NYX Nude on Nude shadow box

Like everyone ( almost) Ihave been dying to get my hands on the Urban Decay NAKED palette, and considering how hard it is to get here in Aussie Land, plus it's crazy price, I decided I needed to try and find a cheaper alternative - Many thanks to the gorgeous Scentsation, who made me obsessed with it ( naughty girl )

Enter NYX to the rescue! I was prowling round the Internet late at night ( always a BAD idea ) and came across NYX's new release of the Nude on Nude Box, Isn't it beeeaaautiful? After trawling eBay with no luck I discovered it on Cherry culture website.  I have never used cherryculture before, but I knew I'd seen pretty good reviews for the site, so off I went and ordered it, just missed out on a 20% off code too :(

Anyway they stock it at the RRP of $25 USD and shipping was approx $12 US, the shipping was a pretty standard time frame from the US to Australia, about 2.5 weeks I believe it took.

I fell in LOVE with the kit before I even managed to rip it out of it's box  :) It comes packaged in a gorgeous chocolate coloured box with the picture on the front, and small images of each colour in the set on the bottom.  Taking the palette out, it is about 15 cms long with square cut out windows showing the top row of shadows with the NYX logo and Nude on Nude written on the chocolate coloured box.

Flipping it open you have a mirror on the inside lid and 2 rows of 10 colours, all in variations of nudes, some typical nudes, some gold nudes and some grey/silver nudes.  There is an excellent variety of matte colours and shimmers with something for just about any nude combo you could dream up.

The shadows themselves are very soft and have great colour payoff, they look awesome on top of a primer and last VERY well. I get about a 12 hr day out of them without creasing or smudging

SWATCHES :D -
top row

woops, picture is round the wrong way...

bottom row

And if that isn't enough, you can pop the bottom of the palette out and there is 10 lipsticks in there as well, now I know I had lipsticks in the Bronze Goddess palette, and these are exactly the same, sort of a soft lipstick as opposed to a lip gloss, they have far more colour to them than a standard eyeshadow palette lip gloss addition and are a bit more solid than a palette style gloss, they also show up beautifully on my lips, and the tones in the palette are well chosen to compliment a nude eye look.

Having said all that I totally love this palette, it's a big winner for me..... but I'm still dying to get my hands on that elusive little Urban Decay NAKED palette!

What do you think do I need the NAKED palette so I can do a colour comparison with the Nude on Nude box?

Eye primer/base comparison Benefit creaseless cream shadow Vs Too Faced Lockdown

On my seemingly never-ending search for the prefect eye shadow primer or base cream, I decided to try Benefit's Creaseless Cream shadow in bunny hop and Too Faced Lockdown Ultimate cream eyeshadow which is infused with Too faced famous shadow insurance.

I ordered both on All Cosmetics Wholesale, the Benefit was $12.99 US and the Too faced was $8.99, so both pretty reasonable prices considering the USD to AUD exchange rate at the moment. Shipping takes around 10 days to 2 weeks for the product to arrive.

The Benefit arrived in a gorgeous box, with a small round glass jar inside which contains 4.5 gm of product, it has the beautiful benefit black lid with white birds design. Bunny Hop which is the colour I chose is a shimmery pinky nude. its a cinch to apply with a small flat brush and smooths on easily and looks beautiful on the lids.

Too faced Lockdown comes in a coloured tube similar to a lip gloss tube with a small pointy ended applicator, it contains 8 gms of product. It is a formula that contains both colour and the Too Faced Shadow Insurance for extra hold. The colour I chose is Bondage which is a shimmery nude. It squeezes out of the tube easily and spreads as easily as the benefit.

The Benefit Creaseless is a bit oilier of a formula than the Too Faced Lockdown is, and takes a bit longer to set as opposed to the too faced which sets almost immediately

I swatched both formulas and applied the same shadow over both, I also applied one eye with benefit and one with too faced then used the same shadow combo over both. The two swatches appeared the same in intensity and look on first glance, but the too faced quickly showed its superiority. Benefits creaseless started to smudge after 10 mins and the too faced was exactly as first applied, on the eyes you could clearly see fading on the eye primed with Benefit.

10 minutes after application, the left swatch is Too Faced Lockdown, the right is Benefit Creaseless, straight away you can see the difference in the intensity of the swatch. (taken at approx 9am )

1 pm - left Too faced, right Benefit, already the benefit has almost disappeared.

3:30 pm - there's still a trace of the Benefit swatch left, but not much.

After 6 hrs the Too Faced was swatch was still going strong and hadn't smudged or faded in the least and the Benefit swatch was almost gone. On the lids the too faced eye was exactly as it looked when applied that morning, but the benefit was greatly faded and had creased. In fact at 9 pm that night after showering, doing the dishes, bathing children etc, I could still see the remains of the Too faced Lockdown swatch and the Benefit Creasless one was completely gone.

I loved the colours of both, but for the purpose of using them as an eye colour base, the Too faced Lockdown won hands down, and at a whole $9 I'd seriously consider getting a stack more of these as shadow bases. Hands down a win to Too Faced Lockdown!

I still have the 3 NYX shadow bases and one by Jordana to test out and hopefully I will find a Holy Grail in there somewhere.

Does anyone have a favourite shadow base that is a holy grail for them?

Taupes DIY and Facebook giveaway!

DIY time again!

