Beauty Blog Link Love

Lisamarie from Beauty Crazed thinks size does matter and tests out her theory with Maybelline Illegal Length Fiber Extensions Mascara - check out her results and see if you agree!

My Funny Valentine is proud to present...A vain person's guide to water sports: how to waterproof your makeup and deal with chlorine.

Nail bling strikes again! Musicalhouses shows you her silver and blue nail art with pearls and hearts!

At Lipstick Musings, Shannon embarks on her first-ever fragrance review with the all-natural artistry of Aftelier Perfume's Cepes and Tuberose.

With the BB cream craze in full swing, Rae takes a moment at theNotice to review (and swatch) the much-hyped Marcelle BB Cream. Find out it if this new wonder-product is all it's talked up to be!

New year calls for new product launches! Miss Beauty Nerd tests out Maybelline's newest - their SuperStay Lip Colors and EyeStudio Color Tattoos.

Beauty In The Mirror has been reviewing the very popular OCC Lip Tars. Pop over for some great pictures and advice.

Kajal Couture shares her tips on preventing eyeshadow fallout.

Prime Beauty is dreaming of spring with the Nordstrom Exclusive Dior Garden Party Milly Garden Clutch.

Looking for some double duty beauty products? Check out Krasey Beauty's recs!

Kimberly at Kimmie Karma Love shows her New Years Eve makeup and the day after pictures!

Phyrra presents a variety of lovely lipsticks and pigmented lipglosses from Morgana Cryptoria.

Tracy at Beauty Reflections has a new PRECIOUS called Guerlain Cruel Gardenia Meteorites.
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Join Anita in celebrating reaching 400 followers and win yourself a gorgeous Accessorize Eyeshadow Palette!

Review: Boots 17 Instant Glow Shimmer Brick

Boots 17 recently re-launched their bronzing products in swanky new packaging and with new items to boot. Amongst the re-launched bronzing powders there is a leopard print bronzer, bronzing rocks and shimmer bricks. Would anyone be interested in me doing a comparison post between my beloved Instant Glow Bronzing Powder in Light with the new launched one? Today, though, I'm reviewing the two new shimmer bricks.

If you would like to see what these look like on ma face, check out my Face of the Day post here to see me rocking the pink one :)

Gold Bronze

Pink Bronze

Each brick contains four stripes of shimmery powder and is £4.99 for 5.7g. The Gold one reminds me of Bobbi Brown Bronze Shimmer Brick and the Pink one reminds me of Bobbi Brown Pink Quartz Shimmer Brick. The Bobbi Brown products contain 5 stripes of colour and cost £30.50 for 10.3g of product. The finish of these 17 Bricks reminds me of MAC Mineralize Skinfinishes; they have the same kind of shimmers and pigmentation but aren't quite as smooth as some of MAC's recent releases.

Gold Bronze - Natural Light

The Gold Bronze shimmer brick contains a soft champagne, a golden sandy taupe, a rich coppery bronze and a deep rose bronze. The fifth swatch shows what the colour looks like when they're all blended together. Each shade is super pigmented and smooth. No chunks of glitter here.

The darker shades in the Gold Bronze shimmer brick are far too pigmented for me to be able to use on my face, I'd end up looking a bronzey shimmery mess. The two lightest shades mix to make a beautiful taupey highlight though. All four colours work well on the eyes and I didn't experience any creasing when I tried them out with my trusty Too Faced Shadow Insurance.

Pink Bronze - Natural Light

The Pink Bronze shimmer brick contains a silvery pink, a soft ballerina pink, a taupey pink and a pinky purple bronze. Again, the fifth swatch shows what the colour looks like when they're all blended together. Also, each shade is super pigmented and smooth. It's worth bearing in mind that the second shade has more of a satin finish; it certainly doesn't have the same level of shimmers as all the other shades in either shimmer brick. This makes it my favourite shade out of all of them lol!

Now these do say that they wash off, and they do easily rinse off with warm water, but I didn't notice them disappearing when I got caught in the rain. That is definitely something to bear in mind especially given the temperamental nature of the British weather!

I used a run of the mill flat shader brush to apply these to my eyes. To apply the pink colour to my cheekbones I found my Eco Tools Finishing Kabuki picked up the right amount of product without depositing too much glitter.

What do you make of these shimmery kinds of products?

Face of the Day: Peep Show Style!

As promised here is a Face of the Day using the Boots 17 Peep Show Eyeshadow Palette and Mascara I reviewed here.

