What does 'Glam Trick' mean, anyway?

Stress was hitting me from all aspects today - school, the general public, even Facebook, so here I am trying to escape from that with another long overdue post.

Today we shall look at the Kate Glam Trick Eyes palette in BU-1:



This is something I'd been lemming for a good while (years) before finally buying it last October. (I told you this was long overdue :D)






The colours are silky smooth yet pigmented. Many Japanese palettes fail in terms of pigmentation but these are almost up to par with Western brands.




Here is a look using the colours just in case you are not convinced:




(Liquid liner is Lunasol Geminate blue liner)

Full face look






I haven't used this palette much over the summer, but the smokey blue-grey colours will be perfect for this Fall.

This concludes today's de-stressing session pour moi. Have YOU tried this series of palettes, and if so whaddya think?

Tightlining with Kanebo Kate Frame Impact Marker

I first spotted this liner on Lotus Palace, and it caught my attention because I like the effect tightlining gives, but always skip it since I find it time consuming.



The liner has 3 felt tip 'prongs' which makes it easy to wiggle between your lashes to deposit colour. And in case you're worried, the tips are not harsh at all - they are basically similar to the usual felt tip liners you get from Revlon, L'oreal, etc.




The liner makes it easier in my opinion to tightline than a regular liquid or pencil liner. Compared with using a brush and gel liner, they are about the same level of difficulty. However using this liner cuts out the step of having to clean your brush afterwards, meaning its travel friendly as well!


Before


(no mascara, just curled lashes)

After



The Kate liner isn't waterproof, but is sweat and smudgeproof once dry - no raccoon eyes! I find that the effect is subtle, but great for natural, no makeup look. My lashes are also not that thick so it helps give the illusion of thicker lashes even if my mascara isn't cutting it.

Do you tightline at all? What's your preferred method of doing it?

Kate Super Sharp liner vs Kiss Me Heroine Make liner

I know, I haven't been a very good blogger lately...been busy with some things at work and home but hopefully its getting better soon. Lots of photos to share from the weekend - I went for a quick makeover at MAC over the weekend, V-day dinner, and I'm also lagging on posting about some new products I got recently :)

For today I'm just reviewing two Japanese brand liquid liners: Kate Super Sharp Liner in BK-1 and Kiss Me Heroine Make liner in Black.





They are both pen-style felt tip liners, but the Kate liner (left) has a slightly shorter tip than the Kiss Me one (right).




There's not a whole lot of difference between the two in terms of lining your eyes. Both are equally easy to use, as the felt tip allows for a lot of control. The Kate liner allows you to draw a thinner line though, which I think is due to the shorter tip (allowing for more control).

Kate liner


Kiss Me liner


Different angles but looks pretty similar in the pics...just that Kate is easier to do thinner lines and Kiss Me can do thicker lines better.


The removal process though is what differentiates the two. I tested them with some water to see if they were waterproof, and also checked how easy they were to remove with DHC Cleansing oil, and Mandom Cleansing Express Moist.

The two lines on the left are Kate, and the two on the right are Kiss Me Heroine Make. I basically swiped across the lines with a little bit of each cleanser.

Water (room temperature, just to test waterproofness)


DHC oil


Mandom Cleansing Express Moist


Some more rubbing and some more Mandom cleanser.




What I notice from the above tests is that the Kate tends to smudge and smear as you remove it, while the Kiss Me liner comes off in little bits. Also with the Mandom cleanser, even when I rubbbed the area to help remove the product, the Kate liner did not remove completely but left a greyish residue on the area.

You can also see that the Kiss Me liner is quite waterproof unlike Kate with room temperature water. However if you do want to remove the Kiss Me liner it comes off easily once you use warm water with a little bit of rubbing.

Overall I still prefer Kiss Me Heroine Make liner because of how durable it is with water. I also much prefer how it is easy to remove (and forgiving when you're correcting mistakes). If I were to correct any mistakes made with the Kate liner, its hard to remove even with a Q tip without smudging the line. With the Kiss Me liner whatever I want to remove comes off easily with just warm water and a Q-tip.


