Sleek Pout Paints

 

From L-R: Cloud 9, Lava, Pin-Up, Port, Peek-A-Bloo

Each tube contains 8ml of product which goes a very long way. Thanks to how highly pigmented these are, you probably only need about half as much as you'd think, and even less when you start mixing them. The packaging itself is cute and I appreciate the clear tubes. They have a very sweet almost bubblegum scent straight out of the tube but this doesn't last after application.The Pout Paints are £4.99 each and available at the Sleek website or in most Superdrug stores. 

Cloud 9

Cloud 9 is a pure white highly-pigmented gloss. I wouldn't recommend wearing this alone for fairly obvious reasons. My main issue with both this shade and Pin-Up is that they had a much thinner consistency and the product had a tendency to separate into pigment and clear gloss. I tried shaking and squeezing the tube which seemed to help a little but not as much as I'd have liked. I'm not entirely sure if it's just mine or if the whole line has this issue but it's definitely something to be aware of. Cloud 9 is primarily there to act as a lightener for other shades when mixing and in this respect it does a great job. You may have to use quite a bit to get your desired colours though so this is probably one to stock up on if you're big on mixing your own shades.

Lava

 A really beautiful pure orange shade. Lava had great coverage, stunning pigmentation and didn't settle into lines. Definitely a stand-out shade and ideal for Summer days and nights.

Pin-Up

 A blue-based red with a few technical issues. This is a pretty colour and decent enough for mixing with others but I probably wouldn't wear it alone. It almost immediately settles into lip-lines and bleeds. I have a feeling that it has just separated over time because I've seen some perfect swatches on other sites. Boo! Luckily this isn't a super unique shade and I have lots of other reds in my collection.

Port

 A blue-toned deep raspberry pink. Reminds me a lot of Raspberry Pie in Revlon Lip Butters and Apocaliptic in the Rimmel Apocalips but not a dupe by any means. I always gravitate towards these beautiful berry shades and I'm really glad I got this one! It's easily one of the best for application and looks gorgeous mixed with anything.

Peek-A-Bloo

The dark horse of the bunch, this mid-toned blue is ideal for alien role-play and darkening your unique Pout Paint mixes. Smooth and pigmented, this surprised me in the best ways. Peek-A-Bloo is less glossy than some of the others which makes it ideal for mixing. Also gives your teeth the Ross-from-Friends-nuclear-white glow. Bonus if you're feeling brave.

Here are a few of my own blends, including a perfect home made nude!

Ooh, so peachy.

The biggest problem overall with these products is that they're just a straight up pain in the arse to apply and keep topped-up through out the day. Much like the Apocalips but even more difficult to reapply thanks to the lack of applicator. I applied all of my shades with a lip brush (disposable doe foot applicators would work well too) and used a plastic tray as a palette. Not exactly a bathroom-at-the-pub friendly kit. The best thing I can recommend for these is buying a little pill tray/organiser (you can usually pick them up at Poundland or any chemists) and storing your mixes in there. This should keep them fairly air-tight (not that they dry out, I left my palette out overnight to check) and safe. Then you can keep a retractable lip brush in your make-up bag to reapply on the go. It's still a lot of effort but that's the trade-off for custom lip colours I suppose!
Wear time is nothing to write home about. They matte down a little over time but still transfer on most things. Eating will definitely require a top up afterwards. Saying that, if you apply very thinly to well-conditioned lips you'll be left with a very pretty stain that will last much longer.

Final Verdict: Inexpensive, fun to play with and a great range of shades with infinite possibilities. Awkward to apply and the wear time isn't great.

Bonus: My mess post swatch session!

Lauren

Orange Nail Varnish Collection and Swatches

Orange is one of my all time favourite colours. It always perks me up to have a pop of orange in my look and nail varnishes are ideal for this. I think orange is one of the most lively and positive colours there is and I find myself picking up cosmetics in this shade far more often than I'm willing to admit! As I was packing away some of my things for my upcoming move (nothing dramatic, just going back to Grandma's before University so we can help each other out) I started idly scanning my polishes and a few really stuck out to me. So here are my five favourite orange nail varnishes!

