Pixi Lid Last Shadow Pen Duo

I haven’t tried that many Pixi products but the ones that I have tried have been excellent. It’s not a brand that’s very readily available on the high-street and I can only actually think of one Boots store that stocks it off the top of my head, which is the large Boots at the Piccadilly Circus end of Shaftesbury Avenue, opposite Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

When I was in the store the other week I was really impressed by the testers of these pencils so I decided to just go ahead and buy them as it’s not a store that I visit that often. This duo cost me £12 but I later discovered on the Pixi website that the individual pencils retail at £12 each, so it’s a bit of a bargain buy-one-get-one-free pack.

Above: I love the cute design on the packaging.

Above: there are some hints and tips on the back of the packaging on how to use the pens to create a smoky eye

Although the product’s name is “Lid Last Shadow Pen” they are actually long lasting cream eyeshadows. This duo contains a light shimmery pink called Shell Sheen and a cool dark brown called Brun Beam.

I have to say that I am already in love with these pencils and they’ve become one of my staples since I bought them because 1) you can create a gorgeous smoky eye look with them in about three minutes and 2) they last and last and last, so you can either wear them alone or as a base underneath powder eyeshadows to hold them in place all day long.

I’ve been wearing these every day for the past week and they last 10 hours on me before starting to fade. They don’t smudge or wander across my face at all once set. After applying the product you have about 30s before they set during which you can smudge them as desired. They are also very smooth and comfortable to apply, unlike some other long lasting eyeshadow sticks (i.e. my MAC shadestick) which can be quite hard and drag across the eye during application – ouch. The barrels of the pencils are plastic but you just sharpen them as normal in a large cosmetic pencil sharpener.

I apply them pretty much as the packaging suggests, only I don’t even bother with a primer as I find they last just fine without one. I apply Shell Sheen over my lid to just above the crease then smudge out to an even thin layer using a flat synthetic brush (a concealer brush is ideal). I then whack some Brun Beam into the outer v of my eyelid and along my upper and lower lashlines then again smudge with a flat synthetic brush to blend all the harsh lines and leave a soft smoky finish. And – that’s it! I don’t even bother with mascara with this look as there’s absolutely no fall out and I have dark eyelashes naturally and the brown pencil along my lashlines adds enough intensity for me. Mascara also always smudges on me by the end of the day as I have quite oily skin, but these pencils don’t, so this look actually fares better without mascara.

It’s not a precise, carefully constructed look, but it does add a nice touch of intensity to the eyes in a kind of cool, laid back way. I really like it!

MUA Powder Blushers

I put in my first ever order at the MUA online store at the beginning of October as there were loads of products I wanted to try out and my nearest Superdrugs aren’t always very well stocked – probably because MUA’s so popular, so the stands are often stripped quite bare. My order was dispatched really quickly and was very well packaged and when I had a query the customer service team were very quick to respond and helpful, so I would definitely order from them again.

One of the things I ordered were some powder blushers. These are from the original £1 range so, yes, they cost just £1 each, making it nice and cheap to experiment with different shades. They are quite small for blushers, with just 2.4g of product. There are currently six colours in the range with a nice selection of shades and finishes, but it is quite difficult to choose shades from the colour representation on the website.

I picked up shades 2 and 3 (no shade names, just numbers) which were darker than I was expecting from the pictures on the website but luckily they turned out to be perfect shades for autumn.

top – shade 3, bottom – shade 2

left – shade 3, right – shade 2

Shade 3 is a lovely matt russet shade while shade 2 is a plum with flecks of gold shimmer. Both shades are very pigmented, but unfortunately the texture is very powdery and due to the small rectangular shape of the packaging I find it impossible to pick enough product up on my normal blusher brush without spilling a ton of blusher dust everywhere at the same time. The packaging is also a bit flimsy and the clear front often comes off at the hinge.

All in all it’s quite a nice product so I can definitely see myself using these up over the next couple of months, but because they’re so fiddly to use I probably won’t be buying any again.

Above: I’m just wearing some tinted moisturiser and MUA blusher in shade 2. The colour pay-off is pretty good and it’s a lovely shade for the autumn.

Great Lips by MUA

Do you love British sweets from the ‘80s and ‘90s? Tinted lip balms? Bargain make-up? Nude lip shades? If you answered yes to any of the above then hooray! I have something to show you that might just be right up your street!

This is Great Lips tinted lip balm by the brand MUA, which is available online and in selected Superdrugs as part of the MUA/Love Hearts (British sweets that my fellow 30-something friends will no doubt have fond memories of from their childhoods…) make-up range which contains a selection of sweet-inspired nail varnish and lip balm shades. Great Lips is the name of this shade incidentally, not the range. I think the range is just called Love Hearts lip balm. These retail at £2 each.

