Crush Cosmetics Eyeshadow Review

Product: Eyeshadow samples

Where did I buy this? Crush Cosmetics: Beauty With an Edge (feedback: 1298 [100% positive])

Indoor light

Price: I bought five samples for $5.00. The product amount in the samples was very generous; I'd say almost 1/4 tsp. However, the smallest sample set they have on the site right now is 10 samples for $10.00, so I don't know if the 5 for $5.00 is still available. Full sizes are $8.50 to $8.85 for a 10-gram sifter jar (holds 2 to 3.5 grams depending on the volume of the product). Petite sizes are $5.50 to $5.85 to a 5-gram jar (holds 1 to 2 grams).
Shipping is  $1.75 for samples, which is true to USPS cost for a small padded mailer shipped within the United States. YMMV depending on what you buy.

Performance: Reading left to right and top to bottom in the photos (swatched over Fyrinnae PE), I got Crush, XOXO, Vintage, and Vixen. The pigmentation of these shadows is BUCK, my friends. However, xxx was pure shimmer, very little base color, but when I packed it on over Fyrinnae PE, my lids were slammin'. It's a great color for green/hazel green eyes. I would say that overall, the shimmer of these shadows is fairly medium level: Not too glaring but not near-matte either. The colors are super-saturated. There are some pale shades available, but mostly every color looks "rainbow-soaked." Although the colors are "glowy," there's not much creativeness to them (e.g., duochrome, contrasting-color sparkles).  However, for such saturated, pigmented product, I really don't care!

Natural light

Packaging: My samples were in the dreaded long zip-lock sample baggies (product gets all over the brush ferrule with these [obviously I prefer the short baggies]). I assume that the jars are your average sample jar :-)

If I lost, spilled, or broke this item, would I buy again? Probably not, but just because I already have so many other shadows. However, I will probably buy more samples to try more colors. There are many new colors that I'm eager to try :-)

Overall rating: 5 of 5 lippies! 

Psssst . . . . . Aromaleigh Videos of Lost in Faerie Revisited = Yum!

Believe it or not, this is my very first review having to do with Aromaleigh, which make most of my most beloved eyeshadows, the older of which many of which I am portioning off in my blog sale.

So, here is some Aromaleigh yumminess in the form of hi-res videos of the glimmering, shimmering sparkles in the new collection, Lost in Faerie (Revisited), which I happen to think is a brill marketing technique. I was not going to buy anything from the collections, and now I am. Presto! Chango!

There is a 25%-0ff sale on these colors on Aromaleigh Mineral Cosmetics site, and the sale ends Wednesday night a 11:59 p.m. PST. That give us East Coasters a little more time to plan a buy. Nevertheless, you might want to hurry up and order so you can get the shades you crave most!

Thanks to Aromaleigh for giving me permission to upload the URLs/videos. They should open for you in a new window when you click the URL. Written descriptions are from Aromaleigh. Do you see any favorites?

1. Odeane: Amazingly unique color! Chameleon-like . . . we can't tell if this color is golden, or pale blue, or pale green. It has golden shimmer and bright blue sparkles and changes in the light; it's a very delicate color.

2. Eolande: Beautiful purple with cobalt blue and russet sparks throughout.

3. Xantha: Beautiful buff coral frost with sparks of violet and gold. 

4. Raisie: Mid-tone lovely rose with mauve tones and loads of silvery sparkles. 

5. Tianna: Shimmering heathered lilac with grey tones and sparks of cobalt and fuchsia. 

6. Elfrydah: deep heathered russet with multicolor interference shimmer and bright sparks of rose and copper. 

7. Orlaith: Frosty rose copper with aurora borealis sparkles. 

8. Suelita: Pale rose with silver shimmer and copper sparks. 

9. Elvena: Muted cool green with silvery tones and bright gold sparkles.

10. Rhoswhen: Pale warm green frost with golden sparkles and shimmer. 

11. Sebille: Rich deep grape violet with brilliant sparkles of cobalt and sapphire. 

What shades do you like best?

Avon Dual-Ended Nail-Dotting Tool Plus Zoya Skye and Essie Blanc Nail Polishes

Products: Avon Dual-Ended Nail-Dotting Tool; Zoya Skye Nail Polish (OOP but available on eBay); and Essie Blanc Nail Polish.

Where did I buy this? The Avon dotting tool was from . . . Avon, LOL, and I got the Zoya Skye and Essie Blanc in separate Makeup Alley swaps.

Price: The Avon dotting tool was $1.99 (which might be a standard price; I don't know because I never actually went out and looked for this item), and both of the polishes were free (+ shipping, of course, for the swap items). However, Zoya Skye is OOP but can be had on eBay for $6.00 (see link above), and Essie Blanc can probably be bought from the Web site (see link above) or a CVS or Riteaid for about $8.00 or so.

