Inglot Reviews: Liquid Blush, Lip Gloss Duo, & more!

Whenever I walk into Inglot, I'm overwhelmed by the sheer choice of colours and products they have. It really is amazing! Since I've been loving my Inglot Freedom palettes so much lately, I thought I'd branch out and try a few other Inglot products too. (Not to mention, their store in Westfield London always seems a much more pleasant place to shop than MAC!). Here's what I got:

Inglot Eyeshadow Trio
I got this in a trio of purple shades. The formula is the same as in the Freedom palettes - pearlescent, smooth, and nicely pigmented. They had a big range of colour choices, including some that were too outrageous for my taste (e.g. hot pink). A very handy size for travel, although I kind of wish there was some variation in the textures (more satins and mattes, please!). The purples I got are vibrant and pretty, hubby even commented they were maybe a little too bright (or was that just 'cause I was nipping out to Tesco's in purple eyeshadow and hot pink gloss? Hmm..)

Inglot Young Skin Makeup Pressed Powder
As much as I love MAC face powders, I always seem to be in between shades. I'm a MAC NC30, but Medium Dark seems a little light, and Dark seems a little Dark. (Am I just being difficult? Maybe). Anyway, so the Inglot pressed powders caught my eye as they had a good range of yellow-based shades. I got shade #41, which is a perfect match for me - yay! The formula is as good as any powder I've tried, but nothing that makes me especially excited. The compact is black, sleek, and functional.

Inglot Liquid Blush
This one's a winner - thanks to Shifa at Get Gawjus! for recommending it! I haven't tried liquid blushes before, but this is very nice. The texture is somewhere between a cream, a gel and a stain, and is surprisingly buildable. Length of wear is slightly longer on me than other cream blushes, but still requires touch-up after a few hours, although my skin is pretty oily so that's no surprise. The colour I got (#82) is a beautiful nude pink that I think would work on just about any light-to-medium skintone. It's in the same colour family as MAC Lilicent blushcreme, only a shade or so deeper. Lilicent disappears on me in minutes, so I'm glad I found this as an alternative. It's also not sticky, just leaves a hint of moistness on the cheeks to illuminate naturally.

Inglot Lip Duo
Inglot sell a lot of different lip products, and this cute duo seemed a great way to try 2 for the price of 1. It comes in a cute transparent cube - the bottom half of the cube has Lip Paint, and the top has Lip Gloss. The formulas are slightly different - I have to say, the Lip Paint is absolutely divine, not like any lip product I've come across. It's very opaque and pigmented, very moisturising but not sticky. This, along with Chanel glosses, is one of the best gloss textures I've found. The Lip Gloss (top half) is quite shimmery and slightly more sticky, with good colour payoff. The colours look similar in the pot, but the Lip Paint is a creamy bright peachy-pink, whereas the Lip Gloss is a medium cool-toned pink with a lot of silver shimmer. I did find it hard to choose shades as many of them seemed quite similar (mostly variations on pink/pink, or nude/clear), so I do hope they introduce more colours into the range.

ELF Studio Mini Makeup Set Review

ELF UK have a very generous offer at the moment, that if you purchase £25 of product, you receive a free Studio Mini Makeup set worth £15. Since they recently added a lot more products to their range, I took the opportunity to order some more Studio brushes (most of which I love btw!), mineral eyeshadow primer & bronzer, and I got the kit for free.

I was pretty excited by this palette as not many kits come with such a fantastic range of products - eyeshadows (powder & cream), blush, bronzer, brow powder, lipglosses and and eye pencil. However I have to say that although I love this palette in concept, the actual thing didn't quite live up to my expectations.

Firstly, the eyeshadows - the range of colours is very good, you have some soft natural colours, blue-greens, and smokey greys. My main gripe though is that the two colours suitable for using as a lid shade (the champagne colour,and the pale cream shadow) are both way too shimmery. Since these kinds of colours are pretty much the foundation of any eye look, this is not so great for doing everyday looks. Maybe I'm just conservative, but for me, glitter doesn't belong in the office. The other colours are OK, but the pigmentation or consistency aren't wowing me.

