My Essence Collection- Part 1 Eyeshadows

Hey Guys,

I was going through my make up collection and found that there were so many products from the brand Essence that I have collected in a couple of years and that I absolutely love and recommend. I love reading one brand posts and thought it would be fun to write about it too. I will talk about the products in 4 posts starting with eyeshadows then lip products, face products and random. 

Today's post is going to be all about Essence Eyeshadows. I absolutely love all Essence products and they make some of the best quality eyeshadows. I have a couple of their regular eyeshadows and some from different trend editions. 

With all Essence eyeshadows the pigmentation is amazing. The eyeshadows are super soft and easy to blend. Even with the new metal glam eyeshadows, they have a glittery overspray but there is no grittiness to the texture. They remain crease free for a long time too. Even without an eyeshadow primer, they are true to colour and what you see in the pan is what you get on your eyes. Some of them are a little powdery, but by tapping off the excess you don't get any fall out. 

They retail from $2.85 to $5.25 for some special edition eyeshadows. For the price I honestly did not expect such awesome quality but all the Essence products AMAZING!!

L-R Olive Garden, Metropolitan, Baby Baby Oh, Frosted apple, Coffee to glow, I'm a marine girl (1), I'm a marine girl (2)

{All swatches are without using any base or primer}

L-R: Olive Garden, Metropolitan, Baby Baby Oh, Frosted apple, Coffee to glow, I'm a marine girl (1), I'm a marine girl (2)

{All swatches are without using any base or primer}

My favourite picks are Olive Garden, Baby Baby Oh and Frosted Apple. But I still like all the other shades too. If you are looking for a really cheap, good quality, pigmented eyeshadow then do check out the Essence line either from Priceline or Target in Australia. 

Also if you liked this post and would like me to do more one brand posts please do let me know in the comments below.

Couleur Caramel Eyeshadows Review

Hey guys,

About two months ago, I was introduced to this brand Couleur Caramel through Twitter which is a certified organic Makeup Brand. They have a beauty ambassadors program through which we can get 50% off all items for one year. To know more about this program you can visit their face book page here. 

The Couleur Caramel range consists of eyeshadows, cream eyeshadows, eye liners, pencils,lipsticks,blushes, concealers, foundations and much more. 

I wanted to try things one by one so the first products I bought were two eyeshadows. The two colors I bought were Pearly Plum Brown eyeshadow 111044 and Vintage Beige Matt eyeshadow 111117.

All Matte eyeshadows contain 3.3% active plant based ingredients which include organic grape seed oil, organic shea butter, organic sunflower seed oil, karanja seed oil, red tea extract etc. Pearly shadows contain 7.7% active plant based ingredients. 

Firstly the packaging is super cute, it comes in a slim cardboard pack with a see thru window where you can see the colour of the eyeshadow. You can leave them in this packaging or you can pop them out and place them in a Z palette or something. You get 2.5 gms of product for $24.45 which is way cheaper than a MAC eyeshadow where you get 1.5gms of product for $33. Plus you are using an organic product. 

The pigmentation of both the eyeshadows are amazing. You can use them lightly for a wash of colour or pack it on for an intense look. The pearly plum brown shade is a cool toned shimmery taupe colour and the vintage beige matt shade is a light beige great for blending. 

I had put both these colors to test with and without eyeshadow primer. On my oily lids only a few eyeshadows last even with a primer so I was very pleased to see the results. Without primer both eyeshadows lasted 4.5 hours without creasing. With primer, the pearly eyeshadow lasted 7 hours and he matte eyeshadow lasted almost 8 hours which was remarkable. I did use them all over the eyelid and tested them over a few days just to be sure.

Overall I am highly impressed with the quality of the products and the fact that they are not damaging to your skin makes me want even more. I can't wait to try out some lippies and face products from them too.

Have you heard of Couleur Caramel brand before?? What do you think of their products?