The balms have the consistency of Vaseline, which seems to be the main ingredient (paraffinum liquidum) so they’re very soft to the touch, and also feel very moisturising once on the lips. It’s just a bit too soft for my liking and I don’t like applying it with my fingers as I end up smushing a big hole in the product and picking up too much whenever I dip my finger in. I use a lip brush to apply the product instead. That’s just my personal preference though. It does mean that despite the handy handbag sized packaging this isn’t an on-the-go product for me. It’s a shame as the colour doesn’t last that long and I would like to take it with me to top up while I’m out as they do feel lovely on the lips. As it is I just apply it before I go out and leave the colour to fade gracefully. The balm is quite pigmented, which I wasn’t actually expecting. Here’s a shot of my lips with a generous swipe of product.

For me it’s the perfect accompaniment to a smoky eye. Here’s the look I wore it with at the weekend– a golden yellow and black softly smoky look.

I thought I’d include a few more close-ups of my eye make-up as I hardly ever wear black eyeshadow (I think that last time I wore black eyeshadow out was actually to a Christmas party two years ago) and this look turned out better than I was expecting.

I blended for a long time because I wanted the black to be really diffused. I used the shades Honey (1) and Zero (2) from my Urban Decay Deluxe palette pictured below (which I am slowly but surely managing to use up!)

China Glaze All That Glitters

I just can’t resist a good dash of glitter… that is how I ended up walking past Sally’s Hair and Beauty one minute, and coming out with SEVEN new nail polishes five minutes later – eek!

I got two sets from China Glaze, one a Ho Ho Ho trio (£12.99) which I’ll write a post on later and the All That Glitters set of 4 mini colours (£9.99). Full size China Glaze polishes are 14ml and each of the minis are 9.6ml which is actually a perfect size for me as I never manage to use up nail varnishes before they start going gloopy.

I love all of these colours and I’m definitely going to get a lot of use out of all of them this autumn and winter. Today I started off by trying out Glitter All The Way, a gorgeous dark, cool toned multi-coloured glitter containing indigo, gold, green and red. Here I’m wearing two coats plus a top coat.

I’d say that with two coats the coverage is pretty much opaque, so there’s no need for a coloured base underneath – although there were a few tiny gaps here and there, but they’re really not noticeable from a short distance. The glitter particles lie nice and flat on the nail and with a top coat the finish isn’t rough at all.

I’ll update this post with nail shots of the other shades as I wear them.

03/11/2012

Here’s the first update! Champagne Kisses is a gorgeous beige glitter, containing so much shimmer it’s bordering on holographic. The finish is a bit gritty due to all the glitter but the finish is good – I went 2 days before I got some minor chipping, but I could definitely wear this for 4 to 7 days before needing to redo my nails.

Green + Gold

I think this colour combo is going to become one of my Autumn staples – especially since it only takes about 3 min to apply.

I wore a cream blush in the photo below which is a great product to use when you want to add/maintain a glow to the skin, but the shade I picked was a tad too light for the eyeshadow I think. Next time I would go for a rosier shade to avoid looking washed out.

Above: green eyeshadow to the crease, light golden brown blended across the crease and lower lash line.

Above: I used the shades Graffiti (1) and Shag (2) from the Urban Decay Deluxe Palette over a creamy eyeshadow base.

Illamasqua Nail Varnish in Stagnate

The biggest problem that I have with this nail polish is that it looks so yummy I just want to start nibbling at my nails whenever I wear it! I prefer to ignore the slightly icky name (just makes me think of a swamp!) and think of it as a deliciously creamy chocolate brown that looks lovely in autumn, when it fits right in with all the earthy muted tones of moulting trees, muddy lawns, rainy days and early evenings.

Above: two coats of Stagnate, no top coat.

The consistency is perfect, not too thin and not too thick, and the colour is opaque in two coats. I get at least a week’s wear out of this shade if not longer – without  any chipping. I always wear it with a China Glaze top coat. Illamasqua nail varnishes are expensive at around £13.50 a bottle but they are often on special offer and I actually picked this one up on sale for £5 a few months back – woohoo! If you don’t fancy paying full price for their nail varnishes but are interested in picking some up I recommend checking out their January sale (not that much longer to wait now – only two more months till Christmas now after all!)

‘60s Inspired with MUA

I love a good cut crease look I do. Julianne Moore wears a gorgeous black and white cut crease look in the Tom Ford film A Single Man which is set in the ‘60s. Unfortunately, I am yet to master the technique on myself.  I keep practising at weekends though and I think I’m getting better…

Here I used the light green shade from the MUA Artiste Collection all over my lid to above the crease which I then blended out up to my brows. I then took a blue eyepencil and marked out the crease by using the tip of the pencil on its side to draw a line along my socket and smudging out with a shading brush, then blended the bright blue shadow from the same palette on top to fix the pencil. The MUA eyepencils are perfect for this as they’re both soft and pigmented.

Finally I lined my upper waterline and along my lower lash line (not lower waterline as my eyes are just too sensitive to cope with any product there these days) with the same blue pencil I’d used on the crease, which I again smudged out on the lower lash line with the bright blue shadow.