Favourites roundup!

WAY too late for August but time for some favourites nonetheless! I’ve changed jobs recently and have to be pretty conservative with my makeup. I love *all* makeup and polish colours so wearing neutrals doesn’t really bother me, but does mean I feel I have to make sure my skin is looking reeeeeeal pretty, hence a couple of items in this post.

 

Clockwise from top left:

Kiko Colour Explosion Multi Tone Blush in  03 Active Mauve

I got this beauty on sale from Kiko for around £6. The four swatches on the right below show the blush tones, with the far right one being all the colours mixed together. I just love how this looks lightly applied – a really soft, slightly cool-toned rose that just looks *so* pretty. I love how each part of the pan is large enough to wear alone, too.



Illamasqua Nail Varnish in Hemlock

I’ve raved long and hard about this, so just let me say that a strong duochrome that is work appropriate and long wearing is amazing.



Impulse Cosmetics Opaque Matte Lipstick in Smoking Gun

You can read my full review of this bad boy here, but I’m loving this beautiful bold, bargain priced blue!



Weleda Skin Food

This stuff really is wondrous! I’d seen a lot of makeup artists rave about this stuff, and when my boyfriend had a nastly flare-up of dry skin I bought it to see if it helped at all – and it did! Being a dry-skinned babe myself, I had to try it out and while I’ve been using it for less than a month I have to say I’ve seen a difference. I apply it at night as it take a while to sink in, but when I wake up my face feels wonderful and after a cleanse I just slap on some Illamasqua Hydraveil as opposed to a thicker day cream, so it saves me time in the morning too! It’s very thick and to me smells like Campari, which I don’t particularly like. If it’s good enough for Posh (apparently), it’s good enough for me and at arond £8 for 75ml it really is a bargain. I know I’ll repurchase!

Silk Naturals Eyeshadow in Fusion

I dug this baby out when rooting through my work-safe colours and it’s a pleasant rediscovery! Well known for MAC and Urban Decay dupes, there’s no arguing Silk Naturals makes a banging neutral and this is no exception. They describe it as a ‘dirty copper plum…with golden highlights’ and that it’s one of the colours that’s ‘too cool for the cubicle.’ It’s a pretty, interesting taupe and it’s made me rekindle my fondness for this brand, so expect to see more from them soon!

Silk Naturals eyeshadows in Heat, Glory, Fusion and Hairpin.

Maybelline Baby Lips

I’ve only shown the mint one here and that’s actually my least favourite, but it’s the only one that I had to hand, the pink and peach tints are living in my drawer at work! I wasn’t sure what all the hype was about I first heard of these, and yeah, they’re just lip balms. They’re not the most exciting of beauty products, but I really like the garish packaging and they do moisturise while providing a subtle, non-staining hint of colour that actually shows up. For three quid I can’t not love that!

What have you been loving at the moment? Tried anything here?

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.