Brands I Plan to Try This Year

This is a bit of a wish-listy post that is different than my usual ant-haul spiel. I've just been seeing a lot of affordable brands come out with truly interesting products and I plan to sample from them.

Of course, this means buying and expanding my palette collection, which I don't know if I necessarily want to do. Of course, if any of these brands decides to start putting out singles, I wouldn't mind, either.

1.) Makeup Revolution. I am swayed. After swatching the Soph X Palette and reading reviews on their Chocolate Bar palettes (a line that is continually added to in new and fun ways), I am resolved to try them. Right now the products I specifically have my eye on can be found in Ulta, but I've seen some Makeup Revolution products in TJ Maxx. Go figure.

2.) Juvia's Place. I have been low-key (beautuber voice) obsessed with the Douce for a while, but...that mint green. One, I already have it, and two, I don't use it. If they come out with another mini palette with the smaller pans, which I am sure they will, I will gladly buy it.

3.) Bad Habit Beauty. I know many people are divided on the "ethics" of mimicking or duping palettes. But the thing is. I was never going to buy Natasha Denona anyway. I was never going to buy Pat McGrath anyway. In the case of ABH, the Mario palette is long gone. So I really do appreciated Bad Habit making these things- that I NEVER would have tried otherwise- available to me.

Temptalia reviewed recently one the palettes they made that dupes Pat McGrath's Subliminal palette. The price difference between the two is $101.00. Ell oh ell. And though she gave the BHB palette a C- total, the most interesting colors for me scored in the B range, and are listed as the top dupes (in a very short list) for the PMcG palette. So. yeah, I do intend on trying a palette from them in the future. Probably one that dupes another higher brand.

So that's my short list! Have you got any products from these brands? If so, what are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading.

Local Ulta Opening + Haul

So today was a bit of an event. It was the opening of a local Ulta, and so many people just flocked there. I swatched a whole bunch of things, some of which had never been swatched before, so naturally I have some thoughts.

I also bought a couple of things.

Let's first go into what I swatched like a madwoman. Honestly, if the store wasn't so crowded, I probably would not have been so brazen about it, and probably would have limited the number of things I swatched.

1.) Mac

The Mac section of the store was super intense and professional-feeling. I swatched the highlighting trios in the square pans. The powders were silky and gave off a gorgeous and smooth sheen. It is no wonder why the palettes are so highly rated (and pricey).

The new Dazzle something liquid eyeshadows- I swatched an iridescent glitter, which was very pretty but took rather long to dry down, as well as a metallic warm pink, which dried fairly quickly and did not budge on my hand. I am strongly considering buying those in the future. For me, my eyes tend to react better to liquid eyeshadows with a metallic finish, such as the pink shade, and not to glitter toppers, which contain larger particles of glitter which seem to irritate my eyelids.

2.) Stila

I swatched a green eyeshadow duo, as part of their line of jewel tone duos. It was fine, but I don't really understand the functionality of this line. Basically the same tone of color with slightly different finishes? I wasn't blown away by the pictures of this product, and was less impressed by them in person.

Liquid eyeshdow- Sea Siren and another pink shade I cannot recall. Sea Siren was gorgeous, a cool pink with a blue-lavender shift. It is an Ulta exclusive, and I would strongly suggest purchasing that in the future.

Additionally, I swatched the putty highlighter in the iridescent shade. I was just curious about the texture of the product really. It is soft, but still powdery feeling, if that makes sense. The shade was quite pretty.

3.) Becca x Chrissy Teigen highlighting powder. I don't really care about Becca as a company anymore, but the powder was pretty. But of course it would be.

4.) Morphe 350 Palette Shimmer. One blogger I read commented that Morphe's shimmers are really good, but when I swiped my finger across a gold one (the palette that had not been previously swatched) the pay-off was barely there. It required more pressure from me, but at that point I had already moved on.

5.) Makeup Revolution- Various Palettes including the Chocolate Bars and SophX Collab. Okay, Makeup Revolution is the winner for me. The palettes were way better than I expected. I am extremely likely to purchase something from them in the future. Especially from that SophX palette- I swatched a pink matte and a green shimmer- and both would not rub off my hand.

6.) The shimmer and glitter from the Ulta Melissa Michelle collab palette. They were extremely chunky. A pass from me.

