HOLY GRAIL! Revlon Royal : Review, Swatches and Praise!!!!

Because I read a lot of nail blogs, there are often colors that I see all the time.  The latest one to catch my attention was Revlon Royal.  Each time I'd see a flakie, jelly sandwich or blue glitter, there it was, Revlon Royal.  I had seen the words ''layered over Revlon Royal'' so many times that when I was at the drugstore (one of the 10 drugstores I visited in that quest) I picked it up just to see why everyone was using it so much.

Honestly, if I had only looked at the color from the bottle I would never have bought this shade.  It looks like a Royal blue (d'uh that's ITS NAME) and I'm honestly not too fond of those.  

But on my nails...oh my... can we say LOVE AT FIRST STROKE?

I mean... look at that gorgeousness.  Almost navy royaley blue with a jelly finish.  It looks so dark and rich without looking black at all.  This is three coats and I feel it's perfect that way.  Very easy to work with also and I didn't have the drying time problems some people have been complaining about with this shade.  Two thins coats and a third thicker coat and it's perfection - well to my eyes that is.  The color compliments my skin so welllllllll.

Here's an another indoors shot that shows it can be more royal blue depending on the lighting, whereas the first picture shows a much darker richer tone.

Last picture is outdoors and you can really see the glossiness of the finish on that one.  I can't wait to try other dark jellies, they're just dreamy.

I have to say this is easily my favorite nail polish so far.  It's versatile, compliments my skin, glossy, dark blue, almost navy, pigmented and the list goes on.  For 6.49$, it's such. a. steal. If Revlon ever discontinues this s***, Imma be pissed.  I even like this better than NARS Zulu, which says A LOT.

What is your favorite nail polish shade?

Revlon Starry Pink/Popular : Story, Review and Swatches

Now, here is a little story I like to call ''How I went crazy about three Revlon nail polishes''.  It started innocently enough, I was browsing my favorite blogs when I stumbled upon swatches of Revlon's Expressionists collection.  I saw Facets of Fuchsia, Starry Pink and Blue Mosaic and fell in love with Starry Pink immediately.  I took a photo of the swatch with my iPhone and proceeded to the drugstore on my lunch break to buy that shade.  

Yeah right.

At first I was baffled.  Why didn't my two regular drugstores didn't have it?  They're downtown and they get a lot of stuff so why didn't they have this.  Would they receive it later on?  I was confused.  

I then started to do some research online, only to find out that these had come and gone at most drugstores.  The displays had been there for a mere week or two and then poof, gone.  

Obviously, being as bone-headed as I am, I went on a quest.  Last saturday during my lunch break I pillaged three drugstores, with no luck.  I braved very cold temperature (like -20 degrees people...) and lots of wind (so -25 degrees in reality), but came back empty-handed. 

The next day, I visited another drugstore during my break, still not finding these precious.  I then decided that after my work shift, I was going to take the bus and get off twenty minutes before my real stop, so that I could pillage two other drugstores.

The first one was a disappointment.  Not only didn't they have my pretties, but their nail polish selection was the worst.  I was starting to get annoyed with the whole thing and almost decided to go back home, thinking that this was a lost cause.  But if I've learned one thing from watching my boyfriend play countless hours of Skyrim, it's that you need to persevere even if it takes AGES TO DO THE SIMPLEST THING.  

So I started walking to go to the second drugstore on my route, which was a few blocks away.  But while getting there I saw another drugstore, which I hadn't thought of - because they usually don't have ANYTHING.  (Honestly it's amazing they're still in business because their inventory and deco really need to be spruced up.... anyways that's besides the point.)

And to my surprise, there they were.  The whole Expressionists display UNTOUCHED.  Actually it even had a little dust on it.  All shades were there.  So I picked up Starry Pink, Facets of Fuchsia, Blue Mosaic and Carbonite (only because it's a Chanel dupe - I don't even like the foil look anyway.... yeah that's marketing and branding right there).

So here is the beloved Starry Pink : 

This is with a flash indoors.  It's three coats over two coats of Essie Mademoiselle which is so sheer I honestly don't know why I thought of using it under Starry Pink.  Must've been some bubble to go through my brain at that point.  But isn't it prettyyyy?

This one is outside and honestly it makes me think of clouds.  When I was a kid I thought that clouds looked yummy, because I thought they were giant cotton candy in the sky.  So yeah cotton candy cloudy nails with glitter to boot, what better things in life can you ask for?  

Well that's easy.  My CPA title.  A Range Rover.  A trip to Egypt, India, Italy and Thailand.  A Miu Miu or Marc Jacobs handbag.  And the list goes on...

But still, a nice nail polish does it's job once in a while...

If you like those too you'll be happy to know that Revlon has added them to their permanent line.  The names will change though.

Starry Pink will become Popular

Facets of Fuchsia will become Scandalous

Blue Mosaic will become Radiant

Now only if I could find Whimsical...

An Eyeliner Story: 5 black eye liners compared

Receiving the NYX eyeliner in my December Luxe Box made me wonder how it compared to the other black eyeliners I currently have.

From left to right you can see : NYX Pencil Eyeliner, Revlon ColorStay Liquid Eye Pen, Revlon ColorStay Liquid Liner, L'Oréal Lineur Intense Felt Tip Liquid Liner and MAC Fluidline Gel Liner.  Obviously, they're all black. 

