My 120 Eyeshadow Palette Review

Ok. let's skip the whole grandmama story on why the long hiatus. =P

I received some questions about my opinion on some eyeshadow palette some time back and where to get them. So here's a quick post about this.

My 120 eyeshadow palette! Still shiny shiny and barely touched. >.<

So you've asked..

.......Where do I get them?

I got these online but I don't exactly remember the seller name for now. But it was from a local seller. Not ebay.

.......How much?

RM60 +- plus shipping.

I've googled and seen a few blogshops and LYN forum people selling them for less than RM80. So for 120 colors divided by RM80 = RM1.50 for a color is cheap!! =D

........ How good they are? Pigmented?

Err. I'll show you the pictures and you do the judging. =)

Six random colors, ranging from shimmers to matte colors.

Swatching them on the hand.

So, whaddayathink?

Yes, it's super powdery and chalky. Luckily my palette arrived safe and sound when I first got them.

Pigmented? Yes. Duper pigmented.

But powdery and pigmented doesn't really work together. I always have to tap the eyeshadow excess off my brush before applying, if not the eyeshadow fall all over the place. -_-

Staying power are okay. You can't match this against MAC eyeshadows because this eyeshadow palette isn't made for it to compare. :P But with a use of eyeshadow base or even cream eyeshadow (or even NYX Jumbo pencil!) can make the eyeshadow staying power last longer.

Nuff' said about it as I can't criticize much about it. The only drawback I personally had is that it has too many colors until I can't decide which to use everytime. Serious, 120 colors for 2 eyes?You gotta be kidding me! LOL!!

Oh and btw, this is eyeshadow palette of mine has no brand. I know I've seen a brand called "Manly" but mine isn't. It came in a white box without any wordings or description on it. =\ I will update again when I have more information on this.

Signing off now! Have a good day ahead, lovely people. =)

Stila Eye Shadow Trio - Gold Glow

*pic from Sephora*

I have been wanting to blog about this for so long... I couldn't find my old pics when I was looking up in my achieves yesterday. So since I was playing with my eyeshadows, I decided to take my ugly eyeshadow pics for you to see.. to celebrate Halloween (since it's fugly and spooky, sort of..)

I got this set around May this year (I know I'm late) when I was joining a spree in LYN, and that was way before Stila got pulled out from Malaysia, so lucky me. :P

Here's the eyeshadow.. (pardon the freaky lighting.. it looks pretty dark here...)




When I first got the item, it looked so pretty !

How can you just not loved the look of it...



But when I tried to open the thing.. argh..crazy I tell you...


I had such a hard time opening the eye shadow. The way Stila packaged this eyeshadow is insane.. -_-


I don't know about them but I just don't understand why on earth they packaged it this way.. in an old crappy cardboard packaging -_-

Because of the packaging, my nail went straight into the pot when I was trying to push it open. Sigh~

The swatch:

The Product: .17oz / 5g

Price: $28 (from Sephora)

Colors available: 3 in total (Bronze Glow, Champagne Glow and Gold Glow)

Made in: Italy

From Sephora's website:

Eye Shadow Trio
Let your lids look like they've been lying in the sun. Designed to be applied either wet or dry, this eyeshadow trio is baked on a terra cotta disk for a sheer, never chalky, application. The bronze trio features three different tonal shades for use as a base, crease shadow, and eyeliner.

My thoughts about it:

I don't dislike it and neither I'm loving it. It looks really pigmented and it is pigmented. It doesn't feel glittery but it is shimmery. Not too powdery or chalky either. It does shows up nicely on skin and what I like about it is the "highlighter" color. It's glowy but not too overboard.

Cons?

I'm not sure if it's me or what, but I find it a little hard to get it show up in my skin. I have to swipe several times with my brush to get the color out onto my skin. But when I swipe it on my finger, the damn color showed up. -_- Weird. Another cons about it is the price, for $28, this is freaking expensive! Even though it is "baked" , but still the price tag is killing me. I wouldn't have bought this if I have to buy this individually.

Before I forget, here's a little spooky "eotd" I"m trying to come up with.. I was actually playing with my scotch tape to get the "clean" line of it. :) Pardon the mess about the liner. :P

Before I forget, Happy Halloween People! :D

Making Eyeshadows "POP" ...

By looking at the pic above, it doesn't do much justice. Let me explain more below.

Kindly note that I'm not comparing against eye bases. I just wanted to show the difference between using these products below...



