My First Life's Entropy Order (Swatches, Review/First Impressions)!

Happy New Year to you!  I hope you have been ringing it in and that 2015 has wonderfulness in store for you!

Yesterday I received my very first Life's Entropy order!  Currently their website is down due to catching up on Black Friday orders--but I think Jane, the owner of Life's Entropy (LE), may be opening up soon as I think she's almost all caught up with everything!  LE is quite active on their Facebook page so I'd recommend checking there for updates about products, sneak peeks to swatches for new items, etc.

Life's Entropy is a relatively new indie cosmetics company, but don't let that fool you--as my pictures and swatches will show, they produce lovely products and I think the pictures will speak for themselves!  I believe LE opened in July of 2014 and they've been making quite the name for themselves as they offer a range of items you may not be used to finding from an indie company.  They are 100% vegan and hooray for that!  I have been tempted to put in an order since the beginning, but I only bit the bullet recently!

I put in my first order in the middle of November when a limited edition colour of their (very popular) Lip Theories was released to the public (previously it was available in a monthly sub with another indie company, Hello Waffle).  I knew I had to have the limited edition colour, but then I realized that the shipping cost to Canada was a flat $8--kind of steep.  So I justified it by...ordering more...of course!  For my first order I purchased the limited edition Lip Theory in "Tundra", a Particle Contour Stick in "Neutrino", and two more Lip Theories in "Apoptosis" and "Big Bang Theory".

Shortly before Black Friday, Jane put a post up on the FB page saying that if anyone would like their shipping combined from a recent purchase with their future Black Friday purchase that that could be an option.  I jumped on that!  With the shipping price being pretty spendy, I was very glad to be able to combine my orders!  It was super kind of Jane to offer to do that.

Then Black Friday happened and at that time, LE released their new (and much anticipated!!) Cosmos Collection--a lipstick collection featuring five lipsticks, three of which are colour "dupes" of popular Nars shades (more on this later).  I had to have it!  AND.  LE *also* released their new Brow Theory pomade (which is a dupe of the very popular Anastasia Beverly Hills "Dip Brow") for Black Friday!  Weeee!  Basically--I had to put in a second order (on November 29th).  I really didn't have a choice!  :)  My second order contained the complete Cosmos Collection, a Brow Theory in "Light Brown" and a bottle of the LE Revival Serum.  After placing my BF order I had a moment of panic thinking I might not have chosen the proper colour for my Contour Stick and Brow Theory Pomade.  I emailed Jane a picture of myself asking if she could give me some colour suggestions and she thought I chose the right shades.  Hooray!  Thanks to her for calming my mind!

Fast forward to December 31, 2014.  My order ARRIVED!  Yes, it took a while.  I'm not at all bothered by that though--I'm used to things taking a while as I am in Canada.  LE received a HUGE amount of orders for their lipsticks and now that I have them in my hands, I can definitely understand why so many of us were curious to try these babies out.  They're pretty awesome!

ON TO THE PICTURES!!  Brace yourselves--there are a LOT of pictures!

New (to me!) Inglot Colours!

Hi All!

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to go to my *very first* Inglot makeup counter!  I found out before having to go down to Seattle for a work-thing that there was an Inglot counter at the Macy's in Alderwood Mall.  Of course I made the whole car do a bit of a pit stop at Alderwood so I could run int with my giant list of colours to look at!!

My experience at the counter was pretty good.  I was somewhat disappointed to see that the numbering system was a bit haphazard.  I had a list of numbers (sorted by colour group) on a piece of paper, but the only way for the Inglot saleswoman to know which colour was which (say in the "blue" group) was for her to turn over each and every blue pan to look at the bottom of it.  I think a better system might have been if the numbers were listed on the top somehow!  Or if there were some kind of "map" available so that we'd know which colour was where.  I only had 30 minutes to look around before I had to meet back up with my work-group, so the woman and I were flipping colours over like crazy to try to find the ones I had wanted to look at (there were almost 40 colours on my list!).  In the end, it alllllll worked and out and I left the counter with 14 new colours.  YAY!

Here are some pictures (and swatches) of what I picked up:

Each colour comes packaged in a little plastic...holder?  I guess we'll call it a holder!  The front plastic is "hard" whereas the plastic on the back is soft and you can peel it off to release the colour from the holder.

Here they are outside of their holders.  

Top Row (left to right): 473 D.S, 340 Matte, 478 D.S. and 413 Pearl.

