Fables in Fashion

Lookbook #20 – MAC Feline

2010-09-01T00:42:48Z

I found a promo photo from the MAC Feline collection (released in USA, not Australia, disappointed but not surprised!), and knew I had to at least give it a shot! It would also be a good excuse to use my green eyeshadows, a group of shades I generally neglect

I wasn’t actually aiming to –look- like a cat, instead I wanted my photos to give off a “cat” like feel. You know, the sneaky, stealth like nature. I tried to achieve this through primarily via the lighting, I spent a lot of time playing around with how the lights were positioned. Again, just using my two cheapo Ikea lamps. I do these shoots completely on my own, so it involves a lot of “pose, hit the remote, check camera, rise and repeat”. Usually I’ll hook up my laptop to make it easier, but the poor thing decided to crash during this shoot >_<

How to reproduce:

Face
This was going to be a quick look, so I decided to skip the primer and go straight into Revlon’s ColorStay in Sand Beige and concealed with Bobbi Brown’s Creamy Concealer in Beige. Skipped the powder since I wanted that creamy / dewy look. But I would certainly use powder if I was to wear this out and for longer.

Cheeks
To get my cheeks to pop, I applied Giorgio Armani’s Sheer Blush in 3 to the hollows of my cheeks, then NARS Albatross to all my high points.

Eyes
Primed my eyes with MAC’s Paint in Bare Canvas, applied MAC’s Eyeshadow in Goldmine to the inner half of my lid, then Tempting to the remaining half. Blend together. On the crease I applied Swimming, and on the outer corner I used Humid. Blending is key for this look! I dusted some NARS Albatross to my brow bone.

I lightly lined my eyes with MAC Technakohl Liner in Graphblack, curled my lashes and applied one coat of L’Oreal’s Telescopic Mascara in Black.

Next I applied my false lashes. I prefer using lashes with a clear lash line, they just appear more natural to me (though are a tad more expensive).

You’ll notice the last 2 photos are different, as I attempted to try cat like eye brows on myself. I think they ended up looking more like “waves” than anything organic, but hey! It’s a first shot lol, and learning is what the lookbooks are all about! I used Lancome’s Le Crayon in Poudre Mahogany. I know I said it last lookbook, but man I really need a darker brow liner! Just can’t seem to find any that match my shade

Lips
Lined the outside of my lips with MAC Concealer in NC20, and applied NYX’s Round Lipstick Iced Lavender direct from the tube.

Review: Maybelline Color Sensational Lipsticks

2010-09-01T00:39:57Z

Pros:

Great pigmentation
Easy to use elegant packaging
Easy to obtain
Array of wearable colours

Cons:

Limited colours (nothing overly unique)
Texture can vary between colours

Price: $16.95AU

Where: Priceline, Coles, Woolsworth, Chemists etc

Currently, this is my favourite non-high end lipstick, the packaging is what caught my eye initially as it reminds me of Lancome products.

That aside, the quality of this product is lovely, it may not be as creamy as say YSL’s Rouge Volupte, but given the price point, some of the formulas are pretty close. I say some because for example, Pink Sand is a more frost finish and tends to feel a tad drier than Pink Please, which is a delightfully pigmented cream matte. That said, I would still recommend applying some lip balm first.

Throughout the day (including snacking and lunch) I’d say I would need to reapply this maybe 1-2 times after the initial morning application.

As mentioned above, the texture, finish and pigmentation varies from colour to colour. My least favourite finishes are the ones with frost, as the colour pay off tends to be lighter and less consistent. I tried my best to swatch the ones I currently own to hopefully give you a better idea as to what I mean:

In general, I would definitely recommend you try these out in person and avoid buying online if you can. As you can see, there is a big difference between the swatches and actual product, so try first. These lipsticks are great for everyday / general purpose. However, if you’re a costumer / makeup “artist” (I use the term lightly because I’m not an actual makeup artist, but as you can see from my lookbooks, I like to create art with makeup), I’d be keener on a wider range of colours. So I tend to only use these for work / outings etc.

So if you’re looking for good quality non-high end lipsticks, I would highly recommend these! You won’t be disappointed (In fact I need to purposely avoid walking past a Maybelline display every time I do my weekly Priceline run else I may end up drowning in these!)

Outfit of the Day: Snow Bunny

2010-08-31T11:16:09Z

I know I’m not actually in any snow, but this outfit just makes me feel like a snow bunny! How ironic too since today is the first day of Spring!

