TMO: Mermaid Makeup Edition

One of my most popular items on this blog has been my little rant on makeup, mermaids, and unicorns. Honestly, though, if I had to choose, I think mermaids makes more sense for me in terms of its role in makeup branding? Huh. Maybe not.

Anyway, rant aside, I have a few products that I want to mention today as part of this TMO. As with all of my TMOs, I will try to show promotional images from the brands, and give measured criticism.

The first product I want to mention is really a generality. I am talking about full indie eyeshadow/highlighter palettes. For me, I think the highlighter palettes are a tad more grievous. Here we have Bitter Lace Beauty's "Mermaid Dreams Bundle," costing $214.00

I find this to be audacious and disgusting. Hear me out. 

1. These are all swirled highlighters. The swatches on the site showcase the different tones in each pan. However, what do they look like when mixed together? 

2. This is a palette of highlighters. HIGHLIGHTERS. The difference among them can't be so noticeable that you NEED an entire palette full of them. 

3. How do you even know what color you will get, if the colors in the pan are unincorporated? More importantly, how will you tell them apart (meaning the different shades of white, not the gold from the blue, obviously)

4. Why would anyone pay $214.00 for this?

It's too much. It's too much shiny collected dirt for my liking. These types of products, being relatively rare in the overall market, should be small and precious. This is a bloated, useless thing that no one should waste their money on. No one. 

And personally, it is rather easy to anti-haul such a blatant rip-off. But I am also going to anti-haul the individual pans as well, or any indie highlighters in the same vein. These in particular by this brand go for $18. For me, the drugstore is doing a good job of making beautiful highlighters. For the longest time I liked the idea of having one special highlighter that is a different tone or duo-chrome or something....but honestly? I can just use eyeshadow. I have enough of that already. 

On the subject of drugstore, another collection I will be TMOing is:

from hellogiggles

The Wet n Wild Midnight Mermaid collection. Now, I think this is an interesting collection for the fall, and I do think trying one or two of these products would be fun. However, I don't recommend buying the entire collection. 

The reasons I would anti-haul this is because: 1. I have never seen WnW do liquid eyeshadows before, and I would be very suspicious of how they perform, especially if they are supposed to be duo-chrome. 2. These lipcolors are cool, but I would never wear them. 

3. The size and shape of the highlighter is killing me. I also hate the design. It looks like the tail got lopped off. Why couldn't they make it square, like their other special highlighters, and just have the fish-scale print throughout? It really is annoying me because the image is so difficult to process. Besides, like I said with my indie rant, duo-chrome highlighters-though very trendy- are not practical, so I wouldn't really use it. Especially if it gives off a blue shift. I do think WnW was smart, though, in that the base of it is golden rather than white, so as to not give a weird grey/white cast to darker skin tones. Maybe. The proof will be in the swatches and looks.

While I don't think this collection is spectacularly offensive (except for that highlighter design ugh) I know personally I won't be able to buy/wear most of it. For people who can wear bolder colors though,  think they will have a lot of fun.