Sleek Vintage Romance Collection

Sleek released this collection for autumn 2013 a couple of weeks ago consisting of a blush (around £4.50) and 12-shade iDivine eyeshadow palette (around £8). I really loved the look of the eyeshadows which I thought looked perfect for autumn but I wasn’t sure if I was going to pick up the blush or not. When I swatched it on the back of my hand in the shop though it was so sparkly and pretty looking I decided to pick it up as well.

The products come in brightly decorated cardboard boxes with a lovely rustic autumnal theme. They definitely say autumn but I’m not sure how well they match the theme of “Vintage Romance”. However the products themselves come in the usual plain black plastic packaging, with the shade names printed on the backs.

I really love the eyeshadow palette which is my current favourite, the colour selection suits the current weather and daylight so well with its selection of decadent jewel and earth tones. The shades come in a finish of shimmer, matte and metallic finishes. As is Sleek’s normal practise these days the palette comes with a plastic overlay with the shade names printed on it. As I usually take a photo of this for my blog I just throw the plastic overlay away as I can always check on my computer afterwards if I want to know what a particular shade name is and I find it quite annoying to have to deal with every time I open the palette.

Maybe the text isn’t so clear in the photo above so I’ll type the names out here for reference.

Top row, left to right: Pretty in Paris, Meet in Madrid, Court in Cannes, Lust in LA, Romance in Rome, Propose in Prague

Bottom row, left to right: A Vow in Venice, Marry in Monte Carlo, Honeymoon in Hollywood, Bliss in Barcelona, Forever in Florence, Love in London

I actually think that the names are quite cute!

Here’s a better shot of the colours in the palette, this time with the plastic overlay removed.

And here are the shadows swatched on my forearm, in the same order as they appear in the palette.

As you can see – wonderful colours, wonderful pigmentation – just wonderful!

I’m not quite so enamoured with the blush, Antique. It’s a very warm brown, but the shimmer is blue and I’m just not convinced that the brown and the shimmer actually go well together. The first time I wore this blush on my cheeks I used way too much and thought it looked awful. Since then I’ve trained myself to start by applying a tiny amount and building the colour up if I want more intensity. The more you buff this colour over the skin the more it acts as a highlighter as the shimmer becomes more apparent. It’s quite an interesting effect, but I’m not sure I’m a fan. Perhaps due to the blue it would work better on cooler skintones (my skintone is very warm). It is very pigmented though so I might try it out as an eyeshadow.

My current favourite colour combination from the eyeshadow palette is Court in Cannes paired with Honeymoon in Hollywood. The purple is so intense that I was worried it might stain my lids but I wear it over a primer and it’s simple to remove with some make-up remover. The shadows last all day on me worn over an eyeshadow base. In the photo below I’m also wearing a tiny bit of  the blush which you can see ever so slightly on my cheekbones and the tip of my nose.

Oh and I’ve just noticed that this eyeshadow compliments the hoodie that I’m wearing which is good as it’s one of my favourites, ha! An added bonus.

Double Bright Contrast Eyeliner

Phew, what a name for a post! I think it’s quite apt for this look though. I wore this last week when there were still a few sunny days to remind me of the summer.

I used my Sleek Eau La La liner in Pumpkin to sketch out the shape of the orange flick first then patted an orange pigment/eyeshadow dust on top with a small flat brush. I then used a creamy turquoise gel eyeliner to draw in the lower flick along my lashline. The look was actually pretty easy to do and I was really pleased with how it turned out. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this eyeliner shape again in different colour combinations.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for colour combinations that you think would work well together!

On a side note, my eyebrows are completely grown out now. I haven’t touched them for as long as I can remember so I guess around a year now. Sure they look wispy at the edges but to be honest I don’t think they look that bad and I love how low maintenance they are so I don’t have any plans to change my eyebrow regime in the immediate future.

Septemberry

What with the weather on the turn and the word “September” just begging me to make a pun out of it and the usual make-up trend at this time of the year for berry tones I thought I’d do a mini-series of berry looks.

I haven’t bought any new make-up for a couple of months because I’ve just moved cities (London to Edinburgh) so my make-up budget has been going on boring household bills lately. However, it’s probably just as well as berry colours are popular every autumn so I had plenty of berries in my make-up stash already that had just been lying around neglected since last winter.

