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

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!

BA Star Spicy Natural eyeshadow palette review

*This post is sponsored by Brandbacker. I was able to try this in exchange for my review

If you've been reading my blog for a while you may remember that I have gotten to review this brand a few times before. So when I saw the opportunity to try their eye shadow palettes, I was all for it. Their products have always surprised me with their quality.

BA Star is a brand that specializes in performance makeup- for cheerleading, dancing, or stage makeup. Because of this you can usually bet on them being pigmented and long-lasting.

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I got the Spicy Natural eyeshadow palette. I don't know what type of name that is...I definitely don't want anything spicy near my eye. The thought makes me cringe in pain!

But I suppose it gets it's name from the fact that the first half of the palette is natural shades, and the last two are a pop of color, to "spice it up". It also came with the BA Star eyelid glue.

The colors are nice but I must admit it's a strange collection of colors. When I think of palettes I think of being able to have a whole look inside one item. But this isn't always the case. I'm assuming the first 3 colors are meant to be the base colors and the purple and yellow can be added for small pops of color.

Notice the nick in the yellow eyeshadow...these shadows are definitely soft and just swiping my nail against it accidentally took out a chunk.

The bottom half of these swatches- aka the right side of the picture- are on top of the eyeshadow glue. You can see that the colors are more vibrant on that side.

The colors are rather pigmented and I like the orange-toned one more than I thought. The yellow ends up being more of a gold, and not as bold as I expected.

I think this product falls nicely into the spectrum with BA Star's other products. They are nice and affordable but they aren't mindblowingly unique. However they have never let me down, and that's nice.

I personally would prefer to use a different primer. I don't like the way their primer feels on my skin but as you can see it definitely improves the look of the shadow.

You can buy this and all their other palettes at bastar.com for $8.95.
A cool thing is that if you buy 6 or more the price drops down to $5 each. This is mainly for cheer and dance teams that might need to all have the same makeup. I think it's a nice deal since that is their target audience.

What do you think of these eyeshadows? Have you tried BA Star before?

Wet n Wild Idol Eyes eyeliner (Startling eyes gift set) : review & swatches

So if you saw my Big lots haul post you saw that I got a pack of eyeliners from Wet n Wild.

As you can see they are packaged together...but right away you can tell that they seem a little mismatched. The labels are in different places on each one, to start. And what's with that random green one in the middle? Hmmm. Things like this are what clues me in to how it ended up at Big Lots to begin with.
The pack itself is called Startling eyes but these are the Wet n Wild Idol eyes eyeliner

But when the price is only $3.50 for 6 eyeliners, I couldn't pass it up.

Right away out of the package you can see the differences between all of them. In this picture I had already taken off all the plastic which, let me tell you, was quite the task. Some of them came off easily because they had perforated plastic wrap. Others took lots and LOTS of effort. Like, I'm legit embarrassed how much effort it took. But that was a huge annoyance to me and I had to remind myself that for the price I got it at, it's expected that it won't be great.

L->R  black (self explanatory), charcoal (gray), navy blue, dark brown, mink brown, & sky lights (the most random...a sparkly blue-green)

On the bottom of each eyeliner is one of those smudger sponges and a plastic tip that indicates what color it is. I know looking at the picture above doesn't look like they are that different. Also, under neath the plastic tip is a sharpener.

The colors are in the same order as above. As you can see, the black is not very dark or black. It looks pretty similar to charcoal. Dark and mink brown are similar too, but distinguishable. I am just not a very brown eyeliner kinda person. The sky lights is a great color and I'd say it's my favorite. All these swatches (minus the navy blue) are the same amount of swipes.

The eyeliner formula itself was nothing to write home about. These were dry and sort of tugged at the skin. It wasn't a great application.

Unfortunately my favorite of this set is the navy blue color...it's a GREAT, perfect even, color. However this one was the WORST. It was somehow softer than the others and when you tried to apply it it just bent against the top of the pencil and broke. It was SO difficult to even get this swatch!
Because I like it so much I want to find a way to salvage it. Maybe I can depot it into a jar and apply it with a brush. That seems like that might work.

Anyway do I think these were worth $3.50? It's hard to say. That's such a low price so it's pretty hard for a brand to miss that low expectation. I would say that if you like at least two of these colors, or even one color a lot, it makes the price of all of them worth it.

If I can salvage the blue, these would definitely be worth it. It's also nice to have the brown eyeliners even though I don't think I will use them. I know I won't use the black.

Have you tried these eyeliners? Do you think they are worth the $3.50 price tag?

