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If you are like me and have eyebrows that don’t grow in certain places than you will understand how important a stay put eyebrow pencil is.  I envy people who have thick gorgeous eyebrows with a beautiful arch-I have neither.  I inherited this quirky feature from my mom where my eyebrows are short and they don’t have a tail to complete the arch.

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Ahh…I love beauty events! I can’t help but to check Nordstrom’s event schedule on a regular basis to see what kind of spectacular events are coming up.  In fact, because I went out to the Smashbox event last weekend I had to keep myself from going to the Nars event they had this past weekend featuring their celeb makeup artist Uzo…sob…

In any event, Smashbox periodically has these wonderful events where for a $75 reservation fee applicable to your product purchase, you are able to attend the event have your full makeup done (45 minute session), and be whizzed off to a mini photo session with Smashbox’s own fashion and editoral photographer Steven Khan.  In addition, you are given ALL of the photos on a CD for your own personal use.  Now that’s a super deal! For those of you familiar with professional photography, obtaining the actual digital copies of your photos can get pretty pricey.

I actually planned far in advance for this event when I realized that I missed this amazing opportunity to have my photos done by Steven at the Birchbox and Smashbox event back in September.  After the Birchbox party, photos that Steven took at the event were floating around on twitter and blogs and I sulked around sad that I missed this opportunity.  I took it upon myself to contact the Smashbox counter and asked when he’d be shooting again and when I found out I booked immediately. What was even better was my best friend and I were able to have a nice photo taken of us together.

As well, with the holidays around Smashbox had discounted their holiday sets for this event so there were some pretty amazing deals going on that day.

I walked away with over 100 images, however, there were only a handful that came out really well.  Here are the photos from the event. Enjoy!

Posing for the camera 🙂
This one was probably my favorite shot
My best friend and I
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I know my blog has been severly neglected.  Admittedly I have spent the bulk of my spare time working on growing my YouTube beauty channel.  I feel like I am so behind on everything going on in my life.  Oh well, such is life.  Please check out my channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/pixiemama5000?feature=mhee

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to a Smashbox Master Class at Nordstrom the first weekend of November.  My best friend and I trekked over to Nordstrom super excited.  The purpose of this class was to teach the basics of applying makeup correctly.  Although I believe I am pretty well versed in that, I receieved a lot of benefit in learning more about the Smashbox products specfically.  The class was in a closed off location at Nordstrom and we had a small class of about 8 or so people.  There was 1 makeup artist to two students.  We had a gorgeous and fabulously funny Smashbox artist/trainer Laura that guided us through a step by step process of creating a look.  We were supplied a full set of Smashbox brushes, which I have to admit were simply amazing, to help create our look.  In addition, the dedicated Smashbox artist custom picked products for us to use based on our skin type and skin tone.  This was a  hands on event where you really had the opportunity to ask as many questions as you’d like and get as much help as you need.  I would highly recommend this to anyone who is learning the basics of makeup or who’d like to learn more about the Smashbox line.  To a reserve a spot in the class a $50 deposit was required, however, the $50 will be applied to your product purchase-not a bad deal at all.  In fact, I took that credit and purchased a super awesome holiday value set that I have been extremely excited about.  Check out the pictures below:

The fabulous spread of beauty tools and products!
 Yay! We’re done! Photo Op with the wonderful Smashbox artist/trainer Laura
 Awesome value set that I HIGHLY recommend-enough products to give you a good flavor of the Smashbox line
 My friend Clare – the finished look 🙂
 My seat
 Bare faced and waiting for the fun to start
Laura in action showing us how to shape brows-her reference to brows: “They are not twins, more like sisters…” lol..
Thanks so much for reading! Anyone get any good holiday sets? Would love to hear what your favorite holiday finds are!
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I couldn’t wait to try out my new Smashbox products that I purchased from the Smashbox event.  I was in search of an everyday palette that was a little different from my others.  The trio I chose was the “Head Shot” trio.  This trio was unique relative to my makeup collection as it was a warm neutral trio, the dark brown has a lot of warm to it.  I was concerned a little about the peachy color making my eyes look tired accentuating redness in my eyes (as I always seem to be-I have two kids!).  As well, I tried out the gel liner.  I must preface this by saying that I am currently exploring gel liners-I have a few others that are in my queue to try, I have been a huge liquid liner fan.  I love the bold line that a liquid liner makes.

So here’s what I used:

  • Trio in the color Head Shot
  • Gel liner in Dark Brown
  • Limitless eyeliner in Black
  • Smashbox Bionic Eyeliner in Black
  • Blush Rush in the color Passion

One of the first things I noticed was that the shadows were a tiny bit powdery-not a huge problem, just requires a little clean up afterwards.  The pigmentation was excellent and the shadow itself was very blendadable.  I primed my eye with a MAC paint pot and by the end of the day I did not have any creasing whatsoever.  I have extremely oily skin so if I am not wearing good eyeshadow/liner it will crease on me and my liners will smudge.  The blush I chose was a pinky color-I normally go for bronzers so I wanted to choose something that was a little more unique to what I currently own.

The gel liner did go on quite smoothly and I was able to create a bold line to my satisfaction.  The eyeliner was nothing short of amazing.  It stayed on all day and night without budging at all.  The eyeliner did remind me a little of MUFE Aqua Eyes.  At the event the Smashbox person I talked to swore that the gel liner would not budge and they were correct.  Day 2, I wore the same stuff and even took a nap with my face pressed against the pillow and I woke up with my face looking perfect.  I have to say that I am quite happy.  Smashbox was a smashing success!

 Products I purchased (L-R) Jet Set Waterproof Gel Liner, Blush Rush in Passion, and Eye Shadow Trio in Head Shot
Swatches (L-R) Trio of Eyeshadow colors, Brown Gel Liner, Black Limitless Eyliner, Passion Color Blush
Close up of the natural look I created
Full Face look