First up here’s a deep red matte cranberry lip. I used“Cranberry” matte finish True Colour lipstick by Sleek which I got in a Christmas set that came out a couple of years ago so I don’t think that it’s currently available alas, although I’m sure there are a few similar shades in their current range. This lipstick is very, very pigmented and even works well mixed with lip balm and worn as more of a shiny stain (haven’t got any pics of that today though I will post some another day if I remember).

This kind of colour can be a bit problematic and in fact you can see that it’s a bit patchy in the close up although from a distance I think it looks fine. Matte finish lipsticks are often quite dry so it was a bit difficult to apply evenly. When I’m wearing a strong lip like this I like to apply colour on the centre of the lips straight from the lipstick bullet but then work on the edges with a brush to ensure a super-crisp outline. I blotted after applying one coat then went ahead and applied a second. Worn like this this lipstick lasts for ages and ages on me – I get six hours wear before I have to worry about touching up and it even survives food and drink.

On the rest of my face I went for matte skin, slightly flushed cheeks and a slick of mascara. I think this is a really nice autumn daytime look, though if I were wearing this lipstick after dark I’d go all out and pair it with a dark, smoky eye.

Sleek Candy Collection

Sleek Makeup have just released a limited edition summer collection called the Candy Collection which consists of a 12-shade eyeshadow palette (i-Candy, £7.99), pout paint (Lol-Lip-Pop, £4.99) and blush-by-three blush trio (Sweet Cheeks).

I did hesitate for a while over whether to buy the entire collection or not. The products aren’t exactly expensive, but they’re not really what you could call cheap either. What I would say though is that Sleek are a great value-for-money brand when you consider the price-to-quality ratio. In the end, I decided to buy them all instead of any other make-up this month.

The products come in cardboard packaging featuring a mouth-watering cupcake and sweets design. I wish they could print these designs onto the make-up packaging itself which is the same slick black packaging as normal.

I have to say that while the blushes and pout paint definitely remind me of candy floss and iced cakes, the eyeshadow shades don’t exactly scream “candy” to me. I think this might have been more suitable as the palette in the Aqua Collection while the Lagoon palette would have been more suitable as a candy palette. Here are the two side by side for a quick comparison (Lagoon palette on top):

First up, here are swatches of the blushes and Pout Paint.

From left to right: Cupcake (creme), Dolly Mix (matte), Candy Floss (satin); Lol-Lip-Pop pout paint.

I was super-excited about this blush-trio and originally this was the only product from the collection that I was going to buy. However, I wasn’t too impressed when the creme blush left staining on my arm when I removed it with my normal make-up remover so it does make me think that these might be just a bit too pigmented for blushes. I’m not too keen on the formula of these.

I have been enjoying the Pout Paint more than I thought that I would though. There’s a whole range of different Pout Paint shades available and they’re designed to be easy to mix up to allow you to create your own custom colours. This one is no different to the others in the range - it offers fantastic pigmentation and opacity, the texture is creamy and very comfortable on the lips, and the product lasts a respectable 3-4h on me. The main disadvantage for me is the packaging, which I find a bit difficult to work with. Pout Paints aren’t the easiest to top up on the go due to the fine nozzle and I always apply them with a lip brush to get a sharp line.

Below, the eyeshadows swatched.

Left to right: Strawberry Sherbet, Bon Bon, Parma Violet, Apple Sour, Pear Drop, Flump, Liquorice, Blue Fizzle, Aniseed, Bubble Gum, Mint Cream, Cream Soda

The quality of this palette is excellent. I think this is one of the best quality Sleek palettes that I own. The pigmentation of Parma Violet in particular is unbelievable – it’s definitely the most intense violet eyeshadow I own. While I think that the colour scheme is a bit incoherent, you can definitely mix-and-match up some fun bright looks with this palette.

To conclude, this collection is brilliant if you love bright colours, but definitely one to steer clear of if you prefer your neutrals. In the pic below I’m wearing Apple Sour, Pear Drop and Flump eyeshadows (along with some purple eyeliner and mascara too), a mixture of the two powder blushes and Lol-Lip-Pop pout paint.

Garden Eyes

Today’s a Bank Holiday and it’s sunny – double bonus! I took the chance to sit out in my garden and do a bit of reading earlier, though I didn’t sit out for too long as I didn’t want to get sunburnt. Still, it was nice to feel some sun on my skin and the buds, shoots and flowers in the garden gave me the inspiration for this simple bright look.

