Sleek Make Up Aqua Collection Mirrored Pink Blush Review and Swatches

Gah, I've been so busy these past few days, I've hardly been home, so that's why I haven't been posting much. I'm gonna quickly write this post up and then go to bed, I'm knackered. I know this is just a hobby, but I feel bad about not being able to blog. Hopefully next week will be a bit calmer.

The other day I showed you the eyeshadow palette from the Sleek Make Up Aqua Collection and today I've got the blush called Mirrored Pink. The blush comes in the same style cardboard box as the palette, and the compact itself is the regular black Sleek compact with the full size mirror in the lid.

Mirrored Pink is a frosty, slightly cool blue pink shade with fine gold shimmer, can't actually think of what other blush to compare it to. It's really nicely pigmented and smooth, not too powdery, and it wears very well. It is a bit frosty and it's quite easy to overdo, but it is a lovely blush. I have been using it for the past few days and it's very easy to wear. I did enclose a picture at the end of this post, but I wasn't wearing much else in the way of make up as I'd been to the pool, so excuse my disshivelled look please!

My only niggle about this product, and this might just be my compact, but I find it very hard to open it, so instead of trying to force it open with my nails, I'm now using a pair of nail scissors to pop the lid open. Shouldn't be necessary, but it could be a one off. At least it closes securily!

The blush costs £4.49 and you get a whopping 8 g, so it's still a brilliant bargain and it is really lovely. It's limited edition and is available from Superdrug and the Sleek Make Up website.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Barry M Bold Purple Waterproof Eyeliner Review and Swatches

A little while ago I told you about two shades of the Barry M Waterproof Eyeliners, Bold Gunmetal and Blue (click the link for my review), and now it's time to tell you about the purple one. I think this one is my favourite of the 3. It's a gorgeous purple with fine micro glitter, absolutely stunning.

In fact I've found that it's a nearly exact dupe of Mac Designer Purple Pearlglide eyeliner, which is one of my favourite purple eyeliners. The staying power of this one was slightly better than the other two as well. I didn't test whether it's waterproof, but it did stay on my lower lashline all day without smudging or fading, so that's good enough for me. Luckily the micro glitter doesn't irritate my eyes, in fact the pearlglides sometimes do, so in that respect I like this eyeliner better than Designer Purple.

These eyeliners cost £3.99 each and are similar size to the Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliners, although it doesn't say anywhere on the product or the Barry M website. I'd estimate it to be between 1 and 1.2 g.

A lovely, soft, creamy, long lasting eyeliner at the fraction of the cost of other brand's very similar product. What's not to like?

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Barry M Bold Gun Metal and Bold Blue Waterproof Eyeliner Review and Swatches

I bought these Barry M eye pencils a little while ago when they had a 3 for 2 offer in Boots and there was a very pretty nail polish I wanted to get. So you know, started looking at other things to make use of the promotion (as you might have noticed, I do that very often!) and came across these eyeliners. I thought for £3.99 each (well, one was actually free) they were worth a try. Luckily I was right.

They are very similar to Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencils, soft and smooth, very easy to apply, but dry down quickly and don't budge for hours. The shades I got are Bold Gun Metal which is a shimmery silver/grey colour and Bold Blue which is a shimmery medium blue colour. Bold Blue has slightly more micro glitter to it, but it's by no means glittery. I also bought Bold Purple subsequently which I'll be reviewing separately.

Both eyeliners stayed on my waterline fairly well, probably for about 4 hours, and on my lower lashline all day. These are supposed to be waterproof and I have tested Bold Gun Metal in the swimming pool and it did smudge, not terribly badly, but it did. I'm not that fussed, but if you are looking for a truly waterproof eyeliner, these might not be the ones for you.

Bold Gun Metal isn't too similar in colour to any of the Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencils I own (it's quite a bit darker than Gunmetal and less shimmery), but Bold Blue is a dupe for Deviant, I swatched them side by side and you can't tell the difference. If you like blue eyeliners, this may be good news for you, as these are similar size to the Urban Decay ones (doesn't actually say anywhere, but I estimate between 1 and 1.2 g) and only cost £3.99 each, plus there's bound to be an offer on them at some point.

