NARS Day and Night Palette

Today's post is another short one; it's for the NARS Day and Night palette. The Day and Night palette was released with NARS's 15th anniversary collection and comes in the same packaging that the 6 pan palettes have all come in; except that the NARS lettering on the palette is in red instead of white. As usual, the palette contains 6 eyeshadow shades from the permanent line and retails for $50 at Sephora or on NARS's webpage. I forgot to mention this in my last post, but there's currently a 20% off code on NARS's site with $60 purchase or more. (CP9H1211) which expires 12/31/2009.

Here are the shades:
Abyssinia- This shade is also in the Pleasures of Paris palette. It's a nice shimmery beige color. For some reason I feel like the Abyssinia in my Day and Night palette is smoother than the one in the Pleasures of Paris palette
Sugarland-I'd describe this as a sparkling bronzed peach I guess. The texture's slightly gritty, but it applies just fine
Fathom- light pink with silver microglitter. This has a drier texture and the payoff is kind of poor. It makes a good base though I think.
Cleo- shimmering seafoam green in the pan, this one shows up nearly white on my skin with a green tinge.
Underworld- shimmery deep blue with some grey tones in it. Passable as a crease color, works nicely as a liner shade
Night Breed- Black with silver glitter. Unlike the majority of the Night Series shades, this one isn't chalky. I'll still probably never use it.

My overall thoughts on the palette are that it isn't bad, but it isn't great. I don't feel it's worth the $50 really. It's not a particularly versatile palette and I bought it when I was in my nude wash of color + colored liner phase so I'm okay with keeping it as I can find a couple of looks to do with it..unlike Modern Love which I couldn't work with that well. I do recommend Abyssinia as a single though..it's nice

Review: Kirkland by Borghese 15 Piece Premium Cosmetic Brush Set

Good morning ladies. Has everyone finished their Holiday shopping yet? It's 4:30 AM and I'm taking a quick break from playing Zelda Spirit Tracks to bring you a quick review of this year's Kirkland brush set from Costco. This 15 piece set contains a 8 piece full sized brush set, a 4 piece mini travel brush set, and an eyelash curler and retails for $19.99 at your local Costco store (unfortunately, they don't appear to carry this online. I bought this set a few days ago after obsessing over it for a couple of weeks, and I'm really glad I caved and got this set; it's the nicest synthetic brush set I've come across (I like them better than ecoTools) All of the brushes are super soft, and both the full size set and the mini set come with really great quilted brush cases that remind me a bit of Trish McEvoy's packaging.

The full sized set comes with 8 super soft brushes;

The Powder brush is a nice fluffy brush that isn't too densely packed, but is excellent for depositing a thin layer of powder all over the face

Flat-Top Bronzer brush- this brush is small enough to fit well on my cheeks and can be used for buffing in a powder or applying blush or bronzer. It's not nearly as dense as my Every Day Minerals flat top brush, but it's still really nice and super soft

Angled Foundation brush- a densely packed angled brush for applying foundation. I'm pretty sure you could easily get away with using this for blush.

Eyeshadow brush- good, somewhat fluffy basic brush for applying eyeshadow. I was pleasantly surprised with this one since I wasn't expecting too much out of this since my ecoTools synthetic eyeshadow brush is pretty awful for applying powder eyeshadow, but this one is actually pretty decent at applying powders as well as creams

Eye blending brush-decent for applying shadows into the crease

Flat Eyeliner Brush-nice, soft flat liner brush

Eye Smudger- the one super boring "brush" in the set..it's a typical foam smudgy thing

Angled brow brush and Brow Spoolie- a very nice angled brush with a small spoolie on the other end. It's thicker than what I would prefer to use for a liner brush, but it'd be soft enough if you wanted to use it for such a purpose. It's also a good size to use to apply brow powder

