Product Rave: Majolica Majorca Lash Enamel Glamour Volume On

My blogging has been really slowing down recently, and I am sorry for that. In the midst of moving and starting school, I haven't had much time to think about blog posts, and with my makeup packed and scattered, I've had little inspiration. 

One thing I can comment about is a new mascara that I bought while I was in Hong Kong, the lash enamel glamour volume on by Majolica Majorca. Besides having the longest name ever, this is probably the best mascara that I have ever tried. Before this, L'oreal voluminous was my favorite mascara, and I still love it, but I think this one is just a little bit better. 

On me it gives a similar effect that the L'oreal Voluminous does, which you would never guess by looking at the flat, plastic wand. The side with the denser bristles separates amazingly and the sparser side thickens and volumizes. I tend to alternate between the two sides until I get the look I am going for. The best thing about this mascara is that it holds a curl like no other mascara I have ever tried. It is one of those mascaras that does it all - volumizes, lengthens, separates, and curls. 

It is also waterproof, which means it requires some work to take off, but it's not impossible and for the results that it gives I can deal with it. 

Here's a not so great picture of it on me:

The wand makes it really easy to build up the product at the root of the lashes making it look like your have eyeliner on without any harsh lines. 

Majolica Majorca is a brand owned by Shiseido, and I'm not sure where to buy it in the US, but it looks like I will have to resort to ebay or some other website if I want to repurchase this in the future. 

If you ever get a chance to pick this up, do it! It really is amazing. 

~Vida

An Unlikely Pair

My skin has been going nuts recently and so I've laid off the face makeup while it recovers. But that doesn't stop me from playing with my eye makeup...

As I've mentioned before I really like the Covergirl quad, urban basics, especially the light lavender color. I have been trying to find different ways to wear it, and today while going through my makeup, I randomly decided to pair it with club by MAC to see how it would look. Surprisingly this green-y brown eye shadow blended in really well with the lavender and it turned into a deep purple while still maintaining its signature murky brown look - a pleasant surprise, and one that makes for a really dimensional smokey lavender eye.

I swiped the lavender shade all over my lid. To get the most color out of this eye shadow I put it over MAC's painterly paint pot and ditched my usual MAC 239 brush for a fatter and denser one by Essence of Beauty. 

For club I used a "pencil" type brush from Confidential so that I could be more precise about where I placed the color. It made it a lot easier to define my crease since I have such small eyelids, and draw out the elongated shape that I wanted.

I did a thin line of Maybelline's lasting drama gel eyeliner on my upper lashline and one coat of Rimmel's lash accelerator mascara. 

I also added a pale gold eyeliner (smashbox 14K) on my lower lashes for good measure. 

This looks really good with a peachy nude lipstick like Revlon's soft nude, but then again, so does everything. 

{conveniently covering up the worst parts of my skin}

I'm glad I found this amazing combo and another reason to love club eyeshadow =)

~Vida

Covergirl Eye Enhancers

I recently found these when I went on what started as a drugstore run for some top coat. I don't know what attracted me to them because in the past I haven't really liked any of the Covergirl cosmetics nor do I usually pick up eye shadows from the drugstore. I'm glad I did though because I ended up loving them so much. There were a few sets in the collection that seemed really unwearable or not my style, but I would say the majority of them were very tempting. I had trouble picking out just two and I am hoping to get more in the future. The two that I picked out are urban basics and shimmering sands.

Shimmering sands is a beautiful neutral trio. The shades include a chocolatey taupe, a greyish gold taupe, and a light frosty pink - all of which contain shimmer. I love all these shades, they are super wearable, but are still interesting and have a lot of dimension.

Urban basics is probably my favorite out of the two, mostly because of the pale lavender color on the left. It is such a pretty matte shade, one that I have been looking for in more high end brands and I am so happy to have found it in this 6 dollar quad. To me, it is a very spring/summer shade and is surprisingly wearable/flattering. The other shades include a shimmery taupe, which is very similar to Urban Decays' sidecar, a super glittery light pink (boo), and a shimmery off-white color.

The first two shades in this quad make it so worth it, even with the two rather crappy highlight shades in it.
All of these eye shadows are soft, pigmented, and last all day with a good primer on underneath. The cheap plastic packaging is disappointing, but doesn't take away from how beautiful these shadows are!


I am surprised at how much I like them, and I would really recommend anyone to check out the other colors and get one, especially because they are currently buy 1 get 1 50% off at CVS!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed,

~Vida

Second Chances: Eyeko Graffiti Eyeliner Pen

There are some things in my makeup collection that I fell in love with immediately and have been loving ever since, some that I hated as soon as they touched my face, and then there are others that I tried on, shrugged, and put aside rarely picking them up again afterwards. 

These are the products that I have casted off because they weren't particularly special to me or they just didn't meet my expectations. They are by no means bad products, and I hate to have things going to waste in my collection, so I decided to go through them, try them out again, and see whether I really hate the product and should give it away or if I could start using it more regularly. 

One of the products on the list is the Eyeko Graffiti Eyeliner Pen in navy. 

Anything that is readily available only in the UK is highly covetable to me, hence why I jumped on this when I saw it online at Urban Outfitters. However, the first few times I used it, I found that it was hard to get a pigmented line on my eyes and it took me forever to put on, even though it swatched beautifully on my hand.

When I tried it again today, it also came out amazingly when I swatched it, but I still found that it was a little hard to put on - maybe I just suck at felt tip liners? Nevertheless, this dries to a completely ink-like, no-smudge state and the color is such a pretty navy blue.  

