Plenty muchos NYX haulage (part 3)

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I love buying make-up. Especially when you buy it from NYX – although there are a few products that, after purchase, make you question your own sanity, the vast majority of the ranges are both of decent quality and also at fantastic prices. I would NEVER buy any other “drugstore” lipgloss – for the superb level of quality you get, why would you? To be honest, I’ve got a couple of Chanel Lip Glossimers and the NYX ones are even on a par with those – amazeballs.

Moving on to the rest of my purchases, firstly the eyeshadows.

Wow.

Just……. Wow.

I bought these eyeshadows in the sale, so paid the princely sum of £3.00 each. To be honest, even at the full price of a fiver, these are an ABSOLUTE STEAL.

I bought four – kicking myself slightly now though, for that price I SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT THEM ALL – the complexity of shimmer in the four that I bought is phenomenal! No disco glitterballs here (although some of the NYX eyeshadow finishes can be like that), these ones lend a moderate twinkle on the eye under certain lightings which adds a fantastic depth – which means on those lazy days when you just frankly can’t be bothered to spend five minutes blending two colours together, a quick 30 second application to the eyelids makes you seem as though you spent hours on your look.

The shades I went for are below:

L-R: Eucalyptus, Herb, Dune, Burgundy Pearl

Eucalyptus is a shimmering, light tauped-silver (I think I’ve in love!). Herb is a twinkly dirty olive. Dune is a charcoaled dark silver, also with shimmer. I did suffer with a little bit of fallout with this one, but nothing a primer wouldn't fix easily. Burgundy Pearl is a medium-dark muted maroon with distinctly cool undertones, which suits my cool-blue eyes perfectly.

Eucalyptus makes a great “wash-of-colour-when-I-can’t-be-arsed-in-the-morning” for daytime, as does Herb (although Herb is slightly more dramatic due to the darker tone). Herb also seems to also be a great pairing with a little bit of Burgundy Pearl in the crease – I didn’t think it would work as I thought the colours would just blend together and go “muddy”, but with a little care and attention you can keep them discrete and it makes a great alternative daytime smoky eye.

And finally, I also went for a couple of blushers. Now, I already own three of the powder blushers and already know that they are premium quality with a tiny pricetag. 

The one I added to my small collection was Angel – a light coral-peach with neutral to cool tones, which is non-overpowering to my fair complexion, so is lovely to couple with either bright lip or smoky eye for an effortlessly natural look – this one seems to be impossible to over apply, which is great for those of us (like me) who tend to be a bit hamfisted when tired in the mornings……!

I also decided to try out one of the Cream Blushes for the first time – especially with dry skin, sometimes powder blushers can creep into fine lines and pores and look a bit weird, and I am reliably informed that using cream formulations take the edge off a bit.

CB02 (Natural) is a slightly darker coral peach than Angel, with more neutral-warm undertones in the pan – on me, this actually leans quite warm on the cheek and gives me a slightly porcelain doll-like look – great if the eye and lip is natural/neutral looking, but can be clown-like unless you use a careful, light hand. I tend to just lightly dip my middle two fingers into the pot, pat onto the back of my hand first then apply with light patting motions to the apples and bones of the cheeks. Less is definitely more, here – you can add morem but it is difficult to take excess away. Although if you owned a Beauty Blender I suppose that would help you to blend away any “mistakes”. 

Left: Powder blush in "Angel        Right: Cream Blush in "Natural

Angel; Natural (note, these swatches are super-mega-heavy so you can see the true colour)

I definitely like the look of the Rose Petal and Tickled cream blushers, so I feel another purchase coming on pretty soon……..

Pick yours up at NYX Cosmetics. The sale continues, with cut-price bargains as well as a 3-for-2 offer on certain ranges. Plenty of bang for your buck.......!

Jen

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Plenty muchos NYX haulage (part 2)

Right then, as promised - let's get busy with the swatchy.

Now I've had more chance to play with the lip liners, it's not quite as bad as it could have been. I bought three colours; Citrine, Rose, and Cabaret.

L-R: Citrine, Rose, Cabaret

Citrine is a muted rosy plum with a hint of shimmer. As is typical of the NYX lipliners I already own, the shimmer means for better slip (and therefore makes me less inclined to feel the need to tear my lips off my face in a fit of scabby, itchy, moisture-sapped rage). But you definitely pay for it in longevity - but to be honest, I'd rather have to reapply something that doesn't give me the rage, than have a lip product last for ages but be perpetually irritating.

Rose is frankly AWFUL. Not just the colour (a lightened, milky, Barbie pink), which is terrible (on me anyway), but the intense matte-ness to the finish made it actually painful to apply. This would need lashings of lipbalm underneath, which kind of defeats the object I think. 1/10, and only because it was so bloody cheap.