7.) The L'Oreal Paradise Enchanted palette. I should have swatched the mattes, as those are harder to formulate, but as I cannot resist shiny things I swatched two coppery shimmers. They were surprisingly opaque. The palette also has a distinct peach smell, which even though it was artificial, it was not unpleasant.

What I almost got:

The Laura Geller Gilded Honey highlighter mini, for $15. Couldn't do it. I knew I have so many highlighters already, but I was so close!

What I actually got:

From left to right, I got the Goodbye Blemish Liquid Patch from I Dew Care, the Essence Ultra Last Instant Color lipstick in So Ungreytful, and the Essence Volume Booster lash primer. Reviews for each product are on their way, but as a whole I am pleased with what I purchased.

The only little disappointment is that the Ulta does not carry BH Cosmetics, but I hope they will eventually. It was really cool seeing it on its opening day. Everyone- associates and customers alike- were super excited.

Thanks for reading!

More Makeup Ramblings, a text post and an anti-haul addendum

An addendum to my anti-haul of the Lemonade Palette by Christian Dominique, that is. I'll be so bold to say I may have predicted the problems with the shimmers- saying that they were not vibrant enough. CD then went and corrected these issues, and Temptalia reviewed the palette, giving it a very high score of A-.

Now, I am not about to buy another palette out of nowhere. I just bought the Norvina palette. But it does grind my gears a tad that two of the highest rated colors in the Lemonade palette, Pink Lemonade and Strawberry, are the exact types of pink that I have been looking for. 

Now, I don't usually do this, but I am going to show you the swatches of those two colors that Temptalia provided in her review, along with my commentary on those swatches. 

                                  

I believe Pink Lemonade is on the left, and Strawberry on the right. Temptalia described both of these as "warm toned" pinks, which I do not agree with at all. These strike me as more bubble-gum cool toned pinks, which is exactly what I have been looking for. I do think that warmth or lack thereof is all relative, though, and out of context I can see how these could skew warm.

But it concerns me that such similar shades can be found in one palette. Even on Temptalia's website, she cites the same shadows as dupes for each of them. This tells me that the industry has had trouble formulating these shadows for some reason, and there are just not enough of them out there. 

So, the fact that these colors are specifically ones I am craving, in a palette that I anti-hauled, seem to perform so well, compared to the palette I actually got, which contains the cool-toned pink shimmer (Wild Child, Norvina) rankles. 

I still don't know why there are two of them in the palette, but w/e. Overall, I do think the Norvina palette is more interesting to me than the Lemonade palette, but I do applaud Dominique Cosmetics for re-issuing a palette and not going over the top with the hype machine. It was a very subdued release, and definitely makes me interested in any future releases. 

Let's keep going! 

So Natasha Denona thinks we care about her brand anniversary (how very Too Faced), and is releasing a Safari palette. It's going to be as Safari as Taylor Swift Wildest Dreams I'll tell ya what. 

No, I will never be convinced that her palettes are worth it. And I truly question the eye of her design team. The Camel palette was atrociously and aggressively bland, especially when the brand already has those colors out there in those kinds of smaller palettes. The Safari Palette will have a lot of earth tones, which could be really pretty, but we'll see what they decide to do. As of now, they have a black and white photo to generate hype but that's so played out.

Finally, I think Mac somewhat embarrassed themselves yesterday. They would not release the name of the person they were collaborating with, and instead featured a signature of the person with a prominent B for the first name, on top of an outline of Texas. Of course, everyone wanted it to be a big name like Beyonce or...Bunny (wut), but instead, they revealed it to be the designer Brandon Maxwell. You can view his runways over at GoFugYourself, and I am actually quite fond of his designs- very simple and chic, if not a tad boring. As a collaboration, I think Mac should have just revealed who it was upfront. Instead, they invited a maelstrom of comments that really did illustrate what people want- big names in popular culture and the online community. Because when they announced his name finally, it was going to be a letdown, which it did not have to be. 

And so, those are my rants for tonight! Did I miss anything? As always, thanks for reading. 

Wet 'n Wild Zodiac Lipgloss in Cancer, Virgo, and Pisces: Review and Swatches

The lipgloss train keeps on rolling! For $2.39 each, I picked up these three really pretty glosses from Wet 'n Wild. Gloss is making a comeback, and drugstores are making glosses with visible shimmer (my own little obsession) readily available.

