What happens when a belly dancer from The Netherlands and a belly dancer from USA hang out together? They swap makeup, of course! I was really excited that my friend Sabien brought me this Durable Eyeshadow Mousse from Make-Up Studio, because it seemed like an interesting product and the color “Edgy Emerald” looked really stunning.
Comes in a little jar.
I expected this product to be like a typical cream base, but it actually has a texture like mousse, a lot lighter and softer than a cream or gel. As such I picked up more with my brush than I really needed!
Color is a bit off due to sub-optimal lighting conditions.
This product is a little tricky to apply. You have to let it dry before opening your eye, or it will crease. However, it dries pretty quickly, so you can’t really blend it out to diffuse the edges. If it does crease, you can apply more to smooth it out.
So green!
It seemed to either give my lids a weird texture, or over-emphasize the texture that was already there, so its not ideal for close-up photos. However, the color was vivid, intense and metallic. And best of all, once it is dried it does. not. budge. I wore it all day and my eyes still looked great at the end of the day. I first tried to remove it with the magic eraser cloth from Sephora and barely took any of it off. An oil-based cleaner did break it up, so you can remove it when the time comes.
I also applied it under my lower lash line and it worked great that way, so I think these would double as a liner really well.
This product seems ideal for all-day outdoor events and maybe even for mermaids who want something that can get wet. Unfortunately, you can’t currently get it in the US, but if you are traveling, you may want to look for a Make-up Studio store!
So I’m basically in love with these new Kat Von D Metal Crush Eyeshadows. I’m giving serious thought to buying all ten, even though that would be expensive and take up a lot of room. They’re just that awesome!
Iggy and Synergy.
So far I have these two colors. Iggy, the greenest green there ever was, and Synergy, a really rich bronze. Both are really smooth, beautiful, and hyper-pigmented. They provide an intense metallic effect on the skin that matches what they display in the pan. I’ve only worn Iggy so far, but it held up well to an evening of goofing off in the New Mexico desert. Look at how obscenely green it is.
Photo by Hannah, ridiculous behavior by me.
These are intense enough that even if you don’t normally use a primer, I’d suggest putting down some sort of base layer to prevent your eye lids from staining.
On a weird side note, the flavor text on Sephora says there are 11 shades, but there have only been 10 available on the website. So what is the mysterious 11th shade? Will it be released later, maybe for the holidays? Or is it a typo?
As a bonus, please enjoy this video swatch that I took after first finding these shadows at my local Sephora. They didn’t have Iggy in stock, so I swatched Synergy, Raw Power and Danzig.
When ColourPop announced their Spring collection of pastel colors, I of course had to order the least-pastel eye shadow in the bunch. Snap Dragon is a gorgeous mid-tone blue-based green in a matte finish. I was wanting to try their relatively new matte formula and this was the perfect excuse!
Arm swatch, no primer.
I really like this color because it’s unlike any of the greens I have in my collection of palettes. It’s a great minty, seafoamy sort of shade with a perfect matte finish. I found that the color applied well with my fingers, with good intensity and smooth application.
Well, it WAS matte, before I got shimmery lime green eye shadow all over it.
I wore Snap Dragon for April’s Open Stage, doing a fun spring-summer look with bright greens and glitter. It held up pretty well although at the end of the night I noticed one of my eyes had a weird sort of splotchy, marbled Easter egg look to it. I hesitate to say that this is a problem with the shadow, though, as it may have been caused by the fact that I had to use some makeup remover to clean up an eyeliner blunder and then applied more shadow over it. There could have been an interaction between the remover and the fresh layer of eye shadow.
Weird splotchies.
Anyway, I was over all pretty happy with the wear of this shadow, so I’d say that if you’re looking for some matte pastel colors, ColourPop is a good choice. Of course I’m still waiting to see how these cream-powder hybrids hold up to my dry Arizona climate!
You guys know I love nail polish. I’m fortunate enough to have really long, strong natural nails, and it seems a shame not to decorate them as often as I can. So in the interest of not having my beauty blogs be all nails, all the time, I’m going to try to just do a round-up of all the new brands and products I’ve tried once a month or so.