Shoes and sunglasses are my favourite aspects of this outfit, the shoes were about $35-40AU and the sunglasses were $8AU! I do love me some great steals!

Confessions of a blogger

2010-08-29T23:01:47Z

“What did you do on the weekend?” or “Got any plans this evening?”

Conventional questions I get asked at work all the time, whether out of sincerity or to fill the conversational void, they get asked. And my never failed response is, “oh nothing much”.

And yet we all know this is far from the case. In fact if you took a glance at my schedule, you’ll see every night I have something planned. And more often than not has to do with either cosplay, this blog or working on my portfolio.

Lookbooks take up a lot of my time, not just because I like to shoot in advanced, but because I tend to re-shoot them several times before I have a set of photos I feel are good enough to be put on this blog. But how exactly do you tell someone, who most likely isn’t that interested in your evening to begin with “I’m going to put on a lot of makeup, sit in my bedroom and take photos of myself”. Hmm… suddenly, “Going to work on my blog this evening” doesn’t sound as social inept anymore!

Yes, I’ve always wondered how dedicated bloggers with full time jobs outside of blogging even introduce the topic of their “other life”. Do you guys even bring it up? Or are you like me, juuust keep it to myself and not mention it at all?

P.S: Props to me, I finally linked Fables on my FaceBook page, where I’m linked with all my co-workers. So… step 1 right?

Lookbook #19 – Ruby Lips

2010-08-24T13:14:09Z

Since seeing a similar look online (but with silver diamonds), I knew I had to give this look a shot. It’s not as polished as I had hoped it would be, but I suspect that is in part due to my lack of photo shopping.

Gluing the gems on was obviously the most time consuming part. And I couldn’t eat or drink anything, so I made sure to do the lips last! The eyes were purposely left with a “soft’ smokey look, as I wanted the attention to go right to my lips. Other than that, hope you enjoy

How to reproduce:

Face
Apply some MAC Prep & Prime all over the face after washing and moisturising your face. Then I applied Revlon’s ColorStay in Sand Beige, the coverage is great! Unfortunately this particular shade is a touch too dark for me, I think I may need to mix it with a lighter foundation. (Though you probably can’t tell since my lighting is very strong). Conceal dark circles, redness and blemishes with Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer in Beige (this is my favourite concealer, I need to review it!). I chose not to seal with powder for a dewy look.

Cheeks
To achieve higher cheekbones, I applied MAC’s Blush in Azalea just under the apples of my cheek, then NARS Albatross on the apples of my cheeks, forehead, bridge of nose, jaw line and chin.

Eyes
Prime eyelids with MAC Studio Studio Finish Concealer SPF30+ in NC20, then I used NYX’s Winter in Moscow palette to create the smokey eye look. I unfortunately don’t know the name of the colours I used, but basically I used a lighter shimmery shade for my lid, a medium shimmer for my crease and a dark matte grey for the outer corner of my eye. I used the white shadow for the inner corner of my eye and brow bone.

Lined my upper and lower lash line with MAC Technakohl Liner in Graphblack, curled my lashes and applied 1 coat of L’Oreal’s Telescopic Mascara in Black.

I extended my brows using Lancome’s Le Crayon in Poudre Mahogany. My brows are naturally very dark, so I’m thinking I may need to get a darker brow pencil for the brows to appear more seamless.

Lips
Lined and filled in my lips using Savvy by DB’s Lip Liner in Poppy. Then using DUO lash glue, and a pack of small red gems I picked up from Riot, one by one glue each gem to my lips. I started by creating an outline first, then filling them in, much time later, done!

Review: Savvy by DB Luxury Liner

2010-08-26T10:53:04Z

Shimmering Slate, Illuminating Indigo, Glistening Green, Brilliant Bronze, Pearlescent Plum

Pros:

Fantastic price
Very pigmented
Smooth application
Strong staying power

Cons:

Can flake off under warm water
Sharpening can be messy

Price: $7.95AU

Where: Priceline

One of the problems with reading primarily American / British beauty blogs is that half the products they talk about, I can’t easily test / try out without buying it online (and even that can present it’s own set of obstacles). So when I made my weekly voyage into Priceline, I was talking to one of the SA about trying to find a creamy pencil liner that doesn’t budge. She recommended this.

Saavy by DB is a local brand, made in Germany, but distributed within Victoria (state loyalty!)

What I loved most about this liner is how it glides on my lids, absolutely no tugging at all (a personal pet peeve of mine, looking at you NYX pencil eye liners ). The colour pay off is amazing, exactly how it appears on the pencil. It goes on very creamy, and after about 20 seconds it dries and is almost impossible to budge. I wear mine to work, 14 hours later, you will notice hardly any wear.

