Femme Fatale Cosmetics Eyeshadow swatches and review

1-6 indirect sunlight

When I moved to Australia I was eager to find local makeup brands since many foreign brands are more expensive here. I came across Femme Fatale Cosmetics and was drawn in by the amazing colours and swatches on the website. In addition to eyeshadows, there are blushes, illuminators and nail polishes.

1-6 direct sunlight

1. Archangel - a soft pinkish ivory with a subtle violet duochrome. Great for highlighting.

2. Divinity - a light pink with a bit of a gold shift.

3. Elitist - a yellow gold with shimmer.

4. Exorcism - violet with a blue green duochrome.

5. Flare - a strong, orange-y red with a gold duochrome. I like to mix this with a clear lip balm to create a red tinted lip balm.

6. Frozen Flame - a light orange with a strong light blue duochrome.

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7-12 direct sunlight

7. Heroic - a light copper with gold shimmer. Great for an easy, neutral all-over shade.

8. Incantation - a reddish burgundy with pink shimmer.

9. Inscribe - a warm chocolately brown with a soft, pale green duochrome.

10. Misdirection - a forest green with light green shimmer.

11. Moonglow - a light silvery blue with yellowy gold and pink shimmer.

12. Moonstone - a sheer icy white with a light blue duochrome. Looks amazing over a dark base.

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13-18 direct sunlight

13. Mysticism - a reddish purple with a light blue duochrome.

14. Shadow Dance - a cool toned grey with pink and blue shimmer.

15. Smokebomb - very complex! It starts out dark brown but shifts to green, purple, and gold.

16. Spirit Bond - a strong indigo purple with a greenish gold duochrome.

17. Sunfire - a peachy pink with a gorgeous gold shimmer. Looks amazing on the eyes or the lips, my absolute favourite.

18. Unholy - a dark base that looks like a purple-y brown with a strong green duochrome.

My personal favourites are Archangel, Heroic, Smokebomb, Sunfire, and Unholy.

Overall, I really enjoy all of these eyshadows. They are all swatched dry and without any base or primer and I had no problems with application. If you like highly pigmented, complex colours I'd definitely recommend checking out Femme Fatale Cosmetics' website.

When I wear these on my eyes I do use an eyeshadow primer. Sometimes I also use a homemade mixing medium (two parts water to one part glycerin) and apply it wet for a foiled look. I also have a primer meant for loose powder eyeshadows that doesn't change the look, but helps them to adhere to the eyelids better. When I apply these, I get some product on my brush, tap off the excess and pat it onto my eyelids so there's no messy fallout.

Recently when I've traveled with makeup at least one of my pressed powder products has been broken/shattered; so, I like to bring the sample bags when I travel because an already loose eyeshadow can't be broken down any further!. The sample bags are also great for travel -- this allows me to bring lots of colours that I'm not likely to wear on an everyday basis, but won't take up a lot of space/weight.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics' eyeshadows are available in three sizes; a sample zip-lock bag which contains 1/8 of a teaspoon ($1.10AUD), a mini jar which contains 3g of product and an optional sifter ($3.00AUD without a sifter, $3.10AUD with a sifter) and a full sized jar which contains 5g of product and no sifter ($5.75AUD). There are also discounted sets available. Each eyeshadow is individually labeled and informs the user as to whether or not it is eye safe, lip safe, and vegan. The full sized 5g jars contain a lot of product, so I would recommend those for multi use colours (like peachy, coral-y oranges and pinks that can be used on the eyes, lips and face) or colours you would likely use everyday.

If anyone wants to try out Femme Fatale Cosmetics but is intimidated by the bold colours, I created an easy, neutral look using Heroic on the lids, Archangel as a browbone and inner corner highlight, Smokebomb (used with an eyeliner sealant) as an eyeliner, Forever Lovely Rose (discontinued, it was a limited edition item) on the cheeks and Flare mixed with a clear lip balm on the lips.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics is an Australian owned company that does not test on animals. Orders which contain samples only ship free, worldwide :)

Makeup Geek Eyeshadow Swatches and Review

Anyone who watches YouTube makeup tutorials should be familiar with Makeup Geek. One of my favourite Makeup Geek videos is "How To: Blend Your Eyeshadow Like a Pro" which I have watched many times to help me with my eyeshadow blending technique. The beautiful and talented CEO, Marlena, has created her own makeup line. At present, it consists of pan and compact eyeshadows, lipsticks, and gel eyeliners. Today I've got some eyeshadow swatches here for you.

