New Milani Eyeshadow Palettes - Bold Obsessions and Most Loved Mattes

I stumbled upon these beauties in my local drugstore but they were totally sold out! Bummer, but only for a few days until I was able to order them directly from Milani's website at $20 each.  The palettes in the store were sold out, but they still had sample palettes to play with and swatch.  The colors looked so pretty and the golden glitter was calling my name.    

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Each palette has 12 shadows and are cased in a mirrored gold finish.  They also include a full size mirror.  

What's even better are the shadows inside.  Below is the Bold Obsessions palette.  Can you see why I'm crazy over the gold? It's even more beautiful in person.  This palette is a combo of shimmers and mattes, perfectly balanced to create numerous looks.  

A closer view of Obsessions.

The Most Loved Mattes palette is also beautiful, but many of the shades are close to my skin tone.  I just wish there were a few darker shades to create more of a contrast. 

After swatching I see more contrast but I still wish there were a few more dark colors!  I do like that there are several shades of beige (50 shades of beige, lol) because I find they all look different against my skin tone.  It's tricky to find just the right shade that serves as a base color and has some color correcting properties to help with the darkness of my lids. 

The palettes look and feel high quality.  The performance of the Bold Obsessions palette surprised me.  I tried 6 of the shadows and they applied and blended very easily.  They are pigmented and have great color payoff.  I also like the matte palette but honestly I have not used it yet.  

I think these are a great buy for what you are getting.  Their quality rivals some of the higher end brands at half the price!  

Impress Manicure Christian Siriano Collection

Hey beauties! Today I want to share Impress Manicure "press on nails" with you, specifically, the Christian Siriano collection.  I've been rocking Impress Nails over the last few months and as a fan of Project Runway I was extremely excited to discover Christian designed a line for the company.  

The great thing about his collection is that most of them are metallic-ey.  A small accomplish but nice because most press on nails are usually opaque.  Christian's nails are glossy, metallic and there's even a holographic set.  I choose 3 from the collection but I will be purchasing more as they are limited edition.  

Here's the holographic set, Stained Glass. I tried to show how they look different depending on how the light hits them.  I got soooooooooo many compliments on this set.  

The lace chrome set (Lacey Rose) is equally adorable and great for Valentines.  

As usual the nails lasted all week!  The down side is that Lacey Rose started to chip/peel at about day five.  Overall I'm really impressed with these press ons.  Christian did a fabulous job!

The Christian Siriano Collection is only available online at impressmanicure.com.

Zoya Mystery Box 2018

Zoya is offering a mystery box and free shipping with the purchase of any 3 polishes.  Their polishes are $10 each so that's $30 for 3 polishes and whatever extras that are included in the mystery box which has a retail value of $120.  I went back and watched a few videos from previous years and I must admit I am tempted.  The offer is good until January 26th or until supplies last.  

The boxes will ship out starting January 26th and are limited to 1 per account. 

Maybelline Total Temptation Palette I Shadow and Highlight Palette

My first beauty purchase of 2018 is the new Maybelline Total Temptation Palette.

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Too Faced Chocolate Gold Eyeshadow Palette - Swatches and Review

The Chocolate Gold eyeshadow palette is the latest from Too Faced's plethora of fall releases.  The layer of melted gold embedded on top of the chocolate bar immediately caught my attention and drew me in.  

The palette has the typical chocolate bar semi-random format of 16 shadows (2 extra large).   There's real gold inside, where and what colors, I'm not sure.  

At first glance the theme of the palette seems colorful, but when you subtract the bright purple and green everything else is pretty neutral.  Here's swatches of the first half of the palette.  Chocolate Gold, the large transition shade, is a little too bright for my taste but would probably add to a dramatic holiday look.  I'm loving the fifth color here, Old Money, a golden bronze.  New Money, the bright purple, is gorgeous and would be a fun summer shade to sport.  All of the colors swatched here are shimmers. 

