Parrot Saturday

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend my dear fellow beauty junkies! It's been a glorious week here in Brussels, the sun shining, blossoms in bloom, cotton replacing wool etc. Definitely time to dig out those brights from your make-up bags and start having a play around with colour again. This is precisely what I spent my Saturday night doing. Too knackered to go out anywhere, Mr P and I were lolling about the house trying not to eat the entire contents of the fridge and while he settled down to watch something ridiculously boring I sauntered upstairs to put a face mask on and ended up digging out my Sleek palettes and having a bit of a play around. First I created a very dramatic smoky eye with 3 shades of blue (3rd, 4th and 5th colours on the top row in picture below) from the Original palette, after which I skipped downstairs to show Mr P my handy work.

He was a bit disturbed as I never really wear blues (men don't like change) and then proceeded to 'constructively' criticise my blending (????).
I returned upstairs and proceeded to spend a good while in front of the mirror batting my eyelashes at myself, trying to work out whether I, as a truly mediterranean olive skinned, dark eyed, curly haired brunette, could carry off this strongly blue look. Conclusion? Yes, on condition that I wear something stark and simple, either all black or all white, and if my skin is totally flawless with a very cool toned pink cheek and a neutral mouth. It's not the easiest of colours to pull off, but boy does it make brown eyes sparkle! I could suddenly see nuances of green and hazel in my eyes which normally are not apparent. Note to self and to all you dark-eyed lovelies: Will definitely be using bright blue as an accent colour rather than an all-over colour.

Not content with my blue adventure, I swiped off the eye make-up to try something else. Here I feel I must add, blue eyeshadow as pigmented as these are a NIGHTMARE to get off! I used Bioderma cleanser as it's extremely gentle and non-oily, important as I was going to be applying more make-up. If however you are going to wear blues, get out an oil based or bi-phase make-up remover, you're going to need it!
Next adventure, Project Acid, aka trying to find wearable looks using the Sleek Acid palette.

I picked the two arguably most 'unwearable' shades, the fluorescent yellow and the orange next to it. Trust, me the photo doesn't really do justice to how fluorescent these colours are. Think highlighter pens. I used the orange on the outer half of my eyes and the yellow on the inner half to create a summer citrus-y look. The good news is that these shades are not as pigmented as in some of the other palettes, which means that you get a really 'friendly' version of what you see in the palette. I ended up with a surprisingly chic-looking matte citrus eye which was very wearable. Noticeable, but not scary and, astonishingly, also very flattering! I added a feline slick of liquid liner and again popped downstairs to subject myself to the judgement of Mr P.

"You look like a parrot"
"Er, is that good or bad?"
"Actually, it's quite nice, you should do that next time we go out"
"So it's 'good' parrot then?"
"Yeah, but it's still parrot"

Conclusion? Fun, chic, wearable.... flattering! I love it, no matter what Mr Parrot says.

Well if I'm a parrot then he is too...

So, will you all be following 'parrot fashion'?



Sleek Make-up (delivers throughout Europe and most other countries)
http://www.sleekmakeup.com/en/categories/eye-shadow-17.aspx