Category Archives: Reviews
Too Faced Tutti Frutti Twinkle Twinkle Liquid Glitter in Ice Queen (Review & Swatches)
Too Faced‘s Tutti Frutti collection has launched, and with it a whole slew of new products – including the Twinkle Twinkle Liquid Glitter Eyeshadows!
I snagged Ice Queen at ULTA as soon as the collection launched because I’ve been fairly obsessed with my Stila Glitter & Glows, and I wanted to see how this one compared.
The Tutti Frutti collection is a little bit harder to get your hands on as a Canadian unfortunately – ULTA is the only physical retailer to carry the product, so you basically have to buy it sight unseenvia either ULTA online (like I did) or via Too Faced’s own web site. For the Canadians out there who are unaware – ULTA does ship to Canada for the last year or so, and you can get free shipping with a $100 minimum spend. Keep in mind you will pay customs in advance via Borderfree, but it means there’s no worrying about some crazy charge when the package arrives on your door. The customs charge was as if I was paying sales tax AND I avoided that horrid Canada Post opening fee of like $12 per package (before charges).
Back to the actual product review! The Too Faced Tutti Frutti Twinkle Twinkle Liquid Glitter Eyeshadow “are a high-shine liquid glitter eyeshadow inspired by candied fruits”. Of course, one can only immediately begin to draw similarities between the Too Faced liquid glitters in comparison to the Stila Glitter & Glows. However, at $22 USD, the Too Faced ones are two dollars cheaper than the Stila Glitter & Glows ($24 USD) and they contain 25% more product in terms of weight.
I picked up the shade Ice Queen because it seemed the most unique of the lot – the rest are predominantly neutral champagne colours, although there is a BEAUTIFUL orange called Citrus Mistress in there as well.
The first thing I noticed when I swatched Ice Queen was that the base colour is not that strong. There is a lot of translucency in the base that holds all the glitter in, which is significantly different from the original Stila Glitter & Glows that have a very pigmented base (although it has to be said that more recent Stila glitters have become more translucent – Perlina is the one that comes to mind immediately). The glitter flecks in the Too Faced one are slightly larger, and Ice Queen has a lot of different glitter colours in it – silver, pale blue, dark blue and the occasional golden orange.
Since the base was more translucent than I normally go for, I opted to lay down a similar coloured shadow on my lid before going in with the glitter. This helped to really amp up the colour of the blue and bring out more of the sparkle.
I found the wand tip fairly easy to work with – although not as easy as my Stila glitters, but I think that may be due to the length of the wand – the Too Faced one is REALLY long, whereas the Stila one is shorter. I personally prefer a shorter wand across all products (specifically thinking about liquid lipsticks here too) because it gives me slightly more control. The edge blend is do-able with the wand, but you might have slightly better luck if you used a brush.
Final Thoughts
Fundamentally, the application was good, but not quite as nice as the Stila glitters – I found those more fluid and I like that they have a stronger colour base. That being said, I only bought one shade from Too Faced, so it’s possible that the other colours have a stronger tint. The wear time was excellent and I only experienced very minor creasing after 9 hours of wear.
I am always happy to see brands put out similar products to the Stila Glitter & Glows, especially if it provides us more variety in colours. While I like the colour of Ice Queen, I do wish the lineup had provided slightly more variations of colours. I would LOVE to have seen a hot raspberry shade, or a candied lime colour. The selection of colours that is there will appeal to a wide variety of people I’m sure, but for me, I wanted something a little bit more unique. I have hopes that Too Faced will continue to launch more Twinkle Twinkle Glitters though!
The Too Faced Tutti Frutti Twinkle Twinkle Liquid Eyeshadows can be purchased at ulta.com or toofaced.com for $22 USD each.
Post contains affiliate links.
Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses (Full Collection – Review & Swatches)
Bite Beauty has this knack for pleasantly surprising me. Every time they come out with a new collection of lip products I end up having this cute little smile on my face due to their inventive ideas. They have this habit of turning on a dime to produce something different and very unique every time they launch a collection – whether they’re coming up with monthly astrology-based lip colours, or putting out spice-inspired lipsticks (seriously cannot get enough of those), or, like with today’s posted, putting out a bunch of lip glosses inspired by coffee – suffice to say, Bite has a little something special for everyone and you never know what they’re going to put out next!