With the second half of the swatches, you can really see how neutral the palette is.  This is a combo of shimmer and mattes.  I'm loving the look of Famous (warm gold) and Classy&Sassy (rose gold).  Rollin' in Dough is a little too light for me to use as a transition shade but so So Boujee is perfect. 

After the disappointment of the White Chocolate Bar, I didn't have high expectations of this palette, but I was pleasantly surprised.  So far I have used 6 shades and they applied and blended beautifully. Matte lovers may not be drawn to the palette since it's mostly shimmers.  I usually were mattes, but the pop of brights and the shiny gold drizzle drew me in.  

The Chocolate Gold palette is available for $49 at TooFaced.com and other retailers that carry the brand. 

New Fall Drugstore Makeup: Milani Metallics

Hey beauties! I stumbled upon, the new Milani Metallics at my local drugstore.  They appear to be part of their Holiday collection (or marketed as such) because they were in a separate display.   I choose one shadow palette and lip creme from the collection. 

The shadow palette I choose is Metallic 08 Must Have Metallics Everyday Eyes

The swatches are really speaking for themselves. This palette is like a mini UD Heat palette but better.  All of the colors are gorgeous! 

Eye look I created with the palette. 

Milani Metallic Lip Cream: Making Me Matte 

Video on the above look. 

There were 2 lip cremes in the Holiday display.  I chose the darker color Making Me Matte, because I thought it would go along better with the eyeshadow.  There was also a lighter lip creme available.  Like the name suggests the lippie is metallic.  The best thing about it, is that it lasts all day!  The down side is that it can be drying. I countered that by applying lip balm first.   

I've been using these 2 products all week and I'm pleasantly surprised. The palette consists of 5 shimmers and one matte black and can be used alone to create an everyday or dramatic evening look. I normally don't wear shimmers as an all over/transition color, but surprisingly it worked!  Color 1, the largest color in the palette, is a shimmer and I was able to use it as an all over/transition color.  It's very pigmented and helped to camouflage my dark circles.   The orange and red (colors 3 and 4) blend effortlessly and the gold (color 2) was great as an inner eye shade.   Of course you can mix and match them however you choose.  Overall, I'm impressed with the performance of these products.  Definitely worth the ten bucks, but an even better deal if you can catch them at BOGO 50% off!

Anastasia Beverly Hills Prism Palette

Today I have the new Anastasia Beverly Hills Prism palette to share with you.  I purchased it from the ABH website and it arrived a few days later.  The swatches online had me excited about this palette because they seem to look good on every skin tone. 

Here's the palette alone.  There are an equal number of mattes and glitter/shimmers.  I'm not sure why they positioned them in the palette scattered, instead of putting glitters in one row and mattes in the second row. 

The first row is my least favorite. The white glitter is somewhat sheer and I can't imagine when I would use the bright neon yellow.  The purple glitter (osiris) is also on the sheer side.  My favs from this row are eden (peach) and obsidian (black). Holly bat man, this black is pigmented. 

Names left to right: lucid, eden, unity, sphinx, osiris, sphere and obsidian. 

The second row is my favorite from the palette.  Dimension (grey/purple) is a gorgeous shimmer and I can imaging a glamourous smokey eye with it.  Pyramid and eternal are very wearable shimmers since the colors are in the neutral family.  Throne is a gorgeous green and I choose it for this look.  

Names from left to right: dimension, parallel, pyramid, throne, saturn, eternal and lupe

I like this palette but I was a bit deflated after swatching the first row and having difficulty picking up some of the colors.  The shadows that I used for the above look applied and blended very easily (unity, eden, throne and obsidian).  The mattes feel soft and buttery.  The shimmer/glitters are nice but the white and purple will require some work to build up (if you don't use a colored base)

  This is a predominantly a neutral palette with a few pops of color thrown in for interest: green, purple and neon yellow.  I would equate this palette to the Subculture palette as far as style and value.  

The Prism palette is available on Anastasia Beverly Hills and Sephora.