SPARKLE: Spoiled: The Parking Meteor Expired

One of the reasons I so enjoyed heading over to the US recently was the opportunity to check out the Spoiled nail polish collection carried in CVS drugstores. I had 17 polishes on my wish list and managed to get about 10 - but have no fear it did not break the bank as the Spoiled range is done by Wet N Wild and retails for around $2 US each.

So swatched here today is the colour 'The Parking Meteor Expired' which reminds me of a cross between China Glaze's Watermelon Rind and Emerald Fitzgerald. This is the first colour I tried and I am so impressed. All pictures are taken in natural outdoor light (unfortunately it is cloudy here so I couldn't get a sunlight shot). I am wearing 2 coats with no topcoat and this is day 3. No chipping -  did I mention I'm impressed? Want to see more...

 (the pink reflection here is actually my top - sorry)

Apart from the price and range (Spoiled comes in 70 colours - holy cow), the only other note worthy thing is the brush - it be thick and wide. I found this reasonably easy to use with some practice and I'll be sure to catch the brush in a pic next time I do a spoiled NOTD.

Unfortunately I have not found a way to acquire these online as they are a CVS exclusive. Lucky Americans ;)

What colours have you tried?

Jac x

TAG: I LOVE Drugstore Makeup

1. What is your favorite drugstore makeup brand?
Actually I really don't have an overall favourite - I have favourites by products - Revlon for lips, Wet N Wild for eye shadow, Face of Australia for foundations and Australis for Mascara. If you made me choose just one brand to use for the rest of my life it would be between Revlon and Wet N Wild.

2. What are your favorite face, cheek and lip products?
Face - Physicians Formula Happy Booster Powder and Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation
Cheek - BYS blush in Peach Sundae and Face of Australia Illuminator
Lip - Revlon lipstick in Demure and Revlon Lip Butter in Sugar Frosting or Peach Parfait

3. Least favorite product?
Maybelline mascaras generally and ESPECIALLY The Falsies. Yuck!

4. What is the best makeup bargain?
Walking on Eggshells palette from Wet N Wild or Essence's Blue Addicted Nail Polish (you'll see why under number 7).

5. What is your favorite underdog product?
BYS eyebrow pencils and blushes.

6. A drugstore product that is overpriced?
Well ALL OF THEM in Australia but, generally I think mascaras are overpriced even in the US. In Australia I would have to point the finger of shame at Sally Hansen - my base coat is $16 AUD but only $6USD  - I'm sorry but that's ridiculous.

7. Show your best drugstore dupe(s)!!

• Sally Hansen Extreme Wear in Blue Me Away is a dupe of Zoya's Robin.
• Essence's Blue Addicted Nail Polish is a dupe for Deborah Lippman's Across the Universe.
• Julie G's Nail Polish in Julie's Fav is a dupe for Essie's Cute as a Button.

8. Drugstore product that isn't worth the hype?
'BB creams' (don't even get me started on the fact these aren't 'real' BB creams at all either) - if you actually want to try one then go on eBay and check out brands like Skin Food, Misha and Etude House. 

If you got to the end of this post then consider yourself tagged baby. If you do decide to do this tag as a post please feel free to link your post below - I'd love to read it.

Happy Tuesday.

Jacx

I'm back (+ a little Illamasqua blush candy)!

Hello everyone!

I have returned from my holiday overseas and I had an absolute ball. I hauled shoes, jewellery, makeup, perfume and of course polishes as you would expect. I'll definitely be posting some haul pics for those of you who want to see it all but in the meantime let me share some pics of my current favourite blush- Illamasqua's Zygomatic. I just loves it!

While it looks like a simple colour (the first pic is most true to colour -sorry about the swatches they are a little brown) it is absolutely lovely on the cheek and that sheen makes your skin look like magic. High 5 Illamasqua!

Hope you are happy and well.

Jacx

I'm not sure what happened

I sit here in my pjs penning this post wondering where the month of September has gone and slightly freaking out that I am about to embark on my first overseas holiday in a little over 34 hours.

I had planned on doing some new NOTDs, posts about the ABC (because I had a ball), some reviews and a very overdue empty post - so what happened? I'm not sure but here a couple of things that have contributed:

• WORK -  has been challenging as we restructured as of the 3rd of the month, not to mention having work coming out of my ears.
• WORK AGAIN - I have been in an interesting recruitment process that took 5 months to tell me I had been successful. I am so happy with the outcome but in my role I have been supporting others who did not receive the news they were expecting.
• HOLIDAY PLANNING - because I have no idea what I am doing I have tried (with my husband) to work out as much of this holiday as we can. I spent an evening a few nights ago on google street view trying to work out what places were near our accommodation. Why? I have no idea.
• ANXIETY FILLED DREAMS - nothing better than waking up each morning after odd (sometimes disturbing) dreams before beginning another challenging day at work.
• WORRYING OVER MONEY - I want to punch myself over this one as we have planned so well that our holiday is fully paid for before we go. But I do love a good stress out over money.

And so it could go on blah blah blah...

