Makeup Revolution Scandalous Lipsticks in Felony, Immoral and Depraved

Makeup Revolution are the newest budget beauty brand on the UK scene and they have tons and tons of makeup with a tiny price tag. I jumped at the Scandalous lip collection, which featured a sky blue, yellow, purple, bright pink and orange shades. A blue lipstick for £1?! How could any self-respecting product junkie not try that?

I’m up to my neck in orange and purple shades from all price points, so wanted to see how these more unusual shades fared.

The packaging here is very similar to MUA, except the colour part on the end is in the lid, not the body of the lipstick. I like this style of packaging as it’s easy to see find what you’re looking for in a sea of black cases. The product has a fairly light but pretty synthetic smell typical of cheap lippies. A TL;DR summary: The packaging is light and you’re getting what you pay for in that respect. The formula for all of these has a *lot* of slip, and the wear time on them all is pretty short as well– I would check up on the state of your lips at least once an hour, especially as more unusual shades have a tendency to look worse as they wear down compared to more natural shades like red or pink. As you’ll see, these colours aren’t perfect, but there are virtually no other comparable shades at this price point.

Felony

Okay, let’s start with the worst of the bunch. There’s no two way about it – this lipstick is a travesty and should not have been made, regardless of the fact it’s only a quid. The formula isn’t very pigmented and it’s super emollient and slippery, making it a bugger to apply alongside evenly, alongside it not being overly flattering. Your lip colour will always show and seems to emphasis imperfection on the lip. Boo. I may use this to adjust other colours but I can’t see myself ever reaching for it to be honest.

It works a little better over a white base, creating a cute pastel shade, but be careful to choose as dry a white base as your lips can stand as the consistency for the lipstick itself, has a lot of slip which will cause it to mix with your base if it’s creamy. I don’t have a yellow liner to try this over which is a shame, but once you’ve put a dry liner on your lips, you may as well use eyeshadow to create your crazy colours to be honest! The only other yellow lipsticks I can think of are Lime Crime New Yolk City
which has mixed reviews, from other brands I know are the same private label like Ka’Oir/Secret Kisses, and from the Inglot Freedom line. If anyone else can think of any, please let me know.

Immoral

Next up is Immoral. This one is far from perfect, but much better than Felony! Again, there is way too much slip for my liking – it’s hard to get an even coat of this and to have no lip colour showing through, but it’s much more pigmented. I would wear this over a sky blue eyeliner, which luckily is more easy to find than yellow! So… not my favourite, but to find a half decent blue lip colour for a pound? I’ll work with it.

Blues like this can again be picked up from Lime Crime and other companies who use the same private label, Inglot Freedom system and, if you can still find them online, regular Inglot lipsticks as well, although these were limited edition. Pretty Zombie Cosmetics also has a matte blue lip cream, and there are plenty of eyeliners in a similar shade which you could also use – in the UK, the Sleek Eau La La liners are nice for the lips and they have a similar blue shade.

Depraved

This is my favourite of the bunch. Again, the slippy formula, but it works much, much better with this shade and the colour is lovely. If you were tempted by any of them, I’d go for this one. No complaints.

Purple shades are easier to find – MAC, Ilamasqua, Inglot and many, many indie companies make purple lipsticks.

I have to pause here and say that regardless of what I think of these products (I have some more reviews coming, they have some lovely stuff!) I think is brand is a bit bloody cheeky. My friend Rachael bought one of their palettes and it is exactly the same, down to layout, as a Sleek palette. I can see this repeated in a couple of their palettes, and several of their items look exactly the same and are at exactly the same price point as everyone’s favourite cheap-and-cheerful high street brand, MUA. I wondered if they’re the same company, but a little Googling says they’re not. Very odd that a brand would copy another budget brand in my opinion!


Will you be trying these lipsticks? What’s your favourite brand for odd colours?

Quickie Halloween Look with lenstore.co.uk: Mermaid

You know I’m a big fan of Halloween looks that are quick – if Halloween was a public holiday and we had the day off get get ourselves mystical, spooky or whimsical that would be amazing, but it’s just not the case! With that in mind I tried to do a mermaid look with just a few additions to a regular ‘going out’ look!

First up, I have to mention these gorgeous lenses! lenstore.co.uk very kindly sent me some lenses to try out with some Halloween looks and I was pretty keen – I love lenses and I’d actually already bought costume lenses for my Halloween outfit already but I’ve never tried lenses that just change your eye colour before.



