A quick look at Sleek MakeUP's iDivine's in Acid and Chaos

Hey Makeup junkies,

This afternoon I'm ditching responsibility for a few minutes to show you what arrived in the post about 3 days ago.  It's the Sleek makeUP's iDivine palettes in Chaos ( all mattes) and Acid which has a mix of mattes, shimmers and Neons ( this one just screamed fun to me and I immediatly needed it LOL )

This post is just mainly going to be some quick pics of the palettes, I'll have to leave the swatches and reviews for when I have a bit more time on my hands, but safe to say so far I love these palettes. 

The packaging is simple and effective, very Sleek HAHA!

Lets start the pictures off with Chaos which is the matte palette

And now for Acid which contains a mix of Neons, mattes and shimmers

And just for a bit of fun a look I did using the silver in the bottom row and  the lighter blue from the top row of the acid palette and the black from the chaos palette.  I was in a bit of a mood that day and added my blue contacts to finish the look off.  I'm just going to say there was a touch of creasing in these pics but I'm totally going to blame the base I had on under the shadows, I dont think it had anything to do with the quality of the Sleek eyeshadows.

Hope everyone's having a great start to the school holiday week so far!

Estee Lauder staff shop - Mac haul

A few weeks back I hit the Estee Lauder Staff shop in Sydney with my Make-up obsessed Gal Pals and posted some pictures of the resulting Haul... man that trip was fun :D Thanks girls!

Now that I'm back to reality after a quick trip up to Brisbane to celebrate (or not) my 20th high school reunion, it's time to do some more swatching and reviews.  I figured I'd just lump all the MAC from that day into one giant swatch fest.  I guess some of these items were probably limited edition MAC collections, but MAC also has a reputation for using some new colours and some re-promotes in their collections so I kind of figured that some of these swatches may be valid for people looking for images of certain colours.

First up I have the Tartan Tale Warm thrillseekers set, Tartan tale was definitely a limited edition collection but I'm unsure if the shades in it were limited or not.  I wont bother with images of the tartan box it came in seeing as you probably can't get it anymore anyway.  The set contained 5 mini sized pigments each holding 2.5 gms of product, which to me looks to be similar to the sizes of the NYX pearls pots without hunting them down to check.
The colours in this set are
Gilded Green - cool medium toned green
Most Darling - semi matte, not as shimmery as the others, almost milk chocolate brown
Gold Mode -mid toned shimmery golden brown, almost a shimmer version of Most darling
Gifts O' Glamour - Medium shimmery antiqued rose pink ( very pretty)
Reflects Bronze - this is one of the straight eye safe glitter pigments, personally I wouldn't waste my money buying MAC for those just about any brand has straight glitters at half the price, plus be warned you'll need a super sticky base for these to work on the eyes

Gilded green, most darling, gold mode, gifts o glamour and Reflects bronze

Next up we have the Mystic cool eyeshadow set, this is in a mini palette which is just a bit bigger than credit card sized and has a mini eye brush as well so super handy for travelling or handbags.  I'm unsure which collection this came from but if anyone knows feel free to tell me and I'll add it in.

The colours in this set are in order, top row - left to right
Cool Enchantment (Frost) this is an intriguing colour, while it looks nude, it has a great gold tone to it, but when it hits sunlight it almost has a cool grayish blue undertone as well, very interesting!,
Blue enchantment - (satin) mid toned turquoise blue
Deep secret - ( frost) deep blackish blue
SHHH don't tell - (satin) pale pinkish nude
Rose potion - ( Veluxe pearl) mid to pale rose pink
Violet vow - ( satin ) dark pinky / purpley taupe tone

Cool Incantation, Blue enchantment, deep secret, Shhh don't tell, Rose potion and Violet Vow

I find these really hard to use the colours just aren't vibrant enough for me and feel kind of muted on, they certainly don't have the Va-Voom MAC pigments do.

