Urban Decay Stardust Eyeshadows

I was sent these little lovelies last week by Urban Decay, and I’m delighted to bring you some swatches as I’ve not been able to find any more details about them in the UK!
They’re the latest in sparkly eyeshadows, here’s what Urban Decay says about them: 
“An explosion of stars. Stardust shadows’ silky texture delivers an incredible amount of sophisticated, twinkling sparkle. Boasting 40% more glitter than our most sparkly shadows, Stardust delivers a sheer wash of color, topped with teeny bits of iridescent sparkle that glisten like wet snow.”
I received the shades 54 and Moon Spoon (and how I wish it were called Button Moon!) which are a lovely light lavender-purple and an iridescent grey, respectively.
I love the squeezy rubber packaging, they’re great fun to use, and they do indeed sparkle and twinkle in the package. Urban Decay say you will get no fall out with these, so I put them to the test, but first off, here are some hand-swatches:
First things first, Urban Decay aren’t kidding when they say these are sheer!  I’ve swatched these over Urban Decay Primer Potion here (there’s a dot of UDPP in the centre of these swatches, and the shadow has been swatched in a much larger circle around them), you can see there’s a hint of purple on the 54 swatch, but you can barely pick up the colour of the Moon Spoon at all.  Here’s a swatch from a different angle:

These are very shimmery, and very lovely. They’re not gritty (surprisingly non-gritty, in fact!) and the fact that they’re so sheer actually makes them a lot more versatile than they would be if they were more highly pigmented. I’ve not experienced much fall out, and they’re very definitely NOT chunky glitter.  Here’s a look I created – and wore to the office! – recently with Moon Spoon:

Apologies for the slight creasing there, this was taken after I’d  been wearing it for around 14 hours.  This is a base of the two lightest colours of my Chanel Kaska Beige quad, (with a Kat von D King Cobra liner, more about that later this week!), and with some of the Moon Spoon pressed over the top.  It just gave me a gorgeously glossy shadow look without being too OTT for day wear.
These shadows really come alive under artificial light though, and I’ll bring you some more looks with them when I’ve had a chance to see how they work foiled.
Urban Decay Stardust shadows are available in 9 colours (including white and black) and will be available from Boots and Debenhams stockists very soon, will you be picking any up?

And we have a winner!

Or winners, rather!  The lucky winners are the comments numbered:

Winner of the Liz Earle package (comment number 46) is Beauty Junkie London

And winner of the mystery package of goodies (comment number 8) is JellyMinx

Congratulations to both of you! And thank you very much to every single one of you who entered, it's been great fun, and I'll be doing this again soon.

Makeover: Rebecca

I recently put out a call on my blog for volunteers for makeovers, and the lovely Rebecca from Le Salon de Beaute had volunteered almost before I’d finished writing the post!  Take a look at her blog if you get a chance, it’s a lovely one, and I’m a big fan.
Anyway, this is Rebecca refusing to give me her best “Prisoner Cell Block H” impression.
I was a bit nervous during this makeover, as Rebecca is a talented makeup artist in her own right, so I was really putting my amateur skills to the test here.
As always, we start with the base.  Rebecca has very pale skin, and I had a little trouble matching her up with my small foundation supply, but the nearest match we came up with was – once again – Max Factor Seamless in Porcelain:

It’s evened out her skintone well (it’s a foundation I use a LOT), but I can’t help thinking it’s  just a touch too warm on Rebecca’s skin.
We had a fun time picking out some colours to use, and eventually we decided to do something a bit different, and went for a pink and burgundy smokey eye.  As a colour wash, I used ELF’s Shimmering Facial Whip in Pink Lemonade:

It’s a lovely soft pink shade that you can use anywhere on your face, and it makes a nice eyeshadow base too. 
It’s not as scarily bright as you might think on the eyes, and I thought it was a lovely, brightening shade.  In order to smoke it out, I used Korres 77s eyeshadow in plum, which is a lovely  burgundy, and an eyeshadow that I use very often.  I used it as a liner, and to define the outer V of the mobile eyelid and into the crease:
I then finished off the eyes with a sweep of Bourjois Ultra Care mascara (full review of that coming soon!) and added a little of MAX lipgloss in VI to Rebecca’s lips:

I think she liked it:


Here’s the before and after: 

Thanks so much for taking part, Rebecca! It was lots and lots of fun!

Giveaway Reminder!

So, did you enter my giveaway yet? Alongside your choice of either Liz Earle skincare or pefume, I’ve added some goodies from Stargazer (IMATS exclusive!), Clinique and Balm Balm.  The second prize gift includes a skincare set from Jason, and there might be a little something from Lancome in there too … there are

some other little surprises in the bags as well!

