Monday Makeup Madness: Resisting "Twilight"

When I first saw Karla Sugar's swatches of Guerlain Rouge G Le Brilliant a few weeks ago, I immediately fell in love with B63 Bella. However, I was turned off by the fact that it shares a name with the main character in those "Twilight" novels. (To be fair, I was also turned off by the fact that it costs $46. :P The other color I liked? B21 Bianca, which also happens to be the name of my Wii. ...Moving on.) Now, I don't hate Twilight. I don't even know much about it. However, my nature is to avoid things that have that level of popularity, and Twilight is no exception. It got to the point where I was annoyed by random products coming out that happened to have "Twilight" in the name, either as coincidence or to cash in on the craze (i.e. Bath & Body Works' "Twilight Woods"). When I came across ULTA's eyeshadow named "Twilight", I was torn for a second. Then I remembered I had an eyeshadow called Twilight Grey. And then I remembered that one of the lip products I got in that Bobbi Brown 3-pack over the holidays had Twilight in the name. ("Twilight Heather"? I'll go look later.) Then I was over it.

I was planning on ending this with swatches of the products I mentioned, but the weather didn't cooperate. Hopefully it'll be better this weekend.

Monday Makeup Madness: NOTD + Memento Mori

Hello! It's been a while, so let's start out with a NOTD pic:

This is OPI Dreaming of Red (Holiday 2009 ULTA Exclusive) topped with Essie Matte About You. Brush strokes annoy me, and I recently discovered the "get rid of brush strokes by mattifying" trick, so I thought I'd give it a go for Valentine's Day (which I'm not really into...so I did a bunch of laundry and watched the Winter Olympics, woohoo). I really like this. The color is not as bright as it is in this picture, and in most lights it appears to be a bit blackened at the edges. I meant to change colors for Mardi Gras but that didn't happen, whoops!

My order from Sephora recently came in which included Kat Von D stuff, most of it on sale (quite a few products were half off, I think they still are) and one product that was not: the new limited edition eyeshadow palette, Memento Mori.

 

Like all of the other eye palettes, Memento Mori goes for $34. Like the limited edition palettes, it contains a cream shadow. Unlike the other palettes, this one comes in a white case. The swatches are below. The upper one was taken outdoors, the lower indoors...this one is here so you can see the gold sheen that Peggy has.

True is a vivid medium purple. It seemed kind of weak as far as creams go, but it might work as a base. Solitude is a lavender with a bit of a blue flash to it that's very similar to Urban Decay Asphyxia. As you can see, I had trouble getting this one to show up. Maybe when it's sunny and I have time, I'll see how it looks over True. But I digress. Meditation is a sort of light copper. Agatha Pink is closer to peach than pink IMO. Sugar Skull is pale gold. Peggy is turquoise with a gold sheen. Hard Luck is darker green that seems to have a bit of another color to it, but I need more time in the sun to figure it out. Tijuana is black with copper sparkles.

Overall I'm pleased with this. The pigmentation's pretty good. I just got this, so I haven't had time to wear it and check on staying power, but I've had good experiences with Beethoven and Gypsy so I figure it'll be the same with this one. I'm really curious about the KVD eye primer that's out now...have any of you gotten the chance to try it?

(Disclaimer: These were all products purchased by me.)

Belated Monday Makeup Madness: NYX Sale + NOTD

In case you didn't know, NYX Cosmetics is having a $1 sale on a few of their items through the 25th...mostly select colors of certain products, but I noticed that the entire range of their Ultimate Pearl Eyeshadows are part of the sale! (See Karla Sugar's swatches here.) No affiliation, I'm just a NYX fan. :)

And here's a picture of my nails from the other week: a coat of $OPI Absinthe Makes the Heart over 2 coats of OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow. Pardon the tipwear as this was taken five days in. Also pardon my really dry hands, ack. But I wanted to show you the color. I initially planned on only wearing Aragon, but I fell asleep before it dried...so I fixed it with Absinthe. I have yet to try Absinthe by itself, but I heard it was on the sheer side. Since this is layered over a dark green, I'm thinking it would look slightly different layered over black. From a distance, this looked like a nice shimmery army green.