The French Press Lip Gloss collection is a “a limited-edition collection of coffee-inspired lip glosses that serves up indulgently creamy shine in warm, java hues.” The formula actually uses coffee butter (is that a THING? AND TELL ME WHERE I CAN BUY IT – I feel like I need to spread this on toast!) and arabica cold press coffee oil! And of course, it wouldn’t be Bite if it wasn’t handcrafted right here in Toronto and made with natural ingredients.
While I have not fully succumbed to the gloss trend that everyone else seems to be happily jumping aboard… I have to say that these had my interest piqued. I was immediately drawn to Dirty Chai and then Salted Caramel. The colours looked creamy, delicious and… different. They’re the kind of colours that I wish I had in a lipstick, but that I just somehow don’t!
Each tube comes with 4.3 grams of products and retails for $26 CAD/$22 USD. The tube is sleek, compact and sturdy and has a slanted, pointed, doe-foot applicator.
Swatched out the colours are surprisingly pigmented. And heck – you can actually see just how creamy they look!
Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses Lip Swatches
Flat White amazed me. I used to wear these kind of muted-down, almost concealer glosses (hello MAC C-Thru!) all the time, but I’d kind of forgotten about it. And now? Now I’m back to being in love with this look!
Vanilla Latte was a shade I really wanted to love because it’s my go-to Starbucks drink order when I’m getting something other than a black coffee. But, true to the hot drink, it actually came out a little more yellow-based than I was looking for. Still pretty though!
Salted Caramel… be still my heart. This is GLORIOUS. I should’be known just from the name that I was going to love this one. It’s an easy lip colour to wear as it goes with so many orange, red and really any warm hues I’ve been wearing lately.
And sure enough, the colour that I was drawn to originally – Dirty Chai – turned out to be frigging glorious. Just look at that colour!
Things started to get a little bit patchy on me with the darker shades (this is French Press), but I think, fundamentally, that they’re not intended to be worn over naked lips unless you’re a deeper skin tone than fair/light. The colour itself is gorgeous, but you can see some distribution problems across my lips and it’s simply because it’s a dark gloss and my lips are incredibly light in comparison. If you’re pale like me and want to wear this, just fill your lips in with a similar lip pencil before applying the gloss and you’ll be good to go.
Black Coffee performed the same as French Press did on me – which is to say that alone on ME it needs a bit of help with a lip pencil, or even just wearing it on top of a lipstick. What I really like about these two darker shades is that they’re not just black-brown – they actually have deep red bases which make them much more appealing (to me).
Final Thoughts
The formula on the Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses is impressive – they go on super glossy, and stay that way without any over-the-top tackiness. I was surprised to discover that they were still intact on my lips after two hours of wear. This isn’t normally the case for me – gloss has a tendency to disappear (Is it being wiped off? Am I eating it? I have no idea!) but these stayed put a heck of a lot longer than I was expecting them to.
For me, the paler colours are what I’m drawn to because they require less work but that isn’t to say the darker shades wouldn’t be less work on someone with a much deeper skin tone. When I wear a gloss I want it to be simple and easy, so for me that’s the paler options. Dirty Chai, Salted Caramel and Flat White were my clear favourites – I loved wearing those shades so, so much!
One last thing to mention – the scent. So many people have said it smells like coffee to them, but it doesn’t to me. It has a scent yes, and maybe it’s vaguely of coffee, but to me they smell like freezer burn. And I can pinpoint this scent because I used to keep a jar of instant coffee in the freezer (it was for making mocha icing) and that is EXACTLY the scent I get off of these – freezer burn coffee. (Bizarre, I know.) The scent/taste is not intrusive however – it does linger, but it tastes fine to me!
So all in all, these are lovely. Comfortable to wear and the longevity is great. Let me know if you’ve snagged any and what you think of that! (And tell me if it smells like coffee to you!)
The Bite Beauty French Press Lip Glosses are limited edition and can be purchased on sephora.ca for $26 CAD or on sephora.com for$22 USD.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
Wet n Wild Zodiac Collection (Review, Swatches & Looks)
The problem with a Wet n Wild collection launch (lol – if you can even call it a problem!), is that there are SO many products to test out and try, that it means you’re going to be in for a long haul review post. So buckle up people – the new Wet n Wild Zodiac collection is a beast, and I’ve got every highlighter, eyeshadow, lip gloss and powder swatched, reviewed and applied to my face in this post!
Available only at Walmart.com or on Wetnwildbeauty.com, the Zodiac collection features colour stories that center around the elements (earth, air, fire, water) and the twelve astrological signs. You can buy them individually or get them in themed bundles on Wet n Wild‘s web site.
