Beautifully Disney Lipgloss Swatches (Maleficent, Merida, Ariel, Belle, Snow White and The Wicked Queen)

This week I came back from my wedding/honeymoon in Florida, which naturally for me was largely Disney-based! I’ve always been a huge, huge Disney fan and it was a wonderful trip in every way. I’ll be sharing my wedding makeup soon.

Disney have their own range of makeup available in the parks called 'Beautifully Disney,' and naturally I was all over it! It's available at several locations in Walt Disney World, with the largest range available in the Co-Op Market in Downtown Disney, where the products are (loosely) themed into collections - there was a Villains collection, an Alice collection, and two displays of princesses and Disney heroines - and the range includes blushes, eyeshadow palettes, lipglosses, mini lipstick sets, polishes and polish set, brush kits, nail wraps, a gel liner set, a few false lashes and some sundries like sponges and mirrors. Tiana, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Aurora, Mulan, Alice and Cruella are featured, and I also went on a Disney cruise and noticed some glosses featuring characters that I didn't see in the parks, such as Minnie Mouse and the Blue Fairy, (no male characters, however). Some of the range occasionally pops up in UK Disney Stores, and they are also sometimes available in some of the outlets in the I-Drive area in Orlando as well.

 

Aaaanyway. Due to luggage constraints and not wanting to smash any powder products, I picked up six of the lipglosses! I honestly would have bought them all, and I’m planning to collect more in the future. Each gloss is named for a character, with that character displayed on the tube, and a sticker on the top of the tube and box displays a symbol matching the character as well - a rose for Belle, an apple for Snow White, etc. Generally speaking the shade of the gloss matches the characters personality or the themes for that film - for instance, the Maleficent gloss is purple, Ariel’s is a coral shade, the Rapunzel shade matched the pink of her dress. A+ for packaging and theme here, there are a lot of nice touches for Disney fans and I prefer this packaging, even though it’s just stickers, to both the MAV Villains and Maleficent collection packaging. I feel more thought has gone into it.

Let’s have a close look at each one!

Mistress of Darkness (Maleficent)

A bright purple in the tube, this translates to a sheerer lilac on the lips. Your natural tone will show through, which makes this look pinker. The gloss has very small reddish gold sparkles in which don’t translate very well in photos.

Change Your Fate (Merida)

A decently pigmented orange-red gloss, I predict lots of wear out of this one!

Love’s First Kiss (Snow White)

A dusky pink. I love this shade, it’s very feminine and pretty. If you’re surprised Snow White’s shade isn’t red, it’s probably because Disney gave a red gloss to Cruella.

Mysterious Mermaid (Ariel)

A pale pinky-coral with gold sparkles. Again, one I can see myself getting a lot of wear out of.

A Rose Is A Rose (Belle)

A mauvey pink. I think this is the sort of shade Belle might actually wear. I really, really love this one!

Heartless (Wicked Queen)

A vampy blackened red. How great is this? Glad to see there is at least one shade in the range that will suit darker skin tones or bolder looks!

 

And just for comparisons sake:

In all honesty, I wasn't expecting too much of these glosses at all, I fell in love with packaging and wanted to add them to my makeup collection. The Maleficent colour is much sheerer than purple lovers would hope, and I expected the rest of the glosses to follow suit. While most of the ones I’ve got are on the sheerer side, these are actually nice quality, with some pretty sophisticated shades! I love the dusky tone of ‘Love’s First Kiss’ and it’s hard to find anything negative to say about the stunning vampy qualities of Heartless – neither of which are shades I would have expected to find in a cartoon themed line, even if it is obviously geared at adults. As glosses, you’re not going to get stunning wear time out of these, but none of them stain or feather, and they are all lightweight and non-sticky which is great.

At $14.95 plus tax, these aren’t the cheapest of glosses (although some places in the parks they are on Buy Two, Get One Free) but as a beautiful Disney souvenir it was a price I was more than willing to pay and I was pleasantly surprised at how lovely these are.

Would you buy Disney makeup?