So, please, become a follower (there’s a link just over there on the right –>), and add a comment to the post on this link There are only two more days to enter, I’ll be making the draw on Sunday evening!

Thank you everyone for reading, I’ve been at this for six months now, and it’s been amazing!

Technorati Tags: Giveaway,Random

Estee Lauder - Michael Kors

More beige, and yet I want this collection so badly.  Someone needs to talk me down ... I have enough make up! 

... Don't I? I also think I need the Bobbi Brown summer corals collection.  I love me some coral ...

Any things you are looking forward to seeing appear in the shops over the next couple of months?

Nail of the Day - Nubar Oh Baby Pink

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've already said that spring, to me, is all about the brights, right? That I'm not about the pastels?  Okay ... in brief, I love this polish ... but...

This is Oh Baby Pink and it's from the Nubar Hypnotic Valentine's collection (which is available from the lovely, lovely people at Beauty Shed) it's a pastel pink creme, that only took two coats to cover my nails in dense, pink colour.  It was a dream to apply, slightly streaky on the first coat, but fully opaque and shiny on the second. Nubars always wear pretty well, and I'm assuming this won't be an exception to that.

My photos wash the colour out a little here, making the shade a lot more pastel than it actually is.  In the flesh, this shade is more of a candy- than a baby-pink.  If Barbie OD'd on Tipp-Ex, then this is what she'd throw up. It's a real love-it or hate-it shade, this one. I think I'm on the wrong side of that particular choice! That said, I've been wearing the colour out and about the last day or two, and some people really, really love it.  I think it'd be a great shade for people with cool-toned pale skin, or very dark, or tanned skin.  I think on my pale (very pale) yellow-y skin that it just makes me look a bit jaundiced.

I took a picture in different light to see if I could capture the full effect of the colour, and these are the best I could do

In artificial light:

In natural daylight

If you  like soft, girly colours, then you will adore this polish. Nubar say it's a lovely romantic shade - I'm not entirely sold on that, being reminded faintly of Pepto-Bismol every time I look at it) but there's no doubting the quality of the polish itself.

This happened today though.  There may have been a couple of tears shed (ironically, it's also the picture closest to the real shade of the polish):

No flowers please, the ceremony will be a private, family-only affair.  MrLippie has been laughing about it ALL DAY.

Organic Wednesday - A change from our usual programming.

In which Get Lippie goes off on one and hopes she'll be forgiven ...

Here at Get Lippie, I have a lot of organic products, and I read a LOT of pseudo-scientific gubbins about why organic products are better than products that contain ingredients which are not organic. And, by and large, I take most  of these claims with a pinch of salt.  You can tell me that a product works because the contents are  harvested only by the light of a gibbous moon by virgins, then then ingredients are handed to fairies who use angel wings to mix them up (not actually that far-fetched a claim, to be honest) and I'll simply roll my eyes slightly (possibly whilst belming gently to myself) and then go back to smearing it wherever it's meant to be smeared and reading the ingredients list.

From reading that,  I'll know that a product works because it contains ingredients known to moisturise, or perfume, or colour and doesn't contain potential irritants. I'm a big fan of reading the ingredients list of any product I buy, organic or not.  More people should do it!

There are, however, two words which, when I encounter them on an organic product - and it is always an organic product I'm afraid, that will make me go all "HULK SMASH" on the offending article.  Those two words are:

Chemical Free

They make me crazy.  Because I'll assume two things.  That the makers of the products are idiots and, worse, that they think the people buying the products are idiots.  And that makes me angry.  Just because people may want to avoid increasingly synthetic products, it doesn't mean they're gullible.

There is nothing on this planet that is chemical-free.  I am chemicals.  You are chemicals.  Air is so full of chemicals it's astonishing we can breathe at all.  Water - the supposedly one of purest ingredients on earth is ... you guessed it ... chemicals!  ORGANIC INGREDIENTS CONTAIN CHEMICALS.  Everything does, and certainly everything on that pesky ingredients list will consist of chemicals in various guises. There simply is no such thing as chemical free.  Any product that tells you it's good because it doesn't contain "chemicals" is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes in order to get you to hand over your hard-earned pennies.

If a product is free of synthetic dyes, perfumes, colours, additives or preservatives, then that's great - to a point, but that's the subject of a whole other post - then quite rightly the packaging should mention it.  But I do wish organic producers wouldn't be so tricksy at times.   Sometimes you need a degree in double-speak to figure out if the products are entirely organic or not.  I really don't think you should be able to claim that a product is organic if it merely contains a couple of organic essential oils or something.  But again, that's the subject of another post.

What do you think of organic products? Does the provenance of the ingredients in your cosmetic items bother you at all? Did you make it to the end of this post? Are you a cosmetic brand who disagrees with what I've written here?  What drives YOU crazy about cosmetic claims or labelling?