It’s Bargain time: 40% off Urban Decay Palettes

I would be a bad blogger if I knew about a great makeup offer and didn't tell you about it. Right now, you can get your hands on three Urban Decay eyeshadows palettes at 40% off on Cheapsmells. Which ones are they? Scroll down to know more:













Offer stops when they run out of stock and will end no matter what in 2 days, this Sunday12 August.
That's it  xx

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The eyeshadow palette of my dreams?

When I saw this eyeshadow palette on Vex in the City, I thought that my heart skipped a beat. You have no idea for how long I have been longing to find a neutral everyday eyeshadow palette containing only matte shadows, and 'in the know' from Stila might finally be the answer to my prayers. Please don't remind me of the pigmentation fiasco of the Sleek 'au naturel' palette whose bottom row might as well had been left blank as the shadows on that row were struggling to show on skin. The legendary Urban Decay naked palette, its amazing dupe by MUA and even 'In the light' from Stila contained decent matte shadows but they were lost in a sea of shimmers.







What's wrong with shimmery shadows? Shimmery shadows are beautiful, and they usually blend more easily than matte shadows but I have got a hooded eye shape. Hooded eye shaped gals can use whatever eyeshadow finish they wish but when you have a hooded eye it's considered best to use matte makeup on and above the crease area. Put shimmer on the hooded part of your eye and it will highlight it and make it more prominent. So I'd rather keep my shimmery eyeshadow for the part of my eye which is just above the lash line and use a matte everywhere else.


According to Yinka, 'In the know' will be released from 2 August, for £25 in selected Boot stores (definitely not my local store *sobs*) and Selfridges but I am hoping the bloggosphere will be able to share some swatches before then.


How Stila designed it:

Stila's original matte shades are back in this beautiful collection of eye shadows in universally flattering shades. The In the Know eye shadow palette contains 10 matte shades of Stila's award-winning eye shadows that flatter every skin tone and can be worn wet or dry. The palette also includes an exclusive Smudge Stick Waterproof Eye Liner in Halfmoon, a matte charcoal grey shade, plus an eight-page look book with detailed application tips and tricks.

and a description of the shades:

• air - matte beige
• driftwood - mid tone brown
• wind - soft matte peach
• fire - matte brick
• desert - soft matte tan w/warm undertones
• rain -matte brown
• clay - matte warm light brown
• smoke - matte charcoal grey
• earth - deep matte chocolate brown
• ebony - matte black

I cannot wait to see swatches of this and then I'll be in a better position to make a purchase decision.


Do you know own any Stila palettes? What are they like?
I had not seen before today the 'in the moment'. It's annoyingly pretty. grr ...





credit:
Photo of  Stila 'in the light' palette was taken from Sophie from melovemakeup.com.  Montage of three palettes was made by me. Read Yinka's impressions on Stila 'in the know' palette here.

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Swatch Sunday: Gosh Smokey Eyes Palette

what: Gosh Cosmetics Smokey Eyes Palette in shade 02 Brown
how much: £7.99
where: Superdrug shops nationwide
disclaimer: palette was bought by me

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Sleek Saturday. Pepperminty {eotd}

I can't believe the last makeup look I posted was September 2011. Time I put back some makeup in this makeup blog, don't you think? Don't get your hopes too hyped up, it's only something very simple today. While the blogosphere is starting to buzz about the new ultra matte palettes, I am revisiting the Sleek PPQ palette, the last palette, I believe which featured the trademark waffle pattern on the pans.    



Is it still worth quoting the official description of the palette at this late hour? Ok, go on then:

It’s the ultimate collaboration of beauty and fashion: Sleek MakeUP has teamed up with fashion house PPQ to produce the makeup looks for PPQ’s London fashion week show. The Me, Myself & Eye I-Divine is the result of a mutual admiration of colour, texture and vibrancy! Taking inspiration from PPQ’s S/S 2012 theme, the palette is a heavy mix of pattern and colour to toughen up feminine summer silhouettes making it the ultimate accessory for every self-confessed fashionista and beauty lover! Packed with an array of brilliant bolds, with matte and shimmer eye colours, you can create endless looks from smoky black, to glistening and gold. The finishing touch is PPQ’s renowned naughty sense of humour, with eye shadow names like Lilac Allen, Primal Green and Barry White!

A lot of creativity has gone into this palette and the play on words for the names of the shades of the palette made me smile. Pigmentation wise, I struggled to make the colours show off on my skin very well (apologies for my pathetic swatches) and I couldn't envisage playing with this palette without a generous dose of 2 faced shadow insurance and nyx jumbo pencil in a bid to make the colour as vibrant as possible. I am trying hard to explain why my swatch of Chris de Burghundy looks like a bullet wound and I am going to pretend it's there for artistic purposes.