MAC Alluring Aquatics Swatches: Goddess Of The Sea and Seduced By The Sea

Alluring Aquatics came out last week, seemingly hitting the UK shelves before the US, yadda yadda yadda. I’m going to give you the TL;DR version straight up – average MAC products, AMAZING PACKAGING. I could leave it there but that’s the general gist.

LOOK AT THIS SHIT. Each item in this collection is a shiny blue metallic packing, covered in 3d fake water droplets. FAKE WATER DROPLETS. I didn’t realise this until I opened it – I thought they were embossed somehow and when I opened the packaging I was like IS THIS REAL LIFE? If you’re a makeup collector you need at least one piece from this collection, man. It’s really, really cool. Like every woman my age who is pissed off that we actually have to be adults now and give a shit about things, I want to be a mermaid and this collection I feel helps a little with that. Is it cool enough to warrant the extremely cheeky price raise to £16.50 on the lipstick? If this collection wasn’t released on payday I may have had a different answer to that question, but I think yes.

 

L-R: Extra Dimension Blush in Seduced At Sea, Cremesheen lipstick in Goddess Of The Sea. More water droplet action, and the MAC logo is inlaid in some fancy blue pearlescent writing.

L-R: Blush in Seduced At Sea, cremesheen lipstick in Goddess Of The Sea

Goddess Of The Sea. I totally am the Goddess Of The Sea but I’d probably pick Illamasqua’s Apocalips for my official duties. Described as a ‘dark vibrant violet,’ I was expecting this to be a little less wearable and quite frankly darker. Not what I was expecting but lovely nonetheless. I do like the cremesheen formula so I expect I’ll get a good bit of wear out of this one.

Here I am wearing Seduced At Sea on the cheeks. Described as a ‘mid tone neutral plum’ which is quite frankly absolute bollocks. This more like a light, burnt orange to me. I wished when it arrived that I’d ordered the coral, but applied this is actually rather lovely. I’d apply with a light hand to avoid looking like an Oompa Loompa. A nice colour for medium skins or tanned lighter skins.

The products themselves are very nice – I love the extra dimension blushes and wish they were a permanent fixture because I would sop them up with a biscuit. They’re just lovely. And a cremesheen lipstick is always a winner. While I only got two items, I don’t think there is one overall standout from this collection. Everything is nice, wearable, something you’ll get use out of. That’s fine, but this collection in my opinion is outshined by the absolutely banging packaging.


Almost everything seems to be sold out at the moment, but will you be picking up anything from this collection?

Getting back into eyeshadow: LOTD with Sleek Acid Palette

I’ve hardly been wearing eyeshadow at all this year and I feel like the last few times I’ve applied it I’ve felt like a newbie! I can’t wear whatever makeup I like to work anymore, so I tend to wear a cream eyeshadow that I can easily apply on the tube. With Christmas and going snowboarding and having various coughs and colds I’ve missed wearing eyeshadow, so on Saturday this weekend I decided to wear something bright!

 

Eyes: Sleek Acid Palette, Illamasqua liner in Scribe, Collection 24/7 Extreme pen liner.
Lips: L’Oreal Extraordinaire Gloss in
Cheeks: Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush in Diffused Heat
Face: L’Oreal Eau de Teint, Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer

If I’ve been neglecting eyeshadow, I’ve *really* neglected this palette! I thought the neon would look great with a pop of white, although in reality I was probably a bit too rushed to make the liner look as nice as it should have. And I think I ought to have used lashes too. Oh well, it was fun and so nice to wear something bright after so long!

Is there a palette you haven’t used for a long time?

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?

Kiko Haul!

I’ve featured a few Kiko products on my blog before and from what I’ve tried, I really enjoy the brand. The range itself is pretty fabulous, is really reasonably priced, and they have lots of skincare and nail stuff as well as makeup, and rotating collections to keep things interesting. Everything here is from their ‘Fierce Spirit’ summer collection and was on sale, with the exception of the lip balm. The collections are often packaged really prettily, which is just a nice touch.