Monday Makeup Madness: Contest Link + Alice Babble

First off, if you haven't entered Krasey Beauty's One Year Bloggiversary Giveaway, you should. She's giving away close to $1000 in products! So go. Right now. I'll wait.


Okay! So most of you probably know about the Alice in Wonderland tie-ins with OPI and Urban Decay...OPI's Alice collection is out now in some places (see a review & swatches at Vampy Varnish), while UD has an Alice-themed Book of Shadows coming out on the 15th (see review & pics at Pursebuzz).

Out of OPI's four colors, two of them are reds, which gave me a "meh" sort of feeling. If I were to get one of them, it would be Absolutely Alice, a lovely bright glittery color, mostly blue with some gold. I can't decide whether or not I like the multicolored glitter...maybe I feel like I'm too old for that kind of party-in-a-bottle.

I have to admit that I'm slightly disappointed in UD's offering in that there's nothing unique--well, besides the Alice packaging. They're all existing UD shades that have been renamed, though some of them are from Book of Shadows II (and one is from the Pony Show palette IIRC), so if you don't have that one, this is your chance to get a hold of a couple of unique shades. I think what really got me down was that I was hoping Alice's "Absolem" shade was a re-release of Absinthe from BOS I, but it's actually Homegrown from BOS II. D'oh! At $52, it's $4 more than the previous Books. I'd say if you have BOS II you can skip this unless you want it for the packaging, which I can understand.

Monday Makeup Madness: FTC Update + YSL Babble

I'm sure you've all heard by now about the FTC guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials on, among other things, blogs. I'm pretty sure it's on a going-forward basis, though I may update my old posts just to be safe. For the record, any opinions I've given on past makeup posts are my own honest opinions on items I have purchased myself. I'll figure something out for future posts...for example, I might use labels to differentiate as some other blogs have done (purchase / gift / sample / etc.). Next month, I'm hoping to go through the F&F aftermath and swatch what I've hauled. We'll see how that goes.

On to the babble. YSL's 2010 Spring Look is available for preorder; it should ship around January 11th. YSL is generally out of my price range, but I like to look at it just the same. I noticed two new Golden Glosses, #19 Golden Petal and #20 Golden Macadamia. Question: Is Golden Macadamia supposed to be a repromote or is it supposed to be new for spring? I ask because while it's not on the main Golden Gloss page now, it was during their F&F sale earlier this month (and I now own it as a result of that F&F), so...now I'm wondering if Golden Petal was also on the site then. I can't remember offhand if I saw it.

Monday Makeup Madness: Glamour to Go III

Bonus Post! Since I have these swatches ready and they're also Too Faced, why not post them today? Glamour to Go III goes for $19.50 and consists of eight eyeshadows, four lipglosses and a blush. Here are pictures taken next to the Natural Eye palette for size comparison purposes:




And here are the swatches. Had I been more awake when I did these, they might have been straight on my arm. :P If I remember correctly, I didn't have the easiest time with the purple and black, but the other colors went on easily. That brownish shade in the top left corner is close to what I expected Bob's Your Uncle (that one messy shade from the Queen for a Day quad) to be. It's a nice little set overall, and I'd definitely recommend it as a gift.



Next week I'll either do some Kat Von D (the 500 pt. bonus palette + the lipstick & lipgloss sets) or some odds and ends (Korres pencil set, Stila glitter liners). We'll see how it goes. I need to find my camera, too. It went missing on me over Thanksgiving break, but it's definitely at home somewhere.

[edit: It's been foggy-rainy over here lately, and as a result I haven't been taking pictures. Sooo the next post will probably be about the recent FTC guides and my Lancome haul at Macy's over the weekend.]

