Easy Way to Glam Up Your Eyes/Richmond Makeup Artist Aaron Ellerbrock Review

Many of you know my relationship with Laura Mercier Cosmetics.They really do make some amazing products. But as with all lines, they have some things they do better than others. Mercier is known for primers and all types of foundation so I was a little wary when I heard they had Caviar Stick Eye Colours. The original caviar product was in a small compac,t similar to what their eye shadows come in. This was a product that was launched when I used to work for Mercier and I can honestly say I did not (and still don't) care for that product at all. I found that it dried out very quickly and then would often crumble when it was applied. It was also not very blendable and the texture was not soft, almost hard at times.

A couple of months ago, one of my clients and I were out shopping for new prodcuts for her to add to her collection and we stopped at the Laura counter. The Caviar Sticks had just launched and I thought I would play with one on her. We both fell in love immediately. There are several things about this product that make it a much better buy than the original caviar.

First and foremost is the texture. It is soft, blendable, and velvety. When you apply this product it glides right over the skin and never catches, even if the eye is on the dry side. Second is the packaging. Having it in a tube (that you twist as you need morre) keeps some air off the product. With the original caviar in the compact, air gets to the entire product every time you open it which I believe leads to it drying out. Thirdly, we have lots of color choices. There are beautiful greens, plums, blues, and of course standard gray, black and brown colors. It appears they also create some limited edition colors for some of their seasonal collections. Finally we come to application. You can use this product is so many ways!! You can apply directly with the stick for a thick eye liner that really makes a statement. You can put it all over the lid and blend with your finger or a brush for a quick all over color that stays put. These things really have good staying power. One friend said she still had it on after going kick boxing! You can also apply it with a thin brush or small smudge brush if you want to keep it close to the lash line.

There is a ton of pigment with these sticks so just know a little goes a long way. Also, because it is a cream it is not the easiest thing to blend over powder shadows. If you take your time and do it carefully it works just fine, but I think it blends best over cream shadows.

In any case, I really like the wearability and payoff that the Caviar Stick Eye Colours provide. So much so that I made a trade with an artist for 8 of them! At $24 a stick you might not want to spluge on quite as many but I have used them on several clients and everyone so far has raved about them. This is an easy way to take a simple and fresh daytime look into an ultra glam night look with the sweep of a single product! I like and think you will too! As always, please let me know what you think!!

my love/hate relationship with foundation

The makeup artist I am today is completely reliant on the happy accident of working for Laura Mercier cosmetics for eight years and being fortunate enough to work personally with Laura. I joke that I used to "stalk" her; before I had my kids, I used to plan my NYC trips to visit my family around Laura's personal appearance schedule. I would just show up at Bergdorf's , Bendels, Saks, and start working. (Okay, so my regional pulled some strings first)I ended up doing over a dozen events with her this way. I remember one day at Bendel's, nobody showed up. To see makeup artist extraordinaire Laura Mercier-! But so much of their traffic is tourists and actual natives are pretty jaded about all these celebrity makeup artists. It's like every other day you have Trish McEvoy or Bobbi Brown traipsing through so you are pretty unimpressed by it all. So anyway, Laura spent the whole day giving us an inpromptu training session right there on the sales floor. She certainly could have packed up and gone home instead, but she answered every question we had, did demos on all of us, and imparted her wisdom.

For those of you unfamiliar with her background, Laura trained as a painter in Paris before going into makeup. She came to New York to launch American Elle with Steven Meisel and her career pretty much exploded after that. She created most of Madonna's most iconic looks and has done countless magazine covers and editorials. I read a column she had in Allure many years ago, and became such a fan.At that time she was doing so many covers that I could actually spot her work before checking the credits in the magazine. When her line came to Cincinnati Saks, I interviewed to launch it there, and Laura did two personal appearances at our store during my tenure. (Unfortunately one visit was the exact day I gave birth to my third child, so I missed her-!)

In the very early days of Laura Mercier Cosmetics, we were a tiny little company. We had virtually no training, but we did have national makeup artists travel in for events who had all been trained by the master. But it wasn't until I worked personally with Laura in Chicago for the forst time that I really "got" her technique. She is very hands on with her artists, and for 75% of the day she kept murmuring to me "too much coverage" (in her wonderful French accent, which I take great delight in butchering when I attempt it) She repeatedly told clients that they didn't really need foundation. Wait-isn't this retail? Aren't we supposed to take this client for all she's worth?

Finally at the end of the day, she took me aside and told me she was very pleased with my work and she loved how I had mastered "the flawless face". Laura's philosophy when her line launched was pretty revolutionary; she was the very first to have a primer; she had found on photo shoots that what a model wore under her makeup directly affected how the makeup looked and lasted on the skin, so, like the painter she is. she concluded that there should be a primer coat underneath the foundation. After all, you wouldn't paint a piece of raw wood without priming-all the paint would keep sinking in and you would use too much product. She created a very highly pigmented foundation so that she could apply a super sheer layer but still get amazing coverage. She followed this with a thick, pigmented camouflage cream to painstakingly feather over each little flaw. (maybe not for everyone, but for us perfectionists, it was a dream)

This entire story is the illustrate the frustration I feel when I see makeup artists treat foundation like spackling or a mask. I have seen some of the most gorgeous women have their features obliterated by a thick layer of makeup. I met a woman on Saturday who had so much makeup on that you couldn't even determine her ethnicity. (She had her makeup done at Bridalrama) I removed her makeup and realized how beautiful she was and how amazing her skin looked. Why would anyone put that much makeup on a luminous, even skin? I guess that is why I have had so much trouble jumping on the airbrush bandwagon. I tried-I took a class in NYC and invested a ton of money in equipment-but it doesn't feel like my medium. I don't feel painterly. I even felt like I was trying to take the easy way out, shooting a layer over the whole face instead of tackling each flaw with a teeny brush. I don't love how it looks or feels on the skin, no matter how I try.

Obviously this is a topic that hits a nerve with me, but I just wanted to share my philosophy with those of you patient enough to get through my manifesto! I do have a lot of clients inquire about airbrush and I just figured it was time to put this out there.

Happy Monday, y'all!

New amazing Laura Mercier stuff...

I cannot wait to try the new illuminating tinted moisturizer. The original one is so incredible I can't even imagine how she managed to improve upon it, but my friend Alisha reports that it is da bomb.

And how brilliant is the concealer pot with the powder stashed underneath?

In a shameless plug, I will be returning to my old stomping grounds next Friday August 1st, working Mercier's Face to Face event at Saks.

Please call 513 421 6800 x366 to book an appointment with me! You simply won't find a better foundation or concealer than hers. I could use this line exclusively forever. I would have to quit doing makeup if they ever went under. : )