Affordable Mixing Mediums

So there's a fancy dress party you're going to. You wanna wear some serious glitteratti eye wear. It would complete your look without a doubt. You have the glitter, you have the outfit. Time for the execution. How do you ensure it stays on all night?

Enter Mixing mediums.

There are a fair few mixing mediums currently on the market. Some work better than others but that depends on what you want to use them for. A lot of women like to use mixing mediums for foiling pigments which allows the colour to remain vibrant and on the lid the whole day. I've even witnessed mixing medium being used to help set certain foundations where fading really isn't an option so it's uses are very versatile. Today I just wanted to share with you the mixing mediums that I have, that you can use to turn those specialist products into something fierce!

Water and Glycerin

Ingredients:

Active ingredient: Glycerol 100% (per 5ml of liquid)

Given that Glycerin is not primarily sold as a mixing medium it is certainly worthy of a mention as a cheaper alternative . Glycerin has long since been used by people all over the globe to keep their eyeshadow in place when one needs the extra longevity of an eyeshadow. Personally, I will only use the water and glycerin mix if I've run out of my usual mixing mediums. I find it doesn't last as long as I'd like it to and I don't trust it enough to use on my clients. It's alright if you're wanting to use it short term ie 2 or so hours but after that I think that you'd be risking some creasage.

Incase you're wondering how to make your own mixing medium with Glycerine here's a recipe for you:

1 part glycerin

3 parts distilled/boiled/purified water

Mix ingredients together in a container and you're good to go!

*Please note* This mixture isn't designed to be kept for a long time. So making it in small batches is always more sanitary for you.

Currently retails for £1.39 from Boots.com for 200ml

Ben Nye Liquiset Waterproof Mixing Medium

Ingredients:

Aqua (Water), Acrylates, Copolymer, Propylene Glycol, PEG-12, Methenamine, 3-chloroallylochloride (Quaternium-15), Trisodium EDTA

This mixing medium comes in a handy 59ml spray bottle. It is specifically designed to be used in place of water for any water-based make-up such as face paints. It's use is to make the water-based make-up last far longer than it would with just water. Ben Nye state that this mixing medium will provide a smudge and waterproof finish.

This mixing medium doesn't perform too well with mineral make-up or pigments. In fact out of the mixing mediums I have I would be hesitant to recommend this medium to be used directly with any eyeshadow. However, with that being said, I love this mixing medium when I use it as a colour base with water-activated make-up such at the infamous Mehron palettes. If you want your colour base not to move and give you a *serious* level of vibrancy then this medium is for you. It will not budge beneath your make-up and you'll be hard pressed to see any creasing if any at all! This medium allows those face paints we love to grab onto your eyeshadow in a pretty awesome way, thereby making you the belle of the ball.

Currently retails for £5.90 for 2fl.oz from Treasure House Make-up

Graftobian Magic Set Mixing and Lining liquid

 Ingredients:

Water, Acrylic Copolymer, Propylene Glycol, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Methylparaben, Propylparben

Graftobian's Magic set was originally designed for body painters. It mixes well with pigments and does give a lasting finish when required. However on larger areas it can transfer and sometimes a setting spray is needed. If you're looking for a very affordable mixing medium to use with your cakeliner Magic Set will work well for you. It gives good longevity with eyeliner even when someone suffers from watery eyes. 

Word of Warning: Mixing up Magic Set can be very tricky. You need to practice with this medium a few times to work out the consistency that will work for what you're going for. Mix in too little liquid and it will clump up on you and look like lumpy porridge. Mix in too much and it will sheer right down like you wouldn't believe. Practice makes perfect with this little number.

Currently retails for £2.40 for 1/2fl.oz from Treasure House Make-up

Mehron Mixing Liquid

Ingredients:

Water, SDA-40 Alcohol, Acrylates/Octylacrylamide Copolymer, Trichanolamine, Propylene Glycol, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Methylparaben, Proplyparaben

This mixing medium is by far the best out of the three in my personal opinion. It mixes very well with a large variety of pigments and I am yet to experience creasing with it when I've used it. In as much as this product does contain alcohol, I have found that letting the product dry when using it around the eye area before opening up the eye has meant that the eye is not irritated. That is a personal observation. Generally they don't advise that you use this medium around the eye area but I have had no problem with it. Use at your own discretion.

Mehron mixing medium is great for body work, eyelining and eyeshadow. It's staying power is pretty awesome and I found it worked really well with the infamous Style Black Mineralized eyeshadows. When that collection came out errbadi was excited about the sparkle but I know that a fair number of people struggled with keeping the sparkles from fading or even getting the eyeshadow to look half good. Mehron works incredibly well with such eyeshadows and gets a pretty A* from me!

