Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol. II

I was thrilled to get my urban decay book of shadows Vol. II that was just released on the urban decay site today. It's a gorgeous set of shadows. There are some repeats from other urban decay eye shadow palettes but there are also 7 shades that are only available in this palette. This set also contains a look book, 2 mini eyeliners and a mini eyeshadow primer potion.

Top has a lid that lifts up to reveal a mirror surface and a compartment that holds the look book which break down various ways to wear the shadows.

Bottom is a drawer that pulls out to reveal eye shadows, eyeliners and primer


Perversion (matte black), gunmetal (grey with silver shimmer), ecstasy (violet with pink sheen), AC/DC (dark purple shimmer), nylon (medium gold shimmer), sellout (frosty beige), mushroom (grey taupe), sphynx (bright pastel pink shimmer)


Half baked (warm bronze), twice baked (dark brown gold shimmer), midnight cowboy rides again (beige with silver glitter), ydk (brown shimmer), jinx (medium blue with blue shimmer), flipside (metallic teal) , homegrown (grass green with gold shimmer), misdemeanor (dark grey blue shimmer)

My favorite new shades are AC/DC, misdemeanor and jinx (reminds me of zoya kotori). The exclusive shades are AC/DC, nylon, mushroom, sphynx, jinx, flipside, homegrown and misdemeanor. The mini eyeliners are bourbon and zero. This is a super cute set and it reminds me that I need to use my urban decay palettes more often since they do have fabulous shades.

Maquillage Fall '09: BR365 palette and lipsticks

These darn maquillage 3D eye shadow palettes just keep beckoning me. I caved and purchased the Alexander Wang limited edition BR365, I picked this one over the BR364 since it seemed to be the cooler toned of the 2 palettes. It turned out to be a pretty nice neutral palette.

The palette has a white gold cream base, a taupe brown with gold shimmer, a dark grey brown with a touch of pink sheen (really interesting color), a brighter light gold color and a dark burgundy liner.

I also gave 2 of the new moisture rouge lipsticks a try. Both were super smooth and creamy and leaves my lips feeling moisturized. I picked PK244 and BE380.

BE380, PK244


PK244, BE280

PK244 was the color on type, while the BE280 was the sheer type. I loved the PK244, but I thought the BE280 ended up looking a bit too pale on my lips. The sheer type lipsticks are in collaboration with Alexander Wang and are limited edition.

Next maquillage post, I'll share more lip gloss shades. I definitely love the new lip gloss formula and I ordered more (will definitely need a make-up diet after this month). I realize they do last quite sometime and are pretty transfer resistant. They do fade a bit after a few hours but you still have some product left on your lips even after eating and drinking.

Bobbi Brown Fall '09: Metallic cream eyeshadows

It's hot and humid but I wandered over to Bloomies to take another look at the Make-up Art collection from MAC. I decided to hold off on getting anything but I decided to wander the cosmetic area to see if anything was new. I normally just take a quick glance at Bobbi Brown-a lot of times the colors are pretty but they don't scream to me, but I noticed they had put out the new metallic cream eye shadows-yay!

Luckily the associates were busy with other customers so I could swatch in peace. First pic is in natural sunlight inside the store near the front windows, second one is with flash. There are 8 colors in all for the metallic cream eye shadows, swatch on far right is the new gel eyeliner.

(ok, it's late and I didn't notice that "mercury"
was really big till I posted. oops)

These eye shadows are shimmery metallic goodness! Each has multi colored sparkle to them (click pic to better see it), have a super smooth texture (although not as buttery as the gel liners) and are really long wearing. After having the swatches on my hand for a few minutes, it definitely took some rubbing with make-up remover to get it all off. I was trying to resist Starry purple but I couldn't. I also bought chrome patina and black pearl. I am so tempted to get more.

I also picked up the new gel eyeliner in forest shimmer ink. It's a nice dark brown with a golden shimmer to it. I'm definitely glad I made a pit stop at the Bobbi Brown today to pick up these gorgeous new colors.

Maquillage Fall '09: 3D Face creator palettes

It's hard to think about "fall" make-up when it's so hot outside. Anyway, after getting one of the Maquillage 3D face palettes for fall, I caved and got the other one. The individual shades in these palettes seem to have less contrast from each other than the palettes from the spring, so for me they seem to be a bit more subtle, but still very pretty.

Color #55

Color #66

I had a hard time trying to get swatches to show up in pictures. The colors seem to just disappear on my hand and all you see is the shimmer. =( The flash makes the colors look more shimmery than they really are; they do have a bit of shimmer but definitely not over the top.

Although it shades don't show up well on my hand, on my face they do provide some highlighting/contouring but I think I'll have to wait till the fall and I'm a bit paler to really see the effects a bit better. (Currently, I'm around MAC NC 35-40). The usage is the same as the previous palettes and if you go on the Maquillage site, you can see other ways of using the palette. I swore I was able to find an English translation at some point and the different ways are based on individual face shapes. I will update if I can find the English text.

Screen shot from Maquillage website

New items added to sale page

New items have been added to my sale page and more items to be added soon! Click link on right or here.

Mac Make-up Art Collection

I somehow got an invite to a preview event for the Mac Make-Up Art Collection and almost threw out the invite because it just looked like a bunch of postcards, then I actually opened the whole thing out and notice there was text on the back of one, duh.

