NOTD Mar 4/13 - violet and colourful glitter

I just loved this new shade of polish so much I had to find a way to use it! It's another dollar store one, can't remember the exact price but it was somewhere in the $2 range, and it applies marvellously for such a cheap polish! Doesn't have that stinky chemical smell some cheaper polishes can have too which is even more of a bonus.

I kept it simple (for me) with a couple coats of the gorgeous violet and then a glitter gradient that was multicoloured.

The violet is Tivoli Color Shock in shade NP127 (have I mentioned how much I hate it when companies don't actually name their shades? Grrr!) and the glitter is NYX Advanced Salon Formula Nail Polish in Multi Glitter. At least it has a name, but no points for creativity there.

Review/Swatches: NYX Stick Blushes (Hibiscus, Pink Poppy, and Tulip)

Today I want to review a product that I am completely loving!

If you've been reading my blog for a little while you may recall I reviewed NYX Stick Blush in Hibiscus back in August, but since then I've gotten a couple other shades and I wanted to have one post where I sort of review the product in general, and pool all the swatches. I will probably end up with more shades of this in the future and when I do I'll be sure to swatch them!

These are nice and stiff in the tube, but they apply very smoothly and blend well. To get the best colour level I usually like to swipe it directly on my cheeks, blend with my fingers, and then repeat once or twice depending on how intense I want my blush to be for that particular look.

The longevity is really great, which is nice since that isn't always the case for cream formula blushes. They are also a great size, so they're easy to pack in your purse in case you're out for a very long time and eventually need a touch up.

ALSO - I need to talk about one of the hidden delights of these blushes. They make AWESOME lipsticks. Seriously! I like to pick up the product off the stick with my finger and then pat it on my lips. Pink Poppy especially looks gorgeous on the lips. It creates a really nice put together look to have neutral eyes and then the same shade on your cheeks and lips! And take it from someone with lips that tend to be as dry as the Sahara, these don't dry your lips out like you would think they might!

OK, enough talk though, let's get to the pictures!

 This is all three of the ones I currently own. As you can see, another awesome thing about these blushes is that the packaging is the same colour as the blush on the inside. Even right down to the details - Hibiscus and Tulip are non-shimmery, and so is their packaging. But Pink Poppy has very fine gold shimmer in it, and so does the packaging!

First let's focus on Hibiscus. This is a slightly darker beige toned pink blush with some peach tones. Out of the three it's the most neutral and most peachy type of colour. I wouldn't even really describe this one as overtly pink at all, more like peachy-nude.

Here's a shot of the product inside the package.

And here is a swatch. On the left is it swiped on, and on the right blended out.

Now let's look at Pink Poppy. Pink Poppy is a neutral pink shade with definite peachy tones, and a slight gold shimmer. Very, very pretty!

This picture I think actually shows the colour as a little pinker than it is, and I'm sure you can tell it looks more peachy in the package. It definitely looks like the colour in the package on the skin, and not as dark or "magenta" looking as the swatch on my skin. Camera must have been being funky or the lighting outside wasn't great or something!

Click here to see a FOTD where I'm wearing Pink Poppy on my cheeks.

Last but not least, let's see Tulip! Tulip is a cool toned pink, much more Barbie!

This swatch turned out the most colour accurate I think, although a little more intense than it appears in real life. It's not quite so vivid when you're wearing it on your face!

Overall, I LOVE these products! I have several more shades of this on my wishlist, and I definitely think you should check them out too!

Let me know if you have tried them and what you think!

NOTD Jan 19/13 - inspired by Madeline Poole

I saw this gorgeous mani on Tumblr, and something about the simple design and the yummy colours just caught my eye! I had to recreate it!

I tweaked the design a bit for myself, instead of the rhinestones I did a single gold pyramid stud on each nail. Love how this turned out, couldn't stop staring at my hands last night. :)

 The yellow is NYX Salon Polish in Pastel Yellow and I painted the triangles on with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet.

NOTD Dec 12/12 - Viridian snowflakes

I love snowflakes for a holiday nail design (if you hadn't already noticed) but I wanted something with a slightly less traditional colour this time.

I chose Illamasqua's Viridian, a gorgeous shimmery deep blue-green shade! See a swatch of it alone here. Then I added white snowflakes with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, and topped it with a holographic silver shimmer (NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Disco Inferno). Simple but pretty!

NOTD Nov 20/12 - peppermint swirl

Do you ever kind of look up, look around, and go, "Holy Crap! It's late November? Wasn't it just summer like, last week?" I don't just mean weather wise... I mean it was pretty mild through most of September and even October... but I feel like this fall so far has gone by extremely quickly and all of a sudden, BAM, it's almost the end of the year! Crazy!