The second disappointment is the lip products. The colours are quite dark, which for me is a negative, but at the end of the day comes down to personal preference. However, the consistency feels somewhat cheap. It's hard to describe, but they feel waxy and have an unflattering shimmer to them.

The blush, bronzer and brow powder are all smooth and nicely pigmented. Thumbs up.

The eyeliner pencil is not that pigmented (especially when I'm so used to Urban Decay 24/7 pencils). It would do in a pinch, but wouldn't be my first choice for eyeliner.

Overall I think this was a really nice freebie, but not one that I'll be using much. I'm really not convinced it's worth the £15 ELF UK is otherwise charging for it. On the US website, it sells for US$15 I think, which seems like a fairer price. I'm sure there are plenty of people who love this palette, but for me it was a bit of a disappointment given how much I love the other Studio products. I will stick to the ELF products I already love - especially the brushes!

Inglot Blush Palette Review

A few months back I purchased this (link here) Inglot Freedom Palette. What I love about this palette system is that it's made up of magnetic layers, so you can basically add as many layers to your palette as you want. You can choose from eyeshadows, blush, concealer, brow or lip products. So far I have two 'layers' of eyeshadows, and I've been so impressed with their smoothness and pigmentation that I decided to get a layer of blushes too.

There were plenty of blush shades to choose from, although almost all were shimmery shades. Some matte options would have been nice. I ended up choosing one deep bronze colour (to use as bronzer/contour), a bright candy pink, a coral and a medium peach. I've tried swatching them, unfortunately, the pictures aren't so great, I really must get a decent camera one of these days, but you get the idea. These are really very pigmented - more than MAC, but less than NARS, if that makes sense. The colours are clean and bright. Actually I'm wondering now if they're a little too pigmented for my taste, seeing as I tend towards soft colours. They will be wonderful in summer though!

The formulation could use a little improvement as it's very powdery. Because the product is so loose, my brushes tend to pick up a lot of powder, and because it's so pigmented one needs a very light hand when applying. So I'm using a stippling brush (MAC #187) in order to avoid picking up too much product, and that seems to be working well.

Overall I think the quality is good. The price is £26, which is reasonably good value compared to high-end brands. I love the fact this fits together with my existing Inglot eye palettes - I now have a "stack" of palettes that I can add to or downsize depending on where I'm going. I do hope Inglot introduce some more matte options at some point, and maybe some highlighter shades too, but for now I'm pretty happy :-)

Big heart for Mini Mavala nail polishes

I've recently discovered these adorable miniature Mavala nail polishes and I can't get enough of them!

Why I love these:
- They're 5ml(about one-third the size of your average polish) which in my mind is a good size. One gripe I have with nail polish in general is that it'll often thicken up before I'm halfway through the bottle.
- They come in quite a few pretty colours, so are a great way to test out new shades without investing in a full-size bottle
- For less than 4 pounds, you get a very high quality product with good length of wear, which is a great pick-me-up if you're on a budget

These came in a set of 8 polishes, which I picked up on sale for the princely sum of 15 pounds. All the colours are gorgeous, soft shades. What I love most is that this set came with a miniature base coat (SuperBase) and top coat (Fixator), which I haven't tested yet but I'm sure will come in handy, especially on long holidays where I know I'll have to retouch my nails.

From left to right, the shades are:
- LOTUS: Pearly white, this is a little more opaque than I'd like, might pass this one onto my sister as it's more her colour!
- DAKAR: Soft plummy pink with silver shimmer
- BAGHDAD: Pinky coral with silver shimmer
- BORABORA: Sheer peach with gold shimmer, very subtle on but quite pretty
- ADELAIDE: Medium warm pink with shimmer. A little brighter than my usual everyday taste, but nice to have an option for special occasions!
- TOULOUSE: Cream Barbie-pink, will look great in summer
- SUPER BASE: Base coat
- FIXATOR: Top coat

Stila deal on StrawberryNet

Just picked up this great deal on a Stila kit on StrawberryNet! For £13.50 (including free worldwide shipping), you get:

4x eyeshadows in shades: Kitten, Go Lightly, Wheat & Mystic
1x Illuminating Tinted Moisturizer in Shade 01
1x Convertible Color in Peony
1x Major Lash Mascara 5g in Black
1x Lip Glaze in 'Ulta Mate Pink'

Most of the products are full-size, and seeing as Stila has pretty much pulled its distribution in the UK, it's a great chance to snap up some classic Stila (particularly Kitten eyeshadow, and Peony Convertible Colour). The tinted moisturiser I think will be a bit light for me, but it's still worth it even just for the eyeshadows. I get a 10% loyalty discount at Snet, so in total it was £12.15. Bargain.

