Altered Ego Cosmetics: first impressions and swatches!

This review is long overdue, I apologize to Altered Ego for that. I was meant to review them a long time ago, and to be honest, the reason why I haven't is that, for a while, I took on more than I could handle. On the bright side, I've had plenty of time to try these eye shadows and form opinions about them :)

My conclusion: I absolutely love them! The swatches below are of the first seven Altered Ego shadows I got, I have since ordered more, and I will swatch those soon as well. 

From left - right: Wino, The Angriest Pixie, Aura, Routine & Undertow

From left - right: Nakee & Sharp Shooter

Altered Ego describes these colors as follows:
♥ Wino - "a gorgeous deep burgundy color. It truly looks like a rich, red wine!"
♥ The Angriest Pixie - "a shimmery Barbie pink"
♥ Aura - "a medium purple with pink undertones and tons of purple and pink shimmer"
♥ Routine - "a dark gray with tons of purple shimmer"
♥ Undertow - "Just like an undertow, this color will surprise you again and again with its intense, bright color and awesome array of blue and purple sparkles!"
♥ Nakee - "a very light shimmery purple-pink shade but on some skin tones, it may look more nude"

♥ Sharp Shooter - "a shimmery brown-beige with pink undertones"

These eye shadows are all gorgeous! As usual, the pictures don't do them justice; you really have to see them in real life to understand just how beautiful they are. They're also very easy to work with, easy to blend, and when used over a primer they stay on all day. 

Out of these seven, Wino, Aura and Nakee are my favorites (I love my reds and purples, you'll know that by now...). I can honestly say that Nakee is one of my most worn neutral eye shadows, I find that I can pretty much incorporate it into any look. It looks great as an all over wash, a lid color or even a highlight. And I often use it to blend out darker shadows.

I really can't recommend these eye shadows enough. The quality is great, they have many beautiful colors to choose from, and they only cost $2.95 each (3 gram jar), which is very affordable, even compared to other indie makeup brands. You can get them at Altered Ego's web shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/AlteredEgoCosmetics. The current TAT is 2 to 7 days.

Lost in Makeupland's Rock My Look collection

I have some swatches for you today. I purchased samples of Lost in Makeupland's Rock My Look collection on the 31st of October, and received them on the 21st of November. So, it took them 3 weeks to get here, which I think is a long time considering that they were sent to me from Spain (which isn't that far away). She did include a discount code though, since it had taken her more than the stated TAT for her to ship them to me, and I thought that was nice :)

I had high expectations for these shadows. In my opinion, they look absolutely beautiful in the product picture. It looks like they have a really pretty sheen to them (well, perhaps not Queen, but the other ones). And when I got them, that's exactly what I saw as well. I put all the samples in little jars, and the shadows look gorgeous in those jars!

This picture belongs to LostinMakeupland

However, once I'd swatched them, they didn't look that interesting at all. All the shadows look pretty flat on the skin, and they... well, they just look so similar! When swatched next to each other, you can tell that one is more brown, one is more blue, etc., but on the eye you can't really tell. They all just look dark. That's it. 

Dream On was the one I was most excited to try. Lost in Makeupland describes it like this: "Dream On - This shade is specially difficult to swatch. It's deep and depending on the light and the angle where you look at it, will look gold or black. It's undeniably beautiful, you have to see it in person to understand why I love it so much!". And I love eye shadows like that. But this one, in my opinion, pretty much just looks like a warm dark brown color, regardless of the lighting.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I had too high expectations for these shadows. I love them in the jars, but they're just not as exciting on the skin. If you're looking for an "is it black or is it gold?" type of shadow, then I'd definitely advice you to skip Dream On and go for Persephone's Teeny Tiny T-backs instead ;)

To sum it up, I will use these shadows, cause even though I expected more, they are still pretty and I think they'll work great as liners. Let's just say that I won't be buying the full-sized ones.

From left - right: Dream On, Libertine, Queen, Seven Nation Army, Volta & Yeah Yeah Yeah

In different lighting (daylight bulb)

Bad Bitch Cosmetics: first impressions and swatches!

I recently placed an order with an indie makeup company called Bad Bitch Cosmetics. They don't have that many products to choose from, but the ones the do have look gorgeous on the site so I decided to give their eyeshadows a try. You can buy 3 full size eyeshadows of your choice for $10.25, which I thought was a good deal, so I placed an order for Barracuda, Hotaru and Vianne. And I also bought their eyeshadow primer.

I got my order pretty quickly. I don't remember exactly how long it took for my package to arrive, but I'm sure it was under two weeks, so I'm pleased with that. 

Now, I was so sure that I was going to love these shadows - the colors I got are amazing! Looking at them in the jars, they are some of the most beautiful eyeshadows I own. So, imagine my disappointment when I swatched them and noticed that I couldn't get them to swatch nicely for the life of me.

