Review: Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Temptress

Lately I've been trying to bolster my lip product selection, because I took a look at my collection one day and realized it was pretty much lip balms (which I barely count as makeup, it's more like skincare right?) and a very small handful of peachy/pinky/nudey glosses. Like, fewer than five. I realized I needed MOAR! So my goal was (and still is) to find:
a) more lipsticks
b) more glosses in bolder/different colours
c) a combination of those two!

Since then my eyes have really been open, and during one random trip to the drugstore this one caught my eye as it was on sale, and the type of pink shade I tend to gravitate towards/look good in. I usually go for glosses though, so this fit in with my mission to try to get more lipsticks!! Took it home and I love this shade!! It is definitely a rosy version of MLBB for me!

Here's the shade on. Just a tad darker than my natural lip shade, a pretty sheer colour too so it looks very natural. Nice to look just a little more "done" without looking like I'm really wearing any colour on my lips!

The formula feels fairly moisturizing on the lips, this isn't one that will dry your lips out! I would recommend it if you're looking for a lightly pigmented soft rose shade!

NYX Round Lipstick Review

This is actually my second attempt with NYX Round Lipsticks. The first time I ordered some, I ended up with three shades that were nothing like the swatches on the website (lesson learned!) and entirely unsuitable for me. Thalia, Circe and B-52 are all popular shades, but not so great on me - I was able to give B-52 to my mom since the colour suits her more, but the other two sit unloved! Which is sad because I LOVE the formula of these - silky smooth and nicely pigmented.

So I gave them another shot, but this time I researched HARD - I only picked out these three shades after seeing at least three seperate swatches for each one, to get a good idea of what they really looked like. And the research really paid off because all three of these shades are perfect for me!

 Indian Pink is a soft pink with gold shimmer, very beautiful and natural looking but with a little glow thanks to the gold.

 Margarita is kind of like a punched-up version of Indian Pink, a little brighter and with a bit more coral in it.

Fig is a creamy medium pink shade, a definite my lips but better shade for me!

I can see all three of these being in high rotation for me, and helping me get over my "fear" of lipsticks!

Cherry Culture Haul!

Got my great haul from Cherry Culture today! Here's the goods and some swatches (just for the makeup, not the nail stuff this time!)

This is the list of what is up there:

• LA Girl Disco Brites Hustle
• NYX Girls Round Lip Gloss Doll Pink
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil Strawberry Milk
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil Lime
• NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil Purple Velvet
• NYX Ultra Pearl Mania Sky Pink
• NYX Ultra Pearl Mania Lilac
• NYX Ultra Pearl Mania Yellow
• LA Colors Art Deco Nail Lacquer White
• LA Colors Art Deco Nail Lacquer Black
• LA Colors Art Deco Nail Lacquer Silver
• LA Colors Art Deco Nail Lacquer Red
• NYX Round Lipstick Margarita
• NYX Round Lipstick Fig
• NYX Round Lipstick Indian Pink
• a freebie Cherry Culture bubblegum scented lip balm!

I am so extremely excited to finally get my mitts on some striper polishes, this is going to be great!!

Here are the makeup swatches!

Top row L-R (just shade names, too lazy to type out full product names, see above list for reference!): Indian Pink, Margarita (which actually looks a lot brighter and darker in person, and peachier... basically nothing like this!), Fig and Doll Pink.
Middle row L-R: Lime, Purple Velvet, Strawberry Milk
Bottom row L-R: Sky Pink, Lilac, Yellow

NOTD Aug 26/11

This is a design I've been wanting to try for a while, but I've been a little afraid of it - but WOW am I glad I gave it a shot!! This was actually a lot easier than it looks! It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to but I'm still really pleased with it.

Check out the hibiscus flowers!

And for the first time ever.... my right hand!!! Yes, that's right, it exists!! This design was actually so easy to do that I'm confident enough to post what both hands look like, even the one I did with my non-dominant hand. And trust me - I had a grande iced coffee this morning so my hands were shaking when I did this, and it still turned out alright!

I also entered these in the Dare To Be Nails Challenge (pattern challenge) over at Makeup Talk that I think everyone who is into nail art should check out! They have lots of themed nail art challenges very frequently! Sign up and join the community!

FOTD Aug 26/11

I wanted to do a look today that was mostly neutral/bare but with a darker crease, and I really like how this turned out! Especially paired with the glossy, light pink-nude lips!

