TGIF! I’m so excited today, I’ve partnered up with Ulta to bring you this spring makeup look celebrating the launch of Buxom Cosmetics at Ulta stores & ulta.com! This look is super fresh-face and daytime appropriate, I hope you love it!
It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with Rihanna. What a way to begin the week than her releasing two music videos for her new single Work. I love love love both videos so I just had to create two inspired looks in one tutorial. Let me know which one you love more!
My loves!!!! Thank you all so much for the incredible response to my latest video!! I’m sorry it took me a few days to get the product list up but the weekend got a bit busy. ICYMI today is Ekushey February (literally February 21st) – known around the world as International Mother Language Day, declared by UNESCO in 1999, honoring Bangladesh’s Language Movement as well as ethno-linguistic rights for all peoples around the world. I’ll end up writing a novel so I’ll leave it just at that so you can listen to my monologue in my video before the tutorial starts 🙂 I’ll be completely honest, I was a nervous wreck about speaking up about anything remotely political or racial because things are taken out of context so easily on the internet.. but to receive such a warm and open response was amazing and I’m so happy that I took the plunge.
To honor the day and my heritage I decided to create a traditional Bengali look, not to be confused with a look for Ekushey as it isn’t a happy day to remember. Traditionally in Bangladesh you’ll see everyone dressed in black & white on this day. I teamed up with my friend Sharifa Easmin and we both created different looks. Mine originally was going to look a lot like hers but she killed it – I went back to the drawing board and ended up getting super inspired by Aishwarya Rai in the movie Devdas. While she isn’t Bengali, her character (Paro) is and the styling, colors, and textiles in the movie are to die for.
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 highlightwhich 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!
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…