From Thumb to Pinky: Models Own Fluro Orange, Nails Inc Porchester Place, Essie Fear or Desire, Rimmel Tangy Tangerine, W7 Pastel 16

Fluro Orange is ridiculously bright, no camera on earth could capture it's insane beauty. I didn't keep this bizarre (but kinda cool right? No? Just me then...) mani on for long but it's definitely the one that I couldn't keep my eyes off. If you're after some seriously attention grabbing talons I can't recommend this enough. It has a semi-matte finish but you could easily add a glossy top coat for a little more finesse. Porchester Place and Fear or Desire are fairly similar but Porchester Place has a touch more pink and is a little more muted. Both perfect for holiday toes! Tangy Tangerine is a classic apricot and was my boyfriends favourite of the lot for some reason. When I first asked his opinion he replied that they were all the same (my jaw nearly hit the floor at his blindness) but when pressed he claimed that Rimmel's offering was "more subtle and pretty."  I have to agree, it's a great transitional shade for Spring/Summer and won't offend your poor blind boyfriend. W7 is such a pain in the bum to effectively track down but I do so love them! I got a ten pack of pastels from TK Maxx and this is one of my favourites. Very delicate and cool and gorgeous with a tan.

I really hoped you like this! I have a real soft spot for colour-themed collections and adore seeing them on blogs so I couldn't resist! I think I may go for pink lip products next time. What do you think?

Which is your favourite shade? Any others that I have to try?

Lauren

Review and Swatches: Rimmel Apocalips in Apocaliptic, Celestial, Stellar, Big Bang and Nude Eclipse

Pretty much everyone has heard of the Rimmel Apocalips by now. Hailed as a revolution in lip colour, these super pigmented lip lacquers exploded onto the market and onto a ton of blogs very, very quickly. I know a lot of people got bored very quickly of reading about these and I'll admit that whilst I'm not a fan of seeing the same products over and over, I just can't help myself clicking every single post that features them! I must be mad. It took me a week after release to finally track some of these down since my woefully poor local Boots and Superdrug simply didn't stock them. It's enough to drive a beauty blogger crazy! But eventually I had a nice little collection of the colours I "needed" (wink) and wanted to share my thoughts on them.

 

It's been said a hundred times but the packaging really is super cute and very functional. The clear base is ideal for displaying the colour and the meteoric lids fit wonderfully with the apocalyptic theme. As do the fabulous names. A* for marketing. The lids fit nice and tightly and I'm not at all worried about it coming undone. The wand itself works as an almost perfect applicator for this product and the well inside the doe-foot catches just the right amount for one full application. I've read some reviews saying that the applicator felt clumsy and applied too much product but I have to disagree. I work from the back of the applicator and begin applying to the centre of my lips. It's then just a case of flipping it over to add more product and smooth it over bit by bit. It's very easy to add too much if you don't go slowly and applying anything other than a thin layer will make a total mess (trust me. Oops.) The colours are undeniably beautiful but I do wish they had included a strong orange colour because Luna looked a little pale for me personally. Just think of the awesome names they could have for an orange! The only real negative I have at this point is the rather bizarre scent. A plastic/watermelon hybrid which does nothing for me. I really do hate melon.

Apocaliptic

 

Celestial

Stellar

 

Big Bang

                                 

Nude Eclipse

Nude Eclipse was such an enormous disappointment for me. It was just so wrong for my skin tone and for some reason it felt much drier than the others. you can see in the photo how it settles into my lip lines and just looks awful. As if I needed any more proof, the first time my boyfriend saw me wearing this he said "Why do you look like a chav?" Yes that's right, he thought I'd done concealer lips. Kill me now. However, I do quite like using this to blend with other lipsticks to create more of a pastel tone so it's not all doom and gloom.

