is working! As you can see, they have developed some bad habits while I have been away. I disapprove highly of the state of their tank every morning...

Before I finish rambling, because this is becoming quite a phenomenally long post (if you are still reading, goodness you are patient!) this will be in a post coming up!

And finally, because the bookworm that I am cannot resist sharing a good morsel of reading, pick up Tobsha Learner's 'Sphinx' if you love a read with a mix of history and modern fixation. I borrowed the book off a friend of mine and could not put it down for even a second! Read more about it (if you are too lazy to hurry to a bookstore) from where I got the image from Paula's blog.

Hope all my lovely readers are having a great start to the year thus far! Toodles!