Want to win some SUGARPILL?

If you, like me, still haven't tried the sparkly goodness that is Sugarpill (damn you, wallet) then you might want to go check out LadycrowX's giveaway. There's MAC and miscellaneous other nice stuff too.

Real post coming soon, pinky promise :) hope you're all relaxing in the post-Christmas lull.

Swatchfest! High Voltage shadows

As promised, here are the swatches of my eyeshadow sample haul from High Voltage Cosmetics. I bought about ten samples and got two freebies. I ended up getting an awful lot of purples and blues, which in hindsight was silly since I have a buttload of shadows in both those colours. Anyway. On to the swatches! These are done over Concrete Minerals Electric Eye Primer, under artificial light.

Fairy Blood

Site description: satin blood red.
My description: Delicious smoky dark red. Yum.

Outshined

Site description: skin toned highlighter for medium skin tones or darker skin tones with a slight pearl sheen.
My description: I am buying a full-size jar of this after my bank has recovered from Christmas. It's my absolute perfect highlight shade, swept lightly over primer (it's swatched quite heavily here). Not too much shimmer but not a flat matte either. I LOVE this.
 

Spiked Stilettos

Site description: shimmery golden pink brown with pearl accents.
My description: Beautiful smoky golden pinky taupe! The neutral I didn't know I was missing out on. Looks like a really dusty pink in the jar, I didn't think I was going to like it at all, but once I swatched it I was wishing I'd cracked it open sooner!
 

What A Drag

Site description: metallic orange red.
My description: This shows up as shimmery chocolate-copper brown to me. I can see myself using this for liner a lot, it's a very rich shade.

Alter Ego

Site description: fuschia metallic shadow.
My description: Bright, shimmery fuschia purple. I'm not too sure why this is in the 'pink' section. The only thing I had close to this was a colour in the Sleek Curious palette, which disappeared every time I tried to use it. The shadow I mean, not the palette!

Girl's Night Out

Site description:  indigo-purple with massive gold sparkles.
My description: Dark blue with an explosion of silvery and gold glitter! This will probably need Pixie Epoxy to stay glitzy, but it's really gorgeous! The blue is a bit darker in person - like a cross between navy and royal blue. Dark, but still definitely blue.

Electric Boogie

Site description: royal blue with gold sparkles and a slight pearl sheen.
My description: Electric blue with gold glitter. Very sparkly!

Sunset Strip

Site description: powder blue with subtle purple undertones.
My description: Periwinkle blue with a slight lavender shimmer. This goes a bit pale and matte if overblended like I did in the middle of my swatch.

Saturday Night

Site description: complex shadow that looks purple blue or silver from differnt angles.
My description: Silvery-purple-blue! It's this metallic duochrome... I can imagine even more absolute gorgeousness coming out of this over Pixie Epoxy.

Little Miss Perfect

Site description: light airy blue with strong yellow highlights.
My description: Dusty denim blue with gold shimmer/duochrome. I really, really love this shade.

Cocktail Party 

Site description: bright shocking aqua.
My description: Bright, cheerful aqua/turquoise.

Detroit Rock City

Site description: light aqua green with tons of shimmer.
My description: Slightly darker and much more metallic version of Cocktail Party. I ordered both of these because I couldn't make up my mind which to get. I'll probably end up mixing them together with a splash of TKB Hilite Blue to have a nice standby turquoise/aqua colour, since it's not something I use a lot, but was missing from my collection.


Phew! I reeeeeeeeeally need to stop buying samples and start just getting full sizes of the colours I use. Maybe I should make that a New Year's Resolution :P

Hope you liked the swatches and that you're all having a great Christmas! I've set this to post while I'm enduring enjoying a family Christmas lunch. I should be back pretty soon after Boxing Day - I'm not jetsetting off for a holiday like a lot of my friends are. I'm gonna stay home and relax after the silly season! Sooo looking forward to it.

Review: High Voltage Lip Whips (!)

After enduring horribly slow December mail, I finally got my High Voltage Cosmetics order. The previous order I placed came quite fast for international shipping, so I knew it wasn't anything on Jasmine's end, just crazy Christmas-ness. She followed up several times on Twitter to see if I'd gotten my order, and when it finally arrived we both had a big "YAY!"

