Rock & Republic Haul

Rock & Republic Haul: Top- CASHMERE. Middle- Wrath, Alloy. Bottom- Corset, Privilege, Love Rocks.

The Rock & Republic eye shadows and powder that I ordered from HauteLook a week or two ago just arrived!

Love & Beauty Swatches: Bronze Shimmer Shadow, Goldie Tones Palette, and Cat Eye Felt Tip Pen

Here are the swatches that I did for the makeup I bought from Forever 21:

Top Row (with flash)
Bottom Row (without flash)

*ALL APPLIED OVER URBAN DECAY EYE PRIMER POTION* 

Get the detailed review after the jump!

This Week's Forever 21 Haul: F21 x Hello Kitty Ring and More

Today's Haul from Forever 21

Hello Kitty Collection Double Finger Ring, $9

Love & Beauty Goldie Tones Palette, $5

Neutrals and Metallics

Love & Beauty Cat Eye Felt Tip Pen

Love & Beauty Shimmer Shadow

I went a little crazy at F21 this week- I got up early this morning for the Hello Kitty Collection but my store didn't have a lot of the new HK stuff in yet, which was doodoo, and the bracelet I wanted wasn't there :( Another girl was looking for it, too, and I'm pretty sure we shared a moment where we both wanted to cry. (LMAO I'm just kidding. Not really.) Anyway, I'm going back this weekend to see if they get any new shipments.

I did get the pave Hello Kitty 2-finger ring I wanted, with rhinetones and a gold bow, though! It's such a big-ass ring but I don't careee! It's so cute and glam.

I picked up some other jewelry, too: a pair of pave curved triangle earrings, a pair of square pave hoops, a pave double heart ring. Of course, I couldn't resist buying a few beauty products: a Love & Beauty Cat Eye Felt Tip Pen, eye shadow, and the leopard Goldie Tones palette. I also bought a Clueless tank (love that movie!) and a Spoiled tank with Pebbles on it.

The black HK bracelet was the one thing I really wanted from the HK collection (I wouldn't really wear any of the clothes) so hopefully I'll be able to find it this weekend because I'm pretty sure it's already sold out online.

Stay tuned for swatches of the makeup I bought...

Pigment-palooza!

Etsy.com is one of my favorite sites because I can find tons of homemade products, from handcrafted jewelry to blended mica mineral pigments. Sellers have their own online boutiques where you can browse all of their products and goodies. On a hunt for duochrome eye shadows recently, I discovered two great cosmetic lines on Etsy: Caustic Cadets Cosmetics and Spectrum Cosmetics.

I decided to purchase 5 duotone pigments from each line:

Spectrum Cosmetics charges $3.25 per 3 gram jar or choose any 5 for $15
EOS: Looks like burnt copper with tons of white glitter in the pot but shifts to a gorgeous, sparkly mix of light green and blue with a deep reddish-brown base
EOS-2: (A less glittery version of the original EOS but still shimmery) It looks like a dark reddish-brown in the pot but shifts to a turquoise blue with a reddish-brown base
Mystic: Looks like a medium reddish-brown with moss green iridescence but shifts to a metallic teal-green with a reddish-brown base
Briar: Looks like an almost completely matte light rose-violet in the pot but shifts to a light blue shimmer with violet flecks
Sassy: Looks like an almost completely matte light peach but shifts to a light violet shimmer with light blue flecks

Caustic Cadets charges $3.99 for each jar of 2 grams of powder
Volatile: Looks fuchsia in the pot but shifts to electric violet with flecks of blue
Dreamweaver: Looks peach with green glitter in the pot but shifts to reddish brown with flecks of olive green
Pillow Talk: Looks like rose in the pot but shifts to medium rose gold
Black Magic: (my FAVORITE duochrome!)  Looks deep periwinkle blue with gold and blue glitter in the pot but shifts to electric teal, blue, and gold with a matte black base
Siren: Looks pale pink with blue shimmer in the pot but shifts to a dusty lavender with flecks of light blue

I tried my best to describe the colors accurately and display the right shades in the pictures, but the pictures don’t really do these pigments justice. They are absolutely stunning and so affordable that you’ll definitely want to check out several colors at a time. Happy shopping!

*All of the swatches were brushed on top of Clean & Clear Finishes Pore Perfecting Moisturizer to help the loose pigment powders stick.

***UPDATE: Caustic Cadets Cosmetics are now sold on Facebook here.

If you try any of these pigments, let me know what you think!

This Weekend's Pink Mini Makeup Haul

Isn’t my mini haul from the drugstore this weekend so cute? Everything is so…PINK! xD To find out what I think about each product, read on!

[Image via Temptalia]

The Wet n’ Wild Spoiled Brat Eye Shadow Trio ($2) caught my eye because not many drugstore brands sell this vibrant fuchsia color (sorry that my first pic doesn’t do it justice, I did the best I could with rainy-day outdoor lighting). I applied all of them over Urban Decay Eye Primer Potion and all of the colors have great color payoff for a drugstore product! They are a bit powdery, though, and do fade, even with primer. Oh, well, I really just bought this for the pink color, anyway, so I’ll give this a 4/5. I can’t wait to do a pink smoky eye shadow look with this!

