NYX Jazz Night Palette

Hey Y'all!

Last night I had a nice dinner with my family and did a makeup swap with my beautiful cousin Rachel I'm very happy with the products I ended up with because some I was planning to buy already. Case and point? The NYX Jazz Night Palette. This is the perfect piece to add to my NYX palette collection which includes the NYX Smoky Eye Palette and the Champagne and Caviar Palette. (click names for review)

Im my opinion, this palette is appropriately named and comes with rich cool tones and creamy darks. Every shadow is a shimmer so if youre a matte lover this palette is not for you. the colors of this palette remind me of this restaurant called "The Jazz Kitchen" at Downtown Disney which makes me love it even more :)

On to the pics...

 w/o Flash

w/ flash

 the middle dark blue color has little pieces of purple glitter in it

 w/ flash

 w/o flash

Cant wait to use this! Have you guys tried any of the NYX palettes? 

Read more...

NYX Palette Review + Swatches, and update!

Hey Dolls!

Hope everyone is off to a wonderful start for the New Year! I spent New Years will a killer flu and just when I was about to get better, my guy caught it...even my little Mochi got sick! Luckily we're on the tail end of it now and should be back to %100 within the next couple days. You can bet I will be the first in line to get flu shots from now on!

Anyhoo, I went makeup crazy these past two weeks, partly because I got a gift certificate and some extra Christmas cash. I got a few things from MAC's Mickey Contractor Collection and few shadows from MAC's Peacocky collection, but Ill save that for the next post. This post will be about NYX's Champagne & Caviar palette. Ive been debating forever whether or not to get this palette because of my towering stash of neutral tone eye shadows but I finally gave in and so far, I don't regret it! I could see myself using every single shade. I already have the NYX Smokey Eyes Palette which you can see a post about that by clicking here. What I noticed is that the C&C (Champagne & Caviar) palette  feels a lot more sturdier, if you will, than the SEP (Smokey Eye Palette). The eye shadows in the SEP practically crumbled when swatched and the whole compact already broke after 3 uses. Perhaps I got a bad batch but I will still be keeping a close watch on this palette and will update in a couple weeks. Here id the breakdown of the palette:

NYX Eyeshadow Palette in Champagne & Caviar, $8.00
This palette comes with 10 neutral shimmer and matte shades ranging from a pure silky white to a matte dark gray. It also comes with a dual ended sponge applicator (but who uses those anyway?) and a mirror. Some of the shades may not show up well if you are medium skin toned like I but all are def usable. You can purchase the palette at cherryculture.com by clicking the above title

w/o flash

w/ flash

Here is a pic of the rest of my haul...swatches and review to come soon!

And now for a couple of holiday pics :)

Me & my little Mochi :)

 A couple of pics at the ballet when I went to see The Nutcracker, it was amazing! I wish I took more pics

City Hall looks so festive, I love my city

 I have a HUGE family, and when I say HUGE, thats an understatement...We all agreed in my family that we would only buy gifts for each child and do a Kris Kringle to save some money, but with all the kids on both my parents sides, plus the kids in my mans family PLUS all my friends children, I spent nearly $1000! Anyhoo, I still wanted EVERYONE to have something to open so I made some sugared cranberries and cake pops and dressed them up in nice packaging :)

 Home Decor

 We bought an artificial tree and Walmart was having a sale on this nice one that rotated. I really didnt care much for the rotation but the tree was lovely and the price was right so we went for it

Home made dutch apple pie

♥ Hope you all had a wonderful holiday and thanks for reading!!! ♥

Read more...

Holy Grail Item! Revlon ColorStay 12hr Eyeshadow in Coffee Bean

Revlon ColorStay 12-hour eyeshadow set in Coffee Bean is my go to eyeshadow set. I used this and ONLY this on my recent trip to Hawaii. This set comes with 4 long lasting eye shadow shades all in neutral colors. The pictures dont do this much justice so here's a color description for all the eyeshadows in the set from top to bottom:

Row 1: light vanilla color, perfect for brow bone
Row 2: muted grayish beige, I use this color the most for blending
Row 3: my favorite color in the set! this is a very shimmery (not to be confused w/ glittery) true copper color. Just a tad bit darker that a shiny new penny!
Row 4: dark brown color with a plum undertone, very pretty

What I like...
- All the colors have a very nice sheen to them, but they arent overpoweringly shimmery. I use this for both day and night looks
- Long-lasting!!! I dont know about 12-hour long lasting though, personally I don't wear my makeup that long (unless Im SUPER tired) but I've put this on as early as 8 in the morning and the eyeshadow was still evident when I washed my makeup off as late as 11 at night.
- This set is perfect for travel! It comes with all the colors you need to highlight you brow bone, cut crease etc.

What I dont like...
- Nothing!!! :)

On to the pics

here's the back:

w/ flash

w/o flash

w/ flash

w/o flash

Read more...

ELF Eye Transformer Palette

Heres my review of the ELF's Eye Transformer which is, in my opinion, a waste of $3.00 lol. Here is the description ELF gives online:

Convert your shadows into brand new shades with these four opalescent shadows. Wear alone, under, over or in combination with your other makeup. The opal tones transform your dark color into a new shimmering hue.

To me, this is just a palette of 4 shimmery eye shadow colors that I would never use ever in the tones that they are. When I initially bought this palette I thought it would great for highlighting my brow bones. Honestly I don't know what to do with them, but I definitely know that I cant wear any of these colors alone. I mean, the colors here are shimmery tones of GREEN, ORANGE, PINK and PURPLE! What am I going to do with that? They're too shimmery to wear alone but the color of the shadows are too bold to wear as an accent or as a highlight. I guess they work best if you know how to blend and mix them as stated in the description but I'm not that talented in the makeup arts to make these work for me that way

If you have this or have any good ideas on how to use this puh-leeeeze let me know! Either than that, back to the unused makeup drawer this goes because Im too cheap to throw this away :P

swatches

Read more...

