Madd Style Cosmetics: Golden Mint Chocolate Tutorial

After receiving the Emerald City grab bag, I felt compelled to use Wishes & Wonders! I've had this crazy obsession with the color 'mint' lately and this eyeshadow did. not. disappoint. I also had the urge to do something a little different and decided it was time to try and incorporate gold into my look. When I was done 'playing' I realized that these colors kind of remind me of the different colors in my own eyes! ha ha

Products used for this look:

Top left: Stila smudge stick waterproof eye liner in "stargazer", theBalm What's Your Type? mascara in "the body builder",

Tick:Tock Infinity Eye Shadow Base in "Milky Way", Too Faced Shadow Insurance Anti-Crease Eye Shadow Primer, 

and NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in "Pure Gold"

Bottom left: bdellium tools brushes #781, #777, #716, and #760

Top &bottom right: Madd Style Cosmetics eyeshadow pigments in: 

Wishes & Wonders, Chocomint Robot, Birf'day Suit, & Honey Badger

Start off by applying your preferred eye shadow primer and base! :)

Grab your eye shadow brush and pat 'Wishes & Wonders' all over your lid. Use a lighter hand toward the inner and outer corners of your eye, and lightly blend up into your crease.

Using the outer corner of your lower lash line as a guide for the angle/placement - very lightly apply 'Chocomint Robot' to the outer corner of your eye up into the crease. 

To soften and blend (if you prefer), go in with a shade that matches your skin tone. In my case, I grabbed 'Birf'day Suit' and blended out the edges of 'Chocomint Robot'.

Your last step(s) is/are all about eye liner (and don't forget the mascara)! I used my NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in 'Pure Gold' on my waterline to give 'Honey Badger' a little something to adhere to. I also applied 'Honey Badger' to the inner corner of my eye and finished up by adding Stila smudge stick in 'stargazer'. :)

Thanks for viewing! :)

Ipsy: March Glam Bag

A hot pink bubble mailer showed up in my mailbox yesterday...! The "Great Escape" themed Ipsy bag for March! :)

Pictured:

Glam RX - Mini Freestyle Palette

Yaby - eyeshadow refill in 'Seashell'

Yaby - eyeshadow refill in 'Azalea Petal'

LA Fresh - Travel-Lite Makeup Remover 8ct

Juice Beauty - Hydrating Mist

Lets just dive right in!

Glam RX - Mini Freestyle Palette

From my understanding this mini freestyle palette was made exclusively for our glam bags this month. They are normally sold as a touch up palette (with a top compartment containing: shine eraser, eyeliner, concealer, and lip balm). The touch up palette can be purchased here and retails for $16.50.

Other than that - this cute little magnetic palette is about the same as their touch up palette. It is the size of a credit card (just thicker) and opens up like a book. A magnetic closure makes it easy to open and close, and it also has a nice little mirror on the inside of the cover. :)

The top left photo shows the cover, while the photo on the right shows what it looks like when open (and empty!). The photo on the bottom left will hopefully give you a better idea of how tiny this palette is - pictured inside the palette are my two yaby eyeshadows (15.5mm pan size) next to my Mirabella eyeshadow from a previous glam bag (26mm pan size). Click to enlarge the photo. :)

Yaby - eyeshadow refills in 'Azalea Petal' & 'Seashell'

Yaby eyeshadow refills retail for $3.15 and can be purchased here. However, since Yaby is a Canadian based company you may want to check out the selection carried by Camera Ready Cosmetics here. ;)

My favorite part about this company is that they are vegan friendly and cruelty-free. I also found the eyeshadows to be quite pigmented and easy to work with. The colors I received would not have been my first choice but they are quite lovely all the same :) Browsing their website, the first thing that caught my eye was packaging. Almost all of their products are sold as refills! This not only keeps the cost down, but makes everything less bulky and easier to store and use on the go. Not to mention if you were to ever hit pan on a product - you can easily clean and reuse for mixing. ;)

The top left photo shows the convenient labeling on the bottom of the eyeshadows as well as the clam shell container they arrived in which kept them nice and safe. Bottom left is a size comparison between a MAC eyeshadow refill (26mm) and the Yaby eyeshadow refill (15.5mm). The Yaby refill pans are slightly taller (but smaller) whereas the MAC pans are shorter and wider - if that makes sense? ha ha

Top right is a close-up of Azalea Petal and Seashell, and bottom right is the swatch I did over NYX JEP in 'Milk'!

LA Fresh - Travel-Lite Makeup Remover Wipes (8ct)

LA Fresh travel friendly makeup wipes typically retail for $1.99 each and can be purchased from their website here. I love that these come in a resealable package.. and, well, let's face it - this little 8ct package is 100 X better than the single use packet I received in a previous Birchbox! ha ha

Looking forward to trying these out and I love that they carry a variety of products - from nail polish remover wipes, antibacterial wipes, shoe shine wipes, etc.. they basically have it all covered! Impressive!

Juice Beauty - Hydrating Mist

We received a deluxe sized sample (1 fl oz/30ml). A full size (6.75 fl oz/200ml) retails for $22 and can be purchased here. (1/6.75 * 22 = $3.26)

Pretty excited to try out another Juice Beauty product! Though I have to say.. I'm not quite sure how I feel about a toner in spray form just yet ;) I'm not at all bothered by the scent and actually find it to be refreshing, light, and more 'natural' rather than perfume-y! Whew!

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the bag this month &I'm enjoying all of the products we received. There was a different eyeshadow variation ('So Vein' & 'Sand Dune') that was sent out as well - I honestly wish I had received that combo instead. But, I love the colors I received regardless - heck, I love all the colors! I'm not hard to please and I totally hoard them all..! (... it's my weakness.. gotta catch 'em all..)...errr, I mean.. anyway!

