FOTD: Chartreuse, Gold and Brown

This look is a bit different from what I would normally wear, firstly I don't often wear greens and certainly not chartreuse, but I was playing with my Frontcover loose powder eyeshadows and decided to do this look. My inspiration partly was the Models Own Golden Green Beetlejuice nail polish, I actually wore this look at the same time.

It wasn't this bright and in-your-face in real life, maybe it's the flash, I don't know, but it does look a bit scary, especially the full face pictures. Oh well, nobody stopped me to wipe it off my face, so I guess it was alright. Feel free to let me know what you think (but please be kind)!

To create this look I used the following products:

Eyes:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Frontcover Pigment Powder in Lime Lime inner part and middle of lid, and under lower lashline
Mac Vintage Gold pigment in outer part of lid and above crease, and under lower lashline
Frontcover Pigment Powder in Saddle Brown in crease
Frontcover Shimmer Powder in Desert Dust on browbone to highlight
Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner in Zero on waterline
Clinique Lash Power Mascara in Black Onyx
Mac Brow Set in Show Off

Face:
Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse foundation in 030 Sand
Mac Truth & Light Magically Cool Liquid Powder
Mac On A Mission Beauty Powder Blush

Lips:
Avon Ultra Colour Rich Moisture Seduction lipstick in Mocha Plum

See more pictures after the jump!

FOTD: FrontCover Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette Cover Look

As promised, here's my attempt of recreating the cover look of the FrontCover Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette that I reviewed yesterday. This is something I don't do very often, partly due to lack of time and partly due to lack of interest, I prefer doing my own thing. But I do like the cover look on the palette and wasn't too sure what to do with the bright green shade in the palette, so I thought right, I will try to do the look.

So here it is, what do you think? I was quite pleased with it, although I need to add that it's not a look I would wear on an average weekday as it was brighter and darker than in the photos. It's good fun though and I did this last Sunday, so I didn't get many funny looks (other than from my family, but they are used to me wearing bright make up by now).

Keep reading to see more photos and find out what I used to create this look!

FrontCover Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette Review and Swatches

Every year with Christimas comes a new bunch of limited edition FrontCover sets and I usually can't resist and end up buying a few, despite already owning a good number of them (you can check out my collection in this post). As there's usually a 3 for 2 offer in Boots, I often end up with 3 of these sets at a time. This year, among others I purchased the Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette which I'm going to show you today.

Housed in a plastic two-tier compact you find 18 eyeshadows in pretty much every colour of the rainbow. They are all quite frosty, so if you like your matte eyeshadows, then this is not the palette for you. A couple of them also have small glitter in them, although it's not too obvious, especially as those are the darkest shades. The top tier contains 12 eyeshadows in blues, purples, greens and a couple of highlighter colours, and the bottom tier contains 6 pink/peach/brown shades arranged in a slightly different format like a shimmer brick. You get a double ended brush and a small face/blush brush as well, plus there's a nice large mirror in the lid.

The fact that there's a face brush next to the 6 pink/peach/brown shadows made me think they're also intended to be worn as blush, swirled together as the strips are too narrow to be used alone, but to be honest, they are way too frosty for that. I did try to recreate the look on the cover and used the bottom 6 as blush, but it did not look very good. And they're too dark for highlighter, so I would stick with them as eyeshadows.

Pigmentation-wise the shadows are pretty good, some better than other, but the bright ones really do pop and the dark more matte (well with glitter) ones aren't too chalky either. Over UDPP they didn't crease or fade at all. There was some fallout during application but not while worn, so I was pretty impressed. All in all you get 23 g which is massive for £16. The case is rather heavy, so that makes it less travel friendly, but it's not bulky and you get so many shades that you really don't need much else. The brushes provided are pretty naff, but that's normal with sets like this I think. What's great about FrontCover sets is that you get useful hints and tips on how to create certain looks. I have tried to recreate the cover look and will be posting my FOTD pictures soon. The cover is pretty cool actually with the image changing from open to closed eyes depending on the angle you look at it, I can't for the life of me remember what it's called, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

There are lots of pictures including swatches after the jump!

FrontCover To Go Pop In Pop Out Compact Review

I was recently sent a voucher from Boots for FrontCover's new FrontCover To Go compact so I thought I'd try it out. The offer was that you get the FrontCover Pop In Pop Out compact and 4 eyeshadow singles for £10 (they would cost £21 otherwise with the palette priced at £5 and the eyeshadow singles at £4 each). My local Boots doesn't stock FrontCover neither do the bigger ones nearby, so I was happy to see that the Boots on Oxford Street had them when I was in London 2 weeks ago.