This whole lot cost me £22.60, with all the sale items being half price.  The blush was £6.90, the shadesticks and pigment were £2.50, and the Glow Touch Balm was £2.90. So even at full price, most things are really accessibly priced anyway. I had to stop myself going back for the other colour of Glow Touch, and the other Long Lasting Stick Eyeshadow and the summer body splashes!

 

Here’s what I got:

Clockwise from top left, Colour Explosion Multi Tone Blush in  03 Active Mauve, Long Lasting Stick Eyeshadows in 29 and 30, Glow Touch Lips and Cheeks in 03 Lucky Flamingo, Pigment Loose eyeshadow in 27 Beaming Beige, Kiss Balm Lip Balm in 01 Coconut.

L-R: Stick eyeshadow in 29 and 30, Glow Touch in Lucky Flamingo, Active Mauve colours 1, 2 and 3 and all the colours together.

Lucky Flamingo on the lips.

 

I’m super pleased with these products! The stick shadows are super vibrant in real life and don’t budge. I originally thought these were a different formula to the usual stick shadows as they take a while to set, but these are fabulous. The Glow Touch I am SO pleased with – this is genuinely pretty and comfortable on both lips and cheeks. Often dual-purpose products are horrible on one or the other, and this is lovely. I feel it won’t last long the cheeks (I only tried briefly) but it sure looks pretty.

The pigment I’m not stoked on – it’s pretty chunky and didn’t apply well wet or dry, but for £2.50 I’m not too bothered and I’m sure I’ll find a use for it. The blush however, is gorgeous. It’s a beautiful soft mauve and I really like the highlight shade in particular.

I haven’t swatched the lipbalm as it just comes off as a sheer gloss, but it was the scent that drew me in and I needed a new lip balm.There’s a whole bunch of buttery, fruity scented lipsticks in that collection that do have a colour pay off, each with a corresponding colour on the packaging so worth checking out if you like that type of lip product.

 

Well that’s my bargain haul! If you can’t get to the two Kiko stores in London you can shop their sale here: http://www.kikocosmetics.co.uk/sale.html

Quickie Review: Topshop Lip Bullets in Joyride and Heartbeat

I’m not that up to speed with Topshop makeup – I’ve tried a few bits and bobs but I’d rather spend my pocket money on Topshop’s Freedom jewellery range so never really got stuck into the makeup. One of their lip bullets caught my eye on a lunch break recently so in the name of, err, science, I bought two to test!

Oh Topshop, please stop with the white packaging! It looks dead cute but already the tips of my pencils are covered in the product and I know they’ll pick up smeg from my makeup bag no matter what. I do like that these are twist-up pencils though, and that they have the classic lipstick bullet shape rather then being a blunt pencil.

Joyride:

Ohhh, how I love this colour! Helpfully described on the Topshop site as ‘RED,’ it’s slightly less blue-based than it looks here and gives the most beautiful ‘I’ve just eaten an ice lolly’ stain but still with heaps of shine. It’s very slick and smooth on the lips and wears a whole lot better over a lipliner, but it doesn’t bleed or feather. I get around an hour with the glossiness, and it leaves a stain. While it’s slick, I wouldn’t say it was moisturising, it just happily sits there!

Heartbeat:

I simply can’t accurately capture this one folks – sorry! Heartbeat is an orange-coral in the tube that translates a touch more pink on the lips. I’m actually disappointed it looks as pink as it does on me because in store it looked much more orange – I’ve seen other bloggers disappointed by this as well, so be warned. It’s described on the site as ‘peachy pink’ and that’s much more accurate. There’s something about this particular shade that looks almost frosty, even though there’s no shimmer – my lips are in good nick at the moment but this is not going to be a shade that’ll fare well on dry lips. While I do like it, I much prefer the other colour I bought, even though this is the one that caught my eye! Comfort and wear time is the same as Joyride, though.

 

While these are nothing special, they’re nice additions to a summer makeup bag and I really love the red colour! I think they’re fairly reasonably priced, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to collect them all, but if another colour caught my eye… oh well! ;)

Lip Bullets cost £8.00 and be found in store and on www.Topshop.com