I've seen others mention it and I think that this bag is lacking in comparison to previous months.. Everything seems so much smaller than usual? Not as many samples? I can't quite put my finger on it.. But I hope it won't be a reoccurring theme. I have a hard time complaining because quite frankly all of these products are multi-use and at least we aren't getting foil packets. I seriously am not missing foil packets at all..

The bag itself has the most amazing print and I adore it nonetheless, but the material used is really thin and.. cheap feeling? I can't even describe it! I'm just hoping I can make it last a while. Nautical designs get me every time. <3

(in case you couldn't see it very well up there)

Updated to add my 'look' using the eyeshadow colors I received! :)

This is Seashell (inner corner/highlight) & Azalea Petal (on the lid). 

I used my Stila smudge stick in 'Oscar Fish' for my liner, 

& Stila kajal eye liner in 'Pearl' on my waterline. 

Mascara is theBalm What's Your Type? "the body builder" :)

Thanks everyone! <3 <3

FTC: This subscription is paid for by myself/by my boyfriend. I am not being compensated to write this post, these are my honest opinions on the products and company. All photos of products and swatches were taken by me in natural lighting, and are unaltered aside from cropping/collaging!

Coastal Scents: Haul + Hot Pot Swatches

This is a post I've been unintentionally slacking on (quite majorly)! I've been wanting to share my Coastal Scents haul of goodies that I purchased during their Black Friday sale. Yep.. you read that right! During their Black Friday sale.. oops. ;)

I actually stumbled upon a LivingSocial* deal (back in October) for a Coastal Scents voucher. The deal was $12 for a $25 voucher to use on the Coastal Scents website. At the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to use it for.. but I had a few items in mind that I had been wanting to purchase. It was a good deal so I figured.. why not!? And then I got wind of their Black Friday sale (every year, they have had a 50% off sale - entire site marked down!)..... I knew what I was saving my voucher for!
*LivingSocial is a daily deal site much like Groupon! But, my favorite part about LivingSocial.. If you purchase a deal and then share that deal with your friends - if at least three of them decide to purchase the same deal, using your share link, you get yours for free! They can also share after their purchase and get three more friends to buy to get their deal for free, too! ;)
If you are interested in checking out LivingSocial/signing up - you can use my referral link if you like and LivingSocial will set you up with 5 'Deal Bucks' to get you started!

I had been anticipating the sale and so I was a bit ahead of the game by making my 'wishlist' (or rather.. 'plan to purchase' list) ahead of time. While I was adding things to my little virtual shopping cart (Thursday night), I noticed that they had already marked everything down to 50% off before making the big announcement. I didn't waste any time - I got my order in quite a bit early. ;) I had absolutely no issues with using my voucher toward my purchase (it acted as a coupon code, no code was needed during the 50% off sale = score!). Shipping was a  bit high for me but it was totally worth it! I know many people dealt with delayed orders/shipping because of how big the sale was - so I consider myself extremely lucky to have placed my order when I did. I only had to wait a week for it to arrive!

So...I wonder what this could be? ;) ...

The box was insanely bright! &Everything arrived safely bubble wrapped together 

and secured by tons and tons of tissue paper. :)

Here it is!:

Pictured: CS Winterberry Palette, CS Creative Me #1 Palette, CS Empty Magnetic Palette,

12 Hot Pots eyeshadows, two African Black Soap samples.

I made my own 'custom' palette by ordering an empty magnetic palette (retails for $5.95) and picked out 12 Hot Pot eyeshadows (retails for $1.99 each) to fill it with. The other two palettes had quite a bit of the colors I already wanted and it was much cheaper to purchase them in the pre-made palettes. :)

The palettes are pretty small and compact - when open, the entire top of the palette is a mirror &the bottom holds the eyeshadow pans magnetically. There is a small indention which makes it easy to lift out the eyeshadow pan if you ever decide you want to switch them up/rearrange them! The only thing that bothers me about the palettes is that the pans move around easily (I noticed this quite a bit when I was in the middle of doing swatches). Now on to the swatches!

I added in the text for the names of each color (and the previous number they went by before they were named).  As always, swatches are done over NYX JEP in Milk and are photographed in natural lighting. :)

Winterberry palette &swatches:

Creative Me #1 palette &swatches:

(Holy brights, batman!) I have to warn you, these colors have some staining power!
(Neon Red, Neon Bright Pink, Deep Grape, Magenta &Indigo leave a tint of pink behind).

'Teal Green' is just barely lighter than 'Shamrock Green' - also

'Teal Green' has a hint more blue, 'Shamrock Green' has a hint more green! 

Both photographed more blue, but in the eyeshadow pan (in person) they appear more green. 

Once again, 'Teal Green' & 'Shamrock Green' photographed much too blue. :( 

In person, these are much more on the green side and not cyan/blue.

Also - 'Indigo' is a beautiful blurple and photographed a tiny bit more blue.

My 'custom' palette &swatches:

Hot Pots in: Bombay, Light Slate, Empress Teal, Virbrant Blue Green,

Periwinkle (M11), Thistle Lavender (M15), Vibrant Plum, Profound Plum,

Bronze Peach (B03), Fine Wine, Light Taupe (M16), Timeless Taupe

Coastal Scents eyeshadows are pretty fantastic (especially for the price point)! I've never had any problems with application - as long as I use a good eye shadow primer and base (for them to stick/adhere to), these work very well for me. Some of these shades are meant to be more 'sheer' but all of them are really easy to build up. :)

I hope this post will be helpful, thanks for looking/reading! <3 <3

FTC: These items were paid for by myself/by my boyfriend. I am not being compensated to write this post, these are my honest opinions on the products and company. All photos were taken by me in natural lighting, &are unaltered aside from cropping/collaging!