This time I was feeling a bit Taupe, so I decided it was time to do a DIY taupe eyeshadow.  I wanted something light and shimmery that could be used with almost anything and a medium matte Taupe for the eye crease.

So lets get started, first off I decided what colours I was going to use and got prepared.

ingredients

more ingredients

I mixed up my basic oxide blend that will be the basis of the colours.

oxides pre- mixing

Then added my white base blend that gives the adhesion and slip and kept tweaking until I had a universal matte taupe that I was happy with.

Taupe anyone???

I then took that blend and added shimmers :)  (oooohhh love sparkle ) until I had a pale shimmer Taupe to suit all skin tones and a Matte medium Taupe, then I swatch tested them and tried them on my lids for a few days.

shimmer - matte

shimmer all over lid - matte in crease

shimmer on lid - matte in crease

This was the result. I'm thinking a name the colour comp on Facebook, because I suck at naming things! With the winner getting a pot of the finished colour, but will announce the details on FB when I have decided on the rules :)

180 Palette - Tray 6, last set :( Thank god!

Here I go again, this is the last tray of colours from the 180 palette. I have to say that I'm pretty damm happy to be finished swatching this palette! This tray consists of Blues and Greens only, the full details are here.

I'm a bit over swatching these despite how pretty they are, so I'll just get straight onto the pictures :)


The tray - close up, all Blues and Greens

 Row 1 - True blues, a mix of sheen's and matte's

 Row 2 - Violet Blues, some sheen's some matte's.  I love the 2 shades at the end, they are easily amongst my favourites in the palette.

 Row 3 - Blues with slight green hues, all sheen's

 Row 4 - Lime Greens, all sheens

 Row 5 - Lime greens again, but these are mostly Matte's

 Row 6 - Emerald or True Greens, all sheens, and all VERY pretty :)

Well that's it for the 180 palette. I still really love this palette, it would have been nicer to see a few more neutral tones in it, but you never can get exactly what you want anyway.

Heres a list of a few things I could do next. If anyone has any preferences as to what they would love to see out of the list, just leave a comment otherwise I'll just randomly pick.

 - all my mac blushes
- 15 colour concealer palette
- a road test between Benefit creaseless creme shadow and Too faced Lockdown colour creme shadow used as a eyeshadow base
- a DIY, you pick the colour and I'll try and make it.

and whats on the way to play with soon
- NYX nude on nude shadow box
-NYX eyeshadow bases
- Jordana eye shadow base
- Bobbi Brown Nectar shimmer brick

I'm starting to draw a blank on anything else, so if you see something on the first list that you'd really like to see up next, then just let me know :)

180 Palette - Tray 5

Hi Beauties

Back again with more swatches and colours from the 180 palette. This is the 5th tray from the palette, and as usual all the palette details can be found here. This palette is a mix of Pale Yellows/Strong Yellows in either matte's or sheen's. Greens in matte's and sheen's and Blues in matte's and sheen's.

As usual with all the other trays, the colours are very true to how they appear in the palette, and the last colour in each row on this tray is a marbled colour.

Enough with the chatting as you have heard it all before with the other trays and onto the swatches.

The tray - close up, see the marbled colours on the end of each row?

 The marbelled colours, close up - When swatched each of the marbelled colours is whatever the main colour is, but with a undertone of what the marbelled colour is, so the Yellow one you see below is yellow, with an orangish undertone when on the skin.

Row 1- Off whites and Pale Yellows, the Off whites are matte, and the Pale yellows are sheen's

Row 2 - Yellows, mostly sheen's

Row 3 - Lime greens, all matte. The first one is a really yellow lime green.

Row 4 - Greens.  Again a mix of matte and sheen, note the last colour is the marbelled green from the close up, so you can see how it is green with the yellowish/lime undertone.

 Row 5 - blues. Mostly pale tones, with a mix of matte and sheen.

 Row 6 - Blues, these are all sheen's

Phew, almost at the end of the 180 palette, there is only one more tray to go, then I have a few bits and pieces to look at, plus a NYX  Nude on Nude shadow box with 20 neutral shadows, plus 10 lip glosses in it to review and swatch.

180 palette - tray 4, More swatches

Hi everyone,

I'm just back from few days break away in Cairns and surrounds before my first child starts school today :(  boy am I glad to be back with all the cyclones happening up there ATM.  I hope everyone up there is OK and doesn't have much damage or loss, thinking of you all.

This is the 4th tray from the 180 palette, all the info and details on the palette can be found here, all the details for it are in that blog post :)

This palette is a mix of mattes, sheen's and metallics ( one green in particular is to DIE for ) but you'll see that one in a minute

The tray close up, can you spot that green? and those oranges are insane, but I have no idea where I'd wear them!

Row 1 - Yellows

There's a mix of sheen's and mattes in the yellows and the mattes are always hard to swatch.

Row 2 - Neutrals

again another mix of mattes and sheen's.

Row 3 - Pinks

sigh. LOVE my pinks and the coral on the end is lovely too

Row 4 - Purples

There's a few different tones of purples in this set of shades, ranging from pinky purples though to the more violetty ( hmm not sure if violetty is a word )

Row 5 - Oranges

Another mix of finishes, with some mattes, some sheen's. WOW look at the brightness of these oranges, now how do I use them?

Row 6 - Earthy tones

Here is that to die for metallic olive green, this is one of my favourite colours in the whole 180 palette.

See anything you love yet, out of the 4 trays?????