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?

New CID Cosmetics Review

I recently spotted this brand on a couple of peoples blogs and also on the QVC website. I never really paid much attention to them because no stores near me stock them and I do like to test a brand before purchasing when possible. I needed a new translucent powder and spotted on this on the QVC website for £17.52 + £3.95 postage and it came with a brush so I thought it would  be a great way to try out the brand.

I received the product really quickly and I was really excited to try it, I applied the powder with the brush supplied after my foundation and immediately I really disliked it. It didn't mattify my skin it just wasn't very good at all. However I think this was down to the brush, the brush has rave reviews on the website but I found it to be really difficult to work with. Its a beautiful brush and its so so soft  but I just didn't think it does anything for the product. I've used the powder with my normal brushes and its so much better. It does what it says on the tin, its a translucent powder. It mattifies my skin and leaves a nice finish. Although I don't think its worth the price. I have found other much cheaper powders to be just as effective. This one for example in my opinion is just as good. 

Next up I have the pressed powder in extra light, I love the packaging and I love that it has a little light on it. Its so cute! This retails for £24.00, again it does what it says on the tin. Theres not alot to say about it really. It does mattify my skin and eliminates any shiny areas on my face it is a very light coverage. I like the powder but don't think I would purchase it again at the price. Some much cheaper alternatives that are just as good in my opinion are the Rimmel Stay Matte priced at £3.99, the 17 pressed powder priced at £3.42 and the MUA pressed powder priced at £1.00, I love this powder and think its a bargain at only £1.00.

I picked up the Look Book palette from TK Maxx for about £7.99, it looks really nice but its a fingerprint magnet. It contains 4 neutral coloured eyeshadows, 2 lipsticks, a blush and a highlighter (it also has 2 of the rubbish applicators you usually get with palettes that are really not worth mentioning) The highlighter is beautiful as are the eyeshadows, they are so incredibly pigmented and give a gorgeous finish. The blush is slightly less pigmented but for me thats great as I am really heavy handed when applying blushes and its much easier to add more if you haven't put enough on than take some away when you have applied to much and look like a clown. The lipsticks are very sheer, they look fairly bright in the palette but just leave a very nice tint of colour and a sheen to your lips, again perfect for me as I haven't quite got round to rocking the bright lipsticks yet, I'm such a wuss!

 3 down, 2 to go. The I-Shimmer, a double ended highlighter with brush. The shade is marshmallow and its so nice. Its a lovely colour and I love that it has a brush on the end, its so handy and I think its much better than blending with your fingers which I always end up doing with other stick highlighters. This retails for £18.50 and is so worth it. I would purchase more but after looking at the other colours the marshmallow is the best for me but I will be repurchasing once this runs out. Love it so much. A cheaper alternative would be the ELF all over colour stick in either spotlight or toasted and these are priced at £1.50. I have tried these and they are good but I personally prefer the New CID.

Finally we have a lip product, its the i-gloss, light up lip gloss with mirror in baby doll. These retail at £16.00 on the website. This is alot more than I would normally spend on a lip gloss I will be honest. Its very glossy, a gorgeous colour and its not sticky at all and lasts a while before you need to apply but unfortunately I would not pay the full price of these or the £4.99 I snagged this for at TK Maxx. I'm not really  a gloss fan usually I just thought the name was quite cute, I'm more of a tinted lip balm kinda girl so will be sticking to my Revlon Just Bitten Balm Stain which I am in love with at the moment.

Hope you enjoyed my little review. If you have tried any New CID cosmetics that you have thought were worth the quite hefty price tag please comment below I would love to try something on someone elses recommendation.

Topshop Constellation Eye Palette

I've never really got into the whole Topshop make up range. I've had one or two items but never been overly impressed with them. I recently got the Constellation Palette that they do and I have to say I'm rather impressed. It retails for £12 and can be found here on their website. Its a really nice smokey eye kit and would be great for Christmas.

Here is the palette, I love the packaging. Its really sturdy and feels like it would hold up if you popped it in your hand bag. It includes a mirror and an applicator.