The travel set comes with

Powder brush- the head of this is a lot smaller than the full sized powder brush...making it good for apply blush. It's also good for light powder touch ups, but I prefer the larger brush for all-over
Concealer brush- this also has a smaller head than the eyeshadow brush in the full sized set. I'll probably just be using it for eyeshadow since I like using stick concealers and blending with my fingers.
Eye Blending Brush- again, this has a smaller diameter than the full sized brush..making it better for my tiny creases. I also feel like it's just a bit stiffer than the full sized one
Flat Eyeliner brush- a bit smaller/thinner than the larger version

The brush case for this mini set is ingenious; at first glance it's a regular envelope style case that flips open with a little band to hold the case shut, but upon a closer look, you'll discover that each brush has it's individual slot to hold it in place.
The last item in the set is the eyelash curler. I didn't have too many expectations for this either, but it's not a bad eyelash curler. It fits easily in my hands and gets the job done, though I have to hold the curler in place longer than I do if I use my Shu Uemura curler, but it's a decent curler that makes it difficult to overcurl or accidentally crimp your lashes. It's great for a beginner. It kind of looks like Shiseido refills would fit this curler so it can last you a nice long time if you don't abuse it.
The set's a steal at about $20 and I think it makes a perfect gift for both newbies and makeup lovers alike...it's a great little gift to pick up for somebody if you haven't finished your shopping yet or just want to add a little something more to an existing gift.

Guerlain Holiday and NOTD China Glaze DV8

This holiday season, Guerlain was the one that took my money...partially due to pushy sales ladies. I bought the holiday Bal de Minuit (retail $58) and the new holiday meteorites Perles Imperiales (retail $53). Bal de Minuit was pushed on me by the sales ladies at my local Guerlain counter. I was extremely hesitant to buy this because they had made a really awful muddy mess with it when they applied it on me, and I was less than enthusiastic to purchase it for that reason. However they finally pushed it on me telling me just to try it at home and to return it if I still hated it afterwards. At this point I didn't feel like arguing with them anymore (and I would never have made as bad a mess as they had), so I brought the quad home with me. In the end, I like it enough not to take it back at this point. It's a nice quad of shimmering neutral colors reminiscent of Chanel Dunes. However, unlike Chanel Dunes, it's much more shimmery and pigmented, which is a plus as Chanel Dunes didn't show up on my lids. The quad contains a shimmery white beige, a shimmering pink-champagne, a shimmery taupe, and a warm dark brown.

Perles Imperiales comes in a nice black glitter adorned case with rhinestones on top. Despite the aesthetics of this year's release, the packaging is still, unfortunately, made of cardboard. Comparing it to the 3 types of balls that Guerlain carries permanently, it's as sparkly as Pink Fresh, but the effect on the face is in between that of Mythic and Beige Chic. Basically speaking..it just sort of comes across as sparkle on the face. I'll have to play with these a bit more to decide whether or not they're worth keeping.


Today's NOTD is China glaze DV8. It's a great turqoise holo that in real life looks a lot more green than what shows up depicted below on my monitor.. I bought this baby last night for $2.75 at a local shop. For anybody that may be in the (South) Bay Area (California) there's a great little shop called US Nails Supply (you can look them up on Yelp) that carries China Glaze, ORLY, and OPI for discount pricing. The store is really tiny and somewhat cramped, but the pricing is excellent and doesn't come with high shipping fees. The selection is definitely more limited than say, if you bought of Transdesign or any other etailer, but still worth checking out as there are still some nice goodies.
This post was brought to you while battling a set of tiny jaws clamped to the corner of my netbook screen

Tarte Treasure Chest

So I have to admit with a certain degree of difficulty that I've fallen pretty far behind on swatching..the problem being that I'm pretty much not awake during the day anymore except at odd hours like this where the sun really hasn't risen out of the sky yet...so I've made you guys promises I have yet to keep...the last big thing I swatched was the Tarte Treasure chest close to a month ago and just let sit for a while as laziness overtook me...my bad, and my apologies...
Anyways, today's topic is one of the more decent sets this holiday, the Tarte Treasure Chest. This baby retails for $52 at Sephora and unlike Tarte's more recent palettes and last year's failure of a holiday palette, the quality's actually pretty good (Though I will admit that the blushes in last year's holiday palette were so nice I almost kept the darned thing just for those) This year's palette is also a lot bigger than last years; with 32 full sized eyeshadows instead of 16.
The palette comes in bejeweled casing that imo, is somewhat cute, but in a tacky way. (I find it kinda festive...it reminds me of Christmas tree ornaments) There's unfortunately a near fatal flaw to this packaging; if you tilt this forward at all, the "drawer" like design of the palette sends the lipgloss and cheek color layers flying out at you at a somewhat alarming speed. Luckily, this palette has some redeeming qualities, so it missed getting the axe. Nevertheless, this is definitely not a travel friendly palette.

