Will I buy the Prism palette by ABH?

It's a question I keep asking myself as the palette has become available for Canadians on Sephora today.

I didn't find the colour story of Subculture appealing, so it was an easy "pass" for me. However, I'm more interested in Prism and at first glance, it looks very unique. I decided to search through my palettes and singles and see if I couldn't put together a little version of Prism myself. Perhaps my efforts will help someone else who is trying to budget or pan other palettes!

If you were to rotate the top, original palette clockwise, my swatches will be in that order; starting with Lucid.

Lucid - I used Shimma Shimma, a single from MUG. Lucid looks like a nice champagne shimmer, and I think most people have a shade like this somewhere in their collection.

Eden - I used Clementine from KVD's Pastel Goth palette. It looks orange or brown in my photo, but it's really almost spot on. A matte peachy shade leaning pink.

Unity - I used Bold from Tarte's Tarteist Pro palette. Unity appears to also be similar to MUG's Peach Smoothie and Kesi from Juvia's Magic palette. Likely another shade one could find easily.

Sphinx - I used Boronu from Juvia's Magic palette. I actually had a hard time finding a metallic copper exactly like Sphinx. I think something like MUG's Legend or Grandstand might be closer.

Osiris - I used Indigo from Lorac's Mega Pro 1. It's not even close, in pan in looks similar but it's really just a black with very limited purple shimmers. I don't have a good dupe for this.

Sphere - I used Star from KVD's Pastel Goth palette. It's basically the same thing.

Obsidian - I used Punk from Tarte's Tarteist Pro palette. Everyone owns a matte black, this isn't special.

Dimension - I used Yemoja from Juvia's Magic palette. It's similar enough, though perhaps more silver than purple.

Parallel - I used French Kiss from Colourpop's Yes Please palette. A matte brown like this is kind of unique, but most dark browns are easy to find. MUG's Cocoa Bear may also be close.

Pyramid - I used Butter Cake from Colourpop's Yes Please palette. It's lighter and more yellow, I have similar shimmery golds but most of mine are quite yellow. This one is potentially unique.

Throne - I actually layered two shades, Aja and Yara from Juvia's Magic palette. It's a very similar effect, but not perfect. I think this is a big hitter that is making many people fall for the palette.

Saturn - I used Zakiya from Juvia's Magic palette. I find this one to be fairly easy to dupe with all of the warm palettes on trend right now.

Eternal - I layered two shades, Louie and Chauffeur from Colourpop's Yes Please palette. I had a more challenging time with this one as well, even though it just appears as a shimmery copper.

Lure - I used Unexpected, a single from MUG. This matte grey-toned mauve has popped up a few times recently, I suspect Buon Fresco from Modern Renaissance would also work.

...
So what does this mean for me?

Sphinx, Pyramid, and Eternal and are coppery shimmer shades that vary only slightly in tone, and I don't have anything that resembles any of them. But they're probably not that special once applied in a look, so really to have 3 shades so similar is a bit of a waste.

Dimension and Osiris are purple based shimmer shades I don't have good dupes for.

Throne is fairly unique in the beauty world full of matte, warm palettes.

Everything else I can pretty much live without.

For really only "wanting" 4 shades in the whole palette, I'm better off to skip this one, I think!



Did you get the Prism or Subculture palettes? 

UK's Sleek i-Divine Palette in SUNSET

This is a product I've owned since January, but I haven't really talked about. I don't get to have Sleek products in Canada, so I order them on eBay. They're inexpensive (around $12CAD each), with great pigmentation and blendability. There are a lot of options for their palettes, in all sorts of colours and themes! I also own i-Candy and Vintage Romance.

The Sunset palettes is a range of "sky" colours, just like the name suggests - reds, oranges, yellows, blue, and pinks. There are a couple of shades I'm amazed with and it makes the palette worth it.

The swatches above are two swipes of a fingertip, without primer. 

The first is a bit chalky, like most black shades are. It could have been skipped, to be honest. A light purple would have fit well in this theme.

2 is a really pretty red that performs well.

