Pixi Early Bird Kit Review

Firstly I will start of by saying that I love Pixi make up, everything I have ever used from this brand have always been amazing, from the packaging to the quality of the product. I have never had a bad word to say. I was really hoping my review on this product would be the same, unfortunately not this time.

 

This is the Early Bird kit, I picked it up from Boots, it retails for £16 but has a value of £64 if you look at everything individually.

I thought the packaging was so cute and as I've always loved their make up I thought it was definitely a good investment.

 

Its really sweet and girly packaging and when I opened it up I wasn't initially disappointed with what I saw, you'll see what I mean with the next picture.

This looked like a whole lotta happiness in one small palette. It contains 3 blushers, 2 bronzers, 1 highlighter, 4 eyebase powders and 16 eyeshadows. That in my opinion is a serious bargain for £16.

However after looking a little more closely I didn't feel that the palette was of such good quality that I am used to with Pixi products, the pans were loose from the palettes and were lifting out of the palette for starters which slightly disappointed me. 

I overlooked this and just tried to push them all back in being careful not to break the powders, this helped slightly.

The blushers, such pretty colours and I love the printing on them

The eyeshadows and eyeshadow base colours (central) you can see slightly what I mean about the pans here.

Bronzers and highlighter again lovely colours and printing on the product, I really like that they do pay attention to small details.

Now, here is what let the product down, possibly the most important thing, the pigmentation. Some of them are as usual really good quality and have excellent pigmentation but others are just not good at all. Some of then I couldn't get anything from them at all and others were just picking up glitter and no colour. Here are a few swatches of the better colours.

I attempted the lesser quality ones but I was essentially just photographing my arm and that seemed rather pointless.

The reason I am being quite negative on this product is, although £16 for a palette containing so many products from Pixi is quite cheap, there are lots of other brands out there that offer cheaper products that are much better quality than the duff ones in this palette. 

Would I buy it again? No, sadly not but this hasn't put me off Pixi as a brand and I will still be checking them out on my next Boots visit.

Have you tried this palette yet, or any product from Pixi?

ELF Haul

ELF have recently done a 48% off sale and as I'm never one to pass up on a bargain I decided to put in a little order. I ordered either Tuesday or Wednesday morning and it came on Saturday, super quick considering how many orders must have been placed during the sale.

As usual it arrived well packaged, in perfect condition and with everything included.

There was one thing in particular that I really wanted to order from ELF and was my main reason for putting an order in, this item was the brow stencils. I was chatting to a friend at work who mentioned these and I really wanted to give them a go, they were only £1.50 (78p after the discount) for 4 different shaped stencils. I can't use all of them due to the shape of my brows but there are two that I should be fine with.

So after popping these into my basket I then ended up with this

All for only £35 delivered, bargain in my opinion. I've had a quick go of everything apart from the mascaras and nothing has disappointed. A few items are repurchases such as the brushes but everything else was new to me.

I've broken them down into sections, first up is brushes

L-R Concealer brush, blending eye brush, angled eyeliner brush, eyeshadow brush, lip defining brush and Kabuki brush

All the white brushes are part of the essentials line and are £1.50 each, the angled liner brush is part of the studio line and is £3.75 and the Kabuki brush is also part of the studio line and is £6.00. I already have all of these brushes apart from the Kabuki brush and they are really good quality, especially the angled liner brush, I can't be without this now and its the only brush I use for applying my eyeliner. 

Next up we have eye products

L-R Jumbo Eyeshadow Stick (Little Miss Thing), Lengthening & Defining Mascara (Black),  Regular & Waterproof Mascara Duo (black),  Jumbo Eyeshadow Stick (Turkish Coffee), Jumbo Eyeshadow Stick ( Check Me Out), Mineral Eyeliner (Coffee) and Pressed Mineral Eyeshadow (Bridal Party)

The Jumbo Eyeshadow Sticks are £2.50 each and are great, I've given them a little go and I find them so much easier to use than the NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils, they crease so badly on my lids but these are fab, even without a primer. The mascaras are both £1.50 but I haven't tried these as of yet because of the sheer amount of mascaras I have on the go at the moment. The eyeliner was £3.00, I swatched it on the back of my hand and it seems nicely pigmented and quite creamy and smooth so hopefully it wont tug when putting it on my eyes. The mineral eyeshadow was £3.50, its a really pretty white. I used it as a brow highlighter today and it worked perfectly fine for what I wanted.