Models Prefer Sweet Shadows and Sweet Kisses Swatches and First Impressions

Hey Guys,

Its that time of the year again where all makeup companies come out with gift sets, Yes!! Christmas is almost here. I had been eyeing this eyeshadow set since the day Priceline posted a picture of it on Instagram. Finally I found it and also found another gift set with face products too. I am talking about the Models Prefer Sweet Shadows and Models Prefer Sweet Kisses. There is another gift set launched by them which is a cute clutch purse with three makeup items in it. I did not buy that as I was more keen on getting these.

*All swatches are applied using a brush

First Impressions:

When I first saw the picture on Instagram it reminded me of Too Faced gift sets. That was the primary reason I wanted to buy these. There were no testers in store so I could not swatch the shadows before purchasing.

Sweet Shadows  $15 at Priceline:

The sweet shadows gift set comes with 12 eyeshadows, 1 eye primer and 1 mascara and brow gel duo for $15.

The eye primer feels smooth and dries matte. It does not have any tackiness to it like most eye primers have. Tacky eye primers help intensify shadows on the eye. I felt this eye primer to have the formulation of a face primer. 

The Mascara wand is a rubber wand with short bristles on one side and longer bristles on the other. I quite like the formulation of the mascara as it is a thick consistency. The Brow gel side has a normal mascara wand with clear gel.

The eyeshadows have cute names and most of them fall under the mauves and purples category. The shadows are very chalky and don't have much pigmentation. You have to layer them 4 or 5 times to get the shadows to actually show up. In the pictures I had to layer the shadows 4 times to make them look close to color. 

Highest Pigmented shades:

Precious

Enchanting

Lowest Pigmented shades:

Innocent

Adorable

Angelic

Sweetened

Overall Verdict:

Cute gift but not a must have. There are other gift sets from Models Prefer under the same price range which have better quality eyeshadows.

Sweet Kisses $25 at Priceline:

When I saw this box I expected some lip products to be in there but there is none. Like the name Sweet Shadows had eyeshadows, Sweet kisses did not have any lip products. Instead it has face products like blush and bronzer.

This box comes with 16 eyeshadows, 1 eye primer, 1 mascara and brow gel duo, 1 bronzer, 1 highlighter, 2 blushes and 1 eye brush duo for $25

The eye primer and mascara duo is the same as in the Sweet Shadows. The duo eye brush is synthetic with one side shader and one side blender. It is quite a stiff brush and I personally will not use it.

The highlighter in Macaroon is very powdery and has a slight sheen. It is not a very noticeable highlighter.

The bronzer in Cinnamon Spice has a nice texture and is warm toned. It is not completely matte.

The blushes in Marshmallow and Peach Parfait are hard and not very blend able. They are not at all pigmented. Even when I used my finger to swatch hardly any color showed up on my skin.

All the eyeshadows are named after sweets and again not very pigmented. The 3rd and 4th columns of eyeshadows seem to have more color pay off than the first 2 columns. 

Highest pigmented shades:

Toffee

Black Forest

Honey Crunch

Dark Cluster

Lowest Pigmented Shades:

Chocolate Whip

Mint Slice

Cherry Ripe

Caramel

Overall Verdict:

Again this is a cute gift but not something that will be of any use because there is no proper pigmentation. The tin boxes that these come in are reusable to store knickknacks. 

I was just looking through some pictures online and these gift sets are exact copies of Too Faced products. In terms of eyeshadow colors, Models Prefer tried to come out with almost exact dupes but unfortunately the quality just does not match up. These are just my first impressions and all eyeshadow swatches did not have a primer or base underneath. Maybe they will perform well with a primer, can't be too sure though. I really liked the quality of Models Prefer eyeshadow quads but these don't look like similar quality. 

Have you tried the Models Prefer gift sets? what do you think of them??

http://www.beautylish.com/p/too-faced-shadow-bon-bons

http://www.beautylish.com/p/too-faced-sweet-indulgence-palette