Ethereal Beauty

My Pretty Zombie

2012-02-27T18:28:00.001+10:00

***NOTE THIS POST IS PIC HEAVY***

Hey peeps!

This is a review & swatch post about indie cosmetic company My Pretty Zombie. This is the first time I have purchased from this company, and all opinions are my own.I have seen and heard a BUTTLOAD about MPZ and had wanting to try them for what seems like a gazillion years. Out of all the orders I have recently placed this was the one I was most excited about by far!

I placed an order on the MPZ Etsy (here) on the 10^th of Feb, and received it about 10ish (I think - sorry - I know it was a short time though) days afterwards. I was pretty happy with the TAT and shipping time (although of course MPZ can only control the TAT hah, but still, it was nice and quick which I appreciated).

What I ordered:

Drugs Like Me Blush: MDMA ($8USD)
The Blue Period Trio: Infirmity, Forsaken, Dissolution ($15USD)
The Husbandry Affliction Trio: Mad Cow, Hoof and Mouth, Anthrax ($15USD)
Full Size Eyeshadows: Thundernuts, Disquiet, Quinsy ($5USD each)
3 eye shadow samples you choose the colours pack x 2: Amacyst, Agonys Decay, Illustrated Ink Darksider, Abyssal Gems, Rabies, Black Eye ($3USD each total $6USD)

SHIPPING to Australia was $4.60, a great price IMO considering all the full sizes I purchased.

Andrea also refunded me $9USD after my order placement, a discount I really appreciated and totally did not expect, so that was a great surprise :)

Packaging:

My order arrived carefully packaged in a small postal box, and included a icky fake bloody finger (which I thought was pretty lol, I promptly threw it in my boy's face when he came home from work haha) as well as some business cards and some extra samples! Yay :D

The jars were wrapped in a damask patterned cello bag, all the full size jars were shrink wrapped - which is something I really like since postal workers can be so careless. There was also that pink shredded packaging stuff in the box too, so overall my order was secure and well packaged.

I received three free samples:

LSD - Drugs Like Me Blush
Unicorn Pee - eye shadow
My Pretty Zombie - eye shadow

The samples did not come with ingredients listing, although the labels were round which I thought was great. Since I transfered my samples to jars immedietly, the round labels were handy so I could put them on the bottom of the jars :)

Only one of my products leaked, a full size eye shadow, but it was only a teeny bit and I didn't mind since that kinda of thing is to be expected. But overall the shrink wrap really helped keep the products safe, and none of the sample baggies leaked or asploded.

Product & Sizing:

Usually I don't mention sizing in any of the reviews I have done, but this time since I bought samples as well as full sizes I thought it might be handy for people who haven't yet purchase from MPZ.

At first when I transfered the samples to my 5g jars I was a little confused by the sizing, some of the samples were about 1/8tspn scoop or a bit less (essentially enough for about 2-3 uses) and the others were a lot bigger. Then I realised that the free samples were smaller than the paid samples. This is something that totally does not bother me at all, because a free sample is complimentary and a courtesy item from the seller. Because I don't expect samples, free ones are appreciated no matter what size they are. Since the ones I paid for had more product, I was satisified in that regard also.

Although all loose products weigh different amounts depending on ingredients, the sample weights were from .12g - .54g. The lighter being the free samples and the heavier being the paid samples. I think an average of about .40-.50g is a great weight for the $1 price of paid samples.

The full size products came in these adorable square 5g jars. To me they look smaller than a regular round 5g jar, but I think that's purely because these square jars are higher than the regular round 5g jars that are popular with other indie companies. Personally, I like these square jars, it's nice to see something a little different than usual. The jars come with a MPZ clear sticker on the top, and are labelled with the shadow and ingredients on the bottom.

I didn't weigh all the full sizes, but the ones I did sat inbetween 1.15g - 1.22g. The 5g jars are not filled to the top with product, which is something I personally like as it prevents product spillage from product leaking over the edge of the jar.

I didn't weigh the full size MDMA blush, but I did notice that the jar is about half full if not a little over half capacity. The jar comes with a clear sticker on top, and weight and ingredients etc on the bottom. The weight is stated to be 3.5g net. The jar also came with a standard sifter, and matches the 5g jars too.

Because I didn't weigh the full size blush I can't comment on how accurate the weight is to the 3.5g net statement, but visually it looks like there could of been more product packaged into it and was a little disheartening in that regard, but once again that's just based on visual, not a fact of how much product is actually in there. HOWEVER overall I was happy with the amount of product for the price, and the packaging of the products.

Swatches:

[Blushes on bare skin; foiled shades on bare skin; sunlight swatches over Fyrinnae PE]

I had an issue with my MDMA blush, it had a little bit of unblended Carmine in it. I know how annoying and time consuming it can be to make sure pigmented ingredients like Carmine and oxides are fully blended into a shadow/blush etc, so I contacted Andrea to let her know in case she needed to check that particular batch. Andrea got back to me super quick and said she would post out another MDMA, something I didn't expect at all but appreciated greatly. I managed to get a few swatches that weren't streaked with some of the carmine, especially once it's blended out it was easier.

I love this shade, it's such a sweet, true mid tone pink, that's bright and fun. It has a great golden shimmer to it which wasn't lost upon blending. I know I'll be using this a lot in future.

LSD blush is such a great mix of colour I am actually kinda depressed it's a shade that will most likely not suit my skintone. I'm going to try to make it work though! It's a heavily grey base shade with lilac tones, and a beautiful copper shimmer to it. Once again like MDMA the shimmer is not lost upon blending.

Unicorn Pee was a tricky little mofo. I had a lot of difficulty with my initial swatches, it came out awfully patchy on UDPP and Pixie Epoxy. But I tried it the next day with a different brush and it came out better, so I'm assuming that brush was the problem. Usually I'm extremely apprehensive when it comes to heavier cosmetic grade glitter. Unless there's a super great base mixed in with it it tends to just morph to the outside of the swatch (even when you pat that badboy on instead of swiping), like there's a line of colour that's bordered by glitter, and I find that really annoying. However, Unicorn Pee could maybe do with a bit more base in it, I thought overall it was actually a great shade. It had a heap of fallout but when foiled it wasn't too bad. The holographic glitter in this is INSANE and it's over a soft blue tinged white base. I think I'll be buying a full size of this later one, I just LOVE this shade, seriously just looooooooooooooooooove it ^_^

Thundernuts was a bit darker than I had expected, but that wasn't a bad thing at all. I think this colour is a bit of an odd choice for me, but I will definitely be using this on a regular basis. It's a soft rusted shade with sheer blue duochrome sparklies. Very pretty and great application. The sparklies don't come out as much when foiled, but that's not a big issue because it still looks great either straight over primer or foiled.

Black Eye was definitely more reddish when foiled. When swatched over primer the shimmer came out a bit more too. The photo doesn't do it justice, it's a great colour IRL. Extremely pigmented.

When I was transferring this to a jar from the sample baggie I was kinda 'meh' over it. When I foiled it I was like 'WOWSOBRIGHTHURTINGMYEYES' but after it had dried it was actually a stunning colour. I don't think I have anything so closely bordering a true HOT pink and red. It's an amazing shade, that's also incredibly vibrant when just over a primer. It seems like it has fine flecks of blue/purple/pink shimmer in it, but it was hard to tell. I'm glad this wasn't a matte shade, it's much much better with that fine shimmer. This shade causes some serious skin staining, especially foiled, but nothing that a bit of makeup remover can't deal with.

Hoof and Mouth looks like a grey bluish shade in the MPZ Etsy photographs, but IRL this shade is pretty purple. It doesn't look greyish at all. It has a great subtle emerald green duochrome depending on the light, but when I foiled it I couldn't get the duochrome to appear. I like how the colour shift in this is very subtle, unlike Anthrax which has a noticeable duochrome.

Anthrax appears to have a similar base colour to Hoof and Mouth in the jar, but when it's actually applied it has an intense bright green duochrome. It's super, super awesome. When foiled it's amazing. It also has a subtle shift to a warm copper gold depending on the angle of the light. Very pigmented, very smooth and overall stunning. A must have.

Mad Cow is one of those super popular mixes of blue duochrome over magenta/pink/purple base. It's a fantastic colour that really pops when foiled. It's light and smooth, applies like a dream and is definitely one of those colours everyone should own!

Dissolution is part of the Blue Period Trio and let me tell you right now, if you don't own this set you HAVE to buy it. HAVE TO. My photos do NOT do this shade any justice whatsoever. It's incredibly sparkly, tons of purple shimmer and sparks over a blue purple base. It's insanely glitterly and has a colour shift to it, morphing into a copper gold depending on the angle of the light. Seriously, I can't even put into words how stunning and amazing this eye shadow is. Although it's only good over a base, the sparklies won't stick to bare skin at all, so make sure you use it over a primer or such. It's also just as amazing foiled.

Amacyst is a good staple colour, a deep purple with sparkles. It's like Dissolution's kid sister, less 'out there' but still pretty. It's much darker foiled, but will make a great liner.

Forsaken is part of The Blue Period Trio, and just like Dissolution it is stunning. It's amazingly sparkly and has a colour shift to purple depending on the angle of the light. Absolutely beautiful.

Illustrated Ink is less of a true midnight blue like the Etsy pics show, but it almost spot on with the finger swatch MPZ has on there. It's a great colour, a deep greyish blue base with bold blue duochrome. It's not glittery, but is amazing in sunlight nonetheless. It's very very smooth and great when foiled.

Rabies is a fav of mine. A soft aqua blue with touches of sea green, it has an extremely subtle pink duochrome and it just beautiful for an everyday or spring colour. Love it.

Disquiet is another favourite of mine, especially when foiled. It's a great sea green with blue duochrome, and omg, I just can't even describe how much I love this shade. I don't have anything that's quite on par with it, so it's now very unique to my collection.

Quinsy is another fav, that also is great foiled. It has a subtle blue green duochrome that didn't photograph very well at all, but in real life this is super pigmented and the duochrome really compliments the shade.

Agonys Decay is a shade that I didn't think would be sparkly, but it has some of the holographic glitter in it. It honestly not my type of colour, but since I only bought the sample size that doesn't matter much. It's still quite pigmented and smooth, but the glitter was lost a bit when foiled.

Infirmity is the third and final shade in The Blue Period Trio. Once again you MUST purchase this. It's an insane collaboration of golden and green sparkles over a deep green blue base, incredible when foiled. It has a subtle colour shift to emerald green depending on the angle of the light and this is my favourite colour of the trio. Stunning.

Abyssal Gems is a simple shade, a deep green over a dark base. It's very smooth and pigmented, honestly not a colour I will ever use often, but that doesn't matter much. That's the whole thing with trying new products, you either love them or don't, that's the risk I take lol. Either way, this is a great standard shade that applies well.

Overall Final Thoughts:

Overall I was incredibly impressed with many of the shades I purchased, especially the Blue Period Trio.I was impressed by the quick TAT, the discount I was given unaware and the replacement of my blush without request. Andrea provided quick and courteous customer service, and the products overall are of high quality, with fantastic and unique shades in many varieties.

There is absolutely no question about whether or not I will purchase from My Pretty Zombie again - it's a definite yes.

I have to say my absolute fav shades are Infirmity, Forsaken and Dissolution. I literally cannot get over how stunning these colours are and I'm absolutely obsessed with them.

What are your thoughts on the shades I ordered? Have you tried them before? Any to recommend me for a future order? Would love to know!

Thanks for reading,

Sophie

Upcoming swatch posts

2012-02-17T21:46:00.001+10:00

Hi dolls!

Wow what a day! My boy left our rent money (which is two weeks worth) AT the ATM... so when we went back 15 minutes later of course it was gone... so today we lost $550 to a stranger and I am so disappointed that a responsible kind-hearted person didn't pick it up and leave it at the Police Station on the next street. At least my birthday which is tomorrow has provided me with some b-day cash, which I can use to help cover the rent. But still, I'm always so disappointed that in these types of situations people seem to think they're entitled to people's property. I know my boy should have made sure he picked the cash up, but in his defense he was in a big rush this evening preparing for a trip down south for the weekend. *sigh*.

So I was going to post another look today but after this afternoon I just haven't had the heart to really do much more than kind of stew over money problems in a grumpy silence, alone in my home, lol.

I know that for many months now I haven't done any products reviews or swatches. No my blog isn't really just about that, but I do enjoy having a few things to post about, rather than just 'look what I wore today' posts. So I had had a bit of cash floating around for the first time in months (literally); January was a good month for Femme Fatale! So I decided to splurge on some indie makeup from a bunch of companies I had yet to try, and one I placed my second order at (now a year from the first hah!).

The orders I'm awaiting on:

Pollen Cosmetics (eye shadow samples)
My Pretty Zombie (blush & eye shadow f/s & samples)
Persephone (eye shadow f/s & samples)
Scaredy Cat Cosmetics (samples)
Darling Girl Cosmetics (petite eye shadows)

And I have to admit I am SO excited like you wouldn't believe. Although I work around makeup almost every day, I think I have really missed actually trying OTHER makeup. I've missed shopping for new shades and the squirmy excitement I have whenever I'm anticipating a package of goodies in the mail any day now :D

So you guys know me to an extent, I love swatching and having sparklie rainbow arms (lol), so I'm really looking forward to these upcoming posts, especially as 4 outof the 5 I have never tried before. The only qualm I've had to date is that I have no idea if my Persephone and Darling Girl orders have shipped. At least on Etsy you can see when they're markled as shipped, but with Artfire and Darling Girl's website I have no idea what's happening to my order and it's been about 5 business days now. Hopefully if they're not off on it's way to me already they will be soon :)

I will be posting more soon, another EOTD over the weekend I hope. I have formulated my new eye shadow releases for Femme Fatale so I'm going to be playing around with those a little more over the weekend I think.

Have a great day and fun weekend :)

Soph

♥ FOTD: Studio Waltz

2012-02-09T22:11:00.001+10:00

Hey everyone,

I'm back AGAIN with another look, because apparently I have wayyyy too much spare time haha. Felt like doing something a bit more toned down this time, so I picked out a few lesser used soft shades and just did whatevs. I like how it turned out, but this is not a look I will probably do ever again with these particular shades because although they work well the light pink just doesn't work with my skin-tone at all. I'd probably like to replace it with a deep purple grey actually.

- WHAT I USED -

EYES:
Primer: Urban Decay Primer Potion
Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'
Crease: Sugarpill 'Dollipop' applied lightly through crease; Aromaleigh 'Pirouette' used to blend 'Dollipop' into 'Tako'; Aromaleigh 'Graphite' in outer crease for definition and pulled lightly towards inner corner.
Lid: Aromaleigh 'Hyacinth' which is a super light blue but applies as a white with blue undertones. Over 'Hyacinth' I applied Medusa's Makeup 'Studio 54' from inner corner to middle of lid for a touch of golden shimmer.
Inner Corner: Fyrinnae PE with a white holographic loose glitter applied over the top (so old I don't even have a label on it).
Upper Lashline: Catwalk liquid liner in 'Amethyst'.
Lower Lashline: NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in 'Milk' blended out; over which Aromaleigh 'Waltz' was applied. 'Graphite' was lightly smudged towards outer lashline.
Waterline: Bourjois Contour Clubbing eyeliner (black) towards outer waterline; Urban Decay 24/7 glide on eye pencil in 'Ransom' towards inner corner.

FACE:
Foundation:
Maybelline Dream Matte Mouse in Light 2 Classic Ivory
Aromaleigh Pure Cover #1

Blush:
MAC 'Ripe Peach' Blush Ombre

Highlight:
Aromaleigh Luminescence Divine Finishing Powder 'Seraph'

Lips:
Body Shop Hi-Shine Lip treatment in an unnamed colour. It's essentially a pigmented sticky gloss; the shade is a berry apple red but applies a bit more sheer than what's in the tube of course.

You can't see it in the photos but the glitter I used on the inner corner was super sparkly (as glitter tends to be, duh Sophie haha). When I finished doing this look I wanted to call it 'Unicorn Poop' because the pastels, pink and glitter just reminded me of it sooo much, but I figured it mightn't be overly appropriate to call any makeup look 'poop' haha.

Will probs be posting again soon, I've really gotten into a makeup kick lately since work has been a bit quiet the last few days.

Have a great evening!

Sophie

♥ FOTD: Golden Trax

2012-02-09T01:34:00.003+10:00

Hiya!

I have a full faced look for you today, and let me just tell you I LOVE the colour combination I ended up throwing together. I picked out one or two lesser used shades, and I love how it all came together.

I had been a bit indecisive for whether I should attempt a look at all recently, because my fav primer Aromaleigh in Light is all used up :( I tried using Pixie Epoxy but that's no good for blending at all; no matter how little I use or how long I wait for it to dry up a little. Pixie Epoxy is great for when I need to pat super awesome sparkly stuff on, and that's about it for me. I thought my UDPP was drying up - when I used it the other day nothing would even stick to it. But I gave it another shot this eve and this time it worked fine - yay!

