Holiday 2011: Laura Mercier Book of Nudes and NOTD OPI Meep Meep Meep

One of the things I bought for Sephora's Friends and Family sale is the Laura Mercier Book of Nudes. This palette contains 8 shadows, 1 cake liner, and 3 cream cheek products. Most of the eye shadows are smooth and buttery, but Tiger's Eye is an unpigmented, hard pressed mess. The other shadows are somewhat sheer, but very buildable. All swatches were taken in a mix of natural lighting and OTT lighting over UDPP, roughly 3 swipes each (except Tiger's Eye)

Buff is a matte beige.
Tiger's Eye is an warm brown with gold glitter. It's hard and unpigmented and easily forms a crust on top. I had to really dig in to get payoff. I think this was 6 swipes or so with my brush, and I had to really pack it on.
Sandstone is a shimmery beige pink.
Bamboo is a warm, slight antiqued bronzey taupe.
Baroque is a warm orange brown with gold shimmer
Fresco is a matte, pinked brown.
Granite is a deep, matte grey.
Cocoa Brown is a reddish brown with slight bronze shimmer. The shimmer doesn't really transfer onto the skin.
The cheek creams in the palette have a smooth, kinda oily texture. The only one I found somewhat pretty is the cheek veil which is a slightly corally peach shade. Bronzer veil reminded me kind of like baby diarrhea...it didn't look particularly pretty swatched onto my arm. Glow veil is a golden highlight shade. The only one of these I tried on my face was the cheek veil. It was easy enough to blend, but I didn't like the payoff on my face. Each of these swatches was maybe 4 swipes. They're definitely quite sheer.

I did neglect to swatch the cake liner, but you can find a swatch of it with the LM Luxe Color portfolio I swatched earlier this month if you're interested. Overall, the palette is okay, but the colors themselves don't particularly appeal to me. If you're torn between getting the luxe color portfolio or the book of nudes, my personal preference would be towards the luxe color portfolio. The Book of Nudes is quite a bit cheaper though, so if you like the colors, it's okay to get, but it doesn't excite me whatsoever.

Here's a look at yesterday's NOTD as weel; OPI Meep Meep Meep. This polish is a slightly pink red, that I found was somewhat jelly-like in color payoff (I can still see my nail line a bit after 3 coats). There's some multidimmensional shimmer to it as well that I feel like my camera didn't capture so well. This photo was taken under OTT lighting at the end of the day shortly before I removed it.

Pout Blushes

Today we're making a quick visit into the land of the discontinued as I've swatched the Pout blushes that I currently own. These lovely items retailed for $22 and are a whopping 12g (larger than the R&R blushes, which are 9g). This line is not to be confused with the Pout line that Victoria's Secret carries now. All of the blushes are wonderfully pigmented and blend like a dream. It's truly sad that these were discontinued.

I have 2 pictures for you as I couldn't decide which one I liked better out of the two. Swatches were done in a mix of indirect natural lighting and indoor lighting on bare skin. I used 2 swipes of each just for good measure despite the pigmentation of the blushes.


Blossom Belle is a peach/orange blush that has a lot gold shimmer throughout it. Despite the gold shimmer, it still avoids being frosty on the cheeks
Berry Babe is a red-coral shade with gold shimmer. It doesn't have as much shimmer as Blossom Belle.
Pearly Queen is a pigmented matte warm pink
Cherie Tarte is a matte rose/mauve shade.
Apricot Totty is a gorgeous coral with gold shimmer. It's my favorite out of the 5 that I own and consequently the only one I thought to back up. I did let go of the backup though as I don't imagine I'll ever be able to use these up.

If you can find any of these (eBay, blog sales, swaps) I highly encourage you to pick one up. They're honestly amazing.

Majolica Majorca Puff de Cheek Blushes

Matte blushes are a bit of a rarity when it comes to Japanese blushes, but Majolica Majorca released a few last spring so I snagged them. I bought all of the Puff de Cheeks except for the beige highlighter shade. I believe OR302 is still available (it's still up on adambeauty and ichibankao), but I seem to only be able to find the other two on eBay. The Puff de Cheeks are nice, but not horribly unique. They're fairly subtle on my face and I like the look of them. It took several swipes for them too show up this well on my arm.

Laura Mercier Holiday 2011-- Luxe Color Portfolio

Laura Mercier Luxe Color Portfolio- retails $98
Contains: 6 eyeshadows, 3 cake liners, 2 blushes, and 3 mini brushes

Laura Mercier Luxe Color Portfolio (close-up)

Natural Lighting + OTT light over UDPP

Primrose-Warm shimmery pink.
African Violet- Warm violet shade with gold shimmer
Merlot-Deep plum shade with mild shimmer
Truffle-Warm matte brown
Topaz-silvery taupe
Stellar-shimmering beige

Indirect Natural Lighting, no base

The Luxe Color Portfolio by Laura Mercier is my favorite palette so far this season. It's really the only thing I've truly been happy with purchasing in a while (with the exception of the Guerlain 4 pan palettes) and is well worth the hefty price tag to me. All 6 shadows are smooth and blendable, and carry medium pigmentation. The mini brushes are soft, and very useable, unlike a lot of brushes that tend to come in sets. The cake liners are fairly easy to use; lightly dampen an eyeliner brush and mix with the liner. If you dampen the brush too much, you won't get a nice, pigmented line. I wouldn't really purchase the cake liners on their own, as I prefer pencil/gel liners but they're nice to have in the palette and come in very pretty colors. Ground Espresso is even a bit taupey.