Above: one of my fruit trees has flowers on it for the first time, hurray! I have forgotten what kind of tree it actually is but that just makes the anticipation of possibly having fruit in the autumn even more exciting!

I used the same pink on my eyes as my cheeks; it’s actually the blush from the recent Sleek aqua collection in Mirrored Pink. It’s very heavily pigmented and as the name would suggest very shiny. I think I prefer it as an eyeshadow in fact. Which works for me as that means I now have an absolutely massive (8g) pink eyeshadow that I love!

Match Your Makeup to your Handbag

Make-up has always been heavily influenced by the trends at global fashion weeks, so here is my fashion-inspired trend du jour: matching my make-up to my favourite handbag. What do you think? Is this a trend that could/should catch on?!

Trend-setting aside (he he), coral just happens to be my favourite make-up colour at the moment because it matches my thank-goodness-it’s-spring-at-last sunny mood!

I’m wearing a coral coloured Hello Kitty lipstick in the shade Betz Believe, a bright orangey pink from my Sleek Respect iDivine eyeshadow palette, and a coral blush.

I think this lipstick is amazing – but I don’t know if it’s available anymore as the stands seem to have disappeared from all my local Superdrugs! It has a very nice, creamy consistency and good coverage in just one swipe. Hello Kitty, if you are out there reading this, please come back to Superdrug soon – I’m a big fan of your range!

I teamed the eyeshadow with royal blue eyeliner and mascara because I felt that my eyes needed the extra definition of some eyeliner with such an orange shade (to avoid looking like my eyes were just pink because I had an eye infection!) but I wanted something less harsh than black. I know that many people hate coloured mascaras because they find them a very “teenage” look or consider them to be unflattering, but to be honest, I really do think that certain shades can really be an asset in a make-up bag. Today for example I think black would have overwhelmed this look somewhat, whereas the blue lent it just the right intensity.

Sleek Eau La La Liners

A quick google will reveal that these multi-use pencils are almost universally beloved across blog-land. I was rather taken in by the hype surrounding these products and I picked up four quite soon after their launch last year.

Above left to right: pumpkin, Red Sky Night, Moulin Rouge, Blue Moon

Eau La La pencils (£4.99) are waterproof and can be used on eyes, lips or the body and are available in 20 different shades from traditional nudes and neutrals to loud and bold brights. They have a lovely smooth and creamy consistency that glides on and lasts and lasts. When I wear them on my eyes they last all day long and while I don’t tend to wear bright lip colours all day long so I can’t confirm exactly how long they last on my lips, they certainly last several hours.

So far, so good. However, they do have a problem and that is with their formulation. I think that one or more of the ingredients evaporates from the pencils and leads to all of the problems I’m about to mention.

I encountered the first problem the very first time I opened and used the products. The lead on every single one pushed back into the barrel. You can see this clearly with the orange and red pencils in the shot below. However, having had the pencils for some months now I’ve recently encountered another problem, which is that the force of pulling the lid off actually pulls the lead right out of the barrel – this can be seen clearly with the blue and pink pencils in the shot below.

The next problem is that they are horrible to sharpen. In the photo below you can see how much I’ve sharpened the blue pencil already when compared with the full length red pencil. I’d love to say that that’s because I’ve gotten so much use out of it, but unfortunately it’s because the lead breaks so much whenever I try to sharpen it. The wasted product is so frustrating!

So there you have it – in a nutshell, a potentially great product is let down by a bad formula. My advice is not to fall in love too much with those bright colours because the hearbreak of all that wasted product just isn’t worth it!

Sleek Lagoon Palette

Note: I applied a colour vibrancy effect in the above photo so it is not a true colour representation of the palette!

Sleek released a spring 2013 “Aqua Collection” at the end of March which comprised of an i-Divine 12 pan eyeshadow palette, a powder blush, and a mini nail polish set of four colours. I’m sure I didn’t need yet another spring-themed eyeshadow palette but I have a soft spot for Sleek so I decided to pick it up. I also bought the blush but I haven’t tried it out yet so I’m not going to mention it in this post – hopefully I will get round to trying it out next week so that I can post some thoughts on it soon.

The eyeshadow palette contains 12 x 1.1g eyeshadows (basically – loads!) and costs £7.99. There are a mixture of matte and shimmer shades. Here are a few more shots including some swatches on my arm.