Anyways, continuing with the spirit of the approaching Christmas (and assorted other holidays) season I have another festive manicure! This one is inspired by peppermint candies!

This may look upon first glance like a water marble, but in fact since I totally refuse to subject myself to the what seems to be torturous process of water marbling, I took a different route with this. I painted my nails first with Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On, and then took a miscellaneous red striper polish and painted on curved diagonal lines that tapered at one end.

I did each nail one at a time so the polish wouldn't dry before I got back to it, and took a needle and dragged in through the lines, going first one direction and then the next time in the other. Then I topped each nail with NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Disco Inferno for a bit of glittery fun! I loved these and they seemed to be real eye catchers, I got lots of compliments on them!

NOTD Sep 8/12 - pastel yellow and vines

This is a girly and pretty design that I saw on a nail wheel done by Look At Her Nails! and just loved! Mine isn't quite so delicate as hers but I still like how it turned out very much!

I started with a couple coats of NYX Salon Polish in Pastel Yellow, which you may have noticed in my haul post yesterday! Then I used a medium striper brush to paint on the little vines, dots and leaves and such in Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear's White On.

September haul!

I recently received an order I placed with Cherry Culture for a whole bunch of nail polishes, all glitter except for one! One was a repurchase and the rest are brand new!

Top row L-R: LA Girl Rock Star in Double Platinum, Milani One Coat Glitter in Lavender Fizz, NYX Salon Polish in Pastel Yellow, Milani Jewel FX in Gold, LA Girl Rock Star in Live On Stage

Bottom row L-R: LA Girl Glitter Addict in Animate, LA Girl Glitter Addict in Uninhibited, LA Girl Glitter Addict in Purge, LA Girl Glitter Addict in Explosion.

These are my first two Milani polishes ever, very excited to try them out since I've heard great things about both of these polishes!!

FOTD Sep 3/12 - NYX One Night in Morocco warm smokey evening look

Technically, this is only an eye of the day, but that's my favourite part anyways! :)

The first two looks I did with the NYX One Night in Morocco palette were more daytime looks (see here and here), but this palette is also great for creating darker, more nighttime appropriate looks too! I went for a warm, brown toned one this time, but with this palette you can also lean towards the cool greys and even one that's mostly in the taupe family. I'll post evening looks with those colour families some time in the future as well!

This look used no eyeliner and no false lashes, but you could amp up the drama a lot more by using one or both of those with this look. I really liked how it ended up looking without both though, so I stuck to just the shadows and mascara for this one (with the obligatory tightliner).

Here's a breakdown of what shades I used where.

First I applied e to the inner half of the lid, bringing it down to the inner corner and also applying it on the browbone. Then I added a bit of a to the browbone and inner corner to lighten it up even more. I applied g into the crease all the way to the inner corner, keeping it distinct from the lid colour, and also blended it onto the outer half of the lid, fading it into e in the middle. I used g again to smudge under the lower lashline, from outer corner to just before the tear duct. I used d to blend out the crease colour up into the browbone, and smudge out the lower lashline a little more. I used a teeny bit of h to bridge the gap between the lower lashline colour and the highlight on the inner corner. Last but not least, I deepened the outer V area of the eye with f, blending it out well.

Hope you liked this look! If you haven't already, this is a great palette to get - lots of versatility for anyone who likes neutrals!

ALSO - weird side note, but I'm blown away by what a difference lighting makes to colour... you can see in most of the pictures I post that I take them outdoors, and my eye colour comes out as really green. In real life it's a little less vivid, more brown toned - a true hazel eye. But in these indoor pics, my eyes look totally different, almost with an earthy teal colour to them! Not at all what they look like in real life but kinda cool eh?

FOTD Aug 20/12 - NYX One Night in Morocco, lighter and warmer

For today's look, I used my NYX One Night in Morocco palette again, but unlike yesterday's bolder, cooler, smokier look, I wanted to do something a little warmer, lighter and softer. This palette delivers in that arena too!

  I started with applying shade e to the inner half of my lids, the inner corners and the browbones. This light, satiny sand shade is so gorgeous and really lights up the eyes, this is already one of my favourite eyeshadows. Then I brushed shade g, a warm dark brown, onto the outer half of the lids and up into the crease, and very slightly under the lower lashline. I blended it out a little bit there with shade h. Then I just used shade f the line the upper lashline!

Very simple and easy, but it looks "done" and the light, sandy lid shade brightens up the eyes so beautifully! I can't decide which look I like better, today's or yesterday's! So different from each other but both so nice in their own ways. Loving this palette more and more!