I would much rather use a gel eyeliner or a pencil, as I can wack those on a lot faster. With this I have to work with it for a while to get a good line, and I almost never get it straight. It is also not pigmented enough for me to do just a thin line of it. I will use it until it runs dry, but I won't be repurchasing. 

I have a lot of products that fall in this "B-list" category, so I hope I can go through them all and maybe rediscover something that I really like. 

Do you have this eyeliner? What do you think about it?

~Vida

Soften the Mood

For the past 2 months, I have found myself constantly reaching for this eyeshadow combo. It is MAC's soften the mood, one of the mineralize eyeshadow trios that came out in the "In the Groove" collection.

I love the color combination of this trio - neutral and wearable, fun, and oh-so-easy. I like to wear the middle shimmery rose color all over my lid, the soft matte brown color in my crease, and the light blue on my lower lash line. The rose color in the middle has silver and gold shimmer running through it and is my absolute favorite out of the three. I've already made a noticeable dent in it and am desperately on the lookout for a color similar to it (any suggestions?) The blue is light and wearable and it works surprisingly well with the neutral colors.

Here's what it looks like on:

       On the rest of my face: 

- Clinique superbalanced makeup

- MAC Margin blush 

- Revlon 3D extreme mascara

- Clinique gel liner 

- NYX orange soda lipstick

Crappy pictures I know, but I'm getting better... :)

If you can still find this trio at your MAC counter/store or if you can someday find it at a CCO, I definitely recommend you get it!

Liners I've Been Loving

I recently purchased these eyeliners from Smashbox and I have been loving them! 

It is the smashbox Wish for the Perfect Pencils Collection - a box set of 4 mini eyeliners a metallic slate grey, a dark violet, a gold, and a black. This retails at $16 which is a great deal and I believe this is a limited edition set in which $1 of every purchase will be donated to the Children's Miracle Network. 

I have always wanted to get an eyeliner from smashbox because they swatch so beautifully in the store, but I never want to dish out the 20 bucks just for an eyeliner. This set is great because you get to try out 4 different colors, which are not part of their permanent line (I'm such a sucker for these deals). 

                                    

The colors are really pretty and they glide on super smooth. My favorite is the gold one, I love to use it on my lower lash line and even on the inner corner. They have amazing staying power and don't smudge. The only negative is that they are not super pigmented once you've got them on your eyes. This may be a negative for some who like their liners to give intense color, but I find that its a nice alternative that's easy to throw on and have a really pretty, natural look.

I really like these eyeliners, as I knew I would, and would maybe even consider buying a full size one. I've got my eye on the Indigo Ink and Black Violet ones. It sucks that they don't have a full size of the 14k because I really do love it!

What eyeliners are you into at the moment?

Drugstore Mascaras

I'm always on the hunt for the perfect mascara, and although I've found a few that I really like (MUFE Smoky Lash, Bourjois Volume Clubbing Mascara, L'oreal Voluminous) I am always wanting to try more because its so easy to go through a tube, and because mascara adds so much to a makeup look.

So over the past month or so, I have been testing out a few mascaras that I picked up at the drugstore. 

The first one I tried was the Rimmel Waterproof Sexy Curves. 

I got this for a vacation, and because I had heard such good things about the original Sexy Curves that I thought this mascara was going to be amazing. Perhaps the waterproof formula is different than the original, but I hated this mascara. When I first opened the tube, it felt like there was hardly any product on the wand. The formula is very dry and hard to work with, it is one of those that never completely dries, and after spending far too long trying to coat my lashes with the product, my eyelashes were not extraordinarily curled at all. The brush is plastic and tugs at my eyelashes - it also hurts like hell when you prick yourself in the eye with this. I definitely do not recommend this mascara. 

Slightly disappointed, but not discouraged I also tried L'oreal's Telescopic in Carbon Black, which is another drugstore mascara that is celebrated in the beauty community. 

Out of all the ones i tried, this mascara gives the best lengthening effect. Unlike the sexy curves, this plastic brush was extremely easy to work with, and because its so thin it is great for going behind the lashes and getting those hard to reach places. Although it gives you amazingly long lashes, it is not so great at thickening your lashes. I think this mascara would be really good to layer under another, more volumizing mascara. 

Another L'oreal mascara I tried was the Bare Naturale. This, is supposedly Jennifer Love Hewitt's holy grail mascara, so I thought I'd give it a go. 

             

This mascara definitely does what the name implies - gives you really pretty, natural lashes. There's absolutely no clumping with this mascara, and your lashes look really separated and full after one coat. The thing I like most about this one is that it doesn't feel like you have mascara on - no hard, crunchy lashes. This mascara gives you your lashes, but better; it's perfect for minimal makeup days and natural looks. 

I also tried Maybelline's The Falsies mascara. 

The best thing about this mascara is the brush. It's a curved brush that is fatter on one side and thin on the other. Something about this makes the application feel so nice. You can use the thin side to apply the mascara, especially to the harder to reach areas, and then use the fat side to brush it through. Amazing! And great for those people who end up getting mascara all over their eyes (me). Overall the formula is good, it gives you nice thick, separated lashes, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite. 

My favorite of the bunch was this one 

This is Revlon's 3D extreme mascara, and it is one that I just picked at random. I wasn't expecting it to be very good, or for me to like it as much as I do, but I guess you should never judge a mascara by it's tube. 

This mascara does it all - lengthens, volumizes, and separates. After one coat my eyelashes look dramatically fuller and thicker, and after two coats I've got eyelashes that people notice and compliment me on - which is rare because I have short, little asian eyelashes. The brush is tiny, and is shaped sort of like a spiral, wider on the bottom and tapered at the top. I don't know how this little stubble of a brush works - but it does. I love this mascara and I would definitely recommend it!

What's your favorite mascara?