All in all these are nice, creamy, long lasting eyeliners, but not as waterproof as they claim to be.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Chantecaille Painting in Venice Palette Review and Swatches

If you've been reading my blog for a while you will know that I love Chantecaille and have quite an extensive collection of their pretty palettes and powders. I also have a couple of big palettes that I've managed to buy on eBay for much less than their retails price (which is somewhere around the £130 mark here in the UK) and now I have a new addition to my collection: the Paining in Venice palette.

I believe this palette was released in 2003 and it contains 7 eyeshadows and one blush. Most of the shades are actually permanent, but the beauty of this palette is that even though it's really expensive, it's still a great value. Refills for Chantecaille palettes cost $25/£23 each, that makes $200/£184 plus the empty "Ma" palette (the large 8 pan palette) costs an extra $52/£48(?). So $135/£135 is really a bargain, right?

Of course it's not just about the money, Chantecaille products are very high quality and the colours in this palette are really lovely. You get cheek shade in Joy which is a bright rosy pink colour, and 7 eyeshadows in Lasting and Shine finish: Agate, Freesia, Pyrite, Lemongrass, Peony, Patchouli and Perle. They are all really lovely and well pigmented, smooth and blendable, plus they stay on all day without creasing (over a primer).

I bought this palette on eBay and paid $80 plus $15 shipping, so it was certainly a lot cheaper than even the original retail price. Plus this isn't actually available anymore, although most of the shades are. Anyway, I'm very happy with it and will be keeping an eye out for other palettes on eBay.

You can see my rather out of date post on my Chantecaille collection that also contains my other two big Chantecaille palettes by clicking here.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Get A Free Revlon Ruby Ribbon Nail Polish At Superdrug!

First of all I want to say that I've given up on the nail polish no-buy. I can't do it, so might as well not pretend that I'm not buying nail polish, and since I am, I might as well show off what I've got. Right?

So today I thought I'd show you this beauty I picked up yesterday in Superdrug - for free! As well as a 3 for 2 offer you get a free glitter nail polish if you buy 3 or more Revlon products. As this is not available to buy on its own, I just had to buy 3 things, which sadly made me fall off another wagon, but I'll tell you later about that.

Ruby Ribbon is a bright pink glitter polish with holographic bar glitter. It's really gorgeous, very sparkly and festive. It reminds me of Zoya Kissy (link by Scrangie) from last year's Gems and Jewels Collection. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know what it's like, but it looks like it has a good coverage on its own. Alternatively I guess it can always be layered over a similar coloured polish.

You get 14.7 ml and Revlon nail polishes usually cost £6.49. *P.S. Boots also have the same offer including Sequin, a gold glitter polish which I haven't actually seen in person myself.

See another picture after the jump!

Fantastic Lancome Deals At Debenhams!

I was going to blog about the Mac Glamour Daze eyeshadows today, but then I got so excited about the fantastic deal I came across in Debenhams, I just had to share (sorry, Mac swatches coming soon!). I don't know how long these offers last, so I thought I'd let you know quickly, in case you want to take advantage of them.

Today I bought two of the Lancome holiday collection eyeshadows and one of the khol pencils (I will do a proper review on those later) and as a result was given a really nice gift with purchase including a gorgeous make up bag, several skincare samples, a tiny lipstick, a sample size mascara, two make up brushes (which I forgot to photograph, sorry) and because I bought the third product, a full size Bi-Facil make up remover. I won't go into all the details here, but you can see the offer by clicking on this link. According to Debenhams the gift with purchase is worth over £58, although I'm not entirely sure if it includes the extra Bi-Facil, but it doesn't include the make up bag and brushes apparently. A full-size Bi-Facil alone costs £21.

I also purchased the Christmas Beauty Box for £45 (you can only buy this if you buy 2 or more Lancome products, and luckily you still get the gift with purchase, they don't exclude each other) which actually has a value of £165! The eyeshadow palette and blush alone add up to at least £45 and there's also a full size Bi-Facil in here as well as Genifique and Visionnaire samples, 2 tiny lipsticks (one is the same as in the gift with purchase), 2 sample size mascaras, an eye khol, a sample size cream, a sample size cream cleanser and toner, as well as a gorgeous big sparkly gold make up case.

