Darling Girl Cosmetics, Part 1

A little over a week ago, I received my large Darling Girl Cosmetics order. Unfortunately due to a variety of things, I wasn't able to get to swatching but I started today! The last time I ordered from Darling Girl was about a year ago and I ended up giving away most of my makeup to a close friend who wanted to get into cosmetology. As a result, I ended up splurging a bit to rebuild my collection. In doing so, I had to analyze how I was going to store them all which I'll get into a bit later. I forgot to take pictures when I first unwrapped them so here's a quick look of what is in store. 

All of the white caps are from Darling Girl. Yep, a lot.

For the first set of swatches, I grabbed the reds, pinks, oranges, golds, and silvers. I guess in my frenzy I forgot to purchase anything yellow. :) As we go through all the swatches, I will be using Dreamworld Hermetica Eye of Ra Eye as the primer. Please remember that you can click to enlarge the photos. 

Outdoor Light

Indoor Light

I grabbed the eyeshadows from different collections so some of these also include The Black Collection and Who Ya Gonna Call. Also note that Hello Fall was the gift with purchase for the week that I ordered. Now while I was swatching these, the last 4 didn't look like they were very much present when I was in a dimly lit area. They really stood out once I got into natural light which you can see set them apart. As I was swatching, I really liked The Safety Dance, but looking back on the swatches, I'm pretty impressed by Obviously a Wig, Sex on Fire, and Hello Fall. 

Moving on to what I thought were the golds and silvers, I ran into issues rather quickly due to how glittery they were. In general a lot of these were pretty difficult to swatch without trying to pack as much pigment into the area as best I could. They just didn't want to stick to my skin, even with the primer. 

Outdoor Light

Indoor Light

A lot of these hail from the Who Ya Gonna Call collection and Impervious at the end was a sample that was included. I had high hopes for That's a Big Twinkie, There is No Dana, and Tragic Death of Mr. Stay Puft. Overall I like them but they were very hard to brush on so you might even be able to see each brush stroke. Again, this may be do the the glittery nature and perhaps a different type of primer would be better with this set. Nonetheless, the colours that really impressed me was The Apocalypse There is No Dana. I rather like Impervious but I will admit, I wasn't sure what colour it was supposed to be till it was on my skin because in the bag it looked like blue and brown. 

I've still got the blues, greens, and purples to finish swatching so hopefully I'll get to that soon. Darling Girl Cosmetics are available for purchase for $2.50-$5.90 depending on the size. Seeing as this is my second huge order and the first was happily donated to a budding cosmetologist, you can imagine that I really enjoy these products. I do think that if you're going to go down the rabbit hole of duochrome or glitter eyeshadows, you do need to have the right primer  though. Luckily, Darling Girl carries 3 types. :)

The Powers of a Primer

Items used were purchased or received complimentary.

Last week when I swatched a few eyeshadows, I was amazed at how far the Dreamworld Hermetica Eye of Ra Eye Dew took the eyeshadows. Now it's not that I hadn't tried eyeshadow primers in the past -- I tried the Urban Decay Primer Potion and it didn't seem to help the eyeshadows much. Actually if memory served correct, it worked similarly to a regular facial primer so for a while I was just disappointed with eyeshadows and primers altogether because I felt as though my combination of skin tone and undertones had a way of undoing the colour. Not one to give up hope entirely, I heard that Fyrinnae's Pixie Epoxy and Darling Girl's Glitter Glue were the Holy Grails of glittery eyeshadow. So I sprang for Darling Girl's Glitter Glue and while preparing for it's arrival I figured I should go through my stash to sort out all my makeup. Go figure, in my stash was another primer from Dreamworld Hermetica and so I started swatching with that.

If you're wondering why I went into this elongated explanation of my discovery of how I got around to finally realizing what everyone else realized, keep in mind that there was a part of me that resigned myself to never pulling off one of those amazing smoking eye looks. 

To test the powers of a good primer I decided to reswatch my Sugarpill eyeshadows because I use them more often. 

From left to right: Stella, Love+, Tako, and
Bulletproof with no primer.

From left to right: Stella, Love+, Tako, and
Bulletproof over a regular primer.

From left to right: Bulletproof, Love+, and Tako
over the Eye of Ra Eye Dew 

I sort of mixed up the colours when I swatched them again -- I no longer have Stella because I gave that to a friend. However you can see the difference immediately. The colours pop SO MUCH and really have better coverage overall with the help of the primer. So if you're like me and have a really hard time with getting eyeshadows to show, I'd highly recommend looking into different primers specific to eyeshadows or glittery eyeshadows in particular.

