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.

OPI I Only Drink Champagne B64 Nail Lacquer Polish swatch/review

OPI I only Drink Chamapgne, color code B64 (from night brights collection) is a light frosty champagne, it's a very pale champagne and not quite dark engouh to call it beige.

Here it is with 1 coats on the nails on top of a very sheer ivory shade. It applies very fine so when you look closely it's pearly but from a distance and a few more coats it will be a frost finish.

Personally I'm not a fan of any frost finish but this is quite understated and pretty.

Overall 4/5.

Canus Goat's Milk Lip Balm review

Canus is a brand that has picked up a certain popularity in Taiwan with their signature 'goat's milk' based products, from body moisturisers and other body care mostly, then I've also read good things about the lip balm.  It retails for about $4USD or so in Taiwan, very cheap.

Comes in a standard lipbalm tube 4.25g size.

The balm is visibly a waxy and harder consistency.

Ingredient list:

Here's the swatch on the skin- you can see it leaves a thin film. I honestly hated this lipbalm because it's spearmint scented! (not a fan of spearmint at all). Smells just like wrigley's spearmint gum or something. Not to mention the consistency is a bit thin and while it feels slightly cooling on the lips because of the mint, with my sensitive lips it actually irritates it.  For the time it did stay on my lip, it offers literally no moisturising property for my chapped lips.

Probably the first time in a while I've just literally tossed a lipbalm after a few uses!

Overall 1/5. Definitely not in my like list.

MAC Shy Angel Sheertone Shimmer Blush review/ swatch

MAC Shy Angel Sheertone Shimmer blush is a pale baby pink sheer shimmer, there is a base color to it (as opposed to just straight shimmers), the base color is a soft pale pink in the same color as the shimmers.

I don't think this will show up as much pale pink once on the skin unless for super pale girls- but I think this is intended to be layered on top of other blushes to give it dewy finish.

The shimmer is fairly subtle, does not scream glitter or visible shimmer. This also doubles as a highlighter or eyeshadow (doesn't say if it's eyesafe or not but I suppose a bit on the browbone won't hurt).




I purposedly swatched it against other MAC sheertone shimmer blush (in Dollymix) so you can see the difference in color vs shimmeryness. I find the level of shimmer is fairly consistent between sheertone shimmer blushes.

Here it is compared against just normal sheertone blushes. you can see from a distance the shimmer is pretty sutble:

 

Overall 4/5. A decent highlighter, but again, easily dupable in most other drugstore brands nowadays.

MAC Peachyness/ Blushbaby Sheertone blush Duo swatch/review

The top color is peachiness (lighter shade) and bottom color (darker shade) is Blushbaby. They are both sheertone blushes which means they are velvet matte finish.

 Swatches: I swatched peachiness a bit heavily , it's a nude peach (looks fairly baby peach in the pan but turns a bit more dusty when swatched, I wonder if it's because some of the powder from Blushbaby side is on the peachiness pan).
Blushbaby is a mauve dusty rose. It reminds me a lot of Coygirl:

Here's the swatch of blushbaby against Coygirl: Coygirl has more rose pink tone to it.

Here's Coygirl on the left, the Blushbaby pan on the right:

Overall 3.5/5. Again, sheertone blushes are comparatively weak compared to most new blushes released by MAC nowadays. There's also the issue of a lot of color seems to be a bit dull looking once swatched, even though looking quite different in the pan.

MAC Coygirl Sheertone Blush swatch/ review

MAC Coygirl Sheertone blush is a dusty mauve pink, it's rather cool toned, and sort of velvet matte. The powder is relatively finely milled, however as with all makeups go, the newer generation they are, the better they often are too, so the consistency of the newer MAC blushes would easily surpass this.

I would say it's best suited for pale girls, as the dustyness or mauve can look a bit weird on sallow or yellowtoned skin. Just looks a little bit dirty?. However on pale skin with a good canvas of foundation and powder to prep, this looks really pretty and naturally rosy for pale skinned girls.

 

Overall 3.5/5. Again, probably easily duped from other makeup brands now, and there are definitely better mauves or cool pinks out there than this.

MAC Dollymix Sheertone Shimmer Blush review/ swatch

I know I'm probably behind the bandwagon a bit, but sorting through some earlier photos and trying to at least review or swatch most of my MAC blushes.

Dollymix is a brightened vibrant pink, it's not quite fuschia but a few tones brighter it would be a hot pink.

Here are the swatches, applied lightly and more heavily. On the skin it's a wash of slightly shimmery strawberry pink. Quite pretty.  I do wish the consistency was a bit better, I'm not sure why but the surface of MAC blushes tend to go a bit funny or crumbly looking after a while (despite I always use a clean blush brush on any makeup).

Overall 3.5/5. I have to say it's not too exciting to be tracked down. Many drugstore brands nowadays would do a bright pink that easily duplicates this.

Stila Eyeshadow Palette (Moonlight, Twilight, Kitten, Wheat, Oasis, Sun) swatch/review

Stila Eyeshadows are buttery soft, shimmery and top quality (back in the days before it got bought by Estee Lauder group at least).

This is one of the palettes that features Stila's most famous eyeshadows from the neutral family.

Swatches below under different lights, swatch from left to right are:

Sun, Oasis, Wheat, Kitten, Twilight and Moonlight:

Under warmer lights in reverse order:
Moonlight, twilight, kitten, wheat, oasis and Sun:


Moonlight is a shimmery white, twilight is a greyed blue, kitten is a shimmery (almost metallic) warm beige, wheat is just a tinge more brown than Kitten and not as metallic, Oasis is lighter than kitten by a touch but a bit more beige and less brown, Sun is a more bronze orange metallic.

Overall 5/5. The palette can be a bit too shimmery and metallic for some, but I like using just a few shades from this palette for a shimmery neutral eye look.

Sofina Aube Nail Lacquer Polish RS207 swatch / review

Honestly this is a short review because this is probably one of the crappiest formulation polish I've used from a Japanese line. Sofina Aube is now discontinued and I don't think they've brought in any nail polish range for the Aube Couture line. This is probably why.

The Sofina polishes are very thin and gluggy at the same time- thin being the consistency while gluggy being how it goes on the nails, it just drags and applies unevenly. This was done after at least several reapplications on a few nails to make it look neat.

RS207 is a standard medium rose pink, has some pearly shimmers. There's nothing much more I could say about the color because it looks rather plain in real life (and better in photos by the look of it).

Applied 2 coats and because of the uneven consistency, still not quite opaque.

Overall 1/5.