Cabaret is one of those potentially hit-or-miss shades which I think will actually work out ok for me - it's a slightly darker version of Deep Red (which I already own, swatched here), and is also matte and therefore quite painful to apply, but not as bad as Rose - and because of the colour I would be more willing to work a bit harder for this one. The only other problem is that the colour isn't very forgiving on application (as you can see in the lip swatches below - it's like I'm back at primary school learning how to "colour in the lines").

Bare lips, for reference

Citrine

Cabaret

Rose

Finally, the lipgloss. This is one of NYX's Megashine Lipglosses, which is my favourite gloss formulation bar none. And now, imaghine my delight to find my favourite lipgloss colour in my favourite formulation. The gods of lipgloss were smiling on me when I added this to my shopping basket entirely in error (I actually wanted a pink one, thank god that didn't happen)......... MUST BUY SEVEN BACKUPS IN CASE OF ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Megashine Lipgloss in 143 - Plum

My husband (not pictured, obvs) photobombed this picture when I took it, hence the smirk

This is a beautiful muted rosy-plum, which would actually look pretty good layered over the Citrine lipliner, now I come to think about it. The formula is completely non-sticky, has decent lasting power of around 1 hour (which is pretty damn good on me, inveterate tea-drinker that I am), but to be honest it's easy and fulfilling to reapply anyway. It also doesn’t seem to go gloopy in tube after a month (unlike MAC's infinitely more expensive Dazzleglasses, the barstewards).

Think that's all for now, folks - eyeshadows and blushers next.

In the meantime, here's the full version of the photobombed lip swatch photo........

Jen

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Plenty muchos NYX HAULAGE (part 1)

I love getting unexpected little brown parcels through the post - I really do. It invariably means I've been sleep-shopping, or someone has had a Super-Duper -Mega-Sale-Never-Shall-We-See-Its-Like-Again and the "sale mist" has descended, sending me into a frenzy of credit-card maxing and frantic website clicking until I have to recline on the sofa, exhausted. 

This time round, it was the latter - and the website in question was NYX Cosmetics.

I am a great fan of this brand, god knows. How they manage to make such fantastic quality products for so little money is frankly boggling. Don't get me wrong, they have also make some corking mistakes on occasion, but generally I find that the majority of products I try are keepers.

This time, I tried to temper myself and self-restricted to purchasing stuff I genuinely have had my eye on for a while. I work on the premise that one can never have too many eyeshadows, and I think in purchasing these four babies, I've hit the jackpot. The colours are fabulous, and also work effortlessly together (which was definitely more luck than judgement). 

The blushers are of a similarly high quality, as is the lipgloss - ah! such a fantastic formula! - so the only thing that let me down really were the lipliners.

I have bemoaned about lipliners before, but one out of the three pictured below is definitely not going to work for me, either in colour or in formula. The other two aren't bad though, so to only have one bad egg amongst the group (which to be honest is probably more the fault of my scabby lips than the product itself) is a pretty decent proportion, methinks.

More posts coming soon to go through the products in detail....... first stop, lip products!

Jen
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Make-Up Academy haul - finally!

Well, it's been a while! Such is the hectic and giddy life of someone that teaches other people how to be accountants. Anyway, I have finally managed to have a little play with the Make-Up Academy haul that arrived a couple of weeks ago....... thank you MUA, for allowing me to haul so many shiny, pretty things while only requesting the paltry sum of £18 from my bank account.

Anyway, let's have a look at what we've got.....

Firstly, the Glamour Days eyeshadow palette. Had my eye on this one for a while - after having had a brilliant experience with the buttery, shimmery goodness that was the Heaven and Earth palette, I was looking forward to trying some slightly more "outre" shades but not so much that I was stepping too far out of my comfort zone.....! The pretty purples and blues in this palette seemed ideal, and to top it off there are a couple of nice neutrals in there too. A good one for travelling, methinks.

Top row

Bottom row - there is a sixth shade on there, I promise...... it's just coincidentally the same colour as my arm!

Amongst the haul I also got some liners, a mixture both for lips and eyes. Again, wasn't expecting much from these, but the Intense Colour liners were creamy, pigmented and quite a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, the Intense Glitter ones were a bit hit and miss, but for 75p each (as it worked out after the discount) one cannot really complain, can one? I also got a liquid liner, which so far seems easy to apply and has a fabulous thin brush, but the pigmentation just feels a bit lacking and can apply a little patchy unless you do a couple of coats. Workable though, definitely.

