A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

A few of you eagle-eyed ladies spotted the manicure I was sporting in my NARS post!  *Looks at Kim, Danielle, Rae and Dee*

It’s the bomb! The Glitterbomb!  I originally had an Orly taupe shade on my nails that was looking a little tired… so I played at “How much glitter can I put on my nails in one go”.

The Miners Extreme Nail Colour is now discontinued I’m afraid, but it’s surely easily dupable?  I paid 99p for it a few months ago from their website. I think they may be sold at Claire’s (or at least they used to be).

I applied 2 coats of the Miners over my gnarly taupe polish and then finished off with a “top coat” of Inglot’s flakes.  A cheaper and more accessible version of the flakes would be GOSH Rainbow. (I can’t find it in my local Superdrug).

Ta-da!

I don’t even bother with cotton pads for removal of these glitter-fests.  I just fill the lid of my nail polish remover with the solution and dip for about 3/4 mins per nail.  That dissolves enough polish for one firm swipe of a cotton pad to do the job.

Have you been indulging your inner 4yr old lately?  Is glitter even remotely on-trend?  Do we even care?

In addition to my lovely Inglot Eyeshadow palette, I picked up a couple of lipsticks when I checked out the Inglot Store in Westfield a month ago…

The packaging is sleek… I love it, the outer cardboard box is more than a little reminiscent of MAC but the tubes themselves feel much sturdier.  They’re heavyweight metallic cases that would easily stand up to the rigours of being in my handbag.

I grabbed a pair of fairly nude shades…

#192 is a pink-toned nude with a touch of frost

#264 is a more flesh-toned nude with no frost.

You can see from the swatches, both lipsticks have a creamy, smooth texture with a slight shine.  Good for my poor dry lips as these don’t accentuate all the grooves and furrows that our recent plunging temperatures have created.

Here’s what they look like on:

#192 – Pink toned nude

#264 – Flesh toned nude

Apologies for the face photos, my only excuse is that it’s 2am…

Inglot Lipsticks retail at £7 each… tell me I don’t need any more please, ‘cos my arse is making buttons to get back there for some brights.

When I was in London earlier in the month I headed over to the huge Westfield to throw myself on the makeup.

I was itching to check out the Inglot store that I remembered hearing about on some forums when Westfield first opened.  And here it is! (please excuse the mobile phone pics)

Check out the range of eyeshadows:

and nail polishes:

Not forgetting the lipsticks…

It’s like an explosion in a Skittles factory no?

Beautiful!

Anyway… after that colour overload, I proceeded to choose myself a trio of eyeshadows to fill a small Pro Freedom Palette.  I went for the safe option (I know, boring!)

But aren’t they beautiful?

They’re ultra pigmented… incredibly smooth and I’ve embarked on a full-on love affair with them.

I can’t remember exactly how much I paid (argh! – can anyone help me out?)  I think it was around £14 for all 3 inc. the palette.

It’s called the Freedom System and you choose which shades you want the SA to put in.

The way I understood it is this…

You can choose from a Large Pro Palette (which hold the square shaped shadows, blushes and face powders – you can see the square shadows in my picture above).

or

You can choose from a Small Pro Palette which will hold the smaller eyeshadows (like mine), lipsticks and concealers etc…

Once you’ve chosen small or large… you can choose how many pans you want the palette to hold (I’m not sure of all the available choices).

You can also purchase items individually if you wish.

Hope that makes sense?!

The small shadows (to my eye) are the same size as MAC 26mm pans, but you get 1.8g of product in each pan compared to MAC’s 1.5g.

The range of colours is mind boggling, each with different finishes… I love me a bit of shimmer though!

I also bought a couple of lipsticks and will be back shortly with a post on those.

Have you tried Inglot? What say you?

These are the first Xmas releases Illamasqua have put out, last year they were too busy being all shiny and ‘noo’ to get into the Christmas spirit, so I was interested to see what they had wrapped up for us this year!

Introducing…

Golden Goddess

Containing: Liquid Metal Solstice and Pure Pigment Furore with a Medium Pencil in Sophie and the fabulous false lashes 019.

Silver Seductress

Containing: Liquid Metal Phenomena and Pure Pigment Android with a Medium Pencil Sophie and false lashes 019.

The gift sets cost £54 each, saving £12 if you were to buy each product separately and can be purchased online.

Which is your favourite of the two?

I wanted to share with you a little discovery I made about a month ago on eBay.  I was checking out some of those 88 palettes from China when I came across a seller with a small range of gel eyeliners priced at around £3.80 each inc. p&p.

I bought one in black along with a long handled flat-top kabuki style brush.

Now, I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t really hold out much hope that the liner would be any good.  This isn’t the first time I’ve bought gel eyeliners off the Bay, and they are mostly non-setting, non-pigmented greasy affairs as if someone has mixed together a splodge of vaseline and a sprinkling of coal dust.

Imagine my suprise when it turned out to be pretty darn decent!

