180 palette - tray 3 swatches

Hi Beauties,

It's been awhile since I started swatching the 180 palette, so here is the next instalment, which is the third tray in the palette set.  This is the more neutral colours in the palette, this tray has a mix between shimmers, sheen's and mattes.  In the first picture the first colour doesn't swatch well but I find light matte colours never do.  So onto the swatches :)

The third tray - Naturals :)

tray 3 naturals

 Row 1 - Golds and yellows

row 1 - golds

 Row 2 - silvers

row 2 - silvers

 Row 3 - bronzes and browns

row 3 - bronzes and browns

 Row 4 - pink neutrals

row 4 - pink neutrals

 Row 5 - neutral browns

row 5 - neutral browns

Row 6 - neutral browns/ Taupe's

row 6 - neutral browns / taupe's

There is some very pretty colours in this tray, and they do look really lovely on and easily last me all day.
Stay tuned for the next tray :)

Mirenesse - where do I start?

OMG where do I start in my continuing frustration with this brand?

 I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Mirenesse, they do make some really nice products, but I can never get past their inflated shipping costs. I desperately wanted to get one of their flood relief sets where the $10 you pay for the products totally went to the flood relief effort, but come to check out they wanted $8.95 to ship 2 mascara sized products interstate.... Come on ... seriously??? It costs $4.40 to ship a small package that size interstate!

Anyway, moving on from the flood relief set, last week I wanted to place an order with them for a trial sized mascara to travel with and a trial sized eclipse age defense balm, I added both to my cart and selected check out, each individual item had a shipping charge of $4.95 attached to it. Now knowing how small these items are, one could safely assume they would be packed into the same bag, or that shipping should total either $4.95 or $9.90 as a combined total, but no... The total shipping cost on check out was $18.95.... HUH?? So as an experiment I removed one item from my cart and checked out with just the mascara in it, and sure enough the shipping went down to $4.95, so I ordered that one item then re-ordered the eclipse balm, again shipping was only $4.95. What sort of con is this company trying to pull? I have to wonder how many people have been tricked into overpaying for shipping.

Today my first order of the eclipse balm arrives, and surprise, surprise, the item looks nothing like the image on their website under trial makeup, AND the teeny tiny, 5cm round item, which has a peel off lid contains product that is seriously about 1.5 cm in diameter... Can anyone say OVERPACKAGED?

And if that's not bad enough the whole 5 cm item arrived in a 20 x 30 cm padded bag! What a Huge waste of packaging.

I don't know, but in this day and age of recycling, not polluting the environment such a blatant overuse of packaging materials, just annoys the crap out of me. Big thumbs down Mirenesse :(

2nd love Blush Haul.

About 2 months ago, I was browsing around the Brigettes Boutique site looking for some MAC sheertone blushes, and came across a brand called 2nd Love, the blushes looked just like MAC mineralize blushes, with that awesome marbled finish that just gets my attention every time.  The 2nd love ones aren't mineral blushes, and come with a super cheap price tag of $7.95 US each, so I couldn't resist getting all four of them.

I wouldn't expect blushes that are that cheap to be anything like MAC in quality, but I have totally fallen head over heels for all 4 of these, they are sheer and buildable with 2 of the colours being shimmery and 2 being more matte with a slight glitter that buffs right off and is not at all noticeable.

First I will show you the blushes in their packaging, then go onto the individual colours and swatches :D

the haul

from the top

from the side

and open

Blush No 1 is Sunshine - This is a gorgeous pink/silver marbled blush and at the moment easily my favourite, it has a sheer, shimmery finish, in a soft baby pink with silver tones.

close up

from the top

Sunshine swatch

2nd up is Sunset - this one is a pink, peach, neutral marbled swirl in the pan, and comes up as a soft peachy pink with shimmer on my cheeks.

