Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: My Favorite Daaaark Makeup

Let me be clear (Obama voice) -- I like dark shit. On the inside, my darkness level hovers around Wednesday Adams and Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice arena. I'm not on, like, a Richard Ramirez/John Wayne Gacy tip; clowns are horrifying (and so is serial murder, I guess), but I'm not a lollipops and sunshine-y person so much. As if you couldn't tell by my ability to rattle off serial killer names.

My love of darkness also extends to my beauty obsessions. Don't get me wrong, I love a bright lipstick and nail polish, but I'm just DRAWN TO ROLLING THE DEEEEEEP. (Side note: I miss you, Adele. Where's that new album, homie?)

This post is all about the darkest of the darkness, and here I am wearing brown eyeliner in this picture, like a bitch. But look at those lips -- it doesn't get much darker. Let's investigate.

Lips That Are Straight-Up DARKSIDED!

Dark lipstick makes you look like someone that's not to be effed with. If you want to look like you want to be effed with, you can skip ahead.

I have a couple of deep wine/berry/Pinot Noir/I'm running out of descriptives lipsticks that I like to mess with. For matte lips, I'm all about ColourPop Lippie Stix in Dalia, and for something a little more glossy, I'm into Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Shame. (I'm wearing them layered in the photo above.)

The thing I love the most about deep lipsticks like these are how universally badass they are, regardless of skin tone. They look vampirically cool on the fair-skinned, and look GORGEOUS on deeper skin tones.

Dark-n-Fringy Lashes For DAYS

I'm not sure that fringy is a word. If it's not, I want it to be.

You probably already know how much I love this shit. Maybelline Lash Sensational in Blackest Black (OF COURSE) is inky as hell, and brings out the deepest, darkest lashes. It's my favorite drugstore mascara, EVER.

It feels good to know I could totally be a graphic designer if I wanted to be. The raw talent is clearly there.

The Darker The Liner, The Darker The Heart

I'm not sure I could exist as a human-ish being without black eyeliner. It's the glue that holds my soul together. It's my Chicken Soup for the No Soul.

My black eyeliner requirements are: black as eff (OF COURSE) and stays on until I die a timely death. My current ride-or-dies are tarte Tarteist Clay Paint Liner and Kat Von D Tattoo Liner in Ink Black. Urban Decay's 24/7 Pencil in Perversion is another solid, crazy-dark option. They are all v, v black and stay on as well as can realistically be expected in today's world.

My only complaint about all these mofos are they aren't waterproof on the inner eyelid waterline, which is straight bullshit. But, UD is giving the people (AKA me) what they want, because they're coming out with this pencil MADE SPECIFICALLY FOR WATERPROOF WATERLINE LINAGE for holiday. Finally. My life is really coming together.

Not-Quite-Black Shadows Are The New Black

There are plenty of great matte, black shadows on this crowded-ass planet. Open any decent eyeshadow palette, and you'll get slapped in the eyeballs with an acceptable one.

So instead of focusing on those, I'm sharing my favorite glittery and almost black shadows. Nars Eye Shadow in Night Porter is a green-black beauty. If a pine tree in a majestic forest mated with a velvety black cat, it would be weird as hell, and also this shadow. But shimmery and shit.

MAC Eye Shadow in Beauty Marked is a super-deep eggplant. I would rather eat a deep-fried eggplant parm sub, but this is lovely, too.

Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can't See (Because It's Dark. Get It?)

This isn't the first time I've spouted off my big mouth about my love for dark polish, so I won't stay on this too long and bore you more than my regular levels of boring you. I just came here to say that I have also added this RGB Nail Color in Oxblood to my list of bad bitches.

That concludes my primer on darkness. So, good day, et al.

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The Shade Of It All: The Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Palette

I have a confession -- I'm a sucka-ass sucka for a matte eyeshadow palette. Call me a basic bitch if you wish, but it's just my comfort zone. It's like sweatpants for my eyelids.

So, when the Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Palette came out a while ago, my brain got all tingly over that shit. It was like finding a pair of sweatpants that cup your butt cheeks just so. I wanted it. I needed it. I was a little too poor to buy it. But then I said eff this life and caved like woah. I'm more irresponsible with money than Lilo. ALLEGEDLY.

Side note: I've been watching an ungodly amount of RuPaul's Drag Race over the past week, so prepare your eyeballs for an onslaught of draggy gifs. Christmas (or Hanukkah or Shannen Doherty's birthday) came early this year.

