In praise of brown eyeshadow, red lipstick, and black eyeliner

Today, I'm going to go all ~beauty blogger~ on your ass. I'm not even close to  a fashionista, as I've said before, but I love me some makeup. Oh, man, do I love it. Always have. Makeup is forgiving. Makeup will not make you look pregnant. Makeup will not grow back, leaving you with silly roots. Makeup will not slip, slide and feel uncomfortable...at least, most of the time. Everyone can appreciate makeup, even more so than clothes. "High fashion" makeup doesn't really exist in the real world. Whether you stick on a bit of concealer and mascara and get going, or spend hours on it, makeup is makeup. It loves you all. Even the 2007 version of yourself -- back in the day, I used to wear various crazy colours of eyeshadow to school (the neon pink glitter was a mistake). I'd still rock a bright green every so often, just for old time's sake. Over time, I upgraded to brightly-coloured eyeliner and then to metric tonnes of winged black eyeliner. Then I stopped wearing makeup altogether in sixth year. I was so tired from studying all the time that I basically rolled out of bed in the mornings and I didn't go out much. But my god, how I missed it. I could write poetry about putting on makeup. I just love to do it. The sweep of the eyeliner (okay, I digress, I still rock A LOT of liquid eyeliner) ,blending several different kinds of eyeshadow together to make your eyes look all pretty...the despair when I mess something up or have one eye perfect but the other ALL WRONG. But hey, we can't have it every way. On a good day, I cross the final frontier...lashings of red lipstick!

Lipstick and I have had something of a troubled past; my mother never liked it and I convinced myself that I didn't suit me. I was wrong, though. To be honest, with pale skin and dark hair, I'd be a fool not to pile it on like I'm Marilyn Monroe. It's just about finding the right colour. I had a practically-pink Rimmel one for years, but it's just...too damn pink. I discovered that if one is going to do red, one should do it PROPERLY. Firebrand. Pillarbox. Tomato. Proper, Dita Von Teese red. My favourite is by Catrice, which I'm wearing in the picture below. I got it for four euro just before Electric Picnic and it's just great.  Lately, I've been rocking red lipstick with my usual makeup quite a bit. Whoever came up with the eyes/lips rule is a boring cunt. Who doesn't look exponentially more sexy with red lips and dramatic eyeliner? Messy sexy, of course...

Pictured: metric tonnes of lipstick and eyeliner. Unfortunately, I can only really wear red lipstick when I'm not with David. It's not conducive to smoochin' at all.

But where was I? Yes. I've grown out of the bright eyeshadow (mostly) and have taken to stealing my younger sister's browny colours for college and work. Much to her chagrin, of course, as Eimear is someone who has a special right to everything I own but woe betide me if I borrow her stuff. Furthermore, her eyeshadow palette is "special". (Read: expensive). I'd been thinking about buying my own, cheaper version of what she has, so you can only imagine my delight on Christmas day when THIS turned up, courtesy of my wonderful aunt: the glorious NAKED palette from Urban Decay.

 

The Naked palette is glorious. It is the perfection of nature, the song of songs, the most beautfiul part of the creation. And I've been doing too much English. For those of you who don't know, this pallette is ten pretty shades of brown eyeshadow, a grey one and a black one. Six of them have SPARKLES (yay!) and they range from practically white (If I was doing this properly I'd call it "champagne shimmer" or something, but I'm not,I'm just fangirling) to chocolate coloured. Behold: 

It's beautiful, isn't it?! I've used it every time I got out since I got it. I can use the sparkly black one on top of eyeliner to make it last longer,  I can use the grey one to be all ~smokey and sexy~ and I can just shove the brown ones on three at a time, blend it all together and look nice. The gold colours make my eyes look more Kurt Cobain blue than their actual washed-out blue colour (flawless flawless) and the pale ones are really handy to highlight stuff. Or at least they would be if I knew how to do things like that. Like I said earlier, I am not going to go through packaging, pigmentation and all that jazz. Mainly because I don't care. This isn't a review telling you to buy this eyeshadow; this is a post in praise of having it bought for me. Here's to brown eyeshadow, man. But here's to red lipstick and green eyeshadow and purple eyeshadow, too. But most of all: here's to metric tonnes of black liquid eyeliner.