close up

from the top

Sunset swatch

3rd up is Amber - which is a really soft baby pink in the pan, and shows up more matte than the previous ones, its still sheer and has the slightest touch of glitter in it, the glitter buffs off easily leaving a soft sheer baby pink colour on my skin. The swatch for this one is a little bit deceptive, it comes up paler than that on my cheeks.

close up

from the top

Amber swatch

And lastly, but absolutely not the least is Terra Cotta, which in the pan appears to be a lovely bronze gold colour, this is another of the ones that comes up more matte with glitter on my skin, and is much more of a gorgeous natural peachy pink, perfect for no blush or natural looking days.

close up

from the top

Terra Cotta swatch

And finally a picture of all the colours swatched together as a comparsion.  Left to right there is Terra Cotta, Sunset, Amber and Sunshine

They are all so pretty and wearable for daily use for totally different reasons :)
Hope you enjoyed!

180 palette - part 2, colours 30 thru 60

There's really no need to go through all the details of the 180 palette again, so I'll just get stuck into the next 30 colours.  This is the top tray in the palette, that sits on the right hand side.  The colours in this set are mostly matte with a couple of sheen's and 6 of the marbled colours which are the the first colour in each picture... woops... I forgot to rotate the pics round the right way :(  anyway as usual mattes are that bit harder to work with and a bit harder to pick up on the brush than the shimmers, but I kind of expect that now anyway.

and more pictures!

tray 2

tray 2 row 1

tray 2 row 2

tray 2 row 3

tray 2 row 4

tray 2 row 5

tray 2 row 6

Hopefully I will have the next tray up in the next few days. Plus a quick review of my sigma brush haul and some 2nd love marbled blushes plus piccy's

Ta-Ta for tonight

180 palette - tray 1, 1st 30 colours

Hi again beauty buffs :)

As promised here is a quick run down on the 180 palette that arrived a few days ago.  As I suspected when I compared the pan size on the 180 to the pan size on the 88 palettes, the 180 has noticeably larger individual colour pans, they feel quite soft and apply very easily, and are very pigmented. There's a good mix of satins, shimmers, metallics and mattes in it, with shades ranging from the very bright intense rainbow colours to more subdued and neutral tones. They easily last me a whole day with primer underneath.  The colours are just gorgeous with so many shades to choose from, and I almost wish I had gotten my hands on this before buying my 88 palettes.

You can find many different sellers on eBay selling the 180 palette, I chose to go with a seller on eBay that I have used before called Buyincoins,  I did however purchase direct through their website buyincoins (just type 180 palette into the search box or to make it easier here is the direct page for the 180 palette) as the price was slightly lower that way, I think it was around $30 on eBay and approx $27 on the website with free shipping. It came extremely well packaged with bubble wrap right around it and encased totally in foam, with not a single pan cracked,  it took around 3 weeks to arrive on my doorstep, which is pretty average.

and onto the fun bit.... pictures :)

This is the first tray in the palette, so the first 30 colours, it's mostly shimmers in this set

tray 1

tray 1, row 1

tray 1, row 2

tray 1, row 3

tray 1, row 4

tray 1, row 5

tray 1 row 6

The next tray will be on it's way soon.

180 palette

Hi again, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year :)

This morning I received something that I just couldn't wait to rip open and play with!  The 180 eyeshadow palette, I'm just going to really quickly post some pictures as a teaser and a full review and swatches will follow in the next few days.

The closed palette

 1st layer when you open it, it has 2 small windows on the sides and a mirror in the centre of the palette lid

 The layers then flip upwards revealing the next layers

 The full second layer

 The second layer sections then slide outwards revealing another layer underneath.

 which lifts out

then flips up as well to reveal the last layer

and some close ups of the marbled colours..... PRETTY...... :)

Each layer or section has 6 rows of 5 colours, so there is 30 in each section, I haven't done a size comparison between the pan sizes on this and the 88 palettes yet, but it looks to me at first glance that these are bigger pans, and there's a good mix of neutrals, satins, shimmers and some awesome metallics.

Please don't tell me you want swatches of the 180 colours! LOL