Hourglass Ambient Strobe Lighting Powder | Review

Woohoo we’re halfway through the week! Today I’m sharing with you one of my absolute favorite products – woohoo x2! It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders, I use them in almost every video and I am forever recommending them. They reflect light in the the most subtle, natural looking way and leave a soft-focus finish to the skin – leaving you looking absolutely flawless! A couple years back I purchased the Ambient Lighting Palette and that’s where my love affair began. Hourglass is a bit pricey but not only are they worth the money IMO, these powders are baked so they really last forever! I’ve barely made a dent in my first palette and since then I’ve bought a couple Ambient Lighting Blushes as well as the limited edition Ambient Lighting Edit. Being a true believer in the brand and product I was so excited to receive the new Ambient Strobe Lighting Powders on my doorstep, thank you Hourglass!!!

I’ve been using Incandescent Strobe Light in my latest few videos and now that I’ve properly researched the product a bit I realize I incorrectly described the new powders in a recent video. For some reason I was thinking that these were the same as the OG Ambient Lighting Powders and that “Strobe Lighting Powders” was just a classification of the new four shades.. wrong! They’re a new product all together! The original Ambient Lighting Powder is a finishing powder which is why I apply it at the very end of my face routine to illuminate certain high points of my face.. they create a very beautiful, polished, soft-focus glow; they are not a highlighter. The new Strobe Lighting Powders are somewhere in-between that and a highlighter – they’re designed to sculpt the face with light, creating depth and dimension for a refined, natural-looking highlight which is exactly what I was getting at when I was rambling about these powders on snapchat last week. For those of you that missed my snaps, I was demonstrating how and where I apply my Strobe Lighting powder. I apply it to the apples of my cheeks (not my cheekbones where my highlighter goes) to create a lifted, sculpted appearance as if I got my cheeks done. I’ve been getting so many compliments about my contour lately and I have to say that I haven’t changed my contour technique or routine at all.. I must have unintentionally been strobing! We’ve seen all the viral strobing videos using gobs and gobs of highlighter but I have to say that this is true strobing! I’m not knocking highlighting because I use these and still apply a highlighter to the tops of my cheekbones – I just wanted to distinguish between the two. I think these will be especially great for women that have a bit of imperfection to their skin; shimmers and highlights accentuate these imperfections but with the Strobe Lighting Powder’s concentrated ultra-fine mico-pearl particles will reflect light in a subtle, glow-from-within type of way. No metallic finish.

These four shades are universal for all skintones so there is no wrong selection – it all comes down to personal preference. I’ve been using Incandescent Strobe Light which is a light pinky-beige and I just realized that it was originally in the Ambient Lighting Palette! No wonder I gravitated towards it immediately -_- I need to hide it so I actually experiment with the others. Iridescent Strobe Light is an illuminating pink, Euphoric Strobe Light is a pearlescent beige (neutral), & Brilliant Strobe Light is a light yellow golden shade.

Hourglass also just released the Ambient Strobe Light Sculptor, a dual ended sponge that allows you to precisely apply your powders and sculpt the high points of your face. The edges and tip are perfect for the bridge of your nose and cupids bow!

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What’s in my Makeup Bag | Valentine’s Weekend

Happy Valentine’s Day from Carmel-by-the-sea, California! Waseem and I ventured out to explore a little bit of California for the first time after a year of living here. Our new home-state has so much to offer and it took us forever to decide where to go! We decided to go…

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Chocolate Cherry Valentine’s Day Makeup

Hi my sweethearts!! For this Valentine’s Day look I originally wanted to go the uber-traditional route and do something with the bright red lip. When I sat down to paint my face I began veering away.. I figured a red-lip look would be really typical and besides, that’s what I wore last year! Then I started playing with my Naked 3 palette thinking I was going to do a rose gold look. I ended up ditching all that and going back to my one true love.. neutrals 🙂 To keep in the Valentine’s Day spirit I chose neutral shades with a rosy flavor – & the chocolate cherry look was born! I got to try out a couple of my new Coloupop Ultra Satin Liquid Lipsticks for this look and I have to say that I love them so much! *gasp* I love them even more than the Ultra Matte formula. I won’t get into it too much now though.. I’ll save it for the review 🙂 Enjoy the tutorial and I hope you all have a magical weekend!

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Sweetheart Valentine’s Day Makeup

Hi babes!!! It’s Valentine’s week, yayy!! I love seeing all the candy and gifts stocked all over the shelves at this time of the year.. it always brings back such lovely gradeschool memories of decorating our boxes and buying Valentines for everyone in your class. Today I was inspired by Sweethearts – the candy! I wanted to do a bunch of different lip colors with this look at the end but ended up loving my pink lip so much I didn’t want to take it off and change it 🙂 I am giving away one of the colors I didn’t end up wearing though: Tarte’s Lip Paint in the color “Yaassss”! Another tube of it showed up at my doorstep today haha so there will be two winners instead of one! The winners will be chosen on Valentine’s Day, good luck! All the entry details are HERE.

I hope you guys love the tutorial, you guys gave me such wonderful feedback last night on snapchat. Thank you 🙂

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Tarte Tarteist Lip Paint & Lip Crayon | Swatches & GIVEAWAY

Tarte’s new Tarteist Lip Paints are described as ultra-pigmented, matte liquid lipsticks. They are super pigmented but I don’t think I would quite describe them as a liquid lipstick – which is not a bad thing! They’ve very comfortable on the lips and not drying at all. They feel more like a lip cream and dry to a more velvety, soft finish. I would compare them more to NYX Lip Creams than Anastasia or Colourpop liquid lipsticks. I swatched the first 10 shades that were released late last year for you today; there are a fewer new colors since then which I don’t have yet including a VIB Rouge exclusive, Fomo (which I totally have FOMO over!!).  I loved all but two of the colors & being a girl that doesn’t experiment with lip color very much… that is a big surprise! Yay! Paired with the lip paints are the new Tarteist Lip Crayons – these are unbelievely pigmented, you won’t need more than a swipe. My one gripe is that they are a little drying and pull on the skin a bit. Latergram is my new favorite neutral liner especially for my skintone and I broke the tip off my crayon already because of how hard I was tugging – waah! It just had to be my favorite color that broke. Make sure you don’t twist up too far before applying or you might snap yours too!

I am giving away a brand new tube of Yaassss so be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post. Enjoy & good luck!!

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