Makeup Tutorial

FINALLY GETTING ROUND TO THIS POST O.O

As usual I took these photos a long time ago but am only posting them up now hahaha.

Anyway most of the products used are from Yves Saint Laurent Beauté & Etude House as they were sponsored for me to try! I currently do still use some of these products & I'll say which at the bottom.

First up would be the YSL roll-on Wake-up Eyecare which is meant to soothe & brighten tired eyes!

Basically there will be a "cooling" feeling when you apply it. Let it be absorbed then apply your concealer over it! I am still using this YSL concealer for my dark eye circles & other red areas.

Next would be eyeliner! I find eyeliner quite important; concealer + eyeliner is usually sufficient to make me look good enough to go out! This Etude House Drawing Show Dot eyeliner is a special 3-pronged eyeliner to help you create fake eyelashes by drawing vertically!

The lines I drew on my hand are examples of how it'll turn out based on the amount of pressure placed.

I actually use it like a normal eyeliner & just draw a horizontal line by turning it lengthwise!

So that's me with concealer + eyeliner, which is a simple uniform line that's extended slightly beyond the end of my eye. I draw a thin lower lashline with the same eyeliner & connect it to the top's.

Here I tested out the 3-prong function by drawing the vertical bottom eyelashes!

Cute eyeshadow palette from Etude House! I like the colours they have here because I generally am not very adventurous with eyeshadows, I tend to stick to dark & light brown or shades like dark purple/green. I used to use white/silver eyeshadow sometimes but now I can't be bothered.

Anyway the Etude House eyeshadow is very matte, meaning there is no shimmer in it at all whereas most eyeshadows commonly are more towards the metallic side. So it's up to your preference!

I didn't blend the eyeshadows that well but never mind lah, cannot see one hahaha.

P.S. Remember to curl your eyelashes before mascara application!

The Etude House 3-step Volumecara gives you 3 different options for mascara intensity!

I don't know how they designed it inside the tube but basically you twist it to your desired intensity, with Step 1 being the mildest & Step 3 the most vava-voom!

Tested:

You can actually see a clear difference between Step 1 & Step 3! 

Step 3 is much thicker & fuller, so Step 1 may be more suitable for day-to-day use!

Etude House blusher! Actually I'm not very sure what having the 2 shades of pink is for haha.

(This is why I am not a beauty blogger) But I think you sort of mix it together? I just swipe my brush across it & it seems fine. My brush is possibly a foundation brush or whatever, but I like it for my blusher.

I always smile when I apply my blusher (yes I have been observed doing this & have been told how retarded I look) because you should use the apples of your cheek as a gauge! Apply outwards towards your hairline; I apply mine along the bottom edge of my cheeks.

Lip balm because I have very dry lips T_T

These Burt's Bees ones are a bit pricier ($9 I think?) than normal drugstore brands but I find it more nourishing (normal brands don't seem to do anything for my lips) & they smell good!

I have 2, one for my bedside & one that I carry in my bag.

The Rejuvenating one in the picture above is Acai Berry flavoured, while my other one is a Refreshing one that's Pink Grapefruit flavoured! As far as I can tell there's no difference between Rejuvenating, Refreshing, forgot-what-else-they-had...

Anyway if you don't mind the slightly higher price then I would recommend these! 

Available at Sephora.

My favourite product from YSL - their lipstains!

Sweet coral-pink shade above is #7

It's something like a cross between lipsticks & lipglosses. I dislike the stickiness of lipglosses & lipsticks can be a bit too dry so these lipstains are perfect! They allow for a very consistent colour that doesn't come out cracked or patchy the way lipstick might (especially for girls with dry/chapped lips like mine).

The brush makes it very easy to apply as well! Good for corners & uh.. precision haha.

And done!

On a day-to-day basis I don't wear all the makeup items. 

I hardly wear eyeshadow because I find it doesn't make much difference to how I look haha.

And mascara is a bit peskier to remove!

So normally it'll be - concealer, eyeliner, blusher & lipstick

Ok the two pictures are practically identical but there you have it!