This month’s big winner is Butter London’s British Racing Green. This is an expensive brand, so I waited a long time to try it. A couple of months ago Ulta had a sale so I picked up two colors, and this was one of them. Although it’s inspired by that classic car paint color, I think it’s also a really nice choice for the holidays! You could dress it up even more with some silver or gold glitter, a festive accent nail, or some other nail art. The above photo shows two coats, and you can see it’s a nice opaque color with a bit of shimmer to it. I think I got about a week or so of wear on my hands, and several weeks on my toes. Even then, my toes were only a little chipped and I was changing my color more out of boredom than necessity. I’d say this brand is probably worth the splurge, especially if you catch it on sale or use some reward points on it. If you’re looking for holiday gifts for someone, they have some cute steampunk themed nail polish sets right now, too.
There is one drawback to British Racing Green, however. Because it’s a dark color, it will stain. I used a base coat, so my nails were fine, but there were some spots where there was stubborn bits of green in my cuticles or under my nails. Plus it left green residue all over my skin! Let’s take a look at my feet after I decided to replace the Butter nail polish with some Lime Basil Parfumerie polish…
I’m bad at pedicures!
See the green stain on my index toe? I even tried using a makeup remover wipe on it. That color did not want to go away. Luckily a shower soaked it off. As for the Lime Basil polish, it’s a fun bright opaque green and was perfectly opaque after two coats. I can’t report back about the scent though, since I’m not about to try to smell my own toenails.
Now for a color that is beautiful, but really high-maintenance.
Formula X, when will I learn?
I don’t know why I keep buying Sephora Formula X colors, I never end up being quite happy with them, and they’re not cheap. But the colors themselves are so gorgeous, I always tell myself this time it will be different! So here we are with the Brushed Metallics, a line that is matte and iridescent and downright beautiful. I was in a weird mood when I was at Sephora, so I bought the weirdest color they had. Determined is a matte taupe brown with blue iridescence. It’s really cool and weird and a great choice for winter. It would look beautiful with a blue and brown costume… and yet… It was almost impossible to apply. It went on streaky, and attempts to smooth it out just made it worse, resulting in big blank swathes on my nails. And because it’s a matte color, I can’t put a top coat over it. So when I took a shower the next morning, it started chipping, and just kept flaking away for the next day or two. I painted my nails Monday night, repaired the chips Wednesday afternoon, and I’m sitting here on Friday morning with nails that look awful. In fact, as soon as I get done with this blog, I’m taking this polish off. I can’t look at these huge naked spots any longer! This is definitely the sort of color that you’re only going to get one or two days of wear from.
Oh, and speaking of removers, a quick shout-out for the Formula X Delete nail polish remover. It works really well, and comes in a cool pump bottle, and isn’t too stinky. A nice upgrade from the cheap drugstore brand polishes I’ve used in the past.
I was really excited when Makeup Geek announced these new foiled shadows, because if there’s anything I love more than eye shadow, it’s really shiny eye shadow! So I signed up for the pre-order mailing list and when the day came, I was really good and limited myself to just three colors to test out before deciding if I needed them all.
Grandstand, Jester, Houdini.
They were supposed to arrive today, but USPS was really on top of the ball and got them to me yesterday, which meant I was able to stress-test them at Open Stage last night and bring you a review today. Thank you, USPS!
Obligatory Hand Swatch ™.
Let’s talk about the colors really quickly! Jester is my new favorite thing ever. It’s a metallic olive gold with a really good color payoff. You know how I love my olive greens and they just look so good with my eyes. This color is going to look disgustingly good with my olive gold super bootie skirt. Note to self: find excuse to wear said skirt soon.
Grandstand is a nice light coppery/rose gold kind of color, which makes a nice accent. It also has really good color payoff, I actually used it like a liner on my lower lash line last night.
Houdini is a dark teal green and doesn’t seem quite as intense as the others. It also looked a little similar to Envy, a normal eye shadow from Makeup Geek, so I swatched that one on my hand to show how they compare. Houdini definitely has more teal and more shine than Envy, but it’s not as awesomely shiny as the other colors. I’ve been seeing other bloggers say the same, so I’d say probably give this one a pass. I’m still going to wear it, it’s just not as cool as the others.
This picture is not very helpful.
I’d like to take a minute to acknowledge that the lights in my bathroom are not very good and this picture does not really do much to show you how pretty Jester is, and it doesn’t show you Grandstand at all, because HELLO lashes! I am looking to improve the photography situation on this blog in the new year, because I’m getting pretty serious about this makeup stuff and I want you all to really be able to see the true colors of the products I’m using.
