A little sale hauling

Priceline had a 40% off cosmetics sale recently and I tend to use these bigger sales to test out products I can’t justify paying full price for… usually because I don’t really need them. I was pretty good and only bought a few things.

Left to right: Essence Make Me Brow in 01 blondy brows, Max Factor Liquid Effect Pencil in Lilac Flame, Model's Prefer 12H Kohl & Liner High Impact Eye Pencil in Smoky Cinder, Model's Prefer Kohl Pencil in Black Amethyst, Australis Eyes Cray For Colour in Souling The Fun, Rimmel Magnif’eyes in 002 Millionaire

Essence Make Me Brow – I’ve heard good things about this but I didn’t realize when I picked it up that it was such a light colour which won’t work on my dark brows so I’m gifting it to my fair haired sister. Essence do now make a second colour, 002 browny brows, but it’s not available in Aus yet.

Max Factor Liquid Effect Pencil – my first MF purchase. I don’t have anything like this colour in my current purple eyeliner collection. It is very creamy and glides on the back of my hand smoothly so I’m interested to see how it’ll wear on my waterline [edited: it wore beautifully with no smudging]. Very pricy for the size though – it retails for $21.95 and is a fair chunk shorter than every other brand of eyeliner I own - with the 40% off I only paid $11.37 and even though I really like this formula I doubt I'd ever pay full price for such a short pencil.

Models Prefer 12H Kohl & Liner – After loving Smoky Haze, I was keen to pick up another colour and again I don’t have anything like this in my collection – it’s a mix of smoky olive and dark grey with a fine dirty gold shimmer and in the right light I can even see hints of blue grey in the shimmer. I've already worn this one and its a lovely rich creamy smoky colour. I love how it looks deepening up the lashline and waterline with Burberry Pale Barley or MAC Patina over the lid.

Models Prefer Kohl Pencil – not one of the 12H liners, this has a very subdued satin finish. It’s a blackened purple with a warm mauvy pewter finish and hints of pink in the sheen.

Australis Eyes Cray For Colour – I haven’t bought any Australis products since the early 90’s when brown everything was in. Completely an impulse buy and my first impression was very positive – the swatch blended out smoothly and then set on my hand within minutes and would not budge. I really like the silvery grey purple and while I was a bit sceptical that the high reflective shine might be too flashy for my mature eyes it blended out nicely to give a very wearable sheen. When I took the above picture I thought it looked remarkably similar to my Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Colour in Amethyst so I swatched them next to each other (Australis Souling The Fun on the left, Laura Mercier Amethyst on the right).

     

Photographed to capture the reflective sheen................................and to capture the colour beneath the shimmer

However the heavy swatch and blended edge shows they actually are different. The Australis has a one dimensional silver sheen over a neutral mauvy taupe base while the Laura Mercier has a  multidimensional shimmer with ultra fine particles of pink and purple and gold (difficult to capture in a photo but easily seen in real life and so sooo pretty) and a warmer undertone with a plumy brown base.

Rimmel Magnif'eyes– I saw this shadow on a recent Pixiwoo video and it looked really pretty on Sam so since the sale was on I picked it up too. It has more orange in the undertone than I thought it would but I really didn’t need it as you’ll see below…

Left to right: Rimmel Glam’eyes in 030 Smokey Quartz, Rimmel Magnif’eyes in 002 Millionaire, Nyx Single Eyeshadow in Nutmeg, Nyx Single Eyeshadow in Latte Foam

I’ve read some blogs that say if you have Smokey Quartz you don’t need Millionaire. The finish and the colour family is the same but the undertone is definitely different – Smokey Quartz is fairly neutral whereas Millionaire is warm with a bronzy undertone. The next closest thing I had were a couple of Nyx shadows and apart from the finish they're all pretty much the same. The pigmentation isn’t fabulous on any of these but they work well as a wash of colour over the lid as they're hard to overdo and I'll be adding this shadow to my arsenal of 'neutral-everyday-last-minute-out-the-door' colours.