Also my hair is really wtf. I swear my hair isn't dry, it's just so flyaway T_T

Oh yes, the products I currently still use right now:

(These photos were taken in November 2012 *hides face*)

YSL concealer

Etude House eyeliner

Etude House blusher

Etude House mascara

YSL lipstains (I have 3)

I have other products to review (some purchased, some sponsored) so I hope to do that soon LOL.

Hope this little walkthrough helped! But I think my makeup skills are pretty basic so this is really for like... makeup noobs hahaha. I don't even know how to do all the shading/contouring stuff & am a complete retard at makeup brushes. So complex wtf!

My Hair

I went down to Bugis Essensuals the other day to colour my hair again! I don't know if you guys noticed, but my dark hair roots were seriously starting to grow out.

Anyway a little background,

1) My hair is naturally a dark brown, with the brown-ness only showing up under light.

2) I DIY-ed my hair sometime last year. I was just bored of my hair colour so I bought a box of hair dye.
Based on advice of "the colour will come out darker than that on the box because your hair is so dark now", I got a medium-ish brown. I certainly wouldn't call it light brown, but basically I hoped it would be visible brown (refer to #1).
Anyway... it did turn out like that on the box, so basically it was too light. To put it nicely would be to say it was copper-coloured. To put it bluntly I could call it orange.


Actually it looks pretty acceptable without flash (right) but with... (left).

3) With Bugis Essensuals I had my hair dyed a darker brown. I've still been hopping around with the shades of brown! Eventually planning to get a brown that tapers down back to my original hair colour.

You can ask Bugis Essensuals about any random hair woes (how soon can I swim after rebonding my hair?) (does short hair suit a round face?) as well as the services they offer at their Formspring!

They don't charge by length like most salons do, but instead they charge by the level of expertise of the stylist you pick!

Bugis Essensuals
241a Victoria Street, Bugis Village
(above Burger King)

Weekdays: 11am-9pm
Weekends: 10am-8pm

Mention that you're my blog reader to get a discount! :D
Valid every day (except Friday & Saturday) from 10am-3pm


P.S. My hair is naturally wavy! You can probably easily achieve this just by bunning up your hair for a short while.




Haha I remember deliberating about this flower headring thing in London, asking my friend if I should get it (it was 4pounds I think, which is not cheap at all by Singaporean standards).

She said that if she saw me walking down the street with this she would think I'm retarded. I bought it anyway.

Later on lots of girls/women came up to me to ask where I had gotten it from! ^^ (Camden Market)

TYING YOUR HAIR FOR SCHOOL

I sometimes get questions from girls asking what to do with their hair for school/what I did with mine, so I took photos!


This is what I do when I'm lazy or in a rush. Extremely low maintenance and it's comfortable! You can simply adorn this low ponytail with a ribbon (and the one I have here is exactly the same ribbon I wore in SAJC!)
Ribbons like these can easily be bought from stores like Paperchase or Spotlight, where they sell ribbons by the metre.


I usually do this when I have PE or CCA that day (I was in Rhythmic Gymnastics) because it keeps my hair away from my face. When it's really hot I can just incorporate my fringe into my braid as well, and generally you don't even need pins.

P.P.S. Please don't ask me HOW to do a French braid! It's really very simple if you know how to do a normal braid. It was self-taught for me.


Lol. Just if I'm feeling slightly more "adventurous" with my hair that day.


Did this quite often until my favourite rubberband broke ): In JC2 I tended to just do the Low pony almost every day haha. Lazy liao.


And here's your generic normal high ponytail! I very, very rarely used this in JC because my hair is pretty long and thick, so this seriously hurts and tugs on my scalp especially considering how long school days can be.

So there you have it! I actually first started doing the French braid in Sec3 when I was 15 years old, and everyone laughed at me lor... say look like farmgirl, Dutch milk girl etc.