Burberry Blushes

I've recently (OK, maybe not so recently) become obsessed with Burberry's blushes. They're smooth, blend beautifully, and all of them are great, wearable colors. If you love super bright blushes, this probably isn't the line for you, but if you love blushes that give you a great, sophisticated, and natural glow, these are great for that. I've found every shade wearable, especially for my light/light-medium skin.

Rose is a bright-ish warm pink with a mild amount of warm pink shimmer. It's probably the brightest of the 8 blushes. It's not a horribly unique color, but it's really cute on the cheeks.
Cameo is a matte pink with mauvey tones to it.
Misty is a light, matte pink. I think anyone darker than the 20-25 range may have trouble getting this one to show up.
Peony is another light matte pink. It's similar to Misty, but it's a bit warmer and shows up just a bit better on me that Misty, but not by much.




Blossom is a warm coral pink with understated silver shimmer. It's nice and glowy on the cheeks, instead of frosty. find it a bit warmer in person than it appears on my monitor.
Russet is a orange-brown shade with shimmer. I don't see this working too well on light, cool skin, but probably looks nice on warmer skin tones.
Tangerine is a matte, peachy shade with some brown to it. It's not quite as brown as it is in this photo, it's closer to what's pictured in the first picture. It was my first Burberry blush, and I'm quite fond of it.
Earthy is a warm taupe. I like to use it for some light contouring, but on cooler skintones, this one will probably be closer to tan.

I Don't Think I Have Enough Blush

I'm kidding :].
I have more than enough. These are all of my highlighters, blushes, and bronzers.

Guerlain G Serie Noire

After seeing post after post about this blush, I felt that I had to have it. Unfortunately, my local counter was sold out of this, and I was told that it was completely sold out in the Nordstrom network. Of course, when it popped up on Sephora's site, I quickly plopped down the ridiculous amount of money that this blush was to cost me.

When the blush did arrive, I was completely underwhelmed by it due to the gold shimmer that was laced so strongly throughout its entire surface. Revisiting the swatches I'd seen on various other blogs, I was even more disheartened by it's comparison to blushes such as NARS Orgasm, which I had hated for it's gold sheen, as well as the overall shimmer in each shade. I was sorely tempted to take this blush back to Sephora without even trying it; however, it was still getting rave reviews online. I decided to suck it up and give this blush a whirl before I made my final decision; so taking my favorite R&R blush brush, I carefully ran my brush through all 4 colors and applied it to my face.

Sadly for my wallet, I found that I rather like this blush. I think that it's comparison to Orgasm, Deep Throat, and other peachy-pink blushes is a bit of a sad generalization about this blush as it does not even begin to describe this blush. While it's true that running your brush through all 4 colors will create a shimmery peachy pink blush, it does not have the gold sheen that Orgasm does (or it's sheerness), or is even quite as strong a shimmer as Deep Throat (though I could be wrong on this one). Plus with the way this blush is striped, you could make it as pink, peach, or coral colored on your face as you'd like. To me, this says that it is mutiple blush colors in one, making it my blush pick for the spring (though I'm not sure I could bring myself to travel with this sucker...it's far too pricey for me to want to tote it anywhere past the safety of my own home. I'm fairly excited to see what the summer blush will look like when it comes out.

I chose not to swatch this blush as I can't bring myself to wreck the G emblazoned throughout the surface of the blush, but decided instead to share my thoughts with you ladies on this blush. My honest opinion is to pick up this blush if you find one. It's well worth the splurge if you can afford it.

Global Goddess Blushes and Bronzer

I'm finally awake during the day so I thought I'd put myself back on track by swatching my Global Goddess Cheek products as I promised you guys months ago. Global Goddess is a line mostly intended for women of color; it's meant to match middle eastern and Indian skin tones, as well as darker ladies. There are 3 blushes in the Global Goddess line;
Mirik- a peach colored blush, matte
Chowrasta- light pink. There's no shimmer to this, but it still manages to be slightly glowy
Sattva- matte plum

Despite looking somewhat scary in the pan, all 3 are sheer and look nice and natural applied with a blush brush

The bronzer is 3 colored and has a pattern stamped on top in a shimmer overspray. The overspray is very sparkly and was dusted off before I used it. It is eye safe and can also be used as eyeshadow. It's not a bronzer I'd normally choose though; on my face it's just a slight golden glow. It's really nice, but strikes me as more of a highlighter than a bronzer on my skin. On lighter skin tones I'd imagine it might be nice as a bronzer
Here are the swatches of all 4 products. I had to layer these several times to get them this pigmented..my camera, unfortunately doesn't like picking up anything subtle. They're much more natural looking when applied to the face, b ut easily layered depending on your skin tone. I wouldn't particularly recommend Chowrasta on darker skin tones or Sattva on really light skin tones, but all 3 are quite nice.

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.

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.