I immediately pulled out my three Lip Whips and my heap of samples, all ready to start swatching... aaaand my camera promptly ran out of battery. More December madness ensured I wasn't able to get replacement batteries til yesterday, and I've been really busy working so I didn't have time to swatch!

Since I haven't been able to find a whole lot of reviews or swatches on the Lip Whips, I thought I'd do a review/swatch of those first, and then do a big, separate post on the eyeshadows.

Lip Whips are $6.25 US for 7ml. They come in a squeezy lip gloss type tube with a slanted tip. They're vegan, peppermint scented, and SO pigmented.

Without further ado! I ordered:

• Jesse's Girl (creamy nude suitable for medium to tan complected skin tones)
• She's Got the Look (creamy coraly pink orange[request])
• Iron Butterfly (bright lime green)

Those are the descriptions from the website, and also links to Jasmine's swatches. I think they're actually better than mine turned out!

Jesse's Girl tube

Hand swatch

So at this point, I'm thinking "Nude for tan people?! I must need way more sun exposure! Look how dark that is!" But wait...

Lip swatch

On my lips it softens into an absolutely gorgeous glossy, nude shade. Ignore the blue bit on the left there, it's a reflection! See how glossy it is? :P

She's Got the Look, tube

Hand swatch

Lip swatch

This looks really terracotta-orangey, and it's not. It's a bright, clean, pinky-orange coral. It's absolutely wonderful, and I reach for it when I don't feel like doing a nude, or a red lip - my two go-to work colours. It's a great all-around shade. Please go see Jasmine's swatch for a far more accurate depiction!

Last but not least:

Iron Butterfly tube

Lip swatch 

Something about greens, and my skintone - I don't know what - makes pictures abysmal. Greens end up chalky and my skin turns raging sunburn-red. I tweaked the lip swatch so that a) I wouldn't look like a lobster and b) Iron Butterfly wouldn't look like a pastel. Again, please go and check out Jasmine's swatch, it's dead on.

From the description of the Whips, a lot of people have been saying that these may be cheap, indie dupes for the coveted OCC Lip Tars. I am by no means an expert on the Tars. I own one, the original purple called Katricia. I love the colour to bits, but I really don't find myself reaching for this often.

Not a Lip Whip, this is OCC Lip Tar Katricia

I haven't done a long, concentrated comparison. What I can say about the Tars vs. the Whips, just in passing observation, is that:

• When I open the tube and sniff, they have the exact same peppermint smell.
• On the lips, both the Tar and the Whips give the same gentle cooling minty sensation.
• Both feel light and somewhat oily to me. The Whips feel slightly thicker - almost as if they have more pigment? I like the weightier feeling, it doesn't make me paranoid all the colour's disappeared. They're still much lighter and more moist than a traditional lipstick.
• The Whips 'settle' and dry without becoming drying. Katrice always feels 'wet' on my lips.
• Whips: $6.25 US for 7ml, 68 different shades (at last count!). 
• Tars: $12.50 US for 8ml (OR Aussies can get it for $16AU from here), 33 different shades. 

Honestly, it's up to you. As I said I haven't done an in-depth comparison or even a wear test. But I'll be buying more Whips and I probably won't shell out the cash for another Tar. Jasmine is coming out with new colours in the Whips almost constantly. She also does requests - I actually requested Iron Butterfly and another blogger, I believe Cacau, requested She's Got the Look (THANKYOU! I LOVE IT!) I have worn both Jesse's Girl and She's Got the Look at work, and not only do they stay put nicely, but they stop my lips from getting dry and crackly like they normally do without copious/frequent applications of lip balm.

I really, really want to try some of her new lipsticks, the primer, and get some full sized shadows, but that'll have to wait until 2011 since I'm broke.

Hope you like the lip swatches (well the first two, anyway) and I shall try to get the shadow swatches up in a reasonable amount of time! I have several half-finished comic review drafts sitting around waiting for me, and I have a bit of an announcement as well. Right now, though, it's bedtime. The rest of you can check out High Voltage's shop or the other reviews (one of which is my first one).