But I was really quite worried about my hairline then (hahaha) and the daily weight of my ponytail was annoying so I stuck with my French braid and it slowly became acceptable! Then I saw other girls in St Margaret's starting to sprout braids/French braids... ~pui~

Haha but I think now girls are more adventurous with their hairstyles. Fewer are sticking to just the ponytail. But then again it's been so long since I've been in a uniform :D In NUS most girls just let their hair down!
I also don't know how strict the various schools are with respect to hair accessories, SAJC is pretty lax about such things.
(I tried to wear a flower in my hair once in Sec3; the teachers made me remove it haha)

Add that sparkly effect to your photos!

Hello! (: I realised that the few times I did sparkly photos, I would get questions asking how I did them and every time all I can answer is: Photoshop!




The sparkly effects in this photo will look very familiar to the one below, because I reused the sparkly image!

Anyway this tutorial is fairly basic, meaning I'm assuming you have almost zero knowledge of Photoshop, such as the concept of layers and Free Transform (Ctrl-T/Command-T). So if you already know some stuff this might be boring.
Also there are alternative ways to doing this such as using the Magic Wand, duplicating/merging layers etc, but like I said this is for really basic Photoshop so bear with me!

Oh and do note that I am using a Macintosh and as such my shortcuts and etc may differ slightly from that on Windows.


Alright so first open the base image you want to add the sparkly effects to (left) and a sparkly image (Right).

For the sparkly image I know a website which has the BEST ones ever but I don't want to share hahaha, but basically you can just Google something like "galaxies" or "stars" or even "sparkly image". You can use almost anything, such as the image of sequins/lights on the bottom of the very first photo at the top of my post.

As for the photo I'm using, it's one of the photos from my selling post which I'm gonna do soon! :D And since I was gonna be staring at my face for the length of this tutorial, obviously I wanted one I liked hahaha. SO TOO BAD YOU HAVE TO STARE AT MY FACE TOO teehee.


#1. Drag the sparkly image over the desired base image. I don't know if Windows allows for dragging of images or not, but if they don't, you can copy-paste the whole photo over.

As you can see, my base image is a lot larger than the sparkly image (16.7% zoom vs 66.7%) so when dragged over the sparkly one is really small.

AT ANY TIME IF YOU SCREWED UP, CLICK CTRL-Z/COMMAND-Z. This is basically the Undo. You can Undo continuously by clicking Shift-Ctrl/Command-Z till desired action has been reversed.
If you click Ctrl-Z/Command Z (Undo) then Ctrl-Z/Command-Z again without the Shift, it will Undo your previous Undo a.k.a it will Redo the action.


#2. Use Free Transform to edit the sparkly image layer. For Windows, use Ctrl-T and for Macs, use Command-T. Alternatively you can click Edit -> Free Transform.

Here I will try to introduce the concept of layers in Photoshop:

On the right of the screenshot you can see the middle box titled "Layers", in which there are 2 layers.

One is my base image, which is by default called the Background, and the image I dragged over, which by default is called Layer 1.

The amazing thing about Photoshop is that whatever you do on one layer, will NOT affect any other layer. This is great because you can see how the whole thing will look like and edit each layer separately as and when you feel like it, simply by clicking on the layer you want to edit.

Hence currently I'm on Layer 1, and whatever I do to my sparkly image will not affect my base image (mah face).

Anyway, my sparkly image is too small and I want to change the orientation for a better fit. In Free Transform mode, the layer (in this case it consists only of the small sparkly image) will have the 8 points around it from which you can drag/push to resize the image.

#3. Right click the layer and select Rotate CW (Clockwise). Or CCW, it really won't matter. Alternatively, you can simply rotate the image by using the cursor (move it out of the boxed up part; a rounded arrow appears).


So here my sparkly image has been rotated and moved to the top left corner.
I'm now enlarging it. If you want to enlarge it while keeping the constraints (eg. a square shape to always remain a square, just larger/smaller), press Shift as you drag one corner.

For Photoshop it doesn't matter if you enlarge it beyond the boundaries of the frame (meaning it disappears/gets cut out at the sides). You can just drag the image left/right/up/down to frame only whatever part you want.

I mean for my image above, if I press Shift (to maintain the proportions it currently has), the sides will clearly be cut off.
I chose to stretch it without Shift. It won't matter if the image looks distorted since you just want the sparkly-ness.


