Sleek Original + Ultra Mattesv2 DARKS palettes swatches, review: A luxola sg haul

Hi girls (and perhaps boys),

Just a week ago I was complaining about not finding decent quality cheap eyeshadows, this week I am back with a post about some great UK drugstore finds: SLEEK MAKEUP.

Sleek Makeup from UK is definitely not anything new, I have heard raves all over the blogosphere about their Divine palettes and have been itching to try them since they first came out in 2008. However, I never got around to it because they don't ship to Singapore and shipping to US is too expensive when I was there (whooping USD13.50 which was more than the price of the actual palette). Last week, when my friend Min Ah told me about a 30% off all items on luxola.com, I never thought I would find Sleek makeup items there, imagine my excitement! I made use of the discount and got 2 Sleek eyeshadow palettes and a face contour palette, for below SGD40.

(Just a little side note about shopping on luxola.com, I really enjoyed it! First they stock a whole ton of high end luxurious makeup/skincare items, hence I guess the name Luxola. From the brands there, I would recommend Becca cosmetics, the Face Atelier foundation, Sarah Hipp lip scrub, all of which I have heard great things about and would one day love to try. Second. the website is very user friendly and clean, I love the fact that they allow you to check out using PayPal. Third, for Singapore orders, they have free 3rd delivery in person, so you don't have to worry about the postman dropping and breaking your items. If you love online shopping, I would suggest you head over there and take a look.)

On to the Sleek palettes,

I got the Divine Mineral Based Eyeshadow Palette in The Original, as well as i-Divine ultra mattesV2 DARKS palette. Each of these palette cost SGD20 on luxola and contains 12 x 1.1g mineral based eyeshadow, which works out to around SGD1.70 per shadow, making them a huge steal if good quality.

Size comparision between MAC's 1.5g shadow and Sleek's 1.1g ones

The shadows are housed in a sleek (how apt) black palette which is compact and good for traveling. I am contemplating bringing them to Seoul for my trip in July instead of my usual Naked Palettes.

Logo on the front.

Palette discription on the back.

The shadows themselves

The Original Palette contains 11 metallic, shimmery shadows and 1 lone matte black eyeshadow, which according to Sleek's site is for us to use as eyeliner. Initial thoughts are that the colors look gorgeous in the pan, and would make a great travel palette because it contains both neutral and bright colors for versatility. Upon swatching, I find the the shadows are soft, quite buttery and pigmented, all of my swatches made above were done with a single swatch. They also apply true to their color in the pan which is exciting. My personal favorites are colors number 12 an olive green and number 5 a teal blue color. The Matte black is a little lacking in quality because it applies chalky and isn't very pigmented. Also, the dark brown 11 also has chunky glitters that are prone to fallouts, but all in all I think for the SGD20 that the palette is retailing at, it is a huge steal!

The MatteV2 Darks palette is a slightly newer palette that was released last year if I am not wrong. Since matte shadows are all the rage now, I decided to give it a try. (They have a MatteV1 palette which contains bright colors, but I am more conservative when it comes to shadow colors, so I gave that a pass).

Again, these swatches were single swatches. I feel that most of the colors are pigmented and swatched relatively smoothly (click for bigger view). Even the lighter colors like Dune and Pillowtalk applied gorgeously. Unfortunately, Flesh a yellow orange color is the exact same shade as my skintone and did not apply upon swatching no matter how I tried. Besides Flesh, I was also disappointed with Thunder, even though soft, it's not pigmented enough, it will probably take at least 3-4 applications to get the color to show up like the color in the pan. Fern and Orbit somehow swatched similar on my skin, Orbit looked more green than teal, as for Fern, even though it's a very gorgeous deep green color, the texture was chalky and had fallouts. However, despite that, I still think that for the 20 dollars you are paying, this palette is worth a try if you are searching for good matte shades.

All in all, I am happy with my purchase, I would definitely repurchase Sleek palettes again sale or not. So if you guys are looking for more eyeshadow colors to play around with, or if the haze is keeping you indoors, head over to luxola.com and take a look.

Have fun!

xoxo,

Nyx Love in Paris- 06 C'EST LA VIE review

Hi everyone,

I took a week off blogging, no special reason, I was just kind of lazy. :P

Anyway, as some of you may know, I am getting married soon, so these days I have been more careful about spending money, and have been trying to cut down on my makeup spending habits. Besides buying less makeup (HA!), I am also exploring cheaper drugstore options. With age, I have come to realize that there are a lot of treasures in the drugstore, just because they are cheaper, doesn't mean they do not measure up to quality of branded cosmetics. For instance, I have come to love Revlon's lip products, in fact I feel that a lot of their formulas are every bit as good, if not better than MAC's lipsticks, and also Japanese liquid eyeliners are the best liners in my opinion.  However, drugstore eyeshadow is still lacking quality in my opinion, I am still searching for my holy grail eyeshadow brand.