Performance: Avon nail-dotting tool = This was the first time I've used any type of nail polish tool, and I thought my first try went very well albeit lame-o (you can see said lame-o results below):-) I've already stated my love/hate relationship with nail, polish, but lately I've been into doing my "nail," so for $1.99, I thought I'd give this a try. It has two ties: one with a teensy tip and the other with a larger tip. I used only the smaller tip. By the way, I have a super Avon representative who can be found here, and Avon usually has a lot of free-shipping specials. Zoya Skye = I used this for the base color. I'm nerdishly excited that I managed to get a perfect creme nail. I'm not a nude-nail chaser at all, but I thought this nude polish was pretty perfect with my skin tone. I''m cool-toned and pink-undertoned, so I didn't want anything that threw yellow on me, and this appears to be pretty neutral (although how do I really know since I haven't tried a lot of nudes?). I like it, but YMMV. Essie Blanc = If I'm scared of nail polish, I'm crap-my-pants terrified of pure white polish! I didn't have the guts to try this as the base coat, but I thought it would make a pretty summer nail over the Zoya Skye, so I dotted the Blanc over the Skye base. The results are lame but kin of cute-lame, LOL. However, now that I'm getting into shimmery/glittery top coats, I may give Essie Blanc a whirl as a base coat this summer. Don't let the blop of white toward one of the nail edges creep you out: It was my first time dotting!

Packaging: Avon dotting tool: standard plastic wrapping; Zoya Skye and Essie Blanc: standard bottles with standard brushes.

If I lost, spilled, or broke this item, would I buy again? Avon dotting tool: Yes; Zoya Skye: yes (assuming I could find it); Essie Blanc; no, but only because white polishes are ubiquitous :-)

Overall rating: 5 out of 5 lippies for each of them! 

Handmade Designer Soap From The Charming Frog

Product: Handmade designer soaps. Here's what it says on the home page: "I offer an array of handmade, artisan, designer, and sculpted soaps! I also offer salt scrubs, sugar scrubs, lip balms, bath fizzies, and room/body sprays. New designs are created monthly however, if YOU have a preference or want me to create a custom soap for you, please let me know and I would love to come up with a soap based off YOUR ideas, I can create soaps in any scent or color of your choice. Every soap has a destiny . . . to be used!" The home page says that the shop contains 281 items. That's a lot of soap!

Experience: I bought these as a gift, so I have not tried them (I don't use soap are anything with sodium laureth/laurel sulfate, but that's another post in itself), but I have not heard any complaints from the giftees :-) However, my experience with the seller was outstanding: the seller was courteous; the packaging was excellent; and the shipping was prompt. My impression when I opened the package was that these soaps were indeed worthy of gifting: They were beautiful and classy (see photos below) as well as lightly and elegantly scented (which I personally prefer [e.g., sage, lavender, nag champa, mandarin spice, white jasmine, etc.]).
Performance: Soapy, I assume, LOL.

Where did I buy this product? I bought these soaps at The Charming Frog on etsy.com.

Price: The soaps general range from $6.00 to $8.00 each with some price variation for larger-than-usual soaps.
Packaging: The package was extremely well-packed to protect the soap and was shipped promptly in time for gift-giving. I was a bit worried that some of the soaps might arrive "dinged," but everything was delivered in good order.

If I ran out of or lost this product , would I buy it again? As I said above, I don't use soap, but I would definitely buy more of these soaps to have on hand as "pop-up" gifts.
Overall rating: 5 of 5 lippies for beautiful and useful product, good customer service, creativity and crafting performance, and prompt shipping!

Contest at Dawn Eyes Cosmetics

There's a contest over at Dawn Eyes Cosmetics for a large new collection (10 new shades): Bluebells, Field of Dreams, Freesia, Leafheart, Magic Violet, Phlox, Pomegranate, Sugared Ginger, Sweet Pea, and Wisteria (shown in order below). Winner get 5 full-size jars and 5 samples of their choice from the collection. Just register on the Dawn Eyes Cosmetics blog here and write what name you would call this collection, which has a garden them. It ends tonight at midnight and needs four more entries [Dawn Eyes Cosmetics requires 10 entries for a contest to run] :-) Dawn Eyes Cosmetics eyeshadows are rich, lush, and beautiful!

NYX Cream Eyeshadow in Chocolate

Experience: I really like this NYX Cream Eyeshadow in Chocolate, but I did not like it in Copper at all. The Chocolate color is a deep, true neutral chocolate shade: Not too warm, not too cool. The finish is extremely metallic, which is why I like it so much :-) Even without flash/daylight, it looks very glowy. However, the Copper, for my fair skin tone, had too much red in it (it looked like it had pink undertones in the store). I'm already ruddy-skinned, so the red tones made that all the worse. I applied this over UDPP.