- WHAT I USED -

EYES:
Primer: Urban Decay Primer Potion
Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'
Crease: MAC 'Trax' throughout crease, blended into 'Tako' using BFTE 'Violet Stardust' which is a pink duochrome on a white base (also a repack of TKB Hilite Violet). Aromalegih 'Umber' is applied over 'Trax' towards the outer crease to provide depth.
Lid: Aromaleigh 'Golden Chrysalis'
Inner Corner: NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in 'Milk' with 'Violet Stardust' applied over the top.
Upper Lashline: Rimmel liquid liner in black with a slight wing; over which NYX Candy Glitter liner in 'Crystal' was applied. While 'Crystal' was wet I patted on Aromaleigh glitter in 'Morgaine'.
Lower Lashline: Bourjois Contour Clubbing eyeliner smudged out, with Kat Von D's 'Lucifer' (from the True Love palette) applied lightly over the top.
Waterline: Bourjois Contour Clubbing eyeliner (black)

FACE:
Foundation:
Maybelline Dream Matte Mouse in Light 2 Classic Ivory
Aromaleigh Pure Cover #1

Blush:
Femme Fatale Cosmetics 'Exotic'

Highlight:
Aromaleigh Luminesce Divine Finishing Powder 'Seraph'

And I leave you with a picture of my 'little moo' who so thoughtfully cleaned herself on my side of the bed after sprinting in from the sudden downpour we had this afternoon.

Hope you enjoyed my look!

Have a great evening ^_^

Sophie x

♥ EOTD: Hot Candy

2012-02-03T23:41:00.000+10:00

Hi again!

I'm posting again so soon, haha. After watching a brief HR Giger doco this evening I was all 'hrm what to do?' and I figured I'd play around with my makeup some more.

A few days ago I rearranged my bedroom because every now and then I have to change things around, whether to be more functional or just because I'm sick of how it looks. So after I finished heaving all the heavy furniture around in the tiny space that is my bedroom (whilst sweating like crazy and probably making those unladylike grunting sounds that are usually limited to intense workouts) I eventually went through my makeup stash and neatened it all out. I realised how much I'd missed just using my stuff. I get so sidetracked with work and looking at makeup all day I seem to never have the energy to actually use my personal makeup stash, which is a damn shame because I have enough to last me until the day I die.

I'm still trying to use the stuff I hardly ever touch (eye shadow wise) but for this look I choose to use a NYX glitter liner as I hadn't used one in a long, looooong time. Maybe like 5 months long time.

- WHAT I USED -

Primer: Aromaleigh in Light

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'

Crease: Aromaleigh 'Umber' in outer crease, overlaid with Inglot '38' up towards my brow. 38 is a soft peach with strong blue duochrome, so it's come up noticeably blue over 'Umber'

Lid: Sugarpill 'Dollipop'

Inner Corner: Aromaleigh 'Orion'

Lower Lashline: 'Umber' towards outer corner, Sugarpill 'Magentric' towards inner corner.

Liner: Rimmel liquid liner in black on lid, overlaid with NYX Candy Glitter Liner in 'Hot Candy'. Waterline is a black Rimmel liner, one I've had since I forget when and is just pretty standard and not very exciting.

I really liked how 38 over Umber created this subtle purple; which along with the blue, apricot and pinks made a really appealing collection of colours. What do you think? I also love how Hot Candy looks over the black liner, in some photos it just looks like a miniature string of sequins <3

Also, sorry my pictures are half at one angle and half at the other. I would of changed them to all be the same angle because I liked things to match and all, but they looked better how they are. Haha..

Hope you enjoyed this look!

Sophie

♥ EOTD: Biker Chic

2012-02-03T14:46:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

A quick EOTD for you today, a look I did the other night. I didn't do a full face, i was just mucking around with eye shadow but I liked the mix of colours so I wanted to share. Enjoy!

[No flash]

[Flash]

- WHAT I USED -

Primer: Aromaleigh 'Light'.

Highlight: Light dusting of Sugarpill 'Tako'

Crease: Fyrinnae 'Biker Chic' in outer crease, overlaid with Persephone Minerals 'Bi-Curious' which turned into a copper/red over the 'Biker Chic' areas but remained a light blue towards to the highlight.

Lid: Aromaleigh 'Disintergration' over Fyrinnae PE.

Inner Corner: Fyrinnae 'Dinosaur Plushie' lightly overlaid with Lime Crime 'Snow Queen'.

Lower Lashline: 'Bi-Curious' over UD eyeliner in 'Perversion'.

Waterline: 'Perversion'

Liquid Liner: Rimmel in Black.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Bi-Curious colour shift, I hadn't applied it over something dark prior. It's a shame Disintegration doesn't photograph well with my camera, but it's basically just loose glitter. Also Biker Chic has these awesome aqua sparks that really contrasted the heavy blue glitter, although it's a bit harder to see in the pictures. Same with Dinosaur Plushie, it has rainbow sparks which I love but it's impossible for me to photograph :( Now I think about it I should either get a better camera or just give up altogether, lol.

Till next time ~

Sophie

2011 Favourites

2012-01-14T20:54:00.000+10:00

Hi peeps!

A quick post today about my favourite products from 2011. It's a bit of a late post, I only realised this morning that I hadn't even given any thought to it! I know it's a popular topic and who am I, the mere mortal that I am, to object to jumping on the beauty blogging bandwagon. Silliness aside, I am still on a sort-of hiatus, and to be frank there's been screaming children at our place all afternoon and I needed SOMETHING to block out the never ending banging, squealing and thumping.

Let's get to it!

Inglot Pigment #84

For those of you who know even a little something about me, you know I love colour shifting and duochrome eye shadows as much as a crazy lady loves hoarding cats. Ingot #84 is one of the pigments you REALLY should be looking at adding to your stash if you don't have it already. Unless you hate golds or rustic warm tones, then you guys can just give this one a miss. Like all Inglot pigments #84 applies like a dream (who couldn't of guessed that?) and the shimmery goodness is drool-worthy.

Fyrinnae 'Mephisto'

This one is a no brainer, look at that colour - have you ever seen such a little pot of colourful bliss? I think not. I love how Mephisto is this deep plum with red flecks in the jar, and as soon as you apply it it just does this crazy morph into a red/brown/golden eye shadow. I literally could just sit and be mesmerised by Mephisto all day every day.

Fyrinnae 'Wicked'

Wicked is another favourite, not only is it mind blowingly stunning when it's just hanging out in it's jar mesmerising me, once it's applied it's just full of blue and teal flecks of shimmer over a smooth blue and plum base. I think it's pretty individual to each person, people have their own way of interpreting colour - but this is an amazing shade. Like all Fyrinnae's shades it applies smoothly and is incredibly pigmented.

Bourjois Paris - Contour Clubbing - Waterproof Eye Liner

For an eye liner hoarder like me you tend to end up with 50 different brands of every ladies beauty staple - the black eye liner. Contour Clubbing has been my pick of the bunch in 2011, and the one I used most frequently. I like a good eye liner that's soft (ever tried to apply a hard eye liner? It's like stabbing your waterline with a skewer) as well as being super duper pigmented. Contour is both of these for me. Of course most beauty products are subjective - people have individual tastes. For me Contour Clubbing has hit the mark, and I'll definitely be purchasing it again when I run out.

Sugarpill - 'Tako' - Sweetheart palette.

Whoever could of guessed I'd include Tako here can now place a gold star on their forehead and can be the epitome of win-ness forever more. Joking aside, Tako is the best highlighter I have come across. It's a simple white matte eye shadow, which can be found in nearly any and every drugstore palette, but Tako is creamy smooth, easy to blend and actually can be built up to a nice opaque white. This is the Sugarpill eye shadow I use the most; almost EVERY time I do my eyes Tako is used as the browbone highlight. THAT'S how much I love it.

Sigma - Flat Top Synthetic Kabuki - F80

So awhile back I did a review on Sigma since I bought a bunch of their brushes. Out of the entire lot I purchased this is the best brush and the one I use the most. I don't have a very high opinion of Sigma brushes, and even this one sheds on occasion STILL; but it is good at what it does. It's lovely and dense (which it won't be in the future if it continues to shed -sadfase-) and soft, and it does wonders for my over-blushed cheeks.

MAC - Bite of an Apple Blush - Venomous Villains Collection

Bite of an Apple was a blush I looked at and really did question whether it's lush shade would suit my cheeks. I took the risk and fortunately for me, it does. MAC is a brand I really do not purchase from, simply because in Australia it's insanely, hideously and horribly expensive. I think we pay 2 to 3 times more than Americans do for MAC products; so usually when I do buy MAC products I tend to purchase things I really desperately need and other then that I leave MAC well alone. That aside, Bite of an Apple was a good purchase on my behalf. I tend to stick to really soft shades as I'm quite fair skinned, but I like the rosy glow this gives me. Kind of like I've just been out in the snow, which maybe in hindsight might look out of place since it's summer in Australia 365 days of the year.

Cover Girl TRUblend Minerals - Shimmering Sands - 430

Ok so this one I cheated a bit - I think I purchased this a bit before 2011, but I've never mentioned it on my blog before and I do tend to use it quite frequently. Shimmering Sands is a loose mineral blush which is a really soft pink and has a heavy helping of golden shimmer throughout. I like Shimmering Sands because I'm so fair - one quick sweep of this will give me a nice glow that lasts throughout the day. It's more suitable for day wear because it is such a pale shade, and the fine golden shimmer helps to highlight my cheeks. This is a blush I will purchase again, even if it is a drugstore brand.

JUUCE - Iron Smooth

Iron Smooth is a heat protector for your hair. This was one of many heat protectors I have purchased over the years, since I have crazy wavy and generally undesirable hair I tend to straighten it with a feverish passion almost daily. Iron Smooth is silicone and oil-free and protects from heat up to 200˚C. What I have liked the most about Iron Smooth is that it doesn't make my hair sticky. I don't know if anyone else has ever had this issue with a heat protector, but some of them do tend to make my hair sticky and therefor more irksome when trying to straighten it since it tends to glue the ends of your hairs together and knots it. Anyway, Iron Smooth doesn't do that at all, so it's nice to use plus it seems to work. Either that or I have mutant strong hair.

Lush - Angels on Bare Skin

For someone like me who likes to exfoliate religiously, Angels on Bare Skin is a great exfoliate because it's so soft. It's not harsh on your skin, which means I can do it as frequently as I like (which is a lot). Not only is it a fresh product filled with lush ingredients; it also has a calming scent to it - rose and lavender. If you haven't tried this product before and you like to exfoliate I definitely recommend it with a gazillion gold stars.

Lush - Dream Cream

I did a review on this earlier last year and raved about how it made my elbow skin soft. MADE IT SOFT. That's how good this product is. It too also smells amazingly calming and organic, because Lush seemed to have perfected that. The only thing I haven't liked about Dream Cream is that it doesn't keep my skin moisturised for long enough, but for the sake of my elbows I can deal with that.

Chandelier Earrings

Pretty sure we've all been through this fad. It's pretty self explanatory. I think I purchased these from one of those junk jewelry outlets like Diva or Equip; and I call it junk jeweler y because most of their stuff is not only overpriced but also extremely poor quality (tends to break in about a month). These were a pleasant surprise though; I think I've had them since March or April 2011 and they have yet to lose a diamante or fall apart. Plus they're pretty to look at.

Glass Rose Bead - Tedora

I purchased this glass bead from a jeweler near my old work; and to be honest I was pretty apprehensive putting it on my Pandora bracelet (and not because it automatically voids any repairs Pandora will thus do on that bracelet). I thought it would be of less than impressive quality since the market is so full of bead and charm companies these days. However, I have been pleasantly surprised. Not only is the design of the roses on black still as appealing to me as it was originally, it hasn't chipped or broken or anything negative at all. It just sits on my bracelet looking pretty.

Buddha & Witch Charm - Pandora

My family members tend to gift me Pandora charms on special occasions. For Christmas 2011 my mum gave me the Buddha charm which I felt was a weird choice because neither of us is even slightly religious (excluding the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) but she said it was for calmness or something similar, which I appreciate anyway regardless of what the charm is because it's a gift from my mum so it naturally means a lot to me anyway. My brother gifted me the Witch, which I did blog about, because it's so damn ugly and I absolutely love it. Trust him to get me that.

And that wraps up my favourite 2011 items. Hope you enjoyed my post, and I will still be on hiatus but hopefully back soon with some more EOTD's.

Were any of my favs similar to yours for 2011?

Thanks for reading xx

Sophie

Extended Hiatus

2012-01-13T17:06:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps,

Just letting you all know I'm taking an extended blog hiatus. Life is pretty busy at the moment, there's some other stuff I need to focus on. Nothing too serious, but it just means I'm short on time a lot recently.

Hopefully will be back soon - I'm still planning on working my way through my giant stash of eye shadows!

Sophie

Christmas

2011-12-29T16:02:00.000+10:00

Hi all!

Hope you all had a super awesome Christmas with your family and friends!

I spent Christmas day down in Lismore with my mum's side of the family and my brother. We used a GPS nav system on our phone, and it took us a way that was 10k's shorter than the route I had intended to take. The great part was that you had to do about 30k's the entire way, which pushed us an additional 30 minutes behind schedule. Although I didn't really mind, the winding route we took was a bit NE of Lismore, and the scenery was just stunning.

I had to keep stopping to take pictures! It was a slightly overcast day, but I think that made the drive nicer in some ways.

I have to mention the best present I received was from my brother, who picked out a charm for my Pandora bracelet. He picked out a witch, of all things! It's honestly the ugliest little charm I have ever seen, and I absolutely LOVE it!

I made shower scrub for the female family members, my dad thoughts it was something to clean the shower with /rolls eyes. The recipe I posted about before is the one I used, super easy and quick to make! I couldn't find my Jojoba Oil so I substituted it with Olive Oil (which I looked up a bit first, but seemed to be ok).

I had such a great Christmas, I can't believe how many bottles of wine and chocolate I received! I won't be able to fit through my front door soon :( Everyone loved out gift baskets, but I am NOT doing that again next year. It ended up being more trouble than it was worth, especially with all the additional cooking. The cooking went fine, but it was just frustrating spending every evening making fudge or cookies after work when all I wanted to do was veg out and watch A Game of Thrones.

Hope you all had an amazing Christmas though, what did you get up to? Do you travel much for Christmas? Thankfully for us our longest drive is to Lismore, which is only about 2.5 hours :)

Sophie

♥ Pinks/Purples with FFC [Phyrra Indie Spotlight]

2011-12-20T23:11:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone!

Hope you are having a good Christmas week so far and haven't been rushing around too madly (like I have been, hehe). I mentioned in my previous post that I would be posting a look I did for something outside of this blog; this will be the last post until after Christmas for me.

Anywho, I did a Indie Spotlight on Phyrra recently, and the look I put together using FFC shadows was one that I really liked, I loved how it turned out so I wanted to share it with you.

So almost everything I used was FFC since that's what the spotlight was for:
•Sugarpill Tako – Highlight.
•Archangel – over Tako and in Inner corner
•Incantation – Upper Crease
•Unholy – Crease
•Obliterate – Outer lid
•Levitate – rest of lid
•Lower Lashline – Unholy towards outer eye, Obliterate in the middle, Archangel in Inner Corner
•Aspect Chroma Glow Blush on cheeks.
•Liner is Urban Decay Perversion.

My foundation was Maybelline Mousse in light or something, I forget what, I cbf checking (sorry, if you really want to know what it is leave me a comment and I'll check lol).

The upper crease/highlight area is a little more greyed out than I actually would have liked, but I think in a way that tone works well with tying the look together, since I have such a dark blackish based crease shade.

I'm starting to do a few more looks with FFC lately, since I'm preparing to fill out a section on the FFC blog with looks using the products, to show how they are with 'real life swatches' if you catch my drift..

In relation to FFC I've recently opened up a cart on Facebook (which uses PayPal for transactions) and through that you can purchase L.E. items and gift certificates, if you want to find out more go here.

Other than that I seriously have been bookmarking some shades form indie brands I'm desperate to try out, hoping to get a chance to grab some in early Jan, because I'd love to do some more swatch posts and get back into working my way through the gazillion eye shadows I have.

To all my followers if you don't already follow Phyrra, please go check her blog out - it's seriously friggen' awesome and one I've been following for a looong time now; she does a ton of great beauty looks, reviews and helpful posts on new companies or stuff to avoid. And a quick shout out to Phyrra, thank you so much for having me on your blog for the Indie Spotlight, I really appreciate it! ♥

I hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas and NYE!

Sophie

Short Hiatus Upcoming.

2011-12-19T00:01:00.000+10:00

Hello lovelies!

I have a quick post today, a general update. It's getting so close to Christmas now I wanted to mention that I will be on a short hiatus from my blog. I have a post coming up in the next few days with a quick look I did for something outside of this blog, which I really want to share with you all since I LOVED how it turned out. So that will be up in the next few days. This week I'm really focusing on bringing all the hampers for our family members together, as well as FFC work which has gotten a bit busy in the last 48 hours.

So because of this I probably won't be posting much until after Christmas, but I figure at this time of year everyone is in a similar spot to me, focusing on family and the mad rush that happens right before the 25th!