One nifty thing that you could try with the Mehron mixing medium is to use another eyeshadow as a colour base for another. What I mean is you might have a pigment that would serve really well as a colour base for other colours that you would like to put on top ie using a duochrome colour underneath to bring out a special aspect of another. Sheering down the mixture allows you to build a colour base as you would if you were using a shade stick or NYX Jumbo pencil. You could custom blend the colours too. The options are endless but the results are very good and rather long lasting.

Currently retails for £4.94 for 4.5fl.oz at Treasure House Makeup

Now I do realise that there are a wealth of other mixing mediums out there. I've only given you a glimpse into the affordable mixing mediums currently available on the market. To my USA ladies, check out your local theatrical stores for these brands. You probably have a wider choice in terms of range than we UK chicks do.

Other Mixing mediums you might want to try out:

MAC mixing medium for water/alcohol/face&body/lash/eyeliner/gel

Inglot Duralinefor eyeliner and eyeshadow  

Napoleon Perdis Cake Eyeliner Sealerwhich can be used for coating eyelashes, making eyeliner or making eyeshadows more vibrant

If there is a mixing medium out there that you use and you think it ain't getting enough attention let me know. I'm always on the look out for something else to try!

Stay blessed lovlies xxx

A Wedding Trial for a Pretty Bride.

Hi Lovlies,

I didn't realise until the other day that I have not updated this here blog of mine for a while. I think I went through a burn out these last two weeks and I'm only just coming out of it now! I've been busy with work and weddings and just trying to get my life back in order. Not exactly sure where it all went kaput but yes I think I'm back to regular programming!

So wedding season is coming to an end. Kinda. Sorta. There just won't be as many wedding through winter as they are in summer. I was busy with a few this year and I wanted to share the trial pictures of a particularly lovely bride I did last weekend. This lovely young lady is a stunner. Her dress was GORGEOUS, everything about her individual style just left such an impression with me. I wanted to show you her trial pictures. I'm making arrangements to get a hold of some professional pictures soon.

She wanted to look like "a more glamourous version of her natural self". I think we achieved that goal and I, for one, was happy with the outcome. Now I know someone is going to want to know what I used on her....I confess I can't remember it all but but I'll do my best to remember!

*pictures are clickable.*

RCMA foundation
Myfacecosmetics Blush in her name is Rio
GOSH lipgloss in 104
Barry M eyeshadow in Bronze and Gold [not the actual names...]
MAC Rose Gold pigment
MAC Vanilla Pigment
Eyelure eyelashes
GOSH Black waterproof eyepencil
Natural Cosmetics Brow powder
Ben Nye concealer wheel

She was a great bride to work with. She knew exactly what she wanted [which is always a good thing] and I reckon her day was pretty as perfect as they could come! Congratulations my love! You looked smashing!!

COMING UP...
*Style Black Haul and FOTD [are you sick of it yet? if not...stick around!]
*Alternative mixing mediums
*Fong Kong MAC brushes...and lots more!!!

Be blessed lovelies!!!

xxxx

Battle of the Brush Cleansers

I love all my make-up brushes. I value them because they cost me some serious money but also because they have helped my make-up application get better so much over the years. As a result I look after my brushes very well and being a freelance make-up artist means I have to keep them in a santized, good condition. This is an indepth review on 5 brush cleaners that are currently available on the market for both regular consumers and professional make-up artists. Y'all enjoy :)

Method of cleaning:-

I split my dirty brushes into 5 different groups. Each to be cleaned by a different cleaner. I poured each of the cleaners into a small dish then dipped the brushes into the product, agitated them for a little while and swipped on a paper towel until clean.

The Brush Cleaners

Left to right:- MAC Brush Cleanser, FaceSecrets Professional Brush Cleaner, Ben Nye Brush Cleaner, Mehron Brush Cleaner and Graftobian Brush Cleaner

First up...
Graftobian Brush Cleaner £6.16
This is a clear liquid and you can totally tell this stuff has Isopropyl Alcohol in it. It totally reeks and it carries a warning label of "Flammable Liquid".

The good
I really like this brush cleaner. It cleaned its set of brushes very very well. The eyeshadow brushes were completely dry in less than 2 minutes and it took about 4 minutes for the bigger face brush to dry completely. The scent was almost gone when they were done. Left for longer I'm guessing it would disappear. The brushes did feel nice and conditioned afterward. I felt like my brushes were definitely sanitized and it would be good to take with on gigs were you have multiple clients.