Old Haul: NYX & Red Cherry

Ive been planning on doing a makeup blog for quite sometime now, months before I even started this one. I guess I got discouraged because I'm not a professional makeup artist and I didn't have nearly as much makeup as the other beauty bloggers I read. The day I admitted to myself that I was addicted to makeup was the day I started this blog lol. I noticed myself buying tons and tons of makeup thinking, "Oh I need this" or "If I just get this set I wont have to buy makeup again for a long long time" Did I live up to that? Heck No! I still catch myself saying those things then turning around and buying makeup again. I just bought from Cherry culture like one week ago hoping that would be my makeup budget for the month and what did I do last night? I ordered the 88 Warm Palette. Granted the things I buy aren't ridiculously expensive, but that's still no reason to go haul crazy like I do almost every month. I'm so impulsive sometimes it makes me sick. Having a makeup blog makes me feel like I didn't completely waste all my money on items that's I'm only gonna use once then banish into my endless makeup drawer.

Anyhoo, as I was saying...Ive played with the idea of creating my own makeup blog long before I started this one. I even took pictures of my makeup and hauls. Luckily I saved them and now they can be put to good use! Here's an old haul I did last year

Row 1 NYX eye shadows: Ultimatum/Red Bean Pie/Exotic Green
Row 2 NYX eye shadows: Skin Tight/Morocco/Smoke Mountain

Same 2 rows as mentioned above but with the NYX stick concealer in beige & Red Cherry lashes #49 (falsies for your lower lash line).
(don't know why I took 2 of the same pictures switching out the lashes in concealer :/)


Swatches for the eye shadows and concealer


These shadows as w/ mostly all NYX shadows break really easy. Either than that, the pigmentation is great. I never used the lashes though. They were a little to long for my taste. I don't think I have enough patience to work with lower falsies anyway. I also did some EOTD with the Red Bean Pie and Exotic Green that I will post next

Read more...

NYX Smokey Eye Palette vs. NYX Smokey Look Kit (Pic Heavy)

So we don't get confused I'm going to refer to the Smokey Look Kit as "SLK" and the Smokey Eyes Palette as "SEP"

I'm a really big fan of the "Smokey Eye" look. To me, there's nothing sexier. I don't know why I feel the need to pounce on any palette with the word "smokey" on it when I have millions of eye shadows in the black-gray family already. So when I was looking through some NYX products on cherryculture.com and seen this "Smokey Look Kit" I knew I had to have it. When I received my packaged, I opened it only to find I already had these colors in my NYX Smokey Eyes Palette! I was kind of bummed about it but then I realized a girl could never have too many smokey eye shadows right? Plus, my SEP was so ruined already! NYX eye shadows are great but they crumble way too easy. I wouldn't recommend carrying them in your purse. You'll see from the photos. Honestly I blame the packaging. The shadows are spread way too thin on a palette to wide. Please see below for all the details, photos and swatches for each set. Click on the name for a link to where I purchased them. Please note, I am not affiliated with that company and these sets were bought with my own money

NYX Smokey Eyes Palette (SEP)
This set comes with 10 shadows, a mirror, and an eye shadow applicator (which I lost, I never use those things anyway)
I know its all jacked up, can you believe I only dropped this twice?! I never really used it since because its so fragile.

w/o flash

with flash



NYX Smokey Look Kit (SLK)
This set comes with 9 shadows, 2 lip colors, a mirror and eyeshadow and lip brush (which again, I have lost lol)
The shadows are a lot smaller in size which is cool I guess because I don't see this crumbling like the SEP



with flash


w/o flash


Here are the lip colors. I really don't see myself wearing any of these, I don't fancy lippies that come in this form. The pink color is nice though.


Swatches & Comparison


So here are the swatches. This swatch comes from the SEP. I didnt bother swatching the SLK because they are the exact same eyeshadows.

with flash

w/o flash

I did however find that the SEP comes with one more shadow than the SLK. Here is the comparison

As you can see, the swatch on the right coming from the SEP is the eyeshadow not available on the SLK. Both are gray shadows but the SEP gray has a nice shimmer to it

Here's my final thoughts...
Both SEP & the SLK are good buys. They both have a wide variety of shadows to create that smokey look, and each box they are packaged in comes with step by step directions fpr application if needed. The only difference is that the SLK comes with two lip colors and the SEP comes with one extra shadow. Also, you get a lot less shadow with the SLK, but the packaging is a lot smaller and easy to carry in your makeup bag. Its all on your personal preference which one is right for you.

Buyer Beware!!!
These shadows break easy! I dont see the SLK breaking that much because the shadows are so small but we'll see. Ive carried it in my makeup bag for a couple days now with no problem. Aside from breaking easy, these shadows can get very messy and powdery. I think thats with all NYX shadows though. Usually to remedy this I apply my shadow before my face makeup and wipe the excess when I am finished.

Would I re-purchase?
Maybe. You know when youre going through your makeup and find a item that you havent used in awhile, then you start using it and loving it for like a week, then it goes back into that pile to be forgotten again? I see the SEP and SLK being one of those products for me

I'll do a FOTD probably on the next post using one of these palettes. Stay tuned for my review on the NYX gloss mauve and Desert Rose blush!

Read more...