I'll finish up my quick update with some pictures of my super dooper Christmas tree (I love our tree!). It's a fake tree, one that we bought from Myer along with the decorations about 3 years ago. I of course wanted to buy multicoloured decorations (who could of guessed that?) but we eventually settled on one colour theme - silver and blues. We don't put tinsel on our tree, just hanging decorations. I like to put tinsel on just about everything else but the tree though haha! It's hanging all over our walls and from the ceiling :D

It looks much prettier IRL - without a camera flash. And yes, that is a pink stuffed Pegasus on my bookcase. I figure that girliness is countered by the Warlock figurine of Meryl Felstorm I have in front of it, lol. I was considering tying my Illidan figure to the top of the tree, but my boy wasn't a fan of that bright idea. Haha.

Have a fun and safe Christmas week everyone!

Sophie

♥ FOTD: Molten Cloud

2011-12-10T15:29:00.001+10:00

Hello lovelies!

I have a quick FOTD today, just some warms tones I was playing around with last night. I liked it that much I thought I would share! The inspiration for the colours is loosely themed around WoW's Firelands raid, as I was playing for a bit last night and I adore all the warm colours in the game's scenery.

I've used some shades I rarely use, including the blush and illuminator. I was using flash and didn't apply the blush heavily, so it doesn't show up well. It was a soft coral tone with a bit of sparkly stuff, aka glitter.

Had a lot of trouble blending the base crease colour (the deep red shade by Inglot). It was annoying and took me awhile but eventually smoothed out.

Anywho, what I used is below the pictures as always.

[Sparkly!]

[EDIT: btw if you're wondering why I have a dot on my upper lip it's a closed Medusa's piercing. Sometime it shows up a lot, weirdly.]

- WHAT I USED -

[You can click to enlarge]

EYES

Aromaleigh Primer in Light
Highlight - Tako
Upper Crease - #48
Mid Crease - Holiday Spices
Base of Crease - #450
Outer V - #450
Lid - Skiba
Inner Corner - Cloud White overlaid with Rapidash
Upper Lashline - Blackground (used as a liner winged out slightly in the Outer V)
Lower Lashline - #450
Waterline - Stray Dog
Lashes - Plain black mascara (Rimmel I think)

FACE

No primer, too lazy lol.
Foundation - Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse in Classic Ivory Light 2 (too dark for me but I figured the flash would even it out, which it did - yay for smart brain choice!)
Powder - Maybelline Shine Free Loose Powder in Light 01 (I rarely use this so figured now was a good time to start. It's a pretty average product, but I always prefer my Natio pressed foundation powder)
Blush - Momobella
Illuminator - Solace (I LOVE this. First time I've used it, the soft pink shimmer is stunning and applies so well, cannot get enough of it)
Lips - Hi-Shine Lip treatment (gloss) by The Body Shop. I forgot to picture this and it has no name. I got this during a work secret santa in a pack of three. The one I used is a really neutral shade (applies almost clear) with a bit of glitter. I don't like lippy much, actually I don't like putting anything on my lips aside from basic gloss, but these ones last quite awhile and are shiny!

And as I was putting this post together I realised my makeup matches my berry-carrot hair:

So as you may have read in my last post I died half my hair (ran out of time to finish). I was going to do the rest yesterday but I kind of like this odd colour mix. I might leave it for awhile, or maybe dye the orange into a bright colour. Not sure yet.

Hope you enjoyed my look! The weather has been cool enough for me to do full faced shots, hopefully the cooler weather will continue so I can post some more next week :)

Have a great weekend!

Sophie

Inspirational Christmas ideas: homemade hampers and body scrubs.

2011-12-09T03:42:00.003+10:00

Hi everyone!

So I have been a bit AWOL lately. The weather has been so dismal lately and I've been focusing on work a ton! Now that I've got a few spare moments I wanted to get back into updating. Well, actually for the last 3 months or so I've had really bad insomnia which has led to erratic sleeping patterns. It's now 3.15am and I'm not even tired. It's doing my head in not having a normal sleeping pattern. And I've never had insomnia before this year. I guess this year has really been a big one for me or something.

I'm planning a EOTD in the next few days, and I've recently dyed my hair deep purple! Actually, half of it. I did the front half (I get the boy to do the back since I can't see the back of my head luls) and it took way longer than I anticipated. I got halfway through and then realised it was raid time (shameless WoW addict lol) and had to wash it out. Luckily since I have thick mid length hair I always buy two packs, so I can finish the rest off tomorrow. So now half my hair is a deep plum and and the rest is bright orange - certainly an interesting mix of colours.

So aside from work I've been focusing a LOT on Christmas gifts. Since we're not financially well off at the moment we decided to put together gift hampers for our immediate family members (6 or so people). Which in some ways is fantastic, because it's a cheap alternative to buying specific costly gifts, but on the other hand each has to be planned slightly different. For example some family members on drink white wine, the others red, some only drink Baileys, and some not at all. It's hard to plan for my dad, because he can't eat too much sugary foods, and his partner is such a good cook it's almost a waste of time including lots of food gifts; so we're substituting sugary food items with things like handmade shower scrubs, incense (he likes incense a lot), a windchime (the previous bamboo one broke and after many McGuyver repair jobs it finally fell down for the last time and died) and some savoury items like spreads, chutney, olives, cheeses (he loves the smelly ones! lol) and exotic coffee etc.

It's a bit of work, but we're making a lot of the foods ourselves, and I'm making a shower scrub. I wanted to make some soap but that would of been more costly. I looked at soap suppliers and a kit averages about 50 - 180 aussie bucks (yeah........). Then I read up some more about it on the net but I felt a little too out of depth to attempt it for a gift. I would LOVE to learn soapmaking, I think I would really enjoy it, but maybe when I have more free time to play around and perfect it.

Plus I LOVE crafty stuff like this. I almost got fully into scrapbooking before I realised it was a waste of my time since I have hardly any pictures and ones I do have stay in frames anyway. Heh.

So we're getting jars, baskets, stuffing and ribbon stuff from the dollar store which is a good money saver. Once I'm done it'll hopefully look a million bucks. Or more hopefully, not just like one buck. Lol.

I'm making a lot of baked goods myself which when i buy the ingredients will be costly, but when divided between 5-6 people it works out to be about 10-15 bucks each on food items which is pretty good! I'm a little bummed I don't have enough cash to throw around, I adore buying gifts for others. But I think on the other hand that our family will appreciate the fact we made a lot of it ourselevs too. So I'm happy as well.

This is the food I'm making, all relatively easy with few ingredients. I got all the recipes from Taste.com.au -

[Note all images here onwards courtesy of Google]

Chocolate Turtles! This recipe was a basic random find. Mini preztels + Rolo + oven for 2 mins or so. Push halved pecans into the squishy melted Rolo and viola! Turtles!!!! Om nom nom :D

White chocolate and macadamia cookies.

Rocky Road (the boy's father is a Rocky Road fiend apparently!)

Caramel Hazelnut Fudge. Look how tasty that is!!!!

Honey, Cinnamon and Pinenut Shortbread.

So all of those are pretty straightforward, easy to do. I'm no gourmet chef but I can easily follow recipes with no problems. Everything looks so tasty I want to make it now!!! Sorry no links to the specific recipes, I copied the recipes for myself but didn't bookmark or anything, nore did I want to make this post longer than it already is!! If you go to www.taste.com.au you can search for those specific dishes quite easily however. They have a HUGE range of Christmas treats and recipes. Seriously, go there to find something new and fancy to make this Christmas.

Now for some inspirational food pictures! What I would love to make but probably don't have the skill to nor the monies to buy a gazillion ingredients lol. These would make such fab additions to a gift hamper!!!

(NEED to make these dipping spoons SO badly! How tasty do they look??? zomg)

I love the idea of cookies or cake mix in a jar. The layered ingredients looks fantastic.

Gift hamper inspiration:

( Love the homey/handmade feel about this one!)

(This one is probably a little to flashy for my relatives but I loved the girliness of it!)

(I adore the look of this homemade body scrub!)

And finally the scrub I'm making: ( found this recipe randomly through the interwebs, so sorry I don't have a specific link)

Aunt Katie's Body Scrub

Honey 3/4 cup
Caster sugar 1 cup
Sea salt 1 cup
Jojoba oil 3ml
Fragrance oil 3ml (orange & ylang ylang are beautiful combined with the honey)

Pour honey into medium sized bowl, then add sugar and stir to combine. Add the salt in increments, to adjust the consistency to your liking. (I prefer a consistency not unlike crytallized honey). When all ingredients combine, add oils and stir well. This recipe is particularly long keeping as the lack of water discourages bacteria.

Sounds so devine, I can't wait to make it and try it out! Fragrance oils are expensive here, about 10-20 bucks per tiny jar. I wanted to make additional bath/body stuff but simply couldn't afford it. I wanted to pick a scent that most people would appreciate, so I hope they'll like the Orange and Ylang Ylang :D

That about wraps it up for me. I can't wait to get started on the baking and wrapping. I'll definitely share some pictures here of the finished product :D

What are you giving to your family members this season? Have you made your own body scrubs or bath salts before? If you have please let me know - I'd love to hear how yours turned out and what type it was!

Soph

Back soon :D

2011-12-02T00:31:00.001+10:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanting to update quickly why I've been a bit AWOL recently, I've just been overwhelmed with work a little. Not too much so, but enough that I've very little free time recently. Hoping next week to be back into posting, I have a few unused shades (Fyrinnae and Persephone Minerals especially!) aside that I'm wanting to play with in the next few days! Also, I will be doing more tutorials but not until I get my hair under control. I keep bleaching it to go lighter but then have to dye it so I can go out, it's like this never-ending loop haha. I'm at the stage now where I'm just bleaching until Christmas, so unfortunately I won't be doing a tutorial until xmas/NYE time. But I'm looking forward to doing another, and I was wanting to do full faced tutorials, hence me putting it on the back burner for the moment. But I will still be doing EOTD's again from next week :D

Back soon!

Sophie

Petition: Cancel advertising until Kyle Sandilands is dumped from radio

2011-11-25T14:59:00.002+10:00

Hi everyone,

This isn't really related to anything else on my blog, but I found this issue has affected me as such I feel it important to share what I can about it. Here in Australia we have (what I consider) to be a E-Grade 'Celeb' shock jock Kyle Sandilands, who is possibly the most immoral and disgusting person I have encountered through a media outlet. I'm not going to go on and rant about it, but I will link and quote a few necessary things which will show why a good portion of the Australian public is fed up with it all.

PLEASE NOTE THERE IS OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE AND DEROGATORY TERMS IN THESE QUOTES.

A few quotes taken from Wikipedia:

"In 2005, Sandilands replaced Ian "Dicko" Dickson as one of the judges on Network Ten's Australian Idol. A year later, Sandilands referred to idol contestant Bobby Flynn as a "mong" - a derogatory slang term for mongoloid, referring to people suffering from Down syndrome."

"On 4 August 2006, Sandilands used his radio program to call Fiona Connolly, a columnist from Sydney's Daily Telegraph, "fat" and a "liar". After calling her the "chick that I hate at Sydney Confidential" he also stated he "... would hire a private investigator to film her and her family then I'm going to put it on a website and I'm going to show everyone what members of her family do that are dodgy ..." He has since been banned by Austereo management from mentioning Connolly on air."

"On 20 August 2007, Media Watch examined Sandilands' on-air comments asserting that smoking was not as harmful to people as many institutions would lead people to believe and that the statistics presented by these institutions are falsified. These comments led to the Cancer Institute of New South Wales pulling their "13-QUIT" advertisements off the network. Media Watch further reported that on 20 July 2009 Jackie O and Sandilands 'cruelly' and 'sadistically' taunted a refugee from Pol Pot's Cambodia and meted out similar treatment to the woman's 19 year-old niece whilst on-air."

"On 29 July 2009, Sandilands and co-host, Henderson, were leading a segment on their regular 2Day FM morning show in which a 14 year old girl was strapped to a lie detector while the child's mother, Sandilands and Henderson questioned her, including questions about her prior experience with sex and drugs. Before questioning started Jackie Henderson had propositioned to the mother "What’s your worst fear? Is it the sex?".

The girl started by saying, "I'm scared. It's not fair". Sandilands said, "She is scared everyone. Yeah." The segment went astray when the girl revealed she had been raped at the age of 12. The girl had been asked by her mother if she had any sexual experience. After a long pause, Sandilands then clarified "Right ... is that the only experience you've had?".

The segment was widely criticised by health professionals, media commentators, the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and the public. The controversy was reported internationally. A group of 15 high-profile psychologists, academics and child advocates wrote to The Age calling for the show to be cancelled. They suggested the show had been the venue for child abuse and a gross violation of human rights"

"On 9 September 2009, Sandilands was suspended for two weeks after making comments that were alleged to racially and religiously vilify Magda Szubanski, an Australian TV host and comedian. Sandliands said on-air: “You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall off … like she could be skinny”.[43] Sandilands and Henderson were debating who should be the next face of weight-loss company Jenny Craig. Szubanski had recently lost 25 kg using the Jenny Craig program during a well-documented public weight battle.[citation needed] Szubanski, whose father was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II, told ninemsn news "I couldn’t give two hoots about what Kyle says about me, but to trivialise what happened to people in concentration camps is abhorrent." Jewish groups also criticised Sandilands and once again called for his sacking."

AND the latest controversy caused by 'shock jock' Kyle Sandilands -
(quoted from News.com.au)

On Tuesday, Sandilands personally attacked Stephenson (news.com.au journalist) for her review of his TV show, A Night with the Stars.

"Some fat slag on the Telegraph website, sorry, news.com.au, has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article she just hates us. What a fat bitter thing you are. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of s---," he said.

His co-host Jackie O joked that Sandilands didn't take criticism well. Sandilands then named Stephenson and said: "You are supposed to be impartial, you little troll ... You’re a bulls--- artist girl. That’s what you are. You should be fired from your job."

After Jackie O told listeners that the article contained a picture of the reporter, Sandilands said: "You haven’t got that much titty to be wearing that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth girl, or I will hunt you down."

Since this occurance most of the major sponsors have pulled from Southern Cross Austereo until Kyle Sandilands is removed from his position as radio host 'shock jock'. So far he has cost Austereo over 8 million dollars in lost sponsorships including the loss of not only the Federal Government sponsorship but also those from major companies such as Telstra, Optus, Holden, Mitsubishi, Toys'r'us, The Good Guys, GIO Insurance, American Express, Ford, Lexus, Blackberry, Olympus, Coles Online, and many more.

There is a petition circling around online which has reached nearly 20k signatures in the last few days, and I would appreciate it if anyone would contribute their signature.

This is something I feel strongly about, and I give my thanks to any who would care to contribute their signature [ here ]. People from any country can sign.

I don't even think there are words to describe how horrible it is that someone this vile is allowed to go on air and not only threaten other people but also use such offensive and derogatory language on a constant basis. Please show your support.

Thanks,

Sophie

Aromaleigh Giveaway Winner

2011-11-23T10:58:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps!

My Aromaleigh giveaway is officially closed and a winner picked at random. Since everyone had only one entry/comment I didn't bother with a spreadsheet or anything :)

The winner recieves 23 Aromaleigh products in total. 20 eye shadows, 1 glitter, one massive bag of an 'Oops' eye shadow, and a Coquille in 'Vert'. These were from my grab bag haul from aggges ago and all of the bags have more than double the standard amount of product :)

Congrats to Kerry B. on winning! I'll be sending you and email shortly :) Remember there is a 48 hour timeframe for a response before another winner is picked at random, so please check your email! :D

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Sophie

♥ LOTD: Peachy Keen + New Hair Colour

2011-11-16T02:32:00.000+10:00

Hello lovelies!

Today I have a mixed post for you all, a LOTD in addition to showing off (I admit it) my new hair colour ;)

The look I'm posting today is the look I wore out for lunch by the bay on Sunday with the boy and his parents. Since it was midday and it's currently the middle of summer, I wanted to go with something soft yet warm-toned. It's probably one of my favourite looks to date, I'm still using shadows I rarely use and I was super pleased with the combination of shades and also how well it worked on my skintone. The pictures do not do it justice, it was a little more shimmery and of course the colour depth was far more noticeable in real life.

[No flash]

So as you can see it's a mix of pale pink and warm peach. I kept the eyeliner quite minimal (for me, anyway!) because like I mentioned, this look was for lunch and I think anything heavier would of been inappropriate.

[With flash]

So with this picture you can see the pink pops out a little more, and the soft blending of the peach tone across the upper area of the crease paired with a minimal highlight keeps the look fresh and light. I've used a purple based shadow for my brows, as opposed to a dark brown shadow (which suits my natural hair colour) because the purple works well with my current hair colour. You may disagree, considering my hair is bright red there, but you will understand why it works better further on in the post :P The only thing I don't like is that with a flash my eyebrow colour shows through too much for my liking, pah!

[Oh, hai thar]

I do have foundation on - I'm suprised I didn't sweat everything off considering the heat! I've used a light application of liquid foundation, and applied mostly powder as well as a dash of blush.

So as you can see from this last part, I have a purple chunk in my hair. This is what my eyebrows match. Maybe I should use red to fill in my brows, but my brows are so dark (and really, cbf lightening them) they show through red immediately, whereas with this darker toned purple it works quite well (excluding photos with flash, lol!).