Eyes:

• UD Naked, wash all over lid from lashline to browbone
• UD Virgin lightly patted over inner half of lid, inner corners and browbone
• MAC Print blended into outer V and crease, under the lower lashline
• UD Buck patted between Print and Naked/Virgin on the lid to blend them together a bit

Lips:

• L'Oreal Colour Juice Sheer Juicy Lip Gloss in Bubble Gum

Cheeks:

• Wet n' Wild Color Icon Blusher in Pearlescent Pink

 I am very impatiently awaiting my package from Cherry Culture, with a nice makeup AND nail polish haul... I just want to get my hands on it so bad! It's got some nail polishes (including some striper polishes) and a bunch of NYX stuff - lipsticks, lipgloss, Jumbo Eye Pencils and Ultra Pearl Mania shadows! Hopefully customs isn't going to hold it forever and a day!

NOTD Aug 22/11

A very cute design I'd been meaning to try, finally happening! Found the design thanks to cutepolish - Hello Kitty tips!

EDIT: Gave her some ears :) I love it now!

Kleancolor, LA Girl and Sally Hansen polish haul!

Got a few new nail polishes in the last couple days, including my first neon and my first crackle! Not counting the CoverGirl one I had in fourth grade ;).

From left to right it's Kleancolor Crack Nail Polish in Black, Kleancolor Nail Lacquer in Funky Yellow (I can't wait to do those two together!), LA Girl  Color Addict Nail Color in Emotion and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Strobe Light - this is a really gorgeous light pink glitter and my second bottle of the stuff! I want to work this one into another glitter gradient. :)

I noticed the crackle polish had some unusual instructions compared to what I've heard about the application of most other crackle polishes.

 Usually you're supposed to apply to totally dry polish, but not this stuff! Apparently it's a little finicky to put on if you don't know what you're doing, but luckily the internet is a wealth of knowledge so I think I should manage OK!

I've got an awesome Cherry Culture order coming soon too that will be an upcoming haul! So excited - striper polishes! Finally!

NOTD Aug 18/11 and steps on how to do it!

Hey guys! I am really happy with this glitter gradient mani I just did tonight, partly because I think it looks great but also partly because it was so freakin' easy! This mani could seriously not be more goof-proof! I didn't take step by step pics, but I'm going to post the steps to getting this mani below the pic - it's seriously so easy you don't really need pictures!

My camera didn't even really capture the full glory of it... I may try and take another picture of it tomorrow in daylight to see if it captures better there! New picture added!

Here are the steps to getting this!

Products used:

• Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Black Out
• Nicole by OPI in Nicole's Nickel

Steps:

1. Prep nails with a base coat, let dry.
2. Place french manicure guides or a piece of tape to leave about 1/4 or a 1/3 of your tip at the top (depending on how long your nails are - the longer your nails, the bigger the tip can be, but even if your nails are shorter you don't want to have a skinny teeny little tip)
3. Paint the tips black, pull off the tape! Don't worry if the line isn't totally straight or looks a little jagged, that's fine!
4. Let it dry - I just painted a coat of quick-dry top coat over the tips to speed this up.
5. Take a latex (or non-latex!) makeup sponge and rip the edge so it's a little jagged. Dip this in a glitter polish that has silver glitter and a semi-opaque grey/black base (like Nicole's Nickel!) and sponge it on just over the black tips to start.
6. Then go back and get a little more of the glitter polish on your sponge, and this time dab it so it overlaps not only the black tips but a little bit further down on your nail. This will create a gorgeous gradient effect!
7. Optional step - if you want the gradient to be a little more dramatic, after you apply the glitter polish, go back with the sponge in a tiny bit of the plain black polish, and veeery lightly dab that on the very tips of the nails (I'm talking the last millimetre here!) and dab the sponge several times to blend it out well.
8. Add some top coat to seal it and voila! Gorgeous glitter gradient! You could definitely try this out with other colours too for a different look! Enjoy!

Thanks for reading lovelies! :)

FOTD August 16/11 and saving time on your makeup routine!

This was me trying to REALLY streamline my makeup routine!! Right now I'm getting up at 5 a.m., and if that time of day doesn't make you reconsider the length of your makeup routine, nothing will!

The trick, for me at least, to streamlining my makeup routine is to wear less makeup and do my makeup more quickly, but not look like I'm wearing less makeup to the untrained eye... so to go from 4+ shades of eyeshadow carefully blended, with precisely drawn eyeliner down to one wash of eyeshadow and no liner isn't an option. Nor would going from skin flawlessly finished with foundation, concealer, powder and so on to moisturizer and a bit of cream blush. I want to find ways to make it look like I spent just as much time on my makeup as I usually do, even when I cut that time in half.

My tricks? I break them down into two categories - base and eyes.

For base:

• Start with a good tinted moisturizer! Right now I've been using the Origins VitaZing. For some this will be enough, but if like me you prefer a more full-coverage look and still want some foundation on, using tinted moisturizer first will give you some base coverage combined with the all-important step of moisturizing first...
• ...then, take your foundation of choice and apply it only to "problem areas". For me, that's areas of redness like on and around my nose, my chin, and a little on my forehead. I've been using Rimmel Lasting Finish 25 Hour foundation, and just applying it to these areas with my fingers. I make sure to get it on the undereye area as well, because this step can also save time on concealer!

