Essie Sold Out Show #390 Nail Polish Review/ Swatch

Essie Sold Out Show (code #390) Nail Polish was definitely one of my earlier Essie polish purchases from a while. Using this I was definitely reminded when I first got into nailpolishes, I often felt the (older collections of) Essie formulation in sheer/ french shades were generally inferior to OPI in terms of colors and finishes.

However, Sold Out Show was a pretty decent one in terms of color and finish. It does has a stronger nailpolish smell that is slightly irritating for the nose, the smell has obviously improved over the years with Essie.

This is probably as good as I could capture the Sold Out Show shade. You can see in a predominantly ivory base (with a tiny hint of pink), there's this pearly/ opal glow. The glow is slightly lavender and slightly silvery. Very very subtle.

Here are many nail swatches- Sold Out Show is basically an ivory french color with a slight pink touch, but it is way more ivory than pink. The ivory is also a soft ivory, not a stark white base.  The finish is a sheer transparent pearl with an opal flash (which makes this a neutral or cool toned shade) that can be built up for more opacity, but never completely creme.

Here under a slightly different lighting it's clearly more ivory/white than pink.

Overall 4/5. It's a pleasant, safe ivory pearly shade with an opal flash. It is one of those 'clean' looking shades. However would require a good application of 2-3 coats to ensure no streakiness. Would like more opacity in this shade as a true ivory pearl with opal flash in more opacity would certainly be stunning.

I love french shades and pastel colors but would not say this is on my 'must have Essies' list.

Chanel Ombre Essentiel Soft Touch Eyeshadow 66 Candid / 69 Black Star swatch/ review

Chanel makes eyeshadow singles every now and then in their various makeup collections. Personally I much prefer their quads since the single eyeshadows cost an arm and a leg anyway.

Here's #66 Candid and #69 Black Star, both are limited editions.

#66 Candid looks like a soft velvet pale beige with a pink tint, I thought it would make a wonderful eyeshadow base shade. It has very very fine shimmers close up. however on hands it shows as just a sheer powdery pale pink beige.

 #69 Black Star looks like a shimmering charcoal greyed-black in the pan, thus I was rather excited about this shade:

#66 Candid swatch:

 (yes it barely shows...) On my eyelid it's not enough to create a perfect canvas as I do have some pigmentation.

#66 and #69 swatch

You can see black star does apply shimmery, but not as intense as it looks in the pan, and the color is still sheer. Overall 2/5, a bit disappointed with the quality paritcularly given the prices Chanel charges.

MAC Undercurrent Pearlglide Intense Eyeliner

MAC Pearlglide eyeliners are shimmering eyeliners with a medium tip, it's hard to do a fine line with these, but they are richly pigmented and shimmery, which is refreshing as a lot of so called shimmery eyeliners often barely shows any shimmers once on the eye.

Undercurrent is a rich forest green with shimmers, very gorgeous. The pearlglide eyeliners apply without much tugging, I do find depending on the weather they can sometimes be a bit soft and crumbs on my eyelashes, which is a bit hard to clean and affects my mascara application.

Overall 4/5. Wish the consistency would lead to less crumbiliness.

Fasio Point Make-up Remover with white lily extract review

Fasio Point Make-up remover is in a 100ml, silver capped blue bottle. It's a 'point' makeup remover which in the terminology of Japanese brands means point makeup (as opposed to base makeup like foundations), which generally means eyes and lip makeup.

Fasio is a drugstore brand, this probably retails for below 10USD. Very cheap, very effective.

Comes in a pour out cap:

The instruction says apply the remover on a cotton swab or cotton pad, then gently press against the eye, wait a few seconds, then gently wipe off your eye makeup.

Here's what it looks like on the cotton, it's a cloudy thickish liquid consistency (without being a gel).

Here's my test swatch of MAC black swan liner on top, and Shu uemura shimmer eyeliner in black on the bottom. Both have shimmers so we can test to see how Fasio performs with eyeliners which tend to leave shimmer particles behind when removing your eye makeup:

Wiped over skin without too much effort:

Here- clean skin afterwards. I didn't recleanse with soap cleanser or anything. Just rinsed with water and pat dry.

As with most eye makeup removers, it's best to put enough on the cotton pad (but without being dripping wet otherwise the makeup remover gets into your eye easily), the trick is to let the remover work its magic by being pressed against the eye to allow it to melt away the eyemakeup first. Then swipe.

If you apply, swipe straightaway, you will have to go back and reswipe a few times to get everything off, which is always bad when you have to tug the delicate skin around the eye.

Overall 5/5. I'm on my 3rd bottle over the last 3 or 4 years. I think lancome Bifacil is better (but cost a few times more than this obviously. However this works wonders with most Japanese mascara (can be quite stubborn to remove) and general eyeliner or makeup.

I always double cleanse with soup to get any last residue off.

This can make your eye a little bit cloudy if the liquid gets in, but generally I've never found it to irritate my eyes.