Guerlain Spring 2013 - Ecrin 4 Couleurs 502 Coup De Foudre Review and Swatches

This is the second limited edition eyeshadow quad from the Guerlain spring collection, if you haven't see the purple one, you can check it out here. Coup De Foudre contains 3 green shades and a bright coral.

The palette hasn't got any special packaging, it's housed in the regular gold compact. It comes with a double ended sponge tip applicator and a full size mirror in the lid. The colours are very pretty and springlike. The palette contains a frosty khaki, a satin bright coral, a frosty light silvery green and a slightly frosty greeny-grey shade. This one doesn't have a highlighter shade, which some people may not like, but the 4 colours work together well, so I'm happy. I haven't used the coral shade yet, but I can see it working well with the light green and the khaki colour. I have done a look with the three greens which you can see at the bottom of this post.

The eyeshadows are really lovely, smooth, buttery and pigmented. They go on and blend easily and stay put all day (I always wear Too Faced Shadow Insurance under them). I'm not sure which one of the two palettes is my favourite, I love purples, but these greens and the coral are so gorgeous as well.

It's really lovely to see two such great quality palettes out this spring, in fact I have found that Guerlain's limited edition palettes have been consistently excellent quality lately. Makes you feel better about forking out for them.

You get 7.2 g of product for £38. The Guerlain spring collection is available from all good department stores and Escentual.com (for a bit less).

See more pictures including swatches and a look I did with this palette after the jump!

Guerlain Spring 2013 - Ecrin 4 Couleurs 501 Attrape-Coeur Review and Swatches

Guerlain released two limited edition eyeshadow quads this spring and I have 501 Attrape-Coeur to show you first. This is the pretty purple one, I will show you the green one tomorrow. In fact you've already seen it in action in yesterday's post about the new Cils D'Enfer mascara. If you haven't, check out my post here.

The palette hasn't got any special packaging, it's housed in the regular gold compact. It comes with a double ended sponge tip applicator and a full size mirror in the lid. The colours are very pretty and springlike. The palette contains a muted lavender, a frosty white, a frosty dark purple and a pinky violet shade. I like purples like these that aren't mauvy or red, but true purples, they look better on me. (Mauves make my eyes look tired.) Unfortunately this is exactly the shade of purple my camera hates and doesn't pick up properly, the colours are much prettier in real life.

The eyeshadows are really lovely, smooth, buttery and pigmented. They go on and blend easily and stay put all day (I always wear Too Faced Shadow Insurance under them). I like it that this palette contains a complete look with a highlighter and a dark shade as well as two lighter ones, but equally I wouldn't mind to have a different colour instead of white. It's not too harsh for a highlighter though so it does work well with the palette. 

You get 7.2 g of product for £38. The Guerlain spring collection is available from all good department stores and Escentual.com (for a bit less).

See more pictures including swatches and a look I did with this palette after the jump!

My Chanel Holiday 2012 Collection Haul - Review and Swatches

At last, the Chanel holiday collection has arrived to the UK as well. Must have been the last of the high end collections, it was released on 9th November. Yes, sorry, it has taken me this long to finally review it, I still have quite a backlog of things I haven't even photographed, or swatched or used.

But for now, here's what I bought from the Chanel holiday collection:

I got the eyeshadow quad, Harmonie de Soir, the blush called Star Dust and the new Illusion d'Ombre in Apparence. I knew I wanted the quad when I saw pictures of it sometime in the summer, it just looked so pretty, I had to have it. I was on the fence about the Illusion d'Ombre, especially after swatching it as it seemed to be pretty much the same colour as the gold in the quad. The blush I wasn't even going to get, but once I'd swatched it, I couldn't leave it behind.

So the eyeshadow quad. It's soft, silky, pigmented, gorgeous. Easy to use, blendable, long lasting, non-creasing shadows that look satiny. Love it. Only drawback is you only get 4 g of product which is teeny, especially considering the pricetag (£43). But then having said that, I'd rather pay that much for 4 g of loveliness than £30+ for a mediocre Mac quad. Anyway, I have used all the colours except for the gold one and they all looked great 12+ hours later, didn't crease (over Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer) and didn't lose their sheen. I apologise, I didn't take a picture of the look because that day was the gloomiest, darkest day and I knew the pictures wouldn't come out right.

The Illusion d'Ombre is a gorgeous not too yellow gold colour, it's also not very warm, so should suit people with cooler complexions. Not as yellow and sparkly as Vision Illusion d'Ombre, it's more of a muted colour. Still sparkly, but not as metallic as Vision. It's a very lovely colour. If you have the quad you probably don't need this as well, because the two golds are very similar, but Illusion d'Ombres are a different products, they are cream eyeshadows that don't crease and stay on all day (I only use them over primer). I love them on those days when I only have 10 minutes to put my make up on, they are just so easy. You get 4 g of eyeshadow for £23.

As I said, I wasn't even going to get Star Dust blush, but it's just so sparkly, I couldn't say no to it. Also, Stardust is one of my favourite films (watch it if you haven't see in yet!), so the name really appealed as well (yeah, I know, lame excuse). Star Dust is a very sparkly light pink blush, more of a highlighter really, and defitinely more for nights out than school runs (although I wear crazy colours to school runs, so whatever you want to do really). It's very finely milled and just lovely. It's not huge, you only get 4 g and it's pretty pricey at £31.

While the Chanel collection isn't my favourite of this year's holiday collections, the products I've bought are all really lovely. I didn't got for the lip products or nail polishes for obvious reasons (no-buy), but they also looked nice.

See more pictures after the jump including swatches and a look I did with Apparence Illusion d'Ombre and Star Dust!

Guerlain Ecrin 4 Couleurs 01 Les Violets Swatches and Review

Last year Guerlain reformulated their eyeshadow quads and released 9 variations (since then they have added a few more colours to their permanent line up), one of them being 01 Les Violets. I initially only picked up 08 Les Perles because that one seemed the most unique and I'd already had all the older eyeshadow quads so didn't feel necessary to buy the others, but I saw this one on eBay and decided to pick it up.

As you can see this is just a tester, so it doesn't come in the fancy compact, but it does come with a plastic protective lid, so still properly portable. If you want to see what the compact looks like, please check out this post. You still get the full size eyeshadows, 7.2 g in total. In Les Violets you get 4 different shades of purple (who would have thought?), from very light pinky violet to dark mauve (the colours in the pictures look more blue than in real life). The textures are different, you get a matte shade, a frosty/metallic shade  and 2 satin shades. None of them are shimmery/glittery. Some feel softer than others, the matte shade in particular is a bit chalky, with the frosty cool purple being the softest and most pigmented.

This quad felt a little bit below par considering the usual quality of Guerlain eyeshadows, a couple of shades just didn't feel as nice as they should. I do appreciate that mattes can be a bit harder to work with, and I think Guerlain does frosty/metallic and satin shades better than mattes. The eyeshadows still stayed on my lids for 12+ hours without fading and creasing, so that's up to Guerlain quality, it was more the application issues I had with a couple of shades that I wasn't too pleased with.

All in all, the colours are lovely, but I can't recommend this palette wholeheartedly. Unless you are a massive purple fan, I'd skip this, especially as the recent additions to the Ecrin 4 Couleurs line have been a nicer quality.

I bought my tester for £14 on eBay, but Guerlain Ecrin 4 Couleurs eyeshadows retail for £37.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!