OK so what I used for this look!

EYES

Primer: Aromaleigh in Light.

Highlight: A super light dusting of Sugarpill 'Tako' (not pictured).

Crease: 'Princess Mars' focused towards outer crease, overlaid with 'Promise'.

Lid: 'Shy Blush'

Inner Corner: 'Pirouette' (this has a subtle blue duochrome which really contrasted with the rest of the look, I loved it!)

Lower Lashline: 'Dirtydeeds' in the outer area, 'Pirouette' lightly applied from the inner corner towards the middle.

Waterline: 'Bourbon', with a bit of 'Perversion' towards outer area.

Rimmel Liquid Liner in Black winged out across outer area of lid.

FACE

Primer: Rimmel Fix & Perfect in 001 (this is a bit too orangey and dark for me)

Foundation:

Liquid - Revlon ColorStay in 110 Ivory.

Powder - Aromaleigh Pure Cover #1 (this is pretty light on me, so I use it lightly to even out the colour) and Natio - Pressed Powder in Light.

Blush: Mac Mineralize Skinfinish in Stereo Rose.

So I kept the face stuff rather light, nothing was applied too heavily which is why I suppose my freckles show through so much. It's weird, I forget I even have them until I see some photos where they really seem to stand out /shrug.

AND as you may have noticed my hair colour has changed slightly! Last time I dyed it a bright red, this time I've dyed it a more pink based red (like I had originally intended). I dyed the area around my hair part bright pink, which then merged with the red pink. Then I ran out of dye, and since I was mid way through doing my hair I decided to do a purple chunk, lol.

Which I am totally in love with ;)

I redyed my hair so soon because I wanted to go to a gig last Fri night, and needed my hair not to be orange :P I did a similar style to what I posted before, a messy bun, but I don't like how this one turned out much. Although I did have fun curling my hair!

Zomg I love curls!!!

I guess the messy bun was less 'defined' this time round, but by the stage of pinning it up I was seriously running behind on time and had no option but to leave it 'as is'. I still had to get dressed and do my makeup, and I think I had less than 20 minutes to get that done. I ended up being and hour late, haha!

I still think it looked ok, but I'm far too much a perfectionist to be happy with it. Meh. Better luck next time, right? :D Once again I used Fudge Paintbox colours, this time in Pretty Flamingo and Cherry Bomb. The purple was a mix of the two colours plus Electric Blue.

So that wraps it up for now. I'm hoping to strip this colour out as much as possible and continuing lightening it, as it still has too much orange in it. I want to go a mix of teal and bright blue/purple.

Sorry I didn't have as many close up pics of the makeup, I took quite a few but they all came out blurry. I think I have to fiddle with my camera because it seems like it's playing up a bit.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully will have another EOTD again this week, with more close up pictures. Maybe even a tutorial if it doesn't stay too hot and humid at night so I can play with my makeup a little (I wish!).

Sophie xx

PS - Do you like my new layout? I really wanted some colour - and red is my fav :D

♥ EOTD: Wicked Envy Tutorial

2011-11-10T00:35:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone!

I decided today to try my first ever tutorial! Now, I'm not good on camera so I'm doing this in a series of photographs, which I know many other people do so I figured I could do it too :)

The look I'm doing today isn't anything special in particular, but I have had many comments over the months about my 'style' of makeup, or my blending, or whatevs, so I thought it would be neat for me to show you all how I do my makeup. It's pretty standard for me, I generally always apply things in the same order. I don't know if what I do is right or wrong, but it works for me regardless. Again I have picked out a bunch of colours I have yet to use more than once. Slowly I am making my way through my mound of eye shadows!

So I have included some information on what I do along with each picture, and if anyone wants to try this look I hope it helps! I hope you all enjoy, let me know what you think! I had a LOT of fun doing this :D

First things first, what I used:

[Click to enlarge]

[Images courtesy of Google]

When I do my makeup I use as few brushes as I possibly can, because I hate cleaning them - it's just another chore. I don't like making unecessary mess, which is easy to do once you have a lot of brushes. So that's why I've only used three, you could use a lot more if you want to - whatever you feel comfortable with using and works well for you and your eye shape.

OK let's get started:

First up, apply your eyeshadow primer or base (pretty much a no-brainer eh?). I like to use Aromaleigh primer in Light, and I let mine sit for a few minutes to make sure I can clear away any creasing that may form. This tends to happen in hot weather for me, and it's summer here in Australia at the moment. While I wait for my primer to settle in, I usually fill in my brows.

Using a shadow brush, I've patted 'Moss' along my crease. I don't know about anyone else but to me my crease begins where the outer corner of my eye starts and on the angle up towards the end of my brow. Anything too far under that line makes my eyes look droopy and it's quite unflattering.

'Moss' is a deep uniform green which is a matte, making it a good choice to mix with the shimmery shades I've also picked. If you don't have a deep green matte shade, you could use a shimmer and change your highlight to a matte. Having a somewhat even balance between shimmer and matte will stop your lids looking like disco balls - it can tone down a look quite a bit while still looking spiffy ;)

I've blended 'Moss' outwards and up towards my brow, but I've not been overly pedantic about how neat it is (like I usually am hah!) since I'll be layering over the top with another colour. I've just been carefull enough to make sure there's no bold lines which will show through any additional layers of product.

After the blending, I've placed a light application of NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in 'Milk' directly under my brow. Although I have chosen to use a light golden based shimmer as a highlight, having 'Milk' under the brow lightens it just that little more.

After blending 'Milk' in lightly, I've then applied 'Bees Knees' across my brow bone, making sure it's pulled to the end on my brow and down towards my inner corner of my eye. I've applied the highlight right down to where 'Moss' ends, but I haven't blended it completely since I'll be applying another shadow in that section.

Again using the blending brush I have lightly applied 'Envy' where 'Moss' meets 'Bees Knees'. To begin with I start lightly to make sure the blending is seamless and smooth, adding additional colour when necessary. It is much more preferable to start out slow and work through evenly, rather than risk applying way too much product. It's a mistake I've made often, and can be a nightmare to try and correct without having to remove everything and start again. Remember, this part of your makeup is a major focus point when people look at your face - especially with such bold and bright colours - so you want to make sure it's not only flattering to your eye shape but also looks seamless - slow and steady wins the race ;)

For applying shadow to my lid I often use a medium or small square shaped eye shadow brush, as I find it's not only more precise but easier to use. Using my eye shadow brush I have applied 'Wicked' across the outer lid area, lightly blending into 'Moss' at the base of the crease. After this I have lightly applied more 'Moss' at the base of the crease to ensure a have enough depth of colour there, and once again to make sure the transition between shades is smooth.

After wiping the brush clean I apply 'Aqua Nightmare' across the remainder of my lid, ensuring it's blended in nicely with 'Wicked'.

I have applied 'Perversion' on my outer lower lashline, and 'Electric' towards the inner corner. I've blended both liners lightly using a clean finger. I often choose eyeliners that are similar shades to the eye shadows I intend to apply there, as it causes less colour distortion (unless you're going for that look). I also like to match my colours to the ones applied on my lid, but that could just be because I am pedantic ;)

I applied 'Milk' lightly to my inner corner, and on top of that I have blended in 'Visage' using a pencil brush. Visage is a super light blue with tons of shimmer, but basically any light colour or white will work well. I like to use shimmer in my inner corner to add a bit of bling as it's quite eye-catching. I've made sure that 'Visage' merges seamlessly with 'Aqua Nightmare' both on the lid and lower lashline.

I have applied both 'Aqua Nightmare' and 'Wicked' over the lower lashline respectively, making sure it's blended and not too harsh a line. I always make sure I don't pull the shadow too far down under my eye, as it makes my eyes look droopy and out of whack. That said, make sure you do what works best for your eye shape! I've also pulled 'Wicked' out under the outer crease to form a little wing there.

Afterwards I have applied 'Perversion' along my waterline. When I use deep or dark shades I prefer to use a black eye liner, as it adds a subtle smokey effect which I like. A midnight blue eye liner would work equally well though with this look, or even a lighter shade if you don't want the look to be dark. I've applied Rimmel liquid liner in black very thinly across my lid, focusing more on the outer area - I haven't pulled it right down to my inner corner because I wanted to keep that part light and fresh looking. I have also applied mascara, but this look would work well with false lashes for some extra sexiness :)

And that's it!

Well, I hoped you all enjoyed my tutorial, I certainly had a lot of fun putting this together. For future referrence I would love to have done this including a full faced shot, but I still have that carrot hair until this weekend. So hopefully if I do another tutorial next week I can include some full face shots with both eyes made up.

If I did another tutorial what type of look would you like to see? Something bright and fun like my usual style or maybe something a bit more everyday? Let me know!

ALSO don't forget to enter my Aromaleigh Giveaway!

There's a link in bright red in the sidebar over thataway ---->

Some of the shadows in the giveaway are complete stunners!

Thanks for reading xxx

Sophie

♥ EOTD: Bad Reputation

2011-11-08T19:34:00.000+10:00

Hi guys!

Another EOTD for you all! It was much easier for me to do something with my makeup today since I cleared away all the mess and storage issues.

I purposely pulled out a couple of shades I hadn't really used much of to date. And I want to say right now that if you don't own Inglot pigment #84 then you have to own it - NOW! I had forgotten how absolutely STUNNING this eye shadow is. I could rave about it forever, it's just so damn pretty! Unless greeny/goldy shades aren't your thing, in which case steer clear of #84 ;)

I found #84 to also have this orangy rusted reddish colour shift when viewed from a certain angle, as you can see on the lid. I have #84 all over my lid, it shifts to an intense green when over a darker base.

What I used:

Primer: Aromaleigh in Light.

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'

Upper Crease area: Aromaleigh 'Tuscany' over a light blending of Aromaleigh 'Slate'. 'Slate' is a matte concrete colour, it looks super light in the jar but applies a fair bit darker. 'Tuscany' is a shimmery mid brown with reddish undertones, very simple yet very pretty.

Crease: Aromaleigh 'Bad Reputation'. I really like 'Bad Rep' because it has this deep reddish base with stunning golden green sparkles. It didn't photograph at all, but it was very noticable to the naked eye.

Outer Lid: Right along the outer lid and a little into the crease is Aromaleigh 'Umber'. 'Umber' is a super deep brown shadow, mostly matte, which applied very intense. 'Umber' is overlaid by Inglot Pigment #84, which gives it that lovely deep green shimmer.

Lid: Inglot Pigment #84

Inner Corner: Inglot Pigment #45, a soft green base pigment with iridescent green shimmer. It's a stunner. I applied this over Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner in 'Midnight Cowboy'.

Lower Lashline: I used a Bourjois Paris duochrome eyeliner in #61 Vert Dore as a base, and applied Inglot #84 blended over 'Umber' towards outer eye area, and blended into #45 towards inner corner.

Waterline: Bourjois Paris 'Vert Dore' eyeliner towards inner corner, Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner in 'Perversion' towards outer corner.

Liquid Liner: Rimmel liquid liner in black.

I wish the sparkles from Bad Reputation has shown up in the images, because the colour of the glitter tied in perfectly with the lid colour. I'm once again obsessed with Inglot! What are your favourite Inglot pigments? I'd have to say #84 is right up there if not at the top of my fav list.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great day/night/whatevs ;)

Sophie

Makeup Storage

2011-11-08T19:15:00.001+10:00

Heya!

So a few posts ago I mentioned how utterly awful my vanity was, and it was something I had to fix asap. Having no 'work space' meant I had no initiative to actually sit there and do something.

This is what it looked like previously:

As you can see when you pull a drawer out there is literally no room for anything or to do anything.

Today I spent abut 2 hours tidying and reorganising it. I admit most of that 2 hours was spent specifically organising exactly how my eye shadows sat in the tray and what two types of colours to group together.

I previously grouped similar colours together in each tray in each storage unit. So I had reds/corals together, blues/teals, silver/white/black/white based duochromes etc etc. I went from having 7 trays to 3, lol. And I'm so pedantic about colour organisation it was a bit of a nightmare. For example, I had a lot of trouble with how I have browns/oranges/gold/yellows together and pinks/reds/corals together... some shades look like brown AND coral... so what tray does it go in? Haha, it was just so irritating!

I have all my large palettes still in a file rack (I suppose you would call it), and I keep my meagre range of blushes and foundation items up on top along with my brush cleaner and frequent items like makeup remover and moisturiser.

I took out all my nailpolish from my vanity desk drawer and I relocated all my nailpolish into a plastic drawer which I stacked up the top of the vanity shelves, out of the way. I have so many that they pretty much all didn't fit in there neatly, which kinda peeves me off.

In the desk drawer I put in a divider which holds my MAC shadows, my Calypso Minerals stack, Kat Von D, Inglot & Sugarpill palettes and my loose Inglot pigments and loose Sugarpill shadows.And also a major pile of Aromaleigh facial products.

Above the drawer is a slot in which I put more dividers, and these hold my NYX glitter liners, jumbo eye pencils, variety of lipsticks and lip products, variety of eye products like liquid liner and mascara and a bunch of misc hair/skin care stuff.

Once again I finally have space to 'work' in! It's great, i did another EOTD which I'll post after this and it's much more encouraging to have everything put away neatly and storedout of the way. When I go started on this whole operation earlier I decided to throw out the stuff I didn't use/want, want to see how much I threw out?

Barely even made a dent. I got rid of a lot of drugstore brands palettes and shadows, stuff like BYS and Rimmel, Revlon etc - because I never ever used them. I even still had some makeup from my highschool graduation and that was 8 years ago! Like... wow! Haha. I threw out some additional samples I had too, because I don't hold on to them. I usually transfer everything to jars.

I moved all of my larger hair and face care items next to my vanity atop a bookcase, to rid more clutter from the desk surface.

I'm really pleased with how it all turned out, I love having all tucked away and not in my face! How do you store all your make up stuff? I'd love to hear some suggestions :D

Soph xx

Aromaleigh Giveaway CLOSED

2011-11-08T16:39:00.001+10:00

****AROMALEIGH GIVEAWAY****
CLOSED

Hey peeps,

A few days ago I came across my extra Aromaleigh shadows from my Grab Bag haul. My last giveaway included many of the doubles I had recieved through that Grab Bag order. What I'm giving away now are the remaining eye shadow baggies.

There are 23 products in total. 20 eye shadows, 1 glitter, one massive bag of an 'Oops' eye shadow, and a Coquille in 'Vert'.

Let me make note now that these baggies hold over double the amount of normal sample size. Some of these bags are thick with product - when I originally potted all of my Aromaleigh products from the Grab Bag haul, many of these eye shadow bags filled more than a 5g jar.

I have swatched all the eye shadows so you can see what colours they are (some of them look completely different from the colour in the bag). NOTE I swatched my own eye shadows, NOT the ones that I'm giving away, as you can see here:

I did not swatch the Coquille, nor the big bag of 'Oops' eye shadow. Here are the swatches of the other 21 products:

1. Wild Coco

2. Verdant Wisp

3. Feather Boa

4. Disintergration (glitter)

5. Baby Blues

6. Cornflower

7. Tide

8. Lagoon

9. Not So Silent Night

10. Pique

11. Cranked

12. Flutterby

13. Pink Fingers

14. Dollhouse

15. Morbid Curiosity

16. Chantal

17. Wine

18. Bad Reputation

19. Strawberry Dispair

20. Trainwreck

21. Eros

The pictures don't do many of the eye shadows any justice whatsoever. Pique has this great greenish colour shift, Flutterby has a coppery gold shimmer and Bad Reputation has some crazy (but awesome) glitter going on there.

--------------------------------------------------------------

HOW TO ENTER

- Closes Nov 22 2011 @ 8pm AEST -

- Open internationally -

- If you're under 16 y/o you will need parental permission before entering, as you will have to provide a mailing address if you win -

- Winner is drawn using Random.org and will be posted on this blog on the 22nd -

- Winner will be contacted by email and will have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be picked at random

- Package will be sent using standard Air Mail in a bubble mailer within 2 days of winner being drawn -

- PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN A COMMENT -

TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY SIMPLY LEAVE 1 COMMENT WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS.

You don't have to follow my blog, you don't have to tweet or blog about it, everyone who leaves a comment is given one entry only.

Thanks everyone, and good luck :D

♥ EOTD: Moonglow

2011-11-08T00:14:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps,

I have an EOTD from yesterday! If you saw my previous post, I somehow managed to wrestle through the mound of stuff on my vanity to play with my makeup :D I had been flicking through some of my more popular posts and realised that my NYX haul was probably the most popular of them all, and I hadn't actually even used the glitter liners since then! They're stashed away in a neat compartment in my vanity drawers. I use my jumbo eye pencils rather frequently, yet not the liners. So I figured, hey, might aswell get back around to it, right?

So this isn't anything fancy, I pretty much pulled out shades I hadn't used before. I have everything listed un der the pics, of course. I liked how this turned out. I love using deep colours, purples and reds mostly. I felt the glitter eye liner added a bit of bling to what was pretty dark and smokey looking. It would of looked a helluva lot better with some falsies, but I don't have any at the moment and never really liked to use them on my EOTD's anyway, so oh wells!