These are the Freshlook Colour Blends in Gemstone Green and I love them! I like how the change your eye colour enough to be eye catching but they’re not as in-your-face as, say, the Marilyn Manson style or Twilight style lenses. These also come in prescription strengths, so I think I’m going to try the turquoise next time!

Eyes: Sugarpill Tako, Velocity, Lumi, Afterparty and Darling. KIKO shadestick on the waterline. Brows, Sugarpill Dollypop, MAC Reflects pink glitter. Pearls are nail supplies from eBay and the sequins are from the pound shop.
Cheeks: Darling Girl Spectral Shift in Mystique
Lips: No-brand hot pink liner, MAC Viva Glam Nicki, Revlon lipgloss in Adorned

I’m really sorry for the lack of pictures – I hate doing makeup in the winter when there’s no good light, but I hope this gives an idea!

If you look closely, this isn’t that far off a normal going out look – a strong eye and lip, with a coloured instead of a regularly filled-in brow. Sometimes a bold look is really nothing more than switching up a colour or product, and the time and technique used is exactly the same.

As a Disney kid, of course I love the idea of mermaids as beautiful, fairy-like creatures like Ariel, but I also I really love the idea of mermaids as sea creatures with scales and barnacles and spiky fins, so I kind of tried to combine the two. I chose a girly colour palette, but added pearls to my eyes, overlapped sequins on my brows to represent scales and extended my eyeliner into long, wispy strokes to represent waves or seaweed. I also made sure there was a good dose of shimmer, to represent to sparkle of the sun on top of the sea, and kept as little colour as possible on my cheeks, adding a soft blue-pink highlight, to try and mimic the sort of washed-out look that skin has underwater. I added some bubbles using face paint going down the neck and the side of my face, and if I was going out wearing this and had a decent costume I would extend that down the side of my arm and up my face a little more. If you’re careful spraying it, you can use hairspray to set any small bits of body paint.

Hope you enjoyed this look! Have you tried changing your eye colour with lenses before? What are you going as for Halloween?

If you want to try some awesome coloured lenses, Lenstore.co.uk have very kindly given me a 10% code for you guys – add Robyn_Reader at the checkout before 30th November to get 10% off!


The lenses in this post were provided by lenstore.co.uk. As always, all opinions in the post are my own.

Last-Minute Works-With-Everything Halloween Look

If you’re stuck for a Halloween makeup or you get invited to a party last minute, this look is super simple, works with anything spooky and will also work with using any colour scheme. It’s also still pretty and a bit sexy if you’re not into gory stuff. If you keep the eyes and lips the same colour it packs a punch, but doing the eyes just black with an unusual lip colour, like blue, green or a crazy purple, is pretty fun and one of those looks that if you’re not confident wearing bolder makeup, you can get away with more easily as it’s Halloween. You also only need two eyeshadows for the eye and lip look and if you *really* wanted, you could do this whole look with six products – a black eyeliner for your waterline, lipliner and brows, two eyeshadows (a dimensional or multitonal shadow for the eyes and lips, and one cooler neutral to contour a little) white or lighter foundation, mascara and a setting powder.

Eyes: Darling Girl Don’t Teal Me You Love Me applied with Inglot Duraline, Fyrinnae Futuristic Glamrock in centre of lid. Rimmel Brown Black eyebrow pencil, Maybelline gel liner in black. No-brand lashes from Savers.
Face: Illamasqua Skinbase in 01, Sugarpill Tako, cool matte brown from Inglot, MUA Undress Me highlighter, setting powder.
Lips: Blue kohl pencil from Barry M, Darling Girl DTMYLM, Fyrinnae Futuristic Glamrock

I started out with a medium coverage white foundation to pale out my face – just pale it down, not look clown white. I was taking it off after to go to the gym so didn’t want to take it down my neck too far, but I would if I was going out. Contour with a cool colour and use a white shadow to highlight to keep the look a bit ‘dead,’ and if you want a little shimmer be sure to use something cool-toned as well – Sugarpill Lumi would have been good for this look actually! Draw your brows darker and more angular, or with pointed ends for a more evil look, and if you want to, overline your lips as well because if you can’t go OTT on Halloween then when the fuck can you? For the eyes, I mixed a loose pigment with a mixing medium to give me some fluidity when drawing the shape, and then filled in the space with the same colour. I patted a little of a lighter shadow on the centre, slapped on some lashes and liner and then copied the colour scheme I used on the eyes for the lips and I was done! Really, really simple, the hardest part was getting the shape of the eyes and overlining the lips neatly, but you really don’t have to do that part, I just enjoy doing it when I can get away with it. The hair took me about 40 seconds so looks bloody shoddy but if I were going out a few minutes teasing the top,  slicking down the sides and running a flat iron through the ends would make a nice quick faux-hawky kind of look.