The Bad
The bottle is small. 58ml to be precise. The price is a bit steep considering the amount of product you get however I am happy to overlook that considering how well it works. I wish it came in a spray bottle because I find it that much easier to clean my brushes if I'm spraying the product rather than pouring it out. You end up using less but still getting the same effective result. Graftobian does recommend using their brush cleaner in conjunction with their 4 oz dispensing pump bottle. If I ever get a hold of it, I'll let you guys know how it works.

Mehron Brush Cleaner £4.86
You get 133ml of product in the bottle and it has a blue tinge to it. It smells like mouthwash! Honestly. It's kinda minty :) It contains SDA-40 Alcohol which I have come to know is a high grade purified cosmetic alcohol. It does advise on the bottle not to let the brushes stand in the cleaner for prolonged periods of time and it too is a flammable liquid. This cleaner is not tested on animals.

The good
The brushes came out very clean as well with a nice minty scent!

The Bad
This cleaner left what felt like a residue on the brushes. They all took about 5 minutes to dry to 7 mins to dry which could be a problem if you're wanting a quick acting brush cleanser.

Ben Nye Brush Cleaner [Quick drying Spray] £7.30
This is another blue toned cleaner but this one comes in a 59ml spray bottle. It too contains SDA-40 Alcohol and is therefore flammable. It definitely has a scent to and it is noted on the bottle that it must be used in a well ventilated area.

The Good
This cleaner lives up to its word. It is definitely quick drying. It didn't alter the feel of the brushes i.e. no residue and they were ready to use again in less than 3 mins. One of the brushes that was cleaned with this cleaner was a lip brush. Now you all know how sometimes its hard to get the goopy lipglosses and lipsticks off our lipbrushes right? Well this brush cut through that grease and left it spotless. Thumbs up in my books.

The Bad
I really don't like the smell of this cleaner. It is very chemical-ly and it stays on the brushes even when they are dry. If you're not bothered by smells then this would be a good cleaner. Which is why I choose to keep it :)

FaceSecrets Professional Brush Cleaner £4.99
This is a dark blue cleaner that comes in a child safe 118ml/4 U.S. fl oz bottle. It contains SDA-40 Alcohol and is flammable. It is scented. But not as heavily as the Mehron Brush cleaner. It has a shelf life of 12months. It also advises not to leave brushes soaking in the cleaner for extended periods of time.

The Good
The scent on this brush cleaner is alright. It's not overpowering and it left the powder brushes nice and clean. It took a little longer to try. Probably round about the 4 min mark.

The Bad
One of the brushes that was cleaned by this cleaner was a lip brush. This brush cleaner failed to get all the product out of the brush. It got a good amount out but it was still a little sticky afterwards. If you're a professional MUA this won't do. A bit of a disappointment considering they say its a professional brush cleaner

MAC Brush Cleanser £8.00
This is a pink colour brush cleanser. It contains Isopropyl alcohol, is flammable and has a slight scent to it too. Comes in a 235ml large dropper bottle.

The Good
All the brushes came out clean with a slight scent.

The Bad
I'm not sure if this is entirely a bad point. But if you read the how to directions of Mac Brush cleanser it actually says that you need to apply the product to a wet brush, work it through rinse out then leave to dry. So it isn't designed to be a quick drying, on the go brush cleaner. It's more for deep cleaning. In which case you could then compare it to using baby shampoo for example. The brushes cleaned with MAC brush cleanser took more than 5 minutes to dry so I would'nt recomment this cleaner if you're on a make-up gig.

Conclusion

It's always good to have alternatives in your kit if you're a make-up junkie or MUA. Some products work better for others and I hope this post helped you to see what choices you have in terms of brush cleaners. Now I do know that there are a few more out there that I can review but I'll get to those later. I thought these would be good to start off with.

Personally I liked the Graftobian brush cleaner the most, followed by the Ben Nye then the MAC Brush Cleanser. I'll be carrying the Graftobian and Ben Nye in my kit for on the go jobs and when I'm home I'll use MAC Brush cleanser. The Mehron and FaceSecrets Cleaners aren't bad but given the choice I would pick the ones I've mentioned already.

Stay Blessed lovlies xxx
Jesus love you :)

Pro Make-up Boodle

I like to try different products all the time and find gems by random brands where you might not have ever thought to look. It's always so good to find something that simply works. I've been looking to try a few different brush cleaners and mixing mediums that could go into my kit. First brand I thought to try was my one of my favorite pro brands, Graftobian. And from there I branched out into a few other ranges available in the UK.