The Wet n’ Wild Mega Brilliance Lip Gloss in Crushed Grapes ($1) is a very sheer Barbie-pink with multicolored glitter. The good thing about this gloss is that it is NOT sticky at ALL and it also tastes amazing. It’s not gritty, like most glittery glosses, either. That said, the color payoff is non-existent and the glitter is barely there once you put it on… I feel like you’d only be able to tell that there’s glitter on my lips if I was in direct sunlight. Boo… This gets a 2/5.

Wet n’ Wild FuchsiaRama ($2) is such a pretty medium-toned purple-pink color…(a bit more pink than it looks in the pic above). It’s perfect for Fall! I love that I finally found a purple that doesn’t make the yellow undertones in my skin look weird… (Cool-toned nail polishes make my hands look like a corpse.) This is a warm purple-pink, though, and flatters warm undertones! The formula is very sheer, but it’s pretty much a given that drugstore nail polishes need at least 3 coats, so I’m okay with it. I give it a 4/5.

Finally, we have Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Color in Strobe Light ($3), which is STUNNING! I love Disco Ball, which is snowflake-colored glitter, but this is a close second! It’s a rose pink multi-colored glitter top coat and makes any nail polish more glam Love this! It gets a 5/5.

If I had to recommend only one of these products, I would definitely say to buy Strobe Light. You'll get the best quality for your money there. Hope this helps!

Caustic Cadets Cosmetics Swatches

I received some sample packets from Caustic Cadets Cosmetics, which are now sold on Facebook instead of Etsy. (The owner of the company told me that she made the switch because Etsy charged her about $20/month to sell her products.) I hope her Facebook store is a success!

Here are some swatches from the samples:

Caustic Cadets Cosmetics: (L to R) Beer Before Liquor, Walk of Shame, Comera, Cheeky, Speed Ballin', Galactic, and Wendy

I absolutely love Beer Before Liquor, Walk of Shame, and Galactic. Cheeky would be a gorgeous highlighter for special occasions. It's so glowy and the perfect shade to make my NC40 skin look dewy (not disco).

Beer Before Liquor (eye shadow): Bronze brown with moderate amounts of multi-colored glitter, highly pigmented
Walk of Shame (eye shadow): Electric violet with flecks of periwinkle shimmer, great pigmentation
Comera (creme paint): Matte black cream shadow, buttery soft but not as pigmented as I would like. It would probably make a great e/s base, though.
Cheeky (blusher/highlighter): Gorgeous metallic golden peach
Speed Ballin' (eye base): Sheer pearl shimmer loose powder
Galactic (glitter dust): Very pretty caviar black glitter with flecks of silver
Wendy (mineral lipstick): Tomato red, with more of a sheer lip balm consistency than lipstick

Bottom line: I love the colors and pigmentation of Caustic Cadets' loose eye shadows and glitter powders but I'd pass on the cream-based stuff, since they don't seem to be as pigmented.

1 Duochrome Eyeshadow, 3 Different Looks

As you've probably figured out by now, I luuuhz me a good duo-tone eye shadow. Why? Because the color of the pigment changes depending on the angle that you're looking at them... which gives your lids some extra "oomph" and adds major drama!

Most of them are sheer, making them perfect for layering over other eye shadows (think of them as an eye shadow top coat!). They can be worn alone too, for sheer, color-shifting color that's great for the office or school. For a night out, apply a duochrome over a dark eye shadow for a black magic effect.

See the difference? I love this green-to-brown duochrome eyeshadow over light and dark cream shadow paints!

Duo-tone eyeshadows are a great way to re-vamp your boring old single-tone colors! Have fun with it and play around with different color combinations to get different effects :)

MAC on Sale at BeautyTicket.com!

One of my favorite online beauty sites, BeautyTicket.com, a beauty flash-sale website, is having a huge sale on MAC blushes, lip glosses, and more this week! Check them out here!

MAC "Date Night" Dazzleglass Lip Gloss at BeautyTicket.com

MAC Blush in "Ambering Rose" on BeautyTicket.com

MAC Eye Shadow in "Aquadisiac" on BeautyTicket.com

PLUS you can find hard-to-find or discontinued products from past MAC collections, too! Happy shopping!

HauteLook Haul: Rock & Republic Eye Shadows

These are the gorgeous eyeshadows that I recently purchased from HauteLook.com! It's a flash sale site for beauty products, clothing, accessories, and houseware that offers CRAZY discounts on designer brands for a very limited time. These eyeshadows normally cost $28 a pop (I've seen some stores mark them up to $50 or more!) but when I saw that they were going for only $7 each on HauteLook I knew I had to buy a few.
As soon as I saw all the richly pigmented hues, I wanted to buy all of them -  but somehow I managed to exert some self-control before I was able to rationalize spending $100 on eyeshadow.

Instead of picking out the same old colors I always do (i.e. various shades of copper, dark brown, bronze), I tried to select ones that I don't already own. These colors are just too pretty:

Wicked: a warm dark brownish-purple (matte)
Denim: a rich, deep navy blue (matte)
Ammo: a shimmery medium bronze