The first shade I'll talk is Cancer. I felt compelled to buy this one because that is my sign, though I was skeptical. In the container, it just looks white. However, the gloss is actually much more complex, interesting, and flattering than that. It is a white-pink duochrome, with a slight golden sheen. When you apply it to the lips at first, you can see the white transform into a pearly pink. It's quite interesting! As the gloss wears down, you are left with a slightly milky pearly pink tint on your lips.

I did not think Cancer was going to be flattering, but I have been reaching for this gloss all week.

Pisces, Cancer, Virgo

Virgo, Cancer, Pisces

The next shade we can talk about is Pisces. Pisces is a very sheer pink gloss with loads of pink, purple, gold, and orange shimmer. The shimmers are especially visible in the out of focus, dark photo below.

Though it contains a lot of shimmer, the particles do not feel gritty on the lips, and wear easily. This gloss leaves a slight pink tint on the lips, with of course, a shimmer. Something about the final look on the lips is delicate but glamorous.

Finally, we have Virgo, the most pigmented gloss of this trio. It has a red-brown sheer base with green and silver shimmers. To me, it feels more appropriate for Fall, but I have been enjoying it. It has a more frosty effect than Pisces, but it is still very shimmery.

 These have a good wear time for glosses, 1-2 hours. They are a very light, slippery, but not oily or sticky formula.

They keep the lips from getting dry, but I wouldn't say they are necessarily moisturizing.

Overall, I am very impressed with these glosses, and would highly recommend them. I don't see myself getting anything else from this collection, though. I have enough face and eye powders. I do hope Wet 'n Wild continues making interesting and beautiful products like this.

Thanks for reading! 

Weekly Makeup Ramblings

Hello!

It's been a minute here on my blog, and to be honest I have not been that motivated to post. This week I feel like my eyes needed a break from makeup, so I have not been packing too much product on them this week.

Still, I have been using makeup, and I thought I would give my thoughts on recent things in the beauty world. I do have a Beauty Bookmarks in the works, as well.

1.) The Norvina Palette. I still hate my swatch post and intend to redo it. On the whole, though, for the couple of weeks I have been using it, I have been really enjoying it, and really like how it goes with my other products and singles. The shimmers are actually quite distinct from each other and each clearly serve their own purpose, which was one of my main concerns before buying the palette. I love Wild Child, even though it is frustratingly sheer, and I plan to look into bubblegum pink shimmers from indie brands as soon as I pan it.

The mattes are great, but I will say that for me, I keep my looks pretty basic- 1-2 colors in the crease, 1 on the lid, etc. I am just not talented and physically incapable (given my protruding eyes) of doing complex cut creases. So for me, this is a really lovely and high quality palette, excellent for cooler-toned looks, and easy enough to use.

2.) Foundation. I have stopped using foundation all over my face this past week, because I can't stand it. It is way too hot for that, and weirdly enough my skin has been feeling dry lately. So, I take my moisturizer with SPF, mix it in with a couple of drops of foundation, and that's it. Concealing under the eyes etc etc is out of the question.

3.) GLOSS. Lip gloss. I have been wearing lip gloss all week, and I love it- specifically ones with bits of visible shimmer in it. I bought three from the Wet 'n Wild Zodiac collection (review coming soon), the Pixi Lip Icing gloss, as well as an indie one from Silk Naturals, and have been pleased with all of them.

4.) Highlighter. I have really really been in the mood for pink highlighters lately. I think pink in general has been a big obsession. My love for Becca Lilac Geode is unfailing, but I want to also start using The Sweetest Bling by Wet 'n Wild, again.

5.) TV. I don't really watch TV in the conventional sense, just a lot of YouTube and Netflix. I have caught up completely to the BBC crime show Shetland, which is currently filming their fifth season, and I can't wait. I am also back to re-watching Absolutely Fabulous, because that show is a masterpiece. Truly.

6.) Drama? Does anyone else think by collaborating with Rich Lux, Jeffree Star is controlling what kinds of videos Rich makes? Did Rich ever address this? Because so far, since their collab (which I did not see) he's made videos on people that J* has had tiffs with, like Huda. But is he ever going to make a video ON J* ever again? Or does RL feel beholden unto J* for a boost in supscreebers? Inquiring minds want to know.

SO, that's it for now! I do have some reviews in store, so stay tuned :)