The reality is that this month has been somewhat "too full" for me. If I use an analogy of my energy being on a budget of $20 a day, then my dearest blog I have run out of my $20 often before lunchtime. And because I do blog for fun, I haven't pushed myself to go past my limits.

To sum up briefly -sorry (my bad) for posting only twice in September AND sorry for October because I am on holidays overseas for most of it but if I can I will be posting a few pics on here.

Hope as always this post finds you happy

Jac x

So here's what happened yesterday...

Some of you may know that yesterday was the Adelaide Beauty Conference and I had a ball. I was so impressed by everything I felt compelled to jump on here immediately and post about how happy I am to be part of Adelaide's Blogging Community.

There are so many favourites I have for what happened yesterday (and I will do a proper recap post sharing pics and what happened in the next few days) that I feel like I have "stuff" inside me ready to burst. One of the reasons I got into blogging in the first place was because I have interest in learning more about products and ingredients so I was in my nerdy-heaven yesterday when we had a couple of different companies talking to us about their products and their philosophies.

But what I call the highlight was the blogging panel about monetising blogs featuring some bloggers who had monetised and some who had not. This is a topic I have felt uncomfortable about ever since starting to blog. There is so much finger pointing at people who receive PR samples etc... stating that they cannot be independent. Honestly I don't believe that receiving compensation makes you a sell-out but here is where it gets interesting for me.

After the last conference I did receive a number of samples from PR (which I am very grateful for), the problem was that I FELT COMPELLED to review them in a timely manner and where possible feature them on my blog. I was never asked to do this -but I didn't want to be a PR black hole so I put the pressure on myself. Ultimately because I am not willing to spend the time it takes to post everyday I found that I was no longer posting about stuff I discovered but rather stuff I received - which took the fun out of it for me.

Blogging for me is a release from my stressful and very serious full-time job and because I am the type of person who doesn't like to get something for nothing, PR samples are a bit of a double-edged sword for me. Let me guess - are you thinking did you take a goodie bag yesterday (hypocrite implied) - and the answer would be yes I did. And here's why I did.... It was stated several times that if you did not want to take a bag you did not have to, bags were provided to all bloggers rather than to me specifically and remember why I got into this in the first place - to learn about new things and products.

The products provided to us had a focus on Australian companies and natural products - which is right up my alley. There are several products included in the bags which I have been very interested to try and because I do not have an unlimited budget I may not have been able to try them for some time. I was never made to feel that my taking a bag I have to review them on here but I suspect I will (Sukin provided some items and you know how much I love them for starters).

So where to from here for my little blog - there are enough products provided yesterday to keep me busy for months so I'm not really 'open for business' but what I am is more educated about the monetising issue more generally. I know I will never monetise my blog because of my reason for starting this blog and what blogging means to me in terms of my whole life. But I am not and have not been looking down my nose at bloggers that do either.

The key to blogging for me is hearing your voice and what you have to say about things. If I start to just hear PR lines instead of what you have to say then the reason for me to read your blog has gone. It's the same reason why I don't read magazines. But that is just my personal opinion.

Anyway... I guess I just wanted to share and would be really interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic too. I am genuinely appreciative to the ABC organisers and the panel bloggers for sharing their thoughts on this issue.

Happy Sunday

Jacx

NOTD: Color Club's Revealed.

Color Club's Revealed is a pink-peach with subtle shimmer. I had hoped it would be more peach than it was and decided pretty quickly that this colour was actually quite unflattering on me. Lovely shade just not for me.

All pictures are taken in natural light with 2 coats. The difference between the first pic above and the second below is that the second one is not in direct sunlight.

 

Pretty and definitely work appropriate but not for me sadly.

Jacx

Maybelline Dream Bouncy Blush in Candy Coral

I love a good gimmick and I want to love cream blush (but I don't really) so I pounced when I had the opportunity to pick one of these up through my US-based friend and blogger Tammie.


I asked her to pick me up the colour Candid Coral in the hopes it would give me a peachy flush. I then proceeded to break my arm and leave this blush sitting for the best part of 4 months untried until this last week.

So here are my thoughts so far:

Packaging: Very cute no issues there. It also seems to close well which hopefully will slow the drying out process.

Smell: Not sure there is one. Kind of wish there was - is that strange?

Texture: It is kind of a play dough type texture somewhere between a cream and a powder. It's spongy and kind of strange. I have been rubbing it around and then applying it to my face with my fingers before blending out with my Real Techniques Buffing Brush. I kind of wish this had a shimmer as it seems to sit flat on my face.

Performance against it's claims: The back of the packaging (pictured above) says it melts into the skin and I am not quite sure of that. Maybe this works better if you have oily skin - on dry skin it doesn't seem to do much for me at all. Mind you it doesn't have outlandish performance claims either so it does get a thumbs up there.

Value for Money: Look this is at best a novelty item and for that it works nicely. I certainly wont be replacing my blush collection with the Bouncy blush range anytime soon but it's a nice reminder that makeup can be fun too. It is also quite sheer so probably best for light to medium skin tones only.

Have you tried this range? What were your thoughts?

Jacx