Here's the palette all opened up...it's certainly a lot of makeup in one go...
There are two layers of eyeshadows in this palette. The top layer contains the more colorful, shimmery shades. I swatched these in columns this time. Pictures were taken in warm indoor lighting. All shades were fairly soft and buttery. Pigmentation of the shadows is excellent and they swatch pretty close to what they are in the pan on my arm, but turn muddy on my eyelids for some reason. I know one other person with the same problem, while others have no issues with them
column 1 contains a shimmery, slightly bronzy gold, a brown with gold shimmer, a peachy pink with gold shimmer, and a dark taupey color with gold shimmer.
column 2 contains a warm brown with gold shimmer, a shimmer gold, a light, frosty peachy pink, and a lightish purple with gold shimmer
Column 3 contains a shimmery red, a black based dark gren, a slightly olive green with gold shimmer, and a black based blue
Column 4 contains a black based wine color with lighter burgandy shimmer, a light turquoise with gold shimmer, a red based purple with purple shimmer, and a somewhat sparkly light silver
Layer 2 contains the most buttery matte shadows I've ever come across and are IMO the highlight of this palette. These, unlike the layer above it, do not turn muddy on me. They're also the reason why I keep this palette despite my disappointment with the layer above.
Column 1 contains a matte beige, a dark purple taupe, a matte peachy pink, and a warm brown shade
Column 2 contains a purpley taupe, a warm taupe, a blackish purplem and a tan eyeshadow
Column 3 contains a matte light pink, a pinkish purple, a warm grey taupe and a dark blue that looks slightly greyish in the pan
Column 4 contains a pinkish tan taupe, a red based brown, a matte white, and a matte grey
The 3rd layer contains 16 potted lip glosses and are the top layer of the pull out drawer. These apply easily with a lip brush and are a lot nicer than the ones in last year's palette. They are harder to apply with your fingers. I chose not to swatch these. They few that I've tried have been fairly nonsticky and nondrying. Because of how the palette is designed this year, it is possible to access this drawer without opening the powder layers, or keeping just this section closed while you access the powder layers, making it easy to keep the powder products from mucking up the lip products.
The last layer contains the cheek products; 4 blushes, a bronzer, and a luminizer/highlighter
All 4 blushes are shimmery. From left to right the colors are a light, slightly peachy pink with gold shimmer, a mauvy pink with silver sparkle, an orangey peach with gold shimmer, and a red/rust colored blush with gold shimmer. The luminizer is light pink. It's ok, but I don't care for it it much myself. The bronzer is Park Ave Princess, which I usually like, but I feel like the one I own separate from the palette is a slightly different color.

Overall, the palette is pretty nice, though I wish that at least 1 of the blushes had been matte. Either way, it's a great buy for the price and I feel like it'd make a nice gift for someone without a lot of makeup.