Second Row: 403 Pearl, 419 Pearl, 451 Pearl and 434 Pearl.

Third Row: 440 Pearl, 376 Matte, 349 Matte and 390 Matte.

Bottom two: 363 Matte and 501 D.S. 

No Flash.

With Flash (so you can see the shimmer a bit better!)

And for some swatches!  If you own any Inglot shadows you know what I'm saying when I say that the texture of these are incredible. From the pearls to the mattes to the mattes with glitter (the "D.S."), they all perform wonderfully!

Top row (left to right): 473 D.S (a beautiful sparkly teal), 340 Matte (a dark matte navy blue), 478 D.S (a matte baby blue with glitter).

Bottom row: 413 Pearl (a really gorgeous pearly teal.  This one photographs more blue than it really is.  It has a gorgeous green tone to it), 403 Pearl (a yellow gold), 419 Pearl (an antique bronze-gold).

No Flash.

Top to bottom: 451 Pearl (a blue-based gun-metal type grey with a silver shimmer), 434 Pearl (a purple-taupe-ish based...grey??  I have a hard time describing this one, obviously!  It's pretty though!) and 440 Pearl (a light pearly purple).

No Flash.

I decided to get quite a few taupes/browns in this shop and I am glad that I did!  These are beautiful!!

Top Row (left to right): 376 Matte (a medium-dark grey that has some purple and brown qualities to it), 349 Matte (a light cool-toned brown-taupe) and 390 Matte (a warm-toned beige).
Bottom two: 363 Matte (a medium brown with a slight grey tinge) and 501 D.S (a beautiful grey-toned beige with silver glitter).

No Flash.

Here is a shot of all of them with the flash used so that you can really see the shimmer and glitter in them!

With Flash.

I'm so excited to play with these!  Eeeeeee!

I also picked up three brow powders and a brow wax, but I haven't taken swatch pictures of them yet!  Let me know if you'd like to see swatches.  I'm very happy with the middle and third brow powders.  The saleswoman suggested the first and second colour and I asked her for a suggestion of a "darker" one as well.  The light colour is nice, but for some reason I think it looks a bit odd when I use it.  I may just have to try experimenting a bit more.

The colours are (left to right): 568, 560, 569.  The brow wax (on the right) is 574.

These photographed a bit strange though.  568, although "ashy" is quite a bit warmer than it appears in the photo.  560 is more "brown" and less grey than it appears.  The same goes for 569--it's more of a dark ash brown than a grey (as it appears in the photo).  The wax, as well, is  quite a bit lighter.  I'm really not sure why my camera doesn't like taking pictures of these!  The texture of them, however, is wonderful and I really like mixing 560 and 569 together to fill in my brows.

The last thing I picked up was another black gel liner (in 77).  My last one dried out and then I accidentally...set it on fire in my microwave...but now I have a new one, hooray!  I am also kicking myself for not picking up some of their "Duraline" when I was there because my teal and green gel liners have *also* dried out and the Duraline can revive them.  Luckily I am heading back down to Seattle in the middle of June so I'll be able to get it then!

Have you ever been to an Inglot store or an Inglot counter?  If so--what was your experience?!!

Edit (2:09PM):

Typing up this blog made me super inspired to play around with some of these colours.  I decided to go "dirty-smoky"!  :)

376 Matte on the lid and lower lash line.  363 Matte in the crease.  318 Matte (white) in the duct and under the brow.  395 Pearl (pearly champagne) under the highest part of the brow.  A bit of 349 Matte in the inner part of the crease.  I put a white eyeliner pencil in the lower waterline and then set it using 390 Matte.

My latest MTCoffinz package!

Hi!!

A couple of weeks back, MTCoffinz posted on their FB page that an unheard of sale would be happening on their pressed shadows.  Due to an order amount mix-up, they were offering a BOGO (buy-one-get-one)!!  I knew this meant I had to stock up on some of the ones I had been lusting after for quite some time. I also took this as an opportunity to get a friend of mine into their cosmetics as well.  We went in on an order together and I ended up with 7 new shadows.  Woo!

Truth be told, I have A LOT of eye shadow.  However, what I don't have is A LOT of pressed eye shadows.  This is one of the main reasons I was so excited about this sale--I much prefer traveling with my pressed eye shadows, for example, and so rounding out my MTCoffinz collection was a must do, as far as I was concerned!  :)

Here are the colours that I picked up this time around:

Malevolent.  A medium toned metallic silver.

