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!

Review/NOTD Sep 2/12 - Lush Lacquer's Salt n' Peppa over gradient

I went back and forth in my mind a lot about what to wear under this polish! Since it's a black and white glitter you can wear pretty much anything with it, so it was hard to narrow it down! I thought about some shades, then I thought about doing a different colour on each finger. Then it was a matter of whether to do brights, pastels or ombre from thumb to pinky. I had settled on a selection of colours for each nail, but as I sat down and was about to do it, it hit me that I hadn't done a gradient in a while! So I picked out two of the shades I was going to use and gradient-ized them instead!

I had kind of forgotten the power of a gradient to really give impact to a design and make it look more interesting with minimal effort. I've tried different techniques, but my favourite is still the most basic - paint your nails with the bottom colour (the one closest to your cuticle) and then sponge on the upper colour(s) with a makeup sponge. I also like to go back with the bottom colour to sponge in the middle and blur the line a little better, and then paint a little bit of the tip colour with the brush from the bottle right on the ends to make sure the colour is really opaque there.

Then I topped it off with a coat of my second fantastic shade from Lush Lacquer, Salt n' Peppa! It's an awesome black and white glitter topcoat with all kinds of shapes - bar, hex, square, even vaguely rectangular ones. And there's also some iridescent silvery microglitter tossed in there too, so this has a nice sparkle to it as well as being very graphic and bold looking! It's nice and full of glitter
 just like Mr.Bubble, also no need to fish around for glitter. I did 1.5 to 2 coats anyways to get the coverage I like. The base is not quite as thick as Mr.Bubble too, which is nice.

Colours used for the gradient are Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lacey Lilac and Barielle in Blossom.

Review/NOTD Aug 30/12 - Lush Lacquer's "Mr.Bubble"

I finally got my toe into the indie polishes pool, and I think I picked a couple of real good ones for my firsts! I decided the two I wanted most were from Lush Lacquer, a shop run by a mother and daughter team! I bought two shades, Mr.Bubble and Salt n' Peppa. Today I'll review and show you a swatch of Mr.Bubble!

The polish is in a clear base, and contains large and small hex glitters in matte white, matte pink, and matte blue. This is my first matte glitter and I love the way it looks! It's so fresh and different from the glitter I'm used to.

This is it on my nails, layered over two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Wet Cement. My boyfriend actually pointed out that this looks like a retro linoleum floor, which is so true! I also really want to try this over a sheer light pink, like Essence Sweet as Candy. It would probably make a cool glitter sandwich candidate too - so many options!

The amount of glitter in this polish is awesome - you really don't have to fish. I have about two coats of glitter on here, but really it was one coat, and then a very bare second coat where I wiped off the brush almost completely before applying - just to fill in spaces where I felt there weren't enough large hex. It's pretty thick, so I can see this needing thinner eventually, but they include a note warning of that so no surprises there!

I'll leave you with one more bottle shot to admire! Next up will be Salt n' Peppa!

Essence in Canada!

I was so excited when I heard Essence was coming to Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada, because I had heard so many great things about their nail polishes and how inexpensive they were. I needed to run out to the drugstore for nail polish remover today, and was happily surprised by the sparkling new Essence stand in the cosmetics aisle! I'd completely forgotten to look for it and there it was!

The prices are as good as advertised - the most expensive thing I bought was $3.99! In total I spent about $22 and I got four nail polishes, a blush, a lipstick, a gel eyeliner, and an eyeshadow quad! Impressive!! Based just on swatching alone so far (for the makeup) the quality looks really good! Take a look at the whole haul:

Close up of the polish bottles, which are Essence Colour & Go Quick Drying Nail Polishes. Left to right, the colours are Let's Get Lost, Walk on Air, High Spirits and You Belong to Me. The first two are SO hard to photograph! Both Let's Get Lost and Walk on Air are much darker than they look here. The polish bottles are actually fairly small, only 5 ml compared to the average nail polish bottle size of 10-15 ml. Even so, the price of $1.49 is still awesome!