FOTD Aug 19/12 - NYX One Night in Morocco daytime smokey

The first look I tried when I got the NYX One Night in Morocco palette was a smokey daytime look. You could easily darken this up a bit more and make it work for night too!

For this look, I started with shade h on the inner half of the lid, a cool champage taupe shade. Then I blended shade d, a brown toned cool taupe, on the outer half of the lid and up into the crease, and also took it down to the outside part of the lower lashline. I added a little bit of shade f, a deep cool brown, to the outer V area of my lid, and used shade e, a warm light sandy shade, for a highlight on the inner corners and browbones. Lastly, I used a mixture of shades c and f to line the top lashline!

For the rest of the face, I wore a couple of the light glosses from the palette, and on my cheeks I wore Essence Silky Touch Blush in Babydoll and my new NYX Tango with Bronzing Stix in Tango and Highlight.

Review: NYX Tango with Bronzing Stix in Tango and Highlight

This is the other item I got in my HauteLook NYX haul! It's a stick of highlighter! This is my third highlighter I've owned, so far I have had liquid, pressed powder and now stick form!

This one is the most different in terms of colour - the other two I have are nude and pink-toned, respectively. This one is very warm and golden toned, so it's a good addition to my collection!

Here's a swatch, on the left is swiped straight on and on the right it's been blended out a bit.

The pigmentation on this is pretty good, I wouldn't want it to be too overwhelming for a highlighting product. It's nice and shimmery which I also love for highlighters. It's not the most blendable because it's a little on the dry side, but I find the best way to apply is to swipe it with a couple fingers, and then dab/blend that onto the cheekbones. It gives a nice golden, summery glow!

Review: NYX One Night in Morocco Matte Smokey Look Palette (long, and lots of pictures!)

HauteLook had another great sale recently, this time on NYX stuff. I checked out reviews for some of the stuff available (I never buy online without researching reviews!) and heard lots of good things about this palette. And the hype was well deserved! I've had this for a couple days and used it twice, and I really truly love it!

The palette itself is a nice size - this fits in my hand just perfectly. Inside, it houses 8 eyeshadows, eyeshadow base, and four lipglosses. One of the beauties of this palette is that the lipglosses are completely seperate from the shadows! Hallelujah! I don't normally use the glosses in palettes anyways (I like them more portable for touchups) but even if I did, the fact that most palette lipglosses get covered in eyeshadow so quickly would ruin those intentions fast!

The top section of the palette opens by flipping up the lid, just like your usual compact, and that's where the shadows and base are. The lipglosses are in a little pull out drawer below. Genius! You can open just the gloss section without having to open the shadow section too.

The only flaw with this kind of packaging is that if you open the mirrored part all the way, it kind of pops out the drawer a little, making it more awkward to hold while you use the mirror if you happen to have smallish hands like me.

So let's get into some details! The shadows themselves are not entirely matte. You will notice when you open it up that some of the shadows appear to have a bit of shimmer. BUT! But.... they are not shimmery! Once you actually apply them, it seems more like a satin finish for those shades - they really just seem to be more blendable and evenly pigmented because of this. On the skin the shimmer doesn't show, they still look satiny-matte. I think that little bit of shimmer just keeps them from looking chalky, which is so easy to happen with matte shadows.

Top row, left to right:

• Cool white shade, matte
• Cool light-medium grey, matte
• Black, very slight shimmer, satin
• Brown-toned medium taupe, satin with slight shimmer

Bottom row, left to right:

• Warm-toned light sand colour, satin with slight shimmer
• Cool dark brown, matte
• Warm dark brown, matte
• Light champagne-taupe shade, satin with slight shimmer (this didn't show up well in the photo, it looks really similar to the first shade in this row but it's not - I would consider it a lid shade whereas the first one would be highlight or a very light lid shade. This one is darker, cooler and more taupe)

The eyeshadow base I was not so jazzed about. I tried a little on the back of my hand, and I noticed when I put the light eyeshadows over it (especially the white) they kind of disappeared into it, because the base isn't translucent, it's really the colour seen in the pan. So the white shadow turned the colour of the base. I prefer bases that are either totally translucent so they don't change the colour of my eyeshadow, or if they have to be coloured, white so that they intensify the shade rather than absorb it. So I haven't tried using it on my eyes, and can't comment as to how well it holds up as a primer!

