L.A. Colors Makeup Haul!

I have been talking a lot lately about using cheap makeup. One of my favorite cheap makeup brands is L.A. Colors I have not tried any products from this company, other than eye shadows, but so far they have all been very good. They are super pigmented for cheap products. And since stores like Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and loads of 99 Cent stores carry them, a lot of times you can from them for one dollar.

Today on our way from filming an episode of Tranny Talk 101, Jay and I stopped at the Tomball Dollar Tree. I was very happy to see that they had several of the L.A. Colors 6 pan eye shadow palettes. I have used other varieties of these and I really like them. So yeah, here is what I got.

BEP411 – Precious	BEP412 Hipnotic
BEP413 – Sweet Pleasure	BEP414 – Café Au Lait

I am really looking forward to doing a look with Café Au Lait and the Precious sets. In the Café Au Lait palette, it has a lovely bronze metallic color, a shimmery brown color, a taupe, a peach, a beige and a lovely cream color. I can see doing a beautiful vintage look with this, pairing it with some true red lips. Fabulous!

So, anyway. Get to your local Dollar Store and look for some of these L.A. Colors palettes. They really are worth the little bit of money you pay for them. :D

My Top 6 Must Have Eye Products!

So I was recently asked what some MUST have makeup products were. I sent the person this message. I decided to focus on eye products, and things I thought everyone needed to have in their collection.

1. NYX Jumbo Pencil in Milk ($2.99-$3.99). I love this for an eye base! It makes all of your shadows brighter, and last longer! A close second is the new NYX Eye shadow base. I have this in white, and skintone. Both work really well at making the shadows last longer. Just a tip: Apply these very thinly. And once they are on your eye, get some eye shadow over them quickly. If not, you can get some creasing.

2. MAC Carbon Eye shadow ($11.00-$14.50). Everyone needs a matte black eye shadow! And in my experience Carbon is the best one. Its dark, rich, and doesn't fade. A close second is the Ben Nye Matte Black eye shadow, but this is only found online or at theatrical stores.

3. Ben Nye White Eye shadow ($7.00-$9.00). I love this white! I have never had a white shadow as pigmented as this. I always use it on the inner corner of my eyes to brighten them. It's great. The drawback, like I mentioned with the last one, is that you can only get it online, or theatrical shops. It's a great product though!

4. MAC Honey Lust Eye shadow ($11.00-$14.50). This is a LOVELY color! I am wearing it in my last video, and in the tutorial that I am about to post. Its a shimmery, metallic, goldish beige color. It's very pretty, and looks wonderful alone or paired with darker colors (like I used it.) ;)

6. MAC Pink Venus Eye shadow ($11.00-$14.50) I am sure if you have seen ANY of my videos you will know I love pinks. This one is my favorite. Its a medium baby pink, with a shimmer to it. This looks really good swept over the lid area, with a bit of a purple (like MAC Stars n Rockets) in the crease. A nice look that's not too out there. :)

5. L.A. Colors traditional palette ($1.00). I know you asked for luxury items, but to me this is a MUST HAVE. This palette has a load of shades of brown eye shadow. They are all really pigmented, and they are just wonderful. I have so few high end browns because of this palette. Any time I need a brown, I just look in here, and there is one that works. It also has a really good matte white in it. Get this one! :D

Brush Buying at Hobby Lobby!

OK, so I went to Hobby Lobby on my lunch break today. Of COURSE they didn't have what I wanted. How hard is it to find some sew on acrylic jewels in shades of green and yellow? One would think I was wanting pure Austrian crystal. On yeah, I forgot. They DID have some of those.


But what I DID find was a 50% off sale on art brushes! YAY! So I went crazy in the Royal Langnickel section. Here is what I got.


All of the brushes have about a 6 inch handle with an angled end. They have black plastic ferrule holding the hairs, and a soft rubber grip.


Mind you, I have not used these brushes yet, so this is just my initial reaction to them. I cant speak on how much they will or will not shed.