This palette consists of twelve matte shadows. There are three bigguns on top, which are meant to be base colors. I only use the far left one as a base, because as you can see on the swatches, it's basically my skin. The others I use for blending, but do whatever works for you. I don't know your skin tone, honey.

The shadows are broken up into sections of neutrals (left), cools (center), and warms (right). It also comes with a little guide book deal, telling you how to achieve the look you want to work. I ignored it, because ain't nobody going to tell me nothing. I just want to slap some shit on my eyeballs.

I did some really quick and dirty looks using each section of shadows, starting with the warms.

These shadows are probably my favorite, because I'm just a warm person. (don't get sassy) The shadows are so pigmented and smooth that they're almost creamy (sorry).

I threw these shadows on the day that I bought the palette, and I hadn't even washed my face, so don't look for perfection here. I think you know better than that anyway.

The next day I played around with the cools.

Cool tones are kind of my least favorite in general, just because I prefer warm stuffs, but I actually ended up really liking these. That dark gray is really nice, because it has kind of a brown-y base instead of a blue. I'm pretty, pretty into it.

For the neutrals, I just added to the existing cool eye, so it's a little bit of a hot mess, but you can get the smokey gist of it. Excuse my damn beauty.

My least favorite shadow of the whole palette ended up being the dark neutral brown, just because it kind of had an assload of fallout. Not enough to keep me from using it ever, just something to keep in mind.

Bottom line, because I know you just said "eff it" and looked at the gifs, I really love this palette, just like every other KVD thing I've ever owned. Just add it to the pile, baby. Speaking of piles of product, I have to go wash all this schmutz off my face. I need to triple wash, like a bag of baby spinach.

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Meet Kat Von D's Monarch Eyeshadow Palette, The Baddest B Of The Year (Millennium?)

I know, I know. I've been talking about a buttload of eyeshadow palettes lately. BUT THIS IS DIFFERENT. Okay, so I clearly needed this like I need more fibers of laziness in my being, but I just couldn't help myself. I fell in love with this mofo. And we found love in a hopeless place -- the Sephora inside a horribly crowded JC Penney, riddled with back-to-school shoppers.

Let's take a strong look at what reeled my ass in:

Meet the Kat Von D Monarch Palette ($46). It's clearly based on the coloration of that orange-y butterfly, but when I think of Monarch, I think of Monarchy, then I think of Bizz Markie. I probably need to see a psychologist.

The packaging on this bad boy is equal parts beautiful/reminds me of my tramp stamp from 1999. Yay? Either way, it spoke to me. But when I peeped the inside contents, I really fell the eff in love. THERE ARE THREE HIGHLIGHTING/BASE SHADOWS. And they're hella big, like twice the size of normal. This is a big thing for me because I always use up my base-color shadows first.

I was SOLD sold after I started swatching the palette all over my body in the store. Here's the thing about Kat Von D eyeshadows: the pigmentation and texture are LE-MFing-GIT. Did I mention that this is my third (? fourth? fifth? I can't remember, and I've dropped and broken a couple because I'm a monster.) KVD palette? They are my absolute favorite eyeshadows.

Needless to say (or you wouldn't be reading this shit right now, doy), I bought the Monarch Palette. I know, I'm beginning to be an outright ridiculous person. But I did it, so let's at least get some use out of my overspending issues.

I wanted to create a couple different looks so you could see the versatility of the shadows and really get a feel for this b. So this first eyeball fashion plate is a little on the bolder side of the cosmetics tracks. (The Arbor Mist is free-flowing over on this side, you should come hang some time.)

I really felt the need to use the orange eyeshadow (it's called Wrath) to see how wearable it was, and whether or not it made me look like I had a severe eye infection. Spoiler alert: it did not. It actually made me feel kind of cool and post-Apocalyptic, like I could fashion weapons from debris and lizard skeletons, or something.

The second eye deal is more the kind of thing I would wear on the daily -- it's normal, it's basic (without being TOO basic bitch-like), and it's sportin' a touch of sheen, old sport. Between these two looks I actually ended up using all of the eyeshadows at least once, except for one of the base/highlight colors. High fiving a million angels for my mild productivity!

Here's the main point of all of my nonsensical ramblings on: I LOVE THIS FRIGGIN' PALETTE. So much so that I wrote a short poem as an ode to it. Please enjoy.

I love this palette,
more than a salad.
The shadows are bangin',
they won't leave you hangin'.
I love it so much that we might wed,
and sleep in the same bed.

FIN

I don't blame you if you never, ever come back to this blog ever again. Good day.



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