Had supernova been a little bit more pigmented, I think I would have reached this palette much more often rather than only twice. If you're a fan of mint colour, Salt and Peppermint would tick all your boxes and is the brightest colour of the set. Expect a true red from 'simply red' and you'll be sorely disappointed. Simply Red is nothing like red. Instead it will give a vibrant golden peach shade: superb colour to own, albeit a bit redundant if you own the 'avoir la peche' palette


For my look today, I've chosen 3 colours from this palette (golden shivers, salt and peppermint, supernova) vanilla from mac to blend it towards the eyebrow and a generous dollop of white eyeliner on the waterline.







There is no way on this earth that the Sleek palette is going to rival my bohemian, oh so special, acid and circus palettes, all including much better matte finish eyeshadows, but I still think PPQ is very special and is a nice item to collect.







Liked this post? Catch the previous episodes of my SleekSaturday series here.


what: sleek makeup PPQ palette
how much: £6.49
where: Sleek Makeup online

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the mattest of them all?

If the descendants of Brother Grimm received royalties every time their classic fairy tale of Snow White was adapted to a movie form, they would have probably been multi millionaires by now. 2012 alone, to name but but a few, has seen the success of the ABC Once Upon a Time Series and Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts. June will see the release of another Snow White movie adaptation Snow White & The Huntsman with 'Twilight' Kristen Stewart as Snow White and 'Dior Ad' Charlize Theron as the evil queen. Better still, there is a pretty makeup palette inspired by the movie to be released.



To coincide with the June 2012 release of the film, Italian upmarket cosmetic brand Diego Dalla Palma got a deal with Universal Films to be the official cosmetics partner and will be releasing a palette containing a 6 eyeshadows, a full size red lipstick and an eye pencil.

I know what you're thinking. The box set doesn't look as fancy and luxurious as the Urban Decay Alice in Wonderland box set. On the plus side, the palette offers a refreshing mix of 3 shimmery shades and 3 matte shades. Finally some matte shades!

I will have to wait and see some swatches before committing onto buying the palette (£25) but for now I am very excited about the collaboration, it makes me want to play with makeup and I can't wait to see the film!

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MUA – Glamour Night Palette

If I am not careful, this blog is turning more into like what makeup I would like to indulge into rather than makeup I actually bought and can share my impressions with you on. The truth is that money is a bit tight at the moment and while I have heaps and heaps of 'old' makeup to review, these take time and natural sunlight to be photographed at their best. I am working on this gorgeous beautyuk cosmetics new nail polish collection which I am dying to share with you but the sunrays are missing and the flash of my camera cannot cope with chrome and foil polishes.


Lame apologies aside, I wanted to share with you some swatches of 'Glamour Nights' a gorgeous eyeshadow palette designed by MUA Cosmetics. This palette is usually £4 but I managed to find it in a blog sale at half price. I had vowed myself to stop buying shimmery eyeshadows as I don't like wearing eyeshadow in the crease of my eye and beyond, but here am I with yet another mainly shimmery eyeshadow palette. I couldn't resist, the colours are too pretty.








We'll start with the positives: The shimmery shades are absolutely gorgeous. Minus the silver which produces a lot of fall out, the shimmery shades offer very good pigmentation and are easy to work with.






The matte shades however are very disappointing. The white (first from the left, top row) barely shows but then again, I am not too bothered. Sleek Makeup is not capable either at making a decent white and nyx white answers to all my white needs. The browny grey (5th colour from the left, top row) which was the colour I was looking forward the most to play with is nowhere near satisfactory in terms of pigmentation. No problem with the matte black (first shadow, bottom row) however the 4th and final matte eyeshadow of this palette, the matte purple (4th shadow from the left, bottom row) is really not happening: patchy, patchy, patchy and patchy. What a shame.








Matte lovers, this palette is not for you. Shimmery Lovers, eat your heart out, you really can't go wrong with so many shades for £4.

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Anxiously waiting for…

... the release of the Smokey Eyes Palettes from Gosh Cosmetics. Ever since I saw Beaut.ie's post, I've been regularly checking my local Superdrug to see if they have arrived. We're talking about 3 to 4 times a week. Today, I've finally asked for more information on twitter and rumour has it that it won't reach our British shores (the palette has already been made available in Ireland for a while) before 'sometime' in April.




I am particularly desperate for the brown quad as it's designed to feature exclusively matte shadows and that good quality eyeshadow palette which doesn't break the bank are very hard to find. I've been using this little matte fella from Gosh to death and it's about time I purchased a replacement. I love gosh eyeshadows: They feel a little hard and dry at first, but in return they offer a good colour pay off, have very little fall out and are easy to blend.


