Saturday, December 17, 2011

Dior Celebration Collection Holiday Eye Palette



Dior's Celebration Collection holiday eye palette features lovely neutrals housed in an adorable tweed and leather mirrored compact.  This palette is the best of many worlds: beautiful packaging, practical colors, buttery shadows (except for one which I will go more into detail later), and stay put liner.  The shades in the palette are perfect for every-day wear as well as for night.  I love how the liner in this palette is an actual gel liner and not just a darker shadow.  It's great for traveling because of it's size and practicality.




I was really surprised by the packaging.  I fell in love with the bow and charm detailing, but the quality of the leather and tweed is so much lovelier and nicer than I expected.  It's such a pretty piece to have on your vanity.





The only thing that I'm not a fan of is the brush.  The brush is a mini dual-ended sponge tip and stubby liner type brush.  The sponge is your typical sponge applicator, which you may or may not find useful depending on whether or not you actually use sponge tips.  I personally don't use them.  The liner end is completely useless because it practically gouges your lids out.  It is so scratchy and stiff, I wish I hadn't tried the thing.  Had the bristles been softer, the size and shape of the brush are great.  If you purchase this product, don't bother with the brush at all.




The base shade is a golden khaki.  The color shade is a dark brown/bronze.  The shine shade is white/ivory.  The liner is dark chocolate brown.  All the shades except for the white/ivory shade have a shimmery iridescence  much like the shadows in Dior's 5-Colour Iridescent Eyeshadow quints.  The white/ivory shade is a more powdery than the other shades and has bits of fine glitter.  This shadow doesn't apply as nicely as the other two in the palette, but it works just fine for an inner corner highlight.  I think it's much too sparkly to use as a brow bone highlight.  Dabbed lightly on the center of the lids, this shade adds some overall sparkle to your look.

Here are some swatches in varying light around my apartment.

Natural light


Closer to sunlight


Natural light



Direct sunlight from window


If you like easy, go-to palettes, this is definitely for you.  There's no guess work with this palette.  The shadows are such a pleasure to use and the packaging is only a plus.  I highly recommend.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Chanel 2011 Holiday Lip Products



I know I’m late on this one, as Chanel’s holiday collection has been out for a while now, but I went back and forth so much about purchasing products from this collection that I wanted to save posting until I had decidedly decided what I was getting.  Chanel’s 2011 holiday collection features glammed up traditional holiday shades, lacing their products with sparkle, shimmer, and gold.  One might think this collection boring, but I found I liked the simplicity and sophistication.  However, because of the lack of uniqueness, I found myself skipping out on a lot of the collection.  Like I said, I fought with myself on a lot of the products.

Initailly in my cart on Chanel.com, I had Beige Lame, Rouge Carat, Enivree… and I think a couple of other items.  Slowly but surely I talked myself out of purchasing those products.  I couldn’t justify it mostly based on what I already had in my collection.  These didn’t stand out enough for me. I only ended up picking up two of the lip products:  Rouge Allure Laque in Empire and Rouge Allure Extrait de Glosse in Triomphal.  I already owned RAL in Dragon, which I will also feature in this post. 



 Chanel’s Rouge Allure Laque is THE BEST liquid lipstick formula on the market, in my humble opinion.  So SO SO sad that Chanel has decided to discontinue this formula.  WHY?!?  For what?  I do not know, but if you want to snatch up any remained ones, you better get to it fast because the news has been spreading like wildfire and many of them are no longer available.  How I am kicking myself for not getting a backup of Dragon…



The formula goes on like silk and doesn’t dry out the lips. The applicator is very easy to use, which makes this product even more amazing because it’s easy to apply without any extra tools (ie. Lip brush).  It is a slanted doe-foot applicator but, as you can see, it is much more angular so you can get a really nice crisp line.  The sponge is stiffer than your typical doe-foot applicator so there’s les “squish” and better control of the product. The formula lasts a good 6 hours on my lips and is very resistant to fading even after eating.  Dragon had the slightest bit of fading in the center of my lips after lunch.


Empire is very similar to Ming except that it is a slightly warmer pink than Ming and has gold sparkle.  There isn’t a huge difference between these two on the lips, so I think you could probably skip if you already have Ming.  If you’re looking for a backup of Ming and can’t find one, Empire is a suitable substitute.

Chanel’s Rouge Allure Extrait de Glosse is also my favorite lipgloss formula.  They are pigmented but not overly so and non-sticky.   They do feel a little thick on the lips, but not incredibly noticeably so.  If I used gloss more often, I would certainly purchase more.  I own Confidence and now have added Triomphal from this holiday collection.



 The applicator on this is also different from most lip glosses.  The sponge applicator is beveled on both sides.  It took some practice to get used to the flex and give of the applicator at first.  I think in the end, this type of applicator gives you more control of the gloss.  It’s nice because a shade like Triomphal is quite pigmented and it would be annoying to have to whip out a lips brush to apply gloss. 

 

Here are swatches of the products.  

Dragon, Empire, Triomphal.

I'm still figuring out how to take decent lip swatch photos.  I don't own any fancy cameras or anything.  Until I do, I hope these arm swatches will suffice.