Monday, June 30, 2014

NYX Macaron Lippies part 2 Review & Swatches

In case you've been dying with anticipation, you can all breathe a sigh of relief because I'm finally bringing you part 2 of the Nyx Macaron collection.
If you need a refresher on part 1, you can find that here.

Right now all NYX products are currently 40% off at Ulta so if you wanted to try these, now is the perfect time to pick some up!


My complaint that I mentioned in the first half still rings true for the other half- as you can see on the right.
--Alright my first complaint comes from the packaging. Admittedly you get what you pay for. All the lipsticks above that are turned all the way up are the ones that sort of broke.
So the 3 that are low were fine...but the others..when I went to twist up the lipstick for the first time, they were hard to twist and when they came undone they kind of snapped... It's super hard to explain but when you twist the lipstick up as you normally would, it starts to slide back down and does not stay up. The only way to get it to stay up is to twist it all the way.
This makes application a little difficult but I don't mind too much. It's just a minor inconvenience.
I did find other reviews that mentioned it so obviously it's not just me. Hopefully they will fix this issue in future productions.


This second half contains all of my favorites!


From top to bottom we have: Black Sesame, Blue Velvet, Violet, Key Lime, Pistachio, and Coconut


Gorgeous, right! So pigmented and fun!

Black Sesame lip swatch (with flash)
So first we have Black Sesame. This is a true corpse-style lipstick. It's gray and it's fabulous.

Black Sesame lip swatch, daylight bulb
I honestly like it a lot more than I thought I would!

Blue Velvet lip swatch with flash
Blue Velvet is one of the best! It's so vibrant, pigmented, and creamy. The only way I could love this more is if it were a little more matte.

Blue Velvet daylight bulb
Definitely a fun summer color! It reminds me of the OCC lip tar Pool Boy.

Violet lip swatch (with flash)
Violet is FANTASTIC. If you have been wanting a purple lipstick, this is definitely one to snap up. It had the most pigmentation out of the whole collection, and was one of the creamiest ones as well. It just looks so great!

Violet lip swatch, daylight bulb
Key Lime lip swatch with flash
Key Lime is a unique green lipstick. I normally would not reach for green lipstick but this doesn't look that bad! The pigmentation however is not great, and it definitely needs to be built up. I am not one who minds that though but as you can see above even with building it up it's a little patchy.

Key Lime lip swatch, daylight bulb
Next up is my favorite from the whole collection!

Pistachio lip swatch with flash
Pistachio is a cross between mint green and teal, depending on the lighting. It's just extremely unique and beautiful.

Pistachio with daylight bulb
Honestly my swatches do not do this color justice! This one is also very creamy and pigmented.

Last but not least we have a lipstick that will scare most- a white lipstick!
While I highly doubt I will ever wear a white lipstick on it's own, it can be used to lighten up other lipstick shades.

Coconut lip swatch with flash
Let's be real- it looks silly on me! I imagine that with a fun lip liner though, this could make a pretty gradient lip!

Coconut with daylight bulb
Even it if looks a little 'off', an opaque white lipstick is so hard to come by. Of course it took a few coats to get to this point but it IS possible!


So that completes the NYX Macaron collection (minus Rose).

The best: Violet, Blue Velvet, Pistachio - all are extremely vivid and pigmented and less tendency to settle into lip lines
The worst: Key Lime, Orange Blossom, Citron - as could be expected, the lighter, pale colors are a little more difficult. They take more effort to build up and settle really badly into fine lines. If you can get past this and make them work they are definitely unique shades that are a great addition to a makeup kit!

Have you picked up any lipsticks from this collection? Which are your favorites?

Till next time,
Ember Darling

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Mermaid-Inspired Makeup Look

So last week was my birthday. I didn't do much but one thing I did do was go to the movies. (To see TFIOS. Again.). We went during the morning to take advantage of the lower prices and then grabbed some macarons across the street.

Even though it was a low-key day I really wanted to do a fun makeup look. I completed the look with a wig that I recently got and from there I just felt so confident.

Enough talk, let me show you the look! Unfortunately because we were rushing to make a movie, I didn't get a ton of pictures.


I loosely based this look off of a youtube video I saw a couple days before, and it must have really resonated with me because I mimicked the color combination.


I used mostly Profusion Cosmetics products for this really! First I applied a NYX chubby pencil in Peacock then patted the teal-blue eyeshadow from this Profusion palette on top. I smoked out the top with the purple shade also from that palette. I used the Urban Decay Naked palette to blend out and highlight my brow bone. I also lined my bottom lid with the purple and blended it out, and lined my waterline with Peacock.


This wig guys. come on! I would love if my real hair looked like this. The length, the color, the curliness. I love it!!

I wore a blue crop top from Target and amazing holographic leggings. I really wish I got a better picture of my outfit because I think it helped with the mermaid vibes!

I'm honestly pretty obsessed with this look.
Finally my lips were a subtle ombre. I'm wearing MAC Punk Couture on the outside and NYX Macaron Lippie in Violet in the center.


