Makeup Withdrawal

Kiko Colour Explosion Multi-Tone Blush in 03 Active Mauve

Monday, September 9, 2013

Good morning, friends!

I'm really fortunate to have made friends overseas and one of them is the lovely Chiro from Nail of This Week. She helped me get some Kiko Sugar Matts and p2 Sandstyles and included this gorgeous blush in the package! It was such a sweet surprised.

This is the first Kiko makeup item I've tried. I like the packaging, a sleek mirror like cover with a color explosion. The inside of the cover is an actual mirror and houses a beautiful tri colored pan of blush. The darkest shade is a berry red, the middle is a light mauve and the lightest color is a soft apricot.

Here, I've swatched the three main colors in vertical stripes while the round swatches are the mixes between the shades. The pigmentation is quite good, the thing is that the colors may be hard to see on my arm because they are close to the value of the color of my skin. The two darker shades are satiny in finish while the light apricot shade makes a gorgeous highlighter- it is slightly shimmery/pearlescent.

I think it's fairly natural looking, especially since the finishes on the darker shades is satin instead of shimmery. I know I've applied it lightly in the picture above (in the summer my face gets red enough as it is!) but I really liked how it looked. I love how you can really customize shades with a blush that has multiple colors in it.

The best part of this multi toned blush is the silky texture. The powder is very finely milled and very buttery feeling. I like traveling with this blush (brought it on my last trip) because the case is very sturdy. Overall, a really great blush! Thanks so much Chiro!

Products featured were given by a friend. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Messy Mansion Plate #17

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Hello folks!

A few weeks ago, Julia from the Australian website Messy Mansion contacted me to see if I wanted to review some of her stamping plates and I instantly said yes! I hadn't previously heard of Messy Mansion before but was really impressed to see the shop stocked with so many different stamping plates, some of which I had never seen before. Today I'll be showing you plate MM17 from her own Messy Mansion line of plates!

The MM plates are much bigger than the popular Konad or Bundle Monster series. The images are larger as well, roughly 23mm by 17mm. They came with blue plastic covering but no paper backing. The edges are rough but not sharp though. MM17 has cute dragonflies and ladybugs, and even a pair of cute googly eyes.

I used Morgan Taylor Prettier in Pink as my background shade and used Konad Black to stamp. I'm not used to such nice large images so I kept messing up at first (also pretty rusty, it's been a while!) with my plastic Konad scraper. I eventually figured out that I was scraping way harder than I need to be, which was scraping away too much polish and creating bald spots on the images with large etched areas. Overall this plate stamped well. The designs are just too cute! I can't wait to do a dragonfly manicure next (check out Wacky Lacki, Anutka already did a stunning manicure with those images).

Perhaps the best thing about Messy Mansion? Even though the shop is Australian based, international orders with just plates ship for only $2.50 USD unregistered! Fantastic right?

MM17 plates is only $7. Click here to start shopping!

What's the cutest nail plate you currently own?

Products featured were sent to me for review. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Soft Aqua Gradient + Lines

Friday, September 6, 2013

Hullo! This was my manicure over Labor Day weekend that I couldn't post because my internet was down. Just something simple but using gorgeous colors.

I used two Island Girl colors my lovely friend Ki sent me from Hawaii! You should definitely be following her both on her blog on on IG, she has really fantastic nails.

The white shade is OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls with Island Girl Surfer Babe on the tips. I then free handed some lines with Island Girl Hana Coast. It probably would have been faster to use striping tape but... I never realize that until AFTER I'm all done. Story of my life.

Thank you Ki for these polishes!

Products featured were gifted to me. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

NYX Love in Florence "Prima Donna" Palette

Hi folks! Two posts for you tonight and this is the first. NYX has quite a few of these little palettes in fun coordinating color schemes. This is actually my second, I just haven't had time yet to review the first one I picked up a few months ago!

Prima Donna contains a frosty beige, a matte black with sparkle, one satiny plum, a shimmery aubergine and a dusty light taupe. Swatched with primer.

The quality is just ok, nothing to write home about but these are shadows that you absolutely NEED primer to wear. Without them, they do not show up very well and look rather muddy when you try to blend with them. You can sort of see on the bottom half of my swatches where the primer was blended out and how patchy they look over bare skin. I like the shimmery white beige quite a bit, ti's so pretty!

I think the colors photographed a bit more red than they are in real life. Definitely looks more pink eye in the picture. I used the two plummy shades all over the lid, lightly dusted the beige in my inner corer and smudged the black into the lash line.

Brows: NARS Bali

Eyes: NARS Smudge Proof Eye Base, NYX Prima Donna Palette, false lashes

The nice thing is that NYX products are very affordable so it's easy to pick a few new palettes up just to play with color you might normally shy away from.

Have you tried any of the newer NYX products lately?

Products featured were press samples. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

More KBShimmer Fall Polishes

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

... and I'm back! My internet was down for the past few days so I'm glad to be finally able to post again. Today I have two more stunning shades from KBShimmer's fall release to show you (click here to check out my earlier post with other shades). These two are just incredibly beautiful and absolutely must haves. I took a boatload of pictures because I'm just mesmerized by these shades.

Teal Another Tail is the perfect representation of a mermaid's iridescent tail. A perfect rich teal just saturated with flecks that are fuchsia/gold duochrome. There's also a hint of micro aqua holographic and purple glitter. This is so stunning, especially because the fuchsia is so prominent. It's BAM, in your face. I found that I could use three thin coats or two generous coats for the same effect.

So many flecks!

You Go Ghoul! is just perfect for fall. Reminiscent of Halloween but beautiful for every day wear any time of the year, really. It's a black that allows purple, orange, fuchsia hexes to peak through, along with micro glitter and tiny little splices of orange. Two generous coats was enough for an opaque look on the nail.

I've run out of words to describe how utterly gorgeous this polish is. All I have left to say is that you must, must have these in your collection.

KBShimmer Fall shades are now available here at the KBShimmer Store. Polishes are $8.75 each. For the latest updates and gorgeous swatches, be sure to follow the KBShimmer Facebook page as well as the Instagram account (@kbshimmer).

Do these two shades leave you as slack jawed as they have left me?

Products featured were press samples. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.