Give me all the UNICORN

As most of you know, there has been a unicorn trend on the rise in the past year. I've seen it everywhere from recipes on unicorn hot chocolate and cakes  that look oh so yummy, to clothing such as LuLaRoe where if you have a special pattern you love, it's called your "unicorn".

This colorful trends has really been messing with my little girl, fairytale days and I can't help but feel nostalgic as well as giddy over it. My sister and fellow blogger Swiss Missus, got me my first unicorn item for my birthday coming up and I cannot wait. These are the UnicHorn brushes by Sugar & Cotton. Look at how pretty these colorful bristles are!!! I can't wait to try them.

Just as I couldn't get anymore excited, Tarte came out with a spring release of their own unicorn makeup brushes and palatte and my jaw hit the floor. I have to have it all. Check out their version of brushes with gold handles! This is a 5 brush set with a powder brush, contour brush, liquid foundation brush, crease brush and eyeshadow brush. Perfect for the latest trends in applying a full face of makeup. 

They also came out with a stunning eyeshadow palette, highlighter, 2 matte glosses and a rose gold liquid liner. (All pictured below) Each product was so thought out and is so gorgeous and fun for Spring! So shop on Tarte's website now or get out to Sephora as soon as possible because these are limited edition items and I'm sure they'll sell out soon because they are too beautiful!

I'm so inspired by such a fun and colorful trend and I hope you are too. You can now follow me on Twitter to see more fun things from me.

Don't forget to also follow me on INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK!

As always, thank you so much for the support and love!

Love,
Dee

New Mom, New Beauty Routine

On February 2nd, 2016 my husband and I welcomed our firstborn son, Adrian Alexander, into the world. I'm still getting used to calling myself a mother, let alone getting used to figuring out a whole new routine and new chapter of my life.

The older I've gotten, I'll admit, the less effort I've put into making myself up but I do still LOVE makeup, trying new products, and reviewing the things I do try. I love putting makeup on friends and family, and REALLY enjoy when I have a good half hour to spend alone being creative on my own self. Now that I'm a new mom I've caught myself in the mirror several times looking almost frumpy and I've tried to think of things I could do for myself while I'm home with my son to still make me feel good about myself and not completely unkempt. It's more for my own self than anyone else. With a newborn, most days are spent at home being completely consumed by taking care of the baby. 

For all you moms out there, you know how quickly your life can go from being all about doing whatever you want to, to running around taking care of your family with little time for yourself. For those of you who are looking for ways to still take care of yourself, while taking care of baby this is for you. It's all about balance. I put these in order of what I find most crucial for myself to feel better during the day. Hopefully some of these make you feel good too!

1.) Scrub a Dub- Ask you partner, a friend or family member to come and help you out for 20 minutes so you can get a shower or a nice bath in. I have found that this alone makes me feel 1,000 times better. My son is only 5 weeks old but I have been spit up on, peed on and pooed on many times already so just a simple shower feels like a relief. People always forewarned me that it'd be so hard to shower when a baby came and I used to think they were crazy. They aren't. 

2.) Skincare- when I'm able to squeeze in a quick shower, I like to quickly wash my face with Noxema and as soon as I get out of the shower I quickly put on one pump of my Shiseido Ibuki Protective Moisterizer SPF 15 and my Shiseido Eye Contour Cream. 

3.) H2O- I recommend filling a large water bottle to keep with you all day or just to keep filling up water, the more hydrated you are, the  more awake you are and if you're chugging lots of coffee, like I've been, coffee only dehydrates you so you'll need to replenish. 

4.) Chapstick- I love my Pomegranite Burt's Bee's lip balm because I have found my lips to be much more chapped since I've had my baby. I keep one right by my bed so when I wake up in the middle of the night to feed the baby, I can swipe some on before we both go back to sleep so my lips can restore over night. I also love vaseline as well for my lips. 

5.) Lotion- keep a big bottle of lotion around so that when you have a minute and are sitting on the couch you can give yourself a quick rub down from head to toe. I really like Cetaphil lotion.

6.) Perfume- Every day that I left for work prior to the baby, I always spritzed some perfume on. For some reason spraying perfume on myself seems like a great way to finalize my whole look for the day and makes me feel pretty even without makeup on. I really like Daisy Eau So Fresh and Arlésienne Eau de Toilette by L'OCCITANE because they're both fresh, light and clean smelling. 

7.) Get outside or go the gym- This one is a little harder since it's hard to get away from the baby but if the weather's nice out, take your baby for a walk in their stroller or their carrier. If you have a gym membership and are able to get away for a bit, go to the gym and exercise. Exercise helps everything and is a great way to burn off some stress and help you to sleep better (when you get a chance to that is.)

8.) Sleep when the baby sleeps- the first few weeks of having my baby home, I attempted to be the perfect house wife. I was cleaning, doing laundry and trying to cook meals and take care of the baby all at once and quickly got burned out. Now, depending on how much sleep I got I'll do more or less chores during the day and nap when the baby naps. That has made a huge difference in my energy levels and crabbiness. This also helps your skin to restore itself when you get as much rest as possible. 