Monday Makeup Madness: Queen for a Day

The Queen for a Day collection is one of the Too Faced holiday items that came out a couple of months ago. The set consists of what you see above: a makeup bag, a bronzer, an eyeshadow quad, a special edition Flatbuki brush, a mini Lash Injection Pinpoint mascara, a lipstick (Lip of Luxury in the shade Free Love), and a full-sized Shadow Insurance primer. I picked this up during Sephora's Friends and Family sale, mostly because I was drawn to the bag and the brush (note: the handle of the Flatbuki is actually a bright green, like the green flowers on the bag). The bag was actually smaller than I thought it would be, but that happens a lot with Too Faced items for some reason. I took a picture holding it to give you an idea of its size. (Kindly ignore those lines on the silhouette, the flash reflected off of some marks that I didn't notice were there until right now. They have been rubbed out and now it looks just fine.)



On the other hand, the eyeshadow quad and Snow Bunny bronzer were larger than I expected. I think this packaging for Snow Bunny is exclusive to the set, but I'm not entirely sure. Isn't it lovely?




According to the outer packaging, the pink and matte shades of the quad don't have "real" names--they are referred to simply as "Pink" and "Matte"--while the other two are called Totally Toasted and Bob's Your Uncle. I'm gonna go ahead and say the shiny brown/bronze color is Totally Toasted since it's also the name of a couple of shades in the French and Fabulous Palette (which, by the way, I also want but certainly don't need). Totally Toasted also reminded me of Push-Up from their Natural Eye palette, so I did a quick comparison swatch. I also swatched Silk Teddy* and the Pink eyeshadow, not because they're similar, but so that I could tell the browns apart. :P


* I had originally typed Nude Beach - I have corrected this to Silk Teddy both in the post and on the photo. Nude Beach is the crazy glittery shadow from Natural Eye that I don't use. :P

Now, without further ado, the swatches:



The first three eyeshadows are nice. The last one...is a disappointing, glittery mess. You may even want to click and look at the larger image to better see the mess. The promo pictures made Bob's Your Uncle look like this lovely shimmery taupe, and frankly, the color probably would have been fine without the glitter. Similar disappointment was found over at Jeweled Thumb. It's not enough for me to want to return the set, though, because I love everything else. Especially Snow Bunny. I'm rather fair, so this is perfect for me. The lipstick is a little on the frosty side for my liking, but I like the shade, so it will definitely get its fair share of use. Overall, I'm glad I got it, but I probably wouldn't have paid full price ($45) since I consider that one shadow to be a dud.

Monday Makeup Madness: Friends & Family

In case you haven't already heard about this: the Urban Decay Friends & Family Event is on through November 20th. Use coupon code FNFW1 to get 30% off your entire order. So now would be the time to get UD presents and/or those sets and palettes you've been eyeing. :P I've compared one of the set-exclusive 24/7 Eye Pencils with some similar shades:



Left side is indoors, right side is outdoors. Crash is the exclusive shade in the Stereophonic 24/7 set (regular price $29). I'd say it's just the slightest bit more red than Rockstar, plus it has silver sparkles. Do I think you need Crash if you already have Rockstar? No. That said, I do like Crash. I've found that reddish plums look like crap on me, but this color is purple enough that it works. It makes my green eyes stand out on top of that. Anyway, to recap, if you have Rockstar, you're good here unless you Must. Have. Every. Pencil.


Back to the Friends & Family topic for a bit. I picked up a few things during Sephora's F&F that are due in tomorrow. If I remember, I'll post pictures next week. I looked at a lot of things that I liked but didn't bother to get. A couple of examples:

Kat Von D True Romance Eyeshadow Palette in True Love, $34: I am a fan of this brand (and I picked up the 500-point bonus palette with my order), but I have enough purples that look like those and the brown side looks like it'd be too warm for me.

MAKE UP FOR EVER Aqua Eyes Collectors' Set, $249: My thought when seeing this was "ooh, that's pretty...but no." Even with 20% off I wasn't tempted. I know it's a deal, considering, but I'd use half of those colors at the most. I could see getting this if I had no eyeliner at all and frequently did artsy sorts of looks (and that's a no on both counts, heh).