And the best part is how cheap it is! The average MAC liner is around $30 – 35ish, so these are amazing! In fact after trying out the black, I had to go back and buy every colour, I’m a bit of a collector at heart. I also have Glitzy Gold, but unfortunately forgot to include it in the photos

My only complaint would be sharpening them, I personally haven’t done so yet (a little goes a long way), but given how soft and creamy the colour is, I think you could run into quite a bit of wastage during sharpening. Still, for $8, totally worth it

P.S: Since discovering Savvy by DB, I thought it would be cool start a Local Luxe series and include more local / Australian makeup brands on my blog So I will try my best to hunt them down, try them out and let you guys know whether they measure up Feel free to recommend brands if you know of any!

Manifest 2010: Final Costumes!

2010-08-24T06:11:59Z

Yay! The finished products I think like every other cosplayer, I can see the flaws and I just hope you guys can’t! I haven’t had an official shoot with either costume, so for now they won’t be appearing in their own gallery on Extreme Motion. I need to wait for warmer weather because I was literally freezing in all these photos hehe.

Shidou Hikaru

I can’t wait for warmer weather for this photo! I have a ton of ideas! But more importantly, I can’t wait till my Fuu and Umi are with me to do our official shoot!

Xiao Qiao

The fans! Oh, the relentless “fan” puns I got that day <3 There is a ton of detail missing from this costume, I really hope I finish it off before I get to my shoot~ These fans are not wind friendly (they hit me in the face several times), but they are very light and sturdy! Let's face it, awesome fans -made- this costume =D

Hope you enjoyed my costumes for Manifest 2010! Will annouce it here when I get my galleries for them on Extreme Motion up! Now it’s pretty much back to work for me, and hopefully once I have some time to recover (and catch up at work), I’ll be back on the sewing machine to bring you some new costumes Seriously, why can’t making costumes BE my job!?

Manifest 2010: Costumes!

2010-08-23T08:49:51Z

Like every year, I completed 2 costumes for Manifest. The first (and most time consuming) was Shidou Hikaru thanks for her sword, gems etc. And the second was Xiao Qiao. Unfortunately I only have 1 in progress photo of Xiao Qiao

Shidou Hikaru

I wasn’t keen on paying $50+ for a petticoat, so I decided to make my own based on one Sefie lent me. It was a bit of a pain, but at least it turned out perfect AND was much cheaper!

Red skirt and tunic were some of my favourite parts. Probably not as much as the cape… it was a pain to make, but came out perfect!

Hikaru’s wig was not hard to do, just annoyingly time consuming :/ I had to order a second long wig and cut out a bunch of wefts from it. Sew three together till I had 8 “bunches”, then I would glue them one by one to the short wig layer by layer.

Then I braided it and that would be Hikaru’s seamless ponytail! It looked great, but it’s not something I’d be keen to try again Took me 3-4 hrs all up. I had to use this method because none of the stand alone wefts were long enough and using a clip in ponytail wouldn’t provide that natural seamless look.

The most annoying part is that length of the long wig wasn’t 100% even, so the braid is starting to come undone a little, will probably re-braid and apply some hair spray before I do my official shoot.

Xiao Qiao

Unfortunately like I said above, I have only one in-progress shot of Xiao Qiao The hardest part was creating a pattern for the skirt, seriously. The skirt is like an uneven wrap, so it did take a bit of trial and error, so glad it worked out somehow in the end. And dyeing this was no walk in the park either, took about 1-2 days total of continous soaking, dipping, drying, soaking, dipping, drying etc Still, the result was awesome! Very happy with how the dye creeped

I really should have embroidered this part to be more authentic, but I was running short of time and turned to my paints to save me :/ I hate when that happens!

Manifest 2010: Propmaking (Swords, Resin & Fans!)

2010-08-22T23:17:32Z

I apologise before hand, I will be spamming this blog with about 3 posts recapping the making of my costumes for Manifest this year Let the photo spam begin!

