Toasted vs. Toasted

First off, it's my birthday! Yayyyy! 6 months until I get my driving permit...you do the math if you really want to know how old I am ;) Unfortunately, I'm at debate camp. I'm having fun with my friends here though, so it's not awful. Some of my friends shipped me presents, which I wasn't expecting at all. I woke up at 7:30am today (albeit grumpily), got ready and had to do speaking drills at 9am. Great start to the day...it's been fun otherwise though, I went out to lunch with friends. Today, I thought I'd do a post that I took pictures for before I left for camp. Enjoy!
In this post, I'm going to be comparing Urban Decay Toasted to Urban Decay Toasted. I swear, I'm not crazy (I think) so keep reading! I had the Urban Decay Show Pony palette, and I absolutely fell in love with the color Toasted from that palette. Toasted is a shimmery brown color with taupe in it. The texture is super smooth and buttery, and it has pretty much perfect staying power. I didn't love the palette overall, though. So I decided I would swap the palette away and buy the single of Toasted.

I haven't yet managed to swap away the palette (I might put it up if I do a blog sale), but I did swap for a single of Toasted. It was chipped, but I haven't used up an eyeshadow yet, so I was fine with that. I apologize if the obvious use hurts your eyes. Anyway, when I held the two Toasteds side by side, I saw that there was a definite difference in the two supposedly identical eyeshadows.

The difference isn't as obvious on camera, but it's definitely evident in real life. The single of Toasted looks a lot warmer than the version in Show Pony. I swatched the two side by side to see if the difference still showed up that way.

UD Toasted from Show Pony palette on top, UD Toasted single eyeshadow on bottom

Aha! See, they're not the same! The difference is evident. Why, Urban Decay, why? I loved the palette version. Urban Decay is usually an extremely consistent brand - their eyeshadow singles are usually the exact same color as in their palettes. However, this time I was let down. The single version is just a tad too warm for my taste - the slightly cooler version works much better on my skin. Although I do have warm skin, I can't wear extremely warm colors, such as true copper. Anyway, I just thought I'd post to let you all know about the difference. Maybe one of the items was off-par (is that a word?) and that's the reason? If anyone has had a similar experience or has an idea why the two Toasteds swatch differently, let me know in the comments!

MAC Bare Study vs. Make Up For Ever Aqua Cream in 13 Warm Beige Swatches & Comparison

When I swapped for my MAC Paint Pot in Bare Study (my first Paint Pot), I owned MUFE Aqua Cream in #13 at the time, and the first time I used it I noticed a startling similarity between the two. So when I got around to it, I figured I would do a swatch comparison. I finally did,  It turns out, they're really not that similar. Sorry for all the flipping back and forth of the two products, the pictures just turned out that way....=/

MUFE Aqua Cream in 13 on the left, MAC Bare Study Paint Pot on the right

MUFE Aqua Cream in 13 on the left, MAC Bare Study Paint Pot on the right

MAC Bare Study Paint Pot on the left, MUFE Aqua Cream in 13 on the right

Basically, the MUFE Aqua Cream is a lot warmer than the MAC Paint Pot - more bronzey-gold tones in it, whereas the MAC Paint Pot has more white-gold tones. It does figure, since the MUFE is called WARM Beige, haha. However, they're both fantastic products. I prefer the formula of the MUFE Aqua Cream a bit more since it's waterproof and doesn't crease nearly as fast on me. I have to use a primer under Paint Pots, or else they crease ridiculously by the end of the day, and noticeably after about 4 hours of wear (without primer). The MUFE Aqua Creams crease after maybe 6 hours, without a primer. However, the Aqua Cream isn't as blendable as the Paint Pot, and I prefer to use the Paint Pot as a base. They're both equally well pigmented and they're both great products, hope that was a helpful comparison!

My First Bright Lipstick: Viva Glam Nicki Review and Swatches

Okay, first of all I have to apologize for the long absence. First of all, I recently found out how to schedule posts on Blogger. I know, I'm a bad blogger and very non-tech savvy. But I saw people talking about how they scheduled posts and the brilliant thought occurred to me that I could do that too (I thought maybe they had more advanced blogging platforms, but no). I was actually on a trip to the Grand Canyon and the national parks in that area with my family, let me know if you guys want to see pictures. Anyway, I'm sorry for being AWOL and I'm back with a review!

This was my first purchase of a really bright lipstick, unless you count red lipstick. So I was quite excited. I've been wearing this on weekends, since it's obviously a bit loud for school. Anyway, someone tell me if I'm wrong but this looks VERY similar to Watch Me Simmer and Force of Love, at least in swatches I've seen. But I do have to say that I am in LOVE with this lipstick! I like Nicki Minaj, and her makeup is always super bright and creative. And the money for Viva Glam goes to a great cause - 100% of the money goes towards helping stop AIDS, which is just really, really fabulous.