Acid Reign.  A yellow-toned green with a golden shimmer.

Rumor.  A dark fuchsia pink.

Medusa.  A dark green with light green shimmer.

Vexed.  A blackened red.

 

Tantrum.  A shimmery golden copper.

Wired.  A shimmery chocolate brown.

 Here they all are swatched in natural light.  I swatched them over MTCoffinz's "Under the Rainbow" eye shadow primer.  The order from left to right: Malevolent, Acid Reign, Rumor, Vexed, Medusa, Tantrum and Wired.

And here they are swatched with a bit of flash to show off the shimmeryness that is present in most of them!

For the most part, these performed very well.  They were soft and applied evenly to the skin.  Stand-outs as best/easiest to apply were: Malevolent, Tantrum and Wired.  The only colour that gave me an issue was Medusa (as I think you can tell from the swatch).  These were all swatched using the same brush (that I cleaned off between colours) but when I tried to pick up Medusa I noticed (as I have with some of MTCoffinz's other dark shadows) that it was very "hard" to the touch and the brush wasn't able to pick much colour up.  I tried scratching away a top layer to see if a crust had formed (or something like that), but it didn't seem to help much with the application of the colour.

In the end, I am very happy with my order and the colours that I received.  I would recommend using a very "stiff" brush when working with MTCoffinz's darker colour as that might make it easier to pick the colour up.

Thanks, as always, for dropping by!  What do you think of the colours I picked up?  Do any of them stand out for you?  :)

U.K. Makeup Haul: Sleek and Barry M

Hi All!

I'm super excited because this little 'ol blog reached 200 followers since my last post!  WOOT!  Welcome to my new followers!! I hope you find something in here that tickles your fancy.  :)

Recently a friend of mine was on her annual trip to England and she offered to pick me up some stuff while she was over there and I could not resist getting...a "few" things!  I got the package in the mail yesterday and it was too dark to take good pictures, so I basically rushed home today from work in order to get my swatch-fest on.

Here is what I received:

A fun looking collection of stuff, am I right??

It sure was fun swatching it all!

(Without a flash on the top, with a flash on the bottom.)

To find out more about each product--keep on reading!

First up: Sleek Pout Polishes!  The lids both look like this:

It's great that they have a little SPF in them--especially because the sun is actually *shining* in Vancouver again!  The two colors I chose were Scandal and Electro Peach.  The bottoms of the jars list the name of the colour and the ingredients.

The colours themselves are pretty darn gorgeous.  My camera didn't do such a good job of showing how "red" red Scandal is and nor did it really pick up how coral Electro Peach is.  

The texture of these is pretty neat--and the scent of the product reminds me a bit of play-dough...in a good way?  These are described as "tinted lip conditioners" and although I have only swatched them on my arm so far, I can tell that they would feel really nice on the lips!  The colour pay off, as you can see, is sheer--but not *too*sheer.  I am quite liking these!!

 (Scandal on the left, Electro Peach on the right.)

Then on to the blush!  My lovely friend who picked these up for me picked out the two colours that she sent me.  I'm relatively new to blush, but I knew that Courtney wouldn't lead my astray!  She picked me up the two newest Barry M Blusher shades for summer: Peaches & Cream and Strawberry Whip.   The packaging is pretty typical and I am planning to just toss this little brush that came with it (I have so many other awesome brushes to use, after all!).

This is Peaches and Cream close up.  It's a lovely peachy coral color.  The texture of these blushes is quite amazing--they're very very silky and have some kind of lotion-type feel to them that enhances the silky texture.

The second blush, Strawberry Whip, sadly arrived to me all broken.  It's all good though!  I'll salvage it by putting it into some other kind of container and treating it is a loose blush.  For now it will stay closed though--I keep ending up with pink powder on my table whenever I move it!

And here they are swatched.  Strawberry Whip has a nice golden glitter to it that is pretty subtle.  Both of these I applied pretty heavily to my arm so that the swatch would show up, but when applied to the cheeks they would be much more sheer.  I am really really liking the look of Peaches and Cream on my skin tone (or at least the skin tone of my arm!).

Next up,  Barry M Lip Lacquers!  I chose Cherry Red (pictured on top) and Party Pink.  These are like a lipstick crayon, I suppose.  I think there are lots of products like these out on the market, but these are the first lip crayons I've ever had.  And boy oh boy are they ever AWESOME!