Next the Devil May dare palette from the same collection as the one above, and it has the same issues with colour and intensity.
Oh my Darling - ( frost) true pale nude tone
Dare Ya - ( veluxe pearl) pale nude pink
Sorcery - (satin) deep rosey purple
Gold tease - ( frost) shimmery bronzey gold
Prankster - ( veluxe pearl) cool toned olive green
Devilishly dark - ( frost) shimmery brown with gold highlights

Oh my darling, Dare Ya, Sorcery, gold tease, Prankster, Devilishly Dark

Then last but not least a super pretty mineralize blush in Rhapsody in Two. It's a gorgeous golden peach shade  This is one of the blushes that has the 2 colours swirled but separated in the pan, one colour is a pale pink and the other is a pale gold.  On my skin it can't be called a blush as it doesn't give enough colour but is a super pretty highlighter shade. I should imagine gals with paler skin tones might be able to use this more as a blush as it's intended to be.

pink on its own, gold on its own, the colours mixed

 Do I have any stand out fav's from that lot? Hmmmmm lets see the pigments as always are great and the Rhapsody in two blush is just so pretty!  What about you doe you see anything lust worthy in those swatches?

What's in my mineral foundation??? Spotlight on Estee Lauder Nutrititous Vita-mineral loose foundation

I don't normally feel the need to review or talk about foundations seeing as I usually make my own mineral foundation, but I recently started using a commercial brand of "Mineral foundation" that I felt the need to talk about.  The foundation in question is Estee Lauder's Nutritious Vita-Mineral loose powder makeup with SPF 15.  First of all let me just say I actually really like this foundation.  It has a nice texture, it's creamy despite being a loose powder, it has excellent coverage, it lasts all day on my face, it spreads and applies well, it conceals spots easily.... In short it has everything you really want from a mineral powder foundation.

Now for just a second close your eyes, and let me say the name Estee Lauder, Nutritious Vita- mineral foundation, what images does that conjure up in your head?  For me I think Quality product, ingredients that are good for your skin (Nutritious, Vita- mineral ) great packaging, high end product.  Am I wrong to think that?  I don't think so.

So I have to say I was seriously disappointed when I took a closer look at the ingredients listing on the back of the box it came in.  Just in case anyone wants to bother reading through the listing, I have included a short brief of what most of the ingredients do in brackets after each one.

Active Ingredient: Titanium Dioxide 2.1%. Other Ingredients: Talc, Polymethylsilsesquioxane( lubricating, smooth, silky feel to the product) , Hydrogenated Polydecene (anti aging- synthetic), Boron Nitride (slip and adhesion of products), Calcium Aluminum Borosilicate (oil control), Methicone( barrier for makeup to stick to, stopping makeup sliding off - synthetic), Triethoxycaprylylsilane, Magnesium Myristate(adhesion, free flow, slip, soft feel, rub resistance, lubricity, surface smoothness, and water repellent) , Punica Granatum (Pomegranate) - (antioxidant) Sterols, Tetrahexyldecyl Ascorbate( vitamin C), Zeolite (Moisture absorber so oil control), Retinyl Palmitate ( vitamin A), Caprylyl Glycol, Calcium Silicate (anti caking), Hydrogenated Styrene/Isoprene Copolymer, Sodium Chloride (salt), Tocopheryl Acetate ( form of vitamin E), Lauryl Methacrylate/Glycol Dimethacrylate Crosspolymer, Hexylene Glycol ( couldn't find much on this one, but it's common in anti-freeze, paints, lacquers, varnishes and paint strippers WTF is it doing in mineral makeup???), Zinc Stearate(water repellent- makes cosmetics water resistant, sweat resistant etc), Silica ( reduces appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, absorbs oil makes product feel soft) , Potassium Sorbate (preservative), Phenoxyethanol (Preservative). May Contain: Bismuth Oxychloride( common cause of allergic reactions commonly itching and tightness of the skin), Titanium Dioxide Iron Oxides, Mica, Yellow 5 Lake, Chromium Oxide Greens, Ferric Ferrocyanide, Blue 1 Lake, Chromium Hydroxide Greens, Carmine. 

OK so that looks like a SH**load of ingredients for a mineral foundation, and it is.  Taking a much closer look at these ingredients we discover that after the active ingredient of Titanium, the next one on the list is TALC.... now this is the bit I'm seriously disappointed about. Nutritious loose powder I believe retails for around $68 AUD here.  Talc is a cheap filler ingredient, not to mention the case studies that have been done that have proven it carcinogenic ( causes cancer ) I get that most on shelf makeup contains Talc, but it is the last thing I expect to see in any mineral product especially topping the list - meaning it has the greatest percentage in the jar than any of the other ingredients.  I really have issues with a high end, expensive product containing talc, ESPECIALLY something being advertised as "  Nutritious - Vita- mineral powder " with the following selling points-

The only mineral makeup perfected by Estée Lauder skincare. The nutrient-rich formula includes:

• Minerals to help protect and fortify the skin to build up its natural defenses
• Vitamins A, C and E to help improve skin's overall condition and maintain its healthy radiance
• Pomegranate extract-known as a super-potent antioxidant-to help protect against daily free-radical assaults "

Description taken from Estee Lauder's Aussie website

Yes it does contain a lot of good ingredients, but I see they neglected to tell consumers it's full of a cheap filler known to cause cancer Hmmmm gotta love the omission, marketing in Estee Lauder must be proud!