I had a bit of trouble with the crease to be honest. Do you ever have those occurances where you try and layer colour, but instead of layering in what you'd hoped for it kinda of just fades out alltogether or goes patchy? I hate that, so much. Maybe it's a bad mix of different products or something, but when it happens it really peeves me off. Anyone know how to stop that? or is it just an occurance that cannot be avoided?

Yah, I know my brows are messy too. Everything about me is messy right now. My hair is bright orange and I have caterpillar eye brows. I pretty much haven't been out in public in ages, because I'm re bleaching my hair still and it looks slightly terrifying. Lol.

OK, so what I used is:

Highlight: SMH 'Bee's Knees'

Crease: Persephone Minerals 'Smoke' over Inglot eye shadow #483 (midnight blue with blue reflects)

Lid: FFC 'Wrath Baby'

Inner Lid: FFC 'Moonglow'

Inner Corner: Sugarpill 'Tako'

Lower Lashline: 'Moonglow' towards inner corner, with 'Wrath Baby' blended into 'Smoke' towards outer corner.

Eyeliner: Rimmel black liquid liner overlaid with NYX Candy Glitter Liner in 'Disco Queen'.

Waterline: Urban Decay 24/7 eye liner in a black shade - I forgot which specific one (I have a few).

Maybe in hindsight I might use a less yellow-ish shadow for the highlight, but it photographed a lot mroe yellow than it looked with the naked eye. You can slightly see in the first image that 'Moonglow' has a gold iridescence which is rather pretty, it highlighted the lid in a neat way which you only noticed from certain angles. Inglot did not mix well with 'Smoke'. 'Smoke' is so damn pretty I wish it had photographed better, the sparkles went well with the liner. 'Wrath Baby' is more of a matte shade, which tied in well with the rest of the shimmery shades and evened it out a little.

So this is me getting started on the giant amount of eye shadow I rarely use, to work my way through some of them. I'm positive there's some undiscovered gems tucked away in there, gathering dust.

What do you think of this EOTD? Do you think the glitter eyeliner works well or makes it a bit too over the top?

Soph

Blog Update - What's happening now and in the future :)

2011-11-07T19:28:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to make a short post about what's going on with me, because my blog hasn't been updated with any makeup related topics aside from FFC. As some of you may know, I have been extremely busy with FFC for the last few months. This has left me with less time and less money to spend on purchasing beauty items.

I was thinking of closing my blog down because I don't want it to just be taken up with posts relating to FFC - because that's not the reason I made this blog in the first place. It feels like sometimes the only things I even have to post about is just FFC, because that's what's taking up so much of my time. I don't mind that at all, but it also isn't fair to any of my readers who followed me in the first place because they liked my reviews, or liked my EOTD's or whatever.

At the same time, blogging isn't supposed to be a chore, you know?

Last night I was playing with my makeup, it's been sooo long (lol, well, about 3 weeks) since I've even touched the stuff. I think a really big part in me not touching my makeup is because of the way my vanity is set up. Since I potted all my Aromaleigh eye shadow baggies from the Grab Bags I had to upgrade to something larger, which leaves my vanity cramped and irritating to use. If it's annoying to even sit there, the will to do so goes away completely.

As you can see as soon as you pull out a drawer it takes up the entire arm space and it's so awkward to do anything! I'm going to clean out everything tomorrow and reorganise it somehow without using those two drawers, or at least put them somewhere else. I might have to buy storage things or something, because I have so much stuff it has to go somewhere lol.

I'm really wanting to get back into doing EOTD's, because there is so much stuff from Aromaleigh I haven't even touched yet. I'm thinking of setting out certain shadows I love the look of, to do something with at least once a week. I'm also thinking of doing posts around collections, like my favourite products to use for specific things... not completely sure yet, I just have some ideas floating around.

I find it really hard not to feel guilty about my lack of posting, like I owe it to my followers to post regularly about interesting things. But the truth is is that because of everything else that's happened this year, the good and the bad, I have just had to focus outside of my blog for quite some time now. And honestly, nothing interesting happens to me now anyway! Any quiet tme I have I use to relax by watching the X-Files or playing WoW or Angry Birds (so damn addicting!).

I don't think I'm letting anyone down, it's just hard to get rid of that feeling.

So I am going to start posting EOTD"s again, at least one a week. I won't be doing beauty reviews for awhile because I can't afford to buy anything, so if anyone would like to make suggestions to what type of posts they'd like to see on Ethereal Beauty please comment and let me know!

Thanks for reading xx

Sophie

Anoher FFC update :D

2011-11-06T17:01:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone!

I've just updated the FFC blog with a preview of some of the upcoming eye shadow releases - check it out!

I've been working super hard to get FFC up and running, and I've appreciated everyone's support this far.

I have a Facebook page here which can be shared on your wall too! Keep an eye out for more FFC posts because I'll be looking into sending out some review packs to beauty bloggers who are interested, as well as looking to get some 'looks' from FFC customers who want to share their pics on the FFC Facebook page :D I will update the FFC blog with this info within the next two days, so if you're interested in doing a review keep an eye on our blog!

Thanks! <3

FFC Promo - Free eye shadow with every order over $15!

2011-11-01T02:03:00.000+10:00

Hey everyone!

We have a special on at Femme Fatale Cosmetics until the 3rd of November, where if you spend over $15 on merch you receive a free full sized eye shadow in the colour of your choice. Orders over $35AUD receive TWO free eye shadows. For more info (as some terms apply) check out the FFC blogspot HERE.

Happy shopping!

4 days till giveaway closes!

2011-10-16T13:48:00.000+10:00

Hey everyone!

Just a quick reminder the Femme Fatale Cosmetics giveaway closes on the 20th - which is 4 days from now, 3 prize packs and open internationally. If you haven't entered already then go check it out :)

I haven't been up to much, currently hiding away at home because I've been bleaching my hair. I went out last night and put a red rinse through it, so I wouldn't have gold and orange hair (it looked pretty bad). It came out ok, could still see some orange but it was just for one night so I don't care. Waiting until it washed out and I can bleach it again to get the colour more even. Hoping to go a mix of pinks, purples and a bit of blue eventually. I love having bright hair!

I wish I had taken some decent pics of my hair once it was done, I curled the lot of it and swept it back into a side bun when i kind of pinned the curls in a 'messy' look. It probably took me about 2 hours to do this 'casual' hairstyle, as I have such thick hair it took awhile to curl the lot of it. And it's always hard to pin back your hair since you can't see the back of your head lol.

So yeah, you can see the orange in there; but like I said it was just for one night and no one noticed. I had a few loose curls hanging down from the bun as well as at the side of my face. Not the best pic to show the overall look, but I'm no good at photographing the back of my head! Haha.

I had really simple smokey brown eyeshadow on with purple brown tones on the lower lashline; totally simple and I really liked it. I wish I had taken some photo's once I was done, but by that stage I was in a super big rush to get over to my friend's place for some jelly shots!

I also found my extras from my Aromaleigh grab bag orders; which I had totally forgotten about. I'll have a giveaway for them soon!

Hope you've all had a great weekend!

Sophie

Giveaway Reminder!

2011-10-09T19:00:00.001+10:00

Hey peeps! Don't forget to enter my 3-winner-giveaway with products from my new mineral makeup company - Femme Fatale Cosmetics. All you have to do is comment the post on the FFC blog - super simple to do and it closes up on the 20th of this month! Open internationally too!

Click the giveaway image on the sidebar --------------->

and good luck!

Hopefully will be updating this space again with a new look later this week!

Soph xx

♥ EOTD: Impetual

2011-10-06T20:04:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps,

Just a quick post today. I've been doing some different looks for a gig I'm going to soon. I really wanted something eye catching and so I went for some warm colours. I'll be dying my hair back to red soon (in the process of stripping the black dye out) so I might go with this look (which I absolutely love) or I might change it to cool tones so it doesn't clash with my hair too much. Although cool tones don't look as good as warm tones on me I think, probably because of the eye colour.

Sorry for the not-so-hot pics. My camera has been playing up a bit, it keeps taking pictures reaaaally slowly so they go blurry, although even on different settings it's still the same story. Maybe I just need to get a new one *shrug*.

What I used:

Base: UDPP. Lid is overlaid lightly with NYX Jumbo eye pencil in 'Purple'.

Lid: SMH 'Euphoria', towards inner corner is a bit of BFTE 'Violet Stardust'

Mid Crease: SMH 'Smoke and Mirrors' blended over 'Euphoria'

Upper Crease: SMH 'Light My Fire' towards outer area; SMH 'Flaming-O' towards inner area.

Browbone: SMH 'Bee's Knees' as highlight.

Inner Corner: Aromaleigh 'Tangled Tinsel' over a Rimmel eyeliner in white.

Lower Lashine: NYX Jumbo eye pencil in 'Black Bean' (I love the wet black look!)

Waterline: Bourjois Paris Contour Clubbing eyeliner in 'Black Party'

Close up this is such a lovely mix of colours; from a distance it takes on a real smokey look effect. I'm quite pleased with it and know I'll be wearing this out at some stage. What do you think? Is this the sort of eye makeup you wear for a night out on the town? :P

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for my mineral makeup company that's I've just launched - Femme Fatale Cosmetics! There are three prize packs up for grabs, additional entries or you can simply comment to enter once and you don't have to follow the blog if you choose not to. Plus it's open INTERNATIONALLY! Closes 20th of Oct -------- Click here to enter!

Thanks for reading :) hope you're having a fab week!

Soph xxx

Femme Fatale Cosmetics Giveaway!

2011-10-05T16:22:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps!

Just wanting to let you all know I'm holding a giveaway for the opening of Femme Fatale Cosmetics! Three prize packs up for grabs and super easy to enter! It's open now internationally and all you have to do is comment your details and that's it! Additional entries are available as well as the chance to win an additional eye shadow which is not released yet!

Go here to enter!

Good luck! :D

www.femmefatalecosmetics.com.au

New Blog!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1lol

2011-09-23T13:27:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps!

Sorry for my lack of posting recently, I have once again been overwhelmed with work. Only this time I have been playing with makeup - I've been doing basic 'looks' for my website with my products. Want to see?

'Flare'

'Poison'

'Hibernate'

So as you can see, they're totally simple. Just a basic white highlight of mine (unnamed because it isn't exactly super exciting or anything, just a blend of white minerals I made) and the actual product itself over a primer. I was going to do wrist swatches, but I thought this would look better and give a better idea of what the product looks like on a person's eye. What do you think?

At the moment I'm just awaiting on a few things, hoping to be open by the end of next week. I'm still holding my giveaway, which I will post on this blog as well as the new blog I have recently opened for my business. When I post about the giveaway I'll probably direct everyone to that blog to enter anywho.

I'm just about to make my first post on my new blog, a preview of all the products I'm opening with (which is just shadows and blush). If you want to take a look click the link below :D

Femme Fatale Cosmetics

If you want to stop by and check it out, let me know what you think of my first ever range (which, btw, I'm so nervous about it's not even funny). I'm still hoping to post looks on this blog, looks done with other brands though, so don't worry Ethereal Beauty isn't going to just disappear.

Thanks for reading, I hope you can stop by FFC and say hi!

Soph xxx

♥ EOTD: Cat's Pajamas

2011-09-16T12:13:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone,

Even though today is super busy for me, I really felt like playing with my makeup. Which is great as I hadn't felt like that much recently. I've been a bit down emtionally due to family matters, so today I went for something totally bright - pairing two colours I would pretty much never do. Although I liked the outcome, I don't think it's a suitable colour match for my complexion nor eyes. But, that doesn't matter since it was just for fun :)

('Flare' is slightly off colourwise in this pic)

So these pictures are a little edited, because of the lighting my skin tone was coming out in either bright orange or pink, but the eye shadow colours I've kept as they were photographed, which is pretty accurate. Also, my eyes are totally puffy this morning, so sorry about that! But I didn't think it'd matter too much, after all I just wanted to have a bit of fun with some bright colours :D

I like matching colours together, warms together and cool tones together. I don't know if I'd pair the greens with the warm tones, because it just doesn't work for me personally.

What I used:

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'

Upper crease: Inglot Pigment #45

Crease: Aromaleigh 'Poison Ivy' overlaid with Sugarpill's 'Midori'

Lid: My own shadow 'Flare' which is a orange based slightly coral shade with a green/gold duochrome.

Inner Corner: Aromaleigh 'Gilt'

Lower Lashline: Aromaleigh 'Cat's Pajamas' towards the inner corner, and BFTE 'Raspberry' (repackaged Raspberry Pop!) towards outer corner.

Waterline: MAC 'Black Line'

Liquid Liner Rimmel in black.

What I liked about this look was how the soft gold tone from the inner corner was brought through the crease with the Inglot Pigment #45, #45 is like a creamy gold based shadow with a lovely green highlight to it. I absolutely love that shade. The green/gold was also tied in through 'Flare', but I didn't have any good pictures where I could capture the duochrome unfortunately.

In hindisght I should of gone with a darker shade towards the outer lower lashine, the Raspberry was a bit too bright although it worked nicely with Cat's Pajamas.

What do you think? Do you like the orange and green? Or maybe not your cup of tea?

I'm about to pack my bags an head off down to Lismore for the night, my mum finally moved up from Melbourne for work. I'm planning on stopping off on the way (it's about a 2 and a half hour drive) to an area in Tweed Heads where there's this awesome 2nd hand bookshop. Going to second hand bookshops is one of my favourite things.

What are you up to for the weekend? Hope you have a good one and thanks for reading!

Sophie xx

♥ EOTD: Heroic

2011-08-26T23:11:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps!

Long time no chat!

Today my and the boy drove out to Toowoomba to drop of my business cards to my friend who's running a Miss Indy comp at the tavern she works at. Not only did we drive past a giant red elephant, and a giant golf ball, and a sign of some guy named Scott Buchholz (lol get it? haha I'm so immature!) our car also overheated and we ended up sitting by the road waiting for it to cool down. The road winding up to Toowoomba, although short, is pretty steep. I had some jerk riding up the back end of my car so I pushed the car harder than I should of. Anywho, while we were waiting for it to cool off, at least 3 people came out of somewhere yonder to offer us some help. One lady even said she could give us a lift if we needed. It amazes me that there are still decent and helpful humans on this planet, it really made my day that some random people would go out of their way to help us!

So I haven't posted an EOTD in agggggges but I had fun with my makeup today, so I took some pictures when I got home. Of course, after sitting in the car for 5 hours driving my makeup wasn't in the best state when I got home, so sorry about that!

I took some full faced shots, but to be honest I have a massively gigantic mountain of a pimple on my chin, and I haven't looked after my brows in the last month, so I wasn't emotionally ready to deal with having that on the internet, sorry. Lol.

What I used:

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'. As always!

Crease: 'Ignite', by me. An orangy copper colour, probably a bit on the matte side with a few copper sparkles.

Lid: 'Heroic', by me. I don't know how to describe this colour. It's like a super pale peach/bronze with a really intense golden shine to it. It applied to my lid like it was foiled. This is the first time I've worn it for hours, I think it's my favourite shadow I've made by far.

Inner Corner: Medusa's Makeup 'Studio 54'. White based gold duochrome.

Liner: Rimmel liquid liner in black, waterline is Bourjois Paris in Contour Clubbing (black).

Lower lashline: Savvy by DB eyeliner in Glitzy Gold overlaid with 'Heroic'.

I really enjoyed the look, although in hind sight it might of been too much gold/copper. It went fine with my skintone, it would of been better being offset by a darker shade in the crease.

So this week I am ordering all my supplies, getting my workshop ready, and doing all the photos and layout for my website. Also will be putting up my giveaway in a fortnight (yay!). Very excited :D Although stressfull. So stressfull I've come out with eczema on my ankles, which I have never ever had there before. Wow I freaked out. Thought I caught something deadly. Haha.

I'll admit, my main pushback has been making sure everything is perfect. I know it can never be, but having been a beauty blogger myself I can see the high levels of expectations not only I have set, but others do too. Maybe without even realising it.

At the end of the day I can only do my best. I don't assume I know everything there is to know about mineral cosmetics, and to be honest I expect I'll have a tough road ahead of me but I hope that I can learn valuble insight from it all, but it's still really daunting. I've seen a bit of what's been going around with some other companies, and I'm starting to think that although I want to have the fun and friendly aspects that a lot of other indie brands do, I really want to separate myself from the customer base as a whole. It's hard to explain, but I mean that I don't want to start being people's best friends just because they buy my stuff. I want to work hard, and to focus on that, and although I will have no problems talking to or helping customers, I just don't think I could personally balance the business aspect while trying to be everyones BBF. That seems... really tough... and it seems like setting yourself up to crash and burn, from doing the wrong thing once, or saying the wrong thing once, or for whatever might happen. I mean, you can't please everyone. And yeah, having your own business does mean you represent your brand at all times. That's just how it is - maybe not completely fair - but you are the person behind your business. So you do have to be cautious about what you put out there on the internet about yourself and your opinions.

