Revlon 12 Hr Eyeshadows in Copper Spice and Neutral Kahki

I was recently in Duane Reade, just perusing the aisles to waste a bit of time when I saw the makeup section.. Normally, I  don't go to Duane Reade because they don't have the best deals, but my gosh it was clearance plaza all up in the makeup aisle. Nothing was over $5 and for one second I just stopped all movement. 

I finally calmed down enough to just look without snatching blindly but ended up with nothing. I really wanted one thing from the store, which was the Revlon 12 Hour palette in Nude Elements. Normally retailing for about ~$6 but it was ~$3.50 and I picked it up and started to place it in along with the 2 cans of red bull and cookies. Then I looked at it one more time ... and that my friends was my downfall. I ended up putting it back, since I had similar colors in my hoarder drawer. I looked around but had nothing I desperately needed. 

When I got home later on in the evening, I was still thinking of the palette (a true sign of a loser) and looked through my drawers to cheer myself up. I totally ended up rediscovering some new products that I had completely forgotten about. I remember abusing these palettes and taking them everywhere with me and repurchasing them again back when I started out. Coincidentally, they too are from Revlon's 12 Hr shadow collection. 

 L: Neutral Khaki R: Copper Spice

Both of these palettes are extremely wearable and can be used to go from day to night. No mattes here, just shiner and metallics. I've had little problem with them lasting because I had a base  under it but without a base, these colors will not last. I swatched it on my wrist and after one swipe, the lighter colors ended up fading but the darker colors were still there. So this probably isn't a complete 12 Hr long wear, but it still is decent. 

This one is the khaki neutral one with a light shimmer, then a champagne shimmer then a light olive with golden undertone with a chocolate brown on the bottom.

The Copper spice has a more vanilla shimmer with a pinker shimmery shade and a coppery brown with a once again very similar chocolate brown. Honestly, the last dark color on each palette looks the same except the top one being a tad bit darker.

The shimmery colors don't show up well on camera but I assure you that they are there and pretty. While my descriptions aren't the best and don't inspire you to run out and get some, I do understand that there are better quality eyeshadows out there. But if you see them for sale for $3.50 go and get them. See, I just can't get over the palette. I'm extremely stubborn about stupid things like this because while I manage to talk myself out of wanting a lot of stuff, if I really like something, I want it. I saw swatches of the Nude elements, and guess what? It's not that impressive but my brain doesn't understand logic and still wants it. Damn it! That Duane Reade was out of my way. I ended up putting the Red Bull back, with no regrets but kept the cookies.

Oh and I've finally succumbed to my own cooking. I've mentioned that everyone has gotten sick from my cooking except me but I can no longer boast about my iron stomach. Made chocolate mousse a day before Valentine's Day and I ended up do sick and vomiting. I still feel the effects today and have stomach pains. Ironically, no one has attempted to try the mousse even when I didn't mention that I got sick from it. I had to throw it away. Those smart bastards. Just when I bought a George Foreman grill, I can't cook from it

My First Eyeshadow

With every change of the season I tend to look through my stash and remind myself what I shades I can do without and which ones I obsessively need. I've decided to slap my hand away from neutrals and look for a variety of colors, although I really don't need anything much. While I was rotating my colors, I found this gem stashed in a box in the back of my drawer. I don't remember the name and the sicker has fallen out, so I can't tell you. It's the first piece of makeup that I have ever purchased.

I started wearing makeup in the second year of college, when I had to go to a friend's wedding and I wanted to look different. I knew nothing about makeup and just grabbed the cheapest thing there, which happened to be this neutral palette from Wet N' Wild along with their foundation. The foundation smelled nasty and I never used it but I just slapped this on and went. Now that I look back, I should have never left the house looking so terrible. No primer, unblended and weird placement of shadows were some of the crimes I committed. Do you want to know what the worst part was? Nobody told me and took me to the corner to tell me that I looked bad, not even the family. Geez.

These colors are what I would wear and I've decided to wear it more often. It is a tad bit too shimmery, but it is uber pigmented and soft. I remember it lasting quite a long time on me as well so I'm excited to find this.

It's a nice mix of colors of soft wearable colors and now that I know better not to apply the dark color up to my brow bone, I think I could make myself look less of a hot mess.
I found a ton of old palettes that I forgot I had and now trying to work them into my usual face routine. Is it wrong that I got a little too giddy?

Tarina Tarantino

While I was shopping online at Sephora, I needed something to get me over to the free shipping mark. I try to always get free shipping especially since it cost almost $7 for shipping and these eye shadows were $5 each, I think I made out like a bandit. These are my first Tarina Tarantino products because I could never get into them. The products didn't seem that special and while the packaging looks good, the price was a bit too steep for me. However these seemed like a good buy compared to the other things at Sephora.

This is the Bibarucci Eye Dream Hypershadow (Yellow) and the Electric Butterfly Dream Hypershadow (Orange). 2.9g of product in a plastic case with a sticker attached to it along with a pouch for $5.

These are nicely sized eyeshadows and it has a tiny mirror inside the case. At first I thought the pictures were imprinted onto the case, but it's a sticker attached to the middle (*edit* was told that it wasn't a sticker from a reader and I was wrong, this looks like a sticker but is not. Thank you anonymous commenter!). I think the packaging looks so pretty and almost childish but fun. The packaging isn't flimsy and has a bit of a solid feel to it so that I don't have to worry about it falling apart.

