Monday, December 30, 2013

Empties September - December 2013

I haven't finished a lot of products in these last few months, but wanted to post all the items I finished in this year. There are actually only two products:

Athena beauty exfoliating facial scrub and
Lumene waterproof eye makeup remover

The scrub is nothing special, just an below average facial scrub, not bad but not outstandingly good either.
The makeup remover from Lumene was a big disapointment, I just love the brand, but this perticular item is not so good. My makeup is not particularly waterproof, but my non-waterproof mascara was a pain to get off my lashes. Still prefer my old one wich was from Lancomè.

Thank you for reading and see you in the new year,
Ella

Thursday, December 26, 2013

The 13th item

As I stated in the rules of the 12 beauty budget items of 2013 - I would reward myself with the 13th product if I would be able to stick to the 12 beauty purchases of 2013 in Iceland. I managed to stick to the rules (even though I bought a lot in the states - but I put a disclaimer in the rules that abroad purchaes would not count).

So the 13th product is actually a christmas-gift from a friend of mine: Bourjois smokey eyes trio in 09 lady vert de gris.


Bourjois Smokey eyes trio - 09 lady vert de gris







Swatched in natural light

As you can see from the swatch there is really little colour payoff - except from the highlight colour, which is very glittery, and has a lot of  fallout.  The medium colour is very powdery and has somewhat of a fallout. This is a bit of a disappointment, and I hate that it's not a better quality, especially as it was gifted to me from a friend. When I applied the colours to my eyelids, there was hardly any visable colour payoff, and I had to dig into the shadows with my brush, and tried time and time again to build the colour up, which didn't seem to happen. I put the darkest colour in the crease, yes that one was visable, but very difficult to blend...
I definetly do not have the most quality products, and high-end makeup so I wouldn't say I'm used to very good quality stuff, but sadly I have to say this is one of the worst eyeshadows I have ever tried :( I don't know if this is because my skintone or the elf primer I primed my lids with, or if this is just a flawed trio, but I will continue to play around with it, and I will see if I can make it work and I'll keep you posted.

Thank you for stopping by,
and merry christmas,
Ella

Saturday, December 21, 2013

December beauty budget

The December beauty budget is a Maybelline nail-polish from the color show line in the colour 159 Mauve Kiss:

Maybelline Color Show by Colorrama in 159 Mauve kiss

It's a beautiful light mauve colour, can even be considered a light brown - and reminds me of the mushroom colour that everyone and their sister were wearing a few years ago (apart from me). The colour is light enough for me to wear at work (where we can wear light and not loud colours). The best thing was though, I got it from heimkaup.is which is one of the biggest online stores in Iceland, and they carry everything. As it's a fairly new web-site and I had bought something from their sister-website in the past they gave me a 500 ISK credit with them, and the nail-polish being on a 20% discount, I ended up paying 92 ISK (less than 1 USD) for the bottle and they gave me a free home delivery. Plus the bottle is not too big - so the chance of the polish drying out or me getting tired of the colour is fairly slim ;)
I love the colour (not a very christmasy though), this is one coat on the photo, and that is enough most of the time! Longevity? I experienced some chipping on day 3, with base coat, only one coat and no top coat, so I'm sure you can get longer ware with 2 coats, or a top coat.

Thank you for reading,
Ella

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Seattle Haul

So I went on a long weekend trip to Seattle, USA in November and this is what I managed to pick up in Target, Sephora, Ulta, MAC and online at Amazon:

The haul

The shopping list:

Target:
Revlon just bitten kissabe balm stain in romantic
Elf blush in mellow mauve
Almay eyeliner in 207 brown
Rimmel scandal eyes in 005 nude
Maybelline instant age rewind concealer
Maybelline falsies flare mascara in black
Physicians formula organic wear mascara in black
Nicole by opi in kissed at midnight - from the Selena Gomez line (missing in photo see here)

Sephora;
Tarte blush in exposed
Formula X for Sephora nailpolish in light my fire (missing in photo see here)
Kat von D eyeshdow trio in dreamer
Korres lip butter in pomegranate (missing in photo see here)

Ulta:
Revlon just bitten kissabe balm stain in honey
Revlon just bitten kissabe balm stain in adore
 
Mac;
Mac amplified lipstick in dark side
Mac lip pencil in vino

Amazon online:
Real techniques powder brush
Real techniques expert face brush
Real techniques travel set with essential foundation brush, domed shadow brush and multi task brush
Almay intense i-color satin-i kit for blue eyes
Nicole by opi moisture plus (missing in photo see here)

I also ordered one parfum from Amazon: So Cal by Hollister - which is a discontinued scent - so I couldn't resist.

Regrets:
I wish I had picked up a neautral every day lipstick colour from Mac, and would like to swap one of the Revlon red just bitten kissable balm stains for a more neutral one. Wish I would have had more time in Ulta, even though my purse would probably not like it - I'm now craving an essence eyeliner in 08 Teddy (which is supposed to be a dupe for Mac Teddy) and it's only 0.99 USD. Then I'm almost regretting not to have bought the Naked 1 palette from Urban Decay - nr. 3 was not out yet when I was there... then again I try to convince myself Naked 1 contains parabens, and I have a lot of the colours in my collection already (even though they are not from Urban Decay).

Otherwise there is nothing standing in the way of me looking gorgeous in the near future..

Thank you for reading,
Ella

Monday, December 2, 2013

November beauty budget

This is bit delayed post, but I didn't actually pick this up in November.. but it will be registered as November beauty budget. Also it's my first ever Bobbi Brown product, but I got sucked into buyin it on sale earlier this fall.

Bobbi Brown metalic eye shadow in Java 23


Java 23 swatched


And what do I think of it, sad to say I'm a bit under-impressed... it's a bit duller and colour-less on my eyes than I thought it would be. Have to try it a bit better with a primer.


Another post to come soon, as I did some serious shopping in the states in November,
Ella