Speaking of Kate, I've been lemming over Kate's new eyeshadow palettes ever since seeing this ad:



I love the smoky eye look in the pics however the palette colours in the picture don't look intense enough to create the same look the model's wearing. I'd probably need to use an additional eyeshadow in black to make it dramatic enough. Anyway I've been waiting to see some reviews on the palettes but so far haven't seen any posts on it from other bloggers...I wonder why? If you have pictures or have seen any online let me know!

Some Japanese goodies!

Recently I was fortunate enough to have Nic Nic do a CP for me :) She also sent me her Sana concealer to try! Thank you Nic :D

• Sana concealer in Light Yellow
• Lunasol Geminate liner (most expensive liner ever but I got it because it looks so good on Fuz!)
• Kate Super Sharp liner in BK-1
• Esprique Dress On Moist Rouge in RO610 (because of Row's swatches)

So far I've tried only the concealer. The texture is nice, it doesn't crease at all (almost all concealers do that to me), however the coverage tends to be sheer. It reminds me more of a highlighter/eye brightener than a full coverage concealer but I will have to use it a few more times before I can give a proper verdict on it.




I also got some Majolica Majorca goodies in the mail lately courtesy of Paris B. from My Women Stuff! She had a giveaway a couple months ago and I entered completely last minute, within the last hours of the deadline...and somehow I won :) Thank you Paris! :D

• Majolica Majorca eyeshadow in GR185
• Majolica Majorca gloss in PK384
• and a super handy cellphone pouch :)

The eyeshadow is pigmented and easily blendable, I actually find the texture better than the Majolook palette I got this spring. The lipgloss is sticky, but the staying power is good and it has really nice shimmers in it.




Finally, today's outfit:





Black knit top, H&M
Brocade olive gold skirt, Forever 21
Sheer black tights, Life Brand (lol)
Black leather boots, Browns

Layered a denim jacket (pictured) and black wool coat (not pictured) over it before going out.



The skirt is new :) I was waiting impatiently for it to get on the Canadian website since spotting it on the US F21 site. Only thing is it feels a bit tight :/...probably because of the high waisted cut as well.

I haven't worn these boots in ages...the last time I wore them was the previous winter so almost 2 years ago. Mostly because these aren't very comfortable. They feel fine initially but after a couple of hours my feet will hurt depending on how much walking is being done. Then again though I do have problematic feet...I'm getting some custom made orthopaedic inserts soon to help with my foot issues.

The metal stuff around the ankle is actually on a removeable leather piece, so I could remove it to make them look like regular plain leather boots.

Finally I hope everyone in the US had a great Thanksgiving! 3.5 weeks left to Christmas :)

quick review of Kate gel liners

For Grayburn and others who were interested in the Burt's Bees shampoo I got, the review is coming soon, I promise :) I'm not sure what to write about it though ...I don't know what other people want to know about shampoos? Maybe I need to use it more first too. Also, I want to try the matching conditioner but all the stores that I've been to that carry BB, are out of stock on it :(

Like (g)ezebel, I've been trying to catch up on other blogs too but its tricky. See, I read ALL of them...at work, usually through my google feed reader, shhhh! But I can't comment on them there because I'd have to visit the actual site and that would show up in my history log....Not something I'd want upper management to see if they check it. Sigh. I usually "star" them for later so I can go back to it but right now I have like 300 posts starred lol. Sorry guys :(
So I've been wondering, is there a way to comment on a post through a feed reader??


***

Emilee @ GirlMeetsMakeup.com asked me to review the Kate gel liners I got recently.

I got the purple, gold colours from Japan and then ordered the silver colour online.




So, first thing I noticed about them is they are smaller than MAC Fluidlines. They are a bit cheaper though so I think it evens out. Am a bit too lazy to do the math right now :P

Size omparison with MAC Blacktrack Fluidline:




Swatches and descriptions:

Note that I had to swipe the colour on more than once (about 2-3) times to get a nice unbroken line for the metallic liners. The metallic ones are more similar to glitter liners than gel liners. The purple one is smoother and the colour goes on with 1 stroke but you can build intensity with more swipes.

Silver - like a platinum silver colour.
Gold - is more of a faded/pale-gold colour , not a yellow gold at all.
Purple - reddish purple (i.e. dark purple with reddish shimmer)




Purple liner on top, paired with gold liner on the bottom:






Silver liner on bottom only:




Note that one thing I can't cover yet in this review is the staying power....because I haven't had the chance to wear the liner out on a hot day and see if it lasts (being still cold in Canada and all).