I purchased these a while back when Makeup Geek had a 20% off sale (if you follow them on Twitter/Facebook, you should be able to keep an eye out for any future sales). Since I love to experiment with colour but don't want to spend a lot of money on shades I won't use often, I bought mostly bright eyeshadows.

Burlesque - a dark, brownish burgundy with a touch of shimmer. On my skintone it pulls much browner and less red/purple than the swatch on the Makeup Geek site. I still love it, it's great for a warm, smokey brown look.

Razzleberry  - a bright red with gold glitter. I think some people have experienced irritation with red eyeshadows -- this was fine on my sensitive eyes until I forgot I was wearing eye makeup and rubbed my right eye. My left eye (which I didn't touch) was perfectly fine.

Mango Tango - a peachy pink with some gold glitter, noticeably less gold glitter than Razzleberry. This shade is great for summer, it's bright and fun.

Shimmermint - a shimmery, pale green. I love this for a soft, light, spring look.

Sea Mist - a rich teal with gold glitter. I like to use this with light turquoise eyeshadows for an ocean inspired look.

Unexpected - a matte mauve-y brown. I like to use this for blending out looks if I don't want to use a nude brown colour. I've seen it described as a dupe for MAC's Quarry.

Sensuous - a warm purple with gold glitter. A potential dupe for MAC's Trax.

Overall, I'm very impressed with these Makeup Geek eyeshadows. The shades with glitter do have a bit of fallout (I have yet to find a glitter eyeshadow without fallout!) so if you want to make the glitter stick, I suggest using a sticky or creamy base. The eyeshadows are pigmented, easy to apply and blend well. With these I didn't notice much fading or creasing, but it might have something to do with always wearing eyeshadows over a base.

I ordered the pan form which come in a sleeve similar to MAC's eyeshadow pans; they fit into MAC's 4 pan and 15 pan eyeshadow palettes. However, there's a hitch, Makeup Geek pans aren't magnetic -- in order to get around this I stuck small magnets on the back of each pan. If eyeshadow pans aren't your thing, you can also order them in small compacts.

The pans are $5.99USD and compacts are $7.99USD. I ordered these when I lived in the US and shipping was $3.94. They do ship internationally, so I recreated this order, selected Australia as the destination and shipping starts at $5.77USD.

Makeup Geekeyeshadows are cruelty free :)

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Lush Emotional Brilliance Liquid Lipsticks in Perspective and Strong

Emotional Brilliance

When I saw that Lush was releasing a makeup line, I knew I had to try it. I love many of their products already (my favourites are Ultrabalm, Sandstone soap, Angels on Bare Skin, and the Bubble Bars) so I had high hopes for their makeup range.

Swatches

The Lush Emotional Brilliance line is a new spin (pun intended!) on choosing colour cosmetics, where customers are asked to spin a colour wheel and without thinking, immediately choose the 3 shades that stand out most to them. I gave the colour wheel a spin at the Lush Perth (Plaza Arcade) and the three colours that stood out to me were a bright orange, light green, and light blue. Those products turned out to be the Strong Liquid Lipstick, Healthy Liquid Eyeliner  and Calm Liquid Eyeliner.

When I spun the wheel I noticed that there were a few empty slots, I heard that there was a problem with the original shipment to Australia so my choices may have been different if the wheel had been full (I originally spun the wheel around the end of July when they first launched the Emotional Brilliance line, however my most recent visit to the Lush store was about a week ago and they were fully stocked).

I decided to only pick up Strong, because I wasn't sure how much mileage I would get out of light blue and green eyeliners. I never wear red lipstick as I still have yet to find the perfect red (though I find I can rock a shocking '80s pink lipstick) so I was intimidated by the colour of Strong at first. As the name indicates, it is not for the faint of heart and is a vibrant, reddish orange shade which Lush describes as "blood orange". It does start out having quite a glossy shine to it (but no glitter/shimmer), which gradually fades throughout the course of the day. Strong is very long wearing and as it is a highly pigmented bold shade, it does stain the lips. After eating lunch the shine had disappeared, but the bright red-orange pigment was still there.