Monday Makeup Madness: On Color and Lip Tars

Those who know me wouldn't necessarily know that I love playing with color. Sure, I wear all sorts of colors on my nails, but as far as the face goes, it ranges anywhere from just sunscreen to a sunscreen + tinted moisturizer + a lip product w/ SPF + full eye makeup depending on when I manage to get myself up. (I'm not a morning person and I usually rush to get ready for work.) The eyeshadow is almost always in the neutral family. Anyway, color. Love it. I just don't get much of a chance to use much of it, which is a shame. Over the weekend, I got around to something I'd been meaning to do for a while: blending OCC Lip Tars to create a custom color. I was excited and a little scared even though it's really just like mixing paint, which I've done many times. My first attempt was inspired by the San Jose Sharks' main color:



This is Rx mixed with Botanical...I'd say the mix is about 70/30. Please excuse the redness of my face. :P This was taken indoors with natural light, so the actual color's a little brighter than it is in the photo. If I'm ever brave enough to wear this to a Sharks game, I might add just a touch of Tarred to the mix so that it's not quite as bright and therefore more wearable...um...if one could make teal more wearable on the lips, that is.

Monday Makeup Madness: First Matte

So I finally tried matte nail polish over the weekend...here is Zoya Loredana:





I didn't know if I'd like matte nails, but I wanted to try it out just the same. Once I had this color on, I knew it was a winner. Now I kind of want Dovima, another Zoya matte shade, but I read that it was based on Freja, which I have. I wonder if I could just wear Freja with a matte topcoat. Would that suffice? Hm.

Monday Makeup Madness: Inky

Behold: OCC Inky. (Click on the image for a larger version.)



Two coats, no application issues. It's an extremely dark blue, almost black. It probably looks like it IS black in some lights. I see it as blue, but that might be because I put it on and know what color it is? The sun was barely out today, so that was the best I was able to do for an outdoor pic. I took another one indoors because it's about the same color as my coffee mug at work:



There you have it! Next week I'll either compare and contrast pink champagne eyeshadow shades or write about the Stars Makeup Haven palette I got a while ago.

Monday Makeup Madness: Green Is a Four-Letter Word

Behold, the Nubar Going Green Collection. This came out...late spring / early summer? It is beautiful. However, the phrase "going green" has always been a turnoff for me (I'm all for conservation, but I don't want it to sound like a fad), and I have more than enough green nail polish. Still, one color calls out to me: Reclaim.



The Nubar site describes it as a medium holographic green. Holy crap. I shall admire it from afar.

Monday Makeup Madness: Linkroll

Feeling lazy tonight. I went to the Giants game earlier today, and now I'm just relaxing on the couch watching tennis. I attempted to swatch eyeshadow earlier the week, but I still have to work on the pictures. Perhaps next week. In the meantime, I present to you some links of interest:

All About the Parabens (The Next Best Thing to Going Shopping Yourself)
I enjoyed reading this. I'd been hearing "paraben-free" a lot but didn't really know what the deal was.

Anime and Company (The Girly Show)
OCC Lip Tar mixes featuring the color Anime. This one's over a month old, but it's still interesting.

Urban Decay Nail Polish!! New Apocalyptic Nail Kit for Holiday 2009! (Scrangie)
When I first saw these I was highly intrigued. However, the more I thought about it, the more clear it was that I didn't NEED it. I have way too much nail polish as it is, plus it's a set, and I could only see myself using half of them on a regular basis. I've seen some complaints that these colors aren't "unique like UD's old nail polish colors". I don't know...it seems like it was easier to make a unique color then than it is now. I mean, these days it's pretty easy to find nail polish in every color of the rainbow if you so desire. Anyway, for this set, the most interesting shade to me is White Widow, and the one I'd be most likely to wear is Gunmetal.