Check back soon to see the review and comparison of the other Wet n Wild eyeliner gift set!

Revlon Super Lustrous Vintage collection swatches & review

So sometime last year one of my favorite beauty bloggers posted that Revlon would be bringing back a few vintage shades of their Super Lustrous lipsticks for a limited time.
They actually had an event where you could vote which lipsticks came out. Even though I was unfamiliar with the Super Lustrous lipsticks, I still cast a vote. Then I promptly forgot.

It wasn't until I heard they were finally being released that I remembered that I really wanted to get my hands on this collection!

I have been on a bit of a budget with myself and haven't bought new makeup in a while. So I went into Walgreens specifically looking for this and the Maybelline dare to go nude collections.

I saw the display and actually legit gasped. It was full! This was especially lucky since there is only 2 spots per color in the display. That's it!

Unfortunately the price took my by surprise a little bit. Like I said I have never bought the Revlon Super Lustrous lipsticks so I didn't know what price range I was looking at. They were about $7.25 each.

There are 5 shades and I knew I couldn't afford all of them. So I narrowed it down to just 3- Sandstorm, Icy Violet, and one of the peaches. But then, when we were checking out the cashier informed me that they were on sale for buy one get one half off! So I ran back to get the other peach shade.

There was one more shade, Fifth Avenue Red (first debuted in 1958) I already have so many reds that I decided I could skip this one.

So in the end I paid about $20 for 4, which really isn't a bad price.

Now on to the swatches!

I really liked the packaging for these lipsticks. The top is clear, letting you see easily which color is inside.

same order as above

I also like how there is a sticker on the bottom that is both easy to read and tinted with a general color to represent the lipstick.

I also really liked that they were all sealed with plastic (the kind with a perforated strip) which is my favorite kind of packaging. That way you know no one else tampered with it yet it's still easy to get your product out.

From left to right: Sandstorm, Jungle Peach, Snow Peach, and Icy Violet

When I first saw the press release I was a little confused as why people picked 2 peach colors. However as you can see they are not even remotely the same color. Jungle peach is more of  a nude neutral and Snow Peach leans way pink.

One swipe down & back up

Here they are swatched on my arm, in the same order as above. Once again you can see the difference between the two peach colors.

They are all pretty pigmented- the swatches above are with just one swipe down and then back up, and all of them are opaque.

First up is Sandstorm. Sandstorm first was released in 1999, which I think is very obvious. It just looks like something that came out of the 90s. It's a brown shade that looks kinda like copper- very metallic.

Doesn't it look like the 90s?

Since I spend most of my life pretending it's still 2001, this lipstick is perfect for me. I am so excited to own it! It feels very nice on the lips, in fact all of these lipsticks do. I think after this I am definitely going to check out the core line of the Super Lustrous collection.

Next is Jungle Peach which first debuted in 1963. This is a very nude peach and I did not expect to like it as much as I did!

Since it is so light it does tend to accentuate any dry areas on your lips- perhaps this could be prevented by properly exfoliating and priming prior to wear. Since I am a lazy daisy I did no such thing before putting it on. But I still loved it!

I'm not a nude person AT ALL but I really, really like this color. I see myself wearing it a lot in the future.

Next is Snow Peach, which first came out in 1956! Honestly I don't see how this is a peach color. Maybe if you are a different skin tone than me? To me it seemed very pink. At first I thought I didn't like it but after putting on Jungle Peach I decided that I did like them both, even if neither of them were what I expected.

Like I said, it leans very pink on me.

But I still think it's a very nice color and it's soft enough that I actually like it.

The last shade I got is Icy Violet, which seems to be to belong in the 90s as well. But this shade actually came out in 1946! Who knew there were such fun colors in the 40s!

This color did not photograph very well. It looks more purple on the skin to me. And yes, it is frosty.

Again, it pulls more purple in person. This is also the sheerest of the formulas. It can be built up to opacity though.

So all in all I'm really glad I picked these up AND I'm glad I got to get both peach shades. I truly can see myself wearing these a lot which is something I don't often say about lip colors. I also think Icy Violet can transform other colors underneath it so that will be fun to experiment with. The only thing I can't comment on is wear time- I tried these on consecutively and have yet to see how long they last on the lips.

Do you have any plans to pick up any of these vintage shades? Do any of you remember these before they discontinued them? If you like them I have to say, better hurry because these babies are going to sell out fast! Not to mention now is the best time to scoop them up during the Walgreens BOGO 1/2 off sale!