But anyway, I like the colours, which are quite different from the existing MAC Fluidline range. The purple liner goes on quite smoothly like Fluidlines do, so that I would definitely repurchase if they came out with more colours.

The silver and gold liners are more like glitter liners, while the ones from MAC are more gel-like. So these Kate ones are quite unique BUT can be annoying if you don't like the glitter consistency. I personally find it a bit annoying that the product doesn't go on smoothly, but I find liquid glitter liners have the same problem also.

One thing to note is that unlike Fluidlines, the texture of the Kate gel liners seem more suited for being liners only and not bases. The metallic ones would definitely not work as bases since they don't go on very smoothly. The purple is a bit more creamy but still...not quite the same as MAC.

So if you want your products to multitask as bases, stick to Fluidlines.

In summary -

I like the purple one because I know i'm going to use it as a liner only and it works well for that. The metallic ones are super pretty but I'm not a fan of the texture :( They're something to try, but I wouldn't repurchase the metallic ones.

a haul of major proportions

i finally got some time to take pics of the haul my bf very kindly bought from Japan :)

Firstly, he brought me some clip on earrings which was sweet of him :) I didn't ask for them at all so it was a nice surprice :)



I don't have my ears pierced...my mom never wanted me to get them pierced. Even so, I've been considering getting them done since I was 15 but even now I still haven't decided if I want to.

Anyway, I'm always envious of the selection of pretty earrings other friends have, and have mentioned it to my bf several times so I guess he thought I could use these ones in the meantime. What I like about them is that two of the earrings don't look like clip ons at all from both the back and front. Only one of them (the one on the right) has the telltale clamp thing on the back of them.

For most people these probably look really blah, but to me, these are finally the first pairs of earrings I can actually wear out. I bought a couple pairs of magnetic earrings before but those always hurt my earlobes after a while, plus I couldn't find dangly ones that weren't obviously clip-ons. These are my favourite out of all the stuff I got ^^

He also got me 3 bottles of DHC Cleansing oil, and 2 bottles of DHC washing powder which I'd requested:




And some makeup...He and his friend were so sweet, they went and searched for every single item on the list I gave him even though I'd emphasized he didn't have to get everything. And its not like they even know what any of this stuff looks like so it wasn't easy....





Details and closeups:

1. Kiss Me Heroine Long and Curl mascara

I wanted to try the Japanese version since I'd been using Blinc for the past 3 months and its good, just pricey at over CDN$30 vs 798 yen in Japan...thats less than 1/3 the price I paid for Blinc :S




2. Kiss Me Heroine liquid liner

Chiara's review said it was easy to remove with just warm water, similar to the Kiss Me mascara so I had to try it :)




3. Kate Gel liners in purple and gold



I didn't expect the pots to be that small actually, I thought they'd be close to Fluidlines but they are a bit smaller. Will review when I try them.




4. Lunasol Sheer Contrast Eyes in Lavender Coral



I love the packaging, its all metallic, even the bottom. Pricey though...





You'll see that almost every palette gives you two double sided applicators that are actually shaped for a specific purpose. Only the cheaper brands like Majolica Majorca and Lavshuca provide one applicator, which are still better than the crappy Maybelline / ELF ones.


5. Coffret D'or 3D Lightning eyes in Blue Green





I love the metallic cover, but too bad the base is plastic instead of metallic like the Lunasol one, but then it IS cheaper by about 1500 yen (US$15) so...

6. Sofina Aube Jewellery Shower Eyes in Purple







7. Majolica Majorca Majolook palette in GR741 (LE)





I love this one the most even if it was the cheapest because my bf had to check several different stores before finding it. Most stores were sold out of it, probably because its LE.


8. RMK Shiny Mix Eyes in Light green








9. Shiseido Maquillage Sheer Climax Rouge lipstick in PK730






10. Coffret D'or Combiant Rouge lipstick/gloss in 06 Peach blossom




11. Shiseido The Makeup Hydro powder eyeshadows in Violet Visions and Languid Lagoon

I asked him to pick these up at the airport because they're more expensive here with the 13% sales tax plus whatever markup there is for Canada.




So...reviews to come when I try them out :D