The best thing about this look is you can throw on any generic Halloween accessory and still look like you’ve made a bit of an effort because of the bold shapes and colours – kitty ears look cute stuck in a big quiff or fauxhawk, fangs and a quick bit of makeup on your neck for a vampire look is easy and works well, stripy witch tights with a cute black dress and clumpy shoes is spooky too. I much prefer to plan out my costumes and make an effort but let’s be honest, a lot of us don’t have the time or cash so it’s good to have something up your sleeve that’s quick and dramatic.

Keep your eyes peeled for a review of the fangs by the way – they’re awesome!

Makeup Roundup!

I have been AWFUL at taking non-camera phones at the moment,  but I *have* been wearing nice-ish makeup. Ah well! Sorry about the filters and so on, but take it as gospel that my skin doesn’t look like this but my eye and lip makeup does ;)

Blue brows! I wore blue brows and a neon shirt to take a makeup trip around London! I user MAC Subculture lipliner, my favourite nude with the MUA Undress Me Too palette on the eyes. For the brows, I used a white pencil as a base and filled them in with Sleek and Sugarpill, finishing off with a Barry M navy blue kohl liner.

Wearing Fyrinnae’s Electro Koi and Superstar… I love, love, love pink and orange together!

Dicking about with Sugarpill and Illamasqua here….



Wearing, again, my Undress Me Too palette with Illamasqua Shard on the lips over a liner to make it extra deep. I’m also proudly sporting my very first fishtail braid!

Busting out the Wet n Wild Petal Pusher palette to add a bit of purple to my liner. Using Darling Girl “Stay Beautiful” on the lips and Illamasqua lover on the cheeks.



Way too rubbish for it’s own post, but here’s my version of Hayley’s makeup from Paramore’s “Still Into You” video I did a while back. No idea what I used except MAC’s Pink Noveau on the lips.


I still haven’t managed to shake off my twelve year winged liner habit no matter what else I’m wearing! :D What’s been gracing your gorgeous face lately?

Quickie Review: Impulse Cosmetics Opaque Matte Lipsticks

 

A few weeks ago I noticed a lot of my blogger friends talking about the beautiful eyeshadows of Impulse Cosmetics. I don’t really shop for indie eyeshadow very often any more as I don’t wear eye makeup half as much as I used to and my collection is massive, but I checked the company out anyway. On a whim, out of curiosity, on… impulse (badum-tish!) I decided to try a couple of their Opaque Matte Lipsticks. I’d been looking at a lot of new companies with crazy lip colours, but a lot of them had horrific shipping costs and were more expensive meaning I’d get hit with import taxes too. Boo!

 

I was really impressed with the shipping and turn-around time – I had my order within ten days of purchase, which for an overseas indie company is amazing. Very happy with that indeed! The lipsticks cost $6.99 each, so super reasonable, and came packaged nicely in tissue paper with a business card with a 10% off coupon code for your next order.

So what colours did I get?

 

 

 

Melancholy

This is shown on the website as much, much deeper than my swatch, and it’s not super-matte like the website shows it to be.

 

 

Smoking Gun

This is shown on the Website as a super-deep, inky blue colour. Again, it was less matte than I had expected.

 

I was very impressed with these lipsticks! I didn’t know what to expect when they arrived, as I’m not a fan of chunky tubes like this for indie lipsticks and they do have a waxy scent, so I wasn’t expecting much when I went to apply them at all. Purples are notoriously hard to formulate and in my experience, deep purples of this ilk from indie companies tend to be a bit… well, rubbish! I’d head from another blogger that they found Melancholy very patchy, but I didn’t have many problems at all and found it looked great, but bear that in mind. I have to say that Smoking Gun was my favourite, and apparently this is limited edition, so if you’re a fan, snap it up fast! I’m really looking to trying both of these over a black lip liner to deepen the colours. I found the texture of these quite similar to Illamasqua lipsticks – they’re thick with a little bit of drag if you apply from the bullet, but if you use a lipbrush they’re a lot smoother. I experienced a little staining with Melancholy but Smoking Gun was thankfully fine!