I swatched these shadows in exactly the same way as all the others on my blog - dry over my e.l.f. Mineral Eyeshadow Primer. And I spent a long time trying to get these swatches to look as nice as possible. While it might look as though I've applied them very lightly in some places, I swear that I haven't. I really packed the color on, and I still couldn't get these shadows to look as opaque as I would like them.

Out of these three, Vianne is definitely the easiest to work with. I'm almost happy with it, even though it came out a little bit uneven. Barracuda is an absolutely stunning color, but, unfortunately, it's a nightmare to work with. I mean, just look at the pictures below - does that middle swatch look good to you? I'm guessing not. It just would not go on evenly, regardless of how much I blended and how much shadow I added, which is really frustrating!

Hotaru actually went on pretty evenly. My only problem with it is how sheer it is. Like I said, I packed on as much shadow as I could, and I could still see my skin through it. And I do not want a color that dark to go on that sheer.  

So, to sum it up, I absolutely love the colors of these shadows, but I'm very disappointed with the way they look once I've applied them. Unless I can find a way to make these shadows work, I doubt that I will be buying more. I will say though, that I am willing to try a lot of things to make them work for me, cause I really am amazed at how gorgeous these colors are...

From left - right: Vianne, Barracuda & Hotaru

In different lighting :)

I will review the primer another time... I still have to make up my mind about that one ;)

Madison Street Beauty: first impressions & swatches!

Today I'm going to tell you about my experience with Madison Street Beauty. I want to start off with a little bit of background info...

I had been on MSB's website plenty of times, but I hadn't bought anything from them. Then one day I saw that they were having a sale on Heartsy, and I couldn't resist the offer ($21 worth of products for $10), so I decided to finally try their products. Before I placed my order, I looked for swatches of the shadows, like I always do, and came across a couple of reviews.

Now these reviews made me worried. The swatches were not impressive, and apparently, both these girls had received jars that were sealed with electrical tape, which gave me a bad impression. Also, both of them claimed that these products were repackaged pigments with little to no base.  Needless to say, I wasn't as excited about trying their products anymore. But since I had already bought that voucher, I ordered some of their shadows anyway.

The things I ordered arrived really quickly - it only took a week for me to get them, which is very quick considering that they were sent from the US to Sweden. So, I opened the package, expecting to find jars sealed with black tape. But I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were shrink wrapped - looking just as professional as I'd like them to look:  

Now, to be honest, I'm not sure if I could tell the difference between a hand made eyeshadow and a repackaged pigment - I'm very new to mineral makeup and, as far as I know, I've never seen/used a straight up pigment without a base before, so I don't know what signs to look for. What I can say though it that the MSB eyeshadows that I bought are very beautiful, and in my opinion they swatch really nicely! Here are all of them, swatched over e.l.f.'s Mineral Eyeshadow Primer (just like all the other swatches on my blog):

From left - right: Emerald, Carnation & Parisian Pink

In different lighting :) 

From left - right: Champagne, Antique Rose & Chestnut

In different lighting :) 

I can only speak for myself, and my experience with Madison Street Beauty has been very positive. I think the shadows are beautiful (I love the colors!), and the TAT was really good. I don't know if she's made any changes to her products, or if I just happened to choose colors that look a lot better swatched than the ones I've seen in other reviews, and I'm not going to speculate. I just wanted to tell you about my experience with this company, and I would love to know about your experiences! 

Have you bought/tried anything from Madison Street Beauty? If so, were you happy with the quality of those products? I wanna know everything, so please leave me a comment if you've tried them :)

Persephone Minerals: first impressions & swatches!

So, I am finally going to tell you guys about my first impressions of Persephone Minerals and their eyeshadows. This is long overdue - I've had these shadows for a few weeks now, and I can't remember exactly when I got them, but I know that they arrived quite quickly after I ordered them. Which means that the TAT wasn't bad at all. Let's just say that I've had to wait a lot longer for some of my indie company orders to arrive...

The shop owner, Victoria, is referred to as "the Queen of Duochromes" on several places online, and I can see why - she has so many gorgeous duochrome shades to choose from that it's almost impossible to make a decision about what yo buy. I could pretty much go to her site, close my eyes and randomly add items to my basket, and be sure that I'd love them. Admittedly, it would be pretty damn difficult to add items to a basket with your eyes closed, but you get what I'm saying, right? ;)

My first order from Persephone Minerals was small only because I'm a poor student and didn't have more money to spend at the time, but I will definitely be purchasing more makeup from them in the near future!

So, what did I get? Well, I got two full size shadows called Kore and Teeny Tiny T-backs. I have swatched both of them dry, over e.l.f.'s Mineral Eyeshadow Primer, in the picture below. But I kind of regret doing it that way now... I will have to add some pictures of what they look like wet asap, cause Teeny Tiny T-backs looks so much more intense wet! It's pretty much the perfect, super sparkly, black liner when applied using a damp angled brush. Kore is absolutely stunning both wet and dry, so I'll probably use it dry most of the time since I find it easier to apply that way :)

From left - right: Kore and Teeny Tiny T-backs

To sum it up: my first impression of Persephone Minerals is pretty great. I absolutely love the eyeshadows I have so far, and I will definitely be getting some more!