I am told that the palette will be sold at £7.99 and will be released sometime in April. Watch this space, as there is NO DOUBT, this will end up in my home and on my eyes. Yeeha!    

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Bohemian Raspberry – My first tutorial

The lovely Kat from Click and Makeup asked me if I would want to guest post for her while she’s on holidays and perhaps do a ‘eye makeup tutorial’ blog post. What a terrifying prospect. I have never done a tutorial before. I was petrified at the thought but excited at the same time to embrace the challenge. I am using one of my favourite palette. With extreme nervousness, I would like to invite you to skip over to Click and Makeup blog to see my post. AaaAAaaaaa



 

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Wildflowers EOTD

Once upon a time, I participated in a makeup swap with an American friend and collected this little colourful palette from LA Colors. This particular one is 'Wildflowers'. La Colors palettes are really cheap in America: this one retailed around $2 dollars if my memory serves me right. Whilst I was tidying, I found it again, waiting for me to show it some love for the first time.





As you can see the colours are nicely pigmented. Its main flaw jumps from the page: It's way too shimmery. The lilac/purple is much more pigmented in real life and I hope you will excuse these hasty swatches. I managed to damage the purple just after taking the photos. Be warned: these shadows are very fragile.






My look today uses all the colours from the palette apart from the coral colour in the middle. In addition, I added Vanilla Mac eyeshadow, a welcome matte highlight in this disco ball look and a bit of Nyx Black to add a bit more depth to the crease.







 


All in all, I really like the look but I can't help but distracted by the overpowering shimmer. What a shame, what a lovely colour assortment. Back to the drawers it goes then...

Anything I should own from La Colors?

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Sleek Saturday – Circus Curtain…

When I first saw pictures and swatches of the Sleek Circus Palette, I remember quite vividly how I felt about it. I thought the palette looked absolutely ridiculous, preposterous and I felt strongly about it that I wanted to write a post about 10 reasons why I wouldn't buy it. The lurid lobster/corally casing reminded me of a Fisherprice or ToysRus item for kids and the colours didn't impress me either.






One year and a half later on (or is it longer than that?) this was gifted to me by the lovely Terri and I am absolutely in love. In fact, I nearly love the Circus palette nearly as much as the Acid Palette which is my favourite palette thanks to its winning purple and green.


I am still learning a lot about makeup, about what textures and finishes I prefer on my eyes but one thing I am sure is that I am definitely more of a matte eyeshadow girl than a all shimmery one. Circus is delightful bright mix of mattes and shimmery shadows and this suits me better than many other sleek palettes which are predominantly shimmery.





A quick look at the swatches and you can't help but noticing the 'waste' of a precious sleek palette slot with the poor pigmentation of the lilac and the why-did-they-bother-at-all white. Other than that, all the colours offer excellent pigmentation. The yellow is a my favourite shade of yellow at all (so far, there is only one yellow eyeshadow in the whole world that I like, but this will have to be the subject of another post) but its pigmentation is flawless. The winning stars of this palette: the vibrant shimmery purple, the matte fuchsia, the shimmery light green and the oh so gorgeous shimmery blue.







I have yet to create a shimmery blue makeup look I am happy with. Until this day comes, I wanted to post a look using 3 colours from the palette: the shimmery purple, the black and the very light lime green.

As you probably know by now, I don't do shimmer in the crease but some for reason, which I genuinely fail to comprehend, this shimmery purple worked a treat in my crease. The gorgeous blue undertones of the purple are to die for. I can't believe how rich and easy to work with this colour has been. You'd think, looking at the crease that there about 4 colours in the crease. There aren't. The purple just blends by itself and somehow, which truly gobsmacks me, it's not overly frosty shimmery which makes me want to remove this look at once.













If I wanted to wear a purple crease look, I'd still prefer to reach for the matte purple from the acid palette but this multi dimensional purple is the bomb. Of course I had to go out with it. The guy from Londis liked it :)






On my lips, I have a little gem, a recent blog sale acquisition. Click here  if you want to find out more about it.





Joining me this week are 3 gorgeous girls. Please go and have a look at the Sleek Saturday of these lovely girlies. Click on their ‘pan’ to be directed to their look:

Ellie	Cynthia	Jessie

I have really enjoyed Sleek Saturday. Among other things, it has helped me deciding which Sleek Palette I am going to keep, cherish and keep using and which ones which will be getting the boot. I have used up all the Sleek palettes in my collection so I guess it’s time to finish this series for now. I can’t help myself from feeling a bit sad really. I will be doing some more Sleek Saturdays (as and when I have new palettes) but for it’s an aurevoir (and a full front face picture, actually looking at the camera, aren't you lucky?)







Click HERE to see all the episodes from the Sleek Saturdays (Season 1?) or on the thumbnails below.
Thank you very much again for being awesome, following me, reading and commenting xx

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