Same deal with the shades in these swatches (L-R You Belong to Me, High Spirits, Walk on Air and Let's Get Lost) LGL and WoA look much darker in real life. WoA is more like a creme navy blue/marine blue cross, and LGL is a deeper, richer teal, also creme finish. High Spirits is a great khaki green shade with microshimmer, and You Belong to Me is a pretty robin's egg blue/mint shade with very, very fine microshimmer. All swatches are two coats only, so coverage is great. WoA looks very sheer after one coat but gets to full opacity after the second.

Essence Quattro Eyeshadow in Over the Taupe - yes, taupe! Duh! What did the blog get it's name for if not for stuff like this? This looks like a gorgeous palette of cool toned taupes, every shade you need for a great eye look. The two lighter shades seem to have a little less shimmer than the darker ones, and all seem to have good pigmentation and feel soft.

 

 Essence Gel Eyeliner in London Baby - a cool toned dark brown liner with a bit of shimmer. Nice and dark, the kind of almost-black-but-still-brown eyeliner I've been looking for. Formula seems smooth but very soft, so be careful when you first dip your brush in there or you'll get a big ol' dent... *coughcough*. Once it's set, it LASTS! I swatched this and then washed my hands about 5 minutes later...soap, water and scrubbing hard with a towel and this swatch looked the same. Very impressed!

Essence Silky Touch Blush in Babydoll. Very pretty pinky peach blush, satin finish. Pigmentation is great and this will probably be a fantastic everyday, no-fuss blush that works with any look.

Essence Lipstick in Coralize Me! Very pretty coral-pink lipstick with a bit of shimmer. Goes on sheer but the colour builds nicely. I've been wearing it for the last 30 minutes or so and my lips don't feel dry at all, which is the ultimate test for me. The shade looks really natural and pretty, on my skintone just the right balance between light and dark - doesn't look to bright but doesn't wash me out either.

I'll make sure to do a face of the day with these products ASAP - probably tomorrow! I'm so excited to try them all out!

NOTD Mar 7/12

I needed a reason to use some of the new polishes I'd bought, and a floral just seemed as appropriate as ever! This time though I went for a design that centres more near the base of the nail bed. Because of the colour palette, I think of this design as "gloomy floral"! Hehe!

And this isn't normal for me to post, but I loved the base colour on its own so much that I had to include a shot of it before I added the nail art! It's Essie School of Hard Rocks, and it applies like a dream. Kind of a dusty, dark blue-ish teal shade.

Review: Gosh Bronzing Powder

I've been on a long hunt for the perfect bronzer. I found many that may very well have fit the bill, but there was always a catch - they cost way more than I wanted to pay! Benefit Hoola is around $35, and Nars Laguna is $40 - both bronzers I considered buying many times, but couldn't justify the cost of. And most drugstore bronzers either tended to be way too shimmery, too orange or the texture of the powder wasn't smooth enough.

But the other day, that all changed.... I was browsing around in Shopper's Drug Mart and took a peek at the Gosh display, which I don't do all that often - and their bronzer caught my eye, because at first glance it actually looked... brown! Not orange!! Luckily they had a tester out so I swatched it and fell in love immediately. The texture is soft and smooth and the powder is very pigmented. It has a satin finish so it looks natural on the skin without being sparkly. The colour is perfect - a soft, warm brown. Oh, and the price? $20! It's more than most drugstore bronzers are, but far superior in quality, and I prefer the colour and texture to the higher end bronzers I've tested in Sephora.

Here's some photos of the packaging. It's fairly basic, no mirror - which doesn't bug me since the only makeup I touch up throughout the day are things like concealer, liner and mascara. The clasp seems to close quite securely, it doesn't feel flimsy at all.

Here is a swatch on the back of my hand, taken in daylight.

 And last but not least, my Valentine's Day makeup! I'm wearing the bronzer as light contour along the sides of my nose, under my cheekbones and my jawline! I suppose that also makes this a bit of a FOTD post. :)

Review: L'Oreal Color Infaillible Eyeshadows

These shadows were getting so much buzz over the past few months, and I've got to say I'm normally not the sort to buy single eyeshadows. Most of the shades I own and use regularly come from a palette of some size, whether it's just a quad, or something big like the Naked Palette or one of the jumbo Sephora ones. So a single eyeshadow has to really capture my attention to get me in a buying mood!

