All posts tagged: cosmetics

London/Bahrain Swap with Laala of Intermittent Makeup

I met my friend Laala a few years ago on Tumblr, through a friend (Zet). At the time, I had no interest in makeup at all, so what we had in common was a love for literature and reading. Years later, we have another thing in common—getting bitten by the beauty bug. She blogs over at Intermittent Makeup and I’ve featured here on Nosy Beauty already. Since she was going on a trip to London, she thought of getting me a few things from & Other Stories, since she knew I was salivating over looking to try a few things from them. We ended up agreeing to a budget and do a swap instead! This is what she ended up giving me: A pretty London-themed tote // Laura Mercier Hand Crème in Crème Brûlée // & Other Stories Eye Colour in Percaline Khaki // & Other Stories Blush in Canvas Taupe // Barry M (Gelly) Nail Paint in Blood Orange // Barry M Nail Paint in Countess // a few pumps of Burberry Foundation in …

Trying on Illamasqua Pure Pigments

I grabbed two shades of the Illamasqua Pure Pigment from the aforementioned holiday sale. Pigments are definitely not high up on my list of “things to try,” but these popped up on my radar when Bea of The Dalaga Project made a beautiful look with the shade Incite and unknowingly proceeded tempt meh with other looks using the popular Ore. I don’t think the two other shades were included in the sale, and I resolved to only buy things that were which explains the lack of lipsticks and palettes, so I ended up with Furore and Static. These were priced £7.50 each, down from £16.50. I am in love with the packaging. It has a sort of pinched square shape that Illamasqua is known for. The lid kind of just fits on the container, and the product is dispensed via a small hole in the center. The lid has a small “stopper” on the inside that’s meant to prevent the pigment from flying out and about but customers have complained about it. I don’t really …

Poreless Face Base

I shuffle between products, and it’s always a joy to discover new combinations that become solutions to problems I mysteriously always run into. I’ve been trying to use up some products, so the others I have often get neglected. In this iteration of a face base, I chiefly used three products to blur out the pores on my cheeks. After moisturizing my face, I applied the BECCA Resurfacing Primer, which worked out better than I remembered it to in my original review. I then topped it off with a few layers of Ellana Minerals Loose Powder Foundation in Caramel Latte.* After that, I used the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette, mostly Dim Light on the cheek area as well as my forehead, but I used Incandescent Light to highlight and Radiant light on the outer edges of my cheeks. What is your favorite face base concoction right now? * PR Sample. All the products featured in this post are cruelty-free. Follow me: Bloglovin' • Twitter • Instagram • YouTube • Facebook

Illamasqua Cream Blushers

I picked up a few things from the Illamasqua super sale during the holidays and have been taking them out on a road test for the past month or so. These cream blushers went from £18 to £7.50 each, so I got three. Obviously… I have Promise, Rude, and Dixie, and they are all permanent shades.

A Selection of Makeup Bits from Glory Boon

Hey all! Sorry for the lack of posts. I have been testing many things (they all kind of arrived at the same time…) so I have a lot of drafts in place, but only one face to test everything on, so it’s been quite a weird past few days. I’ve also been out of the house most of the time (there’s an Art Fair going on in Manila now—though today is the last day—and I’m there for a few hours everyday). Anyway. I was looking for indie companies on Etsy to support and I found my way to Glory Boon, which seems to be one of the more successful and visible ones (correct me if I’m wrong?). They have quite a bit of skin care stuff so I wanted to try those out, too. For the makeup bits, I got eyeshadow (predictably), concealer (because it seems to be their bestseller), a lip butter/gloss. I feel predictable, but here, I bought the Chicka Chicka eyeshadow, since it looked good for everyday, like a warm & bright …

Say hello to the NARSissist Eyeshadow Palette, because I got it. Of course.

Oh NARS, you have done it again. But let’s stop pretending that we didn’t know this was going to happen… A few of you actually asked me if I was planning on buying the NARSissist Eyeshadow Palette when it first came out. I was yoyo-ing with my feelings (haha) and was coming up with pretty good reasons as to why I shouldn’t get this palette. After all, it’s another neutral palette. On the other hand, I’ve been meaning to get more into NARS Eyeshadows (for whatever reason). This palette has 14 permanent shades, plus 1 LE shade that was just released, so this would be actually be great introduction for a NARS n00b. The NARSissist Eyeshadow Palette launched into a chorus of mixed reviews. A lot of people said that the shadows in this palette weren’t on par with the originals. As someone who is pretty familiar with the ‘NARS Syndrome,’ I knew that the shades would be hit or miss… but I wasn’t expecting a discrepancy in quality. Finally, after much deliberation, I just …

Sample Stash Sunday: Femme Fatale Sampler Pack

One of my resolutions this year (that I seem to be following to a ‘T’…) is to try and discover more indie and local cosmetics companies. They are usually cruelty-free (sometimes even vegan!) which ties in to my whole transition to CF cosmetics. One of the more prominent brands I’ve been seeing around is Femme Fatale. I think this operation might be bigger than most indie companies, but I still wanted to try them since they seem to be quite popular in the indie cosmetics realm. Luckily, they had a 10-Sampler Pack, which I snatched up immediately. My order came a few weeks later in a simple letter envelope from Australia. I got my 10 samples (8 eyeshadows, 2 blushes) and a free eyeshadow sample.