Drugstore palettes

rugstore makeup are such an instant gratification fix. You can try so many trendy colours without breaking the bank. However, I still want good quality and wearable colours for me. I'm no longer in my 20s so I can't really pull off wearing bright colours.

Thanks to beauty blogs and YouTube I get so many recommendations on what products to try. I'm a girl that never returns anything even though I hate it so I want something I can enjoy.

Lately I've been hearing a lot of good things about Wet 'N Wild's eyeshadow palettes. I wasn't able to find the Color Icon palettes at my local drugstore that everyone's been raving about, but I still wanted to check out their other eyeshadow palettes. I also picked up Maybelline's Chic Naturals eyeshadow palette in Almond Satin that Molly's been raving about so I definitely wanted to pick that up. I actually saw a quad that was called Mocha Motion that had similar colours (with 1 more extra colour than Almond Satin) that I was more interested in, but I decided to go with Molly's recommendations.

Here are the Wet 'N Wild swatches (no flash). First 3 are from the Silent Treatment trio. The last 3 are from the Sweet As Candy trio.

The same colours as above with flash.

So what are my initial thoughts? They are very pigmented and the colours are beautiful. They look like high-end eyeshadows.

Here's the Maybelline trio swatch (no flash).

With flash.

I know this one looks really subtle, but that's what I wanted. I wanted a soft look for every day. It's not as pigmented as the Wet 'N Wild one, but I'm still excited to try this one out. Molly was saying how she loved the crease colour (the taupe-y brown colour).

So I was really happy with these purchases, BUT I really didn't like the cheap plastic packaging. The eyeshadows I picked up had so much tape around it where the Walmart staff stuck the barcodes on. When I tried removing the tape (BTW, chipping my nail polish colour during that process), I ripped up the packaging instructions on the back. Now it looks like a sorry mess...

Even though I could have lived with it, I wanted to come up with a different solution to store these eyeshadows. I had my UNII palette lying around empty (I moved all my MAC eyeshadow pans to my MAC pro palette) so I decided to store my non-MAC eyeshadows in there. I have so many drugstore eyeshadows that I don't touch because I'm always reaching for my MAC palette or Urban Decay's Naked palette.

So I started de-potting some of my single eyeshadows and some drugstore eyeshadow palettes. From top left (going clockwise): Maybelline Stylish Smokes in Natural Smokes, Maybelline Chic Naturals in Almond Satin, Lancome The New Black, Sephora Aspen Summit, and Dior 849 Exquis. I would have liked to de-pot my Wet 'N Wild palettes too, but you can see I had no room...

Beauty + clothing haul

esterday I went to the mall to use a Club Monaco gift certificate that I had gotten for Christmas. I wanted to wait until all the new collection came in. However, as usual, I got sidetracked and bought a lot more than I had bargained for. I wanted to see if MAC had the Caviar Dreams palette from the Cham Pale Collection (they did not) because Ms. Molly Lolli Pop was raving about it in her YouTube video. So I ended buying other stuff at MAC.

I bought the pro palette for eyeshadows. I already have a UNII palette, but my white one was getting sooooo dirty. I just liked the sleek, clean look of this palette.

Here's all the MAC eyeshadows I have accumulated so far. I don't have a lot, but I really like the ones I have so far. From left to right, top to bottom: Vanilla, All That Glitters, Texture, Satin Taupe, Woodwinked, Mulch, Twinks, Smut, Sketch, Beauty Marked, Sumptuous Olive, Stars 'N' Rockets.

I finally got a concealer! I got colour matched to NW25. I thought I would be an NC since a lot of Asian girls are NC's... However, the colour matched me perfectly.

I got the Studio Finish Concealer.

I also dropped by Sephora to pick up more samples of Nars Sheer Glow. I still haven't found my colour. I tried so many that I've lost count. I'm pretty sure I already tried one of these already, but I forgot. Doh!

I got my first NARS Duo Eyeshadow palette. It's from the 2011 spring collection and it's called Nouveau Monde.

Although I loved it when I swatched it in the store (even Chef Caffy on Twitter told me she loved it. She's a huge NARS fan), I'm still not sure if I should keep it. The reason being that I just ordered a bunch of eyeshadows from Rock & Republic and I'm thinking that one of the colours is going to be similar to the purple one. I'm going to hold off on using this palette until that order comes and decide then. Nars eyeshadows aren't cheap so I want to be sure it's worth it to keep. I also wanted NARS' Charade so if I return this one I'll get that one for sure!

And now onto my Club Monaco haul. I wasn't able to find anything in the new collection that I loved.

