When I was very young, I wanted to be a rock star. I'd spend most of my time learning to play the guitar and writing songs. I would dream about going on stage and rocking my heart out to the adulation of millions, wearing slashed tights and distressed leather jackets. It all sounded so awesome in my head. But like all of my adolescent aspirations, it went up in a cloud of smoky black eyeshadow. With a few glitters in it for good measure. :P

Anyhoo, today I want to show you the latest collection from Korean brand Too Cool For School. Glam Rock is inspired by the rock star culture, with emphasis on dramatic eyes and blanked out lips. I have a few items from TCFS here and a quick review of each. :) Let me know what you think!

I'll start with a lip color - the Glam Rock Smoky Nudy Lip Color in Satin Beige. This is a creamy lipstick that needs to be layered at least twice to get the same opacity as the swatch below. I don't mind, since most lipsticks need to be layered anyway and it doesn't take much effort. However, if you have pigmented lips then this won't cover everything. It can look a tad streaky since it only offers medium coverage.

Staying power is average, at three hours. I would recommend wearing a lip balm first since the matte texture can be drying.

The big beauty trend this year is bright and bold eyeliner. The eyes are mostly left naked except for that intensely colored line - thick, thin, geometric, it's all in style as long as the liner is in a jewel or matte neon tone! I really enjoyed this particular trend, as you can see in my past FOTDs. It's easy to do and works well with pretty much any outfit I wear.

One eyeliner that stood out to me recently is the Clinique Quickliner For Eyes Intense (P1,100). This, I believe, is another reformulated version of a Clinique staple. I haven't tried the old one so I can't compare; I can tell you though that this one is quite good, with such a buttery smooth texture, intense color payoff, and good staying power!

The Quickliner is meant to be smudged for that undone rockstar look (it comes with a soft smudger tip), but it's sooo creamy that it can be used as a cream eyeshadow by itself. I also love to use this as a base for my 5-minute smoky eyes technique, since it sets solid after a few minutes.

This eyeliner doesn't budge for about five hours, after which I notice minor smudging. It's acceptable, and easy enough to clean with tissue. 

Aaaaand I'm back. I've been a little distracted lately since I'm preparing for the launch of one of my clients this month - it's a cosmetics brand that many of us know and love. It's going to be awesome! Of course, lol. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the brand is still affordable, but better than ever.

Enough with the teasin'. You'll find out what it is soon enough! ;) This week, I'll be talking about some of the eyeliners that came my way, plus a technique I've been doing when wearing eyeliner lately. I'll start off with a new find: the Maybelline Hyper Sharp Liner (P399).

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that my HG eyeliner is the K-Palette Real Lasting Liner. It's simply the best when it comes to getting a precise line and staying put ALL freakin' day with zero smudging. But it's about P800, an amount that some people might find a bit expensive. It's actually cheaper by a hundred bucks now but yeah if you want to save a little but still get almost the same quality, then you must try the the Maybelline Hyper Sharp eyeliner!

This has the same bendy brush as K-Palette, which makes it a joy to paint over my lash line. I hate stiff eyeliner pens; hate is a strong word but there it is!

Kohl eyeliner makes our eyes more dramatic and intense, but the sad fact is that most of them simply are too creamy to stay in place. That's just the nature of the formula - the creamier, more emollient a product is, the less wear-time you get out of it. 

So who wants to wear eyeliner that looks great for only two hours? Not a lot of people, I imagine. But they're still pretty to look at, especially the Revlon Photoready Kajal Intense Eyeliner + Brightener (P525). 

The formula is very smooth and creamy, while the finish has a satiny opaqueness to it. Some colors are immediately solid, but I find that the lighter ones need to be layered on to get maximum color pay off. I can live with that.

Okay, I'm cheating here. I technically won't be writing about five eyeliners only, because that's not as fun as, say, a dozen ones! I will however be talking about five brands that make crazy amazing eyeliners. These are the ones that smudge minimally, if at all, and never fade even if you wear them until the sun sets (or rises if you roll that way). These are the eyeliners I always pick up simply because they're reliable. 

I have also included some eyeliners worth an honorable mention. ;) Let's get cracking!

K-Palette Real Lasting Eyeliners. My current HG eyeliner is the K-Palette liquid eyeliner - the waterproof one. This is the best in terms of staying power and ease of application! I've worn it for 15 hours and it has never, ever fallen apart. It's what I wear when I know I'm going to have a long day and have zero time to fuss with smudgy eyes.

The K-Palette pencils have amazing pigmentation and staying power as well, but they do smudge if they're not applied on some sort of powdered/primed surface. They're great just as long as I am wearing something underneath 'em.

MAC Fluidline, Technakohl, and Powerpoint eye liners. The MAC Fluidline was my HG eyeliner before K-Palette. K-Palette beats it only because the gel eyeliner requires a clean brush everytime I use it; I simply don't always have the time to rummage for a brush and then wash it.

Today is a busy day! I have to do an ocular for a possible event venue, maybe check out the Luxasia Sale, pick an outfit for the Preview Ball, then go to the said ball. Somewhere in between I must write a proposal. Buuut I love you guys so I'll quickly tell you all about the latest collection from Etude House - Color Pop!

This isn't a full review post since I have yet to complete the swatches of the items I have. I actually just want to answer a question that many of you have asked recently: what is the pink eyeliner I used in this look? It's so cute no?

It's an Etude House Drawing Show Creamy Pencil from the Color Pop Collection!

