Minty Fresh: Soft green makeup with ELF's Mint Matte Shadow

*WARNING* This is a really long post!

Hello!  Sorry I've been missing.  I'm currently fighting an icky cold, so haven't been up for posting for the past couple days.  Boo hoo!  It really bites to have a cold while the sun is out during Labor Day weekend. :(

But anyways, I got my 2nd ELF haul in from the Studio sale. (more of a mini-haul since I split it with my sister)  Therefore, I'll be doing a tutorial on how to achieve this eyeshadow look as well as additional tutorials on cheeks and lips, including reviews.

So here are the items that I received from this order:

1. Studio Complete Coverage Concealer palette in Light
2. Studio Blush in Pink Passion and Fuchsia Fusion
3. Studio Matte Eyeshadow in Mint

Let's create the look!  I start with a clean, moisturized face:

I love my little towel headband! I got it from Japantown for, like, $1 and it effectively keeps hair out of my face while I'm doing washing my face or doing makeup.

I'm going to begin by saying that I seldom purchase concealer for the purpose of concealing.  I tend to use it as a highlighter, therefore, while the matching colors for my complexion are probably in the Medium palette, I got the Light palette to use mainly as a face brightener.

So, using the 2nd shade in the concealer palette, I dot and blend in my entire under-eye area with the help of a concealer brush.

This brightens the under-eye area, leaving your face looking fresh and less tired. (especially useful when I have to get up very early for work or school)  To keep the look natural, I'm going to apply tinted moisturizer over my entire face, being sure to carefully pat and blend it with the brightening concealer in my under-eye area.  We don't want to look like a ghoul!  Then finish by lightly buffing translucent powder over the entire face.  (I'm going to skip images for these steps because we had already gone over them in a previous post)

A lot of the time, I get a little sloppy filling my brows in with powder so I need a little help cleaning up my brow line.  I do so using the 3rd shade in the concealer palette with a concealer brush:

The result should look something like this:

In this case, it may be best to use a concealer that matches your skin more closely.  I'm not going to worry about it, though, because I'm going be layering a primer over it anyway which will serve as a brow arch highlighter as well.

Now we're going to start on our shadow.  I begin with primed eyelids:

I'm going to sprinkle a little of the Mint matte shadow into the container cap and apply it with a shadow brush to my entire upper lid:

I LOVE this color!

To add a little more flare, I line my upper and lower lid lines with blue pencil liner and then smudge teal eyeshadow over the blue liner:

Next, I line the outer corners of my top and bottom lid lines with black pencil liner then layer black shadow for a little extra softness:

To ramp up the drama, I draw a wing along my upper lid line and accent the outer corner of my bottom lid line with black liquid eyeliner:

Curl lashes and add mascara to complete the look:

Next, we move on to blush.  I'm going to try the blush in Pink Passion, applying it with the ELF Studio Complexion brush.  Why not a blush brush?  I like the way a larger brush applies blush evenly and softly for a diffuse, blended look.

This blush is AMAZING!  It's about 2 shades brighter in real life than in this photo and is very pigmented, applies evenly, and is long-lasting with no touchups necessary.  I just tap a little on my brush and apply by blending in a circular motion.  A little goes a long way.

Fresh pink flush, not at all garish or clown-y.

To complete my face, I'm going to finish with a subdued fuchsia lip.  I know "subdued" and "fuchsia" are seldom used in the same sentence, but we CAN achieve this look with a technique I often use.  I start by lining and filling in my lip with nude pencil lipliner:

Then, using the ELF Studio Lip Liner & Blending Brush in Fuchsia, I'm going to add a little fuchsia liner to the center of my top and bottom lip, making sure to soften the color with the attached blending brush:

Layer ELF Studio Glitter Gloss in Fuchsia Fireworks over my entire lip and I'm done.

See, it's definitely fuchsia, just not full-on fuchsia.  This technique makes the color more soft and sheer.

Overall look:

Overall look after 13 hours and a late dinner and drinks with my husband at our local gastropub:

Not bad with no touchups!  Lol, you can tell by my eyes that I had one too many Long Islands. (I only had one, btw, I'm a featherweight)  Haha!

In general, I think the teal may have been overkill for the eyes.  I should have kept the look simple with just the black eyeliner, as not to distract from the gorgeous, soft-mint color.  Oh well, next time!  Hope y'all found this post useful.  Sorry so long!