So what do you think? You think I rocked this look on my birthday? :P
I definitely want to attempt this look again and get better pictures. Maybe even with a real tutorial!


Monday, June 16, 2014

The Night Before Our Stars (The Fault in Our Stars preview experience)

I recently showed you my The Fault In Our Stars inspired nails that I wore to the TFIOS premiere. Now I'm gonna tell you all about the premiere!

The special part about this was that it was more than the premiere- it was a special experience that I am very grateful I got to be a part of.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

The Fault in our Stars Nails

Awhile back I talked about my favorite book, Looking For Alaska. Well, LFA is written by a spectacularly popular author and internet personality (is that a thing? I think so), John Green.

John Green's latest book, The Fault in Our Stars, or tfios, was recently turned into a movie. And unless you avoid all forms of media, I am sure that you knew this.

I am going to be talking a lot about this movie experience I had, and how I feel about the book/movie in general, in an upcoming post but first I wanted to show the nails I wore for the movie premiere.

I actually went and saw the movie Thursday evening (if you want to know how, be sure to come back and look at the future post!)  so on Wednesday I sat down to do my nails.

I have seen a dozen tfios manicures over time and they all pretty much feature the color scheme and design of the book cover.
Mostly because it is an aesthetically pleasing and easily recognizable cover.

picture from Wikipedia
This is what the cover looks like. It also helps that the design is a fairly simple one.

So instead of basing my nails off any examples I saw online, I decided to kind of go with the flow and do my take on the cover.

The fault in our stars nails
So here is my interpretation of the book cover!
First I painted my nails with Rimmel 60 seconds in Blue My Mind . 


Next I painted black cloud shapes with my dotting tool using Sephora Black Lace. (on all fingers except thumb, in which I painted my attempt at an infinity symbol using the same black polish and dotting tool)
Then a little lower I painted a similar cloud shape using Sinful Colors Snow Me White

posing with my tfios necklace
Lastly, the most difficult part. I wanted to see if I could write "Okay? Okay." on my fingers. I have pretty small fingers so this was a fairly ambitious endeavor.

For my middle finger I used a pen tip to paint the word. I could not fit the question mark. There wasn't enough room.
So when I did my ring finger I tried it with a mechanical pencil because it was thinner. I thought, if I could finish and fit the period, I would redo the middle finger with the question mark. However it didn't make it any easier so I abandoned the idea of fitting the punctuation. Oh well.


It is not perfect and i discovered that I'm really bad at making cloud shapes? (Who knew) but I'm pretty proud of it overall. They definitely look better from a distance.

Originally the plan was to make the design on both hands be the same, minus the 'okay's on the right hand. However once I started the clouds I realized even those were too ambitious for my left hand to draw. So I settled on a dotticure using the same colors. I really liked it and think it still captured the spirit of the book cover.


On my pinky nail is Spoiled by Wet n Wild in Pet My Peacock

As per usual I topped this manicure with my Seche Vite fast dry topcoat.

Initially I had my nails looking a little more similar to the book cover-
note: this was pre-cleanup...obviously!
I had my nails like this at first but decided the black 'okay' wasn't visible enough. Where I could read my middle finger from arms distance away, I could not read my ring finger. So I decided to redo it the same was as the middle. I also redid my pinky nail because the glitter did not turn out how I expected. Pet My Peacock has a very thick base that makes it difficult to get the right glitter-to-base ratio.

The truth is that this manicure took me an embarassing amount of time. However it lasted for a few days, which is longer than my nails usually last. And I actually haven't done my nails, like, at all this year. So I was happy to try my hand at some nail art for the first time in a while!

What do you think of my The Fault in our Stars nails? Did you do a similar manicure to celebrate the movie coming out?

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Maleficent Inspired makeup look

So since I'm utterly obsessed with Disney, I've been looking forward to the Maleficent movie ever since I heard the first whisper about it.

When my Queen Lana Del Rey released her version of the classic "Once Upon a Dream" I could hardly contain my excitement anymore.


Since my boyfriend and I are trying to save money we have had to cut back on a lot of fun things but I made him promise recently that we would go on at least one date a month. A real date, which we hardly ever do anymore because we've been together for so long.
Well when he does a date, he does it for real! So we planned to see Maleficent on Saturday night.

Well I wanted to do my makeup just right and in turn, ended up making us late. We went to see it in 3D and we wanted to get DBOX seats (seats that move) but we got there too late. We bought our tickets literally 2 minutes before it started so we ended up having to sit in the very front section, but it wasn't so bad.
After my look, I'll talk about the movie so read on!

Obviously I had to do a look inspired by Maleficent. Since Angelina Jolie's makeup is a little boring (although gorgeous! just not fun to recreate) in the movie, I modeled it after the cartoon original mostly.

no flash- light up mirror
I decided to do a purple smokey eye with a green inner corner and, of course, a wing.


On my lips, of course, I wore my MAC True Love's Kiss which is from the Maleficent collection.


I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! It's amazing how far I've come with blending and yet still how much I have to go. I thought it was really great when I did it but looking back I can provide a more clear critique of myself.


