Affordable Tool for Success: Eye Liner Brush!

Hello, once again!

Today I finally found the one thing I've been looking for a great deal of time. It's a brush for gel eye liner. 

You know how they say that even if you use drugstore makeup which could be less expensive but still of a good quality, but it is quite recommended to invest in good brushes/tools? 

Well, it had become quite popular buying brushes that are said to be made for painting/crafts and use it for eye liner as they are the same thing sometimes and also would cost you much much less!

I've been looking for it in various art student/painters/craft stores, but the prices are still high as the brushes sold there are for proffessional use mostly.

Today I stopped by a store called "Tiimari" which sells office supplies, decorations and items for all sorts of crafts. The shop is not targeted for proffessionals, but rather for everyone. And I found it! It is called Royal Crafter's Choice Grip 9160 in size 1/8". And it was't expensive at all. In my local currency it cost 7 Litas which equals 2 EUR. Great deal!

So now I can strat using my Maybelline Eyestudio gel eye liner with ease! 

What it also impoartant is that the eye liner comes packaged with it's own brush and I will compare it to the craft's one. Plus, a yeah or two ago I've had gel eye liner from Essence which had the exact same packaging as the Maybelline one and also came with a brush. It was much cheaper. I added it to the comparison too.

So, here are the parameters of the craft brush and three brushes compared together (the ruler shows cm/mm).

Next I am showing the line all three brushes create for comparison. See how the crafty brush is doing a fantastic job? 

I think that the difference is amazing!

And for the end I wanted to show the eye liner itself. Notice the pointy cat eye it created. 

Talking about the quality of this Maybelline  Eyestudio gel eye liner I must say that I have mixed experience: 1. It's very hard to wash it off once you swatch it on the back of your hand! After I swatched it for this blog post, I had to scrub it super hard and it still didn't come of completely! 2. When I would wehre it for the day, it would transfer to the lower part of my eye under the cat I wing. Note that my skin does get oily. So it could be that the natural oils do make it move (since it is know that oil does help remove makeup). 

SO: it is quite waterptoof, but not oil proof (which is good when you'll need to remove it).

I really hope that it will inpire some of you to go  check your craft stores and get one, because the ones ment for the use acan be quite expensive.

Thank you for reading! Hope you are having a lovely day.:)

P.S. If you are form Lithuania, you can find more information about the brushes at http://cityart.lt/lt/royal-brush-teptukai 

Review: My Holy Grail Conditioner!

In this post I would like to tell you about  my favourite hair conditioner so far.

Some background about my hair:

My hair is relatively long at this point. Six months ago I had half of my lower hair lightened to achieve ombre effect which I really grown into loving. My hair is brown with a few highlihgts here and there, and lightening the ends just brought some life to my hair.

Anyway, after that my hair became quite dry and damaged, which I was afraid the most. At the time for conditioning my hair I used Garnier Fructis nutri-repair hair mask.

Now, I know this is a hair mask but I used it as a conditioner since my hair is quite dry at the ends. And I really loved it. After washing it out, my hair would feel soft and moisterized. 

Four months or so ago, I found this store which provides a huuuge range of salon products for hairdressers. And that's where I found products from Macademia. I bought their Nourishing Leave-in Cream in a small tube and a few samples of their Deep Repair Masque.

After using the leave-in cream I realized that it doesn't help my hair much. I didn't get the results I was expecting but it would make my ends softer.

The Deep repair masque was what I really fell in love with. I would still use my garnier for conditioning my hair on the regular basis, but once a week I would use the masque on my hair. I would leave it for 10 minutes and then my hair would be softest ever after using any product. 

I remember I bought 2 samples of the masque, and they were enough for 6 uses (my hair is long but not too thick, so I don't use a lot of product). And really, this product is amazing and smells gorgeous!

After those six uses I was out of my miracle masque. And frankly, I was kind of lazy to go back to that store. And, tose products are quite expensive.;/

As I was out of my garnier hair mask as well, I went to the drug store to buy more. I didn't find the exact same one (that was odd, as it would always be in stock). I found a similar one in a diferent colour packaging, it seemed to have the same if not more fantastic claimes, so I took it. (Garnier fructis oil repair one-minute mask).

I was still sad that my miracle masque has ended, but! I noticed that using this actually leaves the same feel to my hair. This is a one-minute mask, but again, I use it as conditioner. I love it! Before washing my hair is usually tangled and hard to brush through, but already when I am washing the product out, I can freely brush my finger through it! :)

So this Garnier product is pretty cheap compared to Macademia products I tried. And will dare to say that , at least on my dry damaged hair, it achieves almost the same results! :) 

And! I use it as a conditioner on regular basis, and once in a while - as a mask, just leave it for longer in hair. 

Also, I have just checked both of the Garnie products for ingridients, and it seems that they are the same... So I kinf of failed to find the difeence between them...;/

P.s. I am not claiming that this somehow "repaired" my hair, which is damaged from dying (or more like bleaching a bit). This product makes damaged hair easier to manage and look and feel healthier.

Academical drawings? Think 3D!

Hey guys!

I have a few thoughts on eyes today. Well, it's more like something I always have in mind whilst doing my eyes.

I've had lots of classes on academical drawing where we would analyze antique "heads", their facial features and try our best to depict them well. 

One of the most often things teachers would say is to treat face as a 3-dimensional object. Yes. Although faces are more viewed from the front, profile (which is the side view) also does characterize us. 

And every single detail on the face must be viewed as 3D, including eyes!

We all now that eyes are basically balls. And eyelids cover the front part. But what is crucial to understand, for example while drawing it, is that eyelids curve around the eye… (I guess you could say that I have been greatly influenced by academical drawing and antique beauty :)

So where I am going with all this?  Well, my main issue is when creating a cat eye using winged eye line, it looks great from the front (that's obvious as you do it looking straight at your eye), but as I turn my head, it rather looks weird >.<. Mainly because my upper eyelid goes down at the side and the winged eyeliner looks like nonsense (at least to me). 

Ah, maybe I am over thinking but this is one thing that I am picky about - doing my eye makeup so that it has no flaws for my liking.

And that is why I always check the sides of my eyes  whilst working of them! :)

I hope this "ramble" made any sense. Hope you have a lovely day!

Always happy to share thoughts - 

Miss K.