Shades 3 and 8 are nearly identical, and I'm certain if this was a mistake in my palette or just how they're meant to be. 8 is slightly darker and more red than peach, but it's barely noticeable.

4, the orange, is a beauty. It's very pigmented, a near-neon colour, and looks really good with the blue shade, which is another of my favourites.

Shade 5 is a pretty generic yellow-gold. It's buttery-smooth, which is fitting for the colour!

7 is a little hard to describe, it's almost like a taupe and it's very shiny and easy to work with.

Shade 10 is the least pigmented and has a lot of extra fallout and glitter.

Shades 11 and 12 are really beautiful, a champagne and a pearly pink respectively.

I think there could have been more variety with the colour selection (2, 3, 8, 9, and 10 are all kind of in the same family and there isn't too much difference). I would have been happy with a white-based shade with golden shimmer, a couple of purples, and maybe a second shade of blue (to replace a couple of the red shades). Overall, though, I'm impressed.

Do you own anything from Sleek?

Creating my MUG Z-palette - with swatches!

The first thing I did after Christmas was order from Makeup Geek. Over the past few months, I've been bookmarking swatches of single eyeshadows so I could eventually narrow down what colours I would order for myself. I made a wishlist on the website a couple months ago, but something was always out of stock. I checked on my list on the holidays (mmm, Christmas money) and noticed everything was available. Perfect timing, right? 

This was an expensive endeavour. You can say "$5.99 for a single is so cheap compared to MAC!" but it doesn't feel cheap when you order 20 things at once. My order was around $130CAD with shipping. With that said, I still think the price it right when you take into consideration the fact that this is 100% customized to have colours I want and will use. I can spend $70 on a Naked palette and have half the colours be relatively unused, or I can shell out a bit more for something where I'm in love with everything because it's hand chosen by me. Totally worth it. 

All of my swatches are without primer, just a couple swipes of my fingertip.

L-R: Shimma Shimma, Peach Smoothie, Chickadee, Cupcake, Unexpected, Twilight, Last Dance
Row 2: Mango Tango, Latte, Cocoa Bear, Bitten, Moondust, Prom Night, Mercury
ALL BY HIMSELF: Razzleberry

Same order as above, but I threw Razzleberry over to the end (red with gold sparkles).  

Okay. My first impression with everything: I still have space in the large Z-palette I ordered, and I won't have to stare at the blank space for all-time because I will be ordering again. I already know for a fact that I need Envy, Cinderella, and Bada Bing. The pigments are amazing and I'm already reeling with ideas to go insane for my birthday face in a couple weeks.

The palettes are magnetic and come in 3 sizes. The large fits 27 singles - I currently have 15, which would fill up the medium sized palette. Makeup Geek's single eyeshadows come in pans that adhere to the magnet without any effort on my part. They also send you some magnets you can use if you choose to depot other brands. The Z-palettes are nice, though they're made of cardboard and don't seem to snap shut very securely, so I can see some people not being impressed with the construction. It's okay, you can use MAC palettes because the singles are the same size and their design is sleek and secure! I have no qualms with the cardboard design myself. The large one that I have is about the size of two Naked palettes, one on top of the other. There are dozens of colours to choose from, enhancing this customizing experience. I went with pink because it's my favourite, but orange and silver glitter were also super appealing to me!

I didn't really have any sort of theme with the colours I chose, I mostly tried to pick out things I didn't really have anywhere else. A highlight shade (Shimma Shimma) and matte brown (Latte, Cocoa Bear) aren't too unique, but are staples in most of my looks. I also wanted to have everything I would need in one palette. I like having lots of palettes, but some days I have 6 different ones out on my bed and I'm using one colour from each; it just isn't very efficient.

Some of the mattes are difficult to build up with and without primer. I don't know if I would call them chalky, they just take a bit of work to actually get picked up on the brush. I had the most trouble with Peach Smoothie and Unexpected. The shimmery shades, on the other hand, had great texture and pigmentation. No complaints for any of those ones. Prom Night, Last Dance, and Bitten are my favourite colours out of all of these because they feel like unique colours and they perform really well. I clearly like everything or else I would have picked different colours, but these ones are the cream of the crop to me.

