Plenty muchos NYX haulage (part 3)

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I love buying make-up. Especially when you buy it from NYX – although there are a few products that, after purchase, make you question your own sanity, the vast majority of the ranges are both of decent quality and also at fantastic prices. I would NEVER buy any other “drugstore” lipgloss – for the superb level of quality you get, why would you? To be honest, I’ve got a couple of Chanel Lip Glossimers and the NYX ones are even on a par with those – amazeballs.

Moving on to the rest of my purchases, firstly the eyeshadows.

Wow.

Just……. Wow.

I bought these eyeshadows in the sale, so paid the princely sum of £3.00 each. To be honest, even at the full price of a fiver, these are an ABSOLUTE STEAL.

I bought four – kicking myself slightly now though, for that price I SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT THEM ALL – the complexity of shimmer in the four that I bought is phenomenal! No disco glitterballs here (although some of the NYX eyeshadow finishes can be like that), these ones lend a moderate twinkle on the eye under certain lightings which adds a fantastic depth – which means on those lazy days when you just frankly can’t be bothered to spend five minutes blending two colours together, a quick 30 second application to the eyelids makes you seem as though you spent hours on your look.

The shades I went for are below:

L-R: Eucalyptus, Herb, Dune, Burgundy Pearl

Eucalyptus is a shimmering, light tauped-silver (I think I’ve in love!). Herb is a twinkly dirty olive. Dune is a charcoaled dark silver, also with shimmer. I did suffer with a little bit of fallout with this one, but nothing a primer wouldn't fix easily. Burgundy Pearl is a medium-dark muted maroon with distinctly cool undertones, which suits my cool-blue eyes perfectly.

Eucalyptus makes a great “wash-of-colour-when-I-can’t-be-arsed-in-the-morning” for daytime, as does Herb (although Herb is slightly more dramatic due to the darker tone). Herb also seems to also be a great pairing with a little bit of Burgundy Pearl in the crease – I didn’t think it would work as I thought the colours would just blend together and go “muddy”, but with a little care and attention you can keep them discrete and it makes a great alternative daytime smoky eye.

And finally, I also went for a couple of blushers. Now, I already own three of the powder blushers and already know that they are premium quality with a tiny pricetag. 

The one I added to my small collection was Angel – a light coral-peach with neutral to cool tones, which is non-overpowering to my fair complexion, so is lovely to couple with either bright lip or smoky eye for an effortlessly natural look – this one seems to be impossible to over apply, which is great for those of us (like me) who tend to be a bit hamfisted when tired in the mornings……!

I also decided to try out one of the Cream Blushes for the first time – especially with dry skin, sometimes powder blushers can creep into fine lines and pores and look a bit weird, and I am reliably informed that using cream formulations take the edge off a bit.

CB02 (Natural) is a slightly darker coral peach than Angel, with more neutral-warm undertones in the pan – on me, this actually leans quite warm on the cheek and gives me a slightly porcelain doll-like look – great if the eye and lip is natural/neutral looking, but can be clown-like unless you use a careful, light hand. I tend to just lightly dip my middle two fingers into the pot, pat onto the back of my hand first then apply with light patting motions to the apples and bones of the cheeks. Less is definitely more, here – you can add morem but it is difficult to take excess away. Although if you owned a Beauty Blender I suppose that would help you to blend away any “mistakes”. 

Left: Powder blush in "Angel        Right: Cream Blush in "Natural

Angel; Natural (note, these swatches are super-mega-heavy so you can see the true colour)

I definitely like the look of the Rose Petal and Tickled cream blushers, so I feel another purchase coming on pretty soon……..

Pick yours up at NYX Cosmetics. The sale continues, with cut-price bargains as well as a 3-for-2 offer on certain ranges. Plenty of bang for your buck.......!

Jen

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Plenty muchos NYX haulage (part 2)

Right then, as promised - let's get busy with the swatchy.

