Urban Decay, Deluxe shadow box

Back to the business of beauty, this time I'm taking a look at Urban Decay's Deluxe shadow box which is another one of the goodies I picked up in Kuala Lumpur.  The Urban Decay goodies I bought on my visit to Sephora in KLCC in the twin towers.

I paid $145 Malaysian ringgit for the set, which at the exchange rate I had back then roughly translates to be around $45 AUD.  Personally I don't think that's too bad considering the RRP from Urban Decay's website is $38USD, and then you have to factor in shipping costs. You can pick them up on EBay though for anything between $20 - $30 USD plus shipping.

The palette itself is similar to the 1st naked palette in that it is that hard magnetic closing cardboard covered in a velvet finish.  The deluxe shadow box is about the size of my hand and is covered on the edges in a royal purple velvet in laid with silver mesh.  On the inside you have a mirror in the lid, with 9 square colour pans, in 3 rows of 3 and 2 small sponge tipped applicators.  It also comes with a 2.66ml primer potion.

The colours contained in the palette are
fishnet - bright purple with blue undertones
honey - bright yellow gold
ransom - deep royal blue
graffiti - bright lime green
zero - shimmer black
peace - light bright blue
shag - medium coppery brown
scratch - neutral skin toned pink
underground - chocolate brown

I bought this palette simply because I was attracted to the fact that it had brights and neutrals all in one.  The shadows themselves are very similar to what is in the NAKED palette very soft and smooth and easy to use, while they are pigmented I don't feel they swatch or apply quite as bright as you initially see in the palette, but they are still quite bright.

photo time :)

The outside packaging

the inside

and the swatches
left to right - fishnet, honey, ransom, graffiti, and zero

and
peace, shag, scratch and underground

All in all, its a really cute little palette and probably a good buy for anyone wanting to add some colour and warmer naturals to their existing collection.  I don't think it's set to become a favourite of mine but is still a useful addition.

Are there any Urban Decay fans out there and what palettes of theirs do you own other than the NAKED palette?

slight deviation from beauty, The big O/S trip :) PART 1 the planning

As I mentioned in my last post I was MIA for the last few weeks while on a family trip O/S I thought I might just deviate from the makeup posts to show you where I dissapeared to.  It was a very full on 3 weeks and in order not to bore everyone with a super huge single post I'll split the trip up into smaller posts and include as much pricing and costs info as possible.

 Now that my boy is at school full time the only real quality time we get to spend together is school holidays, so with it in mind that the December/ January holidays are the longest ones we get all year, so we decided to plan a big trip overseas for this year at that time.  During the planning stage we sat the kids down and showed them some travel videos and gave them the option to choose what they would like to experience while overseas... shocking I know, allowing the kids to pick, but we figured if they got to do things they were interested in then the whole trip would be more fun.  Their choice came down to wanting to go to Disneyland and to see golden temples ( that's my girl, only 4 and already into bling!)

In order to include both of those we chose to visit Hong Kong  (Disneyland)

Kuala Lumpur... that was to satisfy my shopping addiction,

and Thailand ( Karon Beach)

 Much planning went into it and after arranging 6 flights and 3 sets of accommodation it was booked, $13 000 AUD later we were booked, planned and paid for, then the long wait and the planning of what to do in each country began.

I had lots of fun buying up big on Makeup in Kuala Lumpur that''s not readily available here in Australia, but more on that later :)

Back in action, this time with MakeUp ForEver's wild and chic aqua cream LE set

Hi Beauties, my apologies for going MIA again, this time I headed off for a 3 week holiday with the family visiting Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Thailand.  My plan was to hit up a couple of stores and brands such as Sephora which we don't have here in Australia. ( and spend big I did! )  I'll probably do a quickie post soon with  the full haul photos, but today I'm getting straight into it with the MakeUp Forever Wild and chic Aqua eyes limited edition set I picked up from the MakeUp forever store in KLCC.

I believe this one isn't available anymore and I may just have fluked one the last sets they had instore.  I'll still run down pricing etc just for interest/comparisons sake, so If you cant be bothered just skip right over all that to the piccys :)

Aqua creams as described on the MUFE website are a Waterproof cream colour, which are Ultra pigmented and long lasting.  They are highly concentrated in Mother of Pearl pigments, providing and immediate colour intensity with a luminous finish.  The long lasting formula will not crease or smudge even under the most extreme conditions.

They are versatile with some being able to be used on eyes, cheeks and lips, although the ones in the set are eye and cheek safe only.  The individual pots retail at $22 USD and the kit sold for approx $175 USD. Which as we all know would have been at least double that RRP on the australian market.  In the KLCC store I paid around $250 AUD for the kit, which sounds Exxy, but... well I fell in love with it!

Now I have really only just swatched and used these for the first time today, so any opinion I have on them will only be based on my initial observations of them. I used them on my eyes at around 9am this morning and they were still as good as first applied at 7pm tonight. The set has 10 colours in it, with the individual pots being clear plastic with the colour shade numbers printed on the bottom.  They are stored upside down in the case and come with the MUFE 5N brush, which is a medium to small flat tipped brush. It appears to apply the colours really well despite being on the small side.  Each colour is really smooth and creamy and sets within 30 seconds, MUFE recommends doing one eye at a time for this reason.

The set comes in a hard metal snakeskin print tin with a moulded inner for each of the pots and brush to clip straight into

Now for the individual pot pictures and swatches ( the fun bit )
02 - steel grey

 04 - snow white

 16 - Medium rosy pink

 13 - neutral pale pink

 11 - true gold

left to right - 02, 04, 16, 13 and 11

The next 5 colours - 
01 - dark graphite grey

 14 - chocolate toned

 17 - deep plum red

15 - neutral brown

 12 - bright bronze

left to right - 01,14, 17, 15 and 12

See anything you love?  Has anyone tried MUFE's aqua creams before, and what did you think of them?