I brought along Lynnie as my +1 haha. I ran over right after work, got my jamba juice and started the line. Bad thing about being first in line-everyone asks you what's going on and why people are lining up in front of the store. I need to practice pretending to not speak english. As soon as the doors open me and Lynnie ran in and had a good 5 mins to ourselves before the rest of the crowded filtered in. I slap stuff all over my hand but I was a bad blogger and didn't bring my camera. There was finger food going around but the one I tried was pretty bad so I don't think we missed much. There were also some artistes (?) who would sketch your pic-I can get that done at any park in the city-why wait on line? We quickly decided what we wanted, paid and left. All within about 30 mins.

I didn't walk away with what I had thought I would leave with. I ended up with the technakohl liner in artistic license and obviously orange, pigments in push the edge and cocomotion and the notoriety quad. I thought I be all over the purple and green quad but they didn't grab me-maybe I didn't swatch them carefully enough. The lipsticks and lip glosses were pretty but I didn't purchase any since in the end, Mac lip products never make me completely happy. Loved the glitter reflects but I don't know if I really can use that much glitter, lol.

Notoriety Palette-skintone1(lustre), skintone2 (Frost), Notoriety (velvet) and Rich & Earthy (veluxe pearl). It's the same casing as a 4 shadow fill your own palette but I don't think you can pop these shadows out. I gave an attempt and they didn't budge.


Pigments -push the edge and cocomotion

Swatches

My cashier was wearing one of the new eyeshadows and it was pretty on her so I'll have to go back and take another look at this collection to see if there's anything else worth picking up. And when I got home, there was another set of postcards inviting me to a MAC event at bloomingdales.

Giveway shout-outs

Yumeko (bittenbefore) is having a "Thank You for Reading" giveaway. The prize is a set of My Beauty Diaries Masks, go here to join. Quick! Deadline is Wednesday.

Bee creative is having an epic giveaway involving many bloggers and their handmade crafts. Click here to see who's participating and how to enter. Deadline is August 20th.

It's a hot humid summer day, I'm going to go hug the AC now.

Maquillage Fall '09: 3D eye palettes and lip glossess

For fall, Maquillage released 5 new 3D eye shadow palettes. The 2 brown shades (BR 364 and BR 365) are limited edition in collaboration with designer Alexander Wang. These 2 palettes come in different packaging, a black case instead of the standard silver pink case. The others are permanent I believe. I ended up ordering the GR368 and GY867. Thankfully, these palettes go back to having both powder and cream shades. All the shadows were super shimmery and stayed pretty vibrant all day. There was a little bit of fading after a long hot summer day but not too badly and i didn't have much of a creasing problem either.

The Gr368 caught my eye since it has green and purple shades in it, so how can I resist? The shades are a mint green, mossy green, lilac, white gold cream base and shimmery plum liner.

I was worried that this palette may be bit too similar to the GR366 palette, however when I swatched the shadows next to each other. The cream base in the new palette seem a to have a bit more gold in it and the middle green shade is a more green while in the GR366 palette, the middle green has more grey to it. The light green shade in both seem about the same.

The GY867 has a taupe brown, steel blue grey, light gold, light gold cream base and dark brown liner.

There are also 8 new lip glosses being released in this collection. I picked OR264(coral orange), RS587(dark plum) and RS702(pinky beige). These glosses went on super smooth, kind of like Dior lip polishes and were not sticky whatsoever.

The applicator was pretty interesting. It was spatula shaped but not plastic and it looks a bit like a sword from the side.


Swatches: OR264, RS587, and RS702

The minute I saw the fall line up for Maquillage, I knew my attempt to cut back on make up spending was out the door but thankfully, I wasn't let down. I was pretty please with this collection and the variety of colors. Next post, I'll show one of the 3D face palette =)

Illamasqua-MILF (quickie post)

I had made an effort to go to the Sephora grand opening at times square so I could see the Illamasqua line in person. I picked up some pigments, lip gloss and nail polish. MILF is a minty green shade that I ended up liking more than I had originally anticipated. The formula is excellent and lasted quite some time. I didn't experience any chipping for a week straight except for one lone finger on my right hand. I've already moved on to another polish but here's what my MILF + Konad fishnet stamping looked like:

I will post the other items I got soon!

Givenchy Poetique Blue and Poetique Brown palettes + Liner

I finally swatched the Givenchy Poetique Blue and Poetique Brown palettes! Sorry very pic heavy post-I wanted to show the color and shimmer for all the shadows. I love both palettes. Although I will admit that many of the lighter colored shadows are very similar to each other. The shadows last really well all day (Note: I always wear UDPP) and the combinations are endless.

Here are swatches for the Poetique blue palette (For actual pic of palette, please see earlier post). I swatched left to right in each row. Rows are from top to bottom.

All nine shadows

Close up, first five

Close up, last four

So after I fell in love with the Poetique Blue palette, I ordered the Poetique Brown palette. I was afraid it may be too warm of a palette but I was really happy and I think the Poetique Brown is neither too warm or too cool.

Without and with flash

All nine shades


Close up, first five

Close up, last four

The other item I purchased from this collection was the Parad'Eyes Eyeliner in Poetique Lavender. Here is a swatch of it (on the left) next to Lunasol Geminate Liner in 04. In terms of color, I think that the Givenchy liner is more blue while the Lunasol liner has a bit more violet to it. When dried, I also think the Poetique Lavender has a slighter brighter sheen to it. (Will update with a package pic soon). I was afraid that the brush would be too thin but I had no problems with it and I love the color. It also had very good staying power and no flaking.

Hope you enjoyed the pics!