Showing posts with label eyeshadow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyeshadow. Show all posts

Friday, 20 May 2016

A Revelation: NYX Jumbo Pencil in Milk



Urban Decay Dust, Makeup Geek Homecoming, Stila Kitten

Ever been perfectly aware of a cult beauty product and yet never tried it?  That's how I was with NYX Jumbo Pencil in Milk until recently - I spotted it in a NYX stand in a store, a lightbulb went on in my head (it spelled out brighter eyeshadow) and I bought it, expecting not very much despite having heard many, many times that it's creamy whiteness was the perfect way to brighten eyeshadows.

And indeed, it's bloody brilliant, I'm an idiot for not trying it earlier, etc etc.  The pencil is surprisingly smooth and creamy for something which costs a tiny £5 - it's easy to blend, doesn't crease as long as it's applied on top of primer, and brightens the hell out of pale shadows.  As you can see above, it doesn't work quite as well for deeper colours like Makeup Geek Homecoming, but for lighter shades like UD's Dust and Stila's iconic Kitten, it gives them a boost.  If you like that ultra bright neutral eye look, a dab of Milk blended in the centre of the lid before applying your sparkly pale shadow will add dimension and brighten the shadow.

Glorious.  Why didn't I try this before?  I forsee many bright-eyed looks in my future.

Disclosure:  Bought by me.

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow in Homecoming, Vanilla Bean, Burlesque, Taupe Notch & Fairytale





After my last foray into Makeup Geek foiled eyeshadows, I decided to buy a few neutral shades from their original line of eyeshadows too.  Well, a few neutral shades, and a deep red and a lilac, because, well, why not.

Homecoming is a metallic medium bronze; Vanilla Bean a slightly shimmering yellow-toned cream; Burlesque a rich metallic reddish auburn; Taupe Notch a shimmering brown/taupe; and Fairytale a cool grey-toned lilac matte.  All five eyeshadows are extremely well pigmented - even Vanilla Bean, although you can't really see it as it's so close to my natural skin tone.

As well as boasting impressive pigmentation, these shadows are lovely and blendable - particularly the shimmer/metallic shades, which are very, very buttery indeed.  The less shimmery Vanilla Bean and matte Fairytale are also blendable, but don't blend themselves as much as the other shades do.  My only regret is that Fairytale is much more purple than I imagined - I thought it was more of a slightly purple grey, but actually it's a grey purple, and as such it's a bit lonely alongside the other shades I own, which are all neutral.  Definitely worth seeking out swatches online instead of relying on the pan colours on Beauty Bay.

One of the things that attracted me to the Makeup Geek eyeshadow range is the sheer number of colours available (over fifty available at Beauty Bay, and even more available in the States), and their relatively cheap price point at £4.95 each.  If you're looking to build up a collection of really high quality eyeshadows and you want complete control over the shades, some of these and a Z palette are a great place to start.  The experience of choosing and filling my Z palette reminded me a little of doing the same with MAC eyeshadows when I first got into eyeshadow - albeit at a fraction of the price.

You can find Makeup Geek at BeautyBay.  And look, they have duochrome eyeshadows too!  I know what I'm buying next...

Disclosure:  Bought by me.

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Thursday, 28 April 2016

SEVENTEEN Easy on the Eye Palettes in Birthday Suit and The Big Smoke



Birthday Suit
Birthday Suit
Birthday Suit - eyeshadows
Birthday Suit - eyeshadows
Birthday Suit - metallic creams
The Big Smoke
The Big Smoke
The Big Smoke - eyeshadows
The Big Smoke - eyeshadows
The Big Smoke - metallic creams
The Big Smoke - on my eyes
Whew, that was a lot of photos.  And indeed, SEVENTEEN's Easy on the Eye palettes are a whole lot of palette for a mere £7.99 a pop.  There are two variations - Birthday Suit, a selection of soft nudes, and The Big Smoke, made up of smoky shades with a bent towards blue/purple tones.

Each palette contains eight eyeshadows in a mix of matte, pearl and shimmer finishes; three metallic creams, and one eye primer.  The primer is good but not quite as hardcore as UD's Primer Potion or Too Faced's Shadow Insurance, and if your lids aren't too oily you might find you can get by with it.  For me, I needed a stronger primer to get the colours to stick without creasing.

The shadows are, as you can see in the swatches, a bit of a mix when it comes to pigmentation - the mattes are a little chalky and sheer, with the shimmer finish shadows being the most pigmented.  Despite this, they're all easily layered, so you can build up the colour - something that's generally a good idea with a smoky eye to avoid looking like you've got a black eye rather than an artfully blended smoky one.  The surprise standout for me was the metallic creams - they're densely pigmented, with a ton of shimmer which gives them a beautifully metallic finish which looks a lot more expensive than the product actually is.  Granted, they're a little too creamy to work all over the eye, but dabbed into the inner corners, or onto the centre of the lid, or even applied sheerly onto the cheekbones, they do a great job of catching the light and adding a touch of colour.