The other colours however are just total dreams. Mega pigmented, smooth and non drying. I think my favourite is Apocalyptic - it's similar to Revlon's Raspberry Pie on me but even brighter. The darker colours do have a slight tendency to bleed (particularly if you apply them as poorly as I do)  as seen on the Big Bang swatches. They have a gorgeous glossy finish which does matte down over time but I don't find that it becomes uncomfortable at all. They also transfer onto EVERYTHING, even when blotted. You absolutely have to check your teeth before leaving the house with these. They do last wonderfully though provided you don't eat. One sandwich later and you will definitely be rocking the heavy lip liner look so do top up after meals! I've worn Stellar out to drinks though and whilst my straw looked pretty butchered my lips were still practically perfect after 2-3 hours.

Final Verdict: Beautiful colours that look fantastic but will transfer onto everything. Try at least one if you can, you might just fall in love!

Love them or loathe them? Do you have a favourite colour?

Lauren

Review and Swatches: Technic Electric Beauty Electric Eyes Eyeshadow Palette

As promised, today I'm bringing you the swatches from my gorgeous bargain palette that I bought in my recent haul from Love The Make-Up! I didn't really know what to expect from this because the colours are just so vibrant. I know it's difficult sometimes to get that to translate outside of the pan and I imagine even more difficult for £1.99. So did it wow me?

The packaging is exactly the same as the Ultra Violet Palette, sleek, black and easy to open and close. It has a large mirror that runs the length of the packaging and includes a double ended sponge applicator. It's essentially exactly the same layout you would see in a Sleek i-Divine Palette. The shadows themselves are all shimmer finishes and come in a wide range of colours. I have to admit that what really drew me to this palette was the dark magenta pink and golden olive/lime colours in the top centre of the palette. They are just indescribably beautiful! It was difficult to really catch the vibrancy of these shades on camera but I can assure you that they have a serious wow-factor!

Bizarrely the colours inside run backwards to the photo shown on the palette itself. Very strange but I'll let it slide considering the price.

The first group of six is all warm pinks and oranges. The only swatch that I had a little bit of trouble with was the first pale yellow. It came out a little bit patchy but still works as a nice highlight. I really love the peach/copper shade (5) too. I use colours like this all the time and it really didn't seem very exciting in the pan but it's gorgeous! Perfect for a day look with an added touch of glam. The magenta didn't disappoint me either, it shines slightly blue which you can see a little of in the photo.

The second group contains cool tones of green, aqua and purple. By some glorious twist of fate it seems that my favourite colour from the palette is the smoothest and most pigmented of them all! Can I get an Hallelujah?! It's just stunning. A little disappointing is the fact that the middle three colours are nearly identical. I would have much rather they include another green or a cobalt.

Being the excitable lass I am I immediately started experimenting and threw together these two looks. These were done extremely fast, I mean like 60 seconds fast. I just gave my eyes a quick wipe with a makeup wipe to remove any oils and applied the shadows with my fingers. 

This is the pink on the bottom row all over the lid, magenta in the crease and under the eye using the sponge applicator and orange blended up towards the brow. I then applied my Maybelline Master Smoky Pencil in Smoky Violet (review here) to the water line and close to the upper lash line and added mascara. I look like a holiday cocktail and I don't care who knows it.

And of course I had to showcase this! It definitely reads more lime on the eyes but I don't have the slightest problem with that! I simply blended it all over the lid with my finger and added a thick line of Collection Felt Liner in Teal (review here) and an extra line of Rimmel's Exaggerate Liquid Liner in Black underneath. Topped with mascara. People will have to put up with seeing me wearing this all through Spring and Summer. It's so Mother Earth.

I don't know if you'd noticed but I actually wore these at the same time on each eye! Naturally I didn't leave the house but it's definitely an attention grabbing look...
I'm happy to announce that the wear time of these is just as good as the Ultra Violet Palette. There was zero creasing but they did fade a little around the 6 hour mark. Two colourful thumbs up from me!

Final Verdict: Well worth £1.99 and a must for any colour-lovers on a budget.

