Curiously Carmen

ELF Geometric Eyeshadow Book

I find that many ELF products are a hit and miss. At insanely cheap prices, I don’t blame them either. In high school, I bought their liquid liner and it reeked so bad of chemical smell that I threw it out. Sometimes, you’ll be able to find amazing, great quality products for under $5 (maybe even under $3!) but other times, you’ll find that the price you paid reflects the quality of the product. Last year, ELF was having a huge online sale and I went absolutely crazy. I can’t remember exactly what the sale was, but I think I only paid $20 for $45-65 worth of product. In fact, I bought so much that I didn’t even open some of the products until now. One of those products was the their 36 Piece Geometric Eyeshadow Book.
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Bear with the snowflakes, I’m sorry if you think it’s tacky but I love them! Once the holiday season is over, they will be gone so don’t worry :). Anyways, the packaging of this eyeshadow packaging is a bit flimsy, I wouldn’t carry this around openly in my bag. It would definitely be a product I leave at home because the book doesn’t have a clapse to close it. There is a magnetic piece to close, but I don’t think it would be that helpful in a purse with other items inside. It is also made out of a thicker cardboard material.
unnamed (1)Here are the colours of the palette. You can tell which ones are my favourite, and which ones I have yet to touch =P There are a total of 36 different shades, but some of the shades are a bit smaller in size. I love this palette because of how many champagne and shimmery gold shades there are! It also comes with a mirror which is a bit handy. It comes with the standard mini sponge brushes, which I haven’t used yet.

unnamed (2)Because I love golden/champagne tones so much, here is a close up on them! There are enough colours in here to create many looks! The colours on the palette were not edited, I just added some border effects. I found the colours to be pretty pigmented, and they were also very glittery and sparkly. The only thing I didn’t like was that there was a lot of fallout. I noticed after that my cheeks had a lot of sparkle on them after I applied this.
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Anddd here is the finished look! 🙂 This look was my first time trying out this palette, and I was in a bit of a rush. Otherwise, I would have created a deeper smokey eye look!   For the price that I paid, the pigment was pretty rich and vivid! Personally, eyeshadow doesn’t last a long time on my eyelids so I have to use my Urban Decay primer potion beforehand. Because of this, I’m not sure how long it will last without primer.

I also used the Dollywink liquid liner (thinking of writing on this too!) Lancome Hynose Star marsacara, Urban Decay Naked Skin foundation, Bare Minerals matte powder foundation, and Makeup Forever lipstick. I wore this out for four hours at a holiday party and it did not smudge with my primer on. It came off easily with my makeup remover.

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Last weekend, I decided to try it out again! I had a cold and wanted my eyes to seem brighter. This time, I used both the ELF palette and Naked 2 palette. Again, I was satisfied with the application and pigment, but there was a lot of fallout.

I would recommend ELF palettes to those who are just starting out with makeup, and are unsure if they would like to invest in an expensive eyeshadow palette. For under $10, it’s a decent palette with great shades, the eyeshadow looks are almost endless too with 36 different colours to choose from. The only annoying thing about it is the fall out.

Also, I mentioned above about the first ELF product I bought that reeked really badly of chemicals… it is the eyeliner here. The horror!

-Carmen

Backstreets Makeup Company Review (Handmade, vegan cosmetics)

Backstreets Makeup Company is founded by one woman, with a passion for makeup and creating her own vegan makeup products. Yep, you heard that right! April, the owner, actually hand makes each one of her products, where she then posts them on her website to sell at affordable prices.  I have never tried handmade, vegan eyeshadow products so I was quite excited to give these a try!

I wore the colours out once right after I received the products, but unfortunately, did not have time to take any pictures. I finally found the time again to play with these products last week, where my artist friend came up with two looks for me! My opinion will be based on the first time I wore the eyeshadows out, instead of the mini makeup session I had with my friend!
imageApril, the owner, was very nice and friendly. She even sent me a handwritten card when I received this in the mail. The packaging was very thoughtful as well, the makeup products came in two separate layers of recyclable bag. I can not comment on the turnaround time as we found out through our emails that we were actually neighbours! What a small world. But on the website, the TAT is 3-5 days.

Originally, I tried to use the makeup as is in the baggie, but it was very difficult and messy for me. I wasn’t able to get the amount of product I desired, and my table was becoming a powdered mess. I found those small, plastic medicine holders and unused contact lenses cases, and ended up transferring the products in the baggie. The beginning was quite messy as I moved from attempting to dip my brush into the baggie, to moving them into small compartments.
image (2)Yay! After moving them into these pods, they were WAYYY easier to work with! Please excuse the erm… visual appeal factor to the new compartments. But trust me, it really helped! The three pots are the full sized products which you can order. Each pot costs between $4-$5.

One of April’s goals when starting her own makeup creations was to make her products affordable, and I definitely think they are! You get a lot of quality product, and each pot comes with a sifter as well (you can request to not have one if you want). Here are the colours that I received, my first ever swatch!
swatch 2I noticed that some colours weren’t as glittery on my skin as in the eyeshadow packages. Which one is your favourite colour? 🙂

swatch 1As I said in the beginning, my friend wanted to play with makeup and we decided to create two looks with these products, since we had such a wonderful range of colours to work from! I’m glad I did, because I felt that the “love” and “golden pie” colours were too dramatic for me, but they actually turned out pretty neutral when she applied it on my eyes!

The colours are really gorgeous, but I think you would need to apply a lot of each shade to match the colour it looks like in the pot. I also found that there was a lot of fall out, we ended up using an index card under my eye to catch it. It was very powdery as well, which made it very soft to apply on my eyes.

On the day that I wore it out, it lasted all night and the colour did not fade (I used eyeshadow primer too). I was pretty impressed with the staying power of this, and liked how the shades looked on my eyes! I would recommend this product if you are looking for an alternative to your usual, everyday eye products.

Pros:

  • Very soft and powdery texture
  • Vegan and hand blended by April, the owner
  • Not tested on animals
  • Colours are neutral and suitable for everyday wear
  • Does not wear off easily; wore the products on a night out and did not smudge
  • Affordable & cheap
  • Excellent response rate from April

Cons:

  • Fallout when applying
  • Can be hard to apply when the eyeshadows are in the baggie. I talked to April about this and she mentioned that some people actually prefer baggies, so maybe it’s just my own preference?
  • Colour in the pot and on your eye may look different

Check out Backstreets Makeup Company here! You can also follow their Instagram.  I would love to hear your opinions on this product, leave me a comment and let’s chat! 🙂 Thanks for reading!

The products in this post were sent to me free of charge from Backstreets Makeup Company, and I was not paid to write this post. Everything in this post is my personal opinion and was not altered by the request of the company. 

-Carmen