The texture of these is very cool, and said to be a dupe for more expensive offerings like the Giorgio Armani Eyes to Kill and Chanel Illusion D'ombre lines. Like my nail of the day post earlier today, any drugstore line that offers dupes of department store products is good in my books! The texture is somewhere between a powder and a cream, sort of spongey feeling. They come with a little black disc on top to keep the shadow compressed.

I find the best way to get a lot of colour is to just swipe it on with your fingers, then blend out with a regular shadow brush after. But if you prefer to use a brush to pack the colour on, make sure you use either a stiff synthetic brush (like a concealer brush) or a natural fibre eyeshadow brush with stiffer, denser bristles - you won't be able to pick up the pigment with a soft, fluffy brush.

I first picked up the shade Sahara Treasure which is a shimmery bronze shade. It's light enough to use as an all over crease shade for day, but dark enough that you can put a lighter shade on the lid and use it as a crease shade too. Nice and versatile! Similarly, the second shade I picked up - Hourglass Beige - is great to use as a highlight shade on the inner corner, but would be beautiful used all across the lid too! It's a warm champagne beige shade, also nice and shimmery!

On the left is Hourglass Beige, and the right is Sahara Treasure. Note when you are opening these for the first time to be careful though! The side you see in the picture is actually the bottom of the package - when you open the lid, the window will be on the bottom - don't open it upside down and let that little black disc fall out!

Swatches! Sahara Treasure on the left, Hourglass Beige on the right!

These last a long time and I would definitely recommend them! There's a nice selection of shades from the line - lots of neutrals and lots of brighter colours too! Their texture won't be like anything you've seen before (unless you've tried the Giorgio Armani or Chanel versions) and that alone will be a thrill for makeup lovers!

NOTD Jan 13/12

A solid colour NOTD - it's been a while! I got a mini Sally Hansen haul yesterday and I had to try one of them solo, and since I was doing my nails on the fly before work today one colour was all I had time for anyways. And this is a gorgeous colour - a medium blue foil with purplish tones.

This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Deep Blue Sea:

Very pretty shade! I need more shades like this - I feel like I'm very drawn to cremes for nail art but I do like glitters, foils and metallics for single-shade manis.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Top Taupes!

I figured it's high time I posted some swatches of my favourite taupe eyeshadows, seeing as how the colour is my blog's namesake!! Although nail art has been (and probably will continue to be) more of a focus on this blog lately, makeup is still a big part of my life and is still a part of this blog!

So without further ado, here are my favourite taupes, the ones I use again and again (and again)!

From L-R:

• Urban Decay Sidecar - lovely shimmery taupe with slight red undertones and some gold glitter flecks.
• CoverGirl Tapestry Taupe - awesome drugstore taupe, a little less pigmented but over a base it shows up nicely and has a gorgeous subtle sheen.
• NYX Iced Mocha - a loose pearl pigment, extremely shimmery and dramatic! Blends out like a dream though.
• Sephora 5-in-1 Color Play Palette, shades 2, 12 and 27 - 2 is a great dark smoky taupe, awesome in the crease or for one of my favourite evening looks, the taupe smoky eye! 12 is a slightly lighter but still mid-toned taupe, I use this one a lot in the crease for day looks to add depth. 27 is a slightly warmer taupe that has almost rose-gold tones in it, very pretty!

All of these beauties get heavy rotation in my makeup routine - how about you guys? Do you have any of these colours? Love or hate? Any other great taupes you can recommend? One can never have enough!!

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

Review/Swatches: NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils

 (image from NYX's website)

If you haven't tried the NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils, you're missing out! And if you've never heard of them, get out from under that rock!

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils are awesome little cream shadows in chunky pencil form. Currently I own eight shades, seen here:

These are very pigmented and smooth shadows. They are prone to creasing when they're on their own, so I would recommend them as bases underneath powder shadows. They really grip powder shadows laid over top of them, intensify the colour a lot and make them last quite a bit longer. Milk is a good shade to use underneath almost anything. Cottage Cheese is great for a highlight shade. Iced Mocha looks wonderful under shimmery taupe shadows!