Lauren

Review and Swatches: Technic Electric Beauty Ultra Violet Eyeshadow Palette

Another fantastic item that Fiona sent me when I won her giveaway was this palette. I haven't heard much about the brand Technic. To be honest all I knew about them was that they occasionally produced amazing dupes of nail varnishes (Carnival for OPI Rainbow Collection if you're wondering, which I also got!) and that they were generally super cheap! Always a massive plus for me.

The Ultra Violet Palette contains 12 shadows in purples, pinks, lilacs and mauves. At first glance it looks a lot like a Sleek palette. It comes with the same large mirror and the same size pans. It's housed in a slim, secure, black plastic container and comes with a generic double ended sponge applicator. I had no problems opening and closing it and I'd feel happy travelling with it.
I love the colours available here, I don't own many purples at all. There are a few dotted about in my other palettes but it's nice to have so many all in one place! I'm finding myself reaching for purple eye shadow more and more recently and I think it can be a nice alternative to neutrals without being too overtly bright or garish.

The pigmentation is so good and they were really smooth! (As always, no primer used.) They're all shimmer shades but I really don't mind that, I think shimmer eye shadows look fantastic. This is all literally just one quick swipe on my arm. The only ones that I had a small bit of trouble with were second colour on the first row and the first two colours on the second row. They're just a smidge chalkier than the others and therefore slightly patchy so they'd require a bit of building up. Still really beautiful colours though. I was getting a bit of a duochrome effect from a lot of the shadows, some of them shined silver or blue which was gorgeous! This is particularly evident in shade 11. It's a rich kind of pink/cranberry/mauve? Very unique and it shines a lilac/silver colour.

Here's a look I created with the palette for day time:

This is shade 4 all over the lid, shade 1 in the crease and under the eye and shade 12 as an inner corner and brow highlight. Liner is Rimmel's Exaggerate Liquid Liner in Black and mascara is The Body Shop's Super Volume Mascara in Black.
I think one of the great things about this palette is that you could literally pick any of the colours and they would go together well. I loved this look on me and I actually got creepily chatted up by three different weirdos in the middle of the day so I guess it's doing something? Weirdo-attracting isn't really a selling point but I did also get some compliments from normal people! I wore this for 8 hours and it didn't crease AT ALL. Not one bit. It faded a little by the 6 hour mark but I can live with that. I'm so impressed with these and can't wait to experiment some more with the colours!

And now time for the best bit: I've had a trawl around on the internet to find out where you could buy this and I found it here at Love Thy Make-Up for £1.99! Absolutely amazing. There's also free delivery on the website until midday tomorrow if you wanted to buy one of these for yourself. I don't need to tell you that it's worth it for £1.99!

Final Verdict: If you like purples and pinks, you should 100% try this!

What do you think to these shadows? Have you tried any other Technic products that you recommend?

Lauren

Swatches: MUA Immaculate Collection Palette

I was very lucky and won this from the lovely Misellyre (go check out her blog, it's one of my favourites) a few weeks ago but I've yet to have a proper play with it. I decided to swatch the shades and see what the pigmentation was like since I had so much luck with my e.l.f palette. Could I have yet another bargain gem on my hands?! I had to know.

The Immaculate Collection is currently the largest palette available from MUA. It contains 24 shades of eye shadow in several finishes and has a wide range of colours. The flip-top packaging is neat and secure but nothing special. I do love that it has a clear lid (like all MUA palettes) so that I can quickly see which colours I'm reaching for. It's easy to open and comes with a double ended sponge applicator which I don't tend to use. I keep them for absolute emergencies but they usually end up underneath sofas/beds/up the hoover. Oops. There are a lot of really pretty colours here and I was particularly excited about the various shades of blue because those colours were distinctly lacking in my elf palette. I swatched with no primer along each of the three rows.

 Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

I'm so sorry about my goosebumps. It was literally freezing in my house and I became a chicken the second I pushed my sleeve up. You can see it getting progressively worse with each picture.