Have you ever used something that you thought was great for your skin only to discover that it was loaded with not-so-nice ingredients?

EDIT - This is my personal opinion on the ingredients contained within this product, some may agree with me some people may not.

Urban Decay Naked Vs NYX Nude on Nude - showdown time

Everyone knows I recently got my mitts on a couple of the elusive Urban Decay NAKED palettes, and despite wanting to do a review post just on the NAKED palette, which I'm sure has been done millions of times over, I thought it might be a tad more fun to do a showdown between my NAKED palette and the NYX Nude on Nude shadow box

WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS LOTS AND LOTS OF PHOTOS :D

The price differences - The NAKED palette retails in the US at US$48 so it's on the exxy side. The NYX nude on nude RRP is US $25 so there's a pretty big pricing difference between the two

As you can see the NYX box is slightly smaller and seeing as it contains 20 shades as opposed to NAKED's 12 shades it makes the NYX box more compact, NYX also contains 10 lippie shade.  the 2 palettes are also very different in the casing, NYX is in a hard plastic box while NAKED is in a felt style covered cardboard box palette, with the Urban Decay eyeshadow brush

Lets take a closer look at the NAKED palette

the palette

colours 1-6

 Left to right, Virgin, sin, naked, sidecar, buck, half baked

colours 6 - 12

left to right half baked, smog, darkhorse, toasted, hustle, creep and gunmetal.

The Quality of the shadows in the naked palette is superb, they pick up onto the brush easily and transfer to the eyes smoothly, with the colours staying true to what you see, they do have a slight tendency to be a bit on the powdery side almost as if they are too soft.

Now lets take a closer look at the NYX nude on nude box.

First thing you see is that there is 20 shades in the box, there's also 10 lippies, but seeing as I'm not comparing those I wont bother with them but you can see the swatches for them here.
row 1

row 2

Plenty of pretty colours to choose from, the Nyx shadows aren't as soft as the NAKED ones, but considering their price range, that's to be expected, they are however great texture and colours for the price. The other thing is NYX doesn't individually identify the shades with names making it almost impossible to replace something you love.

So now we go head to head with each individual colour to see if there's any dupes and how close they are. Bear with me I hope it all makes as much sense to you as it did to me when doing it.

The first colour up is NAKED's Virgin, next up is NYX this is the first colour on row 1.  it's too light and creamy in colour to be a dupe, 3rd colour is NYX row colour no 2.  this is a tad closer but still too creamy for an exact dupe.
*No. 4 is NAKED's Sin, next to that in position no5 is NYX from row 2 position no 7. they are close Sin is a touch more pinkish to my eye, no other colours stood out form nyx to be close in shade
*No. 6 is NAKED's naked, and the only 2 possibilities that stood out were not even close, colour no.7 is NYX row 1 colour no3 and colour no7 is NYX row 1 colour no 6.

Does that all make sense?  I hope so cause I'm going to keep going!

Up first here we have NAKED's sidecar, follow in spot 2 by NYX row 2 colour no. 2 these 2 look to be from the same colour family, but NYX is far lighter than sidecar.
*in spot no3. we have NAKED's buck, followed by NYX row 1 no.8 again its just not quite right to be a dupe, but nothing else was close.
*Spot no.5 has NAKED's half baked, follow in spot no.6 by row 1 colour no.4 in NYX, and in no.7 spot is row 2 colour no3, these 2 are far too dark and much more orange than half baked.
*Spot no.8 contains NAKED's smog, and lastly is nyx from row 1 no.8 this was the only one close in shade, Smog is clearly more bronze though.