So what is it exactly? You get an empty eyeshadow palette with a mirror and double ended eyeshadow brush to fill with your choice of shades. You can choose from 25 different colours, but unfortunately the Boots on Oxford Street only had maybe half of them in stock. The eyeshadow singles come in a square base that you can snap into the palette. They are very easy to put in and take out, so in theory you can replace them with other shades if you desire (a selection of these eyeshadows came out last winter with the FrontCover To Go holiday palette), but I don't know where you would put the singles as they don't come with a lid so you could safely store them individually. The eyeshadow singles comes in 25 shades, but they are mainly only golds, neutrals, greys, some blues/greens and one (!!!) measly purple shade. I would really like to see a much bigger variety including more purples, some pinks, oranges, different greens and blues, or at the very least it would be good to be able to purchase any of the existing shades and not find the stand half empty. I ended up putting together a neautral/gold palette which is very nice, but I've since discovered that I'd already owned 3 of the 4 shades as they were included in the FrontCover To Go holiday palette. Actually, that's another thing, most of the singles are already in the bigger palettes of which I own quite a few myself.

So all in all, was it a good buy? At £10 it was okay. The eyeshadows are a really nice quality, the colours I chose are gorgeous and the palette is quite funky, although the brush is pretty manky to be honest. However at £21 I don't think it would be quite such a great deal especially if you already own a lot of the shades from other palettes. I wish there was a bigger selection and better availibility of the shades, I would've liked not to duplicate what I already own and I prefer brighter colours to neutrals.

Anyone tried this or other FrontCover palettes? What do you think?

See more pictures and swatches after the jump!

Looks featuring Frontcover eyeshadows

As promised, here are some looks I created using my Frontcover palettes.

First one:

For this look I used:

Plovers Egg + Nine Iron duo eyeshadow from Frontcover To Go (all over lid (PE) and crease (NI))

Powder Puff domed eyeshadow from Frontcover To Go (to highlight)

Azimuth domed eyeshadow as liquid eyeliner (mixed with Shadowline) on upper lashline

Mac Pearlglide eyeliner in Industrial on lower lashline 

Givenchy Eye Fly mascara in black

Mac Dainty mineralize blush

Givenchy Sunset Pink lipstick

See more photos of this look and two other looks created with Frontcover eyeshadows.

Frontcover To Go palette review

I first heard about Frontcover cosmetics 2 years ago when they first released their Rainbow Eyes palette and as I'm a sucker for anything colourful, of course I had to pick it up. Since then they have released several palettes and kits, usually for Christmas, but this year they also had a few palettes in the summer too. (You might remember I showed you their Mermaid Dreams palette here.) They have also made their Rainbow Eyes palette permanent and in my opinion it is probably their best palette to date, so well worth checking out. Frontcover palettes are available from Boots, boots.com and frontcovercosmetics.com. I believe they also deliver worldwide (not Boots though unfortunately).

Today I would like to tell about their new palette called Frontcover To Go. I apologise for being late with this, unfortunately I didn't get around to posting this sooner, but there was a great deal on this at Boots just this last week. It normally costs £35, but it was reduced to £16, but it's also part of the 3 for 2 gift promotion, so you can still save on it. And you never know, it might be reduced again before too long. 

Frontcover To Go contains 20 eyeshadows, 13 of which are domed and 5 that are split in 2. The pans aren't huge, so working with the split ones can be a bit tricky, but not impossible. There are also 2 flat single eyeshadows. The great thing about this palette is that the individual pans are removable and you also get a small palette with 4 spaces to put your eyeshadows into, so you don't have to carry the whole palette around. Which is just as well as this is very bulky. You also get a double ended brush and a pot of Shadowline, which is basically a mixing medium that you can use to turn your eyeshadows into eyeliners. There is an applicator wand inside which is very good for lining your lids, it's pointy, but soft enough so you don't poke your eyes out with it. 

The shades in this palette are mainly cool, you get blues, greens, turquoise, silver, gold, pinks, but there are some warmer shades too. The colour payoff is okay, the shadows are at their best when applied wet, but they work fine dry too. I apologise, I didn't swatch them, but I have created a couple of looks with them which I'll be posting later.

One more great thing about this palette and other Frontcover palettes is that you also get look ideas and instructions on the inside and the back of the box, and they are easy to follow and pretty helpful.

I'll leave you with loads of images of this palette and also my collection of Frontcover palettes and kits, hope you enjoy looking at them. I will be back soon with some looks I've created using this and other palettes.

I went shopping today...

My husband has taken the children to his parents for 3 days, so I finally have some me time on my hands and today I went to London for a spot of shopping. This is what I bought: As you can see, I didn't hold back, I bought quite a few things, but I can honestly say I'm very happy with everything I got. I haven't worked out how much I've spent yet, but it's quite a lot. In my defence, some of the things you see here were samples and gift with purchase, eg you get that lovely make up bag if you spend over £40 on Paul & Joe products. Also I bought the other pieces of make up in Debenhams and Boots and as I have both their loyalty cards, I've earned some points, so I actually saved money. Well, off future purchases anyway... See more pictures of what I bought after the jump!