Left to right:- MAC Brush Cleanser, Ben Nye Liquiset Waterproof mixing medium, Ben Nye Brush Cleaner, Mehron Brush cleaner, Mehron Mixing Liquid, Graftobian Magic Set Mixing and Lining Liquid, Graftobian Brush Cleaner, Mehron Ad Gem Latex Free Adhesive
*All purchased from Treasure house make-up except for MAC*

Yes yes I know. Looks like a bunch of random bottles! But stay with me :)

I'm going through a shiny glittery stage in my life at the moment. [might be a bit late considering I'm almost 25...should have happened 10 years ago but hey whatever!] And so I picked up the Mehron AdGem Body Adhesive. It came with 12 gems to start you off. I think it will be loads of fun when I can decide what to do with it. Ever get a stack of ideas and end up not doing any cause you can't decide? Thats what I feel like at the moment.

The Mehron Brush Cleaner comes in a 133ml bottle and costs £4.86. I think I'll have to decant it into a spray bottle. I find it easier to work with them that way when i'm cleaning my brushes. The Mehron Mixing liquid above costs £4.94. It has an alcohol base so it will dry quite quickly as the alcohol evaporates I assume. I can't wait to use it.

Ben Nye Liquiset whish is £5.90 is a waterbased mixing medium. I've heard it works really well. It might work as a nice alternative to home based mixing medium or Mac's mixing medium. The Ben Nye brush cleaner which costs £7.40 comes in a spray bottle which will always be a plus. It claims to be quick drying so this might turn out to be really good for my kit.

I love Graftobian products. It was only a matter of time till I picked up their Magic set Mixing and Lining Liquid for £4.94. I've seen it used and to be honest I am not sure why there isn't more of a rave about it online yet. Maybe its about to blow up. Maybe not but I played a little with it already and its incredible. Foiled an eyeshadow and when it dried it.did.not.move. Oh the things that you could do!!!! I also picked up the Graftobian Brush cleaner for £6.16. It's tiny but again I'm looking forward to what it can do. Should be fun!!

Finally, I picked this Mehron Pro-Pencil Jumbo up because I thought it looked like an expensive dupe to NYX jumbo pencils. I say expensive because this baby cost £5.76. It comes in 3 other colours which I think I'm going to pick up anyway. I've played with it a bit and from what I can see it doesn't crease so this might be better than the beloved NYX jumbo pencils. I'll let you know how I get on later on.

I'm gonna do full reviews of these products soon. If not you might just seem them worked into some FOTD's :) Which I really need to post a few more of!

Be blessed lovelies :)

MAC oh MAC...

Not long ago a really good friend of mine and I had an interesting dicussion about MAC. She's seen some of my FOTDs and asked what MAC products I had used. I, in turn, replied that I had not used any MAC [save for perhaps one FOTD]. Which she simply did not believe. Her line of reasoning was something along the lines of, "There ain't no way you didn't use MAC on your eyes, the colours are too bright...only MAC does that."

In a way it made me smile. There are a lot of people out there who think that MAC is the be all and end all of all make-up. I'll be honest with you guys. I totally disagree. I do think that MAC has some really good products and I will look to them first for make-up brushes when I can but in general when it comes to eyeshadow, primers, mascaras, powder and whatever else, there are other companies out there that do it much better for far cheaper and that suits me just fine.

Seymone [Reflections of your beauty] (Check her blog out!!!) brought it to my attention on her twitter this morning that a couple of days ago that Temptalia did a mini article on the backstage photographs of the MAC Colourcraft Collection. These pictures were actually taken from the MAC Facebook page. So they are offical. I went onto the facebook page to look at them myself. What I saw made me chuckle. The artist used for the Colourcraft shoot used BEN NYE. Yeah you heard. BEN NYE. Worse yet, the awesome Lumiere Palette [get it if you don't have it. It's amazing!]. Why Mac would allow these pictures to be made public is way beyond me...

*Image taken from Maccosmetics.co.uk*

I am aware that in the industry when promo shoots happen they don't necessarily use the make-up from the collection. But why would MAC with its Pro collection opt to used a brand such a Ben Nye? Could it be that they recognise that Ben Nye is an awesome brand? The promo image from ColourCraft is mint but it was obvious that the goods sold with it were not used to create that image in the first place. Further more they have a face chart on their website for that same promo picture that give the impression that the colours used are MAC ones. I don't get that. The responses to the articule are brillaint.

Check it out:- MAC Colour Craft Backstage photoshoot

My point is this:MAC is cool but if I can create a banging look with a better product that cost me less money then let it be. They certainly had no qualms about it. I'd love to know your thoughts on this prickly sucject! And if you know of companies that "do it better" Holla!!!!!

Going back to bed now :D

Stay Blessed
xxx