To apply these, I used a lip brush and applied a thin layer, and then went over with the bullet. Just as a side note, I always make sure my lips are very well prepped before I apply crazy lip colours. They’re certainly worth taking your time over, especially blue and green colours where you can end up look strange if any pink or red tones from your lips are showing through. I also recommend extra-careful concealing of any redness round the lip area (I get lots of blemished on my chin and redness round those nose, for example) and then you might actually find that this sort of lip colour is really flattering!

 

 

A mattifiying powder is sold on the website to go with the lipsticks. I didn’t think this would be necessary to buy as they were billed as matte in the first place, but as you can see from the above,they’re not actually that matte at all. They do dry down a little more than my swatches above, but I went over them with a regular face powder, just for funsies:

 

 

While I do like these lipsticks and am particularly impressed with Melancholy considering how difficult purples can be both to work with and formulate, I have a few bugbears. The swatches on the website are horribly inaccurate and obviously photoshopped to high hell. I just don’t see why people do it. I know swatches are hard to capture accurately sometimes and it’s a lot of work, but I’d rather an honest effort, or that the company sent out samples for bloggers to swatch, or basically anything other than a crappy photoshop job. I’ve heard from a blogging friend that the owner is aware of this, so hopefully we’ll see some changes soon. I really do hope so, as these are lovely lippies and I know some people who have been put off by the swatches and that’s a bit of a shame really. I also don’t understand why these lipsticks are billed as matte, and then the company sells a mattifying powder to go on top of the lipsticks  – I don’t see the point!

 

 

However, aside from those things, I’m pretty sure I’m going to try out some more regardless. I really like how they look and they’re comfortable to wear. I’ve only worn both colours for a shorter amount of time so I can’t comment on if they’re super long wearing, but I tend to find crazier colours always need a bit more TLC to keep them looking good. As well as the crazier colours shown here, they also have lots of more conventional colours like nudes, pinks and reds. I’d like to see the green shades, and they also offer a service where they will fill a palette with five lip colours of your choice, which I think is a really fantastic idea and an unusual thing for an indie company to do.

 

Have you tried anything from Impulse Cosmetics? You can browse their shop at www.ImpulseCo.etsy.com, or shop through their Facebook page.


Edit: I have sadly heard a few cases of poor customer service from Impulse and also allegations of them stealing images from other makeup companies. Buy at your own risk.

Random Makeup Series: Textured Lips

A slightly better combination than my first post! In case you didn’t see, I recently made up a jar of words which I could use to create looks with when I had no inspiration, and this time I got ‘textured’ and ‘lips.’ Luckily for me, I got some gold leaf in the post this week, so I decided to use that with some glitter and little gems. Normally I’m not really a fan of gold leaf in makeup looks but I’d not tried using it before and this series is kind if about trying new things!

So I started with a green-teal eyeliner (Jungle by Rimmel) and used that to line the lips. Then I tapped a little of Fyrinnae’s Digital Faerie eyeshadow on top which looked gorgeous! I’m going to wear this combo soon for sure. I then added some little gemstones with eyelash glues, and I’ve seen a couple of looks where products like this were applied outside the lipline and I liked it, so I put most of them off my lips. I then mixed up a little of Darling Girls Golden Child glitter with a mixing medium and dabbed it on, adding some blue glitter with Collection 2000’s Glam Crystals in Le Freak. I liked the texture of the glitter – it went a little clumpy, but not in a bad way. It looked great!

After that, I simply tore off some gold leaf and stuck it on willy-nilly with some mixing medium. I have to say I don’t like the gold leaf effect much so I kind of stopped rather than trying to make it work. I do like how it looks with the blue tones though!

 

One more random combination bites the dust!

Sugarpill Sweetheart Palette: Initial Thoughts and Swatches

Writing anything about a Sugarpill palette is probably massively redundant, but I don’t care! I’ve wanted this palette for a long time and it’s the last one in my collection of those that are currently available, so now I have all the current pressed shadows apart from Bulletproof. In general I’ve been super impressed with the Sugarpill pressed shadows and I know they wear, blend and photograph well, so I had high expectations for this palette from the get go.

 

L-R (top over bare skin, bottom over NYX Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencil in Milk: Dollipop, Afterparty, Midori, Tako.

Dollipop was the one shadow I was really excited about as I don’t have a good quality, pressed bright pink. I have plenty of pinks that are poor quality, badly textured and that stain skin and brushes so I really wanted this to be good. It’s smooth, pigmented and bright as balls, so, so far I’m really loving it.  It’s perhaps worth noting that Dollipop left a slight stain on my hand where I swatched it over Milk, which is odd as it didn’t stain my eye area. I will update if I find it stains my brushes.