It's like those MMU indie brands where you see they go on people's blogs and leave nasty messages about a review done on their products. That's crazy. That's like, paranoia crazy. I wouldn't want to read reviews about my products. I'll admit I'd be terrified people would label it as complete crap. Although, I'd still love the feedback (constructive) on the product, if you know what I mean. So I can understand why they would read reviews on their stuff, and then make an effort to protect their business (in a way).

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling. Let's just say that although I love making eyeshadows and blushes and experimenting with colours and formulations, the scariest thing of all is that I'm worried people just won't like what I've created, point blank. I don't want to be the best, or the most unique, or whatever. I just want to be able to do it for my personal enjoyment, because it's something that I find personally rewarding and it's something I'm pretty damn passionate about! And I think the best feeling would be to know other's appreciate, and also enjoy what I've created. Although I'm aware you can please all, I hope to please some.

Will be updating soon with my giveaway! Thanks for reading :)

Sophie x

Experimenting with blushes again.

2011-08-13T12:43:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps,

Sorry for the lack of posts... I have been so busy trying to get everything set up. Over the last week I've been experimenting making blushes. A bit tricky for me, because I only own so many - and all of them are suitable for my colouring. So I decided I wanted to open up shop with about 15 or so shadows and a few blushes to begin with, and add more every fortnight or so (when ever I can manage to kinda thing).

So these are the ones I've made over the last week:

I've swatched them over a base to show base colouring and shine. So all of them would be applied more sheer than shown. They rub down pretty well, some of them are quite pretty!

The blush second from left looks brown/yellow but it rubs down to a yellow based coral. It has a green shine to it which is really subtle so it doesn't make your cheeks look bright green hehe.

The deep plumish purple (4th from left) one rubs down to a softer more brown based plum with a violet shine.

My favourite one is the third from left, it has a really soft rose coloured base but an intense gold sheen to it which is really strong. Maybe too strong for a blush, but it's really pretty!

I'm also having trouble making a hot pink blush without Carmine. I might have to settle with using one that has Carmine in it for now until I can create a vegan one.

Other then that I've gotten a business name registered, and am awaiting my NICNAS registration. So next week I'm organising a work space (probably rental site office since there's no room in the house, and would be good to have a seperate workspace).

Also really exciting I've gotten an Aussie artist to do the artwork for my cards and website, it's going to look fab so I can't wait to set my site up! I'm going to have my own domain rather than go with a site like Etsy. Luckily my brother does I.T engineering so he can set it up for me :D

In some other exciting news I have a friend who runs a photography company and who also does some promotional work, she's running a Miss Indy contest for one of her local pubs which I'll be a sponsor for (so the final 3 girls get my products in their gift bags). I'm also really excited about that. I'm excited about a lot actually. I can't wait to begin!

So at this stage it looks like I should be opening around the first week of September. There's so much to organise between now and then! I'll probably be setting up a seperate blog for the business too, where I'll have a giveaway to celebrate the opening.

So that's about it for now. I probably won't get much of a chance to post over the next few weeks except for when I put up information on the giveaway. Another thing for me to be excited about! haha.

Thanks for reading all!

Soph x

Update + quick reader survey!

2011-07-23T10:29:00.001+10:00

Hey peeps!

Just posting a quick update for those of you who may be interested in seeing some additional swatches of my eyeshadow range.

At the point now where I'm probably not going to be able to 'set up shop' at least for another month minimum. Due to the time frame it takes to get various registrations and funding and applications in order (which is driving me MENTAL - I am the least patient person on the planet!). Also trying to get in contact with a fellow Aussie artist, to do some design commision pieces for me to use for the company. Haven't heard back yet but I'm crossing my fingers because I absolutely adore her work.

So I have decided on 15 shadows to begin with. I wanted to do collections; but initially I'll probably add a ton more and colour categorise them (I've always preferred that sort of site navigation personally). I'm hoping to add blush and possibly foundations towards the end of the year.

I've also decided to hold another giveaway either before I open the site for business; or during the first week. I'll probably have 3 winners as opposed to just 1; and I'll possibly make some limited edition shadows for the winners, that will only be available through the giveaway. So I'll see how I go, but def. more than one person will win :D

So as some of you may know I did send some samples shadows off to some of my fab readers and friends; and the lovely Steph from Raven and the Rose has blogged about them! See swatches here. It's not the entire range but gives a good idea of some of the bright and fun colours I love to make; so take a look :) She also did a stunning look using the shadows, which she has also blogged about. They also have names now! haha - yay!

And finally I would like to ask you all for some information on personal choices when it comes to buying Indie make up brands. I want to know what it is you look for in a company - what do you value in a company that you purchase from time and time again? The reason I'm asking is not because I want to know what colours to produce, or what I should be charging for shipping, but because I want to ensure that my company meets expectations. I want to do the best that I can. I know that I probably can't tick everyone's boxes - it is somewhat impossible to please everyone. But I would like to know what you feel is important when looking to buy, whether it's website navigation and layout, colour descriptions, availability of photo swatches for each colour, user reviews on the site, general company policies, what nice touches added to each order that you appreciate etc whatever you think is important - feel free to comment here and share with me.

At the moment I'm quite snowed under with getting this up and running, so once again I apologise for not posting looks as much as I would like to. Thanks so much for reading, don't forget to check out the swatches (link above) and comment me on what you like about your fav indie brands.

xx Sophie

♥ EOTD: Obliterate

2011-07-18T12:19:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps,

So today I was playing around with some of my eyeshadows that I made, and I wanted to share the look I did. Admitedly, it's not the best I've ever done. You know when you don't really play with your make up as often? and then when you try to it kinda is all wonky and not that awesome? That's how my look is today - HAH. Oh well.

Sorry this one's blurry o_O

And this one, as you can see, was taken under the artificial lighting. So it made it really orangey. But it showed the shine really well so I thought I'd post it anyway.

What I used:

UD Primer Potion

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Tako'

Crease: My own shadow, which I've called 'Obliterate'. It's a washed out maroonish pink with a blue/green shine. I really like it. It blends down pretty well too, which I was happy with.

Lid: Another shadow I made, haven't named it yet. It's an intense blue/teal with a bright green shimmer.

Inner Corner: Aromaleigh 'Feather Boa'. I had this packed into a pot, and it exploded everywhere when I opened it :(

Lower Lashline: Sugarpill 'Dollipop' over UD 'Asphyxia' 24/7 eye liner.

Waterline: Savvy by DB in Pearlescent Plum.

Also a smidgen of liquid liner (SHE in Sapphire) on the outer lid. Was kinda messy, but meh.

If I could re-do this, I'd probably take the pale green outta the inner corner. It really didn't gel with the rest of it. I picked green because of the shine of the shadows, but I should of gone for a pale purple or a white based duochrome. Oh well, I'll live. I was still pretty pleased with it, considering it's been about a month since I really put on eye make up properly.

Good news, also have finally decided on a name for the business. Thinking of doing a 'pin up'/retro themed website. Really important it's appealing to the eye and easy to navigate :D Also think I might do a big giveaway to celebrate the opening of said business. Hopefully within the next month, depending on my finances. I have to register with NICNAS which is 400 bucks annually. Crazy.

Hope you guys liked my look :) might do some more this week with some of the other shadows I've made. Nothing better than seeing how they look on the eye as opposed to a swatch :D

Thanks for reading!

Soph

Bit of a pickle

2011-07-14T11:55:00.001+10:00

Heya peeps.

Inc wall of text!

So this last week I've finally decided on at least 10 shadows to start with. I may increase the number up to 15. Not sure yet. I can't even decide on if I want to do collections. I think I may, because it'd be fun to base them around some of my hobbies, or interest and so forth.

I've been going through my options, deciding if I want to start with any blushes or just have it simple to begin with. I've also been taking into consideration pricing. What is really, really worrying me is the cost of shipping here in Australia. It's like 20-50 bucks to ship internationally. Without insurance. That's... a lot? How do other companies manage to offer free shipping etc? Why would a customer want to pay (let's say) 20 bucks for a bunch of shadows, and then a massive shipping cost on top of that? Australia wide isn't too bad, it's like 5-10 bucks which is OK. But I'm kinda of not sure now what to do.

My product's final price has to include all the materials, shipping costs to get them to me (which will probably be international considering I can't even find any wholesellers in australia, and even then they probably get it from overseas anyway) as well as packaging costs, cleaning costs (like disinfecting etc making sure everything is 100% hygenic) and my actual working cost.

I really don't want to charge ridiculous amount per shadow, I want to keep it affordable for everyone. Obviously considering the exchange rate, prices vary. But I really, honestly don't know what to do about the shipping cost.

Air mail to the US for up to 20kg is about 17.50. Registered post international for up to 2kg is 23 bucks. For a letter, depending on weight, can cost up to 25 bucks. What if someone orders just samples? the postal on that is going to be more than the price of the order! ARGH *tears out hair*

I want to offer samples, for obvious reasons. But now I'm not even sure it's viable. If I couldn't offer samples for sale, I would include them in orders for free though I think. The most important thing here, to be honest, is that I don't lose money. If I lose money, I can't have this business. This business is something I would love to do forever (if I can). But at the same time, I want it to be affordable for everyone. I don't want to be like Inglot or MAC here in Aus and charge 30 bucks a shadow. It's excessive.

So that's my problem. Which I'm going to work on this week to sort out. Now I have a good idea of what goes into my product, how much it costs to get here and so forth, I can work on that. Hopefully I can find some middle ground with shipping costs to potentially make everyone happy.

You know what I'd also like to do? Make specific shadows with a donation of sale price to go to charities, like the RSPCA or Leukemia foundation. I'd really like to do that :) I don't know much about that kind of thing but I'd like to look into it.

Also. Cannot for the life of me find a business name yet. Driving me crazy. I've had heaps of ideas, but none seem to fit me just right.

OK next topic. If you live in Australia and want to test some small sample sizes of some of my first collection, please email me at ethereal--beauty@hotmail.com with appropriate title. You won't be required to blog or promote any of it, I just want feedback on the quality.

EDIT: The reason I say Australia is because of shipping costs. I may be able to ship test samples out to other countries but it will depend on the shipping cost, if each one costs 15 bucks to mail lets say, I can't send out samples to 30 people. :(

That's it for today, I'm going back to mixing. I have this urge to make a hot pink with a green/teal sparkle.

Thanks for reading lovelies!

Soph xxx

I made some blushes! >.>

2011-07-10T16:24:00.000+10:00

Hey guys :D

Made some blushes today! My first ever, what do you think?

Nice matte pink with a barely-there violet shine to it.

Incrediby pale pink with gold shine (this one's super pretty but didn't photograph well)

A good break from eyeshadows! What kind of blushes do you like? Colour-wise? I'm mostly a pinkish coral person... Might try making a coral one tomorrow me thinks :D I'll have to include some blushes for peeps to try with my eyeshadows when I get around to sending them out in the next few months :D Going to look into getting a name for my business this week :) No idea what to call it yet though!

Soph

Finally > a productive day!

2011-07-09T15:36:00.000+10:00

Hey lovelies,

I posted recently asking if any of you would be interested in giving some feedback on some shadows I've made myself. Since a handful of people were interested I thought I'd share what I made today :)

On topic of posts, I probably won't update with a new look for at least another week. I'm growing out my eyebrows to reshape them, discovering in the process that they're growing back as unevenly as possible. *sigh*. I know most people wouldn't care, but a big part of doing a look is making sure your eyebrows don't look like hairy caterpillars. At least, for me, it's important.

Anyway, today was productive. I made some shadows that I absolutely LOVE. I'm even thinking that if people like them maybe I might send some out to my readers to try. I'd love actual product feedback. I'm still unsure as to how much of what I need to put in shadows, to ensure it's not patchy and actually sticks to a primer or base. I've also discovered that with UDPP these shadows stick really well if I apply it immediately, and not so well if the primer has been sitting on my arm for a few minutes before I put the shadow on. I wonder if that's the primer, or the shadow? I want to make sure they're as perfect as possible. Technically, being my own toughest critic, it's getting hard to get anywhere as far as opacity and application goes. I just don't know if it's the primers or the shadows. I mean, if I put the shadows straight onto my arm they're transparent as and hardly stick. But a lot of shadows are like that anyway? Ugh.

So here's some I did today:

This one I love... Intense red based purple with a red shine. Love it.

A burgundy, was super sparkly.

This one is more peachy pink based, with an great gold shine. It looks overall more golden, but it's not IRL.

A great lemon lime colour. Is super bright and fun, but had trouble with the opacity.

Love thyis colour! It's a mellow green with this great gold and orange duochrome.

Black based green. Not a duochrome but rather pretty as is.

These next three are pictures of 1 shadow, not 3 seperate ones.

It's black based, but shines three different colours depending what angle. I think it's pretty neat! :D

I'm also getting confused with some of the samples I got from TKB. Some minerals listed as having preservatives, when I looked up the MSDS sheets it said it had talc in it, I don't really want Talc in any of my eye products if possible. I read that it's linked to cancer but only if you're subjected to insane amounts of it over time. Which surely wouldnt happen in eyeshadows, but i'd rather make stuff that's not linked to something like cancer, you know? I'm trying to be careful with it all.

Very few would have carmine in them. I'm not vegan to be honest, but understandably a lot of people are so I'd like to make a bunch with no animal by-products in them also.

I have so many questions about it all! And no one to ask haha. Ah well, I'll get there one day :)

Anyway peeps, what do you think so far?

Thanks for reading! :D

Soph

What I've been up to...

2011-07-07T12:08:00.000+10:00

Hello lovely peeps!

Wow, I cannot believe I've been away from my blog so much. I was so focused with it at the beginning of the year. Little did I imagine what this year would hold.

I'm hoping again, to start posting some new looks for you all. I admit I have been majorly sidetracked. My vanity table was re organised and I absolutely HATE the drawers I use to store my shadows in. It's really putting me off working with my make up. Something I need to rectify when I have some spare cash, no doubt.

One thing that is really exciting me is how I have been going with making my own eyeshadows. At this stage I haven't tried blushes or foundations. I'm very apprehensive about foundations, because complexions are so complicated it seems like an immensley daunting task to try and match my skintone. Plus, the pretty colours of eyeshadows is what has been holding my attention. How can it not?

This is my collection of samples. And I have to say, the amount of different colours I can create from these is absolutely amazing. I could mix colours for the rest of my life, I think. And I'll be honest, I'm seriously starting to consider a business out of this. It is just so enjoyable and creative, I love it. I've even given some of the shadows I've made to some friends to try out. I'm hoping that I'll get good feedback :D

What I'm hoping to do is actually post some swatches in the next fortnight, to see what you lovelies think. I'd really like to get some feedback about it. I mean, if I'm totally crappy at doing this then there's not much point pursuing this outside of a basic hobby. But to be honest, I couldn't think of a more enjoyable career to have then making and mixing make up *crosses fingers*. But there's so much to learn! It's not like I've had a business before.

Anyway. That's pretty much what I've been doing in my spare time when I'm not working. So I keep forgetting to update here with the looks I do, which is a shame because I've had some looks I would of loved to share but didn't photograph them at the time.

So what do you think? Would you be interested in seeing some swatches of any eyeshadows I make?

Soph

And I'm back... kinda

2011-05-27T14:13:00.000+10:00

Hey everyone,

First off I just want to say thank you to everyone who sent their wishes and prayers my way for my brother, it was very, very thoughtful and touching, and I really appreciated those comments - thank you all so much :)

My brother was diagnosed with CML (Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia) a few days before his 23rd birthday this month. Fortunately for us all, CML is possibly the best form of leukemia to have (not that I would wish it upon anyone) as it has the highest survivability rate of nearly 90%. Thankfully, he does not need to have frequent blood transfusions or even a bone marrow transplant. He is now back at home after only a week in hospital, as CML is treatable with a targeted oral drug that's mostly paid for by the government (yay!). Basically, as long as my brother looks after himself, stays on his treatment and doesn't go into large crowds where they may be sick people, he should live for many years to come. My mother, who is a lecturer in one of the Melbourne universities, has a girl in one of her classes with CML and it's very easy to live a normal day-to-day life as long as you just look after yourself well.

As I'm sure you can imagine just how relieved my family and I are that my brother will have at least another 20 years under his belt, maybe more if treatment improves over future years which I'm sure will happen *crosses fingers*.

In addition to that, my father is wanting to sell his house in the next two years. My partner and I rent the granny flat downstairs, which allows us to save quite a bit. Because I initially stepped down to casual a few months ago to help out my dad when he had his bypass, we haven't been saving. Now I have to go back into work fulltime, whether at my current company or not doesn't matter, so Dave and I can't begin saving to buy our own place. I hate the idea of going back into renting, it's just dead money. At least renting off of my father is not only cheaper than other rental units, but at least it's helping him with the mortgage etc. SO! I'm no longer going to be continuing with my make up artistry course. I don't know if I will take it up again in the future, maybe with a institution that is cheaper, since the one I planned to go to is possibly the most expensive in the country, lol. And the weird thing is, I'm not even bothered by it? Maybe that means that path isn't for me, I don't know anymore.

I can't believe this year. I never would of imagined it would of been like this, I had planned something so utterly different. But oh well, life goes on. I'm kinda of looking forward to owning my own place actually, even if it is two years away from now, heh. I can do renovations! Yay!