All in all then, a reasonably priced palette with reasonably good quality eyeshadows inside to match - you'll need to work a bit to get the most out of them, but for the teeny tiny price, I can't complain!

Disclosure:  PR samples


This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Wednesday, 13 April 2016

Depotting Everything: Large Z Palette







I bought a large Z palette to house my new shiny Makeup Geek foiled eyeshadows, and they looked pretty lonely in there all on their own.  So I decided to de-pot a number of my favourite neutral eyeshadows and stick them into the Z palette too.

Doing the actual de-potting was a mixed bag - some shadows, like Makeup Forever's large circular pans, were meant for arranging in palettes like this, so de-potting them was as simple as poking a pin through a hole in the back of the compact.  That's because they're already held in with magnets rather than glue.  Pro brands are often this easy to depot - but high end brands like Clarins, Laura Mercier, and Burberry are pretty dependent on glue, meaning that I had to prise the pans out of the compacts with a knife.  Most of the time that worked just fine, albeit with some warping - you can see that the long, thin, rectangular Clarins pan got warped pretty badly.  In some cases though, the eyeshadows were damaged - like the wine coloured Burberry pan in the bottom right - or completely destroyed, as happened with my Estee Lauder Raisins duo.  They were too soft to be depotted, and they shattered. Boo.

Anyway, inept knife handling aside, the process of depotting and rearranging my shadows was a lot of fun.  The large Z palette comes with a set of sticky-back magnets so non-magnetic pans can be put safely into it, which worked really well for most of the bottom right hand corner.  I've still got a few left for future de-potting adventures too.  At £14.95, I'm really pleased with my large Z palette - some of my buried treasures are getting use for the first time in ages.

Disclosure:  Z palette bought by me.  Depotted eyeshadows a mixure of ones I bought myself, and PR samples.

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Thursday, 7 April 2016

Meh: Clinique Lid Pop in Cocoa Pop and Grape Pop




Clinique's Pop takeover continues, with new Lid Pops, pretty flower-embossed eyeshadows to go with their existing Cheek Pop blushers.  For a new eyeshadow range, the shade selection is surprisingly small - just eight shades, four of which are in the neutral/beige spectrum, and four of which are a little more colourful.

I've been playing with Grape Pop, a mauve purple, and Cocoa Pop, a mid brown, for the past few weeks, and I've found them to be pretty useful as standalone shades for a wash of colour across the lid.  The finish is wearable and well, nice - there's a sheen, a little bit of shimmer, but it's very grown up and subtle.  Pigmentation is good, although you'll need to build up with a couple of layers if you want the pan colour - by default, a single layer gives you a soft wash.  Be careful, though, if you're looking for more pigment - I found that the combination of layering up and blending can lead to a slightly dull, flat finish if you go too far.

Overall, I like these new Lid Pop eyeshadows, but I don't love them - although given how much I love (and still wear) the Cheek Pop blushes, my expectations were pretty high for the Lid Pops.  I think the lack of excitement might be because they don't really bring anything new - Cheek Pops introduced a wonderful barely there finish I hadn't seen on other blushes, but Lid Pops are just another eyeshadow - albeit one in a pretty shape.  Still, if the combination of pretty packaging, gerberas, and grownup finishes sets your heart aflutter, you'll find Lid Pops at the Clinique website, where they cost £15 each.

Disclosure:  PR samples

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.


Friday, 1 April 2016

Kiko Cosmetics Artist Stroke Mineral Loose Eyeshadow






These little pots of loose mineral eyeshadow are genius - the packaging is the best I've ever seen for a loose eyeshadow, completely eliminating the problems loose eyeshadows have when you try to travel with them.

Many brands have tried to solve the problem of spilling, messiness and over-dispensing by putting sifters in their products, which then means a fair bit of shaking to get to the eyeshadow inside.  Kiko, however, have included an ingenious little mesh across the mouth of the jar - it's flexible and stretchy enough to let you press into it with a brush to load up on eyeshadow.  Combined with a lid which features a bit of plastic to fill the mouth of the jar and press into the mesh, the eyeshadow remains easy to use and totally secure when you move around with it.  Brilliant.

The loose eyeshadow itself is also pretty good - soft, easy to blend, and with a great level of intensity. Surprisingly, they're not the sparkliest of sparkly mineral shadows; there's a glimmer in there, but it's more subtle and dimensional than it is ultra noticeable.  With six shades available, these are a fabulous buy if you're a fan of loose eyeshadow.  Find them now at the Kiko website, where they cost a mere £6.90.

Disclosure:  PR samples

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Monday, 28 March 2016

Pretty Shiny Robot: Makeup Geek Foiled Eyeshadow in Grandstand, Charmed & Mesmerized


Grandstand, Charmed, Mesmerized

Grandstand, Charmed, Mesmerized in my large Z palette
Grandstand, Charmed, Mesmerized

I bought these Makeup Geek Foiled Eyeshadows from BeautyBay out of curiosity, having heard a bit of buzz about the brand, which sprung from the Makeup Geek tutorials website and YouTube channel.  Being drawn to anything sparkly and/or metallic, I chose the more expensive Foiled Eyeshadow, which costs £7.95 per pan, rather than the standard eyeshadow, which costs £4.95 per pan.