But onto more important things... there are actually some really lovely shimmer shades here. I love the cool blues and the last shade is probably my favourite. It's this stunning purple base duochrome that shines electric blue. I can see it working well with a multitude of colours and I'm really excited to use it! The mattes were absolutely dire. Might as well not have been there. They were chalky, had no pigmentation and were impossible to work with. I was so disappointed! I know it's hard to get mattes right but I would have rather just had some more pretty shimmers to work with!  I'm also a little bit confused by the layout of this palette. I know it's a bit anal but I quite like my palettes to have some rhyme and reason and this had none. It's all a bit mishmash and strange. It's not at all bad for £8 though and there's usually some great offers on with MUA or at Superdrug where you can buy this palette. 

Final Verdict: A nice addiction to my collection of palettes and there are some gorgeous shimmers! A bit hit and miss.

What do you think to this palette? Do you have a holy grail palette that you recommend?

Lauren

e.l.f Studio 100 Piece Eyeshadow Palette Swatches

I've been thinking about doing this post for a while and bottling out because I'm lazy and 100 is a big number in swatches! But I finally decided that today was the day. I literally have infinity time at the minute since I finished my job yesterday (absolutely heartbroken in case you were wondering) and thought that this is the ideal occasion! I struggled to find a full set of swatches online when I was considering purchasing this with a lot of bloggers obviously citing time as the restriction for swatching every single shadow. I actually really enjoyed this in the end and found it quite relaxing, plus it's great to have a personal colour reference. It can be a bit overwhelming when you're looking into the palette and I often find myself reaching for my small palettes because the choice is easier. Well not any more! This is the original palette, there is also a version with some marble shadows in it. If you fancy a look at that, Alessandra from Cakes, Cupcakes and Cosmetics has swatched them here.

 I decided to swatch up each column since that's how the colours are laid out, so I have 10 pictures of 10 swatches each, starting from the bottom left of the palette, going by columns. I hope that's not too complicated! By the way, you definitely need to click on the images for a closer look, they're pretty darn good.

 This is essentially a row of really pretty highlight shades. The middle 3 don't really show up on my skin but I don't see that as a negative. I tend to use shades like this a lot to even out the colour of my lids.

Look at these! Aren't they stunning? Beautiful warm toned peach/copper shades. And I love the canary yellow shimmer (9)

The first shade in this column is a stand out for me. It's this gorgeous dark forest green with a slight gold shimmer. Utterly divine. So many lovely green shades here, I love the military olives and the neon brightness of the 8th shade.

These are gorgeous colours  but they definitely lean more purple or turquoise. I would have loved to see a really striking cobalt.

 One of my favourite rows. Deep raspberries and shimmering pinks.

This is a bit of an odd one. There are some pretty violet shades but also a nice mix of deep neutrals. Interesting combination.

 Go-to taupes and browns. Perfect every day eyes.

Look at that red! It's everything I wanted from Central in the Sleek Glory Palette. Central was great but a bit on the chalky side. This colour is beeeeautiful. Also some gorgeous oranges and mid-tone pinks. Perfect for warm shadow lovers like myself.

Lovely mix of deep browns and shimmery taupes.

And last but not least - Greys and silvers. There wasn't actually a true black in the palette. This isn't an issue for me personally since I have black shadows in my Sleek palettes, but I do feel like it should have been included.

And now for the big reveal... this was all done without any primer. You read that right, none at all. Aren't they amazing?! I have actually fallen in love with this palette and am astounded by the colour pay off. Some of the more matte colours are a little chalky and harder to work with but still very usable. All of the colours were soft and whilst there was some fall out, it wasn't deal breaking. This palette usually retails for £15 from the e.l.f UK website but e.l.f so often have massive deals on and I actually got this for £7.50 which is just incredible. So happy I made the leap, it was totally worth it.

If you fancy seeing what else I picked up from e.l.f during their sale click here.

Have you tried this palette? And which is your favourite row of colours?

Lauren