Swords

This year (like most years) I was one of the judges for the cosplay competition. I thought it would be a neat idea for all 3 judges to cosplay from the same series, so I suggested we do the Magical Girls from Magical Knight Rayearth! Fuu, Umi and Hikaru. I was Hikaru, and decided to make everyone’s gems and swords…. cause I’m nuts like that XD

All swords started out this way (except Umi’s, just because Umi’s sword was SOOO easy in comparison, hardly any progress shots for Umi)

After much sanding and slicing the blades were shaped to look like this! Much love and thanks to Toby for helping me with this, we rotated and took turns with the sander @_@ Took us over 2 weekends to finish this, by the end of it I was literally coughing up saw dust XD

So this is how the end of my sword was done, the reason for the groove on one side of each blade was so we could embed a strong thick piece of wood down the center, it would act as the inner core strength for each sword. When you weilding a 2 metre sword around, you want to make sure it is very strong!

Glueing everything together =D

I carved the hilt of Fuu’s sword out of flower foam! This stuff gets EVERYWHERE, Sefie warned me before hand so I made sure to do everything outside.

Painted the blades with chrome, love the finish for them Here I have to thank my dad, having had years of woodworking experience (he built a lot of the furniture we have at home), he taught me a lot about how to obtain smooth finishes etc

I made the hilt for my sword out of wonderflex, I -love- wonderflex. Later this year I’ll be doing another order for armour related cosplay =D

Swords are done, minus the paint and gems! I didn’t get a finished photo of all of them together But the judges and I are planning a group photoshoot very soon, so you’ll get to see them completed in all their glory soon!

Resin
This was the first time I tried my hand at casting crystal resin, and it certainly paid off! I think when you see the finish produce you’ll agree that crystal resin was the way to go rather than just painting the gems on.

There isn’t much too it. I made the models first out of clay, then I created mould from them (the yellow stuff), THEN I just poured in the correct amount of resin and I was good to go! Obviously there is a little more to it than just that (a lot of sanding involved and glossing) I made everyone’s gems, and whilst it took forever (and FYI wet resin tastes bitter… eww), I’m glad I managed to get through it because the pay off was awesome!

Fans

I bought the white fans from a store in America a while ago, and went paint / foam crazy on them! I only seem to have one in-progress shot. Using my makeup mixing plate to mix the paint @_@ My hands were covered in paint by the end of it lol

And that’s it for props! Next will be in-progress costume shots!

Lookbook #18 – Sweet Sorrow

2010-08-12T23:49:08Z

I was aiming for an innocent, sweet yet dark look for this entry. I’m… still not sure I completely hit the mark, but I think I came close. Altering the shape of my brows really pulled it all together. This is the wig I have set aside for some future Yuffie cosplay, and I love how it looks on me. Makes me ALMOST tempted to cut my hair this short, though I can see my partner freaking out already.

I’ve become so addicted to playing around with my “studio” lights (I say “studios” because all I’m really using are two $20 lamp shades from Ikea lol). See how different the feel of the four smaller photos are compared to the middle photo? and all I did was move closer to the camera by a few inches! Amazing After Manifest, I will probably get a couple more lights to see what else I can come up with

Instead of just listing the products I used, I’ve decided to turn them into tutorials instead. Hopefully people will find them to be a lot more useful

How to reproduce:

Face
Apply 2 pumps of Revlon Photo Ready in Shell all over the face, don’t forget to blend into neckline. Conceal dark circles, redness and blemishes with Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer in Beige. Then seal with a light dusting of MAC Select Sheer / Loose in NC15.

Eyes
Prime eyelids and around the eyes with NYX Eyeshadow Base in 02 (pearl white). Apply a liberal amount of NYX’s Eyeshadow in Rust all over the lid with a focus on the crease, wing out to the side and apply under the eyes as well. Apply NYX’s Eyeshadow in Prune just above your crease, blend well. Next using MAC’s Technakohl Liner Graphblack, line 2/3 of your upper and lower lash line, including your waterline. Then extend the liner to create a wing like effect. Use MAC’s Eyeshadow in Carbon to re-trace these lines and smudge it out, then use it to go over the crease with a wet brush to intensify the look. Remember to wing out your eyeshadow. Add some MAC’s Eyeshadow in White Frost to your brow bone and inner corner of your eye.

Curl your lashes, and apply two coats of Covergirl Lash Blast in Very Black.

For the brows, brush them out, then shape them using your concealer. I flatted my eyebrows by concealing the “high points”. Then extended them to align with my eyeshadow with Lancome’s Le Crayon in Poudre Mahogany. Apply a coat of clear gel if your brow hairs need to be set.

Lips
Prime my lips with any matte, non-greasy lip balm. Then outline and fill in my lips with NYX’s Jumbo Lip Pencil in Vixen. I use a lip brush for precision. Finish off with a liberal amount of Chanel’s Aqualumiere Gloss in 17.