Aromaleigh Astronomical swatches, part one

Hi everyone!

This post is long due because Miss K sent me her Astronomical collection for a review and I received the package on Dec 16th. Of course, that was the day I got my epically epic sniffles that led to infection asthma. I've been more or less sick ever since and now it seems it's happening again. However, after washing my hands until they were red an raw I decided to post these swatches. Sorry about the image quality. It's very cloudy in Helsinki at the moment and it's fricking snowing. Again. We already have about 60cm of snow.

I'm doing the swatching in two parts because of the light issue and because I'm not feeling well. So just bear with me.

The swatches are inside without a flash and I've used TFSI + Pixie Epoxy as a primer. BTW, these are so shimmery and glittery that I heartily suggest using a sticky base for maximum sparkle fest.

The colour descriptions are based on what I see when I look at these colours. Ye be warned.

Top (L to R): Milky Way, Celestial, Umbra, Ephemeris
Middle: Magellanic, Apogee, Perihelion, Heliosphere
Bottom: Neutrino, Nadir, Extra-Galactic, Dark Matter

Milky Way: a peachy off-white with tons of green sparkle (which of course isn't visible in the photo).
Celestial: a very sparkly baby pink with golden shimmer.
Umbra: a shimmery, satiny mauve (not as sparkly as Milky Way or Celestial) with pink flashes.
Ephemeris: a light golden taupe with greenish shimmer.
Magellanic: a bronzey brown with red flashes.
Apogee: maroony, red-based brown with tons of shimmer.
Perihelion: a French Vanilla yellowish white colour with cool pink sparkle.
Heliosphere: a metallic olive gold.
Neutrino: dark chocolate brown with intense teal shimmer.
Nadir: shimmery pink coral.
Extra-Galactic: a metallic, slightly dusty purple
Dark Matter: a cocoa brown with golden tones with blue-ish (?) sparkle

My favourites from these are Milky Way, Celestial, Umbra, Ephemeris, Perihelion, Neutrino, Extra-Galactic and Dark Matter.

Colours that are more unique: Perihelion, Neutrino

This is the more neutral part of the collection. The shades are extremely shimmery and/shiny, it's like a burst of stars, really (well, duh). Perihelion and Neutrino stand out to me as the more unique colours but that doesn't mean that the other colours are somehow worse, not at all. For me these two are colours that I don't remember seeing anywhere.

Anything you like in this collection?

London haulings and a few pics

Hi everyone!

So I spent last weekend (actually from Thursday to Sunday) in London with my friend celebrating my birthday and her nameday (well, we needed an excuse!). I was going to do a swatch post today but unfortunately I have the sniffles and I don't like to get germs all over my precious makeup thingies. So instead I'm posting my London makeup haul and some photos from the trip (ye been warned, the post in question be picture-heavy).

FOTD: Parcel Tongue

Hi everyone!

I got a new camera this week so I took some FOTD photos with it. Unfortunately when I was scaling the images down a bit, I managed to change something in my full face photo and then I had to change the warmth of the photo so it may look a bit off.

I also got what appears to be my last Aromaleigh order. I got some full sized products from Wonderstruck and Spells collections. I'm a huge Harry Potter fan (I prefer the books but Alan Rickman makes an excellent Severus Snape) so Spells was my cup of tea. I ordered Obliviate, Wingardium Leviosa, Serpensortia, Tarantallegra and Priori Incantate. Serpensortia and Priori Incantate really stood out for me: Serpensortia is a lovely olive green that leans to gold and has a lovely shimmer to it and Priori Incantate is this greenish golden brown shimmerbomb. If I could, I'd still order Silencio, Protego, Alohomora and Expecto Patronum.


Here's the look I created with Serpensortia and Priori Incantate:

Parcel Tongue

Face:
Aromaleigh Glissade foundation in 1CL
MAC blush in Oh So Fair
Aromaleigh Ultra Resolution Finishing Powder in Clear

Eyes:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance primer
Aromaleigh eyeshadow in Serpensortia (all over upper lid)
Aromaleigh eyeshadow in Priori Incantate (crease and outer vee)
Fyrinnae eyeshadow in Shinkirou (as a highlighter below brow)
Coastal Scents gel liner in 24kk (I think.. used as a liner)
MAC Fluidline in Blacktrack (upper lashline)

Lips:
Aromaleigh lipbalm in Just the Balm, Ma'am
Evil Shades Deviant lipstick in Primrose Path

Here I wonked up the settings. This looks a lot bluer than it should. The plus side is that no one can see my acne!