NYX Cream Eyeshadow in Chocolate (with flash)

Performance: I recently read a few reviews that said this product was hard to work with because it dried too fast to blend, and it flaked off the eyelids. Unfortunately, I didn't read the review closely enough to learn the skin type of the reviewers. I didn't have either of these problems, mainly because I don't blend, LOL, and I have well-behaving skin (not oily and not particularly overly dry). Sorry I can't tell you more on this particular subject.

However, I agree with the previous reviewers that there is a lot of product on the wand when you pull it out of the tube. I didn't have any problem with this: I just put a blop of the product on my lids and just mooshed it around for full coverage. However, it was a bit tricky to get good coverage near my lash line. That may be a result of the cream texture and my lack of skills/experience with applying cream eyeshadow. YMMV.

Just for a lark, I put on a swipe of Copper before I went to bed last night, I was that confident of the staying power. Well, it was still on the back of my hand, still perfectly pigmented, when I woke up this morning, and it didn't come off until I had washed my hands a couple times during the day. I may were this product while swimming and let you know how well it holds up to chlorinated water!

Where did I buy this product? I bought this item at Ulta.

Price: The tubes are $4.99 each, but I got them on a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale, so $7.50 for two tubes.

Packaging: Standard tube with doe-foot applicator.  

NYX Cream Eyeshadow in Chocolate (natural light, no flash)

If I ran out of or lost this product, would I buy it again? Yes, I would buy the Chocolat again: It truly is beautiful if you like a metallic finish. I would also try more colors when they go on sale again. The color range is fairly limited, I guess because it's a new product. However, it's worth tying and persisting in application because the pay-off is beautiful! I'd like to try the Pinky Beige color next, and I hope they come out with a medium violet shade. Both of the purples they have now are too dark/too bright for my taste.

Overall rating : 5 of 5 lippies [the traditional Makeup Alley manner of rating :-)] Have you tried any of these eyeshadows? If so, what was your experience? If not, will you try based on this review?

Psssst . . . LE Sugarpill Contest at Confessions of a Glitterholic!

Check out (and enter) this contest on Christina's blog, Confessions of a Glitterholic, to win a full-size jar of Sugarpill Chromalust eyeshadow in Asteria, a limited-edition color to be launched at the PHaMExpo this weekend :-) Here's more info from the Sugarpill Facebook page:

"Meet Asteria, a brilliant, metallic golden coral eyeshadow. This limited edition color (only 1,000 made!) launches at #PHAMExpo this weekend! Stop by the #Sugarpill booth and take Asteria home with you before she disappears. $12 gets you 5 grams of fun and that special feeling of knowing that only 999 other people got their hands on her! http://instagram.com/p/bFpj5lRRIO/."

And here's a photo of this yummy LE shade (again from the Sugarpill Facebook site):

Return of . . . THE NAIL!

 OK, here goes with the shorter review. PLMK how you like it, OK?

Background: Some of you might remember a post I wrote a while back about painting only one of my ten fingernails for various reasons, the main ones being (1) I don't have time to fuss with manicures because the nail polish chips within 12 hours; and (2) once it chips, in my mind it's ruined. So I do one perfect nail, and "wear" like a piece of jewelry. With lots of topcoat, it can last for up to two weeks with minimal wear. Here's a brief review on the items I used to create my textured "splatter" nail.

Product(s): One coats of  Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Nail Color in Pink Satin (actually a lavender shade), three coats of Sephora by OPI Nail Color in The Golden Age (large- and small-sized reflective gold and silver glitter), one coat of Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine no. 4600 (holographic silver glitter), and one coat of Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine no. 435G (tiny pink and red glitter).

Overall rating: Five lippies combined! Individually, I give the two Wet 'n' Wild topcoats each three lippies (not very good coverage alone), the Sephora by OPI topcoat four lippies (fair coverage in one or two coats), and the Sally Hansen polish five lippies (excellent coverage in just one coat!).

Where did I buy this? The Sally Hansen came from either CVS or Rite-Aid; the Wet 'n' Wild colors came from Giant Food Store; and the Sephora by OPI color came from . . . ummm . . . Sephora :-)

Price: From $2.00 to $4.00 each (I got the OPI color on clearance).

Packaging: Standard nail polish bottle for each brand (i.e., Wet 'n' Wild bottle is kind of square/rectangular; OPI bottle looks like a bullet, LOL; and the Sally Hansen bottle is a generic shape. The brushes were all OK, except the OPI and Sally Hansen brushes were the best.

If I lost, spilled, or broke this item(s), would I buy again? Actually, yes to all of them because I like how my nail came out! Plus the Sephora by OPI topcoat is very versatile!