Afterparty I’m less sold on to to be honest – just a personal preference as it’s not my favourite shade of blue. it has a slight shimmer and I’d prefer it to be matte. Performance wise it works wonderfully, though, and I think it’s a nice accompaniment to Midori.

Midori is simply beautiful! It’s not a complex colour at all but I can’t think of anything else I have like it and I have a lot of green shadows. I can see this one becoming a favourite. Like Afterparty, this has shimmer, but I like it much better with this shade.

Tako is the colour I was most intrigued about. Any makeup fan will know finding a pigmented matte white that isn't awfully chalky is practically an impossible ask! I wasn’t expecting too much of Tako but was going to be happy if it was better than MAC Gesso, which is awful. I’m happy to report it’s much better! It’s not super pigmented – you won’t get it to show up stark white without a base at all – but the texture is smooth and it’s buildable, so I’m more than happy.

This is a very quick look I did with all the colours. I don’t know why I keep doing bottom-lashline heavy looks at the moment, I *know* they don’t suit me and I just wish that they did, basically. Anyway, these worked just as well as all my other Sugarpill colours. They just seem to be consistently good (with the exception of Poison Plum which I find difficult to work with) all round – they blend well, they’re pigmented and not patchy, they don’t seem to change colour on bare skin too much like some mattes can and there isn’t too much fallout. I like!

Like the other palettes, I think the colours are a great combination. The blue and the green compliment each other nicely, and the pink and blue mix together well to create a nice deep purple shade. The white is generally useful and it’s actually a bonus that it’s not ridiculously pigmented as you can use it to blend out edges without having too white a highlight.

Basically if you don’t like Sugarpill, I have only this to say:

Simple Brights FOTD with Sugarpill, MUA and Revlon

I hadn’t worn anything bright for a while, but I was feeling lazy and didn’t want to do anything complicated or that would involve using a ton of brushes. Having seen a lovely look where JazzieBabyCakes used Sugarpill Royal Sugar as a liner, I knew I wanted to try it.

Eyes: MUA Undress Me Too (lid, crease, lower lashline). MAC Gesso, highlight. Sugarpill Royal Sugar (mixed with Inglot Duraline), liner.
Face: Stila Custom Color Blush in Self Adjusting Coral, Boots No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter. Dr Jarts BB Cream, nameless theatrical setting powder, Le Maq Pro Concealer Palette in Light (to contour/highlight), Collection2000 Lasting Perfection Concealer in  01 Light.
Lips: Revlon Fire and Ice

Lo and behold, some photos for my blog where I don’t look like a troll! Hooray! I really, really like this look. I was going to pair the eye look with a neutral lip, but I’ve just bought Fire and Ice and am still head over heels in love with it, so on it went and I really like the result!

 

What’s your favourite pigment to wear as eyeliner?

A Little Lip Art!

Playing with some loose pigments, makin’ some lip artz. I really, really don’t have the patience to practice lip art on myself – keeping your mouth open while you do intricate work on it is actually a right pain in the arse! For each look, I blanked my lips out with Urban Decay Primer Potion first.

 

UDPP, MAC Gesso, Barry M Dazzle Dusts in 15 Aqua and 59 Lilac.

Dead simple to do and very cute. I like the soft pastel wash look.



Barry M Dazzle Dusts in 101 Buff, 98 Petrol Black, 72 Emerald and 99 Bright Indigo. Rhinestones from eBay, gloss random clear gloss mixed with 101 Buff.

This one was a royal nightmare to photograph, and it got all over my teeth and gather on the ‘waterline’ of the mouth so I do apologise for the crappy photos and that I had to color correct slightly which I don’t normally do! However, I liked the result!

Do you like practicing lip art?

In Which I Get Drunk And Forget How To Use A Camera

Look, y’all. Don’t lie, I know you’ve done it too. You do awesome makeup for a night out, or you have a few beverages, and you forget to take a photo of your banging face. As I’ve been a busy bee and it’s been raining like a rainy thing here in the U.K, I’ve no proper blog posts lined up, so have some crappy phone pics of makeup what I done did.

 

Eyes and brows were all Sugarpill, lips are Illamasqua Apocalips.

Eyes are all Inglot with Collection2000 black liner and Kryolan Pearlweiss glitter. Lips are MAC CYY.

I kind of wish I’d taken proper pictures. My contouring for the first look is whack, but the eyes look good. Funnily enough my skin looked boss for the second look even though I jacked up the liner a bit. Ah well!