Beauty: Just Peachy

The last time I shot a beauty “how too” it was freezing and blustering outside and took a considerable amount of flash to make the whole thing look anything other than dingy. Said beauty look was the ultimate classic; red lip, feline eye flick, porcelain skin; makeup suitable for any place, season or occasion where you fancy upping the glamour factor just a touch. Well, today’s face paint special is a little different and of course, wholly Spring focused. It is, like the fact winter’s finally over, just peachy…

Clockwise from left:
Tom Ford lipstick in Sweet Spot, £36, available here
Nails Inc Polish in Marylebone High Street, £9.38, available here
YSL Beauty Volupte Tint-in-Oil, £21.44, available here
YSL Beauty Rock Lace Collector’s Touche Eclat, £25, available here
YSL Beauty Rock Lace Couture Pallette, £45, available here

When it comes to deciding on new makeup looks to try and then maybe share with you, I’m sometimes inspired by something I’ve seen in an editorial or on the catwalk. More often however, it’s an outfit or a product that convinces me to experiment a little and on this occasion, it was a combination of the two. In my latest Look Du Jour, I embraced this season’s seventies obsession with indigo flares and patterned sequins. The whole outfit had a dreamy, fashion-bohemian (note: VERY different to actual bohemian, i.e tailoring) quality to it that I felt asked, or perhaps allowed, for something softer than my go-to bright lip and eyeliner flick combo. I’m totally all about homing in on a particular colour or colour palette to pull an outfit together, and this definitely extends to makeup. Peachy, rosy and orange hues ranging from delicate apricot and shimmering blush pink to vibrant tangerine proved the running theme in this look, and as luck would have it seems to also be a big beauty trend for SS15.

Step 1: Base

As is so often the case, everything started with the eyeshadow palette. YSL Beauty (you know how obsessed I am with this brand!) has literally just last week released two new collector’s products; the Rock Lace Touche Eclat and Couture Pallette and they are both ideal for creating a peachy spring makeup look. My base never varies much. I always use bareMinerals Original SPF foundation, only swapping “fairly light” for “light” when, or more accurately if, I manage to accrue any sort of tan during the summer. Then I use the touché éclat to disguise eye bags and anything else unpleasant that might have set up camp on my visage. The Rock Lace version is actually no different to the standard touché éclat but if you’ve run out then you may as well get this version, the packaging is gorgeous and it’s very limited edition.

Step 2: Eyeshadow

If further proof were needed that I know very little about makeup application and am entirely winging it when I try anything more than “the classic”, the experience of creating this particular look would definitely proof it. Holly will vouch for me on this. But you know what? Not every girl enjoys the actual process of correctly putting on makeup. A lot of us want a great end result but don’t want to spend hours agonizing over which brush to use or what order to apply products in. Hopefully my “how to’s” can be particularly useful to anyone whose busyness or laziness has stopped them pushing the beauty boat out in the past because I am no makeup pro but manage to knock together, I think, pretty effective and non offensive looks with bugger all knowledge in a matter of minutes. So, let’s talk eyeshadow. This look is of course concocted from YSL Beauty’s Rock Lace Couture Pallette, which includes light pink, peach, coral and softly luxe shades of brown. Basically, I got really lucky with the outfit matching situation.

Peach & Coral

Before we go any further I must confess that I applied the different shades in kind of the wrong order. It’s usually wise to work on the basis that the lightest colour in a palette should be applied first, and the rest with the colour intensity increasing in inverse proportion to eye area coverage, if that makes any sense. I forgot about the ultra light pink and kicked things off with coral, applying liberally from inner eye corner, stopping just below the bone.

As you might have spotted, I used a fine haired brush rather than a sponge to apply the peach colour so I could be quite loose with it. This seemed to work well but I switched to a sponge for coral so I could keep things vaguely under control and avoid looking like I’d had an altercation with an orange. Using a rounded sponge tip applicator slathered in coral shadow, I applied from the centre of the lip out to the edge of the eye, swooping up so it almost mirrors the peach shadow in height but with a more extended, cat eye flick outer edge. Do please let me know if this all makes sense in the comments, it’s so easy to understand your own explanations! Hopefully the pics will help anyway.

