Los Angeles makeup artist & all-around babe Giavonna Brascia always looks absolutely flawless and isn’t greedy with her beauty tips - no wonder we LOVE having her in the studio! In this How-To, she shares one of her favorite looks, which is neutral tones used to contour and highlight the eyes, accentuated with winged out liner and half-lashes.
To avoid fooling people into unrealistic perfection, we don’t Photoshop photos and they are fresh off the good ol’ iPhone. This will be the end result :)
Steps 1 and 2:
Prime the eyes using your favorite primer - I love “shadow insurance” by Too Faced.
Then, carve out your crease using a fluffy blending brush. I’m using the MAC brush #224 for this look, but as long as it’s fluffy and a little tapered it should work just fine.
For this look I’m using a soft, warm brown that’s just dark enough to create definition.
I’m using MAC’s “wedge” eyeshadow, which is great for fair to medium skin tones. For darker skin, I love “Texture”, “Saddle”, and “Cork” for the crease color.
Take a light neutral of your choice with a flat brush and apply it to your lids, and use as a highlight under your eyebrows. I’m using a shadow called “Vanilla” by MAC for this look.
Steps 3 and 4
Using a smaller flat or pencil brush, shade the outer corner of your eyes with a deeper shade of brown. I chose a warm, deep, reddish brown called “embark” by MAC. I always tell people to imagine making a little “V” shape hugging the outer corner of the eye. Don’t worry about blending yet, just get the shape.
HELPFUL HINT: when applying your dark eye shadow, be sure not to work it up too high onto the eye before blending. When you take your blending brush to do it, it will naturally rise and spread up and out, giving that smoky look you desire. You can always add more after blending and keep building for a more dramatic effect, but if it’s too much too soon, it can be a pain to remove without messing up the look.
So after creative your “V” shape with a smaller brush, grab your blending brush again and blend out the rough edges.
Note how much the color rose and spread out after blending, and again you can always add more, but I was not going for an intense, dramatic look today. Just soft, sexy shape and shadow on the eyes.
Steps 5, and 6 and 7
Add your favorite liquid liner in black. I’m using MAC Fluidline gel liner in “blacktrack” with the MAC 266 brush.
Shade your lower lash line with the same color you used to shade the outer part of you upper lids. For example: I used “embark” eyeshadow to shade the outer corner of my eye, so I’m going to use the same color to shade the outer corner of my lower lash line.
NOTE: For this look, only shade the outer corner of your eye on the bottom as well, this will keep the eyes looking bigger, and more open.
You can use an angle brush, or my personal favorite the MAC 212 brush.
After this, I added concealer to my under eyes and filled in my eyebrows.
Use whichever concealer you’re happy with and what method of brow filler you prefer.
I have one MAC’s prolong wear concealer in NW20 if you’re curious :)
I love all kinds of brows, but on myself I prefer full, yet soft so I just lightly fill mine in with an angle brush and a soft gray-brown to to match my hair color.
Steps 8 and 9
Make your eyes POP by really accentuating your lashes. Use a volumizing and curling mascara.
My favorites are YSL Faux Cils, MAC false lash and Maybelline Colossal Lash.
For the added bit for sexy use half lashes on the outer corners of your eyes for a flirty, yet still believable lash.
Step 10:
Finish your face by evening out your skin with whichever medium you prefer. Mineral powder, liquid foundation, cream foundation, pressed powder, etc.
I just evened out my skin using a mix of a pump of moisturizer and a pump of MAC’s Prolongwear foundation.
Step 11 and 12:
Cheeks: I didn’t use bronzer or contour in this look though you’re welcome to do so on yourself. I just used a nice amount of Peaches blush by MAC on the apples of my cheeks.
You don’t have to use this shade exactly, but I highly recommend going with a peachier tone for this look.
Step 13:
Lastly….nude lips. Lipstick is very personal as it looks different on everyone and every type of skin tone, so chose your favorite nude.I used HoneyLove by MAC.
It’s matte and very opaque and has an awesome peachy undertone to it. It also looks great on a wide variety of skin tones, it’s a classic.
I finished up with “Instant Gold” lustreglass by MAC. A sheer, non sticky, high gloss, gold toned gloss.
For more makeup tutorials, visit Gia’s Tumblr!
Last Saturday ShopWasteland, along with our buds over at LA Canvas and MINKPINK, said helllllo to summer with the kick off of The Dive Club- one helluva pool party at the Roosevelt Hotel’s Tropicana Pool & Bar in Hollyweird. With the booze flowing and the tunes pumping, naturally s#!t got extra weird, just the way we like it. Check out some of the most epic moments from the madness and don’t be too bummed if you missed out, because there’s always June, July, and August to join the club and get in on the insanity… peep on!
Meet Juliana, our steezy babe of a senior buyer. On a typical day you’ll find her at the ShopWasteland HQ making it rain radness and ensuring the site is stocked with all kinds of epic finds. And, when she’s not here you can catch her on the flipside soaking up the sun, droppin’ it on the dance floor, and endlessly searching for the perfect boyfriend jeans… can’t stop, won’t stop until she finds ‘em. Check out her playlist on our Spotify account HERE!
