GRUNGE SUNSET

Hi, friends! I think I said somewhere, as I do every year, that 2018 is the year I really focus on building a following and becoming a "real" influencer. It always sounds like a great idea. New year, new me or whatever. As we can see, that hasn't happened. Good thing it's only mid-Feburary.

Anyway, so I archived my entire Instagram feed in an attempt to re-energize my creativity. I cleaned my beauty room. I even re-taught myself how to shoot manual on my camera. I started lists of makeup ideas, blog post ideas, etc. I'm headed in the right direction.


For today's look I pulled out two products I surprisingly haven't paired together yet; Anastasia Beverly Hills' Subculture and Melt Cosmetics' Dark Matter stack. Both highly pigmented, grungy, kind of messy. A match made in heaven, honestly, truly.

To keep the look bright but grungy I started by blending "edge" from Subculture above my crease with my NYX Pro Blending brush. This palette is kind of tricky to work with, so working slowly and being particular about where you place color is key. Place the color initially where you want it to be the brightest and blend in *very light*, like barely touching your skin light, circular motions. Windshield wiper motions (aka back and forth) will not give you the result you want.

To deepen the crease I dipped my Sigma E36 into "unseen" from Dark Matter and worked it in using windshield wiper motions. Being that the difference in the lightest shade and darkest shade are so drastic in this look, "unseen" acts as a transition between the two so the color pay off won't be as in your face, but it still adds some depth to the look.

On the lid I packed on "enigma" from the dark matter stack using my Morphe M167. I started with the most color on the center of my lid closest to the lash line and once I had less product on my brush patted it outward. To blend out the edges I used my E36 again with a mix of "unseen" and "enigma".

The lower lash line I smoked out with a mix of "axis" from Subculture and "unseen" using my Luxie 221 brush. Finished off with my all-time favorite liquid liner and House of Lashes lashes in Smokey Muse.

Overall, I really like how easy this look is to create. I could have easily gotten a similar look with just Subculture but something about it mixed with Dark Matter is so, so beautiful to me. Which reminds me! If you recreate this look do your eyes before foundation (if you don't normally don't your makeup that way already) because these do have quite a bit of fall-out.


That's it for this look. Follow me on Instagram for sneak peeks of looks before they're posted here & tag me in any of your recreations!

- Ambz