NARS Express Yourself Eyes Palette

Swatches & Review

NARS Express Yourself Eyes palette is part of NARS Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself kit, which I have recently won from Sephora's Holiday twitter giveaway.

This palette is packaged with a rubberized feeling on the outside.

The Express Yourself Eyes palette contains six eyeshadows.

Left to Right:
Abyssinia: Creamy pearl. This was a bit dry and chalky.
Silk Road II: Warm peach with gold glitter. This was gritty and has major fall-out because of the chunky glitter.
Strada: Lavendar with gold glitter. This was pigmented & even though it has gold glitter in it, it does not really show up. There was a little fall-out, but not as much as Silk Road.

Galapagos: Brown with gold glitter. This was pigmented, but there is a lot of fall-out from the glitter.
Fuji: Forest green. This was very smooth and pigmented.
Brumes II: Smokey slate blue with subtle shimmer. This was very smooth and pigmented.

All of these were swatched over NARS Smudge proof base. A majority of this palette is very glittery/shimmery.
Out of the six colors, I think the only two I liked is Fuji and Brumes. I'm not too big on glittery shades, especially with the fall-out, so if it was up to me, I probably would not have personally purchased this for myself. This is my first time trying NARS eyeshadows, and personally, I prefer Urban Decay, Too Faced & Inglot over this. The colors from this set is not that unique for me to justify spending $85 on this set. The top row's pigmentation was okay, while the bottom row had better pigmentation. I think with NARS, I will just stick with their blushes since I love the blushes I have from them.

What do you think about this eyeshadow palette? Have you tried NARS eyeshadows? What do you think about NARS items?

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Free Zoya Nail Polish 2013

Beauty News:

For the past few years, Zoya does a promotion in January where you would be able to get their nail polishes for free if you pay for shipping. Last year, it was 2 bottles free and the year before, it was 3 bottles free. This year, it is 3 bottles free.

Image from ZoyaNailPolish.blogspot.com This year, the shipping for it is $10, but you get 3 bottles, which makes it a good deal considering one bottle itself retails for $8. It excludes the newer collections, such as Lovely Spring & Pixie Dust, but there are other amazing colors as well. I have previously swatched their Fall collection AND their Ornate collection, so if you are interested, you can definitely check out some of my swatches!

A few of my favorites from Zoya: Storm
Blaze
Aurora
Song
Reva
Kristen
Arizona
Tracie
Wednesday
Fei Fei
Daul
Paloma
Frida
Zuza
Breezi

There's more, but that's just to name a few of my top picks!

For more information, check out Zoya's Blog (here).

The promotion begins next Monday, January 7, 2013 and ends Sunday January 13, 2013.

What do you think about this promotion? Are there any shades you might pick up?

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NARS Larger Than Life Volumizing Mascara

Swatches & Review

I recently won Sephora's twitter holiday giveaway and as the prize, I received NARS Makeup Your Mind: Express Yourself kit. The kit includes full-sized NARS Larger Than Life Volumizing mascara.

Like all other NARS products, the tube has a rubberized feeling to it.

The brush for this mascara has a honeycomb style.

For the swatches on my eyelashes, I have shown one with no mascara, then one coat, then two coats.
Be prepared to see a lot of eyes O_O

The picture on the left is with my lashes uncurled and no mascara. The one in the middle shows my lashes curled with one coat of NARS Larger than Life mascara. The one on the right shows it with two coats.
As you can see, the NARS Larger than Life mascara enhances my lashes a lot! With two coats, you can definitely see the lashes a lot better.

From my previous reviews of mascara, I mentioned that it was quite hard to keep my eyelashes curled because they normally go back to being stick-straight after a while. NARS Larger than Life mascara is not very wet, so it dries very quickly, which actually keeps my eyelashes curled! I have been looking for a mascara to keep my eyelashes curled and I think this is it since I have been loving it so far. This mascara also does not clump when applying, so my eyelashes won't stick together into one single piece. The downsides to this is that it is hard to wash off, even with makeup remover. I always use Bobbi Brown's makeup remover and it wipes everything off easily, besides this mascara so if you do not need to use more than one coat, I suggest only using one coat for an easier time removing it. The other downside is the price. It retails for $25, which is pretty steep considering mascara's dry out real quickly. Out of all the mascara's I have right now, I would definitely choose this over the others until I can find a cheaper alternative.

What do you think about NARS Larger Than Life mascara? Have you tried it? What mascara would you recommend for me to keep my eyelashes curled?

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Zoya Lovely Collection

Swatches & Review

WOOOOO! It's 2013! I hope everyone is having an amazing New Years & had a fun New Years Eve! I kept falling asleep last night, but my boyfriend kept waking me up.. haha.
Anyway, today, I have Zoya's Spring collection for you guys!

Zoya's Spring Lovely collection consists of six pastel spring-like colors. Three of them have a shimmery-metallic finish, while the other three have a creme finish.

The Shimmer-metallic:

Piaf: Shimmery-metallic mustard yellow. It looks kind of gold, but at the same time, it does not seem much "gold". I always wanted a nice yellow nail polish, but yellow nail colors normally clash with my skin-tone. However, Piaf actually looks good on my nails, I definitely like this a lot more than I thought I would. This applied smoothly and I used two coats.

Gie Gie: Shimmery-metallic light powder pink. I normally stay away from pink nail colors (I don't like pink, but I have a lot of pink items), but this was not too bad. I like how the silver shimmer looks on it. It looks very feminine & cutesy for Spring. This applied sheer and I used three coats for the swatches.

Julie: Shimmery-metallic lilac/periwinkle. This like Gie Gie applied sheer. I used three coats for swatches.

The Cremes:

Blu: Pastel blue creme. This kind of reminded me of Kristen, but after applying it, this was definitely not like Kristin. I feel that this is a bit too pale for me, and it is my least favorite in this collection. The first coat for this applied streaky, but it evened out by the second coat. I used two coats for this.

Neely: Pastel spring green creme. I love this!!. I originally thought it was another mint green, but it is not. It leans to a warmer green pastel and is perfect for Spring. It is not too pale, it's perfect! Out of all the colors in this collection, this had the best application. It applied smoothly and I used two coats for the swatches.

Jacqueline: Creamy soft yellow with slight shimmer. The shimmer in this is not noticeable on the nail, but when you look at the bottle in person, you can see streaks of slight shimmer in it. This is more of a nude shade and it looks a lot better on the nails than in the bottle. Honestly, I would not purchase a color like this just by looking at it from the bottle, but on the nail, it looks very nice & does not wash out my skin-tone. I used two coats for the swatch.

Overall, I like the collection. The colors are definitely good picks for the Spring season & I love pastel colors! Spring is my favorite season because my birthday is in Spring! haha. My favorites from this collection has to be Neely, Piaf, and Jacqueline. Piaf is a really unique color that I would not have imagined myself liking, but do like. The downsides to these are that they take a while to dry, and that the shimmery-metallic finish colors, it was a bit hard to remove because the silver shimmer spreads everywhere! Other than that, these colors make me want Spring to come sooner so I can use them!

What do you think about these? Are you going to get some of the nail polishes from this collection?

These are available for purchase on Zoya.com now, and they retail for $8 per 0.5oz bottle.

*The products in this post were provided to me for my honest opinion/review. I was not paid nor compensated for the review.

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