Sephora Lip Service Lip Deluxe Sampler and Essie Mint Candy Apple

When I went to return the Stila Smudge pot set the other day, this set caught my eye in its place. It's a gift set of 8 lip products from various brands retailing for $38. 3 of the 8 items are full sized items too..so it's a pretty good deal. It contains DuWop Private red (deluxe sample size), Smashbox Lip Enhancing gloss in Sheer (clear gloss, maybe 2/3 size), Sephora Nano Lip Liner in Beau Bordeaux, NARS Velvet MAtte Lip Pencil in Roman Holiday (Full Size), Korres Guava lipstick in Wine Red (Full Size), Cargo PlantLove Botanical Lipstick in Muir Woods (Full Size) Tarte Vitamin Infused lipstick in Hatha (sample), and Laura Mercier Lip Color Creme in Pink Champagne (sample)Flash
No Flash
Swatches (L-->R): Du Wop Private Red: supposed to be a color changing lipstick. I don't really notice any real color change. It's a pretty red..unfortunately I don't feel like I love it...or hate it... it's got a good texture, is nondrying, and smells like Smarties candy.
Sephora Beau Bordeaux Nano Lip Liner: Reddish Brown. It looks kind of mauvey in the swatch picture, but I don't see any of that on my skin
NARS Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Roman Holiday: Kind of a silvery pink. It looks like Pepto Bismo against my lips and skintone, but it'd probably look lovely on a lighter girl. It has an odd scent I can't quite place, but nothing too strong or lasting
Korres Guava Lipstick in Wine Red: Cute Pink-Red. Very good texture and moisturizing. I like this color best in the set and think it could be flattering for a wide set of skin tones.
Cargo Plant Love Lipstick in Muir woods- Sheer Mauvey Pink with an emphasis on sheer. Has a somewhat mild waxy scent. I find this color somewhat drying.
Tarte lipstick in Hatha-A nice pink with copper shimmer. It's a really cute color and decent formula.
Laura Mercier Lip Colour Creme in Pink Champagne- Mauvey Pink...a cute neutraly color and very work appropriate. Has a nice emolient feel to it too.
I was messing around with Private Red earlier..so I cropped out a lip swatch of it. It's not quite this warm RL:
Overall the set's really nice and would make a great gift for someone. Personally, I feel like the colors are a bit off with my skintone..but then again my skin tone's made another change and I'm now really warm, so I have to go through my stash and figure out what will work on me again.

Today's NOTD is from Essie's holiday collection. Mint Candy Apple. I found the formula a bit streaky..though thinning it helped a bit. # coats gave a smooth, opaque result:

Smashbox Holiday 2009- Wish for the Perfect Palette

This year, Smashbox has once again, put out a "blockbuster style" palette containing 64 eyeshadows, 8 lip glosses, 8 cream liners, a brow tech palette, 2 blushes, 2 highlighters, and a bronzer. The palette retails for $59 is an Ulta exclusive and can be found at Ulta and Smashbox's website only. In my excitement, I of course ordered one, despite having last year's with the reasoning that the colors in this year's are different from last year's...which they are. This year's palette is certainly a lot brighter than last years, which for me unfortunately meant that the palette as a whole was a lot less wearable than last year's. Additionally, I noticed that this year's palette was scented..which tends to bother me, but luckily the scent doesn't transfer to my face. There were some improvements over last year's..like the brushes for example, but they don't increase my excitement for the palette by much.


The eyeshadows in this year's palette are a lot brighter and warmer than last year's palette, which was very neutral; EVERY shade in last year's palette was wearable, which to me is no small feat since there were 70 eyeshadows in last year's palette. Consequently, I found that the majority of the shades would not work super well on me. The other thing I noticed when swatching the colors is that the quality of the eyeshadows this year are inferior to that of last year's. Last year's palette was smooth, buttery goodness, while this year, only a few were buttery, and a few were downright chalky and hard to scrape any real color from. Swatches were again done in columns...




The blushes in the palette, however, are nicer than last year's. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good pic of these swatched..for some reason all the swatches after I finished swatching the eyeshadows came out impossibly warm..for this reason the cheek colors came out way more orange/brown than they should be.
The cream liners in this year's palette are also an improvement over last year's. For some reason, they were difficult to work with in last year's palette as they were significantly drier than their normal texture. This year's are nice and creamy
The lip glosses are also an improvement from last year's and are my favorite part of the palette. They're fairly nonsticky and don't have any scent or flavor, unlike last year's, which had a disgustingly sweet taste to them.