Recently, my friend, Johnny, brought back Nyx Love in Paris Palette in 06 C'est La vie from the States for me. I wanted to try out this palette most because from the pictures online it has a very lovely olive green and a plummy brown, colors that I would love to incorporate into my everyday look.  Plus, I think the quality of Nyx's single shadows rival that of MAC's, I wanted to see if I can get the same quality from their palettes.

Offical professional shot from their website

Love in Paris is a 9 pan eyeshadow, retailing for USD 9 on Cherry Culture (they ship internationally). 06 C'est La Vie contains shimmery beiges, browns and deep greens. If the color turns out as gorgeous and as pigmented as they look in the pan, I think great everyday palette or for traveling.

First impressions, the packaging is the standard Nyx black plastic packaging which I am not a fan of because they break so easily,but  for USD 9, you really cannot ask for much. Plus, the bow closure on the compact is so cute, perfect for spring and perfect as a gift for a friend.

Moving on the the quality of the shadows, sadly, I have to say I am disappointed.

This is how the shadows look like in the pan. Still gorgeous. All shadows are shimmery, some of them has large chunky glitters.

However, the colors of the shadows did not transfer well to the skin. They are not pigmented, swatched chalky and gritty.

Below are the swatches I made. I had to swatch at least 3-4 times before I get the color to show up.

As you can see from the swatches, almost all of the shadows are very powdery, and there are a TON of fall out upon application. The glitters are also so chunky that they don't blend well with the shadows. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but I feel that all of the shadows look has a dirty greyish tinge to them. The olive green that I was so excited about swatched more like a dirty dark green on my skin, than the gorgeous olive green it looks like in the pain. 3-4 of the colors look about the same once I put them on my eyelids.

Just to show you guys how powdery the shadows are

All the fallout in the palette after I am done swatching.

All in all, I am just very disappointed in the quality of these shadows. The colors look flat and unimpressive on my eyelids. I have only used this palette once after receiving it. Even for the 9 bucks it's worth, I think it's a total waste of money.

If you are thinking of purchasing this palette, I suggest you pass on and save some money for my favorite urban decay shadows.

Friends, if you know of any drugstore shadows that can wow me, let me know!!!

Have a great weekend everyone, I am going for Avicii's beach party concert at Siloso beach later, be sure I am gonna blog about it!

Xoxo,

L’Oréal Les Ombres Color Riche Eyeshadow Palettes Review + Look

I am quite excited today because I am doing my first "look of the day" post. Last week after lunch with Y, I walked into Watsons, got seduced by their 3-for-2 loreal deals and picked up a couple of new makeup products. Oh, how I miss those days of walking into sephora and picking random things I liked, too bad sephora is expensive in Singapore, I will make do with Watsons. Anyhow, one of the things I picked up was the new L’Oréal Les Ombres Color Riche Eyeshadow Palettes.

There was  a total of 6 shades on display in the Watsons I went to, and they retail for SGD22.90. I picked up the color "Beige Trend" from the smokey eyes line. For swatches of all the palettes please see here 

 My take: The colors did not swatch very well on my naked skin without primer, but with primer on, the pigments did come out pretty intense. The 2 lighter shades were very similar on my NC 25 skin tone, so it is as if I got 3 eyeshadow colors for the price of 4. Also, instead of a creamy texture that I am so used to with my Urban Decay naked palettes, it is more of a flakey, powdery texture. Plus, I didn't like the fact that the every single shadow in the palette is packed full of glitter, such that there is no good contouring shade, or highlighting shade. Furthermore, over the course of the day, there was quite a bit of glittery fall out over my cheeks, making it somewhat  messy.  However, the packaging is gorgeous, and for the price, it's a good piece to buy if you are just starting out with makeup, and want to get something cheap that will work well as a neutral palette. I also do love the champagne shade in the palette, I can imagine it wearing as a base color for a variety of looks.

How I use it: 

1. Use the base color and apply it all over the eyelid, creating a dome shape as shown. Use the highlight shade and apply that on the brow bone under the eyebrow. Highlight the inner corners of your eyes for a brighter eye look (pic 2).

2. Asian eyes are usually flat, so to create some contour, I used the darkest shade and pat it gently on the other 1/3 of my eyes, slowly moving up into the eye socket (pic 3) about 2/3s of the way in as shown in the last picture. Also line your lash line with the contour color to define your eyes.

3. Blend all the colors together. Blending is the key to wearing any eye color!

The top picture shows how the look after blending. It creates an illusion of deeper set eyes, and therefore adds more definition to your eyes.

I then lined my eyes using a black eye pencil liner. I didn't use a liquid liner in this case because I was going for a softer look. Finally, I finished my eye makeup with some mascara.

Final look, which is good for work or college

Makeup items used

Verdict: I would not repurchase for sure, but I think this palette is ok as a starter piece for makeup beginners, otherwise I would not recommend.

That's all for today folks. Thanks for reading, let me know if there's anything you think I can do to improve my entries. I am still working on taking better pictures, making the makeup show up better on camera and writing better instructions for the makeup steps. Please bear with me while I work on perfecting my entries. :)

xoxo,

Nicole.