Don't you hate it when you open a product and you nails slip and nick the product? Well the clasp here is easy to open and I don't think that there is a risk of nicking your eyeshadow because the product isn't located near the clasp. The product itself is nice and smooth and although both has gold shimmer in it, but it's not that apparent when applied. Both eyeshadows are tightly packed and not crumbly.

There is little fallout and easy to apple. Honestly, the Bibarucci Eye Dream Hypershadow is a bit sheer and not extremely pigmented. It's a light golden brown that's good for a subtle wash of color on the lid. On the other hand, the Electric Butterfly Dream Hypershadow is crazy pigmented and a dream to look at. It's a bold sun kissed golden orange that needs to be applied carefully, otherwise it can look like a mess.
Both are easy to blend, lasts a good while and makes me want to look at the other shadows from this range.

Loreal Eyeshadow Quad in Desert Sunrise

The weather has been on its best behavior lately but along with it comes ALLERGY SEASON dun dun dun. For the last few days, it feels as if the area around my nose has been on fire. I've actually sneezed so hard and so much that I've woken up with stomach pains from contracting my muscles when I sneeze. At least I'm still young and have control over my bladder. I shudder to think what will happen when I hit senior citizen status. I've been scratching and rubbing my eyes as well, so I look like a strung out addict with bloodshot eyes, wobbling around the street rubbing my nose and eyes while holding my stomach, trying to shove nasal sprays up my nose. I'm thinking about investing in a Neti Pot.

The review for day will be on Loreal's Eyeshadow Quad in Desert Sunrise. It's around $7 at all drugstores but I managed to get this on for $2 with the Rite Aid reward points. Sweet deal because I am not a big fan of this and would be pissed if I paid the full price. I don't have much good experiences with drugstore eye shadows, especially with the Maybelline Smokes collection. So I'm not surprised with this quad as well.

All of the colors are extremly wearable, shimmery (#4 being the only exception), soft and easily blended. But I just could not get this to show up vibrantly on the lid. I got this to show up by rubbing the shadows on my finger then pressing it firmly onto my hand. With a brush, none of these showed up quite as nicely with or without a primer.

However, the fact that they don't show up vibrantly became a good point for me. I tend to go a bit heavy with my shadows and expect the color in the pan to show up exactly on my eyelids. Since these don't do so, these make perfect subtle work appropriate eye shadows. It was damn near impossible to go full throttle on my eyes, and I ended up with a soft brown look with minimal blending.

It also came with pretty good instructions on the back, so if you're starting out in makeup, then this would be a good template.
One strange thins I've noticed is that other reviews show this quad in a brown packaging while mine is in black. So maybe the formula changed with the packaging because everyone was raving about the pigmentation.

Nars Silent Night

During the Sephora Friends and Family Sale, I managed to get Cheyenne eyeshadow duo and I absolutely love it. That was the only thing that I made me feel like I got a good deal. That reminded me of a different Nars shadow that I also got for $10 , but felt the complete opposite, until recently.Nars Silent Night in the pan is so pretty just a bright yellowish gold that would look great on me. I got this when I was just starting out and didn't know much about makeup.

Maybe that the problem because I knew nothing about primers or dark bases. The problem with this as you can see are the big pieces of gold flecks that appear in random chunks. You can see it all around the rim of the eyeshadow cover and on parts of my finger. When applies without a base, this thing sucks, the yellow base color does not show up all all I got were random chunks of gold on my eye, with fallout all over my cheek. I cursed Nars and shoved this back into the always neglected pile.

I was throwing away some makeup and came across this again. Tried it over Tarte's bronze cream shadow and guess what, it looked decent.

My eye looks so tired but if I close them all the way, you can't see the color. Still not in love with this one but it gets a just okay rating. Not worth the $22 dollar price tag now. Honestly, I don't really see myself using this one a lot, but I think I may put on this color a lot during the holidays since I love golds and dark browns whenever I go out but this is going to be on rotation and won't take it into my everyday pile.

Cargo

Whee! Freedom. I've been stuck with an unwelcome house guest that has overstayed their welcome and she is now gone. I mentioned previously about the camping trip, well luckily it got cut short. Picturesque, huh? Nope it was a little slice of hell. Not only did I get a stomach virus that had me lurching over the communal toilet, but my sister got pink eye and no one left happy. Enough about that, lets get to the makeup.

This is the Cargo color palette that retails for Sephora for $10. With 3g of eyeshadow a piece, it is double the size of a MAC shadow, and the outiside packaging is sturdy and heavy. But wait, as soon as I tipped it over to read the back, BAM! The palette falls out of its case.

All that's holding these shadows in, is a minuscule amount of glue right in the center. OK, break out the crazy glue, and plug these back in.

As for the eyeshadows themselves,(sorry for the crappy paint numbering that I did) they are soft well pigmented but honestly, I wasn't impressed by the colors. Number3, the yellowish white one, is a blatantly ugly color and none of these really stand out for me. Only the last number 4 (the lighter brown) looked good. The others looked like something that I already have.

Maybe it's just me, but there was nothing impressive about these. Sure the coppery color looks nice, but I know that on my skin tone, coppery red tinged browns do not look good one me. So, yeah they are a good bargain, but if you really don't need it, or it looks like something you have, then skip. Go buy yourself a nice iced coffee and ice cream treat instead.