BFTE Cosmetics: first impressions & swatches!

I'm really getting into indie makeup these days. I barely even knew that indie cosmetics companies existed until quite recently (well, I knew they existed, but I didn't know of any particular ones). Now, however, I have found plenty of indie companies, and I have ordered things from... *clears throat*... let's just say that I've ordered far too much makeup recently ;)

So, that means that I have a whole lot of blog posts and videos about lesser known brands coming up. And yes, I am incredibly excited about it!

Okay, now I'm gonna move on to what this post is actually about: BFTE Cosmetics. I placed my order on the 22nd of September, and received the package on the 3rd of October, which isn't bad at all. So I'm pleased with the TAT.

I ordered a whole lot of things from BFTE: 12 eyeshadow samples, one full size eyeshadow, one highlighter sample and one foundation sample. They also included a sample of their Dragon Slayer eyeshadow, which I thought was really nice of them!

I will swatch all of the eyeshadows eventually, but I'm gonna start off with the following six:

♥ Beautiful

♥ Canyon

♥ Dusty Rose

♥ Spring Fever

♥ Whisper

♥ Wicked

From left - right: Beautiful, Canyon & Dusty Rose

From left - right: Spring Fever, Whisper & Wicked

From left - right: Beautiful, Canyon, Dusty Rose, Spring Fever, Whisper & Wicked

This is how BFTE describes these colours on their website:

Beautiful: "Don't be fooled with how this butter yellow color looks in the pot. Applied wet an interesting and unique pink duo pops out, and yes, it's beautiful."

Canyon: "Light oyster-beige with gold mirco shimmer that was part of our new Velvet Collection. This color is designed to go on silky smooth and feel like velvet."

Dusty Rose: "Smooth metallic Rose Gold."

Spring Fever: "Light pink with orange duochrome."

Whisper: "Sheer creamy beige with a violet duo chrome."

Wicked: "Purple with green duotone."

As you can see, four of these six eyeshadows are duochromes, or Duo Tones as BFTE calls them. I have developed a slight obsession with duochrome eyeshadows, so I was extra excited to try those four ones. Luckily, they're all gorgeous! So are the regular, non-duochrome, shadows. 

These eyeshadows are all incredibly smooth in texture, and five of them went on evenly straight away (Spring Fever did not). I can't put my finger on how Spring Fever is different from the others, but for some reason it went on a little bit streaky, even though I tried my best to make the colour look perfectly even. Perhaps it was only a one time thing, but it is my first impression nonetheless, and I will therefore mention it in this blog post. The colour of it is absolutely stunning though, so it will hardly stop me from using it ;)

I will be back with more swatches of BFTE shadows, and full reviews of them once I've worn them enough. Please let me know if you've tried anything by BFTE, and if so, what do you think of it?

Spectrum Cosmetics: first impressions & swatches!

I got a package from Spectrum Cosmetics in the post yesterday, and I'm super excited to show you what I got!

I placed my order on the 27th of September, so I am very pleasantly surprised that it arrived so quickly. I mean, it was sent from the US to Sweden - it could have taken a lot longer. From what I've read, the TAT (turnaround time) can sometimes be quite long with indie companies, so I'm guessing that Spectrum Cosmetics is one of the quicker ones out there.

So, what did I get? Well, since it is the first time I've bought anything from them, I chose to start off with a small order, just in case. I thought their 5 Mineral Eyeshadow Samples in Jars offer sounded great, so that's what I decided to order. Now, I had read on the site that they ship internationally, but when I went to the checkout page it said "This item does not ship to Sweden.". So I contacted the owner, Erica, and she got back to me almost instantly and told me that it must be something wrong with Etsy, and that she definitely does ship to Sweden. She even created a custom listing for me with all the colors I wanted and shipping to Sweden, so all I had to to was pay. Needless to say, I am very impressed with their customer service!

I bought samples of the following five eyeshadows:

♥ Amethyst 

♥ Envy

♥ Mystic

♥ Peridot

♥ Smoky Quartz

Erica also included a sugar scrub cube sample in Chocolate Mint, which I can't wait to try!

These eyeshadows really come to life once you apply them to your skin! Just look at the difference between the way they look in the jars and the way they look swatched (I have swatched them over e.l.f.'s Mineral Eyeshadow primer by the way). Not only are colors gorgeous, but the formula seems great too! They go on like butter and blend very easily. 

These are just my first impressions of these eyeshadows - I will do a full review on them once I've worn them enough to know how well they wear, etc. But so far, I am pretty damn impressed with my Spectrum shadows ;)

From left - right: Amethyst, Envy & Mystic

From left - right: Peridot & Smoky Quartz

From left - right: Amethyst, Envy, Mystic, Peridot & Smoky Quartz