"Royal" Tea with Beautylish!

In light of recent current events, I almost forgot a royal wedding occurred on Friday! I didn't stay up late to watch but did catch most of the recaps later. I think Kate looked beautiful and really loved her dress. My favorite part is probably a toss up between Will and Kate cruising out of Buckingham Palace in the Aston Martin convertible and seeing the little niece covering her ears and looking generally displeased during the smooches on the balcony. :)

To celebrate the Royal Wedding, I attended a tea party in San Francisco held by one of my favorite beauty sites, Beautylish. If you are not familiar with the site, I highly recommend checking it out! It's basically a beauty-centric social networking site where you can find/contribute beauty-related articles, product reviews, tips, video tutorials, etc and, of course, interact with your fellow beauty junkies. You can find me on Beautylish here.

Our little tea party was held at Dartealing Lounge - my first time to this super cute place!

See - isn't it darling? I love all the mismatched decor!

My place setting:

They had dozens of teas to choose from! We were a bit overwhelmed when we saw the menu because everything sounded so good. Shown here is the "Pinky Minky" tea :)

And of course, the three tiered tray of sandwiches:

You gotta have crumpets (or scones to me, haha) and clotted cream :)

And to top the lovely afternoon off - mimosas!

Met some great ladies!

We even got cute little gift bags with a Beautylish T-shirt and a lip gloss :) The lip gloss is from a London-based brand and the back of it read, "No More Waity, Katie" :-O LOL!

Thank you so much, Beautylish, for a lovely (and tasty!) afternoon! It was so much fun enjoying teatime and chatting about Will & Kate's wedding with so many awesome ladies such as style bloggers Britt and Whit, http://www.brittandwhit.com, and Jasmine who has awesome hair and makeup tutorials at http://www.youtube.com/jazziebabycakes. Definitely some fun stuff there! :)

What were your thoughts on the Royal Wedding?

Awakening with Dior

I think I stumbled onto something in my last post. I bet I could do a whole series of "Oh, wow, I forgot I had this!" blog posts. So let's do it, shall we?

Today's post is about the Dior Addict Lip Glow, a color awakening lip balm.

I acquired this product last year when I attended a Dior makeup seminar held by makeup artist, Lauren Warner, at Macy's in Union Square. It was a fun two hour demonstration and I actually got to be one of the "models" for the class.

You weren't required to buy anything but anytime I go to some kind of a makeup event, I always feel obligated to buy *something*. Lauren used Lip Glow on me and I really liked it (and let's be honest, it's probably the most affordable item in their line-up). So I picked it up and took it home where it then got buried in my makeup stash. :-O During spring cleaning, the stash has recently been organized and I could no longer ignore this pretty product.

So how does Dior describe their "Color Awakening Lipbalm"?

A made-to-measure lip balm that beautifies and durably enhances the lips’ natural color. A customized color result : thanks to its Color Reviver technology, Dior Addict Lip Glow reacts directly with the unique chemistry of each woman’s lips before releasing its color ingredient. Lips seem revived from within, amazingly fresh, full and radiant. In addition, its SPF10 formula enriched with wild mango and luffa cylindrica continuously protects and moisturizes. A universal balm for all lips.

At the basic level, it's a fancy looking lip balm. But it really does add some color to your lips. And no, it's not the bubble gum pink you would expect from the image - mine almost looks slightly coral-y. It still looks like your natural lips but *awakened* with an extra boost of color, which is perfect for me because I like to keep it simple for every day.

And how cute is the packaging??? That really might be the biggest selling point for me. It is so darling, it almost makes me feel like a princess! ;)

I mean, seriously, how cute is this???

Dior Addict Lip Glow retails for $29. Yes, a bit pricey for what is basically a lip balm but it really does "awaken" your natural lip color. And the super cute packaging is what secured the deal for me!

Late to the Party: MAC Vanilla Pigment

There are many benefits to cleaning out and reorganizing your makeup kit. For example, the always delightful "Oh, wow, I forgot I had this!" moment. This happened to me recently when I discovered a tiny jar hidden in the back of one of the trays of my traincase - MAC Vanilla Pigment.