Now I've had more chance to play with the lip liners, it's not quite as bad as it could have been. I bought three colours; Citrine, Rose, and Cabaret.

L-R: Citrine, Rose, Cabaret

Citrine is a muted rosy plum with a hint of shimmer. As is typical of the NYX lipliners I already own, the shimmer means for better slip (and therefore makes me less inclined to feel the need to tear my lips off my face in a fit of scabby, itchy, moisture-sapped rage). But you definitely pay for it in longevity - but to be honest, I'd rather have to reapply something that doesn't give me the rage, than have a lip product last for ages but be perpetually irritating.

Rose is frankly AWFUL. Not just the colour (a lightened, milky, Barbie pink), which is terrible (on me anyway), but the intense matte-ness to the finish made it actually painful to apply. This would need lashings of lipbalm underneath, which kind of defeats the object I think. 1/10, and only because it was so bloody cheap.

Cabaret is one of those potentially hit-or-miss shades which I think will actually work out ok for me - it's a slightly darker version of Deep Red (which I already own, swatched here), and is also matte and therefore quite painful to apply, but not as bad as Rose - and because of the colour I would be more willing to work a bit harder for this one. The only other problem is that the colour isn't very forgiving on application (as you can see in the lip swatches below - it's like I'm back at primary school learning how to "colour in the lines").

Bare lips, for reference

Citrine

Cabaret

Rose

Finally, the lipgloss. This is one of NYX's Megashine Lipglosses, which is my favourite gloss formulation bar none. And now, imaghine my delight to find my favourite lipgloss colour in my favourite formulation. The gods of lipgloss were smiling on me when I added this to my shopping basket entirely in error (I actually wanted a pink one, thank god that didn't happen)......... MUST BUY SEVEN BACKUPS IN CASE OF ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Megashine Lipgloss in 143 - Plum

My husband (not pictured, obvs) photobombed this picture when I took it, hence the smirk

This is a beautiful muted rosy-plum, which would actually look pretty good layered over the Citrine lipliner, now I come to think about it. The formula is completely non-sticky, has decent lasting power of around 1 hour (which is pretty damn good on me, inveterate tea-drinker that I am), but to be honest it's easy and fulfilling to reapply anyway. It also doesn’t seem to go gloopy in tube after a month (unlike MAC's infinitely more expensive Dazzleglasses, the barstewards).

Think that's all for now, folks - eyeshadows and blushers next.

In the meantime, here's the full version of the photobombed lip swatch photo........

Jen

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Plenty muchos NYX HAULAGE (part 1)

I love getting unexpected little brown parcels through the post - I really do. It invariably means I've been sleep-shopping, or someone has had a Super-Duper -Mega-Sale-Never-Shall-We-See-Its-Like-Again and the "sale mist" has descended, sending me into a frenzy of credit-card maxing and frantic website clicking until I have to recline on the sofa, exhausted. 

This time round, it was the latter - and the website in question was NYX Cosmetics.

I am a great fan of this brand, god knows. How they manage to make such fantastic quality products for so little money is frankly boggling. Don't get me wrong, they have also make some corking mistakes on occasion, but generally I find that the majority of products I try are keepers.

This time, I tried to temper myself and self-restricted to purchasing stuff I genuinely have had my eye on for a while. I work on the premise that one can never have too many eyeshadows, and I think in purchasing these four babies, I've hit the jackpot. The colours are fabulous, and also work effortlessly together (which was definitely more luck than judgement). 

The blushers are of a similarly high quality, as is the lipgloss - ah! such a fantastic formula! - so the only thing that let me down really were the lipliners.

I have bemoaned about lipliners before, but one out of the three pictured below is definitely not going to work for me, either in colour or in formula. The other two aren't bad though, so to only have one bad egg amongst the group (which to be honest is probably more the fault of my scabby lips than the product itself) is a pretty decent proportion, methinks.

More posts coming soon to go through the products in detail....... first stop, lip products!

Jen
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