Overall, I'd say it's a palette I have very mixed feelings over, some of it is really nice, but to me, it's not really worth paying $59 + tax for. Then again, my stash is a monstrousity and I have a LOT of palettes...but in general I'm finding myself kind of disappointed with this year's holiday releases (with the exception of one...but you guys will see that later). The other thing that bothers me about the palette is the way it opens up..it came apart one already when I was sliding it open. It didn't break exactly..just came apart. It was easily fixed (it snapped back together), but it just left the feeling of very cheap quality.

Stila Holiday Smudge Pot Set 2009, and some more Konad

This year's Stila Holiday Smudge Pot set came with 4 mini gel liners. Each pot is 0.07 oz and is half the size of a regular smudge pot set. The set retails for $32 and comes with smudge pots in Kitten, Violet, Starry Night, and Black as well as a mini brush. It's a pretty good value for the smudge pots especially since a full size smudge pot is so large that I don't think I could ever finish it. However, despite the beautiful colors of these liners in their pots, I wasn't impressed with them on my lids. Additionally, the plastic caps on the jars are flimsy and will probably break easily.Kitten is very similar to the eyeshadow it's named after and is a shimmery champagne color. It's fairly sheer applied with a liner brush, as shown below, and would seem better used as a cream eyeshadow.
Violet- a blue based purple with purple glitter. I love the color of this, but again, when applied with a brush, this was much sheerer than I had hoped
Starry Night- Navy blue with gold shimmer. This is, in my opinion, the prettiest color in the set. Unfortunately, it's also really sheer, so I was again, dissapointed with this.
Black- This was the only one that was easily opaque in the set, and therefore the only one I was satisfied with.
My overall opinion of the set is that it contains beautiful colors, but falls way short of being a must have. The swatches above were all done with my Smashbox Cream liner brush.

I posted a couple days ago that I got the giant Konad set so I decided to play around with some of the goodies in it and did this:It's plates M21 and M36 over Zoya Demi with some pink rhinestones. Excuse my hands..they're peeling a bit since I've been lazy and neglecting them.

Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol II

So I've had BOS2 since a couple days after it first popped up on UD's website, but just never really got around to swatching it. Now that it's finally on Sephora's website, I decided to do so. Book of Shadows II is much nicer than it's predecessor. First off, it only has TWO shadows that contain glitter in them ( Gunmetal and Midnight Cowboy Rides Again). The second part is that it's a far more versatile palette than the first. In my opinion, the colors in this palette coordinate a lot nicer than the first as well. Also, unlike the 1st, it contains 2 mini 24/7 eyeliners instead of those dinky ass brushes the first one came with.

There are 16 shades of eyeshadow in this palette, several of which are exclusive to this palette.
Perversion- not quite black, this shadow has kind of a satin finish to it and is the one somewhat chalky shade in the palette. I also find myself wishing they'd put in a less boring color in this palette since there's already 2 liners in the palette.
Gunmetal- one of the 2 shades that has glitter in it. I'm not sure if you can tell from the swatch below, but I think if you stare at the picture of the palette itself you can kinda see the glitter sparking. There isn't a whole lot of glitter in this though so it's still not as bad as BOS1.
Ecstacy- lilacy purple
AC/DC- a deeper cool toned purple than ecstacy
Nylon- to me, this is a shimmery taupey gold
Sellout- shimmery beige
Mushroom-taupey grey, though this looks more taupey in the pan. This shade is exclusive to this palette and I think is nearly identical in color to UD's cream shadow with the same name. It's also similar to BB Stone, but is more shimmery
Sphinx- cool toned pink
Half Baked- Bronzey gold
Twice baked- dark brown
Midnight Cowboy- shimmery Champagne with TONS of glitter
YDK-warm Taupe

Jinx- shimmering mid toned blue
Flipside-shimmering aqua.
Homegrown-shimmery light green. This one's one of my favorites in this palette
Misdemeanor-Satiny greyed green.

UD 24/7 pencils:
In theory, these are a great idea to put in a palette, but unfortunately, these products were not winners for me, even over UDPP
Zero- Black eyeliner. This one's not a true black and smudgy as all hell. By the end of the day I looked like I'd been punched
Bourbon-warm brown.