ATL Beauty Event Hosted by Ren and AJ Crimson

It's not often that beauty bloggers have meet and greets here, with a lot of popular bloggers in New York and LA, so I was extremely excited to hear that my friend Ren had put together a blogger event, here in Atlanta.

She introduced me to celeb makeup artist AJ Crimson, who I got to chat with for a few minutes, and was really a sweet guy.

The event was held at Blushbaby Makeup Studio, downtown. A really cute, girly studio with the walls painted purple and complete with Vanity Girl brand makeup stations.

If you're a woman of color, and looking to try BB cream, AJ has you covered! Huge variety of shades and really good coverage. I picked up shade 40 for myself, I'll post a review for you guys soon!

AJ was kind enough to swatch all of the girls to help them find the perfect shade.

Lots of goodies were also sponsored at the event, including cupcakes from Cami Cakes and moscato from Whiskey Park at the W hotel. I must say, Ren did a great job, cupcakes and wine are perfect for a beauty event.

Meh. I always do this weird squat thing when I take pictures with shorter girls.

Thanks again Ren, for an amazing event!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Keisha and I got together to go out and filmed a quick getting ready video.

My girls looked amazing!

My dress and body chain: Asos.com
Shoes: Zara

The video, if you haven't seen it already:

I See Food

I love, love seafood and I've been having an awesome time exploring what Atlanta has to offer.

I had high hopes for Steamhouse Lounge because it's so close to my house, I figured I'd be able to stop by pretty often.

At least there's wine for the classy ladies, like myself.

Oysters are one of my favorite foods, lately. Steamhouse's oysters were pretty good, but there were a lot of really big ones, that I really can't eat.

This is a bucket of crab legs and lobster that I had at Spondivits, when I went for the first time this past week. The were seasoned amazingly, and I think I'd go back more often if they weren't all the way by the Atlanta airport.

This is a sampler from Fontaine's. It's supposed to be an "oyster house", they were really good and fresh but way too big for me.

If you have a favorite seafood spot, share with me! Leave it in the comments below.

Review: Beauty Blender Sponge

Late bus ticket for one, please.

Maybe one of the most blogger reviewed products is the Beauty Blender sponge. I figured I would give it a try after not immediately falling in love with its cheaper counterpart, made by Sonia Kashuk. They appear to be made of a similar material, but my final verdict is that the official Beauty Blender markedly better.

They now have them in-store at Sephora, when they were previously only sold online.

How cute is that little guy? It comes alone in this tiny packaging, (also available with sponge cleanser) I almost passed right by it, but the bright pink caught my eye. It's meant to be used wet, and just about doubles in size once dampened. I've also tried it dry, out of sheer laziness curiosity, and it works ok that way as well.

It blends out foundation beautifully, however it is a lot slower than using a face brush for applying liquid foundations. I've decided on using my normal foundation blending brush and just using the Beauty Blender to blend out concealer under the eyes.

I use my Real Techniques foundation brush to apply. Here I'm using MAC ProLongwear Concealer in NC35.

Tada!

Edgy Emerald ft Sedona Lace Cosmetics

For this post, I had the pleasure of working with Sedona Lace again. They had me pick out a few products to try and these are the ones I chose.

EB 11 Flat Synthetic Brush - I've come to like this style of brush because it can be used for a few different things. Not only good for packing eyeshadow on to the lid, but also great for applying cream shadows and perfect size for concealer.

FB 01 Jumbo Fan Brush - I kind of picked this one because its so big and fancy looking. This brush is perfect for applying highlight powders and hitting the cheekbones in just the right spot.

Both brushes are from the Sedona Lace Vortex collection, a line personally designed by my good friend and fellow Atl blogger, Ren. 

I also chose the Sedona Lace 88 Matte palette. Standard 88 palette that us makeup whores beauty gurus have seen. I've all but worn a hole in my old one and needed a re-up. The 88 palette is my old faithful, the first palette I bought to start my makeup kit and I ended up using it almost every day that I did makeup for the anchors over at Fox 5 Atlanta (who knew?).

Check out my tutorial using this palette - 

Go Braves!

I went to my first Braves game since moving here about 4 (maybe 5?) years ago, yesterday.

I had no idea how chaotic opening day would be. There were swarms of people everywhere and traffic going downtown was barely moving.

Panda and I took Marta (Atlanta's public train system) instead of fighting traffic.

This was my first time riding, I took pictures like a tourist.

Our seats weren't too terribly bad, we could see a lot of the action from where we were sitting.

Creepin'.

No worries, he was totally stoked about taking these pictures.

Sweater top - Target. Shorts - Charlotte Russe. Wallet/clutch for iPhone 5 - Charlotte Russe. Mocassins - Minnetonka. iPhone case - Walmart. Bracelets - Charlotte Russe.

Sedona Lace Palette Review

I was recently contacted by Sedona Lace to review one of their palettes.

Their website features great products for makeup lovers looking for quality on a budget. Their palette and brush sets are perfect for artists out there that are just starting out in makeup and looking to build their professional kit.

The palette I chose to review is their 28 Neutral Palette, perfect for an everyday neutral look and artists that get a lot of bridal clientele. I can tell you from experience that as a working makeup artist there aren't a lot of clients that you will run into that want to look like the newest Nicki Minaj video. I guess I'm the only one that does.

Gorgeous neutral colors with very good pigmentation and a good mix of shimmer and matte shadows.

Watch the video below to see how I got a sultry smokey eye using this palette