The Christmas Beauty Box is actually a fantastic deal as it costs £75 on the Lancome website, although you can purchase it without buying other products, but to be fair, if you're going to buy something from the holiday collection (and there's plenty to buy from that as it's gorgeous!) or even some staples, you might as well buy it from Debenhams and get it for £30 less!

See lots more pictures after the jump!

Bellapierre Cosmetics 9 Stack Shimmer Kit in Pandera Review and Swatches

On a recent trip to TKMaxx I found this kit for under half the original retail price, so of course I had to get it. I have already reviewed another one of these in the colour Fabulous so I won't repeat everything I've said there, if you want more info, please click here.

What you get in a kit is basically 9 little pots of pigment, 2 eyeshadow brushes, an eyeshadow base, a clear lipgloss and an instruction CD. The pigments come in a stack which is pretty cool, although due to the nature of it, can only be carried around as one piece. 

Unlike Fabulous which has lighter, bright colours, Pandera has a darker, smokier colour mix. It also doesn't include any glitters, whereas Fabulous has two glitters in it. The pigments are still very shimmery, but I find that the shimmer doesn't show up that much on the eyes, so they are definitely very wearable. I only got around to wearing a couple of shades, namely the light pinky beige and the medium brown shade (middle of top rown and right one in the middle row - see in pictures below), but they were both very smooth and easy to apply and blend. They stayed on my lids without fading or creasing for 12 hours.

These stacks retails for £59.99, but this set was only £24.99 in TKMaxx. However, I did notice, 6 months ago the same set in different colour cost only £19.99. Still a good deal, but it seems even TKMaxx is getting more expensive! Anyway, I'm happy to pay 25 quid for this, but I do feel that 60 would be way too much. Thank Crunchie for TKMaxx, eh? 

See more pictures including swatches and the look I did with some of the pigments after the jump!

Too Faced Galaxy Glam Eyeshadow in Deep Space Review and Swatches

I had been wanting to try out Too Faced Galaxy Glam Eyeshadows for a while, but never got around to it, partly because of their price and partly because there were always other things I wanted to pick up. However, on a recent shopping trip I noticed this being sold in TKMaxx and decided to finally get it. I figured at £3.99 I can't lose much even if it's not that great.

Do you know what though? This is actually a good little product. It's basically a baked eyeshadow that mixes 2 colours that you can use dry or wet for more intensity. The shade I got is Deep Space which is dark blue and white mixed together. The blue itself is quite matte, but the white has some sparkles in it. The result is different shades of blue depending on where you swatch it. I tried to use the white alone, but it's not really possible, however you can get some very light blue or mix it with more blue for darker colour.

The texture is really nice, it's soft and well pigmented even when used dry. I did experience some fallout during application, but it was fine once I cleaned up under my eye. It's pretty handy to have several shades in one eyeshadow and I'm such a sucker for baked and marbelised products, I'm really happy I picked it up. I didn't experience any creasing or fading for 12+ hours over Too faced Shadow Insurance primer.

You get 3 g in a compact that looks like a little UFO. The lid screws off and in the lid you have a magnifying glass which makes the swirly product even more space-looking. It's a bit on the bulky side, but it's a fun design. I paid £3.99 for it, but I think it retails (or retailed, it might be discontinued actually) for around £12-14.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Primark Nail Polish Remover Wipes

While on the subject of nail polish, I thought I'd share my experience I had with these Primark nail polish remover wipes. I bought these on a recent trip to Primark, once again got sucked into trying something because of the very low price. These wipes cost just £1 for 50 pads (2 x 25). 

Unfortunately I'd say they're not even worth £1. The wipes are very small (smaller than a cotton wool pad), extremely thin (we're talking tissue paper thin) and not very effective at all. They are very hard to hold due to their thinness and even when I managed to get a grip on them they didn't do a good job at removing nail polish. They were very well soaked in nail polish remover, but obviously not a very good one. They felt a bit sticky and oily and I wasn't overly keen on the scent either. Quite frankly a cotton wool pad soaked with my beloved Sally Hansen nail polish remover is much more effective and 100 times easier to use. I will not buy this again, in fact it's already made its way to my rubbish bin. Fail!

