ud body tattoo + azure lotd ( + accidental diy powder compact repair )

Hi everyone!

So I had a bit of fun today trying on one of the UD temporary body tattoos for the first time, and it became a lot of fun! You guys can take a look at how easy it was to apply and how it came out:

Choose which tattoo you want and cut it out from the large sheet.

What I went with today! Light purple flower for the upper left arm.

Follow directions provided on the tube container. I rubbed some water a few times on my upper arm,
using my opposite hand. I would recommend preparing the damp towel beforehand to make things
easier (I was a little eager and had to try and hold the tattoo in place while wetting and wringing a towel).
Don't forget to remove the plastic sheet on top of your tattoo! (Which they neglect to mention. May be
obvious, but us clumsy ones have our share of foibles!!) Get the tattoo thoroughly damp, and don't be
to soak it a little - you can even use a sponge.

Here we are! Okay, so I admit, my tattoo paper did not have the most graceful exit,
and I accidentally kind of swiped it off. Rather roughly. Thus a few lines and dots of
color are missing, but otherwise it came out beautifully!

As you can see above, fake tats come out kind of shiny. It's recommended to use a skin-tone powder to
make your fake tattoo look more realistic and natural. I used this almay powder contact I got on sale at Target.

So, imho, I don't think the powder really did much to counteract the shininess. Maybe just along
the edges? Perhaps a more HD finishing powder is required. *shrug*

Here are views of what the tattoo looks like along my arm. I think next time, more strategic placement would be required.
Somewhere more along the upper shoulder blade or even the underside of the forearm. After seeing the final result,
I realized that my tattoo kind of looked like it was in the upper-arm-middle-of-nowhere. But still fun!

OKAY. So in the midst of all this, my clumsy self got the better of me, and my butterfingers managed to splatter the almay compact (which already consisted of broken up pieces) ALL OVER and INTO my bathroom sink. Not a happy moment.

Welcome to my life.
(This is after I picked up all the pieces I could and tried to swipe up all the powder.)

So, though! It became a very good time to conduct an experiment, using one of those DIY try-this-at-home remedies I've read up before on Pinterest. Supposedly, you can take the broken pieces and powder of your compact, add a bit of alcohol, mix + mash it all up, and once dry, you've got yourself something a new, whole compact you can actually use without fear. Before attempting, I checked the steps on these sites: Katrina Lomidze, Oh So Pretty the Diaries, The Beauty Department, Little Bird Tell and The Perfect Lipstick.

Let's hope this works! Instead of the spoon most bloggers wrote about, I used a palette
knife, probably recognizable to most paint and/or pastry artists. Sorry, Mom - I took mine
from the kitchen. BUT I THOROUGHLY CLEANED IT AFTERWARD.

Up close and personal (and not very pretty). So I didn't mash up all my powder chunks (I had bigger pieces as
well as loose powder), and I definitely used more than "3-5 drops of alcohol." I tried to avoid soaking the chunks
so they could be left mostly in their original state, just trying to get it all in one piece, but then I ended up adding
more alcohol then I meant to at the very end and so it became this monocolor paste.

So that's one Pinterest experiment actually conducted :) As you can see, the color of the powder darkens considerably after adding alcohol. I'm not sure how permanent this color change is, but I'm going to let my powder dry overnight and get back to you review how successful this was, and how usable the powder is after all's said and done.

Final thing for today! A quick share of my LOTD (Look of the Day) - I ended up doing a blue look, even before I picked my clothes!, so that was strangely fortunate. I still just play around, and today ended up being a double-winged look using both black and cerulean blue liquid liner.

 Using the Urban Decay Skull Palette shown here, I first applied the aqua color "Shattered" (middle right) from the inner corner to the middle outer of both eyelids. Height-wise, I packed just until a rim peeked out, so you could see an outline of the color when my eyes were open. Using what was left on the brush, I set the bottom outer lid with the aqua blue color as well.

Then I applied "Grifter," the pink-lavender pastel shade above "Shattered," at the outer corners, blending in toward the blue already there. It looked kind of funky, a little too light, so I added a hint of glittery black "Oil Slick" at the very outer corners for definition and blended that in as well.

For the upper highlight, I added the light pink glittery "Cherry" along the brow bone. I also dabbed just a dot of Cherry at the inner corners. To finish the look off, I did a mini cats-eye with the black liquid liner, then added another little pointed segment to get it to extend a little more, creating the mini double-winged look.

While putting my stuff away, I spotted my metallic blue liner and decided to have fun, swiping it along the top of my black liner, starting from the inner corner and fading out. I added a mini swipe downward at the outer corners of my eyes, along where my eyelids slant. Then I brought a little of that liquid liner blue to define the outer bottom lid, which had already been darkened a little with some UD 24/7 black pencil liner.

Tip: to slightly define my brows, I always use up whatever pigment is left on my brushes (that I've used for a dark color, like gray or brown) or on my finger tips (because I always end up getting pencil smudges and stuff on them anyway). I find that the vestiges of pigment are enough to fill my brows without look harsh.

That was it!

One thing I'd like to note is that, although I'm playing around with makeup and learning how to use these colors and branch out, I still feel that what ends up looking best is color that hugs and stays close to the eyes defined by a dark liner along upper lash line, with a dark color along the outer corner waterline as well.

But especially regarding eyeshadow - when the color gets packed on too high, I find that it ends up looking garish and kind of hoyden. If you have eyes similar to mine, where there's a lot of upper lid skin but not much fold (common to Asians with out the deep "double eyelids"), you might find similarly that less tends to be much more. See the last picture for what I mean, what it looks like when my eyes are open and I'm smiling.

A few more views of today's makeup to give you a better idea :) ::