Category Archives: Reviews
VIDEO: ColourPop Chasing Rainbows Palette – Review, Swatches & 5 Looks
Hard Candy Glitteratzi Press + Play (Review & Swatches)
When this Hard Candy Glitteratzi Press + Play Glitter Transforming Lip Color package showed up in my mailbox one day last month I was absolutely freaking floored. Number one… I had never heard of these, and they’re GLITTERY. Number two? Could these be the drugstore answer to the Ciate Glitter Flips that made the beauty world explode in 2017??
For those unfamiliar with the Ciate Glitter Flips, they’re essentially a liquid lipstick that when you press your lips together it reveals a wash of straight up glitter on your lips. It’s actually kind of a miraculous reveal, so I was eager to see that Hard Candy was billing their Glitteratzi Press + Play lipsticks as a very similar product. They say these are a matte lip colour that transforms into a sparkling finish once you press your lips together. They are… SORT of matte, when you first apply them, but you can still see a hint of sparkle through the base of the product (the hidden glitter!), so for me these are more on the metallic side of things rather than a flat out matte. It’s a *soft* metallic look, but it’s there.
There are seven shades in the range with some impressively bold colours in the mix. I guess Hard Candy figured that if you’re in the market for a glitter lipstick, you’re probably not one to shy away from unique and off the wall colours. And I really feel like they hit the mark on the colour selection to be honest – these are different, they’re fun, and it’s nice to see a drugstore brand do something that isn’t safe, conventional or expected.
In the swatches above you can see some of the sparkle shining through the product in a direct swatch. I swatched the shade Dazzle first, so you can see how that dries down after about a minute or so, whereas Slay was the last one I swatched and I took this photo within seconds of swatching. So they start off like any other liquid lipstick, and dry down fairly quickly.
On application each shade is incredible, and nearly completely opaque in colour (only the two last shades had the very faintest whisper of some translucency). However, once you put your lips together to reveal the glitter, you can end up with a slightly different story depending on the shade you’re using.
First of all, the glitter is gorgeous – and it’s really cool to “reveal” the glitter when you push your lips together, I love that aspect so much. BUT, while most shades are fine and have a small amount of lifting (just like the Ciate Glitter Flips, I might add – those shades do have some lifting when you press your lips together), there are two that are completely unwearable due to the lifting. I found Slay and Dazzle to be unwearable not because of the colour, but because of the way they tore chunks out of the lip colour when I pressed my lips together. Interestingly, while I can see there is a decent amount of missing patches on Charm (the red), I would say that one looks completely flawless in real life. I think the studio lights are highlighting some problems that the naked eye wouldn’t normally observe. Melanie of I’m Not A Beauty Guru had a similar experience with some of the lifting, but still found these products to be really lovely to wear too!
Final Thoughts
For an $8 CAD glitter liquid lipstick, these are pretty freaking cool! The Hard Candy Glitteratzi Press + Play lip colours aren’t flawless, but if you skip the shades that I had difficulty with then I think you’ll find the remaining shades are beautiful and fun to wear. Out of all seven shades my favourites are definitely Charm, Glitz, and Allure.
I’m really happy to see a drug store brand putting out fun and exciting products. I know these are essentially a knockoff of the Glitter Flips and some people don’t like copycat products, but meh – as far as I’m concerned the drugstore needs an injection of fun sometimes and I’m glad to see Hard Candy delivering on that!
The Hard Candy Glitteratzi Press + Play Glitter Transforming Lip Color can be purchased on walmart.ca for $7.98 CAD or on walmart.com for $6 USD.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
Real Techniques Brush Crush Volume II Review
There isn’t brush brand out there that excites me outside of Real Techniques – I swear! Brushes, by and large, are tools and therefore not really that interesting to me… except when Real Techniques puts out a new brush range, be it shapes, or differently coloured handles… well… I actually get a little bit excited!
Within the Brush Crush Volume II Collection you’re getting four brushes and a sponge duo. The handles on the brushes have the appearance of frosted snow on a windshield, and the handle on the brushes are twisted for a little extra touch.
I tend to use my brushes not quite as they’re labeled – so for me the flat-angle foundation brush made a great stamping and blending tool for blush. And I used the blush brush more as a highlighter brush. The larger powder brush was great for applying all over face powder, but I found it to be a touch too floppy for precise application like blush. The eyeshadow brush is similar to all of the other RT blending brushes I have, which is to say it’s wonderful! I have about four or five of these in constant rotation in my daily routine, so I’m always happy to add another one into the mix.
