Limited Edition: Maybelline NY Color Tattoo in 300 Gold Shimmer

Gold Shimmer is one of the 2012 Limited Edition Color Tattoo's. Being a huge fan of gold shadows, I had to try this out...

The name gold shimmer is misleading - this is more of an antique, brassy metallic brown - but I LOVE the colour so I had to share. Here is a comparison with Bold Gold, the permanent gold in the range.

Top - Gold Shimmer

Bottom - Bold Gold

 Left - Bold Gold

Right - Gold Shimmer

Bold Gold (sorry, it looks a bit darker in this photo!)

Gold Shimmer!!

Left - Bold Gold

Right - Gold Shimmer

You can see that they are both beautiful colours, but I think I will get more use out of Gold Shimmer because of the brown undertone, so it would be suitable for daytime wear and at night. The formula is amazing - creamy and smooth, similar in texture to Bad to the Bronze (which is probably one of the most popular shades in the range?).

There is another limited edition gold color tattoo from the 2013 collection (Gold Rush), but it looks waayy too yellow for my liking. What do you think?

Have you got any of the LE Color Tattoo's?

Boe Beauty Lippies...

Boe Beauty is a relatively new budget makeup brand, found only at Big W. All their cosmetic items are $2, and they do have other products including makeup brushes, sponges, mirrors and larger kits but I think they are more than $2.

I have tried a few of their products and they aren't too bad. I've read a few reviews and the general consensus seems to be that the lipsticks and jumbo lip crayons are relatively well liked. 

So here I will show you the few that I own...

 Top to bottom

Boe Beauty Lipstick in Natural Tea Rose

Boe Beauty Lipstick in Birthday Suit

Boe Beauty Jumbo Wind Up Lips in Boudoir Pink

Boe Beauty in Manic Pink

Lipsticks
Let me start off by saying that the packaging is cheap and flimsy. I've had the one at the top (Natural Tea Rose) for about 6 months, it lives in my handbag and you can see that all the silver writing has worn off when you compare it to the other lipstick. Both lipsticks have minor cracks in the clear plastic lid. 

Luckily, the pigmentation of these are pretty decent. Have a look at some swatches below

 Left: Natural Tea Rose

Right: Birthday Suit

Left: Natural Tea Rose

Right: Birthday Suit

These are both nice shades, with birthday suit being a fantastic MLBB lipstick. They have a slight smell but I can't describe it and it does not last upon applying. As for wear time, it is about 2-3 hours because these lipsticks are quite creamy and moisturising. 

Now, moving on...

Jumbo Wind Up Lips
Hey, so what do these remind you of! When I saw them, I instantly thought of the Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stains...here is a side by side comparison. The Revlon one has had the lid taken off for this photo. They are almost the same, except the head differs slightly.

However, despite my initial assumption, these are not stains, but more like creamy lipsticks. I expected them to be dry and hard, but they glide on well and are super smooth on the lips. Again, wear time is not great, but what can you expect from a $2 product. I haven't had these as long as the lipsticks, but the writing has not shown any signs of fading away. The lids haven't cracked, but there are scratches appearing on the silver bottom. As for identifying the colour, its written on the barcode sticker, which is totally tacky, because if I remove the ugly barcode sticker, I won't know the name of the colour! 

Left: Boudoir Pink

Right: Manic Pink

Have you tried this brand?

Australis Totes Smokin' palette

This palette is a mystery. If you Google it, you won't find any official product information and the first few links that come up are reviews by some great Aussie beauty bloggers. So, is this palette discontinued, or a new addition...?

I first saw a review on this palette over on Mishelle's blog, last November. She does a great comparison of dry vs. wet swatches so definitely check out her post! I thought it was a really nice, budget-friendly palette. Then I also saw another great review by Esteem Beauty a month later, so if I only just bought this last week, how can this be a new product? Confusing!

Anyway, I managed to score this palette for $4.83 at my local Target. This fact itself is astounding, my local Target is equivalent to a barren wasteland, where everything is very suss looking. I saw a few of these palettes, and picked up the one with the least tatty looking box.

Front and back of the cardboard box

On the back you can see that the bottom left hand corner is a little frayed, other than that, all good!

'Kit is complete with a double ended sponge applicator' - omg no way I must buy it now

 Very sleek looking black case. The case is glossy so it easily shows up fingerprints.

 Back of case

 It looks so pretty! The mirror is a great size and you get quite a lot of product for each shade too. 

 A versatile mix of bronzey browns, purples and blending shades

Swatched dry with that life changing sponge applicator. The first three shades are a little chalky and the second shade (which is a matte shade) started to crumble a little. The last four shades of the palette are much more pigmented. My favourite shade is the fifth one. The most pigmented one is the second last one.

Overall, this is a very good palette for the price I bought it for. I created a smokey eye using the two purple shades and a silver shade from a different palette. With the Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer it had okay-ish lasting power. I find that TFSI can make even my BYS shadows last 12+ hours with no creasing, but the purples from this palette did seem to fade a little bit. I think that might be because these shades lean towards being matte, rather than shimmery colours which I usually wear.

If you see this palette, don't hesitate to buy it, it offers a nice range of colours without hurting your wallet :)

Have you used this palette? What do you think?

Keeping things wrapped up...

Just a quick post today to see if anyone else does this - you buy a bunch of things, but don't unwrap  them until months later when you actually use it. I felt like going on a beauty splurge today, but then realised I have a few things that I bought months ago and have left untouched in my drawer!