Having people in your life to help you and support you helps make these a little easier but most of these are quick things you can do or keep in mind when running around with your children. Hope you enjoyed reading these 7 tips to a refined beauty routine for those moms out there who need to keep themselves in mind too. 

Keep Calm and Treat Yourself to Makeup

At the end of every year for anyone usually it's a stressful time with holidays, family visits, parties to attend and money to spend on gifts. It's rough.

For me, work is at it's busiest from September through February every single year I've been with my company. This year we have the biggest billing disaster I've experienced with my company and it's been enough stress to have me take a month off. In lieu of these stressful times in and out of work, I've been trying to work on things to help keep me sane.

I read an article a few years back that when the economy went to crap back in 2008/2009 that sales of makeup went up. In particular, makeup sales went up.

 

While finding a way to stay sane during these difficult times and year end madness, I've come to find that besides yoga and running, makeup has been some sort of relaxing release for me.

For about 2 months now, I've been waking up just a touch earlier every morning to fix my hair and makeup every day before work. They say you should "Dress for Success" and I'm a firm believer in that. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

I really enjoy putting makeup on every day cause it's a great form of artistic expression. When I catch myself in the mirror even when work is hard, if I see my makeup looks nice I somehow automatically feel better. It may sound silly but I'll even take a second to touch up my makeup throughout the day just to have some personal time to be artistic. Having my degree in Studio Art makes it hard to be inspired by day to day responsibilities and in finding a minute or two a day to do something I love, whether that's make-up, painting, or painting my nails seems to always be what makes me happy. 

My Grandma just recently passed away at 89 years old and she was still getting her hair done, drawing her eyebrows in and getting her acrylic nails done the entire time. These are the things that made her happy, the things that made her feel pretty. 

At the end of the day it's about finding what makes you smile, what keeps you calm and what keeps you happy. As long as you never give up on the little things that do that for you, you're golden. 

Life is too short not to do what makes you happy. 

Dedicated to my Grandma Antoinette Marie Scarpaci.

Black vs. White & Contouring techniques

I went to work super early today to get some work done before people came into the office. I also decided to bring my makeup bag cause I knew I had time to primp my face before anyone else showed up to see how terribly tired and puffy I looked. While looking in my broken little mirror I have sitting at my work desk I sat and looked in the mirror and said "What do I want to do today?! What should I look like?" These simple questions inspired this current beauty blog.

Makeup really transforms a natural looking face into anything you want it too. I think that's why I enjoy it so much. It's a way for me to be creative on my face. My face is my own blank canvas each and everyday to do with it what I please.

Simple little makeup tricks can change the ENTIRE look of your face with the swipe of a brush.
From highlighters to bronzer.You can use dark and lights to completely transform your eyes, cheekbones and lips! It's awesome!

The KEY to white versus black or highlighter versus bronzer is that white accentuates what you already have making it look bigger or more noticeable. Black or bronzer makes things more defined and smaller looking.

Let's take the eyelid for example. Here are some examples of how white versus black changes everything on the lid.

WHITE

 

White is a great eyelid opener. If your running late to work take some shimmery white eyeshadow at put it at the inner corner of your eye to brighten things up. I did that this morning and it made my red, puffy sleepy eyes look immediately more awake like the picture above. You can really see how how it really makes things look more open and alive. Pretty simple, right?

 BLACK

Here is an all black smokey eye. This is a really gorgeous look that I used to do almost daily for awhile. She used white or a beige color below her eyebrow to make that area clean and defined. She used black to almost color block her brown eyes so that the brown is the focal point. If you compare this picture to the picture above you immediately notice that your eye is drawn to the WHITE. Here it's her eye, above it the eyeshadow. 

BLACK AND WHITE

Here, this lovely lady used both black and white to create a radiant look of light to dark. Notice how the black defines the corner of the lid while the white brightens up the corner of the tear duct. VOILA! Isn't makeup awesome??

Another example of light versus dark is on the lip!

Lots of woman want bigger or fuller looking lips. Here is a simple trick to achieve it. After applying your lip gloss or lipstick, use a cream highlighter or white, shimmery eyeshadow in your Cupid's bow (the triangular space on the top of your lip) right above the lips and a the same highlighter on the middle section of your lower lip. You can't tell in the picture at first glace but notice how it makes her lips look fuller? This is the trick a lot of people are using. She probably has some highlighter on her nose come to think of it! :)

This brings me to contouring. We use lights and darks to contour parts of our face. On our cheeks you can use highlighter above your cheek bone and then bronzer below it to create this beautiful illusion seen below.

I even found some pictures of how they contour the face using makeup to create light and dark spaces to define and illuminate the face in the right places.

Notice how the dark colors stay around the outside of the face to keep that area defined and the light colors stay on the inside of the face to make certain parts appear clean and bright? This is such an awesome technique and a great cheat sheet to keep. 

I hope this blog helped you to learn more as to how to play with light and dark colors on your face.

Thanks for reading!