3/4" White Goat Hair Mop - Originally $5.99, sale price $3.00

http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?dep=10&cat=35&subcat=55&IsOnSale=0&IsFeatured=0&IsNew=0&ItemId=96550


This brush is SO SOFT. It's made of the same goat hair as MAC brushes, and the Maxine's Mop brushes made by Loew Cornell. The hairs are short, and it's densely packed. This brush is a bit big for an eye brush, unless you are using it to apply a wash of color to the entire eye area. It will work well for applying a thin line of contour under the cheeks, or even blending cheek color.


#12 Fitch Scrubber - Originally $6.99, sale price $3.50


http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?dep=10&cat=35&subcat=55&IsOnSale=0&IsFeatured=0&IsNew=0&ItemId=96688


The Fitch Scrubber is a soft, yet slightly stiff brush. It's like a large pencil brush. This will be wonderful for blending crease colors. It is about the size of the round ELF crease brush, but the hair is more substantial, and better quality. This is a natural hair brush, the fibers coming from a fitch. Which is actually a European weasel related to the mink.


#0 Mop Brush - Originally $1.99, sale price $1.00


http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?dep=10&cat=35&subcat=55&IsOnSale=0&IsFeatured=0&IsNew=0&ItemId=96578


This brush is also fitch hair. And this is a small short slightly flattened version of a pencil brush. This one would be perfect for blending colors on your lower eyelid, or having minute control of color when cutting the crease.


#2 Taklon Round - Originally $3.99, sale price $2.00


http://shop.hobbylobby.com/store/item.aspx?dep=10&cat=35&subcat=55&IsOnSale=0&IsFeatured=0&IsNew=0&ItemId=96523


I am going to use this brush for doing my eyebrows. I like using a round liner brush for brows rather than an angled brush. The hair on this one is Taklon, which means it is a synthetic fiber. This means that it is perfect for apply cream and gel products.


So, the grand total for these brushes was $10.24 with tax. Cant wait to use them the next time I paint on Saturday! :D

MAC Love Lace Collection Look

This was my look today for this week’s Tranny Talk 101 episode. It was done using colors from the recent MAC Love Lace collection. This collection came out this past December, and has some lovely sophisticated cool toned shades. You all know me, and how I like warmer colors like pinks, reds, orange, and yellow, but I decided I needed to broaden my horizons if you will.

I did not film a tutorial for this look because I was in a hurry to get my face finished. Take a look below the picture to hear how this look was achieved.

First thing I did was base out my eyelids. I really have to tell you all that the last few times I have painted my face, I have not used my usual Milk Jumbo Pencil from NYX. I have been using the new white NYX Eye shadow Base. This product is really awesome! It’s a lot like the jumbo pencil, but its thicker, and it doesn't seem to crease nearly as easily as the pencil. I still love my pencil mind you. I got to have my Milk Pencil! :D

As to the eye shadow itself, I used Suave Intentions on my main eyelid, and faded the color Love Lace, from the same collection, on the outer third of the eyelid.

For my crease I didn't want a pure black crease . I wanted it to be a lighter color, with black just in the actual crease. So what I did was take MAC Print eye shadow and put that in the crease, and blended that up to the upper eyelid. Then I took MAC Carbon, and deepened the crease on the outer part of the crease.

For the top eyeliner, I used MAC Blacktrack Fluidline gel liner. I applied this in a winged fashion.

On the lower waterline, I used Jet Black, Rimmel Soft Kohl Kajal Eye Pencil, and set it with Carbon eye shadow. I also applied the Love Lace eye shadow to the lower eyelid, and smoked it out a bit, and applied a bit more carbon to the outer third of the lower lid.

For the lips I used L.A. Colors, Pinky Lip Liner to completely line my lips. After that I applied MAC Lipstick to the entire lip area. Then to add definition to the lips, I lined the outer corners with L.A. Colors, Cocoa Lip Liner , and blended that color into the lipstick.

Here are a couple more pictures of the look. I hope you all like it! Maybe I will work with more blues in the future.