 The lipglosses are fairly standard for palette glosses - meaning they seem like more of an afterthought than a purposeful part of the package. They aren't awful, but they just don't have the same quality as the others. The pigment isn't strong, but I wouldn't expect it to be. I also have pretty pigmented lips, and I happen to like low-pigment lip products, so it works for me. I just prefer individual glosses to ones in palettes anyways. The shades are a light cool pink, a deeper neutral rose, a light peach, and a deeper warm toned rose with a bit of a terracotta cast to it. Again, I know that's not how it looks in the picture- guess my camera was being wacky! But the left two are cooler, the right two are warmer. They did a nice job in this entire palette of having a good balance of warm and cool shades. These glosses do feel moisturizing on the lips, not sticky nor too slick like petroleum jelly.

Overall, I would absolutely 100% recommend this palette. The shadows go on like butter, the pigmentation is great and they blend very well. The mixture of cool and warm shades is nice (although I would have to say it leans a little more cool overall) and you can create lots of great looks with it. I've already worn it twice, for two very different looks, and I'm keen to keep experimenting with it! I will have pictures of those looks up very soon for you to see, as well as a review for the other item I purchased from this HauteLook NYX sale!

NOTD Aug 16/12 - glitter sandwich!

Another one I can tick off the to-do list, a glitter sandwich! I believe I saw some variation of almost this exact colour scheme somewhere else, so I know this combo wasn't organic from my mind (how many ideas are, really?) but I love it so much! It's soft and girly, almost a vintage vibe in some way. Bright, but still muted. I adore it! I can see this being cute with slight variations, like using baby blue or lavender as the bottom coat.

First I did a coat of Barielle Beaches & Dreams, an opaque peachy nude that just hints at a pink tone too. Then a coat or two of NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Multi Glitter, and then a coat of Essence Sweet As Candy.

For those who don't know the idea behind a glitter sandwich, it basically breaks down to this:
Opaque or sheer base coat + glitter coat + sheer or jelly coat = glitter sandwich. The look is to make it seem like the glitter is kind of floating in the middle of the polish, even though it's actually sandwiched between two other layers. It sort of softens and mutes brighter glitters too and gives them new life. I mean, for something rainbow this comes across as pretty wearable!

Review: NYX Stick Blush in Hibiscus

The other day I was in one of the few and far between stores around here that sells NYX (although I did here an exciting rumour recently that a mall nearby will be getting a standalone NYX store! Exciting!!) and picked up their Stick Blush in Hibiscus (a.k.a. shade SB 03 - but Hibiscus is more memorable). I've used their Rouge Cream blush before, which is in a little compact, and adored it, so I wanted to give this a shot too. For some reason I've never actually bought a powder blush from NYX - I just keep having good luck with their cream formulas, and this one is no exception.

There's a shot of the packaging. Basic, plastic, nothing to write home about. There is a little heart on the top of the cap, which I think is cute for what it's worth.

Here's the blush itself! I would describe the shade as a medium melon-beige... melon as in a toned down coral with a little bit more pink. And then beiged down. It's sort of a "perky neutral" blush. I usually steer clear of blushes that are more neutral toned and veer more towards brighter corals, pinks and peaches, but I wanted something different this time and I'm glad I did it! In this case, neutral does not equal boring! It gives a really natural, believable flush, for when you want that look.

Here I am wearing it, with just a swipe applied to the cheek and blended with my fingers. This is a bit of a thicker formula, but still nicely blendable. It didn't stay all wet and tacky on my face but it also didn't dry instantly leaving me with no time to blend. The formula is really nice in that way. The staying power is average but for such an easily portable item, I don't mind having to reapply once or twice - easier than pulling out a powder compact and a brush! And then you get that fresh, dewy cream blush finish refreshed too!

This is a great blush for when you want your cheeks to be a supporting player in your look - natural, glowy, easy to apply.

NOTD Jul 30/12 - home, haul, glitter!

Hey everyone! We got back home on Saturday after our AMAZING trip to Disneyland! I had sooo much fun and I wish I could go back right now! I'm slooowly working my way through editing all of our photos. I'll be sure to throw a few up here on the blog!

The day after I got back I managed to haul a few things! Three nail polishes and a blush (the blush I'll do a seperate post for) and I replaced my poor beat up Disneyland manicure with a fresh new one! I had been wanting a multi-coloured glitter for ages, and when I saw this NYX one at the store I had to get it. The other two just called out to me, so they had to come home too!

Left to right they are: Wet n' Wild Wild Shine in Sparked (silver and rose microglitter in a clear base), NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Multi Glitter (various sizes of silver, red, blue, yellow, green, pink, purple and orange glitter in a clear base), and NYX Advanced Salon Formula in Disco Inferno (silver holo microglitter in a clear base).

Here they are up close.

And here's the mani I made layering Multi Glitter over black! A simple mani and I'd seen it before, but never tried it myself, due to lacking the multi coloured glitter!