Doing it this way saves me time because normally, I would moisturize with a regular moisturizer, then apply foundation all over my face with a sponge, taking a lot more time. This way gets me close to the same coverage, but in far less time, because by the time I'm done step one, I'm already half way there for the coverage I need by the end of step two!

For eyes:

• Find a good medium shade - one that's not too light that it could be a highlight or even your usual lid shade, but not so dark it would be a crease shade. And put it on your lid!! It's really simple actually... if you choose your colours and finishes carefully, you can even get a couple shades of the same colour on there for more depth, but still take hardly any time doing it. I find shimmery shades tend to blend more easily on their own and with other colours, so they can really cut down on blending time if you're in a hurry.

As an example, here's a breakdown of how I did the look below, using all these techniques!

• Apply NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Iced Mocha to the lid. I just rub the pencil on my finger and rub that on my lids.
• Apply shade 13 from the Sephora Color Play 5-in-1 palette (a medium-light shimmery silvery-taupe) to the inner half of the lid.
• Apply shade 12 from the same palette (a slightly darker version of the same colour) to the outer half, blend at the middle. Sweep a little bit of this shade along the outer third of the lower lashline.
• Take an angled brush, dip it in a pigmented, matte black eyeshadow (I like NYX's single eyeshadow in Black) and stamp that on the outer half of the upper lashline, creating a slight, soft wing if you so desire.
• Then just add water! Hehehe no I'm kidding.... then just add mascara and you're done!

This takes less than half the time of most of the eye looks I usually do when I have more time, but really doesn't look extremely simplistic. Play around with the shades you have to see how this can translate for yourself when you want to save time!

NOTD/FOTD Aug 12/11

Double feature today!! I absolutely love how these nails turned out!! It kind of made me realize, in the process of doing them, that even if things look a little whack during the process of doing your nails, stick with it and keep going and it will turn out! If you could see step by step pictures of this, the first few steps just look uggo! And I kind of doubted whether it was going to turn out and thought about stopping and starting over, but I kept at it. And at the end, they turned out great!

So remember, with nail art or even makeup, keep your end goal in mind and keep going for that - the in between stages might not always look pretty but you'll get there! (awfully philosophical for nail art, eh?)

Here's my face today as well!

 

 Main colours used on the eyes:

• UD Mildew on lids
• UD Half Baked just on the centre of the lids
• Maybelline EyeStudio Shadow Quad in Green With Envy, dark green shade in outer V and light green shade in inner corner
• UD Virgin for brow highlight and inner tearduct highlight

The lips were:

• Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Just Enough Buff
• NYX Girls Round Lipgloss in Whipped

Review: Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss in Hot Pink

I recently felt bold on a browse through Shoppers Drug Mart, and decided to be adventurous and try out a brightly coloured lipgloss! I have one highly pigmented Dior lipgloss that's a bright watermelon type of shade, but I wanted to try out something that was a bright pink but more in the fuchsia family. This lipgloss definitely fits the bill!

It's a medium toned bright pink, with definite purple undertones and subtle silvery shimmer. It's very pigmented, so the texture is kind of like if you pureed a bullet of lipstick, added a teeny bit of gloss to it, and put it on your lips! It has a kind of grainy feel as opposed to being slick or gloopy or sticky. Because of this, it has more grip and it stays on your lips much longer than any other gloss, but doesn't have that "glossy" feel or as glossy of a look. But you can always top it with clear gloss to get that patent-look finish!

The packaging is really nice, I think especially for a drugstore item.

 Here's a swatch of it on the back of my hand.

 And on my lips! Picture taken outside in fairly overcast conditions, no flash. This isn't a ton of it on, it had faded down to almost a stain and I did a light reapplication about 10 minutes before this picture was taken. And I habitually press and rub my lips together, especially when I have gloss or lipstick on, so consider this being after about 30+ minutes of wear for a normal person! LOL...

Overall, I would give this product a 5/5! The longevity is great - and even when it wears off your lips a bit it still leaves a nice stain so you get some of the effect of the colour. There is a nice range of colours and the texture is great, somewhere between a gloss and a lipstick.

Definitely recommend you try it, in this colour or in one of the others! If you already have, let me know in the comments!

A shout-out to my parents!!

I know this is totally unrelated to beauty, which is what this blog is obviously about, but I have to give a shout-out to my parents and their newest ventures!! Both of them are artists of GREAT talent, and have very recently opened Etsy shops!! My mom's shop is called SalonRichelle and she does acrylic paintings on canvas and heavy weight paper of a range of things like figures both mythical and realistic, landscapes and even some abstract. My dad's shop is called Thulsa and he does very detailed calligraphy and illustration set around passages from books or song lyrics he likes.