Here is what it says on the back of the packaging.

The palette includes a very glittery black, a dark  glittery silver, a shimmery pink and shimmery light silver. As you can see the palette doesn't include any matt shades but who doesn't want a bit of glitter at Christmas? 

Now, it isn't the most pigmented of palettes, the swatches below took quite a bit of building up to get the colours as close to the pan as possible. The only shade that didn't quite get there was the black but I don't think that is really an issue if you are wanting to do a subtle smokey eye. All the other colours are lovely and really soft to work with and they don't create a lot of fallout which is really good, I hate having little speckles of shadow on my cheeks.

I think this is a really good palette, the packaging is cute, the colours are nice and do blend nicely and the price is not too bad. However I do think there are other products on the market that are as good or better than this palette for less money. 2  that spring to mind are the MUA Pro Glamour Nights Eyeshadow Palette 
This is only £4 and has 12 shades, definitely good value for money as these shadows are so pigmented, although I would recommend a good primer with them, the second palette is the Sleek Bad Girl Palette 
This retails for around £7.99 and again has 12 very pigmented shades, there is also the storm palette which would be a good alternative that retails for the same price. I love Sleek palettes and reach for my Au Naturel palette alot more than I do my Urban Decay Naked 2.

Have you tried any of the Topshop make up range yet?

First haul post

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I had a bit of money left over so I popped into town after work to see what I could find. I'm really happy with my purchases and can't wait to try them all out this weekend.

First I went into Boots, I knew exactly what I wanted from there so I was really happy to see they had one left!

This is the Rimmel Scandaleyes Waterproof Kohl Kajal Eyeliner in nude. I used this today to line my waterline for a more natural looking alternative to white liner and I love this and it lasted all day, something that I very rarely find with high street brands. This is priced at £3.99 - bargain!

Boots currently have an offer on 3 for 2 on make up so not one to miss out on a bargain I picked up a couple of other products to take full advantage.

 These are the Barry M Hi Shine Gel Effect Nail Polishes, I think these I fairly new. I got them in Pomegranate (left) and Blackberry (right). These are really thick polishes, I tried them each out on one nail. The purple only needed one coat to be completely opaque but the pink would definitely need 2. They seemed to dry fairly quickly, however after coming out of the bath they both peeled off in one strip. I didn't put a base or top coat on as I was only testing the colour so this may help but I will be doing a full review of them shortly.
These were also priced at £3.99 so all three items came to a total of £7.98.

I then decided to take a trip into my local TK Maxx, I do love this shop and they sometimes have some real gems hidden but the beauty section in mine always has so many items that have been opened or smashed and its just really annoying. Having said that I did find some amazing (in my opinion) bargains that were in perfect condition.

First up I spotted these hidden right at the back of the shelf. It was a pack of 3 China Glaze nail crackles, they were £5.99. I've only ever tried the Barry M crackle polish and I wasn't overly impressed but I thought that with these being glitter and China Glaze they may be better.

As I was heading over to the till I spotted another shelf so went for a look and was really shocked to find it packed full of Urban Decay palettes for £12.99 each. I picked up this one as it had the most colours that I would actually use. Alot of the others had lots of greens and purples which I already have a lot of.

I love all these colours, this palette is called the Mariposa Palette and retailed for £26 so not bad at all for £12.99 I don't think.

The next item is the one that I was most excited about, I was actually looking at this online the other day but didn't order for whatever reason.

 I've wanted the Urban Decay liner in perversion for a while. Its supposed to the blackest black liner. The full size liner retails for £13 so I'm really happy to get 5 for less than the price of 1 full size to try. They are quite large for travel sizes (0.8g the Rimmel pencil is 1.2g) so I don't think I will even get through the travel sizes.

All in all I'm really impressed with my haul, I'm hopefully going back to TK Maxx this weekend to see if they have any other UD products in. I will be doing a full review of each item shortly.

Have you managed to bag any bargains from anywhere recently?