The sponge duo set are absolutely beautiful to look at – I love, love, LOVE the marbling on them. I found the texture to be identical to my beloved Real Techniques Miracle Complexion Sponge, but the shape made it a little bit more awkward to hold in my hand. Overall, I like the appearance of the rounded sponge, and it does apply foundation the exact same way as my regular sponge, but the shape isn’t necessarily right for me. That being said, I’ll be using the sponges up I feel like they need to replaced, so they’re definitely a good product!
I really can’t get over just how beautiful the brush handles are though! That cracked ice appearance is one of my most favourite things I’ve ever seen in a makeup product, and I’m so happy to have a set of brushes that have that design on them.
Your best bet for finding the Brush Crush Volume II range is at Walmart.ca – I can see the entire range is still available online.
And now… on to the giveaway!
Real Techniques Brush Crush Set Giveaway
Giveaway Rules
- This giveaway is open to Canada only!
- This giveaway starts on December 21, 2018 and runs for one week.
- One winner will receive the Real Techniques Brush Crush Volume II – brushes (4) and sponge duo.
- Please be aware that all entries will be double checked to ensure fairness.
- Once the winner has been contacted, they will have 48 hours to provide me with their mailing address. If the winner fails to respond within that time frame, I will pick another winner. (And so on.)
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration, and the prize pack is provided by the PR team.
SocialEyes Lashes – Vegan Fake Lashes (Review)
If you’re looking for a massive array of fake lashes that are vegan, cruelty-free (no animal parts to be found here!), with a price tag under $9 (most of them are much lower) AND run by a Canadian YouTuber… well you’ve found it – and the brand is called SocialEyes!
Karissa Pukas started SocialEyes in 2014 when she couldn’t find affordable, well-crafted fake lashes. So, she set out to create them! And holy smokes… did she ever… if you visit the SocialEyes site, you’ll be absolutely inundated with options. You want small, flirty lashes for a little extra boost? You got it. You want hugely full lashes for a big night out? You got it. And there’s everything in between too!
Not to mention, SocialEyes also makes lash glue and lash tweezers which can help you with your application if you’re not a fan of using regular tweezers. I found the lash glue to be exceptionally good – it’s completely on par with my beloved House of Lashes glue, so I was really pleased about that. The lash tweezers I actually found to be useless to me in terms of applying the lashes to my eyes, and that may be because I’m used to using regular tweezers. I ended up using the lash tweezers to clamp the fake lashes to my real lashes after I’d applied them and I felt like that really helped to meld my lashes to the falsies – more of a seamless look, you know?
I was sent a massive array of lashes, so I wasn’t able to try out every single one of them for this post, but I did try out four different styles that I felt suited my style the best.
The Lady lashes have an invisible band with a series of lashes clumped together in sections. I like the band because it’s translucent and also quite flexible. It doesn’t have the MOST amount of flex I’ve seen in a band, but it’s good enough to wrap around the curve of your eye without worrying about the ends pinging off.
Foxy was probably my favourite pair that I tried because they’re my preferred lash style – quite fluffy, but not super long.
What’s nice about SocialEyes is they actually make “shorty” sizes for some of their styles. I’m wearing the Glamorous Shorty styles about, but if you like something a little bit longer, you can just pick up the Glamorous style.
While the band on most of the lashes is quite transparent, there are a few that have a slightly milky-white texture that makes hiding the band a bit more difficult. While I liked the style Lush (above), I would this one to have the most difficult band to cover, even when I applied liquid liner on top of the eye lash. You can see a hint of the white-ish band sticking out. I was able to mostly cover it with liquid liner, but it does stick out on areas I missed. Out of the four I tried, this was the only one that I had an issue with the colour of the band.
Final Thoughts
Well I’m dead pleased with these! I knew basically nothing about SocialEyes lashes before the PR team reached out to me to try some out, and now I’m sold. These are affordable and well made lashes. I love the lash glue, and the tweezers work well to meld my lashes to the falsies. I like that the price point doesn’t break the $10 mark and that most styles are under that price point by several dollars. And the variety of styles? Unreal. Their web site has more than you could ever hope for!
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.