Anyway, I layered Jester on over Telepathy from the Kat Von D Monarch palette, and I really like the effect I got. Jester was really easy to apply and looked great with the weird pale champagne ecru gold color of Telepathy. Then I did Grandstand on my lower lash line using an angled liner brush, and it went on really easily but I actually don’t think it was a great color for that area, maybe a little too pink/red. I think on someone with dark skin it would really pop and look like an awesome copper accent, but I think on me it made my eyes look red, at least in the aforementioned lousy bathroom light.
Supposedly since these colors are some sort of cream/powder hybrid, you can use them without primer, but I don’t ever do my eyes with a base of Urban Decay primer, because belly dancers can’t afford to mess around with creasing and fading. With primer and a quick spritz of makeup setting spray, these colors held up well to a busy night of running the event, dancing, posing for photos, and generally being busy.
At only 9.99 a pan, these are definitely a better deal than a lot of other foiled shadows on the market, and they don’t have the fussy mixing regimen of the Stila metallic shadows (which I still need to try and review, but again, they’re fussy!). If you like a really glamorous, metallic finish shadow, they’re a great buy. I’m sure I’ll pick up some more colors after the holidays!
I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of buying big palettes because they have one or two colors I love and don’t have, mixed in with colors similar to or exactly like ones I already have, and colors I’ll never wear. But individual eye shadows can take up a lot of space, and often have more product than I’ll ever use (I’ve yet to hit pan on even my favorite color in my first palette). With that in mind, I decided it was time to start rounding out my color selection by purchasing individual pans from Makeup Geek and putting them into a Z Palette for easy storage. For my initial order I picked out five colors… three shades of green (of course!), a cool matte grey, and a medium silver. I also bought myself a large Z Palette in the rose gold chevron pattern, and a pigment in Kryptonite. I’ll talk about the palette in this review, but you’ll have to wait to learn about the pigment.
As you can see, the individual colors arrive in really cute little envelopes. I tested and it seems pretty easy to take the shadows in and out, so I saved a couple of the packages in case I want to just take a color or two with me on a trip.
My palette so far.
The large Z Palette that I purchased can hold 27 Makeup Geek eye shadows, so it looks pretty empty with my five colors so far. It has a magnetic base so the little pans just stick right to it. It also comes with some sticky-backed metal blanks that you can attach to any other stray makeup pans you might have. I like the pretty rose gold and white pattern, and the big plastic window in the top makes it easy to see what colors I have in here, which would definitely come in handy if I had more than one palette going.
COLORS!So anyway, as you may have noticed I sort of love green, so I was excited to get my hands on some shades that weren’t really represented in my collection of palettes.
Seamist is a beautiful shimmery aquatic green. Perfect for summer, or for a mermaidy costume! This is the only one I haven’t had a chance to wear yet, but I can’t wait to find an excuse for it.
Dirty Martini is a matte olive green. I LOVE drab olive greens and already have some shimmery ones, so I had to have a matte to go with. I needed to layer this one on to get the intensity that I wanted, but once it was on, it was so gorgeous!
Envy is a dark metallic green. I find that when I applied it, it was more of a black with green undertones. I think I need to try applying it wet to bring out more of the metallic shimmer. The pigmentation is good so it’s definitely worth experimenting with.
Stealth is a matte grey. I thought this was a really unusual color and might be fun to play with. Like Dirty Martini, it has to really be built up to get any impact. This is the only one I wasn’t really impressed with.
Mercury is a pretty silver. I have various silvers in palettes, but they’re either a warm silver, or have bad glitter fallout, or otherwise just leave me wanting. This one is a little sheer, so it makes a nice highlight. Like Envy, I might try applying it wet to see if I get a bolder look. Applied dry, it is very shimmery, just very pale.
Obligatory hand swatch, no primer.
I wore Dirty Martini, Envy and a touch of Mercury to troupe practice this week. Applied over primer and sealed with makeup setting spray, it still looked perfect after an hour of dancing.
Greeeeeen.
And I used Stealth and Mercury last month when I was testing Fem Bot makeup ideas.
Goth Bot mk 3.0.
I’ll definitely pick up more of these shadows to keep filling out my collection.
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