First Impressions: Gerard Cosmetics 1995 Lipstick and Pouty Princess Lip gloss

Hi all! Today I bring to you my FIRST first impression review! Yay!

I bought the 1995 Lipstick and Pouty Princess Lip gloss when Gerard Cosmetics had a 2 for $20 sale a few weeks ago. They are both beautiful colors and I'm so glad I bought these two as my first Gerard Cosmetics purchase. Both are great formulas and I'll go through each with lip swatch pictures below.

Top: Pouty Princess

Bottom: 1995

1995 is a beautiful "your lips but better" color on me. It's a pinky brown with a matte finish. It goes on smooth from the tube and is decently opaque. It's very creamy and buildable to get a darker color. It lasted through 6 hours and eating twice with only having to touch up once after eating the second time. I love this color!

Pouty Princess is a sparkly rose pink color. It's pretty sticky so if you don't like sticky gloss you would probably want to steer clear of this one. Surprisingly this gloss lasted almost as long as the lipstick, mainly because it is so sticky and stuck like glue to my lips. It feels moisturizing but not quite like a chapstick. It does skip and goes on patchy to where you would need to go back with a second or maybe third swipe but the color and long wear is so worth it.

1995 and Pouty Princess together

All in all, I do love these two beauties I picked up and I will most likely be purchasing more sometime soon!

Shell

Gypsy "Esmeralda" Look using MUG Foiled Shadows

So today I decided to play with my new MUG foiled shadows because, why not?? Anyways, I started with the one color I didn't really care for (odd, I know) and built a look around that color, which was Fortune Teller. I thought it was too much of a true gold to look good on me but boy was I wrong! I took Fortune Teller and put that in the first half of my lid. I then took Masquerade (a beautiful purple pink color) and put that on the last half of my lid and blended a the colors together in the middle. I used MUG's Latte to blend in the crease, White Lies as my brow bone highlight and I used Pegasus (a blue teal color) along my bottom lash line. I used the new NYC Eye Primer Stick as my primer.

*Side Note* Masquerade didn't quite go on as pigmented as  Fortune Teller did at first so I sprayed my brush with M.A.C.'s Fix+ before putting it back into the pan and it made the shadow pop so amazingly I used the same method and did that with Fortune Teller as well

For the rest of my face, I used ColourPop's Olive blush and Double Dip highlight. Brows are Kat Von D's Tattoo brow in Medium Brown and L'Oreal Brow Stylist Plumper in Medium Brown. Lips are ColourPop's Fancy. My foundation is CoverFX custom color drops mixed with the Body Shop's Tea Tree Primer and my concealer is M.A.C. Pro longwear in NC20 over M.A.C. Prep+Prime Highlighter in Bright Forecast.

Shell

Makeup Geek Foiled Eyeshadows - Spring 2015 New Shades

Hi all! Today I received a much anticipated package with the 10 new foiled eyeshadows from Makeup Geek (MUG for short)!!! I've been eagerly waiting for these to come out. The first 10 were more jewel tones with some neutrals. This time there were more pastel colors with a few springy colors and a bold gold.

MUG is another makeup company I recently found and bought some products from and fell in love with. Their eye shadows come in pan form and you put them into magnetic palette (I use Z palette, which are also available on the MUG website, one stop easy shopping!). The regular eyeshadows are $5.99 a piece and the foiled formulation is $9.99 a piece or they have a few discounted bundles for both formulations. All the shadow blend beautifully and have excellent pigmentation and staying power.

Top is with flash, the bottom without

L to R: Daydreamer, Charmed, Fantasy, Fortune Teller, High Wire, Masquerade, Pegasus, Starry Eyed, Untamed, Whimsical 

When I picked these up I also got 4 other shades that are newer, one is a reformulation instead of a new shade though.

Top is with flash, the bottom without

L to R: Rapunzel, Poppy, Wisteria, High Tea

I'm looking forward to creating all sorts of fun looks with these colors! Would you like to see the rest of the MUG shades I have? Let me know in the comments!

Til next time!

Shell

ColourPop Super Shock Blushes - Swatches and Review

Oh, ColourPop...it was love at first swatch. I first heard of ColourPop last spring when they first launched. I was intrigued but held off until this fall when they sucked me in with their pretty sets for the Christmas season. I ordered "Not a Box of Chocolates" and immediately fell in love with the texture, pigmentation, and over all amazingness of the shadows. And I was hooked for life...

Then they released these bad boys, Super Shock blushes *drool* They combined my favorite brand and pigmentation with my favorite kind of blushes, cream. One of these is a highlighter (more of which are supposed to be released soon...I can't wait!!) but the rest are blushes. I have 23 of the 25 they have released right now, the two I don't have are Swift and Holiday. Hysterical, Tongue Tied and the highlighter, Double Dipped, came in the "In Bloom" collection they released last month. Other than that, you can order each of these individually at only $8 a piece! A steal, right?

Now let's get into the review. First, the texture isn't really a cream or a powder, it's like a hybrid of some sort. A beautiful, creamy and wonderfully pigmented hybrid. They sheer out like a dream to give you sheer color or you can pack on the color and get super bold cheeks. Each order comes with products cards with tips and tricks on how to apply your products. ColourPop recommends for most color payoff to use your fingers, which works amazing, especially if you blend it out afterwards with a synthetic brush. For a more sheer look, I use a synthetic brush (a stipple brush from BH Cosmetics) and slowly stipple and blend out the blush until I get the desired color payoff.

Below are individual swatches of the colors, all of which are only one swipe (with the exception of Early Bird and Homie, those two colors are a bit less pigmented than the others but I still love them <3)

Left to right: Aphrodisiac (Matte), Prenup (Satin), Between the Sheets (Matte), Double Dip (highlighter)

L to R: Trickery (Satin), Olive (Matte), Bonus (Matte), Birthday Suit (Matte)

L to R: Homie (Matte), Clutch (Matte), More Please (Pearlized), Pie (Matte)

L to R: Pegacorn (Satin), Cheerio (Satin), Hysterical (Matte), Mochi (Matte)

L to R: Tonic (Matte), Tongue Tied (Matte), Fruit Stand (Matte), Rain (Matte)

L to R: Thumper (Matte), Early Bird (Matte), Fox (Satin), Quarters (Satin)

The only difference I can tell between the satin and matte finishes is that satin has a bit of sparkle to it compared to the matte. The More, Please shade is a pearlized finish and it has more of a metallic sheen to it. The only two shades that I had trouble swatching were Early Bird and Homie, I had to do two swipes to get the same color payoff with my finger but when using on a brush, they apply just like the others.

All in all, I highly recommend these blushes, especially with summer around the corner, these would be awesome and since they already hold up over 12 hours on a normal day.

I hope you enjoyed! See you next time!

Shell

*disclaimer I purchased all of these*

Hi all!!

Welcome to the lab! I've got a few posts I'm working on from orders I received yesterday, one from sephora and one from ulta. I've been trying out a new "foundation", the cover fx custom cover drops so I'll have that review coming in the next few days since I've had it and used it for a week now.

With this being my first post, I want to tell you a few things about me. I love playing with eyeshadow and I'm not shy when it comes to using bright colors. Very rarely will you find a neutral look on here, though it does happen from time to time. I'm just starting to get into lip sticks, never been a big fan of them until I found colourpop lippie sticks (I'm going to do a whole post, swatches and all, on that after I get my last batch of lippie sticks I ordered last week).

So stayed tuned! Lots of fun coming up!

♡ Shell