Hello blogreaders! I hope you had a nice and merry Christmas!

We’ve had a few lovely Christmas dinners with our family (and with a lot of food - I cooked for 16 people-) and now we’re preparing for New Year’s Eve! We’re going to celebrate it with a group of friends, and everybody brings food, so I’ll be less in the kitchen and more partying this time!

And as promised, here are some inspirational party-make-up looks for New Year’s Eve! These are the holiday pictures from the big designer-make-up brands, by the way.

Chanel:

To create this look, use a matte foundation and apply a black eyepencil on the top eyelid and blend it out to get a subtle smokey effect. On the lower eyelid, use a golden eyeliner (or use a wet angled brush with golden eyeshadow). Then finish the look with black mascara and a shiny raspberry lipstick and nail polish.

Dior:

First line your eyes with a black eyepencil (top lid, bottom lid and waterline) and then blend it to get the smokey effect. After that, take a brown-bronze eyeshadow, and with a blending brush smooth the edges of the eyeliner, and create a soft transition from the black to the colour of your skin. A golden highlighter was used to highlight the browbones and cheekbones.  Black mascara and warm red lipstick and nail polish finish the look.

Giorgio Armani:

For this look, apply a iridescent silver eyeshadow on your upper eyelid. Then use a black gel-eyeliner, only on the top lid. It is important to use a very longlasting eyeliner! (I found one: read all about it in my party-proof make-up article)
If you are planning on using false eyelashes, this thick eyeliner is a perfect combination. When the lashes have a dark ‘background’, they don’t draw too much attention, and that way they seem more natural. In this picture, they also applied a nice dark ruby-red lipstick and an almost black nail polish.

Lancôme:

Kate Winslet is wearing a bright red lipstick with a soft dark-grey eyepencil on the top and bottom eyelids (and again: blend it to create a softer look). I guess you already know my secret for kiss-proof red lips: use a lipstain underneath your red lipstick!

Yves Saint Laurent

This make-up is ideal for a night of heavy partying. If it smudges, it becomes even more beautiful! So you first use a black eyepencil all over the moving part of your upper eyelid, and also under the eyes and in the waterline. Then you fixate it by sweeping over a dark grey eyeshadow. For a very dramatic look: blend the eyeshadow all the way to your eyebrows. When you wear a dramatic smokey eyemake-up, it is always nice to combine it with a neutral lipgloss, instead of a heavy lipstick. Oh, and notice the beautiful matte black nail polish! Instead of buying matte nail polishes, it’s a lot cheaper to just buy a matte topcoat! You can find the fantastic matte Essie topcoat here, on my favourite online beautyshop: beautybay.com!!

Which look are you going to wear for New Year’s Eve? I think I’ll go for the golden eyeliner!
Happy New Year everyone, and see you in 2012!!

A few years ago, Chanel was criticized for giving Keira Knightley bigger boobs in the ‘Coco Mademoiselle’-pictures. But I think they’ve learned their lesson…
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the use of photoshop at all. A photographer needs to enhance contrasts, adjust colour balance, saturation, shadows, … it contributes to the artistic process of creating a picture. But when the facial- or body morphology is unrealistic, they’ve taken it too far.  That’s why I love Chanel’s ‘Rouge Coco’ advertisements: Vanessa Paradis’s little wrinkles and crow’s feet are still visible in the picture!

This in contrast to the Natalie Portman- Miss Dior Cherie ad, where Natalie’s under eye bags are completely non-existent. As a result, the (véry pretty) picture looks a bit weird… What do you think?