The pigments are just amazing and beautiful and photography cannot do them justice. I have been lusting over Insomnia for months and months, it's one of the more popular shades that fans of MUG are always raving about. Utopia is a gold with purple/pink sparkles, and Insomnia is a blue/brown duochrome. Unffff.

Overall, I'm really happy with my purchase. To anyone thinking about purchasing from MUG, you should definitely give them a try. If you feel paralyzed with choice, read more reviews and look at swatches. When I was narrowing down my choices for one order, I wrote down the name of each shade I liked. I looked them up on the website one after another and re-ordered the list from "most wanted" to "I want this, but not as much as anything above it." It was hard, but really thinking about what I wanted to have was a good move!

Do you have any Makeup Geek products?

Avon 12-in-1, Sally Hansen Salon Effects

Hey! I have been a bit busy working, going to the beach, and moving apartments. I would like to update more often, and hopefully that can happen soon. Anyways, I just wanted to share one of my most used products: this Avon 12-in-1 eyeshadow palette.

I got it for Christmas this past year and it's just been one of the only eyeshadows I kept around at school (limited space and convenient packaging). I do have tons of individual shadows and a BH Cosmetics 120 shadow palette, but I don't like moving it back and forth because I'm afraid of breaking the shadows. This is cheap and has a few staple colours and it's just so easy to take places.

This is the first time I've really done eyeshadow swatches, so my apologies for any lighting issues or inaccurate representations. This is just one swipe with my fingertip, without primer. As you can see, the dark brown is a little patchy and hard to build up the colour, but I have no complaints about anything else. I don't use that colour very often. I'm a bigger fan of the first six colours on the left. As you can see in the first stock photo, my first two colours are actually switched. All of them are glittery. My most used colour in this palette is the second, white/cream one. I use it for literally everything. It builds, it's shimmery, it highlights. It's just really nice.

They're obviously no MAC product, but I think the colour choices, pigmentation, and packaging are all good enough for what it costs (approx. $12, depends on sales/deals). It's been a nice addition to my makeup and I have gotten a lot of use out of it. If you're used to quality stuff and you really care about beauty products, you might want to pass on it. It's more of a casual/beginner cosmetic-user kind of thing, in my opinion. I'm actually a bigger fan of i-Mark eyeshadows (next post - I promise!).

Next up.. Sally Hansen Salon Effects. If you've read my other post, you know I'm trying to stop biting my nails. I got the nail thing down, but I still nibble/peel everything else on my fingers. In an attempt to cease this, I picked up a package of Salon Effects in Kitty, Kitty. I figure if my hands look pretty, I won't put them near my mouth/teeth. I was hesitant on picking it up at first for a few reasons:

• TEN DOLLARS? I know salons are expensive, and nail polish costs the same, but it's still a bit expensive for nail stickers.
• I can do leopard print designs freehand already. 
• I'm not allowed to paint my nails for work, so I'd have to remove it pretty quick. 
• I wasn't even sure if it was quality stuff. Who wants to throw ten dollars in the garbage? 

But you know what? I was so happy I picked it up. I have hardly chewed my hands this weekend, and it's been two days and there isn't A SINGLE SIGN of chipping. It's stayed stuck on my nails completely and it looks way better than if I painted it myself because you don't get those puckers and lines like you do with half wet polish. The application is super easy, though a bit time consuming. I think it took me about 40 minutes from start to finish. I'm going to hide my hands from my supervisors all week because I'm off starting the 28th, anyways. I want to do an experiment and see how long the design will last.

(Excuse my poor, bitten fingers. I'm trying; really). 

I'm going to recommend these Salon Effects to everyone. I know for me it's a great alternative to getting manicures and other fake nails put on. I really like how it's just like polish and not artificial nails - I'm not a fan of obvious stuff stuck on my nails. It's easy and pretty, and there are tons of other designs!