Season's Greetings

Hi everyone! I hope all who celebrate Thanksgiving had a great holiday. It was soooo nice to have four relaxing days off from work. Although I have been sick with a cold since Wednesday and couldn't taste my Thanksgiving meal :-( boo. Anyway, I hope to resume posting again soon, but in the meantime I thought I would share a few non-makeup-related photos below...

In makeup-related news: The beauty community is positively buzzing with announcements of the charity auction initative BeautyBloggers.org. Winning bids will be donated directly to Doctors Without Borders. The full amount of winning bids will go to charity. What a nice way to treat yourself, a friend, or family member. Participating bloggers will donate the cost of shipping, in addition to the items themselves. There are some really great items being offered and I definitely have my eye on a few products! 

...I had to get an artificial tree this year now that I have a cat in the house, since she loves to chew on anything and everything and I was afraid she might eat some of the pine needles. Here's a photo of the mischievous feline below. Don't let her innocent look fool ya.

Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!

Chanel Riva Nail Colour

Left to right: What's With the Cattitude?, Havana Dreams, and Riva

I had been looking forward to Chanel's Riva polish from the Cote d'Azur collection ever since I heard news of it a month or so ago and was happy to see it arrive on Chanel's website last week. By now, you may have seen a gazillion posts on this color...and here is yet another! :)

Below I've compared it to a couple of my other light blue polishes: Sephora by OPI's Havana Dreams and OPI's What's With the Cattitude?. Riva is very similar to Havana Dreams but is less opaque, has a slightly more grayish tone, and doesn't have as much of a bright white base. The subtle shimmer in Riva shows up with flash as you can see in some of the the photos of the bottle below, but is not really noticeable on the nails. Havana Dreams has no shimmer whatsoever. They are both beautiful, pale blue shades. I prefer the Riva, but if you are looking to save a fair bit of money, Havana Dreams is not a bad substitute! With all of these light blues I find I need to apply three coats to get full coverage without streaks.

On the end below is Sally Hansen's Blue Icing - just threw that one in there because it's blue and glittery and I thought it looked pretty alongside the others (despite the ugly label design!). It's a nice color, but it has these long, confetti-like pieces of glitter which make for a not-very-attractive, lumpy finish. 

Sorry for the bad lighting in this one -- I took this around midnight indoors! 

Photo above taken in sunlight

Photos above taken with flash

 

Riva is quickly becoming my favorite pale blue. Are you a fan of this shade and blues in general? 

Saturday Shopping

I took advantage of Sephora's VIB discount (20% off between Nov. 11-15 instore with invitation, or online with code VIB20) and picked up a Korres silver eyeliner and Urban Decay's 24/7 eye pencil in Underground (a staple of mine for lining the lower lashline because it is not too dark), and a few other items I will be testing out soon. 

I spotted these two (presumably discontinued) Sephora by OPI polishes in the clearance bin for $5 each -- not a bad deal as these are normally $9. Also got a couple of cute rhinestone bracelets at J.Crew (on sale for $19.99 each).

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Absinthe Makes the Heart appears to be a gunmetal shade in these photos but is actually more of a shimmery, blackened olive-green. It reminds me of Zoya's Edyta. 

Just a Fairy-Tail is a somewhat sheer, shimmery iridescent platinum blue.

 

Thanks for visiting! 

Cle De Peau: Gold #204 Eye Quad Refill

Every once in a while I stop by the Cle De Peau counter at Saks to admire the beautiful eyeshadows, but have never ventured to buy anything until recently as they are just a little out of reach budget-wise. For my birthday I decided to treat myself to #204 Gold, which is one of five recently-added eye color quad refills. These retail for $55 and are designed to fit into a case which is sold separately for $25, for a total price of $80. I think many would agree these are overpriced, but I wanted to give them a try to see how the quality compares to the more moderately-priced shadows in the Shiseido line. At first glance the texture does seem very similar. Cle De Peau is owned by the Shiseido company, which leads me to wonder whether they use the same formula. Just for fun, I compared this palette to one of Maybelline's Eyestudio palettes below. Which would you choose based on swatches alone?

Apologies for the un-pristine shadow! I strive to take photos of products fresh out of the packaging before using them, but in this case when I got home and popped out the refill from its plastic packaging it fell and got a nick in it. I figured, oh well, it's gonna get ruined when I use it anyway. :) 

The CDP logo is just a thin layer of gold overspray

All right -- let's dig right in!

Cle de peau 204 Gold 

vs. 

Maybelline Eyestudio 05 Give Me Gold

in sunlight

with flash 

As you can see below, the Maybelline quad is a bit warmer overall, with its coppery and yellow golds. It also has a deeper brown. The shades in the CDP quad could be considered a bit more elegant and neutral, perhaps making it more wearable on a variety of skin tones. However, it does have somewhat chunky flakes of glitter, so may be more suited to night-time. The texture on both of these is quite nice and smooth. 

If you are on a budget and looking for a gold eyeshadow palette Maybelline Eyestudio is not a bad choice. It retails for $9.99 but can often be found for $7 - $8  at Target and Wal-Mart. 

Below is a CDP product chart I received during my last visit that might be helpful to someone. Click to make it bigger! :) 

Have a great week! 

Lancome: Les Gris L'Wren Ombre Absolue Palette

Here's a quick look using Lancome's Les Gris L'Wren eye palette from the Holiday Color collection 2010. This is a basic smoky-eye palette, which at first glance may not look all that unique, but after using it I found I like it more than I thought I would. Once applied you can really see the difference between the two gray shades. One is a shimmery pewter and the other is a metallic gray with slight blue tones. The highlight shade is an icy platinum silver and has more of a sheer powdery texture with less pigmentation than the others. The slate/black shade is a matte with average pigmentation. Overall, this is a nice little palette and it might be of interest to someone who likes cool-toned shades of gray and silver or for someone who is looking for a classic smoky-eye palette to add to their collection. 

(Try to ignore the awful red-eyes in these pics. I love playing with eye makeup but it never fails to irritate my eyes at first!)

Also included in the L'Wren collection are two nail colors: 020 Le Rouge L'Wren, a beautiful, deep red with subtle shimmer and 021 Le Gris L'Wren, a unique, silvered blue-gray (much like the blue-gray in the eyeshadow palette).

I think I'm in love! This red is pretty amazing and the blue-gray is great, too. It has a very thick formula though--I only used one coat here (two coats for the red). Why must these be limited edition? Sigh... 

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