Top row: Sassea, Deep Water, Reflection, Emerald, Oyster, Black Pearl

Bottom row: Pink Jewel, Sand Dollar, Underworld, Sea Shell, Night Sky, Ariel

Above: top row of the palette swatched

Above: bottom row of the palette swatched

There’s a nice mix of colours in the palette, which will appeal to anybody like me who likes colourful eyeshadows. The consistency of these shadows is very creamy and you might have noticed in the pics above that the surface of the “Pink Jewel” shadow in the bottom left of my palette is looking a bit funky. While it swatches fine I do have trouble picking that shade up with a brush and I’ve ended up gouging tiny chunks out of it in the process, which was a bit disappointing. If you have several similar shades in your stash already then you might want to try to swatch this palette in person before deciding whether to invest in it or not.

The fun thing about this palette though is that you can really play around with it and come up with some funky looks. I went for a splash of pastel colour all over the eye for Easter weekend as the colours on the bottom row in particular reminded me of easter eggs.

I used from inner corner to outer corner: Sand Dollar, Pink Jewel, Sassea, and Sea Shell to create an Easter inspired eyeshadow montage on my eyes.

Inspired by Chilled Pink Grapefruits

These amazing eyeshadows are all from the new Sleek i-divine Respect palette, which is available now (I bought mine in Superdrug) and full of gorgeous shades just perfect for the autumn. I love this eyeshadow as it is the exact colour that I would imagine a “Pink Grapefruit” eyeshadow to be!

Again I’ve skipped the eyeliner on the upper lashline and opted to tightline with a brown gel eyeliner instead so that I don’t lose all the colour of those pretty eyeshadows on my eyelid to a harsh stroke of eyeliner – I think it keeps the look a bit softer and prettier.

I used the shades Cameo Cream (inner corner), New Jack Pink (main lid shade) and James Brown (crease and lower lash line). I also tightlined using a brown gel eyeliner.

Top row – Gladys White, James Brown, Shalamar, Count Basi Beige, Aretha Orange, Otis Red

Bottom row – Roberta Black, Vandellas, Cameo Cream, Motown Mink, O’Jays, New Jack Pink

Sleek PPQ Shangri-La i-Divine Palettes

I didn’t even know that these two babies existed let alone were scheduled for release last week so you can imagine how I gawked when I stumbled across them on the Sleek make-up stand.

There were also two lipglosses released as part of this collection, but I managed to resist them and just came home with the two eyeshadow palettes.

Wouldn’t it be fun if the palettes came in the same designs as the boxes? They’re in the typical black palettes I’m afraid, but at least they do have the names printed on the front these days.

OK, onto some more pics and swatches! I have to apologise for the lighting in these swatches which I found quite problematic due to the funny weather, but I thought that these would be better than no swatches at all.

First up is my current favourite of the two, the Respect palette, which is full of warm-toned neutral, orange and pink shades.

From left to right:

Top row – Gladys White, James Brown, Shalamar, Count Basi Beige, Aretha Orange, Otis Red

Bottom row – Roberta Black, Vandellas, Cameo Cream, Motown Mink, O’Jays, New Jack Pink

Some of the shades didn’t show up very well on my arm but that was because they were close to my natural skin colour, not that they weren’t pigmented. Some of these shadows had a bit of a stubborn texture to swatch, such as James Brown and Roberta Black, but they weren’t a problem to apply with a brush when I wore them on my eyes. If you’re a fan of these shades then I would say this is a good quality palette which is definitely worth picking up for £7. I think the colour scheme of this palette has actually been expertly put together, as it offers so many possibilities of colour combinations that all go together, and also a mixture of bold and neutral shades, contouring and highlighting shades.

Next up is the cool toned Supreme palette, which contains a gorgeous selection of very wearable blues and greens.

From left to right:

Top row: Blue Suede, R&B, Bronx Black, Grand Master Flash, Wah Wah White

Bottom row: La Belle Blue, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Delfonic, Commodores Cream, Shangrilas Lemon

This is a great palette if you usually wear neutral shades but are looking to experiment with colour, as the shades are soft and buildable. R&B and Bronx Black did stain my skin unfortunately so I’ll probably skip them, but I’m looking forward to wearing the other colours to work this autumn.