Another thing that was funny--and maybe some of you noticed this--is that the price was $25 but changed to $26 a couple of days later. I also noticed a similar change for their 24/7 sets--the Hi-Fi & Stereophonic sets were $30, then they were $29, while the Super Stash dropped from $39 to $36. I noticed the changes on urbandecay.com a day or two after I saw all of these products listed over on ulta.com with the second set of prices. (I'm going to guess the Super Stash and the nail set sold out over at Ulta since I no longer see them on the site.)

Monday Makeup Madness: Three Obsessive Compulsive Nail Polish Shades

I'd only heard of Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics recently, when I saw a review for their Lip Tars over on Makeup Geek. A few weeks ago they had a gift with purchase special going on, and the gift was a full-sized loose colour concentrate in Clover and a mini nail lacquer in Pageant. Apparently Pageant used to be called Anime, which had me confused because they had recently added a new color to their lip and nail lineups called Anime. How different is the new Anime from the old Anime? Well, I bought the Anime nail lacquer and, with my Pageant mini, I was able to do a comparison. Click the image for a larger version:



Pageant is on the pinky/middle fingers, Anime is on the ring/index fingers and in the bottle. I did two coats of each one, partly so you could see the difference in opacity as well as color, and partly because the second coat of Anime was a bit too thick, so I was afraid of messing it up if I did anything more to it. As you can see, Anime is much sheerer and more of a neon color (this is more apparent in the bottle than on my nails...the OCC site accurately described this color as "sheer, glossy day glo pink"). I'm not sure how many coats it would have taken to get it close to the opacity Pageant gave me.

Adding to the confusion is an OCC post on Scrangie that I saw before I did this experiment. The first color shown in that post is Pageant fka Anime (this was before the new Anime came out). Based on her swatch and description of the color, I'm now wondering if the original Anime, renamed Pageant, was named Anime once more and that the color of Pageant changed. o_O ...So confused. But they're both pretty. I really like Pageant and I'm wondering what Anime would look like over a white base.




I ended up wearing another OCC color, Rhythm Box, over the weekend. Do not be fooled by the dot on their website! They describe this color as "pale bright violet"--the first thing I thought of when I saw the bottle was of red-violet Crayola crayons. A raspberry-ish color, if you will. The polish looks just a bit warmer in the large picture than it does in real life, though (and in the smaller picture here, it looks just about right--the heck?).

I didn't necessarily plan to do a bunch of pictures like this, but who knows? If it becomes a regular thing, I'll probably have to start watermarking since that's what everyone else seems to be doing. Not that I think my pictures are all that good, haha. I also took some pictures of random eyeshadow swatches over the weekend that I wanted to throw into this post, but I didn't get around to cropping them, so they'll have to wait.

Monday Makeup Madness: Still Kind of New to This Nail Polish Thing

I have quite a few bottles of nail polish in my collection, but I still feel like a novice when it comes to applying the stuff. But lately I've been doing it more frequently, so I think I'm getting better. Kind of. Most of the time I stick to the safe neutral-ish stuff, but I do love color, and since my work setting is pretty casual I can get away with whatever color I choose...so I'm starting to venture outside the box.

I recently broke down and got Sephora by OPI's Dark Room knowing the actual color wasn't even close to what was displayed on Sephora's site (Scrangie and The Nailphile have posts that shows the color much more accurately). On a side note, I find it hard to trust swatches on Sephora's site. I remember buying an Urban Decay nail enamel way back in the day in the color "Perversion" because I thought it was navy blue (IIRC they only had the color swatches and not brief descriptions of the colors). Surprise! It was black. :P I kept it, though I only used it a few times. I actually like black nail polish, not because of my inner goth (which existed then and now), but because it reminds me of Russian lacquer boxes. /tangent

Er, back to Dark Room. I thought I'd like it from the way people were describing the color, plus I had a Sephora coupon, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I was going to wait until fall to try it out, but tonight I was in a dark-nail-polish sort of mood, so on it went! I like the color, it's not quite black, seems to have a green / blue / gray hint to it...it kind of reminds me of a blackboard (the slate type). However, I felt like I needed to add something to it, so I then used China Glaze Wireless Holographic Top Coat. ...Oh my. The combination seems to say--nay, scream "Outer Space Princess". I have not yet decided if this is good or bad. I'm so curious to see what it looks like in natural light...I'll take a pic tomorrow and update this post so you all can see too. :)

[update 8/18: Here we go--it was overcast in the morning (left), so I took another picture on my afternoon break at work when the sun was out. Click to see a larger version, and kindly ignore my cuticles.]