Thus here the sparkly layer completely covers my base image, which can't be seen. You don't need the original sparkly image anymore so I closed the other window.


#4. Right-click on Layer 1 in the right middle box and select Blending Options.

#5. Alter the Opacity of the Layer 1 however you wish (Remember that the base image isn't affected! Awesome!). Here I lowered it to 56%.


Here I'm going to use the Eraser tool (little square in your tools palette) to erase some parts of Layer 1 so that my base image can be seen more clearly.

However I don't want to use a normal circular shape (found under Basic Brushes) for my Eraser because it might look very jarring if the sparkly-ness doesn't look sorta blended into the base image.

#6. To change the shape of the Eraser, click on the little arrow on the top right, which will open a drop down menu of brushes. I picked Natural Brushes because they look a bit like paintbrush strokes.


This is the brush I chose. Change the size of the brush according to however big you want it to be.
#7. Lower the Opacity of your eraser. Same reason; so that it will be less jarring.

Look at the right and left sides of my face -> jagged edges of parts that are light grey. Those are the parts I erased, which I purposely made more obvious so that it can be seen.


If you compare my face here and in the previous photo, it can be seen more clearly here because I erased some of the sparkly image that was over it.

For the sake of this tutorial I'm adding a 2nd sparkly image over it, which I've just opened on the right.


#8. Same as just now; drag/copy the layer over. It will by default be named Layer 2, and will be the top layer.
The order of layers on the right now will be Layer 2, Layer 1 and Background.

#9. Free Transform (Ctrl-T/Command-T) if needed/till desired size/orientation. For mine I only enlarged it slightly because I only want the parts beside my head to end up pinkish.

However I want it to be the layer below the first blue-ish sparkles (meaning the pink one will be less visible).

#10. In the middle box on the right, drag Layer 2 below Layer 1. The sequence will become Layer 1, Layer 2 and Background.


#11. Right-click Layer 2 and select Blending Options to edit it if desired. I did not bother because the colours are already muted since Layer 1 is over it. (Layer 1 is only 56% opaque remember?)

#12. Use the Eraser if desired. Here I also did not bother changing to the brushstroke type (found under Natural Brushes) because I'm following the shape of my arm which is a clear and defined line.


#13. I decided to extend the pink layer to the right side as well.

You can do this by Free Transform (Ctrl-T/Command T) + Erasing again.
OR
You can right-click Layer 2 and select Duplicate Layer. By default it will be called Layer 2 Copy. The sequence of layers will now be Layer 1, Layer 2 Copy, Layer 2 and Background.
Move the pink part over to the right side (remember to be in Layer 2 Copy when you do this).

In the screenshot above you don't see it because I decided to merge the two Layer 2s (Ctrl-E/Command-E).

#14. Here I chose to use the Smudge Tool to even out some gaps between the pink part and my head. The Smudger will only be smudging Layer 2, but it will look even enough when overlapping my base image (Background).

AND YOU'RE DONE!
This isn't a completed piece lah. As in, I don't think it looks very nice haha and you can edit/add more stuff as desired, but this is just to roughly teach HOW it can be done (:


I actually think this looks better. I did this by clicking the little eye on the left side of Layer 2, which will render it Invisible.
(Shown by the absence of the eye in the part I circled in red.)
This allows me to see how my overall image would look like by adding/omitting certain layers!

The other part I circled is to show how in Layer 1 my Eraser brush strokes are actually obvious, but it won't matter since Layer 2 will be under it (when I turn it back to Visible) and will sort of neutralise it.


Here's the final image! Haha it's quite obvious that I did not erase any of the sparkly-ness on the bottom part at all.

If you look carefully you can see some parts where the Erasing (e.g. just above my head there's a small gap lacking pink) or Overlapping of Layers (the edges of the flower in my hair) is obvious, but overall it won't really matter.

I hope this wasn't too wordy and boring to get through! It's actually quite simple really, but I tried to break it down as much as I could. I don't know if I made it seem more complex in the process, or if everyone thinks I'm a retard for trying to explain something simple haha.