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!

NOTD Aug 26/12 - pop art graphic dots

These nails were one of those "pops into your head unbidden" kind of ideas. After I did them, they really reminded me of bright, flashy pop art. I love the way the colours work together!

Starting from the thumb going towards the pinky, I painted my nails with: OPI in The "It" Color, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away! (x2), and Sun Kissed again. Then I added dots in Blue Me Away!, Essence in Ultimate Pink, and Barielle Do Unto Others.

NOTD Aug 23/12 - frankenpolish, "For the Love of Mermaids"

I have three frankens under my belt now, and this is the second one! If you missed the first one, check it out here! This one took a little longer to name, but it came to me when I put the polish on, and got one of the little heart shaped glitters on my ring fingernail, and all at once, "For the Love of Mermaids" popped into my head!

This is it layered over one coat of Essence's You Belong to Me. I didn't want to do a million layers of FtLoM but it gets fairly opaque after about three coats.

Sorry about the one dinged up thumbnail! I'm not even sure how I did that, I didn't notice it until I uploaded the photos! Here's a couple bottle shots.

New look!

Hey everyone! You may have noticed it looks a little different around here! I was still in love with my old layout but I really wanted to do something new, and when I saw this awesome zebra background from the Cutest Blog on the Block (check out their site in the top corner of the page) I had to have it! I played around with the options on Blogger and thought the chartreuse shades would go perfectly with it - even whipped up a new header! Hope you like!

:)

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!

NOTD Aug 18/12 - "First Stars" frankenpolish

I did finally think up a name for my frankenpolish :) I've named it "First Stars", because it reminds me of the colour of the sky a little after sunset, when it's just beginning to get dark and the first stars are coming out. I think it suits it well!

I made a couple more frankens (having fun with it!!) so you'll be seeing those soon too! :D

FOTD Aug 18/12 - flash of yellow

Continuing in my efforts to work some more bold colours (or just colours) into my eye makeup, I went crazy and reached for the shimmery yellow! I didn't even plan this, but luckily I had a secret weapon... if you haven't gotten August's issue of Allure yet, get it now! There is a page where they show the new Sephora + Pantone palette that has 35 extremely varied colours of eyeshadow. They have a suggestion for how to wear every single shade, and some are things you might not think of yourself, especially whilst on the spot trying to get ready. You may not have that palette (I don't) but if you have most of those shades in your collection, it's a valuable page to have! I ripped it out and I'm keeping it in my bathroom with my makeup!

From that page, I got the idea to use the bright yellow as a line along the upper lashline!

The camera actually picked up the yellow quite strongly, which is great for photo purposes - in real life it wasn't as bright and stark as that. I used just a light shimmery nude on the inner half of the lids, a medium brown on the outer half of the lids and in the crease, and a darker brown in the outer corner. Then a little smudge of brown liner on the outer corners of the lashline (top and bottom). Wanted to keep it simple so it didn't compete too much with the yellow! I'm wearing NYX Indian Pink lipstick with a bit of sheer gloss on top as well. :)

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!