Phoenix Blood Cosmetics Review

Of course, I can't do a review of my own products; that is not ethical and usually not the kind of review people want to read.  Instead I have for you a review from a lovely lady who recently bought a bunch of samples and gave me the link to her blog.  Her name is Bobbie, and she's a sweetheart.
You can find her review here.

On another note, I am currently testing recipes for an eye shadow base to make my shadows last better.  I have tried several companies' bases, plus trying multiple  DIY remedies.  I want my base to grab onto shadows so that they show up nice and vibrant, but I also want the base to prevent creasing (my lids are dry, but in a shape that encourages creasing) and extend the life of my look.  I'll keep you posted!

Have a beautiful day, everyone!

Max Payne 3 Inspired FOTD

I only play video games sporadically, due to my tendency of taking them way too seriously, getting frustrated and not having any fun as a result.  My hubby, though, loves to play video games and I find a certain pleasure in watching him play and absorbing the visual style and story of the game (my favorite aspects anyway).  After the dark, broody nature of the original Max Payne, the third installment (yes, I skipped one) was odd in its sunny South American setting.  Here for you is a look that combines the bright, cheerful nature of yellow with a deep, melancholy green.   The colors are a bit more vivid in person; I was not able to use my nice camera today. :(

This angle shows the impact a lighter/brighter inner corner color really has on the overall shape and effect of the look.

Products Used:

Face:

• I made a foundation-like compound out of moisturizer, baby sunscreen, powder foundation and a smidge of stick concealer.  It works, so far at least, and doesn't have the nasty texture, et. al of regular liquid foundation.
• Physician's Formula mineral veil powder
• regular black mascara on brows.

Eyes:

• I used my own home made shadows like so-softly blended warm brown in the crease (Santa Barbara), yellow in the inner corner (Come On, Son), grass green on center of lid (Suck It, Gus!), dark green on outer corner, crease and lower lash line (Primeval), and sheer white sparkle under brow (Toothy).
• Generic black pencil liner to line upper lashline and upper and lower waterlines
• Almay Get Up and Grow mascara in black, two coats.

I forgot entirely to put anything on my lips...oops!

Anyway, hope you found this helpful, and have a fantastic day!

Gothic Mermaid Makeup Tutorial

My first ever tutorial!!!  It's just a slideshow, but I hope it still gets the point across.  It showcases some of the eye shadows I've been busy making.

Products Used:
Face-
generic moisturizer and sunscreen
Maybelline Cover Stick Concealer in Ivory
Meow Cosmetics Purrfect Puss powder foundation in Frisky Siamese
Eyes-
Phoenix Blood Cosmetics loose eyeshadow in Shining Armor (silver), Lady of the Lake (aqua), Gloaming (dark teal), Leviathan (dark charcoal gray), and A Very Juliet Story (light beige)
Detrivore Original eye shadow primer
Wet n Wild Fergie Take On the Day eye shadow primer
Wet n Wild non-waterproof liquid eyeliner
Almay Get Up and Grow mascara in black
Lips-
Morgana's Crypt lipstick in Absinthe

My Etsy shop for makeup can be found here, and is called Phoenix Blood.  

Have fun everyone, and have a wonderful day!

My Vanity Setup

I am a messy person.  I get so frustrated because, regardless of how civilized I feel, I seem to leave chaos and dirty teacups in my wake.  However, I was finally able to impose some order to my perfume and personal jewelry stash.  It's so unusual for me, I thought I'd share it.

I love old-fashioned perfume misters.  I found the fleur-de-lis one at Hobby Lobby (functional!) and filled it with inexpensive but yummy body spray (EDIT: I later found that the glue in the mister had been dissolved by the perfume, and the top came off and doused me.  Do not do this.), and I found the short one with the pink bubble at Goodwill.  It doesn't work, but it's still cute.  You can tell I have eclectic tastes; my scents range from a Bulgari unisex fragrance (which I love) to a silly $1 cotton candy-scented spray.

I keep my necklaces on my closet rack because they tangle so horribly in my jewelry box; that is now reserved for rings, earrings and decorative hair clips.  

I got this cool seance card in my last Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs order.  I thought the (broken) mirror slot in the box would be a perfect frame for display.  I just taped it in.