Comparison

I found Strong to be comfortable to wear which is no surprise to me since the base of the Liquid Lipsticks is Ultrabalm, my nighttime lip moisturiser. The consistency is similar to a creamy opaque lipgloss and with a loud colour like this, it's not really ideal for on-the-go touchups without a mirror. The liquid lipsticks are housed in small glass vials with a short, doe-foot applicator. Because of the opaqueness of Strong and its liquid-like consistency, sometimes I like to dot a little bit on my lips and blend it out with a clean finger for a less bold look.

Since I was pleased with Strong, I went back and picked up Perspective for a more wearable, everyday lip colour. Lush describes Perspective as "a natural, dusky rose" and on my skintone, I see it as a mauve-y pink with a subtle shimmer. Perspective is not as bold or strongly pigmented as Strong and it didn't stain my lips -- I also found it comfortable to wear.

One of the best things about the Lush Emotional Brilliance line is the price, here in Australia all the Liquid Lipsticks, Eyeliners, and Cream Eyeshadows retail for $24.95AUD and the US retail price is $22.95USD. It's nice not being grossly overcharged for identical products here in Australia! You can give the colour wheel a spin yourself on Lush's website or head into a Lush store. I recommend going into a store and trying the products out yourself to see how it looks on your skintone as well as to see if you like the texture and consistency.

The Lush store I went to had plenty of disposable applicators and all the doe-foot applicators had been removed from the testers so it's a hygienic way to test the lipsticks on your lips. There's also no shortage of their makeup remover, 9 to 5 (which I have purchased before and I liked it but didn't love it) so you can try out as many colours as you like.

Jelly Sandwich Manicure featuring Australis' Fairy Bread and Essie Marshmallow

A while back I bought Essie's Marshmallow since I didn't have a white nail polish in my stash. I wanted to use it underneath a glitter polish, but I didn't realise it was a sheer polish which required several coats for full opacity and was a little bit disappointed. I decided to Google the name and see what other people thought and how they were using it -- that's how I discovered Jelly Sandwich Manicures. For those who aren't familiar, it's when you layer a sheer (also known as "jelly") nail polish in between layers of a glitter nail polish, hence the name "jelly sandwich". The end result is pretty cool, as the glitter is suspended in the layers of the jelly polish.

First, I started with two layers of Essie Marshmallow, followed by one layer of Australis' Fairy Bread, then another layer of Marshmallow, a second layer of Fairy Bread and a final layer of Marshmallow. The end result was quite thick so I probably could've gotten away with just one coat of Marshmallow to start with and maybe one thick layer of Fairy Bread. As you can see, by layering the sheer white polish over the glitter polish, it mutes the shine and makes it much more subtle. The glitter particles in Fairy Bread are very bright, colourful and shiny on their own, so layering a sheer on top gives it a different look.

Fairy Bread is a limited edition shade from Australis, if you're interested I would definitely suggest picking it up sooner rather than later. I didn't have trouble finding it at Priceline here in Perth -- it's still available on Priceline's website and is currently out of stock on Australis' website.

I purchased Essie's Marshmallow from CVS in the US, check your local Myer if you live in Australia. For those willing to buy online or wanting to buy multiple polishes, I'd suggest finding a retailer who ships to Australia since Myer sells these for $18.95AUD, however, the US RRP is around $8. I looked online and Trans Design, Inc. seems to be a popular choice for ordering nail polishes; Essie polishes are only $5.95USD! I've never ordered from them before, so I created a basket with five polishes and the cheapest shipping option was $23USD.

Because of the flammable nature of nail polish combined with shipping, I think this option will always be pricey. I haven't ordered Essie online, but I've ordered China Glaze from Head2Toe Beauty and shipping was $17USD for five bottles (the combined price was still cheaper than any other website I found). My total order cost from Head2Toe Beauty was $34USD and it took about two weeks for delivery.