Brown & Browner

As you can see, there are two rich nutty brown hues in the YSL Beauty Rock Lace Couture Pallette. I used the first one on the outer corner of the eye, applying it as if I were painting in an abstract triangle that spread from the outer corner inwards and upwards, finishing in a soft line along the eye groove. For this I used the teardrop shaped sponge applicator that came with the palette.

Last – or so I thought – but not least, the dark, chocolaty brown and the palette’s centre. I was very restrained with this one, literally just using it on a fine brush to line the outer lashes.

Light Pink AKA the shade that I forgot

Just as I was about to tell Holly with a triumphant cry, that I had managed to apply the palette I realised that I had in fact, totally forgot the first colour, light pink… Idiot. I wasn’t about to start again from scratch (remember what I said about laziness earlier?) so instead I cleaned off a fine brush and used the shimmering shade to really brighten up the inner corner of my eye, highlight the bone-below eye brow area and lightly line the lower lid. This obviously resulted in a lot of glitter going all over the show so I used a rounded kabuki brush to sweep it away. As much as I love glitter I don’t want to look like I’m off to a Eurovision Song Contest themed fancy dress party, not all the time anyway.

Step 3: Touch Ups & Lashes

Lancome Grandiose Mascara, £24.50, available here
YSL Beauty Touche Eclat Blur Perfector, £29.50, available here

Finishing touches part 1, because without these no look would be complete. I reckon final skin touch ups and lashes are perhaps the beauty equivalent of a jacket and scarf/sunglasses, with lips and nails taking on the all important role of shoes and accessories. It was only in my early twenties that I learned the importance of primers, blushers and smoothers (this is the latter). During my fake tanned teenage years I was unsurprisingly more of a slather-on-the-bronzer gal and then, traumatised by that experience – and the Facebook photos of Marbella ’06 that haunt me to this day – I pretty much eschewed all excess facial anything except the most basic powder for a good few years. Then some kind makeup artist on a shoot I’ve since forgotten taught me that blush and glow enhancers are both seriously great. I usually use bareMinerals Ready blush in “The Faux Pas” and then their Mineral Veil because I trust it and like to wear mineral makeup wherever possible, but I thought I’d give the YSL Beauty Touche Eclat Blur Perfector a whirl this time, mainly because I like the pretty pink package.

I applied it lightly to my t-zone and a little less lightly on my cheekbones and besides giving my skin a more flawless look it also added a subtle rosy glow in all the right places, result!

My usual mascaras of choice are the YSL Beauty Luxurious False Lash Effect and MAC Zoom Waterfast Lash. I’ve been experimenting a little bit with the Lancome Grandiose Mascara recently and can’t completely make up my mind if I’m honest. I absolutely love how the brush is engineered, you can really get the right angle to do that swoosh without getting mascara half way up to your eyebrow. For precision, it’s fantastic so it works really well for this kind of softer look. However, if you’re in the market for megawatt lashes or doing a smoky eye I’d recommend the other two instead.

(you KNOW you make this face too!)

Step 4: Lips & Nails

Remember my post on Tom Ford’s Lips & Boys lipstick collection a while ago? I’ve been dying to get my hands on some of his makeup for ages and the new season stuff is gorgeous, especially the packaging with it total deco glamour fabulousness. Given that this beauty look is all about peachy tones, the obvious lip colour to go for was Sweet Spot.

I’ve been a fan of coral lips for years and was pleasantly surprised to discover how pretty and skin flattering paler hues like this one can be too. Despite the fact my nails are utterly revolting because I bite them, badly, I’m a firm advocate of deliberately matching or clashing your nails to you’re a) lipstick b) outfit c) accessories or d) the whole damn lot. Despite the fact someone once told me this styling technique belongs should have been left at the early noughties office parties from whence it came, I employ it on the daily. I really struck gold with Nails Inc Marylebone High Street polish which matches the Tom Ford Sweet Spot lipstick perfectly as well as being really great quality, very affordable and super easy to use, as all Nails Inc products are.

… Et Voila!

I really like this look. It’s a little different, and orange eyeshadow is always a risk, but Holly promised me that I didn’t look like I had pink eye so I’ll definitely be rocking it again. Who knows, perhaps I’ll even apply the eye palette in the right order next time! You can check out the outfit I paired this makeup with here.

What do you think of the look? Will you be test driving orange eyeshadow at home?

Love Ella. X

Images by Holly McGlynn