These pictures I managed not to eff up. As you can see, Serpensortia is hella glowy. I love it.

Argh, I wish Priori Incantate would show up more but I messed up, apparently. It's sparkly and glowy and I know a few people who'd want/need this shade...

If you follow me on Twitter (I've changed my profile private again because I've had enough of the spammers there), you probably know that I had an office Christmas party on Friday. The night didn't go so smoothly for me. I spent 1,5 hours doing my hair and makeup and started feeling sick after just an hour after the party had started. FYI I wasn't drunk, I just got a terrible headache, felt dizzy and my stomach started to turn. I suspect that my sensitive tummy didn't like the combo of 2 antibiotic tablets and alcohol. So I went home (by bus after standing in -10 centigrade weather for 10 minutes) and started throwing up. Then I went to sleep for 2-3 hours and woke up feeling relatively fine. Boyfriend was such a sweetie and went to a nearby gas station to get me some ic cream when he heard I had missed desserts.

Here's a pic of me dolled up on Friday:

As you can see, I'm suffering from acne at the moment (that's why I'm on antibiotics, my glands had swollen up due to an infection caused by the acne) and I think I might be a little tipsy...

So, how do you like the looks?

It's a Tartan Blur

Well folks,

it's the time of the year when you have sunlight in Finland only if you're extremely lucky. Now it's 12.46am and it's mostly grey.

MAC came out with a collection called Tartan Tale which really is no news anymore but I just wanted to share my haul with you. Initially, I was just going to get Courting Lilac lipstick, A Wish Come True eyeshadow and Style Clan nail polish. First I got Cut A Caper lipstick, A Wish Come True eyeshadow, Enviably Fun eyeshadow and Style Clan nail polish. I left Courting Lilac behind because it looked too murky at the MAC counter when I swatched it.

I was the second person on the counter on the morning of the release. I had a bit of a hassle because I told the MAC artist what I wanted and she checked some of the shade names except for A Wish Come True. So when I got home a few hours later, I had Semi-Precious in my bag. I had to run back and they changed the eyeshadow. By that time there were a lot more people and I was sure that A Wish Come True had sold out (we have only one MAC counter in Helsinki and they get their stock from another country so if LE stuff runs out, they don't get more of it because it takes about 3-4 weeks for them to re-stock. At least this was the case a year ago. And believe me, sometimes it seems they're out on everything).

Let me share the first blurry pics of my first haul...

The happy Tartan family reunion. Enviably Fun is the green tartan striped eyeshadow (as you can see, these are slightly bigger than regular MAC eyeshadows) and the pinkish one is A Wish Come True).

 Here's how Cut A Caper (lustre finish) looks on my chapped lips. It's a bright peachy pink lipstick but it applies pretty sheer. For me it's perfect because it really freshens and brightens up my skin tone.

Okay. I should explain this crappiness of a photo first. I tried to get a decent swatch photo of the eyeshadows (upper line without primer, lower line with TFSI+Pixie Epoxy) but I had to tweak the brightness because the photo turned out yellow without proper lighting and flash. However, you can see that these eyeshadows really do require a primer because otherwise they're really sheer. They are nice and shiny, though. The finish is very satiny and shiny. But if you want more pigmented dupes, check out Fyrinnae's Danse Macabre (lime with golden sheen) and Apparition (pink with mauve tones) as these are far more vibrant than MAC's.

I love Style Clan nail polish. You can see the flecks of copper in the poop brown base in this photo. And yeah, it looks poop brown in your nails.. but the copper flakes make it more festive! Actually, this polish is a good alternative to black nail polish in case your workplace frowns upon black nails.

So I decided to leave Courting Lilac behind. Guess what followed me home from Tallinn's Kaubamaja's MAC counter? Yep, Courting Lilac lipstick. The shade looked better there (could it've been the lighting?) and it cost a few euros less than here. Win-win, I'd say.

Courting Lilac (glaze finish) is lilac with golden sheen. It's on the sheer side like Cut A Caper. I love the gold in it, it makes the shade interesting and it changes according to light.

Here's a swatch of the both lippies on bare skin.