I know it's hard to see here because the jacket is black, but I've been wanting this jacket since Christmas. It was on sale then for $79, but it got marked down even further to $49! How could I pass it up?!

The jacket is beautiful because it looks like a cropped tuxedo jacket, but is super comfortable. It's not made from a stiff material like most jackets are. It's 100% silk. It also has shoulder pads so my shoulders look really structured, but not over-the-top like the 80s shoulder pads.

See? It's ridiculous. It was $229 regular. I never buy anything regular price at Club Monaco because I find that their sales are crazy. It goes to show you that they mark up their clothes like crazy.

Last, but not least, I stopped by Hugo Boss to looks for something for the husband. I know Valentine's Day is fast approaching and I decided that I wanted to get him something nice. I originally wanted to get him a winter jacket, but I couldn't find any that I liked. My husband is the type of guy that never buys anything for himself. I felt he deserved it.

I bought him a beautiful purple (it's actually coming out more of a bluish purple in these pics, but it's actually more of a pinkish purple) checkered dress shirt & tie for work. Did you know that I love picking out men's shirts and ties? I love finding the perfect colour/pattern combination. I picked this out because he doesn't have a shirt like this in his closet. Most of his shirts are solids or stripes. I felt that this was so different and on trend for this year. Plus, the collars are a bit different. It buttons up more wide than the classic ones. The tie is also a slimmer tie than the classic ties. It's a beautiful dark blue with white polka dots on it.

It's finally here!

y Unii palette came in the mail today! I ordered it on June 10 so it took about 14 days. It was worth it! My MAC eyeshadow pans are in there now. I ordered those on the same day as the Unii palette, but they came way before. I wanted to use the MAC eyeshadows, but I had to force myself not to open them because I didn't want it to be all a mess. BTW, I ordered MAC's Satin Taupe, Beauty Marked, and Woodwinked. Can you believe it's my first MAC eyeshadows?


I love the packaging on these palettes.



If you go on their website you can see how the designer went through so many prototypes of the packaging until she mastered the final one. Brilliant! The shape of the packaging, once you open it, is supposed to mimic the logo.



The palette comes with magnetic strips that you can stick onto your eyeshadow pans. However, my MAC pans already had magnetic strips so I'm going to just keep these for future use.




Here are my MAC eyeshadows. A small start, but I'm going to build up my collection. BTW, the little thing on the bottom right is the thumb grip. You can move the thumb grip around because it also has a magnetic bottom. I love how the designer thought of that too. The palette also comes with a huge mirror.

If you guys like it you should definitely check out their website. It was $29 USD (a little pricey, but way better than any other ones I've seen) and currently they have free shipping for US & Canadian residents. I ordered the one called Snow (white), but it comes in all different colours.

Itching to buy something

rool.
It probably won't happen EVER, but I've been desperately dreaming about owning Chanel's Classic Caviar Jumbo Flap Bag. Maybe it's the fact that I haven't really gone shopping in a long time. Or maybe it's the fact that my husband didn't buy me anything for my birthday, Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day. I do buy things here and there, but it's usually at really cheap big box stores and it's mainly necessities. I told my husband that I'm going to go on a shopping spree before I go back to work, but I don't think he believes me. He's always like 'We have no money, blah blah blah', but when you think about it I think he's just saying that to sway me from buying anything. I am much more cautious in how I spend money these days. Way more than how I used to be. I used to be terrible with saving and I racked up a lot of credit card debt. I'm much better now. However, I really want a Chanel bag! I'm willing to not get anything for my birthday for the next 5 years if it means I can own one of these. I've been dropping my husband hints for a couple of days since my birthday is coming up in August, but I know he's just shrugging it off. We just bought a car so there is no way in hell that he's going to shell out another few thousand dollars for a bag. Oh well.

On another note, I did buy a little something something for myself online the other day. I thought I deserved it. Nothing big, but I bought a few MAC eyeshadows and I bought Lazy Day lipstick from the To the Beach Collection. I'm soooooo excited. Can you believe that it's my FIRST MAC eyeshadows ever? You guys are probably laughing because I'm turning the big 3-0 this year and this is my first MAC eyeshadow. I'm not sure how that happened, but I've never been a big fan of MAC until I started watching YouTube beauty tutorials. Plus, I get a lot of free beauty products through work. I never had the need to purchase makeup until I was actually on mat leave and started running out of beauty products to use. I've tried other MAC products like their blushes, nail polishes, lipsticks, and maybe a pressed powder, but that was back when I was in high school. I'm finally getting interested in trying it out again. I also ordered a UNII Palette to store my MAC eyeshadow pans in. I'm super excited about that. I'll be sure to show you guys the stuff when it comes in the mail.