The world just learned how to sculpt perfect cheeckbones and narrow the nose, and it's already time for a new trend. Who has time to contour their face every morning, and let's face it, this look was not for everyone. It's time for a new, fresher, more natural and dewy look called strobing.

Strobing is a lot simpler than contouring and it's basically just extreme highlighting, it defines your features just by using light. Let me show you how it's done:

This is my face just with foundation

The trick with strobing is, that you can quickly look like you dipped your face in oil, if you don't do it the right way. You have to highlight in all the right places, where the light naturally hits the face. Top of the cheekbones, nose and the center of the forhead are the main areas that were already brightened in contouring. But be careful with the nose and center od the forehead, if you tend to get oily! These two parts are also the only ones that I would apply powder to, since we don't want to make the whole face matte, but we also don't want to look gross and oily.

You can also apply highlighter to the cupids bow, inner eye corners, center of the eyelid, brow bone, temples, chin and under the cheekbone/jaw area, if you want even brighter look. I put on a bit of a blush, to make my face look even fresher. Here are the results:

Below are the highlighting products I own. Benefit's Girl Meets Pearl is a wonderful champagne/rose color, but I mostly use L'oreal Lumi Magique Pure Light primer. You can apply it under foundation or mix it together, but I use it on the foundation as a highlighter, because I love how it gives this gentle satin glow, unlike some other highlighting products, bronzers and  blushes that have a bit of a glitter in it. I really don't like when products, except eyeshadows, contain glitter, because it's so obvious under the direct light or sunlight. You can also use pigments for highlighting, Mac Vanilla or Melon would be perfect for this!

This is a perfect look for fresh summer skin, just don't apply it with a heavy hand, except if you want to loohk like a glowing disco ball. In that case, highlight the hell away!


Till' next time,
xoxo, Lucija

Dark Evening MakeupTutorial

Hello! Today I have for you another tutorial (I'm gonna make a post about something else next time, I promise). You could say this is a smokey eye look, but as we learned at Carpus, smokey eye is this:

For a smokey eye you start with a black eyeliner on the upper lid and kinda smudge it, then you go over it with a black eyeshadow over the whole lid and blend it out towards brow bone, so that eyeshadow gradually disappears. You can also use a few different shades of brown or any other color to make shadow going towards browbone lighter and add colour or warm/cold tones. Then you do the same on the lower lid.

The reason why I'm telling you this, is that people often confuse the techniquei used for a smokey eye. It doesn't matter if you use dark eyeshadows, if you don't apply it like this it's not called a smokey eye. I don't really know the corrent term in English for the technique I used, but we call it Fan (pahljača). It means that you are concentrating the darkest color in the outer corner of you eye, blending it outwards, like a fan and shading it towards the inner corner of the eye. 

I apologize in the advance, because the different shades I used are not explicit enough fou you to see the full effect. I really need to buy professional eyeshadows (this is the only thing i haven't bought yet) and a better camera, because I'm currently using family camera, which is quite old and has only 8 mega pixels. I'm really sorry for this!

So, let's start! This is me without any makeup:

My dark circles are even darker in real life, so the only thing that really covers them are the camouflages from the Kryolan Dermacolor Camouflage Creme Mini-palette. I also use this palette to cover any imperfections, it can be also used for covering tattoos, so you know that the coverage is REALLY good. 

For the foundation I used Catrice Nude Illusion Foundation in shade 010 Ivory, which has medium to full coverage. This is the lightest shade in the range and I would not recommend it if you have really pale skin. I bought this one around January and I couldn't use it until now that I gained a bit of a tan, because it was too dark for me. Otherwise it is a pretty solid foundation. For setting around the eyes and my T-zone I used Ben Nye Banana powder.

I mentioned that I don't own any quality eyeshadows yet, but Makeup Revolution eyeshadows are pretty good and they have dupes fo everything. This is their redemption Palette Iconic 2, which is supposed to be a dupe for Urban Decay Naked 2. If you google comparisions you will see that they are almost identical and this one costs only about 6€.

I wanted to elongate my eyes and make a more defined shadow, so I helped myself with some tape. Then I made  a V-shaped shadow with Essence smokey eyes set in 02 Punk Vibe, which I own for forever, as you can see. Look how sharp the line is when I removed the tape! You can also use this for the eyeliner, for a quicker and more precise application. Then I blended out the harsh lines and also lined my lower lid with the same eyeshadow. To make everything even more defined I used dark brown and black from the MUR palette (last two on the right) and the gold shade (second on the left) to brighten the inner corners of my eyes. Then I added a thin line of Illamasqua gel eyeliner and applied L'oreal Fals Lash Wings mascara on lashes and Revlon Lipstick in Soft Nude.

This was the result. I wanted to make everything a bit more dramatic, so I blended the eyeshadow even more, added false eyelashes, contoured my face with my Anastasia Beverly Hills contour palette and defined my Brows with Anastasia Beverly Hills Dip Brow Pomade in Medium Brown.

That's it! Thank you for reading and again, please comment below with ideas and wishes for my next post.

Love, Lucija <3