L-R: Intense Colour - Red Drama, Royal Blue; Intense Glitter - Gold Nugget, Silver Glitter, Pink Glitter

Liquid Liner - shade 5

In a slightly different order in this pic, not sure why!!! L-R: Red Drama, Royal Blue, Silver Glitter, Pink Glitter, Gold Nugget, Liquid Liner in Shade 5 (Black)

Next, some single eyeshadows. Unfortunately, buying sight-unseen has been a bit of a gamble in this case, but I seem to have ended up with some decent colours that will make for some fabulous smoke eye looks. The only one that seems to let them down slightly is the black one, as it is more matte than the others is has a slightly chalkier texture and a less potent finish than the others. It'll do nicely for setting the liquid liner, though!

L-R: Shades 3, 11, 12, 15, 30

Same order as above, this time!  :)

Lastly, a bit of a hodge-podge of other random bits and bobs that fell into the online basket - I have this fantastic ability to justify additional purchases if I know I will be getting a discount on the items; and in this case it really made little to no difference seeing as everything is so inexpensive anyway!!!

Top: Lovehearts lip tints; Bottom: Lipsticks in shades 5 and 6, blush in shade 4

L-R: Lipsticks - Shade 5, shade 6; Blush - Shade 4; Lip Tints - Great Lips, Sweet Kiss, Hot Lips

The surprise in this bunch was the blush. Shade 4 looked almost overwhelmingly dark in the pan (in fact, almost the same as Shade 3 which I have already dismissed as making me look too "David Dickinson"), however when swatched, as you can see, it is a lovely gentle shade of subtle coral. It reminds me enormously of NARS Gilda (if anything, the MUA shade lacks the orange intensity of the NARS which, for cack-hands such as myself, is a Very Good Thing), but for a fraction of the price.

I am ever more wowed with the MUA offerings. Although initially I may have been a bit dismissive of the whole "cheapo makeup" thing, thinking it would only appeal to (and benefit) the lowest common denominators of society (snob? Moi?), consider me suitably chastised - I am genuinely impressed with pretty much everything I have come across so far. For the prices, I don't think you can go far wrong and to be honest, even if you do, what's a pound between friends?

MUA is available in various Superdrug stores, and also on their wesbite.

Did anyone else avail themselves of the superb discount.....?

Jen
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Special offer - Make Up Academy

Just a quick whistle-stop post today - for those of you who don't follow MUA on Facebook or Twitter, I just thought I would let you know that they currently have a promotion on - as they have reached 25,000 likes on Facebook (yay!), they are offering 25% off all web orders, as well as free shipping!

Essentially, bargain makeup became that little bit more bargainous. Of course, yours truly could not resist the lure of the even cheaper goodies, and have stocked up on some single eyeshadows (which I have yet to try) as well as the Glamour Days palette that I've had my eye on for a while, a fistful of eyeliners both plain and glitter, a couple of additional lipsticks for the collection as well as some of their oh-so-sweet Loveheart Lipbalms!

Watch this space for more swatches/reviews as and when the parcel of fantabulousness arrives. 

You can take advantage of this brilliant offer by visiting their website, and using promo code MUA25 at checkout.

Time to get stocked up on loads of things - if you were ever tempted to try certain colours but have always held back for some reason, now's the time to try them and experiment! Eyeshadows and lipsticks for 75p? Don't mind if I do!

Jen

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Make Up Academy - mini haul

A very, very quick one -  I was very excited to place an order on Superdrug’s website last week for 13 items, and for it to cost me the princely sum of £17.

Yes, you read that correctly – seventeen pounds.

I think I am a bit late to join the Make Up Academy (MUA) bandwagon. Lots of other beauty bloggers have got there before me and probably evaluated them a lot more clearly, succinctly, humourously and sexily.

I couldn’t wait for this package to turn up – I was desperate to see how the £1 lipsticks could be anything more than coloured blobs of wax. As well as seven lippies, I invested (ha!) in a few blushers, a mascara, a nail polish and an eyeshadow palette (the highly acclaimed set of neutrals, “Heaven and Earth”).

So far I haven’t thoroughly road-tested anything, but was so excited by the whole prospect that I ripped the package open and swatched the first things I could get my hands on – the lippies.

Detailed reviews of everything, along with slightly better swatches, will be coming over the next couple of weeks – watch this space! In the meantime, cast your eyes over this pile of cheap and cheerful gorgeousness.

L-R: Shades 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 (Bare), 15 (Juicy), 16 (Nectar) - yes, some of them are just numbered but the newer shades have names, too

MUA cosmetics are available directly through their website, or some branches of Superdrug. I for one will probably buy one of everything – I’ve definitely got my eye on the new Undressed eyeshadow palette, which is hailed to be one of the better dupes for Urban Decay’s famous Naked.

Jen

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