See more pictures after the jump!

NOTD: Primark... erm, Nail Polish

I picked up this beauty on a recent trip to Primark. It was part of a 4 pack together with some other nice metallic polishes, but none of them awfully special. However this one is quite a different story. A greenish grey purple duochrome that flashes purple or green at certain angles and has lots of very fine glitter. Very hard to capture in its true glory, the pictures don't do it justice.

Taken without flash

The pack or the individual polishes have no names, just some numbers on the bottom, but I have included a picture of the whole pack at the bottom so you know what to look for if you'd like to pick this up. You get 4 x 6 ml in the pack for £2, so it really is a bargain. The polish itself has a nice formula, although it was a bit difficult to apply as the brush is rather small. But all in all, it lasted on me for 3 days with just one little chip which is very good for me.

So this just proves that sometimes, cheap can be very good, and you can pick up some great bargains if you keep an eye open for them.

See more pictures after the jump!  

Primark Oil Balancing Cleansing Wipes With Tea Tree

I like shopping in Primark, everything is so cheap. I buy a lot of my children's clothes there as they only need to last through a couple of seasons since they grow out of them so quickly anyway. On a recent trip to Primark I found these cleansing wipes, and since they were 2 packs (of 25 wipes) for £1 I thought I'd pick them up and see what they're like.

I'm sorry about showing you the empty pack, but I never got around to taking a picture before they were all gone. So what are they like? Meh. As far as cleansing wipes go they are fine, they cleanse my face fine, taking off all the make up. They don't dry out quickly, so even the last one was as moist as the first one which is good. The smell, however, is just so strong and unpleasant, I will not be buying these again. I can't really describe the smell, but it reminds me of insect spray, that sort of strong, chemical, yucky smell. I guess since they're not scented, this is just the smell of the chemicals in them? I don't know, but it's really strong and not nice. So in this instance, cheap is definitely not cheerful.

See the list of ingredients after the jump!

My Half Price Guerlain Haul :)

I don't know what I love more, using make up or buying make up. While I love choosing what I'm going to wear each day and applying it, seeing the looks turn out nicely (or sometimes not so) and making me look better than I started out (usually), I also love the anticipation of new make up collections and buying make up so much. I think we can safely say, I'm addicted to make up, both using and buying it.

With June being a slightly slow month for new collections (didn't like the new Mac collections and I'd pretty much bought everything from the other summer collections by the beginning of the month), I was itching to spend some more money on some pretty make up. So when I heard about the sale coming up at Bentalls (a department store where my nearest Guerlain counter is), I made sure I can go there as soon as it started and check out the Guerlain sale. One of the very few high end brands to have sales, they often have discontinued or left over limited edition Guerlain products for 50% the original price. This time they actually had a lot of things, including foundations, blushes, eyeshadows and even some Cruel Gardenia highlighters (yes, I thought they were completely sold out, but clearly not). So I took the opportunity to stock up on essentials and a few nice-to-haves. Here's what I picked up:

I bought a Parure Aqua liquid foundation in 03 Beige Naturel, Parure Nuit highlighter, Rouge G in 75 Rose Barbare and Terracotta Blush & Sun blushes in 01 Sun Light and 02 Sun Kissed. (I also picked up a Parure Aqua liquid foundation in 02 Beige Clair in the John Lewis sale - not pictured. Beige Clair is my winter shade and Beige Naturel is my summer shade, and I have just run out of my bottle of Beige Clair.) As you can see, they were all half price, so I ended up saving a significant amount of money. If there's anything I like more than shopping for make up is shopping for bargains!

Have you found any beauty bargains in the sales lately? Share your findings in the comments!

See another picture of my findings after the jump!