Have you used this product? I've heard lots of people raving about it and it is often mentioned as one of the "must haves" in several MAC Master classes I've taken. I probably picked it up during one of those said classes, gave it a home in my kit, and then promptly forgot about it.

Well it was good timing that I re-discovered it as I had a bridal trial this past Sunday. I was getting ready to apply some highlighter, when it occurred to me that this was a perfect opportunity to make use of the Vanilla pigment!

Now you have to be careful with these because there's no sifter or anything. And in all honesty, I usually avoid pigments because I'm terrified of spilling them everywhere. :) There is a thin plastic lid on top that had just enough pigment on it so I applied it from there using a small duo fiber brush (specifically, my Costco version of the MAC 188 brush).

Making sure to tap off any excess, I applied it to the top of her cheekbones and it looked beautiful! It's one of those colors that you can't really see but as she turns her face, you'll see a really pretty sheen and glow and it really lights up her face! It looks to be golden-pinkish in color with just enough shimmer. I also added a bit to her eyes as well - under the arch of her brows and by her inner tear ducts.

I really loved the overall effect, looked very "bridal" to me. The product is also multi-purpose, I've read how other peeps have actually mixed a bit of the vanilla pigment with their foundation to give their face a more dewy, glowy look!

Let me know if you use this product and what you think about it, or if you have a different "must have" product for highlighting.

Welcome to My "New" Makeup Blog!

Hello everyone! Welcome to my brand new "Makeup by Audrey" blog. If you glance below, you might be wondering how is this a *new* blog when there are already so many entries. No? Well, I'm going to explain anyway. ;)

Just to give you a little background - I have been blogging on various blogs for several years. I've actually been blogging about makeup specifically since 2008 when I was just discovering my love for it. (No, sadly I'm not one of those makeup artists born with a brush in her hand, haha!) If you go back to my old entries, you can see all my "experiments" with makeup as I went through my learning process. I think it's rather fun to see where I was before compared to where I am now so I decided to carry over all my older posts to this blog. That's why you might see some odd links or references.

This is the very first original post of the brand new "Makeup by Audrey" blog.  I plan to write about my adventures as a makeup artist in addition to the general makeup love. ;)

If there's anything you'd like to see, please let me know! Be sure to follow, subscribe, bookmark, etc :D

Playing with Polyvore

Experimenting with Polyvore... have seen this used on a lot of blogs and wanted to try it myself!

Here I made an image set of the everyday makeup products I use. Want to know more details on them? Click the image and get more info on each individual item! Handy!

Everyday Makeup by audgepodge1 on Polyvore.com

I've seen this tool used more often to show fashion ideas - like "must have items" or "wish list" etc...

I think this would also be a great tool to pass along to some of my photographer friends who do fashion shoots. Instead of scouring the web for magazine fashion images, they can use this tool to quickly compile some inspiration looks for use as a "concept board" with their wardrobe stylists!

Give the tool a try... very easy to use!

In Case You Missed It...

If you're following me on Facebook or Twitter, you've seen these already, but just in case...

My friend Karen from Makeup and Beauty Blog asked me to provide some guest posts while she vacationed in Hawaii (ah, jealous!) and I was thrilled to help out!

Here are all of my posts from the last couple of weeks - enjoy :)

• Three Fun Makeup Sets to Add to Your Christmas Wish List
• Black Friday Deals: Have You Tried These Makeup Brands Before?
• My Favorite Travel Makeup Bag May Come as a Surprise
• 6 Fast Fixes for Makeup Boo Boos
• Going Behind the Scenes: A Makeup Artist’s Take on a Magazine Fashion Shoot

Romantic Dress Shoot

OK... so I haven't been doing a very good job with blogging about makeup and the work I've been doing on photo shoots and what not. Well guess what? Today someone did the job for me! So let me just send you over there to see the fun shoot I worked on today.

Today I worked with the wonderful stylist, Lim, and she is all over the blogging! Here are some teaser pics... headed over to her blog for more behind the scenes info. There are also some additional posts on Lim's styling and our team.

Just adding the final touches on Becky, our fab model

Ryan shooting and Becky working it

Team pic! Steph (hair), me (makeup), Lim (stylist), Becky (model)