Somehow the two blushes of the collection didn't tempt me as much as I would've thought. Highland Honey looked too yellow on me when I swatched it and Her Blooming Cheek has nothing on some indie stuff I have.

As you can probably guess some or all of these are following me to my trip to London which is in few weeks!

Did you shop Tartan Tale? What did you get?

Sugarpill: Burning Heart Monster Palette

Happy Halloween!


A few weeks back Sugarpill had a special Halloween sale on their shop where they sold 'Monster' palettes, i.e. their regular palettes that had some minor defects in them. I ordered the Burning Heart palette on a whim and I got it on Friday.

I know that some of you were interested to see what would a monster palette look like so I took you some pics! And swatches too!

Since this post will be picture-heavy, the story continues after the jump...

Jewels enough to make a woman: Whimsy Beading

Hi there!

If you follow me at Twitter, you may know that I've got a new, more challenging job and that most of my days are spent freaking out about new stuff that I have to learn and trying to do stuff I already can do. So for these reasons I have had to ignore this blog and unfortunately you.

I assume that most of the people that read my blog are familiar with my friend's Phyrra's blog. She's almost always wearing these amazing jewellery pieces by an indie company called Whimsy Beading. After drooling over the pics of Phyrra wearing all kinds of stuff from them, I had to give in to my urge to get something for myself.

First of all, Kelly (one of the owners, the other one being her husband Joe) is a total sweetie. This became very evident the first time I contacted her. I wanted a custom colour set of earrings and necklace but I wanted them in the style she had on their Etsy store. I didn't know how much it was going to cost me or if she'd be willing/able to create what I wanted. Kelly's answers were very friendly and she was very helpful in advicing me on the colour schemes of the pieces I wanted to get from her. My first order took over a month to reach me but during that time I was in contact with Kelly and we talked about what to do if my order never reached me. It did and I got my first order. Of course that wasn't the last time I ordered from her.


All the pieces I've gotten have been beautiful and well-made. I'm allergic to nickel and the reason I usually don't buy or wear a lot of jewellery is because I'm afraid that they contain nicklel. I haven't gotten any reaction from my Whimsy Beading jewellery. One thing to remember if you buy from Whimsy Beading is that you shouldn't bathe or swim in the jewellery or wash them with water.


I assume you'd like to see some photos of some of the beauties I have?

These green earrings were custom-made for me and are my favourite pair. I asked Kelly to create olive green and gold/bronze earrings for me in their Rivoli style (meaning that there is a large crystal in the center of the earring). I just love these. The colour is amazing and I love the style immensely.

Kelly sent me a surprise gift of magenta-purple threader earrings with one of my orders. Clever woman that one to know that I'd love this colour scheme! I wear these very often, too, with my jeans and purple/pink tops. I have to admit that I'm not 100% comfortable wearing them because they're quite long and I'm afraid that they'll get stuck somewhere and tear my earlobe. No such thing has happened but I keep my hair down, just in case.

This is my first earring order from Whimsy Beading. I also have a matching necklace. The darker crystals are actually purple (some of them, as you see, have a slight teal cast to them) but I wanted to mix them with turquoise/aqua crystals. This colour scheme was suggested to me by Kelly. It was like she could read me mind because this is exactly what I wanted.

This picture was taken on our holiday in Southern Croatia (extremely beautiful place, by the way). I blew this photo a bit larger so you could see the necklace. The colour way is identical to the earrings. I had other jewellery with me but I ended up using this necklace with the earrings throughout the trip.

If you want to look at the stuff that Kelly and Joe have made, pop to their Etsy store or Whimsy Beading Facebook page (the FB page has a lot of pictures and some of the jewellery might not be on sale in Etsy but may be custom-orderable, just ask Kelly).

I have another pieces too but I didn't manage to take a decent picture of them (yes, boo for me). I'll try to take more photos or maybe do some of my future looks wearing my Whimsies. BTW, if you're a fan of Sir Terry Pratchett and his books, there are some Discworld themed jewellery sold by Whimsy Beading (I myself have a pair of Wintersmith earrings).

If you have any questions, contact Kelly (convo through Etsy or if you have a Twitter account, she's @whimsybeading).

Have you ordered from Whimsy Beading? Are you interested in doing so?

TTFN

I'll be away for a week or so because I haven't yet had a summer holiday. Don't despair if I don't answer to any comments or e-mails, I'll be back soon enough :)