Anyway, have a marvelous summer everyone.  Goth on!

Rosy Nude FOTD

Finally, I am sharing with you a look done with makeup I made.  I didn't make all of it-there's still store-bought mascara and pencil eyeliner.  It will probably be a while before I try to make items that ambitious.  However, here is one of the favorite eye shadow colors I've made so far.  I named it Romanza after an Andrea Bocelli CD I like (it's not Goth, but I don't care! :) )

I also used it as blush.  It's a little frostier than I like my blush to be, so I might reformulate it with less shimmer to suit my tastes better. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Success!!!

I am incredibly excited because...I made my very first eye shadows today!  It is so much easier than I thought it would be, though I realized that I still have so much practicing to do before I can whip out some of the colors I really want to make.  I got my supplies from TKB Trading, and so far they are performing marvelously.  Now, to be fair, I've only made two colors so far, and they aren't terribly dark or Gothic...I made one shimmery butter-yellow and one glittery nude beige.  See, not that impressive.  I'm still so pleased with them though-especially since my beige was made with dark brown, magenta and bright yellow pigments.                 I will be making some wonderful brights and darks soon, though, and I will start showing you guys what my colors look like and how they perform.  So far my mix is quite opaque, smooth, blendable and long-wearing, and that's what really matters when it comes to this sort of thing.
'Til next time, have a glorious day!

Video Share-Pixiwoo Grunge

I know this sort of look is not for everyone, but I feel like certain aspects of the grunge look evoke a "tuberculosis chic" sort of feel.  In fact, though I have not tried cream eye shadow yet, I often wear brown eye shadow in the blown-out, kind of haphazard style shown in the vid.
Enjoy!

Have a wonder-filled day, everyone!

Video Share-DIY Corrective Concealer

If you have read some of my earlier posts, you know that I am a big fan of DIY fashion, beauty, and hair products.  I love to just dig in and try new things, especially since DIY usually has the advantage of being cheaper than ready-made products as well as being completely customizable to what you need.

Wayne Goss, Youtuber and makeup artist, is a proponent of corrective concealers for undereye darkness and overall issues with ashy or dull skin. In this video, he shows you how to make your own peach or pink-toned concealer to brighten the undereye area.  I haven't tried this yet, but I think I will just as soon as I can get my hands on some peach or coral lipstick.

So, what do you think of mixing your own concealer, or odd-colored correctors in general?  Comments are welcome.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a wonder-filled day!

The Care and Feeding of Eye Brows

When I was younger, I was convinced that I would never trim or pluck my eyebrows-that they just didn't grow that well.  Once I reached my late teens, I realized that my eyebrows do indeed grow-they are just various shades of blonde ranging from  practically transparent to light ash.  Since I started dying my hair, I have experimented with different ways to make my brows match my hair.  I started out with heavy eye brow pencil (thankfully that was short-lived), then moved on to matte eye shadow used as brow powder.  Recently, I have discovered something that makeup artists and beauty bloggers have already known about for ages-brow mascara.  Of course, I do not have the funds to try out lots of different specialized products (at least, not yet), so my experience with brow mascara started as a weird little voice in my brain that said, "Hey.  This is mascara.  It is black.  My hair is black.  What will happen if I put this regular black mascara on my eye brows?"  And, well, it worked.  Right now I am doing my "everyday face" with just mascaraed brows, since it's faster than powdering them, and using powder for special occasions or when I feel my makeup that day really needs a strong, full brow.  So, there you go.  Eventually I'm sure I will switch to actual brow mascara, since it is suuuuuper easy to put on too much regular mascara and get weird little smudges and clumps everywhere, but for now it works just fine.
Have you ever tried brow mascara? What is your favorite brow routine (or lack of)?  Feel free to comment and have a wonder-filled day!

Fake Nails-Victory or a Waste of Time?

I have been tempted lately by the ultimate quick manicure fix: glue-on false nails.  My fingernails naturally grow weak, super-flexible and prone to splitting, fraying and flaking.  I use a nail treatment regularly, but still cannot grow my nails past (most of the time even to) my fingertips.  I love the look of long, vampy, pointed nails, but I don't think I can achieve it without some artificial means.  Now, the downsides; I know from experiences by myself and friends that fake nails degrade your natural fingernails, sometimes to the point that they turn strange colors or develop bumps or warped surfaces.  Also, they are high-maintenance, often popping off at inconvenient times and clinging stubbornly when you want to remove them.
Anyway, I guess what I'm really saying is that it depends on your priorities when it comes to manicures.

