Tag: alima pure


The Beauty Of It Is + Spirit Beauty Lounge + Burt’s Bees bring you three weeks of ‘for the love of green beauty’ gift giveaways!

February 6th, 2014 — 6:31pm

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Happy Valentine’s Month beautiful readers!

I’ve never won anything. (At least not anything that I really wanted.) Have you? Spirit Beauty Lounge and I have teamed up to make it happen for 18 of you! Let the ‘for the love of green beauty’ gift giving begin!!

Every weekday for the rest of this month you have the chance to win one of the beautiful gifts featured above.  There’ll be a mixture of our favorites in green beauty, from skincare and haircare to makeup and nail polish from brands like Lina Hanson, Kjaer Weis, Tata Harper, Ila, W3LL people, Rahua, RMS, Mun, Strange Invisibles, Maya Water, Vapour Organic Beauty, Soapwalla Kitchen, Chocolate Sun, Alima Pure, Tatcha, Dr. Bronners, Kure Bazaar, BKR.

It’s super simple to enter; just click through the prompts on my Facebook page. The first giveaway is the delicious face oil from Mun… you won’t be disappointed!!!

oxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

 

 

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get Olivia Munn’s glowing skin and smokey bronzed eye

July 13th, 2013 — 9:04pm

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This image was taken the first time I worked with Olivia a few months ago. I’d always admired how great her makeup looks on the red carpet, and always thought she was one of the most beautiful actresses around. Olivia definitely knows how she looks her best – from the shape of the eyeshadow, to the angle of the eyeliner, and the placement of contour and cheek color. She shared with me that she’s worked with a fantastic makeup artist in Los Angeles for many years, and from the pictures she’s shown me from the events where she’s done her own makeup, it’s obvious that she, herself, seriously knows how to paint her own face – and put on false eyelashes better than anyone else I’ve ever known!

Before I tell you how to recreate this makeup look for yourself, I want to share with you this story:

Recently I arrived at Olivia’s hotel room to do her makeup for a TV show appearance. Before taking a seat in front of me, she reached into her purse and pulled out small bag containing a bottle of nail polish and a bottle of polish remover she’d just picked up at Whole Foods.  I was so excited (as only a green makeup artist can be) by what I saw.  Of all the options she had between the equally as close in proximity drug store, mainstream grocery store, and beauty supply shop, she made it a point to spend her dollars on nail products that are made by companies that have made a concerted effort to be as toxin-free as possible. The color was a killer shade of red, and the remover worked extremely well to remove the polish she started out wearing.  It’s the little purchases like this that say a lot. Companies that attempt to do better for the environment and for their consumers need our support.

Just one more reason why I’m so stoked to work with Olivia. Plus she personally makes the rounds to say thank you, and shakes the hand of every single person that had even the smallest roll on whatever photo or video shoot she’s working on. Who does that?! Olivia does, and it makes everyone feel *so* good.

Okay, back to telling you how you can make your own face glowy and bronzed:

FACE:

  • I favored a really dewy complexion for this glowy look. I started with a tiny bit of La Bella Figura’s Rainforest Hydration Treatment and thoroughly massaged it into her face and neck. A little goes a long way to intensely hydrating skin. I waited about 20 minutes until it had fully absorbed to begin perfecting her skin, which works out well since I always start with eye makeup first.
  • Once I finished her eyes, I used Vapour Organic Beauty’s Atmosphere Luminous Foundation Stick, applied with a small foundation brush, and worked it into the areas in need, patting it into place with a damp – but not at all wet to the touch – beauty blender sponge.
  • I started building the bronzed glow by first laying down a layer of cream highlighter from RMS beauty (living luminizer) on the areas of her face that I wanted to reflect the most light in front of the paparazzi: the bridge of her nose, her cheekbones and her cupids bow.
  • It wasn’t until I was nearly finished with the rest of her makeup, that I went back and mixed two colorful shades of Vapour cream cheek stick color in Torch and Courtesean  on my small, fluffy brush, and swirled them around the apples of her cheeks, just to give a brightness to her face.
  • Then I went to work with my favorite Dr. Hauschka powder bronzer, placing it onto her skin with a large, fluffy, super soft powder brush. The trick when powdering on top of cream is to make sure the cream has set as much as it can, and then place the powder color on top with a large brush. If you buff it too much you run the risk of smearing the cream below and creating streaks.
  • To finish her cheeks, I went back with a matte brown bronzer called Mauna Lao, from Alima Pure to add more definition to her cheekbones, and I softly placed the powder underneath them with a small eyeshadow blender brush, to really make them pop.

ON HER EYES:

  • I love Kjaer Weis’ eyeshadows and use them all the time. Here I placed ‘Charmed’ under her eye, and then over her entire lid, blending it upwards for a sheer application from crease to brow. Then I used my same Dr. Hauschka’s matte bronzer with a fluffy eyeshadow blending brush to create a little depth in her crease, particularly towards the outer edge.
  • It’s no secret that I love some serious lashes, so I curled the heck out of hers, and then applied 400 coats of covergirl lash blast, in very black (and a few individual fake lashes from Ardell for a little extra depth)
  • I filled in her brows with a deep brown brow pencil

ON HER LIPS

Et voila.

Thanks to Glamour magazine for calling Oliva’s look out in July’s issue as a beautiful way to bronze!

Just look at that face! Gorgeous!

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show the world that less is more: super basic makeup 101.