Monday Makeup Madness: Sephora Reviews Revisited

Previously on Framboise Noire, I wrote about an issue I had with some customers' reviews on the Sephora website. Well...at least that group of people actually wrote about the product in their review. Recently I've been coming across people leaving low reviews of a product not because they didn't like it, but because it wasn't readily available. See, for example, the following "review" left for Sephora by OPI's Dark Room:

"So I love getting Sephora e-mails to get the latest updates on what's new. I was super excited to see this beautiful color and went to the store the same day. To my disappointment our Hawaii store does not carry it and I was told would need to wait 2 weeks! I really think our stores should carry it especially when it is advertised in the e-mail."

Seriously, people? This is not the way to properly complain. How about something like leaving a comment on their facebook page? That makes more sense to me. More recent reviews for this particular color make sense, as it apparently does not match the color displayed on the website. Looking at the bottle there made me think it was slightly darker than OCC's Blackboard nail enamel, but I guess it's even darker than that...hmm. Another color that has had a ton of comments along the same vein as the above quote is 212-Sephora, but those are more, um, "ranty". The color is limited and apparently popular, so when they get stock for it, it's going to go quickly. Everyone needs to chill. :P Here's what I consider a good review:

"I have maybe a hundred nail polishes, and this just made the #1 spot. It's got so many different kinds of sparkle and glitter, but not in a god-awful teenage way. It's a little translucent on its own, so I layered it over a black creme for the best effect. It is also very cute on my boyfriend's toes!"

Okay, the last sentence was a tad TMI for my liking, but hey, to each their own, plus it gave me a good idea of what the color was like and whether or not I'd want it. It sounds really pretty, so if I happen to see it around I might snap it up. Not that OPI's cheap or anything (unless you know where to go, though that doesn't apply to Sephora's colors), but they are a good brand. I have a nice little collection of them, so maybe that'll be next week's post...

Shamelessly Plugging Urban Decay

(Some of this was paraphrased from my MySpace blog earlier today. Repetitive, yes, but I don't mind.)

I'm a big Urban Decay fan, and I think their Heavy Metal Glitter Eyeliner is some pretty awesome stuff. However, it's normally $18--yikes--so when I found out that the 3-pc. set they put together (regularly priced at $36) was on sale for $22, I snapped that up...as did everyone else because they appear to be out of it now. :P Uses will be found for the silver and purple liners, but I'm most excited about Stagedive, the turquoise one...I love anything turquoise or teal. Going to Sharks games will include glitter next season. :P Though the Three Piece is out of stock, you can still find three different "Best of Urban" sets on sale for $20...they each include a Heavy Metal eyeliner, an eyeshadow ($16 if purchased alone), a mini 24-7 eye pencil and a mini Primer Potion. I highly recommend getting one of those if you're new to the brand, it's a great introduction. :) The XXX Shine Stash looks like a good buy as well, but I did not partake as I have enough lip gloss and no young female relative/friend birthdays coming up. If those glosses had sun protection, though...I'd have been on it, hahaha.

Since I'm playing more of the "look but don't buy" game these days--gotta save as much money as possible for important future plans--I was thrilled to come across the Best Makeup Under $10 article over at Makeup Geek. I'm interested in the eye makeup remover and maybe the foundation. I don't really use much in the way of foundation, especially when the weather's warmer, I just slap on the sunscreen and go--but this might be worth a try.