Shiro Cosmetics Notebook Collection Mini Review + Swatches + FOTD

left to right: Heart Attack, Task Force, Shinigami, More Sugar, Perfect World
bottom (for comparison) Sugarpill's Weekender and Goldilux

Shiro Cosmetics' Death Note inspired collection is something I've been meaning to swatch for a long time. I've had the samples for quite some time now, but better late than never, I suppose. These were swatched in natural light.

I'm calling this a mini-review because I don't have much to say about it. The colors are lovely and complement each other well. They all go on smoothly and wear well. I'm especially glad for the soft gold that "Perfect World" is, though "Heart Attack" was probably my favorite color. You've probably noticed only half the collection is swatched here. All my shots of the other half were total garbage, but these were my favorite colors anyway. The only color I'm sad I couldn't capture correctly was "Second Kira," a charcoal color with gold sparkles. The swatch for it on Shiro's official website accurately portrays its awesomeness.

Death Note was one of my favorite anime in highschool. I cosplayed every main character at some point; L, Light and Misa. For Otakon 2007 I cosplayed L and my girlfriend cosplayed Light. So I feel a certain connection to this collection.

someone caught a photo of us kissing

I did a quick makeup look a while ago with Perfect World, Heart Attack and Second Kira along with Sugarpill's Asylum. It turned out pretty well, and is a nice warm color look. It was a very soft, smokey, almost innocent look at first.. which I liked.

with Buxom's Lip Polish in Destiny (still rocking the mermaid hair)

But I couldn't resist adding a more bold lip color to it. Amazing how much a darker lip can affect a look.

with Illamasqua's Hermetic Lipgloss

I  also wore one of my favorite outfits this day. I wish I had full body shots of it, but these blurry things will have to do.

Sheer Dot Blouse - Iron Fist

Demon Vial Necklace - Suppurate System

Steampunk Vest - Lip Service

♥ le petit alice

Bite High Pigment Matte Pencil - Review

I was in Sephora recently where I finally broke down and bought a lovely, vampy color for my lips. I've been leaning towards a more vintage style look with my makeup and I wanted a nice bright red lipstick to complete the look. I've always been a bit scared of lipsticks... since I started doing ballet as a four year old I've always hated the taste and feel of lipstick. While I must own hundreds of dollars worth of eyeshadows, I only own one lipstick. Sad, isn't it?

I went into Sephora and asked what they had that was moisturizing. I've always had terrible luck with lip products and flakies. I've done everything I can to keep my lips exfoliated and moisturized, but it doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference.

The girl helping me introduced me to Bite, assuring me that their lipsticks were hydrating and bright. I swatched and tried on a few, but I ended up going with one of their High Pigment Matte Pencils instead   of one of their Creme Lipsticks mainly because of the colors available.

The pencil has a twist up bottom and is sleekly designed. The color I decided on is a black currant shade called "Bramble." I thought about going more traditional brick red, but a more berry shade is really more my style. I was so in love with the whole look after I tried the color on that I kept it on the rest of the day after leaving Sephora. It stayed a pretty firm 5 hours with no problems and minimal touch ups.

Bite High Pigment Matte Pencil in Bramble

I think I may be brave and try acquiring some more lip colors and so far I'm liking Bite as a brand. It's a bit expensive, but the color payoff is nice and it stays quite well.

♥ le petit alice

Heads Will Roll - EOTD

Makeup look inspired by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs music video for Heads Will Roll. I've been having a lot of fun with this weird faux double-lid look lately.

The reds are a combination of Sugarpill's Love+ And Asylum.
The silver is Sugarpill's Tiara.
The eyeliner is Kat Von D's Autograph Liquid Liner in Puro Amor.

♥ le petit alice

Tutorial - Ga-In, Bad Temper Mono-lid look

I don't listen to that much K-pop music honestly, but I fell in love with Ga-In of Brown Eyed Girls after seeing her dance in the video for their song Abracadabra. Since then she's become kind of my mono-lid hero.. much like Kiera Knightly is my small-boobs hero. But I digress.

Ga-In had some interesting mono-lid catering makeup going for her single Bad Temper.

Ga-In in all of her sexy, sexy glory...

I decided to take a stab at replicating the look. I did this literally a few hours ago at about 3 in the morning with no references in front of me, so unfortunately it's not super accurate After looking at a few photos of Ga-In after the fact I realized there are quite a few details I screwed up. At any rate, this is my interpretation of her Bad Temper look.

First I applied my foundation normally and primed my lids with Urban Decay's Primer Potion in the regular shade.

For this look I used all Sugarpill pressed eyeshadows. It did occur to me that using a regular black liquid eyeliner might actually have sped up the process, but what can I say.. I like doing things the hard way.

I used this brush to apply Tako to both lids first. I admit one side came up slightly higher than the other, but I was too lazy to redo it.

After that I slowly traced a line above the white with the tip of an angled brush, applying Afterparty wet.

At some point I realized I probably should have done the black winged liner first, but it didn't really matter yet, so I went ahead and added it then to give me some guideline as to where the blue should end. Again, angled brush applying Sugarpill's 'Bulletproof' wet.

Here's what I had so far. I decided to leave the black very thin for the mean time and build it up thicker after I was finished with the blue on top.

I finished the blue line so the end rested a little past where the corner of my eye is. It was still just kind of a sketchy outline at this point.

Once I was confident with my outline I thickened the blue line at the corners so there was a taper and added blue above the winged black liner and overlapped it a bit with the black.

I lined the bottom lash line with black, lightly.

Then I went over that black with a little bit more blue, filled my brows in and added a very, very subtle highlight with Tako to my browbone.

Here's the finished look. The wings tilt are angled further upward than Ga-In's and the color placement is a little off.. I may try this one again, but it still looks okay, so I'm not completely disappointed.

♥ le petit alice

Skinny Bones - Outfit Post

I've been obsessively following StregaForest on tumblr recently because I find myself quite taken with the dark mori look. A huge plus is there seem to be a lot of Gramm pieces posted to Strega Forest, and my closet is like half Gramm already. Today's look was inspired by what I've been looking at there.

Black knit top - Black Peace Now

Birdcage rose necklace - Suppurate System

Chiffon Skirt - h.naoto MELT

Cream top - Free People

Tights - Topshop

Baroque Boots - John Fluevog

There are not words to describe how lovely these Fluevog boots are. I don't wear them often because there's honestly much I feel is worthy of wearing them with. ;-;

I've been wearing variations this ball-jointed doll inspired eye makeup look with this bob wig kind of frequently:

BJDs often have a very high gloss look around the lips and eyes. Occasionally the shine that you see around the eyes looks like it may actually be a painted in highlight (like this), I have a hard time telling.. bjd owners, please enlighten me. At any rate.. a good way to mimic that look around the eye area is to stipple some silver eyeshadow (wet) on the lower lash line and just above your eye.

It does look a little awkward on the upper lid since I'm not a doll and I have to blink.. which reveals the fact that it's just kind of a silvery line sitting awkwardly in mid-lid.. but it's a look I'm constantly working on making better because I really do enjoy doing BJD inspired looks.

I decided not to go for really showy eyelashes today though.. I'll probably try this look with more doll-like falsies in the future. I'd do a tutorial if I thought anyone would be interested.

the shine looks a lot more intense in person

♥ le petit alice