Maybelline New York Color Tattoo in 300 Gold Shimmer (Limited Edition) RRP $11.95*

Mirenesse Super Long Wear Gel Mineral Face Colour in 30 Aquamarine RRP $39.95

Boe Beauty Jumbo Wind Up Lips in 21 Manic Pink Jumbo Lips RRP $2

Savvy by DB Classic Blush in Rose RRP $4.99

Savvy by DB Graduating Bronzer RRP $6.99

*LE Color Tattoo's are not available in Australia

Do you keep things in their original packaging until you use them? What do you think I should use next?

BYS Browns palette

Having a weakness for brown/neutral shadows means I had to pick this up. Also, I saw some amazing swatches of this palette over at Marked Beauty so I was intrigued! (any excuse, right?)

BYS is one of those hit or miss brands - some stuff is good, and some is pretty pathetic. I'd say this one falls into the impressive category!

 BYS Metallics Browns palette

 Swatches of the first four shades (top row) - sorry it's a bit blurry, the sun decided to hide behind the clouds halfway through taking these photos!

Swatches of the top row

Swatches of the bottom row (last 4 shades)

What I like about this palette:

I love the colours, these are exactly the kind of colours I've been searching for. I bought MUA's Heaven & Earth but they weren't the right kind of browns for me. While these colours look very similar in the pan, they are slightly different when swatched. The last shade reminds me a lot of half baked from the Naked palette too. 

The pigmentation is very good - all the swatches above have been done dry using the applicator (no primer). 

The colours are long lasting with a primer - they last 12+ hours with my Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer (which is actually the best invention ever).

It's not too bulky and very light weight.

It's also been mentioned by Lauren Beautyy in one of her earlier videos, surely that's a good thing, right?

What I don't like

It smells overwhelmingly like baby powder - that's because it has talc in it. It's a pretty strong smell but doesn't linger upon application.

It's very powdery - while it is pigmented, it's soft and crumbly so there is quite a bit of fall out. This means it can become messy. I think for this reason alone, it won't be very travel friendly because it will just make a mess!

Overall, I really like this palette for the colours and I've been using it quite a bit for a simple daytime look. 

BYS is sold at Kmart, Gloss, the Reject Shop and a few other places (which I can't confirm) as well as online at http://www.fashionaddict.com.au/

I bought this for $4 but it normally retails for $5.

Have you got this palette? What do you think?

Trying out Savvy by DB

Sorry for my absence in the blogging world, I've just had exams for the Masters degree I'm currently doing, but now they're finished and I've got a whole week of holidays (gosh, so much time I could travel the world). 

Anyways, at the Priceline sale a little while ago, I picked up a few Savvy products. As far as I know, this brand is exclusive to Priceline and a little bit mysterious - they don't seem to have a website!

I picked up two lipsticks, one of which I'll show you because I absolutely love it! For $3.50, I'm so happy I decided to buy it.

 Savvy Lipstick in Sugar Rose

Savvy Mineral Baked Blush in Blossom

L-R 

Savvy Lipstick in Sugar Rose

Savvy Mineral Baked Blush in Blossom

Savvy Lipstick in Sugar Rose

Savvy Mineral Baked Blush in Blossom

This lipstick is called Sugar Rose, its a gorgeous pink with a hint of shimmer. The formula is nice to apply, a little drying but that improves wear time. I've been wearing it as a MLBB lipstick quite a bit.

Now we have the mineral baked blush in Blossom. When I saw it, I instantly snatched it up, it was too pretty to ignore. This blush is a really nice colour, but I can't go overboard with it because it'll look like I've been punched in the face. The pigmentation is average, but that doesn't bother me too much because of the colour. Also, maybe I'm just crazy but I find this hard to blend?? It's hard to buff out the distinct lines from applying the blush, whereas I don't have any trouble with my other blushes so it's not my brush or my technique. For this reason, I choose not to use it on a daily basis because I don't really have any longer than 5 minutes to do my makeup each morning (if I'm going to uni that is, and lately I've barely gone anywhere else!). 

All in all, I think this is a great budget brand, I'm definitely going to try out another lipstick when my beauty ban is over. And because I'm blush crazy, I'd be interested in trying out another blush but perhaps not from the mineral baked blush range.

Have you tried Savvy products? What are your thoughts?

My Beauty Buying Ban

A common problem issue (or joy?) with beauty bloggers is that we just seem to buy sooo many things, use them a few times and then they retreat into the black hole known as the cupboard (or wherever you store things). I have acquired 5000 versions of the same thing, so I'm going to ban myself from buying a few things for a while...

1. Skincare 
I have so much skincare to exhaust, most of which I didn't pay for. I either got it from beautyheaven trial teams (was anyone else on the Nivea pure and natural trial?), blog giveaways and free samples including the recent Neutrogena samples and I also have some Arbonne skincare samples. I have enough to last me a year or more, so I won't allow myself to buy anything for a looong time!

2. Hair treatments. 
I have quite a few leave in conditioners, deep conditioners, oils etc so I have to use a few of them up before I buy any more. This doesn't include my styling products (such as heat protectant) or shampoo/conditioner.

3. Lipsticks.
I haven't ever used up a lipstick in my whole life, so until that happens, I'm not allowed to buy new ones. 

4. Foundation/BB cream
I have 3 liquid foundations, 2 BB creams, one pressed powder and one mineral foundation. That is more than enough for now. Although, I've hit pan on my pressed powder which I use the most, so I might be repurchasing that soon.

I think that's enough for now. I don't think I'm being too hard on myself, so hopefully I can stick to this plan. Wish me luck!

Are you on a beauty ban? Or have you tried before and failed? (or succeeded?)