If you're into well-done, original artwork, definitely take a peek! Even if it isn't something you are as into for yourself, if you remember about them and tell it to someone who is, it would be appreciated! They work hard on this stuff and I really want to help them get the word out! :) Thanks for reading!

NOTD August 7/11

It was so hard to get a nice picture of these!! But they are sooo adorable! They took a looong time to do but were so worth it. I smile every time I look at them! :)

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils - tips for use as cream base

Most people have probably heard of the wonderful NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils (which I swatched and reviewed very recently) and if you have, you've probably heard that the shade Milk is great to use as a cream shadow base to make your powder shadows show up more vibrantly and stay put longer. This is true, but what you may not have considered is how the finish of Milk would effect the finish of the eyeshadow you lay over it.

Because Milk is a fairly opaque matte white shade, it tends to make shades you put on top of it pull matte as well. Which is totally fine if you put a matte or satin eyeshadow over it, but what if you want to put a shimmery shadow on top? What you may not realize is that putting a shimmery eyeshadow over Milk can actually make your eyeshadow look less shimmery! And if this isn't what you want to do, that's a bad thing!

But luckily, there's a solution! It's called NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Cottage Cheese! A slightly off-white and shimmery colour! When you use this as your eyeshadow base under shimmery shadows, it will preserve and even enhance the shimmer in the powder shadow, rather than dull it down like Milk would! Here's an example of this in action. I used some of the shades from the LA Colors Unforgettable Palette - click here to see a swatch of it over UDPP, which is totally transparent. Now look at this!

Pretty big difference eh? Here's some close ups:

So remember to keep the finish of your powder shadows in mind when choosing a cream colour base so you don't mess up the finish of the shadow you lay overtop! Hope this tip helps you in the future! ;)

Review: Rimmel Base Coat/Top Coat Pro

I figured it was about time I reviewed something to do with nails, considering all the nail polish posts I do!! This one is for a base coat/top coat combo I had been using!! And it illustrated quite effectively for me that even a decent product can go downhill with time... read on...

This stuff started out well enough, did pretty well what it was supposed to. But it was in the latter half of the bottle that things started to go south! I haven't had this for a very long time - I do my nails at least once but usually twice a week, and this is my base coat and top coat, so it hasn't had time to really "go bad". But still, it did... I noticed the last several times I used it that my nail polish was bubbling really bad. I thought it was one of the polishes I was using, but after doing several different manicures with all different polishes, I realized that it was this stuff that was doing it!! Not cool!!! So I can't say that I will be using it again!

I've just purchased a Sally Hansen base coat and top coat, not a combo this time but seperately. I read somewhere that it's better to have them seperate since really, they're supposed to be doing two different things. That made sense, so I think this will be my last attempt at saving money by doing a combo!! I painted a top coat of my new Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Anti-Chip Top Coat over my current mani, and so far it looks great! It actually made the bubbles almost completely disappear, so that's a bonus too! I was just about ready to scrap this manicure already!

Overall, my rating for the Rimmel Base Coat/Top Coat Pro is a 1.5/5. This might work for you at first, but don't expect to get through more than half the bottle before it goes sour on you!

Why swatching is important!

One of the reasons I love having a couple Sephora's accessible to me (one in the mall I work at, and one a few minutes from where I live) is I do less impulse internet buying. I'm able to go in the store, look at the product, swatch the product and see if it's worth it!

In some cases, doing this makes me realize that buying something from my wishlist would have been a big mistake! Such as in the case of the Sephora Collection Moonshadow Baked Palette in "In the Nude", which appeared on my most recent What's On the Wishlist? post.

I dropped into Sephora after work today specifically to swatch this, and I was capital-Disappointed. There was hardly any pigmentation!! If you're looking for some really sheer glitter bombs, this is the palette for you. Now I know some people may like sheer, glittery shadows and that's fine!! But according to Sephora's website:

• "Each formula features high payoff pigments and textures that blend easily. Its micro glitter adheres to the skin better than regular sized glitter. Used wet, the dark shades can be used as an eyeliner with an intensified, bolder effect. "

 So I was expecting pigmented, glittery shadows. Not sheer ones... I made sure to swatch a range of colours, from the light ones and the dark ones, and both were just as bad. I didn't even bother taking a picture...

So know that pigmented is not what you will get here, and you may not want to bother. It's possible these might foil well, but honestly I want the shadow to show up well without having to take any extra steps!

NOTD Aug 2/11

Vanilla ice cream sundae with chocolate sauce and a cherry on top!! Yumm!! Hungry yet?

(PS - drippy manicures are WAY easier than I thought they would be!)