Here we have a few lip products

L-R Luscious Liquid Lipstick (Baby Lips), Long Wear Lipliner (Natural Blush), Luscious Liquid Lipstick (Pink Lemonade), Long Wear Lipliner (Mauve Luxe) and Lipstick (Classy)

All of the lip products were £1.50 each. The liquid lipsticks are amazing and I can't wait to get my hands on some more. Baby Lips is definitely my favourite and I'll be popping a few more in my basket on my next order so I have plenty of backups. 

Finally we have the face products

Top Row L-R HD Blush (Superstar), HD Blush (Showstopper) Contouring Blush & Bronzing Powder (Turks & Caicos) , Contouring Blush & Bronzing Powder (Antigua)
Bottom Row L-R Maximum Coverage Concealer (Porcelain), Contouring Blush & Bronzing Cream (St. Lucia) and Healthy Glow Bronzing Powder (Luminance)

Everything here was £3.75 apart from the bronzing powder which was £1.50. I swatched the HD blushes and they are amazingly pigmented, I definitely going to need some practise with these, I put the tiniest amount on the back of my hand and blended it out and it covered the whole of my hand! I used the pink blush from the Antigua duo today when we went out for tea and its lovely, its really pigmented and really flattering, I had some concerns of it looking slightly clownish but it was just a really nice flush of pink when blended out. You can build it up to a more intense colour if thats what you like but I only used a tiny amount.

So that was my ELF haul, not bad for £35 I don't think. You can buy ELF from here if your in the UK or here if your in the US. If you have never tried ELF before I definitely recommend it, if you like them on Facebook they are always doing various offers and promotions so its worth keeping an eye out if your wanting to put in an order. They also have great customer service as well and have always got back to me really quickly if I have had any problems with anything, they are super friendly too!

I'll be doing full reviews on individual items once I have given them a good go but if there is anything above that you would specifically like a review or swatches of please comment below and I'll get one posted for you.

Thanks for reading!

Sleek Blush by 3

I've been looking for some new blushes for a while and spotted this little beauty on New Looks website of all places. Priced at £9.99 I thought it was rather a good deal for 3 blushes. I've had Sleek blushes before and found them to be extremely good quality. They are highly pigmented and last a good 5/6 hours before they start to fade on me, which is better than some higher end blushes I have tried. 

 The palettes are actually smaller than I expected, I thought they were going to be a little bigger. Here is a picture next to one of the Sleek eyeshadow palettes for comparison.

I picked up the Lace palette which are some lovely very vibrant orange colours.

The shades are Crochet, Guipure and Chantilly. I have to say, Guipure does remind me a lot of Rose Gold, another Sleek blush that has been talked about alot and seems to have been out of stock everywhere for some time. 

Again for comparison here is the Rose Gold blush next to Guipure, pretty similar, do you agree?

Here are the swatches of the blushes, as you can see they are really quite bright but the good thing about these are you can have them as just a slight wash of colour or build them up to a much heavier colour if you like.

Overall I feel like this is a really good buy for £9.99 and definitely worth a look, another fantastic product from Sleek.

Look Beauty Glow, Bronze and Sculpt

Look Beauty isn't a brand I'm really familiar with. I have a blush and a couple of nail polishes from them but never really looked into them properly but I spotted these on the Superdrug website. They do a selection of Look Books, they do a smokey eye, lashes, metallic smoulder and the glow, bronze and sculpt. This one in particular is £18 but they are on 3 for 2 at the moment so you could grab a few for Christmas presents at a really good price.

 

 It comes with this handy guide on how to contour and blush which will be useful for anyone new to make up or anyone unsure on how to contour.

In the box you get a blush in Rosy, a Holiday Glow in Rio, a highlighter and a brush.
 

I didn't like the look of the blush at first as it seemed to be really shimmery and I prefer matt blushes but once you actually apply it the shimmer really isn't too much it just gives a nice healthy glow to your cheeks.

Again the bronzer scared me a little, I thought it would be too dark for my super pale skin and it looked really glittery too but its not at all on the face. If blends out perfectly to contour and looks really natural. 

I think the highlighter is the winner in this set. Its a gorgeous colour and looks stunning on the face. It looks completely natural when blended out and I imagine it would look great in summer with a bit more colour on the face. 

The brush, well this is a bit awful. You can see from the other pictures that it sheds like mad, around 10 hairs fell out whilst trying to take the brush out of the packet but saying that I don't think I've ever liked an applicator that comes with a product, even high end ones so I'm not going to be too negative and I definitely think its worth it without the brush, especially whilst its 3 for 2 as well.

Have you ever tried anything by Look Beauty?