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 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 - mini haul 2

Having got over the initial shock of the cheapness of the goodies I ordered last week, I thought it now time to have a more in-depth look at some of the items. Blushers first.

I tried to go for those which looked as though they might suit my skin tone….. but that’s the problem with buying online I suppose; it’s a bit “sight unseen”. Unfortunately it’s the only way I could get them – although MUA products are sold in my local Superdrug, whenever I have been in there it’s as though people are expecting some sort of Apocalypse and the shelves have been picked bare of anything useable, with only the odd forlorn lipstick left like a lone survivor amidst the chaos.

Aaaaaaanyway.

I still haven’t had chance to roadtest all of the lippies yet, so that will be a review to come in the next week or so. I have had chance to test out these fabulous blushers though – and yes, they are fabulous.

In the end, I went for three shades, which are numbered rather than named. I found all three of them to be relatively finely milled, and nice and “buttery” feeling.

Shade 1 is the lightest of the bunch and (in my opinion) the prettiest. This is a fantastic everyday shade, in a cool-toned light pink which suits my skintone perfectly. This one had the lowest pigmentation of the three, which is no bad thing – I get the feeling that this one will be my go-to daily shade (once my NARS Sex Appeal finally runs out). Application is easy peasy, and you can be as heavy handed as you like due to the low pigmentation.

Shade 2 is a warmer shade of pink, a tiny bit darker than Shade 1 and with rosier undertones. This one still suits my cool skin, weirdly – it is still quite sheer in terms of pigmentation so I suppose that helps. This is still day-time appropriate, too.

Shade 3 is the darkest of the bunch, and is definitely not one I would have bought had I seen it in the flesh – a much browner shade (almost mahogany) with distinctly warm undertones, this one is also the most pigmented so you have to have a light hand. This would probably better suit ladies with darker skin tones (I might like it a bit better if I had any sort of tan!).

For the princely sum of a pound each (yep, you read that correctly - £1), you can’t go far wrong with these. I see a few more on the horizon…….

Apologies for the big gouge mark on Shade 1 – I mistakenly dug my thumbnail into it as I was lining them up for their picture. 

L-R: Shade 1, 2 and 3

See any you fancy?

Jen

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