Looking familiar? :)

Let me explain further.

The first one...
Mineral Eyeshadow Sealant. I'm not sure if we can get this locally but I got this from MAD Minerals some time back.



This comes in a liquid form, but quite watery for my liking. More like an eyeliner sealant rather than an eyeshadow sealant.

Second one...
MAC Butternutty Shadestick.


How it looks like..


The third one..
NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil in Milk. I think most people should have known them by now. :P

The ingredients of this pencil..


Last but not least, the "high-end" eyeshadow primer by Too Faced. :)



You may asked why TFSI? The reason is because normally we either apply our eyeshadow without any canvas/bases on our skin, but nowadays, people believed that by using primer, the shadows will "POP". But we shall see what happens when we compared against the other 3 below.

Normally I'll compared against this three things...
1. TFSI (Too Faced Shadow Insurance)
2. MAC Butternutty Shadestick
3. NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil in Milk



But since I still got my sealant, I'll include it into my review. :)

The more detailed swatches of these "bases"...


I compared these outcomes with the normal eyeshadow and some random MAC pigments.


For a start, I go with MAC pigments first in Pinked Mauve and Tea Time.

Do you noticed any difference?

If you look closely, with NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil in Milk, Tea Time pigment looked a little darker. But on with the rest of the bases, the looked normal. The same goes with Pinked Mauve pigment. I guess the pigment itself is already sufficient to go on its own (just like Gardenia bread :P).

Ok, so let's move on with the normal eye shadows.

Can you see the difference? :D

Maybe this will help you a little more. :)




NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencil really shows some difference between the other three. The colors are more vibrant looking, don't you think so? Just take look at those eye shadows applied without anything underneath! The pink shadows looks really "blahhhh" to me.


MAC Butternutty shadestick does quite a good job too. But it does not showed up so vibrant like what NYX did. It gives a more "velvety" feel to it.

I did compared them both again with other colors.


Overall, for myself, NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils are really a great tool and underbase if you want to make your eye shadows "POP". The reason being is because it has quite a lot of wax in it's ingredients so that it makes the texture more sticky and silky.

But does it crease? If you use it alone, of coz it will crease. But if an eye shadow applied above them, it stays on beautifully (but this may not be the same for other people). :)

However, one reason that I don't quite like about NYX is that it takes some effort to remove them. Because of the waxy ingredients, it tends to stick on like UHU on my skin. :P

About MAC Butternutty shadestick, even though it gives a velvety effect to the shadows, but it is so hard to blend them on the skin!! It is not as silky as NYX Jumbo E/S pencil, also it leaves some chunk "glitters" if it is not blended evenly. -_-" Stroking this onto the eye is not a problem, but blending is a huge problem to me. I have to do some sort of "Rubbing" with my fingers and the eye brushes doesn't seem to work together also. -_-"

As for the Mineral Eye Sealant by MAD Minerals. I don't know what to say. Ha ha. Coz it doesn't really seal any eyeshadow to me. It dries on pretty quickly after I applied them onto my eye. But guess what, it leaves a patch straight on to the skin without letting me blend them. So I guess it works more like an eye liner sealant rather than an eye shadow sealant. :)

In short, here's the summary of these four things:
NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencil (From Nonpareil boutique): $3.50
MAC Butternutty shadestick: $16.50
Too Faced Shadow Insurance: $17
MAD Mineral Eye Shadow Sealant: $7

From the prices above, I do recommend NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow Pencils since it is cheap and they have many other colors as well. As for TFSI, it really is a great primer like I reviewed about it before (HERE). It is just like a make up base, that gives an extra "protection" to our skin (our skin area around the eyes are really thin and wrinkles do form easily if we do not take care of it) and also to "lock" our eye make up to prevent them from creasing and fade. :)

EOTD - Bright Neon Colors for My Sleepy Eye

I'm seriously not good in coloring... Please excuse the mess and untidy-ness...



This is my first ever EOTD here.. Normally my friends and colleagues expect me coming to work with bright eye colored eyeshadows, but the fact is, yours truly does not put any other stuff onto her eye other than eye creams (I don't think it is suitable for work and I don't have the time lahhh)...

But anyways, I was experimenting the colors these other day and I thought of having a yellow combo instead of the usual greens and blues...