(Party Pink on the left, Cherry Red on the right.) 

These glide on to the skin super easily and the colour pay-off is INTENSE.  They are both very very sparkly and I could see that causing a bit of a problem once the product starts to wear off, but holy smokes are the colours themselves every beautiful.  Party Pink has blue duochromey-ness to it and Cherry Red is definitemy more of a blue based pink than a true red (although I'm sure it would be super pretty over a red lip liner--which I will have to try soon!).

(Again--Party Pink on the left and Cherry Red on the left.) 

Here is Party Pink applied over one of my new Barry M Lip Liners, Dark Pink:

(Without a flash on the top, with a flash on the bottom.) 

To help out with all of the lip products I've been collecting lately, I also picked out two new Barry M Lip Liners.  I go Russet (the brown) and Dark Pink (the pink...obviously...heh!).  I'm still not sure why I chose to get brown...I figured if anything I could use it applied lightly to mimic my own natural lip shade.  In my head, this made more sense than it did when I finally got the colour and saw it.  I'm sure I'll come up with a reason to use it though!

These pencils "warm" up against the skin quite nicely and I find that that they apply very smoothly.  I am a fan for sure.

Lastly--Barry M Kohl Pencils.  I have, up until now, only had white and black eyeliner pencils.  I wanted to expand my horizons, so I picked out some greens, blues and a purple.  I think these are going to be so fun to play with this summer!

Once these warm up a bit against your skin they do apply very smoothly.  I think my immediate favorites were the greens and the pale blue.  Although I'm sure the darker blue and purple will grow on my pretty quick!!

 (Left to right: Kiwi Green, Lime Green, Electric Blue, Pastel Turquoise and Bright Metallic Purple.)

And oh yeah!  I almost forgot about the mascara!  I also got the Barry M Lash Modelling mascara.  The package claims that it "volumises, lengthens & separates lashes".  I tested it out this morning before running out the door to work and I did really like how it applied (I forgot to take before and after pictures of my eye lashes--but don't worry, that will follow eventually, I'm sure.  I should actually do a mascara comparison post, that might be fun!).  I like these plastic bristle applicators--I find that they don't deposit too much product at once (because it can't hold much on the brush in the first place--and that works out just fine for me!

That's all for this U.K. makeup haul post!!  One of the things that I really appreciate about both Sleek and Barry M (and especially Barry M) is that they make it very easy to know which products they offer are vegan and which aren't.  I wish more cosmetic companies would take their lead!

Do you have any Sleek or Barry M products?  What are your favorites??

Naked Cosmetics Haul + Review

As!! As I mentioned in this post, I recently got a crazy awesome Naked Cosmetics haul!! Yaaaahooo!! My lovely friend Mo (of Madd Style Cosmetics) let me know about a super awesome kit she was ordering from Naked Cosmetics--and once I knew about, I could not resist getting one for myself!

My first Naked Cosmetics purchase was at the 2011 Vancouver IMATS. I purchased the very lovely Ivory Stack (which will be photographed and swatched with this haul, even though I didn't buy them at the same time!) after seeing Xsparkage rave about it for quite a while on her youtube channel. When I purchased the Ivory Stack it was discounted (I feel like I paid $30 for it). Regularly, Naked Cosmetics pigment stacks (of 6 colours) are quite pricey (they're usually $59.99 each!!), but when I found out about the $165 pro starter kit deal I essentially went mad with desire. Yep, makeup sales are madness inducing!! The only issue is that Naked Cosmetics does not list their ingredients on their website!! My desire was put on hold until I heard back from the customer service people about which of their stacks are vegan-friendly. Peter Estey, the cusomer service rep I emailed back and forth with, was so extremely helpful. At first everyone with the ingredients listing was out of the office, but Peter kindly offered to save a promo for me (in case it sold out while I was waiting) until he could track down the info I was requesting! Wonderful customer service! Eventually Peter and I sorted out the details of my order--it was even arranged that I could substitute the (non-vegan friendly) brushes for a double up on the shadow base and gloss base! As you can tell, before I even received my product, I was a happy customer. Last but not least, once my order was shipped--it was received by me *very* quickly! I'm used to waiting quite a while for U.S. products to cross the border into Canada. I'm convinced Naked Cosmetics has some kind of awesome deal with the border because I've seriously never received anything so fast!

Enough with all of the words! Let's get on to the goods!!!