As always with MAC's lipsticks, the packaging is gorgeous and simple, there's little chance of the lid coming off in your purse.

The inside of the tube has Nicki's signature on it, like all celebrity Viva Glam lipsticks. And the color of this lipstick is just so, so bright! This was an overcast day, so the true boldness of this color doesn't show as much as I'd like it to. I prefer the bullet type lipsticks to the ones where the lipstick takes up the entire casing, since with the latter type sometimes they don't twist down very well.

The formula of this is pretty nice, but my one issue is that it is so dry! I always have to apply lip balm before I apply this, or else it tugs on my lips. :( And after about 10 minutes this settles into the fine lines of my lips, but I can just correct that with a Q-tip and it's fine after. Because this color is just so gorgeous that it's absolutely worth it.

Ignore the purple eyeliner swatch above this, I didn't notice that when I took the picture. I was doing a bit of a swatchfest that day. The color is a yellow based bright neon pink with maybe a tiny tiny hint of coral in there. This lipstick is extremely long wearing, I get around 5 hours of wear from it with a meal in the middle. It does fade a bit unevenly at the end, leaving a nasty lipline so I have to wipe it off or retouch at that point. It's a satin finish, which I like.

Overall, the formula of this lipstick is a bit dry but the packaging is nice, and the gorgeous color honestly makes it completely worth it. A bonus is that the money goes to a fantastic cause. This is a lipstick that I would absolutely recommend. My giveaway ends in exactly two weeks, don't forget to enter! A big thanks to all who have participated so far. Spring break ends today, back to school tomorrow for me. Happy Sunday night!

Am I the Only One? Review of NARS Lhasa Eyeshadow

I'm an honest blogger. And I'm going to be honest with you right now. I have no idea how to pronounce the name of this eyeshadow in real life. Which is why I'm so happy that I don't do videos - I would probably sit there for at least 5 minutes while I tried in vain to pronounce the name of this new eyeshadow. Luckily for you, I'm a traditional, writing type blogger. So you can just read the name and wonder to yourself how to pronounce it. Now, I saw the news about this eyeshadow's release on Temptalia's website. Lavender grey sounded like an intriguing color, so I waited impatiently for reviews.

The reviews were fabulous. Everyone loved it. It apparently was up to par with all other NARS eyeshadows. And I didn't have a lavender grey in my collection. In fact, I only own one grey (Knight Divine by MAC). So it wouldn't really be a terrible thing to have two greys, especially if one was as unique as everyone had said it would be, right? Or at least that's what I told myself when I walked into Sephora. I swatched the display tester on my arm, and was unpleasantly surprised by the lack of pigment it seemed to hold. But the color glistened and glimmered. The hints of lavender peeked through and the finely milled shimmer of the eyeshadow seemed to call my name. I gave in and bought it. I took it home with me and snapped pictures and swatches - here they are for you guys. It was a bit of an overcast day, but I think the pictures came out pretty decently - I had to tweak a couple of them a teeny bit to amp the exposure up, but I assure you I did not mess with the color of the eyeshadow at all.

Okay, there were two outstanding things about this eyeshadow. Firstly - it is not very pigmented, and I had to put on two or three layers of eyeshadow for this swatch. Secondly - it is such a gorgeous color. Unfortunately, those two factors are a bit at war with each other. But the color was so gorgeous, I thought I might willing to sacrifice pigmentation. So the next day, I tried to apply it to my crease. I had to go back to the eyeshadow three times for any impact. I have very few eyeshadows with low pigment - I find them very frustrating to apply and work with. The obvious solution would be to buy pigmented eyeshadows, which is what I do. And NARS Lhasa is really not one of them. Besides that, when I wore it in my crease, it creased. I hear a lot about NARS eyeshadows not creasing and wearing for eight hours. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to hold true for my oily lids. Every other beauty blogger seems to love this shade and had no complaints about pigmentation - I seem to be the only one who isn't in love, or at least like, with this eyeshadow. I'm more neutral - just like the shade itself. I've lost a bit of faith - this was my first NARS purchase, and after hearing so many fabulous things about the brand, I was somehow expecting more. Although the color is fabulous if I can get it to show up, the unpronounceable NARS Lhasa is headed back to the store. Thanks for reading!

Sephora Prisma Chrome Eyeshadow Swatches

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Went into Sephora and swatched all of these. They are pigmented, smooth, and really lovely. My favorites were Shimmery Sand and Bronze Brilliance - I didn't end up buying either, though, because to put it simply these are quite dupeable, and I didn't really see any super unique colors. The black one got cut off a bit in the picture, but it was pretty pigmented (not as much so as Urban Decay's Blackout, but still up to par). They are all shimmery colors, no mattes in this collection. Here's swatches of all of them (the friends I was with thought I was totally crazy)!