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.

Clinique Brush-on Cream Liners

First off, thanks so much to those of you who read my blog. It's a great feeling to log on and see comments on my blog posts. (I really have no idea anyone's reading otherwise) I've been distracted by a new obsession lately (nail polish) and have completely wrecked my sleep schedule (evident from the fact that I'm posting at 5:19 AM I suppose) so I haven't really been swatching anything. Lucky for me I have a bunch of "back swatches" so today I'll be posting about Clinique's awesome cream liners.

Clinique's Cream liners have an excellent texture. They're much softer and fluid-like than Bobbi Brown's Long Wear Gel Liners and MAC's fluidlines. Additionally, they wear without smudging and are waterproof, which is a big must for me when it comes to liners. They retail for $14.50 and come in these itty bitty pots with a small brush that's kinda useless as a lining brush (though you might be able to use it for applying shadow to the lower lid? I have to hear back from cookie1234 about that idea though) I only own two of these babies because I already own BB's Black ink liner (and therefore don't REALLY need another black gel liner) and BB's Bronze Shimmer Ink is identical in color to Clinique's. Additionally, I tend to be a little iffy on brown liners for some reason and Black Honey shows up VERY red on my skin...so here's the two I DO own:

Smoke Grey is kinda a beautiful grey taupe in the pot, but most of the taupeyness just dissapears on me once on the skin. Nevertheless, it's still a beautiful, unique smokey grey that makes me love it so. I'm not really sure why I decided to swatch this on the back of my hand though...it's kind of a bad swatching place?
The second one I own is the much lusted after Egyptian. This liner is gorgeous and a must have for me as it is a very unique and complex color. It's a blackened bronze, possibly with a hint of grey taupe that is just all around gorgeous and I can't live without. I have a backup of this baby and I kind of wish gel liners had a longer shelf life so I could have gotten more. Either way, it's gorgeous and you should get this if you can. I was lucky enough to score this for cheap from CCO.

So long, poorly written post short, go buy yourself some Clinique cream liners. They are probably my favorite gel liners I've tried and are worth the money if you want to try a gel liner.

Cheap thrills- Sleek Gel Liners

My favorite type of eyeliner is the gel eyeliner, which is why I jumped at the chance when a sweet MUAer offered to CP me these Sleek gel eyeliners from the UK (it's a drugstore brand there) These babies retailed at less than £4 each (about $5) and come in 10 Shades:
- Dominatrix (black)
- Espresso (dark brown)
- Pumpkin (gold)
- Zest (yellow)
- Stone Cold (blue-gray)
- Purple Rain (purple)
- Glacier (white)
- Smitten (light pink)
- Denin (dark blue)
- Wave (light aqua/green)
I chose Stone cold, Denim and Wave to test out. These gel liners are waterproof and are on the drier side, though I adjusted the consistency with some eye drops (see my reviving gel liner tutorial) so that they were wetter and easier to work with. Unlike most gel liners, these have a somewhat unique texture to them.. they're still smudgy when dry..which makes them behave somewhat like a pencil liner for me. (They were like this before the eye drops as well..so the eye drops weren't responsible for this behavior)

Swatches under warm indoor lighting. Stone Cold is more blue on the lids and is a greyish blue...very unique and pretty.

Denim is a shimmery navy blue

Wave is a bright green, and is very pretty on.

Tutorial-Reviving Gel liners

So I've been swatching quite a bit for the last few days, but for the most part, I've been too lazy to blog about any of it for various reasons..with the main one being this:

My kitten lovingly likes to spend a good 5-10 minutes blocking my computer screen...and my laptop has no imaging programs for labeling ^^; (not to mention that my keyboard on that's a bit busted..and my desktop has some hardware issues as well...) There isn't a whole lot of swatching in this post as well, but at least there's pictures this time. YAY! So anyways, today I'll be teaching you how to revive a dried out gel liner (or change the consistency on your drier textured liners)

1. Before you begin, you will need the following items: your dried out gel liner, eye drops (the regular kind, for dry eyes--I am using Blink Tears in this tutorial, but Visine works quite well for this as well. DO NOT USE CONTACT SOLUTION. It won't hold up as well), something to mix with, and something to smooth your liner back down with. You can choose to use a toothpick to stir, or a spatula or small wax applicating stick, whatever you find. For the green liner, I used a toothpick to stir with and a brush to smooth it back down. For the blue-grey one I simply used a small stick.

If you are using a wax applicating stick, you may choose to break the stick in half, allowing to use the same stick to revive 2 liners.

2. Add 2-3 drops of your eye drops to the liner. You don't need a whole lot ofo this to revive your liner. If you find you need more later, you can add it in, but adding too much will cause your gel liner to lose its consistency, and your liner will not apply as nicely.

3. Start mixing. If you are using a toothpick, you will have to make sure to mash your liner well, breaking up any chunks.

When it is done, you should have a nice, creamy consistency:

Personally, I found it much easier to mix with the small wax applicator I was using..it took much longer for me to use a toothpick..but you use what you can ;)

4: Final step: pat your gel liner back down in its container, smoothing it over the best you can. You may want to clean up the edges and scrape off as much of the liner off your mixing tool as possible. There will still be a bunch of it stuck to the stick, but it's not a huge loss considering the fact that you're saving money by not having to buy a new liner.

Congratulations: your gel liner is now revived!