Barbara Daly Long Wear Eyeshadow Pencils Review and Swatches

On a recent trip to Tesco I found these Barbara Daly Long Wear Eyeshadow Pencils and thought I'd give them a try. They look very similar to the Topshop ones which I love and at £6.75 each you can't go too wrong. I bought two shades, Shimmer Sand (pinky beige with high sheen, no shimmer despite the name) and Black Marble (shimmery charcoal grey).

The eyeshadows claim to be long wearing and creaseproof. I agree with them being long-wearing, once they set, they're not going anywhere and last through the whole day, but they aren't as creaseproof as I had hoped (in particular Shimmer Sand). I wore Shimmer Sand with and without a primer, without it creased quite significantly. With primer (Too Faced Shadow Insurance) it also creased a bit, but wasn't too noticable. I haven't tried it as a base yet. As I often wear cream eyeshadows when I don't have much time to get ready as they're so easy, I expect them to be creaseproof, at the very least on top of primer. With Shimmer Sand it wasn't too bad as it's a lighter shade. I wore Black Marble yesterday in the crease very lightly applied and blended very thouroughly with a crease brush and it held up beautifully without creasing. So maybe the secret is to apply a very thin layer and blend out very thouroughly.

The formula is very nice, the eyeshadow glides on very easily and can be blended out with your finger as well as a brush. They dry pretty quickly and once set, you need make up remover to get them off. Both colours are lovely, Black Marble has some fine shimmer whereas Shimmer Sand has more of a sheen instead of shimmer. Shimmer Sand reminds me of Urban Decay Sin Primer Potion. There are also two other shades available, Bronze Gold and Sand. You get 1.64 g and the product comes in a twist pen with a lid.

These eyeshadows cost £6.75 and there's currently a 3 for 2 offer on all Barbara Daly products at Tesco.

See more pictures after the jump!

NOTD: She Stylezone Quick Dry Nail Polish #255

I bought this nail polish during my recent trip to Hungary, and it's so pretty, I thought I'd show it off straight away. It's from a brand called She Stylezone which I think is DM's (Drogerie Markt) own brand, and i believe it's Austrian. I actually saw this exact shade last year, but decided not to buy it, however, this time I picked it up.

Taken with flash under strong indoor light on a cloudy day

It's a lovely purple jelly base with lots of holographic glitter. The polish itself is quite sheer, the colour you see in the pictures took 5 coats to achieve, but there's a good amount of glitter in every coat. (By the way, the colour you see in the pictures is pretty true, but as purple is so hard to capture, I had to settle for these rather orange tones.) I think it would work much better as a topcoat over an opaque purple polish, although it is wearable on its own too.

As I said I bought this in Hungary, and I can't actually remember how much it cost, but it was only a couple of quid. You get 10 ml which is pretty decent. Drying time was alright, plus I used Seche Vite on top, so it dried quickly anyway. Wear time was slightly below average, it lasted for not quite 24 hours without chipping, although it still looked okay after 2 days. I mostly only had chips on my index fingers.

Have you tried anything from this brand? Anything you'd recommend?

See another picture after the jump!

Guerlain Shine Automatique Lipstick #200 Sous Le Vent Review and Swatches

I have been looking forward to the new Guerlain Shine Automatique lipsticks and finally I've managed to get my hands on one of the shades, 200 Sous Le Vent. It's a pretty shimmery nude shade, although it probably wouldn't have been mine personal choice of shade, I'm more interested in the pinks and reds, but since this was available on eBay for under half the retail price, I thought might as well get it and see what I think.

 

I do like it actually. The formula is lovely, very lightweight, moisturising and surprisingly long lasting considering how light it is. It stayed on my lips for about 2.5 to 3 hours with minimal drinking, although it was a little hard to judge when it disappeared, because it's really not very pigmented. It does give a lovely shine to the lips and feels very comfortable, so for days when you don't want to look like your wearing much make up, this is perfect. It does have a slight shimmer to it, but it's definitely not gritty at all. It also has a slight sweet scent, not flowery like some of the Guerlain lipsticks nor does it smell of parma violets like the Meteorites. It's quite nice and unoffensive to me.