I haven't gotten around to trying out Fyrinnae's Pixie Epoxy and Darling Girl's Glitter Glue just yet but they are on my radar. You can purchase each of these through the brand's website.

• Darling Girl's Glitter Glue, $6.75
• Dreamworld Hermetica Eye of Ra Eye Dew, $5.39
• Fyrinnae's Pixie Epoxy, $7

Anastasia Beverly Hills Tamanna Palette

Items used were gifts or received complimentary.

My experience with Anastasia Beverly Hills prior to this palette had been somewhat limited. A few months ago I got myself the stencils which have been an amazing addition to my collection. I had no idea that the line included makeup so the first time I heard about the Tamanna and Maya Mia palettes piqued my attention. After much internal debate, I told myself that once my no-buy was over, I would probably treat myself to the Tamanna palette. Fast forward to a few weeks later and my friend Laura surprised me with a gift -- the Tamanna palette. She read the reviews and knew my struggles with eyeshadow and figured it would be a great fit for me. 

From the moment I received, I loved the packaging. Upon inspecting each shade of the eyeshadow, I figured that the problematic ones would most likely be Fresh, Gilded, and Custom but that was before I started swatching.

My initial swatches weren't great since I did them but you can easily draw some conclusions for yourself. Each of the colours directly align to how you see them in the palette. This first attempt to swatch was over CoverFX SPF 30 Protection Primer which is my standard primer. To confirm my suspicions, all the ones that I thought would be difficult on my skin held true (translation: I was right about Fresh, Gilded, and Custom not showing up well on my skin.

I wasn't quite content with how the images turned out and furthermore I figured that I should try to actually use an eyeshadow primer instead. So today I went back and tried each eyeshadow over Dreamworld Hermetica Eye of Ra Eye Dew.

Taking a look at the top row, which is Fresh, Blush, Venezia, Gilded, and Custom and you'll notice that now with an appropriate eyeshadow primer, those colours pop giving them a whole new dimension that a regular primer just can't do. 

In the second set we're seeing Sangria, Bengal, Chocolate, China Rose, and Noir. Again, another amazing performance for getting these colours to really stand out. What absolutely amazes me is Noir because that is the shade of black that I have long coveted. When Laura gifted this palette to me, she mentioned that Noir is perfect for using as an eyeliner and I can definitely see that.

I knew I wanted this palette but being able to swatch it made me love it even more. I will highly recommend that you have an eyeshadow primer to go along with this palette to get those colours to really shine.

The  Tamanna Palette is available for purchase from Ulta, Sephora, and Anastasia Beverly Hills for $29. 

MAC Colour 4 Eyeshadow Quad

Items used were gifts or received complimentary.

Have I mentioned how awesome my family is? Well, if not, they are. Earlier this year on a trip to Florida to visit some relatives, my cousin gifted me the MAC Colour 4 Eyeshadow Quad. Now I will admit that I'm not that familiar with MAC makeup in general since I started using indie products, but I was definitely in love with the selection in this palette. Imagine my surprise when I realized that this new and never touched before quad was circa 2010 and it seems to work well with me. 

In this quad we'll be looking at Manila Paper, Flip, Aztec Brick, and Creole Beauty. I used the Dreamworld Hermetica Eye of Ra Eye Dew which is tacky and is available for purchase for $5.39. Ellie did send me this primer a while ago but due to some issues I experienced at the time, I hadn't gotten around to really putting it to use. With that being said, this is actually my first time giving this eye primer a whirl but I am pretty impressed with it. 

About the eye shadows, I did have a hard time getting the colour to pack in and I'm not sure if that's because of the primer or the eyeshadows themselves. With that being said, the colour was magnificent as you'll see below. 

I was pretty impressed with how all the colours came out. Creole Beauty was a bit too light and hard to capture on me but overall, 3 out of 4 isn't too bad. Plus I imagine that I can find other ways of really accentuating the last colour. 

The takeaway is that this is great palette overall. The problem is that yes, it was in an older run and attempts to actually find it has been slim (which I didn't realize till after I started writing this). So thank you to Alisha for providing this very awesome quad from MAC and to Ellie of Dreamworld Hermetica for the primer.