Here's the outcome... *Please excuse the brows and ugly pores* :P



Item used on the eye:
Sweet scents - Neon pigment
MAC - Mega Rich pigment
MAC - Off the Radar Pigment
Kate Liquid Eye liner in Black
NYX Jumbo eye pencils in Milk (as base)
Sana eyelash curler
Covergirl Mascara

One thing that distracts me in this photo is my eye bags... -_- Damn fugly. LoL!

But anyway, I don't have a full face photo for this as I was just experimenting the color around for one of my online buyers as she commented that yellow is the hardest color to match.

Well, it really depends on what you are going for though, I do think Yellow color is a nice color especially if you have a sleepy eye like mine, it tends to "brighten" up the eye a bit.. :)

PS: Capturing the actual color is seriously a hard job for me... I don't have a good lighting for capturing photos like what I've seen in the other blogger's EOTD/FOTD.. Any other tips for this? Or maybe should I just give an early retirement for my camera?

Bobbi Brights Eye Palette and The Platinum Collection from Bobbi Brown

Pretty huh? I saw them when I went to MAC's HK Launch weeks ago. This set was launched in early March if I remembered well.

I *was* quite interested with this pretty palette when I knew it was going to come out from Bobbi Brown. But in the end, I didnt bought it.

Why? Because it was ridiculously small! The shadow pans is about my pinky(little finger) size! And all of them are matte shadows too! For RM230, I would rather spend it on Coastal Scent's one.

Here's some swatches for your eye satisfaction ...

Taken under yellow lights...


Taken under white lights....


Different point of angle...



My thoughts:
If you are feeling all hype-up about Hello Kitty's "Lucky Tom" or "Too Dolly" palette, I suggest you shift your "investment" to get this one.

As you can see, these colors showed up prettily on the back of my palm (unlike MAC's "Lucky Tom" takes me a few times to get them on my hand!! ).

These eye shadows has a powdery-finished effect and not velvety-finished. Even though this palette is super-small, but the pigmentation of these shadows are good, which I think they are way better than MAC's eyeshadows.

Oh and by the way, Bobbi Brown has another set of Limited edition items coming in as well.

The Platinum Collection.


I'm not a fan of cream shadows or lipgloss. But this is interesting..

Platinum Pink Shimmer Brick.


Skin has a soft and luminous glow this season courtesy of Bobbi's newest Shimmer Brick, part of her NEW Platinum Collection. Five color bars-soft pink, platinum, bright pink, golden coral and rose-blend together to light up the face. These shades work beautifully as highlight colors for cheeks or anywhere you want to add shimmer. The special platinum bar is a great new shade for eyes. Custom-made compact features a metallic silver finish and faux-leather detailing.

Multi-shimmer-brick eh... for eyes and cheeks.. Hmm....

Kate Gradical Eye & Dual Carat reviews

I believed Kate Cosmetics are widely known by all by now.

Kate has this collection of Gradical Eyes and Dual Carat collection in Year 2007, if I recalled them correctly. At that time, Kate was not brought in to Malaysia until mid of 2007.

This is Kate Dual Carat.

*credits from 4allbeauty.com

and I bought SV-1. The Shiny Silver combo.


This line of eye shadows was really pigmented compared to the other collection. The color payoffs are better than Gradical Eyes collection (refer below).



However, the powder are not as finely milled as the other collections and it was much chunkier and contains a lot of shimmers in it.
*below with flash (so shimmery,can!)

*below Without Flash



This is the Gradical Eyes Collection:


I also got the black-grey combo from them as well. (Hm, I didn't notice both of them are from the same color range at that time.)





The colors of this pallete doesn’t appear more pigmented than the above range. The cool thing about this pallete is that it also comes with an eyeliner color (the round shape shadow).



Here are the swatches:


Overall reviews:
I do find that Kate produces quite a good range of eye shadow palletes and the best part of it, they are affordable which is comparable to any other drugstore brands. They are also easily available in selected Watson/Guardian Stores and SASA.

However, I do recommend testing the product personally beforehand because I noticed that each range of Kate eyeshadows have different eyeshadow texture and different color payoffs.

Overall ratings:

(because of their inconsistency of eyeshadow texture & color payoffs).

Oh by the way, this is the new items from Kate that came out recently.
Kate Deep Eyes Collection, each retails at RM49

And its color range


*pic snapshot from nomorerules.net

And their Powder Gel Liner N. Retails at RM45.


And its colors! Sweet looking colors, eh?


So what are you waiting for?

PS: Christmas & CNY is just around the corner, a good time and a good reason for shopping!