What do you think? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
Have a wonder-filled day!

Goth Crafty Haul! Plus DIY Tips

My box from JoAnn's arrived only a day or two ago, and I've already nearly finished one of my 1-pound skeins of yarn.  I made some crocheted hair bows (pics coming soon) and the first two rows of my granny-square afghan.  It was originally going to be a little throw for the couch, but Hubby wanted to be able to snuggle so it will be closer to 5'x7'.  Yes, it will be enormous, and I might have to get yet another 1-pound skein of yarn just to finish it.  I'm really excited about the hair bows-new colors and variations are definitely in the works.  Two of them I embellished with little skull charms.  This is an example of how a little ingenuity can turn any cute little pattern or item into something deliciously dark.  I got my hair bow pattern from Crocheting the Day Away, a really popular crochet craft blog.  It's a super-simple, quick pattern, the original picture was of a bright yellow bow, and still my finished result is wonderfully Gothic Lolita in spirit.  Yes, I am a bit proud; I haven't crocheted anything in at least a year and a half and had no idea whether the skill had left me or not.
Keep expressing yourselves, and have a wonder-filled day!

Antsy, antsy, antsy...

I have more things in the mail, this time crafty ones.
It wasn't intentional, but somehow hubby and I managed to dress our bed in nothing but ugly beige and gray plaid, with a side of graphic checks and hubby's beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It doesn't look like a female even visits this bed, much less sleeps in it every night.  So, I decided to crochet a lovely black, lacy throw to give the bed some feminine, Gothy flair.  I decided on granny squares, because a) they are easy b) they are portable c) in one color they look fairly lacy without complicated stitch patterns d) each square is fairly small, so you get the "I'm done!" thrill many times during the course of the project.  I decided to order my yarn in huge one-pound skeins because it's less pricy that way.  Unfortunately, I accidentally ordered three of these ginormous skeins instead of two.  So, I will be making little hair bows to embellish and sell in my Etsy and Shopify shops.  I'm kind of glad to have all the extra yarn to play with, but...trust me, I'm never going to try to shop online using mobile devices again, that's for sure.

Video Share! Thrift Stores and Why We Love Them

I ran across this cool video from kazlovesbats which was too fun to only put into my makeup and style list on YouTube.

Any of you who are interested in thrifting, here is a video for you!

Have a wonder-filled day, and good luck thrifting!

DIY Leave-In Conditioner

This blog post is not sponsored in any way.  All products were bought with my own funds.
I am no chemist, so many recipes for home-made beauty products baffle me.  I'm not brave enough to try buying the individual ingredients contained in most beauty products and mixing my own, but I do love to save money and try new things.  My hair is dyed (the ends were blonde, then red before I went to black), and therefore fairly dry and fragile, so I decided that a leave-in conditioner was in order to supplement my regular in-shower conditioner.
Rambling aside, here is my simple, cheap recipe for leave-in conditioner.

Step 1-buy a cheap, lightweight conditioner.  I chose Suave Naturals in the scent Sweet Pea and Violet, because it smells yummy.  I only paid $1.50 for the whole bottle.

Ingredient time!

Step 2-get an empty spray bottle.  You can reuse the bottle from a non-aerosol hairspray or leave-in conditioner that you used up and washed really well, or you can get a bottle fairly cheap from Target, Sally's Beauty Supply, or tons of other places.

Step 3-fill the bottle with about an inch or so or your chosen conditioner.  Add more for a heavier, more moisturizing treatment; add less for a lighter finished product.  It's a matter of personal taste.

Step 4-fill your bottle the rest of the way with water.  If you have hard water or don't want any minerals touching your hair, you can use distilled or purified water.  I just used the tap.

Put the top back on, shake it all up, and you're done!  I love both the convenience and the frugality of this method.

On a side note, I had time to get a little fancy with my hair today, and added a little braid.

So much fun!  Thanks for visiting, and have a fantastic day!