Love Lip Color? All you need is Lip Liner.

I'm a little obsessed with lip color... in all kinds of shades, finishes, and wears.  If you have a similar addiction, you could go broke buying balms, glosses, lipsticks, lip glazes, stains, lip liners, etc.  For a much more economical way to experiment with all those fun colors, all you need is these three items to get the different finishes created by the products mentioned above:

• lip liner in color of choice
• clear lip balm
• clear lip gloss

Here are instructions and pictures to show you how:

Pantone-Inspired Beauty Haul

Pantone Color Institute recently announced its Color of the Year for 2012: Tangerine Tango.

“Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”

As a long-time fan of orange shades, I LOVE this color!   And on a Personal Shopping appointment yesterday, I saw two MAC lip colors that perfectly create this red-orange shade:

MAC Lipglass in Knockout.  MAC Lip Pencil in Entertain Me.

How gorgeous are these two colors?  Individually, they're beautiful, and combined they perfectly create the Tangerine Tango shade I love!

Lip Pencil on left; Lipglass on right.

Starting with the gloss, applied in a stippling motion, I then blended in a bit of the pencil for a sheer, tangerine wash on the lips.  Wear this with a light wash of bronzer or apricot brush on cheeks and strong brows with simple, neutral eyes for a chic daily look.  This color is gorgeous on all skin tones, especially those with slightly pinker undertones.  I hear Pantone will be coming out with a line for Sephora this year, but for those of us who want it now, check out MAC.  The Knockout Lipglass is limited edition, so hurry!!

What colors are you feeling this year?

New Beauty Resolutions for 2012

Happy New Year, beauties!  I wish you all a happy, healthy, and gorgeous year ahead :)

Now, getting on to the "gorgeous" part, here are some New Beauty Resolutions that will help keep us looking pretty all year and into the next:

1.  Clean Your Brushes.

This might sound like a no-brainer, but I'm always surprised by how many women don't wash their brushes... ever!  This is so important; brushes are a breeding ground for bacteria that can result in acne and  will contaminate your makeup.  So, wash your makeup brushes at least once a month with a gentle shampoo, following these simple steps:

• Wet the brushes and squirt a small amount of shampoo into the palm of your hand.
• Wash one brush at a time in the palm of your hand using a back-and-forth motion - this is really important, because using a swirling or circular motion will cause the brush fibers to twist around eachother and break.
• Rinse under flowing water and gently squeeze out all excess moisture, ensuring that the water runs clear out of the brush.
• Reshape the brush and lay on a towel or the side of your sink and let dry.

At least once a week, spritz your brushes with an anti-bacterial brush spray to keep bacteria at bay.