There's a great range of colours, from neutrals to brights to darks. The price is right too, I've gotten all of mine from Cherry Culture where they're only $4.50 but almost always on sale for $2.99 or even less. These are highly recommended! My rating for them would be 4/5 only because they can't really be worn alone, but I don't mind that myself since I always top cream shadows with powder anyways!

Update To NYX Ultra Pearl Mania Swatch and Review!

You may remember my recent post about NYX Ultra Pearl Manias? No? Well check it out now!! I wasn't able to find one of the colours I have, but I found it tonight so I snapped some pics and added it to my review!

Go see!

<3

Review/Swatches: NYX Ultra Pearl Mania

I've had these little bullets of loveliness (odd phrasing?) for quite some time, but I've never mentioned them on my blog and they deserve some attention!

They are small little bullets of loose eyeshadow. All the shades have a very shimmery/pearly finish, and are very pigmented and blendable. As an added bonus, these have virtually NO fallout, which is always a concern with a loose shadow. Overall, if you are a fan of shimmery eyeshadows, these are something you need to check out!

The only real drawback with these can be the packaging. They are in small open mouth containers, which are too small to dip a brush into. I find the best method is to get a square of toilet paper and tap a small amount onto it and dab my brush onto that to pick up the colour. And I mean a small amount - a little of this stuff goes a long way! Like I said, pigmented!!

The shades I own, from left to right: Nude, Mocha, Black, Pearl, True Purple, Turquoise.

Update: I found Baby Pink! Here's a picture of it, I put it next to Pearl for shade comparison. Baby Pink is on the right, Pearl on the left.

Swatches! Top row left to right is Nude, Black, Turquoise. Bottom row left to right is Mocha, Pearl, and True Purple.

Update: Here is the swatch for Baby Pink! Also swatched next to Pearl for comparison. Baby Pink on the left, Pearl on the right.

Nude is a really lovely shimmery nude, definitely yellow toned. It's gorgeous used as a highlight on the inner corners and the inner part of the eyelid.

Black is a shimmery black, not one I've actually used a lot (I don't have a chance to wear a lot of dark smokey looks so I haven't been able to experiment with it as much) but it's definitely a gorgeous colour, applies very smooth. The thing that I think makes it stand out from other shimmery/glittery blacks is that the shimmer is very finely milled and smooth, no chunkiness in sight.

Turquoise is a lovely light turquoise, makes you think of the ocean! It's almost exactly between blue and green, but perhaps leans a teeny bit more towards blue.

Mocha is a gorgeous medium toned cool brown/taupe shade... it actually appears much cooler in real life than in this picture. I love this shade, it's probably my favourite of the ones I own. So nice just as a wash of colour all over the lid and that's about all you need!

Pearl is a light shimmery pale pink colour, but it has flashes of lavender and white as well.. just like a pearl!

True Purple Pearl is a slightly warm toned purple; there are definite pink undertones in this. Although I generally prefer much cooler, blue-based purples, this is a really pretty shade for sure.

Update: Baby Pink is a light, cool toned pink, but it's definitely darker and more of a "true" pink than Pearl, which has those purply qualities I was talking about.

I have more than a few Ultra Pearls on my wishlist right now, such as Silver, Yellow, Lime, Lilac and Sky Pink.

A tip for Canadians! I have seen NYX in store at some locations, like Save-On-Foods, but it's usually not that well priced, for example these would be around $5 or even $6. I recommend going to a store that stocks NYX in your area to check stuff out in person and swatch to find what you like. I did that and discovered that some stuff I thought I would like wasn't so great in person, and some stuff I had ignored looked awesome! Then go to Cherry Culture and do an online order! The prices are phenomenal, with Ultra Pearls being only $2-$3 each, the site often having great sales, and shipping to Canada being totally reasonable. I've done several LARGE orders from here such as all the shadows in this post, several of the Jumbo Eye Pencils and other things totally only $40 including shipping... so definitely don't miss out on those deals!

And last but most definitely not least...

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!