Apologies but all the photos were taken in the evening. Basically Ant and I popped out to get a bite to eat and managed to shut our front door with the keys on the inside effectively locking us out. The key was in the back door too and our bathroom window is too small to climb through so we had to call out a locksmith. £120 down and three hours later we were back inside but unfortunately it was too dark to be able to take any decent photos without the use of flash. I did promise that I would put up a Face of the Day and I thought that some photos were better than no photos. Hope you don't mind :)

PRODUCTS USED:

FACE
Garnier Roll-on Anti-Dark Circles in Very Fair
Neutrogena Health Skin Liquid Makeup in Natural Ivory * (Review to come)
Boots 17 Blush in Damson Wine (Review to come)
Boots 17 Instant Glow Shimmer Brick in Pink Bronze - Used to highlight top of cheekbones, peak of brow and inner corner of eye (Review to come)

EYES
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Boots 17 Peep Show Eyeshadow Palette - Light pink on the lid, taupey gold on the outer corner, deeper cool toned brown in the crease (Review here)
L'Oreal Super Liner Carbon Gloss on top lashline
Boots 17 Peep Show Mascara in Black (Review here)
Boots 17 Photo Flawless Eye Pencil in Carbon Black/Blue on lower lashline (Review here)
BeneFit Browzings in Dark
Collection 2000 Colour Me Lash in Clear

LIPS
Too Faced Lip of Luxury in Free Love

Hope you liked this Face of the Day. Once again I'm sorry the photos weren't the best quality but they were the best I could do under the circumstances lol!

Can you guys tell I like Boots 17 products? ;)

* This was a gift from my friend Gina. You can check out our swap videos here and here

Nail of the Day: China Glaze Jolly Holly

Natural Light

Flash

China Glaze Jolly Holly from 'Tis The Season To Be Naughty And Nice Collection, Holiday 2010

Is that collection name the longest you've ever seen? It certainly is a mouthful!

Oh how I love this shade. It's the most perfect shimmery forest green I have ever had the pleasure of owning. Not only is it beautiful but the quality is superb too. Yes it is a "festive" polish but look how pretty it is!! I'm just pleased that I've finally found a green that doesn't make my hands look either super red or bright yellow!

I've been wanting Illamasqua Rampage for ages, mostly because MissChievous from Youtube has been wearing it a ton recently. That one is a jelly polish but is a similar colour to the China Glaze. Good enough for me, saves me some pennies :)

I did three coats, as always, but this could seriously be a one-coater. The first coat was slightly lighter than the shade above, the perfect Oz green in my opinion. Three coats just intensified the colour and depth of shimmer. One downside, of course, is this came out over a year ago and I'm not entirely sure of it's availability. Such a shame.

What's your favourite festive polish you gravitate towards year round?

Review: NYX Eyeshadow Singles

I bought the above NYX singles ages ago from Cherry Culture, back in September according to my order history lol! They are currently on sale (see here) for $3.99. Alternatively you can now buy NYX in the UK. They are available here for £4.50. For those of you going to IMATS on the 4th February in London, NYX have a stand so there may well be discounts on products there. I honestly can't remember if they were any deals or not last year :s

Any way, let's have a look at the colours I picked up :)

Gypsy

Gypsy is described as a Shimmer, a "sparkly eye shadow with soft glittery effect". As you can see in the photo aboved the eyeshadow is a deep red brown with gold glitters.

Root Beer

Root Beer is also described as a Shimmer. The sparkles in it aren't quite as noticeable as the ones in Gypsy but they are still there. It is a cool toned almost plummy taupe brown with silver micro shimmers.

Sparkle Cedar

Sparkle Cedar is a Metallic/Shimmer. It shares the same sparkles as the other two but is considered to be more "bold" and "intense" lol! It is a golden sandy beige with multi-coloured micro shimmers.

LEFT TO RIGHT:
GYPSY
ROOT BEER
SPARKLE CEDAR

I'd hoped that Gypsy would have been an inexpensive dupe of NARS Galapagos but I don't think it is. It seems too red toned on my skin, whereas when I've swatched Galapagos it just looked like straight up cocoa powder brown. NYX Gypsy is a lovely quality eyeshadow though. It is very smooth and soft, almost too soft in fact. It's very pigmented so a little goes a long way. Also, don't worry about the sparkles, they disappear before your brush gets anywhere near your eye!

Root Beer is considered to be a dupe of MAC Satin Taupe. In the pan, to me, Root Beer looks a hair darker. Swatched on the skin Satin Taupe has more of a metallic quality to it that the NYX shadow doesn't. Whilst the base colour of both shadows is extremely similar the metallic sheen definitely gives the MAC shadow that little extra something. Don't get me wrong, Root Beer is a fantastic eyeshadow, super blendable and very nice to use.

Sparkle Cedar is a lovely unique colour, almost an olive toned golden sand on the skin. My biggest problem with it is the fallout. It's lovely, you just have to make sure that you really push it onto the lid rather than sweeping it across.

Despite their few shortcomings these really are great inexpensive eyeshadows. The range of colours is amazing, check out this swatch post on Karla Sugar's awesome blog. I think I will definitely have a look and see if they have any other unique colours I can pick up, might even have to have a look at their other products while I'm at it ;)

Do you like NYX eyeshadow singles? If you do which are your favourite colours?