Is it getting confusing yet? LOL

Spot no.1 in this picture is home to NAKED's darkhorse next to that is NYX row 1 no.5 this is close in colour but not as dark a bit too reddish and third is row 1 no.6   which is clearly too shimmery and has grey undertones.
*Up next in position 4 is NAKED's toasted, next to that is NYX row 2 no.8 similar in depth of colour but NYX is far too orange.
*Colour no.5 is NAKED's Hustle and next to that we have NYX row no.2 colour no. 9, again these 2 are similar but hustle has more purple undertones.  Nothing else was any closer.

Drawing to a close we have the last 2 NAKED colours.

In first spot we have NAKED's creep, next to that is row 1 no.9 from NYX,  these 2 are close with the NYX colour having slightly more blueish undertones.
*Colour no.3  here is the last from the NAKED palette, it's Gunmetal.  Next to that is row 2 colour no.4 in NYX these 2 are close, very, very close Gunmetal is more shimmery though and lastly row 2 no.10 in NYX this is way too light for a dupe.

Now I've seen a couple of blogs that seem to show some of the colours being exact dupes, but to my eye this is not the case.  There's gorgeous colours in both palettes but the NYX one really doesn't contain any exact dupes, there are a couple of close matches but the reality is If you have fallen in love with swatches from the NAKED palette you won't find cheaper dupes by purchasing Nude on Nude.  That's not to say the NYX palette doesn't have great nude shades because it does and it's an excellent budget palette that has a lot going for it. I'd think that the 88 natural from coastalscents may have better duping options. 

Hopefully the comaprisions made sense to you, I promise it made sense to me while trying to work out the best way to show the possible dupes.

Do you have a favourite Nude palette that you cant get enough of?

Face of Australia, Molten Metallics Titanium and black zebra print nails

Face of Australia Titanium

Now my nails are looking a bit nicer, I thought it would be time for a bit of playing around with the new Face of Australia Molten Metallics Nail polishes.  I'm in a bit of an animal print mood at the moment so I pulled out all my Konad plates and found the authentic plate with the full nail Zebra stripe print on it ( plate m57) although I think technically this would be the tiger stripe plate, but MEH still looks like a convincing zebra stripe to me.

image taken from my Konad design book

I cleaned my nails up and used 2 Coats of the FOA silvery sparkle colour Titanium which I picked up at my local Priceline store for $4.95 AUD and went to work with the Konad stamper.

This is the result :D

LOVE my animal prints!
Do you have a favourite nail polish colour or design that you just keep coming back to?

Urban Decay 24/7 glide on eyeliners

Continuing on from the saga that was hubby's US trip and his many visits to Sephora over there, he also picked up some of the famous Urban Decay 24/7 glide on eye pencils, in 4 different shades.  Now I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with coloured eyeliner pencils, I LOVE the vibrant colors of eyeliner pencils but 90% of the time once I apply them they just either disappear, or I can't get the line sharp enough for my liking or they are just too damn hard and pull at my skin on my eyelids when using them. As a result I thought it might be time to get my hands on some of these Famed Urban Decay 24/7 pencils, after looking at swatches and swatches... many thanks to Great Aunty Google for finding them for me.... I narrowed it down to 4 must have colours, Deviant (electric blue), Ransom ( bright iridescent purple ), Stash (dark golden green ) and Gunmetal (glimmering dark grey), actually I preferred dime over gunmetal, but hubby just couldn't get his hands on that one, so Gunmetal was a 2nd choice.

The 24/7 pencils come in 23 shades with some having true vegan ingredients.  Some of the ingredients in these are Jojoba oil, Vitamin E oil and cottonseed oil in a waterproof formula that dries almost instantly. The colours that the 24/7 pencils come in are just stunning, so bright and shimmery (love my shimmer!) Each pencil contains 1.2 gms of liner and retails at $18 USD. The pencils themselves are coloured in the liner colour so you can see just which one you are looking for, they have a silver lid and and silver end to the pencil that you can pop the lid onto when using them, which is great for people like me who tend to loose anything you put down! The 24/7 eyeliner formula is incredibly soft and they apply so smoothly with no pulling or tugging at my lids creating a perfect line every time.  They are also perfect for my waterline, they don't smudge or wear off and create a fantastic colour line for my under eyes which quite often just wears off when using traditional shadows on it. My eyes also tend to be a bit sensitive with really bright light or reactions to some ingredients in products setting them off in fits of weeping and the 24/7 pencils so far have stayed put on my under eyes if they are weeping :) YAY to that. I've never had a colour stay there if my eyes are playing up! So that says volumes for the waterproof claims on these.