I used mostly my BH Cosmetics 120 palette. I also used the Wet n Wild I <3 Matte 8-pan



I still really like how it came out.

As for the movie, I really liked it. I heard complaints that it moved too quickly and I can understand where they are coming from. It could have been more lovely if it were longer. I still liked it though.

Angelina Jolie, as expected, commands the screen so easily. And I like the direction the story went, with a twist on a classic.

After the movie (which we saw at the mall) we stopped at Bar Louie which is also in the mall. I had never been there so we stopped in for some drinks.


I had the Smores Martini, pictured above. It has chocolate sauce and graham cracker crust and marshmallows in it. It was pretty good but also kinda thick and not something I would normally desire to drink. It was nice for having "a drink" but not ideal if you are planning to have a few (or more :P ), you know what I mean?

All in all I had so much fun dressing up to go out on a date with my man. I definitely suggest everyone see Maleficent, and in 3D for sure!

Do you like the look I put together for the movie? Have you already seen it? Tell me your thoughts in the comment section!

Sunday, June 1, 2014

NYX Macaron Lippies Part 1 Review & Swatches

It feels like forever ago when I first heard about the NYX Macaron Lippies (and yes, they are literally called Lippies. I'm not saying that to be obnoxious)..honestly it was before Thanksgiving.
I'm not kidding when I said I stalked NYX waiting for more word about these beautiful pastel lipsticks.

Well they finally went on sale a little bit ago and I bought them all right away! I did not buy Rose, the pink colored one because as I've mentioned before pink isn't really my color.

So basically this review has been a long time coming. They've been out for quite a while now. You can buy them on NYX's website or on Ulta's website. They will be coming to Ulta stores later this summer.

So the Macaron lipsticks are tons of fun colors at a drug store price- which has never really happened before. Everything from yellow to purple to white- all for around $6.

These lipsticks aren't what some people would consider every-day wear. But I enjoy wearing bright and unusual colors, so I do enjoy wearing them.

Lastly, I split these up into 2 posts because there are 11 lipsticks so that's a lot of pictures!


First off my order came in this adorable lace drawstring bag. I thought that was a nice touch. I can keep all of them together and find them easily in my makeup bag.


Here are all the Macaron Lippies in their glory. With my order I got a free gift of Nectar lip liner. I'm not one to complain about a free bonus gift!


Alright my first complaint comes from the packaging. Admittedly you get what you pay for. All the lipsticks above that are turned all the way up are the ones that sort of broke.
So the 3 that are low were fine...but the others..when I went to twist up the lipstick for the first time, they were hard to twist and when they came undone they kind of snapped... It's super hard to explain but when you twist the lipstick up as you normally would, it starts to slide back down and does not stay up. The only way to get it to stay up is to twist it all the way.
This makes application a little difficult but I don't mind too much. It's just a minor inconvenience.
I did find other reviews that mentioned it so obviously it's not just me. Hopefully they will fix this issue in future productions.


Part 1 is going to focus on these colors- Lavender, Citron, Chambord, Orange Blossom, Earl Grey


Hand swatches in the same order as above- Lavender, Citron, Chambord, Orange Blossom, Earl Grey


First up is Lavender. This is a true lavender color which is hard to find in a lipstick.  Most lean really pink. The picture above is taken with flash. 


Here is the lipstick taken with no flash, using daylight bulbs. The color seems a bit more washed out here but then again so does my skin. I just wanted to offer both versions of all the lipsticks so you can see what it looks like in various lighting situations.
This is definitely the type of lipstick that DOES look different depending on what kind of lighting you are in.

Citron, with flash
Citron applied quite patchy. The flash masked some of the imperfections but it definitely settled into dry spots.


It's really pigmented though, which is not easy to say about a yellow lipstick. 

Chambord, with flash
Chambord is a pretty good black lipstick for the price. It's not the best but it's far better than any other drugstore black lipstick I've tried.

Chambord, no flash
This color can also stain your lips if you aren't careful!

Orange Blossom, with flash
This one is very pale but I am surprised how much I like it. This is another color that clings to dry patches so it definitely pays to exfoliate and moisturize before using.


Something about this, I like it a lot. 


Last but not least we have Earl Grey which is a grey-toned pastel blue. This one was ok but the other blue in the collection is better, in my opinion.


I like this color mostly because it is unique. 

I have not worn any of these shades for an extended amount of time yet so I don't know the wear time yet. They don't dry matte and are quite creamy so I imagine it will have a normal wear time- not too long, but not too short either.

I picked these up with a 25% off coupon on NYX's website, and Ulta often has NYX for BOGO 1/2 off. So if you do want to pick these up, you can get them for even CHEAPER if you watch out for a sale. 
These are great colors if you're looking to step outside the box with your color choices, or maybe want to take some fun pictures or dress in a fun costume!

So that's part 1 of the NYX Macaron Lippies. Which one was your favorite? Did you buy any from this collection?
Let's talk about it in the comments!


EmberDarling