Click here for link

MAC Holiday Kits: Going naked this Xmas...

You might call me boring but I'm a sucker for neutrals. I'm not sure if it's because I'm just a chicken when it comes to wearing hot fuschia lipstick to work, or because I'm always trying to justify my purchases ("But it's neutral so I'll wear it all the time.."). Anyway, so although I'd originally planned to pick up the MAC Holiday kits in Sorceress and Smoke & Mirrors, I ended up with the latter plus the Heavenly Dish neutral lip kit.

The Smoke & Mirrors kit is the best smokey palette I've seen from MAC in several years. However it's not really a smokey palette as such, more of an everyday neutral kit. The colours are sheer, & if you're after sparkle or glitter you won't find it here. (Nor any horrible Lustre finishes - thank you MAC!). You can pretty much do anything from a barely-there look, to a soft everyday grey or warm brown eye, to a full-on smokey look with this. Some might find it boring, yes. Personally I think really decent neutral palettes are surprisingly hard to come by, so this one is a gem.

I've taken some pics with a handful of other MAC colours for comparison. The shades in this palette are all unique to the palette as far as I'm aware, & none of my other colours were exact dupes. The closest dupes would be Clue (from the Originals Collection) for the mid-tone grey, and perhaps Brun for the matte brown shade. All in all, I think it's a great buy for anyone.

The lip kit was an impulse buy, I didn't even try it on in store! It really is a very natura,nude look. The darkest colour is slightly darker than my lips. The midtone colour reminds me of a slightly peachier version of MAC Angel lipstick. The gloss goes on completely sheer, it's not pigmented at all. I can see why some people wouldn't bother with this kit as the colours are on the sheer side & don't exactly scream.. well, anything really. But I think it's quite cute and practical - I love that you can use the darker shade on the lips, then apply the lighter pink in the centre for a volume effect. A little gloss on top and it's perfect.

I'm on the fence about the packaging of these - it certainly feels classier than previous years but the mirrors are much smaller. They also don't angle back as far, which was a definite bonus with the old style of palette. The eye palette is very small - even though it has the same amount of product, it looks tiny compared to last year's warm palette!

Overall, I'm very pleased with this year's purchases though. I love MAC Holiday... can't wait until my next trip just so I can take these babies along!

Home-made brush cleaner recipe

OK so I know a lot of people have their own recipes for making brush cleanser, but I've been testing this simple recipe out for 5-6 months now and it's serving me well so I thought I'd share. I pretty much use this every day to sanitise & clean my brushes - I can clean them all quickly and they're ready to use again in a few minutes.

It's literally just 1 part spray-on leave-in conditioner, to approximately 7 parts isopropyl alcohol. The isopropyl alcohol is the basic ingredient in most brush cleansers, as it klls germs and dries in minutes. Unfortunately it can also be somewhat drying to natural fibres, hence the addition of the leave-in conditioner - it keeps the brush bristles nice and soft. You don't want to go too overboard on the conditioner in your formula though, otherwise you get residue in the brush and they take too long to dry.

Isopropyl alcohol is dirt cheap & can be bought in pharmacies (I used to get odd looks at the chemist in New Zealand, as I'd buy 4-5 bottles at a time! I swear they thought I was making drugs...) or from Maplin in the UK.

For the leave-in conditioner I'm using a cheapie one from Boots. Choose one that has a consistency like water, since a creamy consistency won't mix well with the alcohol.

Mix and pour into a spray bottle. To use, spray the brushes with the solution & wipe clean with a tissue. This is meant to be a spot cleaner only, so you should still deep clean your brushes regularly in water.

Happy cleaning!