Asides from that I haven't been up to much else, I've started playing around the TKB kit I bought, but I think I need more colours. The ones that came with kit were actually kind of boring. The colours are bland and really 'meh'. Although I did buy a bunch of samples of the duochrome kinda stuff, which I'm loving :D The kit came with a book, but I found it can be quite vague, or doesn't have answers for questions I come up with. Like when you blend oil into a eyeshadow mix, it doesn't blend. It just sits at the bottom of the little coffee grinder I'm using (which works well for the blending of micas, just not oil apparently). So I don't know how to blend the oil in? I think the oil is just to help the shadow adhere to a base better? I cant even remember it's been a few weeks since I read the section haha. And also, some of the micas (the pretty ones) I blend together and when I swatch them over a primer they can be quite sheer. Does the oil help it build up the colour better or do I have to use a more opaque base to begin with? I just have so many questions. I should probably google some of them (which I haven't bothered to even think of doing - lol!).

I think I'm going to order some more samples from tkb, I really feel like I don't have enough colours to create what I want. I'll show you guys some of the ones I've done so far:

The two on the right aren't blended properly, so they were streaky. But really this was at the end of my mixing event this morning so I really cbf.

I really should of taken better pictures, and you guys know I usually do, but at least the blurryness shows the shimmery side of things, which is the side I love :D

So I'm really enjoying mixing up these eyeshadows! Like I said I need to order more micas. But I'm so obsessed with duochromes I'm trying to make everything more complicated than it needs to be, otherwise I consider it boring (I have at least 20 scrapped shadows because of the boring factor, even though at least half of them are rather pretty even if they don't shine like a disco ball).

I want to try out making matte shadows too, although I don't know how well I will go because of my shiny obsession. Hehe.

So hopefully I will be updating a bit more from now on. I'm the one that takes my brother to hospital once a week for his appointments, and soon I'll be working fulltime again, so I don't know how much time I'll be able to devote to my blog. But I will try my best. I might not be able to buy as much products as I used to, because of saving. But really, if I'm blending all my own eyeshadows then I'll have enough to last a lifetime I guess. I'm even considering of going further with this whole mineral make up thing, but that's just food for thought. Maybe.

How are you guys anyway? Hope you're all well and have had an awesome month :D

Thanks for reading

Soph xx

update: MIA

2011-05-15T16:36:00.002+10:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanting to post quickly and let you all know I most likely won't be posting anytime soon, as my brother has just been diagnosed with leukemia. This has really come as a shock to the family, and as you can imagine I've lost my interest in make up and blogging currently.

Will update this space when I can.

Soph

Shiro Cosmetics Swatches

2011-05-08T18:14:00.000+10:00

Hello all!

Today's post is going to be quick - not like a full review or anything, because I've spent ages doing swatches and then editing them, at which point my stupid computer crashed and rebooted itself, so then I had to go through an edit all the images again... and *sigh* just over it. Haha! I'm really OCD about regularly saving work and for once I didn't do it so of course my PC crashed! My luck, haha.

So a few weeks ago a placed an order with Shiro Cosmetics for the 30 mini jars.

I didn't get any shipping emails or anything, so I emailed twice to which I finally got a response. They send those details through Esty convos or whatever, which is fine, but I don't really use my Esty account much so I don't check the messages. No dramas there. The packaged arrive in a cute detailed plastic bag, with some sweet treats which was a nice touch. A copy of my invoice came also, along with 3 free samples. Considering my hefty (kinda) order, I was really pleased to see that the samples were of shadows I hadn't already ordered.

Labelling is all straight forward, simple and clean, which I like. Almost half of the mini jars had loose or completely undone lids from during transit (I assume) which I didn't like, but they all came with sealed sifters which prevented any spillage, thankfully. I actually ended up removing a lot of the sifters, as none of the product was coming through. I don't like sifters much, but I would prefer to have the products arrive with sifters to prevent product loss, as opposed to no sifters with product spilled everywhere. You know what I mean.

OK so swatches are below. All taken outdoors in direct sunlight over Medusa's Make Up Stick It base. In advance, please forgive me if I have labelled any with incorrect spelling or colours mixed up. I wrote it all down then discovered I left out some names and even swatched one colour twice. This post has taken me ages to prepare, and I'm not even sure if it's correct which really peeves me! Sorry about that o.0 Urgh. Haha.

I'm probably not going to write descriptions for each colour unless I feel it's necessary. I don't want to keep repeating "this one has glitter... this one too has glitter... glitter... glitter..." haha. Most of these shadowes contain glitter of many different colours, and are extremely pretty although some of them feel too similar because of it.

Hearts is a favbourite of mine now, I love that colour. Porygon was a teeny bit patchy with application, but nothing that would cause issues I think.

Small Key is lovely, it's so velvety. I love the colour of this, it almost takes on an olive undertone in other lighting.

I didn't like how obvious the glitter in Rapidash looks, it's kinda of coppery I think, but really obvious from certain angles. Because the glitter is so much darker it makes it look a little dirty. Yet from other angles it's very sparkly and pretty. I don't know what to make of it, I think I'm kind of 50/50 on it for now.

Weepinbell is beautiful. Love this shadow. The colour is so vivid, I know I will use it regularly :D

Oshus has to be patted on, or you end up with the line of glitter around the edges. I tried patting it on over what I'd already done but it didn't work. I didn't even swipe it much to begin with, but meh.

Majora's Mask doesn't really show it, but I felt during application it was really quite chalky and patchy. I wore it to work and it creased awfully over Aromaleigh eyeshadow base in Light (which I haven't really experienced any shadow creasing with). I'll try it again over UD Primer Potion and update this spot in future.

Rattata I found a bit iffy with application. It seemed to go on kinda patchy so Ii really patted it on and built it up for the swatch. The colour and intensity is, however, absolutely stunning.

Spiritbomb is another new fav of mine, I love paler pink purples with green in them. Yay! haha.

Most of them are chockablock full of glitter and are complex enough for my liking. The consistency with some of the shadows was a bit bothersome, but overall I was happy with the quality and quantity for the price. I was happy with the range to choose from, but I probably could of done with picking some that were less full of glitter and maybe a bit more subtle. But that was my error there.

So that pretty much wraps it up. I probably won't be buy much if any more Shiro Cosmetics, just because now I have so much. I felt that I bought all the colours I was really interested in, and there were definitely a few I was pleasantly suprised with. Some of the shadows are absolutely beautiful!

The packaging was nice, as well as the cute treats which were appreciated. There was a thank you note included, and the email I recieved was very nice to which I'm very satisfied with the customer service aspect. I'm glad I purchased from Shiro Cosmetics! :D

Do you have any of these? what are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading!

Soph x

Persephone Minerals swatches

2011-05-07T17:43:00.000+10:00

Hello lovelies!

Once again, my apologies for being slack in posting lately. I will admit I have been mostly consumed with working a lot, and transfering my Aromaleigh shadows into jars (yay!). So this week I recieved all of my three orders, Shiro Cosmetics (should be posted tomorrow), TKB and Persephone Minerals.

Persephone Minerals was the one I was probably anticipating the most, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. One thing that irked me when I was purchasing the shadows, was that I couldn't purchase Mars Crystal Power alone, I had to purchase it in the set. I didn't really want the entire set, and even though they're pretty I don't imagine I'll use most of them that often. But, as always, personal preference there. Victoria was also super quick reply to my email enquiry, which I really appreciated, whereas Shiro Cosmetics I had to email twice before I got a reply. But that's for later.

The jars were also wrapped together in a little sheer bag, which was a pretty touch to my order. I also recieved two free samples which I also appreciated.

First thing I noticed - the jars are shrink wrapped! Is that the correct term? I'm not sure. But they were wrapped up nice and tight to prevent spillage. And I absolutely LOVED this. There are no sifters in the jars, and a pet peeve is when companies ship out their products where spillage may occur. I love that wrapping them this way would prevent any product loss!

My products were also bubblewrapped, and an invoice copy included in the package. So lets get on to swatches:

Bi Curious - Baby blue base with pink duochromes. I adore duochromes, so this will be a great addition to my collection.
Stage Lights - A lilac purple based gold duochrome. once again, another great shadow. Very pretty.
Rampid (Sample) - Vivid fuchsia. Super pigmented.
Lemoni (Sample) - Crisp lemon yellow (hence the name, I suppose, lol).

Smoke - A complex shadow, looks like black based with deep purple undertones, tons of glitter which from what I could see looked like a mix of mostly blue, green and pink. Very sparkly, very pretty.
Infinity - Reminds me a lot of smoke, has the same black base but this seems to have a greyish purple undertone to it, really washed out but pretty also. This one also has tons of glitter and I find purple and blue to catch my eye most of often in there. Pic doesn't really do it justice.
Kalifa - This is very similar to Inglot's #85 eye pigment. Rusty reddish base with intense green duochrome. Even though I have Inglot #85 I bought this anyway because I wanted to see how similar it was. I love this type of shadow and I'll most likely be using it frequently.

Rei - Black based with burgundy undertones, tons of deep red and purple glitter. Very striking.
Mars Flame Sniper - Brownish base with glitter, it's quite pretty but I don't see myself using it much.
Princess Mars - I love this burnt coral orangey colour, hehe. This too has glitter.
Mars Crystal Power - Everyone's fav, right? I adore this colour. I like too that when you rub it is wears down to a lovely deep pink shade also, which I like to put in the crease. This colour is just stunning. if you don't have it, go and buy it. It's probably my favourite eyeshadow, ever.
Sailor Mars - Deep fuchsia with sparkles. This colour is intense!

I wore some of these today to work:

Sorry the colour is a bit dodgy, I took it in my bedroom with the lights on as opposed to outside in the sunshine /facepalm.

Mars Crystal Power on the lid, Sailor Mars in the Crease.
Sugarpill's Tako as highlight and lightly in inner corner. Waterline is Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner in 'Rockstar'.

Wow did I get some comments with this eyeshadow on today! Usually I get some compliments about my make up as I love wearing bright and fun colours, but Mars Crystal power is so eye catching it's unbelievable. Love it!

Have you tried Persephone Minerals? What are your fav shades? Any to recommend me?

Thanks for reading <3

PS: I promise I will be updating more this week! Sorry :( haha.

♥ EOTD: Dirty Bourbon

2011-04-30T16:51:00.001+10:00

Hello lovelies!

Wow have I been AWOL or what??? I haven't posted in a week, that's AGES for me! Haha! So much has been going on, but I found the time today to post a quick look I had done this week. It's nothing spectacular, but for me to play with browns and make something I like, it's kinda special in it's own way. This is more of a toned down look for me. I could of probably done less burnt ornage in the crease, but hey, whatever floats ya boat.

As you can see... nothing too complex... ;D Also, it's really peeving me off how I trim my brows and IRL they look fine, but as soon as I want to take a pic I look like a Worgen.

Highlight: Sugarpill 'Takp'

Crease: Medusa's Makeup 'Brown Sugar' with 'Vanilla Latte' used to blend into the highlight. You can barely see 'Vanialla Latte', which is a washed out rose coloured shimmer. From different angles you could see it quite well, however.

Outer Corner: Medusa's Makeup 'Dirty'. I adore this shade, it's a super dark burgundy-purple.

Lid: Aromaleigh 'Spark of Romance'.

Inner Corner: Inglot Pigment #38. Peachy based blue duochrome.

Lower Lashine: 'Brown Sugar' over Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencil in 'Bourbon'. 'Bourbon' is also used on the waterline. I have a bit of Aromaleigh's 'Spark of Romance' towards the inner corner also.

This was a super quick look. It took me about 2 minutes. So it's definitely something easy to do, and I love mixing all the warm colours together. The burnt orange in the crease is quite a lot (which I personally prefer with my own style of eye makeup) but it would still look fab even is you put less colour in the crease.

I have some new posts coming up, hopefully this week. All three orders I've been waiting on have shipped (Persephone Minerals, Shiro Cosmetics and TKB) so I should be posting about those soon (yay I love swatching!) and I'm not working a lot this week, so I should also have more EOTDS for you. Probably something a bit more complex, I really want to top 'Coldarra'! haha.

Which reminds me, I have been playing TONS of WoW this week. Levelling my second lock on Saurfang (Castorsugar - pm me if you play on that server :D ) and just did some of the new quests in Hillsbrad - they're awesome! I was laughing most of the time, the quest text is hilairious :D But it peeves me you still cant transfer heirlooms over servers, so I'm grinding it out the hard way with no extra XP gains *sadface*.

Soph xx

MIA Update & Rant

2011-04-23T09:26:00.001+10:00

Hello lovelies,

Hi to my new followers! /wave :D

Just wanting to let you guys know I haven't had the chance and probably won't for a couple more days, to post or even do any new EOTD's. I'm kind of bummed about that, because of course I love creating new looks and playing with make up. This week has been my sick week, turns out I've developed a chest infection which has kept me in bed for most of the last 3 days as I'm finding it hard to sit or stand for long periods. Anywho, not very interesting but I hope that next week I'll be better and will get back to updating and posting regularly!

I have really had such a crappy week, to be honest. AS some may know, I had to call in Wed as I was sick, up all night coughing like crazy. I thought I had a chest infection. The cough went away towards end of the day.

My area manager keeps acting like I'm still the store manager, and when I was at work (I got called in on Thursday and I went in as I wasnt coughing thought I would be ok) my health was just declining so badly, I nearly fell off the ladder I was so dizzy, I had to call our third casual in early (she ended up working 11 hours almost alone that day which I felt so damn awful about) because i was close to throwing up at the counter and I had the shakes badly. So the area manager has utterly blasted me over the phone because I'm sick. Blasted me over the phone because the junior casual is sick and cant work today, and the duty manager's son is seriously sick in hospital so she couldn't work either. Apparently, that's MY fault. It's also MY fault we didn't make sales so far during the week even though the one shift I worked on Sunday I made sales budget for last year as well as head office target, and had pretty darn good figures, I'll tell you right now.

And she's also taken all my shifts off of me and given them to another casual about a fortnight from now, for no apparent reason. We were under wage budget and all three casuals including myself had 15 hours each, to be fair, which is what I did when I helped out with rostering. So now one casual has 27 hours and I have none. Apparently I don't need to feed myself or pay for a roof over my head either. And the week after that she took all the hours off of one of the other casuals. Like, seriously, who does that? Do I call her when she has sick days and blast her about it? no. Would I have ever given any of my staff members a week with no income? never. She's in a controlling position, in which she should be ensuring all staff are treated fairly and have access to shifts each week, whether it's one shift or 10.

I ended up having to call the Workplace Rights Ombudsman office, because the area manager kept saying I had to come back in for at least 3 hours even though i had a doctors certificate and I had to go home to rest (the doctor said). They said if she keeps asking me, and taking into account the way she was speaking to me initially on the phone where she was insinuating it all was my fault and that it wasnt good enough, also questioning me thoroughly over how i was sick and what the problem was also trying to nitpick that i thought i had a chest infection and now I dont in sarcastic tones, that she has to report this entire ordeal to the regional manager etc etc (man she really went on and on for a good 5 minutes) it's workplace bullying and harrassment. If she had actually called me one more time I was going to file a complaint with Human Resources, because it just was not on. It wasn't appropriate to speak about all of these issues with anger to a casual, she really should of been speaking to the duty manager about it as she is currently in charge of the store. The reality is, I've worked some shitty jobs and I've seen workplace harrassment before as well as endured bullying from managers, but this was one of the first times I actually cried at work ever. I was just so sick, tired and in disbelief that this woman could really speak to me as such and also make it out that it was entirely my fault everything had gone wrong.

I dont want to leave a staff member working alone for that long, I felt absolutely awful and guilty about it. I also need the money, since I dont get sick pay. So of course I would like to work, but the reality is I'm a hazard to even be put back in a workplace. What if I fell off of the ladder and broke my arm or something?

So that was the great climax to an absolutely smashing week. At the end of it all, I've spoken to my duty manager about the roster issue, but at the end of the day I'm keeping my mouth shut so far and going to act like there's no problem. Because I can always find another job, I don't want to make my position worse off either. So I'm just going to see how it all plays out. What do you think you would do in my situation?

You know what? I feel a lot better after ranting. I feel a little upset, but I also feel good to get it all out. Hope you guys didn't mind too much. I don't like to rant much, I'd rather keep my blog a 'happy' place, haha. unfortunately my week has been rather full of un-happy.

I hope you all have had a great week, however. Hopefully mine will be better next week! I'll be well enough to go back to work and start playing with make up some more, which will definitely cheer me up :D

Soph

♥ EOTD: Creating Oops Shadows

2011-04-20T18:40:00.000+10:00

Hey peeps :D

So I've been up half the night with some serious coughing fits; and I called in sick at work today. You know that heavy feeling you get in your chest and head when you're coming down with something? That's how I felt, with a cough and a headache. Bleh.

Anywho, I spent a lot of the day in bed feeling sorry for myself . Eventually I got over that and went to play with my Aromaleigh 'oops' shadows I got in the grab bags weeks ago. They're 'mega bags' of colour, some are straight eyeshadow colours while others are random blends called 'Oops bags'. Since they had SO much product in them, and the grab bags came with tons of plastic scoops and baggies, I figured I'd muck around with them for awhile and be a bit creative.