The first photo was taken when it arrived about a month ago… the second a couple of evenings ago.  You can tell I’ve got some use out of it!

It’s a deep dark nicely pigmented black shade with no shimmer or glitter.  Consistency is thin and spreadable (much like MAC fluidline).  So far, so good!

Staying power is actually a little bit TOO good.  This was after several swipes with a wet wipe… I had to resort to cleansing oil in the end.

My only caveat with this gel liner is that whilst it doesn’t budge on the back of my hand… if I apply a thick liner line on my eyelid, I do get a little transfer to the top lid.  However, this is remedied easily with a bit of translucent powder or black eyeshadow.

It’s a rubbish FOTD, but you can clearly see how nicely pigmented this liner is.  Note my hooded eyelid on my left (your right) – that’s where I would experience a bit of transfer if I didn’t set it.  However, that’s quite a thick application of liner for me.  I’ve also used this on the lower lashline and not experienced any smudging whatsoever.

Anyway…. The seller has had a shipment of new colours and I have been assured that they’re the same formula as the black so I have ordered a few different colours which should arrive this week!

After having a little play, I shall let you know how I get on… if it’s favourable, I’ll let you know the name of the seller (if, of course… anyone’s interested).

By the way, the flat top Kabuki was pretty impressive too (very soft, no horrible smell, shed when I washed it – but not too much since)

Love eBay… oh and I still haven’t got an 88 palette… thinking I might get one of the smaller neutral ones instead.  Or maybe I’ll just procrastinate on it forever!

When I got up this morning, I was determined to brave this adventurous (for me) lipgloss, so here we go!

You can probably tell that this is a sheer application.  It’s applied over the top of Illamasqua Sheer Lipgloss in Lily-Rose.

It’s consistency is sticky, but not as sticky as MAC’s lipglasses.  Longevity is good, it hasn’t faded much at all throughout the day so far.

Galactic is a really lovely item to have in your kit, glamour in a tube!

[starreview tpl=14]

It was a real treat to be invited to tonight’s Dystopia preview event at Kettners in the heart of Soho, a fab venue which perfectly complemented the informality of the evening ahead.

There were around 30 bloggers present (Tali counted. Real Slow. She had to use her fingers once she got past 10.) and we were treated to delicious cocktails and a Guinness/champagne medley which was surprisingly delicious!

OK, enough about the booze already!  On to the makeup!

Illamasqua are still a very young brand, and it’s clear that they’re having to evolve and grow very rapidly thanks to the huge global success that they’re currently enjoying.  Since their launch nearly a year ago, they’ve become synonymous with bucking the mainstream trends.  They have strived to create a brand intent on celebrating and encouraging one’s alter ego.  But how does this translate for mere mortals like me living in Bobbi Brown land?

I will be truly honest and say that I went to this event with certain preconceptions.  I believed that whilst being very beautiful to look at, the brand and collection would hold little for me that I would consider wearable in my safe little world of boring neutrals.

Hands up, I was wrong.

Dystopia has something for everyone regardless of your attitude toward what (on the surface at least) seems to be a brand and collection that caters to a niche market.  Hand on heart, out of the 6 products I had the opportunity to play with and swatch, 4 of them are now on my shopping list (and 1 of them I received in my goodie bag).  Not bad going from a brand that I thought would have minimal appeal to me in the flesh.

My Must Haves: (I don’t know the names of most of these products but will update when the collection is released on Illa’s website)

~ Pure Pigment – Static – a beautiful iridescent lilac/pink which was met with “oohs and ahhs” from everyone who swatched it.  A real Christmassy affair for the little girl in all of us!

~ Nail Polish – Velocity an on-trend muted purple

~ Eyeshadow in Synth, a beautiful shimmery pale pink shade – gorgeous for highlighting.

~ Intense Lipgloss in Galactic – the most awesomely pigmented silver lipgloss that scared the crap out of me in the tube.  On the lips, it’s pure love.

Here’s a couple of images:

Intense Lipgloss in Galactic – how beautiful is this?  Non sticky and blends out so well that I will be finding more uses for this aside from being a lipgloss. 

Eyeshadow in Machine, a soft nicely pigmented black with a little sparkle.

A huge thank you to Illamasqua for hosting the evening and an even bigger thanks to the whole team for being so approachable and friendly!  It was really lovely to witness how genuinely passionate and proud the Illamasqua team are about their company and to hear how all our feedback (both good and bad!) is being taken on board and used to improve the brand for our future enjoyment.

I had a lovely evening (despite not getting home ’till nearly gone midnight thanks to a signal failure!) and it was great to meet some of my fellow makeup addicts, you’re all fab and I can’t wait to see you all again soon!

Check it out!  Click the image below for more details…

Available to purchase online and in selected stores from 18th August 2009.

I know it’s already available at some Debenhams stores (and I can browse the Illamasqua range on the Debenhams website already…) So I hope this means they’re rolling the brand out to additional instore locations.  Anyone any more clued up than me?

Fingers crossed my provincial local store is one of the lucky ones!