Obviously, the NYX pencil is the easiest to use, it takes the least amount of practice to achieve the desired results because well, we all know how to draw.  You would think that the liquid eye pen from Revlon would be really easy to use as well... wrong.  It's such a mess.  There's either too much or too little product on the tip and it's just a mess to apply, you'll see from the swatches was I mean.

The two liquid liners do take some practice to apply but once you master it it's pretty easy. The L'Oréal one has a felt tip which makes it so much easier to master, so if you're looking into buying your first eyeliner I'd get this one, it does an okay job and it's pretty cheap.  I do find though that the Revlon liquid liner is the best liquid liner in the drugstore category.  The tip is kinda small though so it's a little harder to get straight long lines.  

Finally there's the MAC Fluidline that I've already reviewed here.  The highlight?  Amazing staying power, the best I've seen for a liner. 

Now onto the swatches...

From left to right in case you didn't remember : NYX Pencil Eyeliner, Revlon ColorStay Liquid Eye Pen, Revlon ColorStay Liquid Liner, L'Oréal Lineur Intense Felt Tip Liquid Liner and MAC Fluidline Gel Liner.

The NYX pencil is a deep matte black with a smudgeable consistency.  Great pigmentation there as you can see.

See what I told you about the Liquid Eye Pen from Revlon?  It looks brown - not black - very watery and it was hard to get an even color on my arm so you can imagine how bad it is on your lid? Do not buy, absolute waste of money.

The Revlon liquid liner is a lot more pigmented than you see on the picture.  The only issue with this liner is that the hardness of the tip makes it kind of a pain in the butt to layer.  The first swipe is ok, but then the hardness of the tip scratches the color from the first swipe and you need to do it over... so yeah definitely a product that you need to master.  But once that's done, you can get great results from it.

The fourth one, the L'Oréal Lineur Intense is very pigmented as well but it has shimmer in it, which I'm not too fond of for a liner.  But that aside, it's a great liner and very easy to use like I said before.

The MAC fluid line also has a matte finish and it's very easy to smudge as well.  It's my daily liner and has the most staying power out of all the liners I've tried.  

So that's about it!  What are your favorite brands of eyeliner?  I want to try the UD 24/7 ones and the Bobbi Brown gel liners because I've heard great things from them! 

BUTTAAAAHS : The New Revlon Lip Butters

So I'm pretty sure you've seen them or heard about them or even bought them.  The Revlon lip butters.  Om nom nom, BUTTAH!

I bought three shades.  This was actually the item that broke my no buy November, which I was very successful in - up until I saw the lip butters the 25th of November.  I was good for almost a month though ;).

You see, the US got them at least a month before we did.  Everything is always released weeks if not months later here in Canada.  

The first shade I bought was Cherry Tart, the one on the right.  I liked the consistency so much I went and purchased two other shades about 2 hours later.  

Pictured are Peach Parfait, Berry Smoothie and Cherry Tart.  The packaging is classic Revlon, but I like that the lids are different colors depending on the shade so it's easier to sort 'em out.  

So here are the actual sticks.  The application goes on really smoothly, as you would expect from a product that has butter in its name.  They're creamy and oh so delicious.  They retail for about 7.99$ a pop and there's 20 shades total.  In my drugstore they had a display of the whole 20 shades, with only 2 lipsticks of each shade.  

So if you see 'em and you want 'em, HOLD ON TO 'EM.  Because they will be gone sooner than later.  They are a permanent line though so your drugstore will eventually have them in their permanent displays... but who knows how long will that take!

Here are some swatches on my pale skin, the set on the left is one swipe, whereas the right group shows three swipes to build up color.  You can see Peach Parfait, Berry Smoothie and then Cherry Tart.  

Peach Parfait shows up nicely on the lips, it's definitely a MLBB shade.  It's very sheer and shimmery, like most of the butters.  Of the three I bought it's my least favorite shade.  

I actually bought it because of this...

She's supposed to be wearing Peach Parfait... well it sure doesn't look like that on me LOL.

Berry Smoothie is my kind of shade.  It's a plum shade that leans towards fuchsia.  It has great pigmentation and is on the cooler side, which I love.  It's my favorite shade of the bunch and I feel even though it's one of the more ''daring'' colors of this collection, it still has great wearability.

Finally, there's Cherry Tart.  I thought it would show up more red on the swatches, but it looks so close to Berry Smoothie, it's kind of hard to tell the two apart from the pictures. But you can see that it's more on the dark side, with more hints of red, but still looks very much like a plum lippie.  It's the most pigmented one.  I even had to tone it down a little when I first tried it on, because I was at work at the time.  

I don't think I'll purchase any more shades, because I got the ones I wanted, but it's a great formula that I recommend to everyone, especially lipsticks noobs.  The application is almost fool prof and the lasting power is not all that great so if you make a mistake it's not like your lips are stained all day.  

Points down for wearability because you need to apply every 2-4 hours.  Taste and smell is ok, definitely not a turn off or anything. 

Did you get some buttahs? 

Can you remember them saying : BUTTERRRRRRRRRR!