You get 3.5 g for your money (which I believe will be £24.50 once it's launched in shops sometime very soon) which is your regular lipstick weight. The tube is the same as the regular Rouge Automatiques, the lipstick pops up when you push the slider down. The packaging is lightweight and not too bulky, so you can carry it around happily (not like the Rouge G lipsticks that weigh a ton!). I can't wait to try out the brighter shades, I am well impressed with this lipstick.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Bellapierre Cosmetics 9 Stack Shimmer Kit Review and Swatches

I'd been planning on reviewing this kit for ages, but other things always got in the way, but finally, here it is. I bought this set in TKMaxx a while ago (February), but this is also available from BeautyBay and House of Fraser. I had actually spotted this on the House of Fraser website and loved the colourful stacks, but at £59.99 I just couldn't justify buying it, especially as I'd never actually heard of the brand before. So I was really happy to see it for just £19.99 in TKMaxx and of course snapped it up straight away.

In fact I believe you only get the actual 9 colour shimmer powder stacks for £59.99 whereas this kit also includes an eyeshadow base, two brushes and a clear lipgloss. So yeah, bit of a bargain really. I got the colour Fabulous which is a nice mix of shimmery bright colours. The stack includes two small pots of glitter, one red and one copper, and 7 pots of shimmer powder pigment. The glitter is very fine, but of course still chunkier than the pigments which are really nice and fine. The base included with the kit is slightly sticky and does a good job of holding on to the pigment, giving a creaseless result for several hours (in fact I had no creasing or fading for about 12 hours or so). You can also mix the pigments with the clear gloss and create a lipgloss, although most of the colours in this stack wouldn't be my ideal lipgloss colours. The brushes are okay, a slanted eyeliner brush and an eyeshadow brush are included in this kit. You get 15.75 g of pigment in this kit which is a good amount, making each pot just under 2 g each.

All in all, I really like the pigments, but I would not pay £59.99 for this. It's nice, but not 60 quid nice. However, for £19.99 it's really great and I wish I could pick up more colours (I especially like Iris and Astrid), but sadly due to TKMaxx's nature, they're not available there anymore.

Have you tried anything from Bellapierre? How do you like it?

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Updated Blog Sale Now On!

I've added lots of limited edition Mac pigments and some new paint pots, so be sure to check it out by either clicking here or at the link on the top of the page.

L'Oreal Infallible Eyeshadows Review and Swatches

Having heard lots of good and some bad about these eyeshadows, I decide to check them out for myself. I was browsing in Superdrug and noticed that they were on offer (£3.99 down from £6.99), so I picked up four of them.

I like my Armani Eyes To Kill eyeshadows as well as Chanel Illusion D'Ombre eyeshadows, but let's face it, they are very expensive. Who would say no to a cheaper alternative, especially if they were just as good. But are they? I'm happy to report that these L'Oreal Infallible eyeshadows are really good. They are nice and creamy, but not too creamy, so while they apply and blend easily, they also dry down quite quickly, so they don't crease on my eyelids. Okay, that's not 100% true, I did wear Goldmine the other day without a primer underneath and it did crease a tiny bit after about 8-9 hours of wear, but do you know what, that's good enough for me. I wore Flashback Silver and Purple Obsession over my beloved Barbara Daly eyeshadow base and they did not crease at all.

So yes, I do think these are a very good alternative the more expensive eyeshadows, and they come in really nice colours too. The colours are very rich and well pigmented, so pretty in the sunlight (see the swatches at the bottom of the post!). Out of the four I like Bronze Divine most, but Goldmine is also beautiful. I wore it with Stila Curacao (bright blue) liquid eyeliner on the top lashline and it looked gorgeous. I have since picked up another two shades, I will try to review them too.

As I said before, these are on offer from Boots and Superdrug at £3.99 instead of £6.99! Available in 12 shades, most of them shimmery, but there seem to be some without any shimmer too.

Do you own any of these? Let me know in the comments!

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

My Sales Bargains Video

Just a quick video I did showing you what goodies I got in the after Christmas sales. :)

Blog Sale Is Back!

I have added loads of Mac pigments to my Blog Sale, so if you are keen to find some bargains, make sure you check it out. Either click HERE or on the Blog Sale tab on the top of the page.