I actually enjoyed this soooo much I'm now placing a massive order with TKB for the mineral make up kit and a bunch of other eye safe micas etc; so I can play around with shadows and blushes and even more! Who knows what I'll come up with? I'm actually really, really excited about this :D I love almost anything creative and hands on, I'm obsessed with colour so this is like the perfect hobby for me.

So considering the colours I used today are once off shades (mostly) from dwindling Aromaleigh stock, I doubt I can replicate any of them should I want to in the future, but to be honest I made enough to fill about 2 x 5g jars so I doubt I'll need to make more. And I wanted to share with you all what I made today, because some of the shadows are really quite pretty, and a few were complex enough for my liking (I'm a major fan of complex shadows and duochromes).

I did some looks with the ones I created:

And here are some swatches of the shadows I made today - enjoy!

(click images for larger version!)

I love the blue duochrome effect that came through on the shadows on the left side (above). Both the mixed blueish purples on the right had a lot of glitter in them, I'm really disappointed I couldn't capture them properly with my camera, because they are stunning!

Do you ever play around with your shadows, mixing colours? This is a first for me :) I really had so much fun, I can't wait for my TKB order now :D

Still waiting on a shipping notice (or any sign of life) from Persephone Minerals & Shiro Cosmetics, been about 5 days since I put in an order. But that includes the weekend and I read that Persephone Minerals had a 5-10 day TAT. I'm too impatient >.< but hoping they will be shipped soon!

Sophie x

Sigma Brushes Initial Thoughts Review

2011-04-19T17:41:00.002+10:00

Hello lovelies!

So today I am posting my initial thoughts on the much publicised and well known Sigma brushes. I want to point out that although these are my initial thoughts and opinions, this will be a rather long post. Brushes are the tools of our trade and one of the most important beauty items we could possibly own, so I felt I wanted to give an accurate feedback as possible for those who are considering purchasing these brushes. I know that when I was researching some of the brushes online, the information or descriptions I found about certain issues was very, very bare with little detail. So I hope that I won't bore you to death! but at the same time I just want everyone to understand where I'm coming from.

Also, I want to make note that having had no formal beauty training, I am unfamiliar with a lot of brush styles, companies and quality so I apologise in advance if I make any incorrect statements (although I have done my best to be accurate) and I hope you can bare with my noobness! I do my best to learn about these things as much as possible using the internet, but I suppose not everything on the internet is 100% accurate either.

Ok, let's get going!

Ordering
As some of you may know, I recently received my Sigma brush order. I've been using the brushes for at least a week (daily use for at least 3-5 brushes) and I felt it was time to post my initial thoughts on the product.

Prior to purchasing the Sigma brushes, I will say that my brush collection was meagre at best. It mostly consisted of a couple of MAC brushes, an Eco Tools set, Medusa's Make Up set (which I really quite like, I've been using them for well over two years with absolutely no problems!) and a few stray Natio brushes which I don't use much except for swatching when I don't want to get my other brushes 'dirty'. I also have one or two Manicare and Body Shop brushes which I dislike intensley because they're mostly useless. But, that's for another time perhaps.

So having been viewing the internet beauty community for quite some time now, I because aware of Sigma Brushes and the mixed reviews. Some hate them, some people think they're of equal quality to industry superstars MAC, and some people feel a bit 'meh' about it all. Considering the prices and the fact I actually need brushes, I decided to give Sigma a shot.

My order consisted of the Complete Kit Without Brush Roll in Black and extras. I decided not to go with the ever-so-popular 12 piece kit with travel case, because let's face it - I'm a hermit who never goes anywhere, so I have no need for a hard case. Plus, at $79US it was $20 cheaper than the set with case :)

The 12 piece kit contains:
E05 - Eye Liner
E30 - Pencil
E40 - Tapered Blending
E55 - Eye Shading
E65 - Small Angle
E60 - Large Shader
E70 - Medium Angled Shading
F30 - Large Powder
F40 - Large Angled Contour
F50 - Duo Fibre
F60 - Foundation
F70 - Concealer

I also purchased two extra brushes:
F80 - Flat Top Synthetic Kabuki $16US
E25 - Blending (MAC 217 'dupe') $9US

My total order came to $134.55. Shipping was $40.95, and I also used a discount code for 10% off. So the total costing for the brushes was $93.60, which equates to about $6.70 per brush.

The brushes I was anticipating the most were the E25 (because I love blending!), the E30 as I don't have a Pencil brush and I was excited to test one out, as well as the F40 Large Angled Contour as I actually don't have a proper blush brush! I use the EcoTool large blush brush as a powder foundation brush, because the density of it works better for my powder foundation as opposed to a fluffier brush such as the Sigma F30.

Packaging
The brushes were packaged relatively well. All brushes were contained in plastic sleeves and they also came with descriptive leaflets which I thought was great to include, as it provides some general information on the use of each brush as well as what they're composed of (natural, synthetic etc). I also recieved a freebie, a travel sized blending brush (E25) which I thought was great because I love blending and I desperately needed some extra blending brushes :D A card also comes with the package, recommending the brushes are to be washed prior to use. And I will say it is good they include this, because I'm sure some people aren't actually aware that for hygenic reasons cosmetic brushes should be washed prior to use. You never know who has rubbed their grimy hands all over the product before you bought it!

The brushes have a sleek and professional look to them. The silver lettering is painted on, not embossed such as you would find with MAC brushes. I prefer embossed, because the paint wears away over time. But once again, personal preference here.

Washing & Shedding
So the first thing I did was was the brushes, using a mild shampoo and leaving them overnight to dry. With the large brushes I tend to lean them on a slight angle with the bristles lower than the other end, just to ensure no moisture works it's way up into the joint. I had read some reviews about the F50 (Duo Fibre) bleeding, but I had no problems with this at all nor any of the times I have washed it to date. I noticed some shedding during the initial wash, with almost all of the brushes excluding the Concealer (F70), Small Angle (E65) and the Eye Liner (E05). However, this was to be expected and I was not sobbing at the sight of this. I did notice that the large brushes shed more than the medium sized to smaller brushes.

I had a big issue with the Large Angled Contour (F40) after washing, because it smelled quite bad. And when I say bad, I mean it was pretty BAD. So bad I didn't want to put it near my face, and when I asked the boy what he thought it smelt like he glared at me like I was playing some awfully cruel joke on him by making him smell something that foul. I thought 'fair enough, must be the glue and the smell will wear off after a couple of washes', so I left it to dry. When this brush is dry, it doesn't smell too bad. You could easily use it as long as you didn't bury your nose in it and breathe in deeply. So I decided to wash it again, and the smell came back. It smells like wet dog covered in urine, and to date I have washed that brush about 10 times and the smell is not any less.

I promptly emailed Sigma customer service and politely enquired to if the brush is supposed to smell so bad, will the smell fade or should I request an exchange. They quickly replied back with a 'we're sending you a new one'. I was quite suprised by this, because if the smell fades then technically I don't require a new brush, and I was also wondering why don't they want me to send the old one back for a sniffing inspection of sorts? I could of been fibbing about it? I'm not fibbing about it, but if I was then I totally scored a new brush, you know what I mean? I appreciate the quick reply and the immediate replacement offer, perhaps I'm a little too suspicious for my own good. This new one is yet to arrive, so I cannot comment on if it smells like wet dog or not (I really hope it doesn't). UPDATE*** Received a new Large Angled Contour and it smells a bit, but now where near as much as the first one.

The Large Angled Contour also sheds constantly, as does the Duo Firbe 'stippling brush' which I use for my liquid foundation. I've used it about 6 times to date for foundation application and each time it has left an average of about 5 (give or take) hairs on my face. At least i can easily spot them as they are black, lol. The pencil brush sheds constantly too, and this is really annoying because the hairs get in my eyes, and I'm sure I don't have to explain what a pain that is! The flat top kabuki sheds a tiny bit, but I'm not overly worried about it. The Medium Angled Shading (E70) sheds a fair bit too.

(Hair shed from the Large Angled Contour)

I have read some reviews where people expressed concerns about the brushes not holding their shape after washing, I personally haven't experienced this problem although I also read that people were finding it useful to dry them in the plastic sleeves which the brushes are initially packaged in, as this helps the brushes keep their shape.

General Brush Thoughts
E05 - Eye Liner - Yet to use this.
E30 - Pencil - Sheds quite a lot, I don't think it holds the product that well but it is usuable.
E40 - Tapered Blending - Yet to use this.
E55 - Eye Shading - Still sheds a little, works relatively well however.
E65 - Small Angle - Only used once or twice, no issues with it.
E60 - Large Shader - Sheds a little bit still, but I haven't used it too often because I use smaller shading brushes by preference.
E70 - Medium Angled Shading - Used this a fair few times to date, works well however is still shedding quite a lot.
F30 - Large Powder - Still shedding lightly, to be honest it's not dense enough for my powder foundation (out of preference) however when I'm wanting a more sheer powder look this works quite well. It's very soft, minimal smell and feels very, very nice on the face.
F40 - Large Angled Contour - Still sheds, still smells and I don't feel like it picks up the product that well. I use it to lightly apply blush which I then blend out with the Flat Top Synthetic Kabuki.
F50 - Duo Fibre - I like how well this works with liquid foundation, it sheds quite a lot still and the lighter areas of the brush do stain after awhile. I would probably like it more if it were a little more stiff (just a tad) however.
F60 - Foundation - I rarely use foundation brushes so I haven't used this yet.
F70 - Concealer - I actually feel like this would be better suited for a shadow brush, it's nice and dense and just the right size. I pat on my concealer with fingers to warm it up so it blends easily, so I probably won't use this for concealer.
F80 - Flat Top Synthetic Kabuki - Love this brush. It has minimal shedding, and it's so soft and dense! Blends out my blush like a dream.
E25 - Blending - I really prefer the MAC 217 over this. The E25 works, but quality and application wise I think the MAC one is better. I noticed the bristles look a bit more 'hacked off' at the ends when compared to the 217.

(Sigma Travel Sized E25 / Sigma Normal Sized E25 / MAC 217)

Would I recommend Sigma?
This is the tricky part.

I'm satisifed with Sigma customer service, packaging and shipping times.

Considering what I paid for them I can't really expect much more, although I did think they would be a bit better quality just going from other people's reviews. At the same time in some areas it is hard not to feel like I wasted money. The Large Angled Contour was the biggest disappointment of all, as I was looking forward to using it quite a lot. I'm hoping the replacement will be better.

I have read a LOT of good and bad reviews, some people have absolutely no bleeding, shedding or smelly problems with their brushes, while others such as me were less fortunate. In the larger brushes and two or three of the medium sized eye brushes the shedding is really an issue - when will it stop???

Based on a LOT of mixed reviews, what I'm seeing is a lack of consistency with the product quality. The fact that Sigma were so quick to send me a new brush without really taking a closer look at the issue really makes me feel they've probably had a lot of complaints (once again folks, just my opinion, and as I mentioned before I am the suspicious type).

So I'm going to keep it safe here and say that based on my experience with the products I have recieved I would think that even at such a cheap price, you would probably be better off pooling your money and purchasing better quality brushes that will last you years and years. I'm not going to say 'no dont buy them' or 'yes you should'. You might be lucky and recieve totally awesome brushes with no problems, or you might get totally crappy ones and come back to my blog to e-bash me :( haha! But then this too poses a question doesn't it? If the consistency in the quality isn't there, do you want to take the risk of spending your money on this product?

Although I can use these on a daily basis I still feel there are better quality brushes available - I'm not going to tell you to never buy Sigma products ever, because like I mentioned before plenty of people are happy with them and you might be one of those people. If you don't have a big budget then maybe Sigma is a good option, you may not have issues with your brushes. As I mentioned, aside from the shedding they are quite usuable on a day to day basis for my make up application, but if I were a make up artist freelancing I would invest in better quality. I am also going to point out that I will continue to use my Sigma brushes and I will be updating either this page or in a future post should I have any additional feedback :) but at this stage I'm not looking to buy any new Sigma products, nor replace brushes with Sigma in the future. Based on my experience I personally wouldn't purchase Sigma brushes again.

Thanks so much for reading my giant walls of text, and please let me know about your Sigma brush experience - do you love them or are you just not that keen on them?

Also, if you are looking to purchase some Sigma brushes and if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask and I will try to give you a detailed description/answer as possible :)

Sophie x

*All thoughts and opinions shared in this review are 100% my own. I purchased all products shown and described in this review. I am not affliated with any companies mentioned in this review. The purpose for my review is to be used as a purchasing guide, and I am not telling you that you should or should not purchase Sigma products*

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils swatches

2011-04-18T12:17:00.001+10:00

Hi peeps!

As some of you may know I recently (well, a few weeks ago I think) got a package from BeautyJoint.com. I've already posted about the NYX Glitter Liners, and I've been awfully slow in getting this post up. I've had it mostly prepared at least a week ago, but I've been a bit 'blah' lately so I apologise for not updating as much as I usually do.

I've kinda been playing around with some looks recently, trying to get started on a first tutorial since I know some people would enjoy that. But to be honest I am having so much trouble with lighting and getting decent, clear pictures that I've given up on that for the moment. I'll have to sort something out because my bedroom has the worst lighting EVER. Great for sleeping, bad for make up :(

So I know that this is a very common product; or well, maybe not so much with Australians since we don't have any retailers that stock a broad range of NYX products (that I'm aware of). I'm not going to give a full on review, because I think its kinda pointless and to be honest I don't even have much to say about the product, but I'll probably give a little feedback where I think it's neccessary :)

I didn't buy the whole range of Jumbo Eye Pencils, mostly because I found there were a few here and there that didn't really capture my interest. I love the bright, vivid colours, which work well as a base under bright shadow to hold the intensity of the colour.

1. Pots and Pans - Sheer silver grey.

2. Slate - Gunmetal grey.

3. Black Bean - Black. I love how this has a 'wet' look to it. Definitely can add some interest if used as smudged lining on the lower lashline.

4. Rust - Shimmery burgundy.

5. Gold - Copper based gold.

6. Pure Gold - Light sheer gold.

7. Yellow

8. Orange

9. Cherry (mispelt as 'Chery' on the label. Skills.)

10. Hot Pink - Super pigmented, I adored this colour!

11. Strawberry Milk - Shimmery light pink.

12. Yoghurt - Off pink neutral shade. Very pretty!

13. Milk - White (who didn't know that?!? lol)

14. Lavender - Very sheer ligh purple.

15. Oyster - Another sheer colour, I saw somewhere that this is supposed to have a slight blue sheen to it? but I am yet to see it.

16. Purple Velvet

17. Purple - This looks (to me) more like a purple based blue. It's kinda sheer also, but very pretty!

18. Pacific - Kinda like a lavender based blue. I really like this colour!

19. Electric Blue - Vivid blue with micro glitter.

20. Rocky Mountain Green - Deep green, application reminds me of a crayon. Chunky and uneven but can be built up well.

21. Horse Raddish - Shimmery almost-pastel green.

22. Lime - Love this colour! Looks like olive green based with gold shimmer. Super pretty!

I have experimented using this alone as a base under shadow, discovered pretty early on it has to be applied quite sheer otherwise I find the shadow clumps and cracks, and you get a LOT of build up in the crease area. If I use this lightly over a primer I find the more vibrant jumbo eye pencils really add some pop to bright eye shadows, keeping the colour nice and vivid. This is definitely a product I'll be using from time to time and I'm pleased I actually got around to purchasing these.

You can find NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils at BeautyJoint.com which stocks mainly NYX at great prices (the cheapest I found after browsing many online local and international retailers). For example the Jumbo Eye Pencils are currently $4.50 each on the NYX website, and $2.75 at BeautyJoint.com

;)

Also - I got new storage for my loose eye shadows! I'm super excited about it because it makes it so much easier!

This is what I used to store them in:

Two seperate 12 drawer units from Bunnings Warehouse, meant to house small tools or nails or whatever workmen put in tiny drawers. I can't rememeber the price but I know they still sell them. They also sell larger ones that are like double this size! I had each drawer individually labelled as I keep my shadows organised by colour, not brand. But, of course, my full sized shadow collection is slowly expanding and already I ran out of room for my light and dark pinks!

This is what I upgraded to:

Large 3 drawer plastic unit from Target (@ $30 it was a rip off!) which I inserted plastic storage trays into. Amazingly perfect fit. The trays are customisable (is that a word?):

They come with different length sections that snap on to each other, so you can mix and match lengths. They were $10 for a set of 2.

But I havent changed any of them around yet. Lazy and all. I'll get there eventually :) As you can see there not in particular order because I kinda just bunched similar colours up and threw them in there.

I'm relatively happy with what I now have but the smaller sized sections bother me a little, so I might have to change it around hehe. Especially because I'm still hoping to pop all my Aromaleigh baggies into jars at some point (wow I still keep forgetting to order jars - hopeless!) which is an enormous amount of jars also!

What do you store your loose shadows in? I like hearing about how other people store their make up :)

Thanks for reading!

Sophie x

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