My Eye shadow Palettes

For Christmas Jay got me a pink Z Palette. On the website it says that this palette will hold 27 MAC sized eye shadows. I own 28 eyes shadows. So there are 2 shadows that will not fit in my new palette. lol. Today I worked to reorganize my palettes to get everything together and configured into as few palettes as possible. This is what I came up with.

This first palette is my MAC Palette I am sure I need at least one more of these so I can separate it into warm colors (pink, oranges, yellows and reds) and then do another palette that is cool colors (blues, greens, grays, and blacks).

First Row: Stately Black, Cranberry, Print, Romping, Dear Cupcake, Passionate, Pink Venus. Second Row: Carbon, Satellite Dreams, Sunset B, Et tu Bouquet, Expensive Pink, Paradisco, Honey Lust. Third Row: Beauty Marked, Strike a Pose, French Cuff, Phloof, Bright Future, Yogurt, Fashion. Fourth Row: Stars n Rockets, Aquadidiac, too Dolly, Off the Page, Crest the Wave.

Here is my opinion on the Z Palette. I think it’s great. the magnet that holds the top closed works really well. And the magnet in the bottom of the palette holds fairly well. It works a lot better when you adhere the small stick on magnets that come with the palette to the bottom of the shadow pans. I think the palette should have been made even just a quarter inch taller so that you could fit four rows of seven eye shadows in it. That way it would hold 28 MAC sized shadows.

Various NYX Trios. The bottom two rows have a couple pressed NYX Chrome eye shadows. and two Bee Royal eye shadows.

This small 12 pan palette contains pressed MAC Heritage Rouge and Fuchsia Pigments and some other pressed NYX chrome eye shadows.

Upcoming Tutorial: Red Devil Challenge

Here is challenge number 2 from Tsunimee. She asked me to do a look using my real eyebrows, and asked me to do an interpretation of Spittingglitter’s red devil look.

original look from SpittingGlitter	Tsunimee’s interpretation of the same look.

So this last Sunday I decided to take up the challenges and give them both a shot all in the same look. Here is what I came up with.

This is the look before putting on hair or an outfit. This was how I liked the look best.

And here is the look after getting a full outfit together.

I liked doing this look a lot. I would love to try it again some time using Blanche’s drawn on eyebrows. Wasn’t a HUGE fan of how my real brows looked when the full look was finished.

A tutorial for this look is coming up in the next day or so. So keep checking my Youtube channel!  http://www.youtube.com/user/BlancheBabcock

Testing out a look using my own eyebrows

I had been asked by Tsunimee on Twitter many times for a makeup look using my own eyebrows. So I thought I would give it a shot this morning. I was just playing around with makeup, and had no plan, but this is what I came up with.

Because I was just playing around I wasn't wearing any foundation, or even eye shadow primer. I think if that had been added it would have come out better.

First thing I did was fill in my eyebrow with a brown liner. I extended the end of it a bit because my brows are a bit shorter than this.

Then I worked on the crease. I used some browns from the L.A. Colors Traditional Palette, and then deepened the outer crease with MAC Carbon eye shadow. I used these same colors on the lower eyelid.

On my eyelid I am wearing MAC Honey Lust Eye shadow. This is actually the first time I have used this color since I got it. I really need to use it more often. I liked it a lot. Then for the inner corner I am using MAC Vanilla Pigment.

For the brow bone highlight I first applied a matte white eye shadow, and then went over it with MAC Vanilla Pigment so that it would give it a bit of shimmer.

I then made a bold winged liner first with MAC Blacktrack Fluidline, but that didn't come out as dark as I wanted, so I went over it with Beauty Reflection liquid eyeliner.

I used a Rimmel Black eyeliner on my lower waterline, and then set it with MAC Carbon Eye shadow. I didn't apply any mascara, because I don't have any, or lashes. But this look would be enhanced with some nice lashes.

That’s pretty much it. All in all, a really simple look. I think this would be a good look for daytime, at the office with a nude or light pink lip. Pair it with a red lip, and it’s a wonderful evening, going to the theater (To see Steel Magnolias at Stage Door Inc running January 8th – 31st).

I might have to try using my own brows sometime with a full face. I think it could be a good look.