My blogging backlog is alarming. I probably have over a hundred reviews and features filed away by now but I have stopped knowing where to begin! :( I can probably just quickly mention things here, but then I'd be wasting space. I don't want Project Vanity to be a repository of random beauty/fashion features - whatever I put out here should count. Be valuable. There are a lot of good brands and products out there but the point should be curation - what is worth writing and reading about?

So I figured, I will just write about the things I really, really like at the moment while I am organizing everything. It happens that the Eye of Horus Natural Smoky Eye Pencil (P960 at Glamourbox) has caught my eye!

I've had this for maybe three months now but honestly thought it wasn't anything special. I've seen some rave reviews, sure, but I was still incredulous. I've swatched it a few times in the past but I assumed that the consistency was too soft to be reliable when it comes to long hours and oiliness around the eye area. Wrong! This is an awesome pencil for that smudged smoky eye, or for something simpler like a soft natural line. It is buttery but most importanttly, it stays in place!

Can't believe I'm saying that of a pencil this ridiculously soft, but it's true.

This week's theme will be all about drugstore products. I'm pretty excited about my line-up because I adore all of them! I'm going to feature one drugstore item for the face, hair, nail, and body this week. Today, we're all about eyes!

I picked up these Essence Long Lasting Eye Pencils (P149.75) last month. I found them inside the MOA SM Department Store, where a huge-ass rack of Essence products are just hanging around with their crazy affordable price tags. I thought the texture, colors, and staying power of these pencils were impressive, so I purchased them even if (truth be told) I rarely buy cosmetics these days.

I swatched these pencils last February when Essence first arrived here. I was pleasantly surprised that the swatches remained intact even though it's been hours, and I've washed my hands several times already! For a P150 product, that's quite a feat. But how does this pencil fare on my eyes?

I hereby declare the next five days as Bobbi Brown Week at Project Vanity. Seriously, I have quite a few Bobbi products piling up (they're all fantastic) so I want to release the reviews in one themed week. I'll be featuring one Bobbi product everyday for the next five days, so stay tuned for those posts. ;)

To start off the series, here's an FOTD-slash-review of the Bobbi Brown Twilight Night Shimmer Ink. This is unfortunately limited edition from the Desert Twilight collection last year. However, I think that the brand has something similar in the cream eyeshadow line. I'm sure you can also find dupes in other brands if you're on a budget. ;)

Now Twilight Night is actually a gel eyeliner, but the twinkly dusky color is so pretty that it deserves to be used as a cream eyeshadow.

A dark cream base can make eyeshadows really pop up, plus the uber fine shimmer in this particular product adds more dimension and light to the eyes. I dabbed a layer of it on my lids using just my fingers.

We all started with pencil eyeliners. But the more we learn about makeup and application techniques, the more we crave for precision and different effects for our eyes. If you're a bit advanced in makeup then I'm sure you're starting to explore (or have already explored) cream/ gel eyeliners. This post is all about the basic brushes you can use for those wonderful pots of cosmetics!

For your reference, the gel liner I used below is the Kanebo Kate Gel Eyeliner (it's amazing and affordable too!). Please also check my tutorial on applying eyeliner, with a short stub on how to do a cat's eye. ;)

The flat angled eyeliner brush can be difficult to master at first, but it's probably the best brush for that perfect winged or cat's eye line. It draws the outer line thicker so if you have round eyes (like I do) then this brush can elongate them and make them look narrower.

This brush can also be used for shading the eyebrows with a wet product (such as wax or eyebrow gel).

I don't get a lot of opportunities to wear this glam sequined jacket, but when I do, I make the most of it! Last night's MAC event was the perfect occasion. I paired it with a sequined top since they sort of match, as well as pumps with shimmery gold heels. 

Promod jacket / Forever 21 skirt and top / Louis Vuitton Alma / Shoe Etiquette pumps

I had meetings before the event so I didn't have a clutch with me, hay. I'm not fond of carrying big bags in evening parties but it's hard to be prissy when you don't drive and get to bring a change of clothes/bags.

For the makeup I thought I'd try heavily lined eyes in saphire + red lips (MAC Russian Red of course). Would you guess that this is just black eyeliner topped with eyeshadow?

Hey folks! I have some new products from Maybelline that I'm excited to finally talk about. I've had them for a few weeks now and, well, color me impressed! It's been a while since I used anything from the brand so I'm surprised by how nice their stuff are now. 

Here are capsule reviews of Maybelline's latest: The Jewels by Colorsensational Lipsticks, Master Liner 24-Hr Cream Pencil, and Eye Studio Lumineyes Eyeshadow.

The Jewels by Colorsensational Lipstick (P399) is a collection of six jewel-toned lip colors in uber creamy, pigmented formulas. They're not waxy and they stay on for a loooong time given that the colors are on the dark, brilliant spectrum. They leave a nice stain too without feeling too drying!

The rain has been raging non-stop since yesterday. Stuff that I've scheduled for today have been canceled, so I'm just at home! Hope you're staying dry wherever you are. Come to think of it - what's your weapon of choice in this kind of weather? Raincoat? Boots? Or just the plain ol' umbrella?

Don't forget to read my makeup/hair tips for rainy days! Anyway, today I want to review a nice eyeliner I've had for a while: the Estee Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-Place Eye Pencil in Onyx (P1,295). I was initially unsure about this one when I first got it. It felt too soft and creamy to actually "stay-in-place". I'm happy to say that this eyeliner defied my expectations (or lack thereof) - it does stay on, with only minimum smudging as with most pencils.

What I like about the product

• Super creamy texture that makes it easy to line with, with no tugging or pulling. It's soft enough to be used as a cream eyeshadow.
• Pigmented on lids, though you have to go over the line two times to get a really solid black. This is a very deep, slightly bluish eyeliner. It's completely matte.