When I swatched them on my inner wrist once the colours set I could swipe across them with my fingers with no smudging in the slightest, in fact they stayed put with no smudges through a 10 hr day of wearing jackets rubbing my wrists, washing dishes, and even showering and still looked just as good as when they were first applied.  The minute I used makeup remover they cleaned off quickly and easily with no colour shadowing left behind.

Stash - green gold olive

Gunmetal dark silver with tons of light bright silver shimmer

Deviant - bright electric blue

Ransom - bright blue purple

Now for the swatches

Stash, gunmetal, deviant, and ransom

Big thumbs up to Urban Decay liners and I'm sure some more of the colours will be going on my new wishlist in the near future as well as a couple of the 24/7 shadow pencils :D

Make Up For Ever liquid Aqua liners.

Hubby recently went to the US and got back Wednesday.  He took with him my US wishlist and visited many Sephora stores, which I think he secretly enjoyed
( being waited on by US  SA's who thought his accent was cute!)  How I wish Sephora was in Australia at competitive prices! 

On my wishlist was NARS powder blushes, Urban decay NAKED palettes, Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliners, and Make up For Ever liquid Aqua liners... not at all ambitious for a Non- makeup savy man :D

After seeing reviews and swatches for the new Make up for Ever Liquid Aqua liners, I figured him being in the US was a perfect time to get hold of some. I'm under the impression that these babies are available at Sephora stores only.  There are 15 shades in the whole collection, they are simply labelled with a number on the tube but they do have names.  I'll do a quick rundown of the numbers and names

1 - Diamond gold (sparkly yellow gold)
3 - Iridescent emerald green ( emerald green sheen)
4 - Diamond Lagoon green ( sparkling blue green)
5 - Diamond turquoise blue ( sparkling turquoise blue)
6 - Iridescent Navy Blue ( dark navy blue sheen )
7 - Diamond Black Purple ( deep violet sheen)
8 - Iridescent electric purple (bright purple sheen)
9 - Iridescent Fuchsia ( Hot pink sheen )
10 - Iridescent red ( brick red sheen)
11 - Diamond Burgundy ( sparkling plum burgundy )
12 - Mat mocha ( matte dark brown)
13 - Mat black ( matte black )
14 - Diamond multicolour black ( black with multicolour sparkles)
15 - Iridescent Anthracite ( gunmetal grey )
16 - Diamond white ( sparkly silver white )
(note there's no number 2 in the range... odd )
DESCRIPTIONS TAKEN FROM SEPHORA.COM

The boxes

The Tubes ( easily identifiable by the colour on the tube)

The colours that Hubby picked up from Sephora for me are 6 - denimy blue, 9 - hot pink, 11 - plum burgundy and 14 black multicolour shimmer.  Hubby had to search the whole of Vegas to track down no. 11 the plum burgundy but it was well worth the search!

6 - Iridescent navy blue

9 - Iridescent Fuchsia ( reminds me of Barbie pink )

11 - Diamond Burgundy

14 - Diamond Multicolour black

These liquid Aqua liners are a long wearing waterproof formula with a short tipped brush that is easily manoeuvred and applies the liners really easily. To use them you need to give the wand a shake, there sounds like there is a small ball inside mixing the product ( a bit like some nail polishes) then uncap and use, they dry in seconds ensuring no smudging once on.  The tubes contain 0.058 oz of product which is approx 1.6gm, and retail at $23 USD,  which is really a bit exxy, but they are really just AMAZING! It's also really simple to see which colour is which because the tubes are the exact colour of the liner within, eliminating many mistakes from picking up the wrong colour.  To look at them they are almost a plastic looking product on the skin with high sheen, lots of shimmer and quite intense colour.  If you give them a really good rub with makeup remover they almost peel off like pencil eraser shavings, also a bit like the tube style mascaras.  They last super long and will not simply rub off or wear off at all, they are also extremely waterproof, and eye make remover is needed to take them off at the end of the day.

The swatches :D

natural light 14, 11, 9, 6

flash 14, 11, 9, 6

I'm totally in love with these liners and wish I'd managed to get my hands on the whole range, but give it time and I'm sure they will start popping up on eBay.

What do you think? Do you have a favourite liner brand or colour?