December 24th, 2012 — 5:12am

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photo: Tim Bell

This is my beautiful friend, Mini Anden.  To have a conversation with her, you’d have no idea she was born and raised in Sweden because she doesn’t have a trace of an accent. We’ve known each other for a number of years now, and I absolutely adore her. She’s really intelligent, we have the same sense of humor   (I love it when she cracks us both up while I’m doing her makeup), and she’s a great listener and advice-giver. All of that mushy stuff aside, she’s an incredible model, and at just under 6 ft tall with a body that she subjects to intense workouts including a fusion of pilates and boxing known as piloxing (she has serious abs that I’ve actually tried punching just to see how strong they are – and they kinda hurt my hand!), she’ll have a career in front of the camera for as long as she wants.

She’s also a totally natural beauty. I really prefer how she looks mostly bare-faced, unless she’s been made up for an editorial photo shoot in a magazine with really intense makeup. Her eyes are incredibly blue, in that almost unreal, is-she-wearing-colored-contacts? way.  She’s also a perfect freckle-face, with tons of cute dots all over, although the size of this photo doesn’t let you see just how intense they are.

We shot the photo above after a long day on set, after she’d taken off most of the makeup I’d put on her for the day’s shoot. As you likely know from the makeup I do, I like to accentuate the beauty that already radiates from each woman, rather than drawing her a new face on top of the one that exists. In Mini’s case, I wanted to show how just a little eye makeup and slight skin perfecting makes for a polished look.

We did a very basic touch up before putting her in front of a window, against a white wall with no fancy lighting or makeup tricks used.

The products I used were:

Toning Mist, Kahina Giving Beauty: I had Mini close her eyes, and on her freshly washed face, I generously sprayed this mist to help replenish moisture and calm her skin.

Facial Lotion, Kahina Giving Beauty: I’d already given Mini a face massage with oil earlier in the day, so for this photograph I opted to use a less dew-inducing option, while still offering great hydration.

Shu Uemura Eyelash Curler:  I know many people are scared to curl lashes once they’ve been coated with mascara, but if you do it carefully, and just barely tap the curler when you’re holding it just at the root, you’ll be fine. NO TIGHT SQUEEZING here, please. You’ll take off the mascara where the metal touches your lashes and have a blank space that no amount of recoating will really help cover.

‘Cloud Nine’, Kjaer Weis Eye Shadow: This is one of those really flattering (for fair to medium complexions) champagne/ivory shades with a pearly finish that does a great job of illuminating the eye without leaving behind those horrible bits of glitter. Using this MAC brush I like to place the eyeshadow in the inner corners of the eye, in the very center of the lid, and trace a bit underneath the bottom lashes. I then use my clean finger tip to gently blend the shadow into the skin in the inner corner, and generally I’ll use this brush from Laura Mercier to buff the shadow into the lid.

Black Eyeliner, Vapour Organic Beauty:  Just a light smudge of an eyeliner swiped and pressed into the under side of the outer edge of the top lashes, and then wiggled in between the lashes, and maybe even just a teeny bit smudged on top of the outer edge of the upper lash can do a lot to emphasize the eye without making it look made up.  Depending on the shape and color of your eye, you might find your eye looks best with the entire inner rim lightly darkened, but for most almond shaped eyes, accentuating the outer upper lash line is just enough.  You can try this look with a brown, gray, taupe, or even purple or navy liner to see which you like best.  Different colors will accentuate your eye color ; for me a dark purple liner will not so much read as ‘she’s wearing purple!’, but will simply make the green of my hazel eyes pop.

Very Black, Lash Blast Mascara by Covergirl: I love dark black lashes, even if it’s just a light coating. As I’ve said countless times, this mascara is super black (whereas so many others are more of a light black, almost gray), and can be layered for a more intense look. If you read my blog because you’re looking for only ‘green’ beauty recommendations, I apologize – this isn’t one of them!

Concealer, Mineral Fusion: I like these concealer duos because similarly to the much acclaimed Laura Mercier secret camoflauge duos, you can blend different amounts of the two colors together to get the exact shade you need for the specific part of your face on which you’re laying the product. Under your eye, for example, you’ll want to use a high concentration of a peach/orange concealer to combat the purple – trust me, it totally works. I’ve used straight orange pigment to cover super dark circles under the eyes of women with very deep complexions with great success. Then you blend the more skin-colored shade over top and pat with your ring finger to create a seamless cover on the skin.

On most faces I concentrate on coverage under the inner 1/3 of the eye (never put concealer under the outer 1/3 of the eye unless you want to accentuate your fine lines and wrinkles!), underneath, and around the outer edges of the nostrils, and on any spots or redness/discoloration you may have, but only if you ensure you’ve blended both the color and texture into your skin so that you’re not just highlighting the spot.  For small blemishes, using a really tiny brush like this with a concealer that matches your skin exactly can be helpful.

Bone Beige, MAC sculpting powder: I often swirl this underneath and on to cheekbones as a sculpting powder and I like it, as well, as a non-shimmering bronzer. On Mini, I lightly underlined her cheekbones with Bone Beige using this contour brush.

Freja, Luminous Shimmer Blush, by Alima Pure: I’m usually against products with particles of glimmer, but in this case, they’re really very small, and the color and glimmer combine nicely to give a very-barely-there-pink to the apple of the cheek.

Honey Lip Balm, Burts Bees: Mini put this on herself, as per usual. Ever since I can remember, I’ve seen Mini with this little yellow tube in her pocket, purse, or hand. I can honestly say, it does her lips right, and I’ve never seen them chapped!

 

Just for fun, here are two shots of Mini that I love that really show how transformative a little makeup/hair/styling can be. Note her dark eyebrows in the first one. They look incredible for this photo, but would look shocking if you ran into her at the grocery store looking like that.

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One last endearing thing I’ll leave you with about Mini is that she and her husband, Taber, have a house full of dogs. Mini tweets pictures of them in various positions that make me laugh and laugh. I took an immediate liking to Gus, the skinniest, long-nosed munchkin in the center of the first photo; i think it’s because we resemble one another.

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Thank you, Mini, my love!!!

 

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