1. Girlfriend - Ty Segall
2. Nowhere to Run - Martha Reeves & the Vandellas
3. Hunchback- Kurt Vile
4. My Baby Must Be A Magician - The Marvelettes
5. Meat Step Lively - Thee Oh Sees
6. Chain of Fools - Aretha Franklin
7. Heard You Want to Beat Me Up- The Strange Boys
8. Mama Said- The Shirelles
9. Pure Pain - Kurt Vile
10. Be My Baby - The Ronettes
11. Honey Bunny - Girls
12. Remember (walkin’ in the sand) - The Shangri-Las
13. Wild 2 - The Babies
14. Love is Like an Itching in my Heart - The Supremes
15. Ballad of Jim Jones - The Brian Jonestown Massacre
16. Cupid - Sam Cooke
17. Modern Art - The Black Lips
Meet Madeline Poole, the mega talented babe behind the insanely rad nail art in our May lookbook, Lost LAndia. She took some time out from Nailing Hollywood (hey mind outta the gutter, that’s the name of the agency that reps her… YES, she’s actually repped, that’s how major she is), to sit down and have a cup of the good stuff with us. She spilled on everything from her fave nail trends and giving birth to her first tiny book to the really important things in life, like her first screen name. Read on…
How do you like your coffee?
“Well, I am drinking my coffee black these days. And, I can only drink like 1/4 of a cup before I work because I get really shaky hands. So yeah, I can’t really truly have my coffee until after I’ve painted.”
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
“Um well first I put on chapstick incessantly, then I drink whatever weird bottle of water is floating around next to the bed, and then I pee. Ha, just being honest!”
Describe your personality in five words.
“Oh. God. Well I guess that’s two haha… No, but really I guess I’d describe myself as a little nervous but in a chipper way, I’m also pretty consistent. You got anything to add to that? I mean you’ve known me for a whole ten minutes…”
Well I feel like you have to be pretty creative in your line of work.
“Yes, definitely creative. And, I’m all right if I do say so myself.”
The next question might be one of our favorites ever… what was your first screen name?
“Oh, it was actually really strange. My brother made it for me in 7th grade, he was much older and he told that I had two options, I could either be “Hillsidekiller” or “Unstoppablelove” and so I chose Unstoppablelove, which is like really emo now in retrospect.”
If you could have coffee with anyone tomorrow morning, who would it be?
“Serena Williams for sure.”
Where did you pull inspiration for our shoot today?
“Well I know the model, Staz, she’s a friend of mine and so I kind of based it on her and what I know she is into. Also, I tried something that I’ve never done before that I’ve always wanted to do. You guys mentioned rainbow as a theme, and that stuck in my head so I just ran with it!”
Favorite hands you’ve ever worked on?
“I would say probably just one of my friends, Natasha, who has some of the most outrageous and hilarious style ideas of anyone. She’s always doing something completely unexpected and she comes at me with some crazy good ideas and let’s me just go with it. The last thing I did on her was Cheetos and now she wants to do something with Biggie Smalls and Martha Stewart, a combo. So yeah, she just has wild ideas and she’s pretty much my favorite always.”
Can you talk about your love affair with painting?
“Well it’s been a life long affair really. My mom is a muralist and faux-finisher and I’ve been around painting ever since I was a little kid. I went to art school and majored in painting and I’ve just always had painting in general in my life. Then I started working with an old friend at a poster restoration store in Baltimore before I moved to LA, and it was basically like 5 years of miniature painting. So, I essentially had been training sort of to become a manicurist, but I wasn’t really aware that that was my fate.”
Favorite nail trend lately…
“Right now I’m really into this clear in the center, kind of cut out nail look. My favorite one right now is doing a black nail with a clear heart in the center. It’s really fun, and I found these perfect stickers in Tokyo that mask off the shape you want and leave the center bare and they are my absolute favorite right now. I like it because it’s really simple, but it’s really strange.”
Tell us about your book launching in May? How did it come about?
“Yes! In fact, I have it in my back pack here! So here it is, it’s called Nails Nails Nails. It’s 25 different looks and honestly there are really, really descriptive directions on the inside, like basically everything I knew at the time. I’ve learned a lot more since then but every tip I had at the time I wrote it is pretty much in here. I think it’s pretty cute and very affordable. I think it’s like $11.00 on Amazon right now. It actually doesn’t come out until May 28th, but you can preorder it. It’s got really fun designs, some that are more classic and some that are definitely a little more unique. Some are really hard, some are really easy, and it’s really just a full range of looks for every different kind of person. And, I just really like it because it’s so cute and tiny; I like to keep it nice and easy.”
Peep more radness from Madeline on her site HERE!
Come get weird with The Dive Club tomorrow, May 18th, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Tropicana Pool & Bar. S#!t is guaranteed to get wild, FAST, so early arrival is suggested. See ya there!
RSVP Here: http://bit.ly/RSVP_diveclub
Summer’s finally around the corner, and lately we’ve been coveting monokinis in all fabrics and hues!
It might be the hottest swimwear shape of the season, but the history of the monokini goes way back and actually is a rad little slice of fashion trivia.
In one of the most scandalous swimwear releases in the history of fashion, topless bathing suits called “monokinis” were introduced to Manhattan’s high end retailers in 1964. Shoppers were half intrigued, half horrified, and with a bit of media hype, Rudi Gernreich’s line instantly started selling like hot cakes.
Chances are you’ve seen the image above - Gernreich’s muse Peggy Moffitt agreed to model the racy black wool knit suit with suspenders for her husband, photographer William Claxton. The photo was published in Life and Women’s Wear Daily, caused quite a stir with the Church and remains amazing and iconic to this day!
Way ahead of his time and quite an extremist to say the least, designer Rudi Gernreich was a nudist, an advocate of sexual liberation and the founder of one of the first American gay rights group.
He had a successful career releasing countless iterations of the monokini, and even managed to release the pubikini before he retired… We’ll leave this one to your imagination. ;)
And while basking in the sun topless is nothing shocking for the jet-setting crowd of the French Riviera, we’d rather keep it PG-13 here in L.A., so here’s a peek at some of the monokinis we’ll be rocking at the pool all summer!
Shop the trend: Spring Break Monokini
Shop the trend: Itsy Bitsy Polka Dot Monokini
Shop the trend: Crochet Monokini
Shop the trend: The Dahlia Daisy Swimsuit