And wow, these are very, very metallic indeed - the swatches are what I'd expect from a cream product, not a powder eyeshadow.  The shadows are soft and blendable, although I noticed that the more you blend them, the less foiled they look - I've been blending a layer across my lid with a fluffy brush to get a well blended edge, and then patting more shadow onto the middle of the lid to get a truly metallic finish, but if you can't be bothered you'll still get an intense look with one, blended layer.

Of the three shades I bought, Mesmerized is my favourite - it's an intense, richly metallic brown/purple/taupe shade which makes for a lovely eye which isn't too neutral, but isn't too colourful either.  Charmed is a good deal cooler and icier than I thought it would be, and Grandstand in retrospect was a bad choice - it's a lovely colour, like a new shiny penny, but truly metallic copper eyeshadow is easy to come by.

If you love a metallic eye, I'd definitely recommend trying Makeup Geek Foiled Eyeshadow out.  They're only sold in pans, so you'll need a Z Palette (or similar) to keep them in - that means an initial separate cost of about £12 for a palette, and then a whole heap of space to put your (now comparably quite cheap) eyeshadow pans into.  I'll be trying a few of the 'normal' eyeshadows next.

Disclosure:  Bought by me.

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Tuesday, 8 March 2016

Overpriced: Nudestix Magnetic Eye Colour Pencil in Spirit






I bought this lovely pencil during a recent Sephora dash, mostly because I was curious about the Nudestix brand - they claim to be all about a nude, not-too-heavy, polished look, and their gimmick is that all the products (barring the mascara) come in pencil form.

First off, I was surprised by the packaging - the Magnetic Eye Colour Pencil comes in a black tin, which is very sleek looking and pretty.  But... it's rather large.  Given that it contains a pencil, a separate sharpener, and a piece of paper, the tin is probably three times the size it could be.  That's not a big problem, but if you're a collector, or you like the brand so much you buy a few of their sticks, you'll soon find yourself either wasting space or throwing away tins.

Anyway, excessive tins aside, the stick itself is a creamy, luminous eye shadow which can be quickly blended with fingers or with a brush for a smudgy, sexy finish.  And creamy it is - it's very blendable, but sets quickly into a soft, glowy finish which lasts all day for me, as long as I apply it on top of primer.  It also works well as a chunky eyeliner, smudged out with a fingertip.  Unfortunately, blending dulls some of the luminosity in the finish, but that can be remedied by applying two layers - a base layer which gets blended, and a second layer for the finish.

Back to another packaging problem - the stick itself isn't a twist-up format.  Rather, you get a separate sharpener in the tin.  Given the £24 pricetag, I expect convenience and usability built in - the sharpener can be attached to the stick, but that makes it harder to use, and if you don't attach it to the stick, there's a high probability of losing it and ending up with a dull, unusable stick of expensive eyeshadow.

Ultimately, I'm just not impressed enough by this Magnetic Eye Colour Pencil to feel it's worth the high cost - £24 will buy you a great many cream eyeshadow sticks from Kiko, and the Kiko packaging is much better.  Unless you're super curious, save your money and go to Kiko.

Disclosure:  Bought by me.

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

BUY THIS NOW: GOSH 9 Shades... Cool in Copenhagen Mattes








You guys, this palette is amazing.  AMAZING.  You should go buy one, right now.  Here's the link.  Go buy it.

OK, now I can tell you why it's so damn good.  Firstly, it's an all-matte palette, something which is a bit unusual on the high street, particularly in a palette with 9 shades of eyeshadow.  This is because matte eyeshadow is harder to do well cheaply compared to sparkly or shimmery eyeshadow - mica is a key component of high street eyeshadow because it's sparkly, abundantly cheap, and easy to colour.  Matte shades are really hard to pull off cheaply without ending up with a slightly chalky, low pigment finish.  With this palette, GOSH have pulled off matte finish shadows which are medium pigment, blendable, not at all chalky, and easily layerable for an intense finish.

Secondly, not only is it a matte palette, but it's a matte palette of grey toned neutrals which are SO wearable, without leaning brown.  Which is interesting.  More interesting than the plethora of brown based neutral palettes we've been bombarded with since someone at Urban Decay made the connection between neutral and Naked.  Oh, and it goes really really well with a red or berry lip, which you know I just love.

Thirdly, it's cheap.  Cheap!  Just £10.99 for nine shades of matte, grey-toned neutral eyeshadow, in a no-nonsense plastic palette with a decent sized mirror.  Can't go wrong, eh?

So, now you've heard why this is probably my favourite eyeshadow palette in quite some time, go buy it.  Here's the link again.  And tell me what you think.  I'm off to buy a couple of backups...

Disclosure:  PR sample

This post originated at www.londonbeautyreview.com. If you're reading it elsewhere, it's been stolen, violating my copyright.
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