I’m convinced that swatching before bed brings on makeup dreams.

Last night while watching So You Think You Can Dance (OMG, Ade and Melissa? I’m heartbroken!), I swatched some of the Bobbi Brown Ivy League collection, including the bad-assness that is the Forest Shimmer Ink Gel Eyeliner.

I went to bed after the show finished and had a wonderful dream that I was swimming through a pool filled with pots of gel liner.

I was like a kid playing in one of those vats of plastic balls.

Then, this morning I read this note from Aline:

Hey Karen!

I recently bought Lancome’s Ink Artliner in Indigo Charm from the Declaring Indigo fall collection based on your review and swatches, but mine seems to be a bit on the dry side — nothing “gel-y” about the texture. Was yours the same way?

Thank you for your time! Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Aline

Hi Aline,

You must be psychic! I’ve had gel liner on the brain…

To answer your question, I think it’s normal for Lancome’s highly pigmented (with great wear time!) Ink Artliners to feel a little drier than the average gel liner.

MAC Fluidline, Bobbi Brown Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner and the Stila Smudge Pots are a little creamier, and some people feel that makes them easier to apply.

But you may also have received an expired pot. Check for cracks in the surface of the product or if it has shrunken down around the inside edges (a sign of dehydration). If it has, then it may need to be returned.

Your favorite eyeliners?

Aline’s question got me thinking about other gel eyeliners, so I tweeted a question this morning:

Here are some of the answers I received:

There were votes for Stila Smudge Pots ($20), MAC Fluidline ($15), Rock & Republic Bound Gel Liner ($24) and Shu Uemura Painting Liner ($24), among others. With each of those, I have to agree.

How about yours? What’s your favorite gel eyeliner?

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. I can’t even believe today was Friday… What the heck happened to this week?

Cupid must moonlight as a cosmetics company exec because Dolce & Gabbana’s upcoming makeup for fall 2009 has his lovely fingerprints all over it.

The Romantic Collection’s pinks, blues and greens defy the typical autumn ensemble of smokey eyes, rich berries and dark lips, and when I saw these promotional pictures for the first time, I totes thought I was looking at a spring release.

The pinks in the 13-piece collection for eyes, lips and cheeks (available this September) range from subdued to bright and share the spotlight with a mix of other bright shades.

Soft and dreamy

In the look, colorful eyes smolder in silver, hot pink, bright blue and lime above lightly flushed cheeks and neutral, delicate lips.

I get a soft, almost ethereal vibe from the release that reminds me of the MAC A Rose Romance collection last spring.

Off to a promising start

As the face of Dolce & Gabbana The Make Up, actress Scarlett Johansson helped the Italian fashion house expand their portfolio into cosmetics earlier this year.

The luxury line for eyes, lips, face and nails carries prices in the Chanel/Dior range, so expect to pay a pretty penny — if you can find it. For now, the line’s only carried at two US Saks Fifth Avenue stores (New York and Beverly Hills) and saksfifthavenue.com.

What would you get?

If you could choose to take home any four of the following fall products and didn’t have to pay a dime, what would you get? Since it’s Friday, let’s virtual haul, LOL!

Are you ready to do some serious Dolce & Gabbana The Make Up damage?

It’s time for another round of WHAT WOULD YOU GET?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Choose any four Dolce & Gabbana The Make Up products from fall 2009, and post your wish list in the comments.

Eyes

Smooth Eye Colour Quad in Dazzling 160, $59 (repromote from earlier this year)

Smooth Eye Colour Duo in Rose 90, $36

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I’m so jealous of all the lucky New Yorkers who get to celebrate Illamasqua’s official in-store Sephora launch at the new Times Square flagship store today.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could all go together? We could meet in front of the Blushers and lipsticks and throw elbows at anybody who got in our way, LOL!

Check out some of these other posts for more on the Illamasqua line…

• Illamasqua Intense Lipgloss in Frenzy: A Pink Pigmentation Bonanza!
• Easy 4-Step Eye Makeup with Illamasqua
• Illamasqua Cream Blusher Stays On Like Donkey Kong
• Illamasqua Lip Look: Thinking Outside the Box
• Illamasqua, I Think I’ve Met My Matte
• Illamasqua: Makeup for Your Alter Ego
• Arousingly Sheer Illamasqua Sheer Lipgloss in Rouse
• Illamasqua Swatch O’ Rama
• Illamasqua Pure Pigment In Conquer Needs to Conquer a Price Reduction

It’d be a full-on Illamasqua swatch-o-rama.

But I’d probably shy away from the company’s Volume Mascara in Harness ($23) (a matte black). Truth be told, it hasn’t made me want to shoop as much as the other things I’ve tried from the line.

For now it’s the only Illamasqua mascara available on Sephora.com, and Illamasqua describes it as a smudge-free, dramatic mascara to lengthen and thicken lashes.

Thicker, longer lashes

First, what I see as the good stuff: Volume Mascara does a pretty good job of thickening and lengthening my lashes. The color is a deep, true black with a matte finish, and even a single coat creates an immediate difference that’s both noticeable and above average.

Does it inspire OMG!-filled texts to my BFF at three in the morning? Maybe not, but it’s still a pretty color and markedly above average.

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Have I ever mentioned my Ivy League pants?

One of the colleges I applied to back in high school was Harvard. My parents made me do it (even though I didn’t feel like Ivy League material), but I went through the motions, sending off my application (this was pre-Internet) and waiting patiently for a reply.

Weeks passed, and then a letter came in the mail. The school wanted me to interview with a Bay Area Harvard alumni.

Less than an hour before leaving the house on the day of the interview, the unthinkable happened: I spilled a glass of water on my pants.

Panicked, with time running out, I tossed them in the dryer for 10 minutes. Sadly, I put the dryer on high heat and forgot to check the tags on the pants.

They shrank, horribly, but I was so spaced out, running late and nervous that I didn’t realize until it was too late. A block from the interview, without enough time to go home and change, it hit me.

Something’s wrong with my pants…

Too late to back out, I parked the car and hurried to my appointment, taking shallow breaths every step of the way.

What followed were 60 mortifying, oxygen-deprived minutes of gibberish and the end of my Ivy League career.

Which leads me to Bobbi Brown’s upcoming Ivy League collection of six Lip Crayons ($22), a Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner ($21), two Eye Shadows ($20) and a new, improved line of Creamy Eye Pencils (nine of them, $20 each).

As usual, Bobbi’s colors are conservative and wearable for work (or a Harvard lecture), but a few of them pack some serious punch.

Here are some of my faves…

Metallic Shadow in Bash, $20

Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner in Forest Shimmer Ink, $21

Creamy Eye Pencil in Jet, $20

Lip Crayon in Posey, $22

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