As you saw in my original (teaser) posted, this was my order! It included 2 Clear Bases, 2 Gloss Bases, an angled liner brush and collection stacks in: Sierra Nevada, Mother Nature, Harvest Moon, Heavy Metal, Twilight, Debonaire and Ebony. I will say it right now that these are SUCH beautiful products. They're all finely milled, mixed to perfection and apply like a dream!


First up, Sierra Nevada! A wonderful "neutral" collection from a light highlight all the way to a matte deep black!


The "white" in this collection is actually quite beautiful. It has a pink duo-chrome property that didn't photograph all that well. The next colour is a light goldish tan--it's gorgeous!! Then we have a coppery colour, a silvery one, a bronzey one and a matte black. The shimmer/sheen to these is just spectacular!

(At the end of the individual collection pots and swatch pictures, I will post a two pictures of the swatches without the flash. The flash really helps to show how awesome these are though, so I will be posting the "with flash" pictures in the bulk of this post! All of the swatches in this post were done over MTCoffinz "Under the Rainbow" primer! Lastly, click all pictures for a closer look!)

Next, Mother Nature! This collection ranges from white to gold to red to green to tan to a reeeeeally neat duo-chrome reddish brownish colour with an intense green sheen.


The white in this collection is mostly just a pearly white. The gold here is more "yellow" toned than the gold from the Sierra Nevada collection. The red is a lovely rusted red. The last three are really what makes this group special. The green has a super goldish sheen. The tan! Oh, the tan. Something about this colour speaks to me!! Then the last colour likely speaks all for itself. Isn't it neat?!


Harvest Moon was pretty much the reason I needed to make this order. Never mind that it shares a name with a neato video game--this is a truely remarkable collection! In the pots you might think this is a rather unassuming collection--but the swatches are something else! This one ranges from a white (with a pink duochrome), to an orange (with a pink duochrome), a yellow "truer" gold, a green (with an intense gold shimmer), an antique-ish gold and a brown with a green duochrome.


See?!!!! What did I tell you?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BAH! I believe that these swatches need no explanation.


Now, for some Heavy Metal! These ones all have a beautiful metallic spin. You get a silver, gold, bronze (at least I think you'd call it a "bronze"...), copper, a SUPER eggplant purple and a smashing blue!


These ones are loveeeely! The gold is a bit "sheer", but ultra sparkly. The purple and blue in this group are just to die for, wouldn't you agree? :)


The Twilight collection surprised me the most. I *love* this one. Similar to the Harvest Moon group, this collection might not look like so much in the pot--but swatched, oh my gosh! Just you wait....


BAH! Are you amazed?! Every single colour in this collection of 6 is just freakin' spectacular! The first colour is a very neat light taupish colour with a pink sheen. The second colour is a pale sparkly blue. That third colour...well geez...it's great, that's what it is! It's a light grey with a pink sheen. The fourth colour looks blue in the pot, but bursts out with some green/teal shimmer!! The fifth colour is a nice sparkly dark blue. And the last colour is a sparkly navy blue with a soft black base.


Debonaire is next! This is the solid "smokey" eye set! You go from whites to greys/silvers to matte black.


Yep, it's great! The white is a pearly high sheen white (it's definitely more opaque than the white from Mother Nature). The second white is an ultra sparkly white. The third colour is actually a pale pale super glittery silver-white. Then you get a lovely pearly grey/silver. Next is a darker more "glittery" grey. Lastly is a matte black (the glitter you see must have gotten there by mistake!).


Ebony! All of these colours have a blackened base--it makes them pretty darn special. If you applied these over a black I bet they would sing even louder than they do over the "nude" base that I have used in my swatches. This collection gets you a silver, blue, green, burgundy, dark gold and a sparkly black!


Here are the pots again, with a flash--since they're so dark without a flash--I took this just so you could see how awesome they are!

These swatches are also quite straight forward. I really like these ones (am I getting too repetitive yet?!)! I especially love the burgundy colour!


Last collection, Ivory! Even in the pots--you can tell they're going to be neat!


BAM! In this collection youget a silverish sheer white, a peachy colour, a lavender, a gold, a green and a blue! These work wonderfully in the duct and would perform super awesomely over a black base, I would imagine!


And here are all of the swatches sans flash!



I am thoroughly impressed with my purchase from Naked Cosmetics. As you can see, I will have endless endless combinations to play with!! Have you tried Naked Cosmetics? What is your favorite collection? :)