The collection is mammoth, so let’s dive right in.
Wet n Wild Zodiac Collection – Eyeshadow Palettes
Housed plastic packaging, the zodiac eyeshadow palettes are individually focused around the theme of earth, air, fire or water. Each palette comes with six shades of varying sizes within the same pan. You’ll find that some of the colours have a bit of a more shimmery overspray on top of an already shimmery shadow. It’s not apparent in all of them, but I did notice it at least once per palette.
I thought the Air eyeshadow palette was going to be the most intriguing, albeit potentially the palest.
Sad to say I was half right – it IS the palest, but it’s also the least interesting.
It was the first palette I tried and I found the colours to be incredibly stiff. I had to dig into the pans to get any kind of colour payoff (that shimmery lavender/blue is on my lid but it basically looks like nothing special!) so I was super unimpressed with this palette.
Fundamentally… this is a pale palette with weak pigmentation so it’s really not my aesthetic at all.
Thankfully, the palettes got more impressive after the Air one! This is Earth and it has an interesting mix of predominantly neutrals with a copper, bronze and green spark of colour.
On the eyes, the green behaved bizarrely… it deepened up significantly from the pan and kind of went a little blueish too?
I used the pale bronze on the lid and it turned an interesting greenish hue when mixed with the more green outer corner shade. The gold looked lovely on the inner corner, but the dark matte brown was really bad to work with – chalky, chalky, chalky. The whole palette was good aside from that shade though!
I knew as soon as I looked at this package that the Fire palette was going to be my favourite – and I was absolutely right!
There isn’t a dud eyeshadow in this entire palette – every shade was smooth and pigmented!
While two of the reds are near indistinguishable from each other, it doesn’t bother me that much because it’s such a lovely shade (I ended up combining them since the pan sizes aren’t overly huge).
LOVE!
And the very last one I used was the Water palette – clearly inspired by anything and everything aquatic.
Colour payoff was good across the board on this one except for the brown on the far right – I found that one to be a bit patchy.
I went back to a look as old as time for me – shimmery green on the lid with a deep blue (matte-ish) outer corner colour. I used the reflective pale blue on the inner corner and I think this one came out really well!
Wet n Wild Zodiac Collection – Highlighting Bars
Continuing with the elemental theme, the Highlighting Bars (and any Wet n Wild highlighters really) have become the item I look forward to the most in any given collection they put out.
These Highlighting Bars have a slight bit of glitter overspray that gets removed after the initial application. It’s not a TON of glitter, but some people (understandably) hate an overspray, so I thought I’d mention it.
The highlighting reflect is really strong on Air and Earth, semi-strong on Water, and not nearly as apparent in Fire (although that changed considerably on the cheeks).
Air is your more traditional champagne-pink hue of highlighter. Beautiful reflect on this one!
Earth has more of a golden hue than I was expecting based on the swatch, but it’s still gorgeous!
Fire surprised the heck out of me. I was expecting it to be impossible for me to wear just because the swatch deposited SO much colour on my arm. I do feel like the shade deepened up my blush (but I ain’t mad about it), and the reflect…. wow! Completely unexpected from a red-ish shade!
Water though… yikes. No. Nope. Negatory. Do not want!
Look, I *love* oddball coloured highlighters and I wear them all the time, but on me they only work when the base is pale and the reflect is a different colour. This was the opposite – the base was blue and the reflect was pearly. Fundamentally this looked like an awkward bruise on me and I really did not like how it looked. I ended up swiping off this highlighter before I went to work that day because I just could not get down with the colour of it.
Wet n Wild Zodiac Collection – Loose Highlighting Powder
My favourite highlighter in this collection though? The loose one. Holy smokes is this ever something else! I fell in love with the Loose Highlighting Powder in the Goth-o-graphic collection (I still use it all the time), so I was excited to see how this one – Written In The Stars – would look on me. (And how cute is it that the sifter is made up of little stars??)
Swatched out, Written In The Stars is kind of innocuous right? I mean – it’s pale, it’s slightly reflective, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to wow you.
And then I put it on my face and was like “oh. Oh. OH. OH OKAY!” This is GLORIOUS! Wet n Wild do some incredible loose highlighters and this is just yet another one to add to the list of amazingness. Whereas the Goth-O-Graphic one was more gold, this one is more pearly with a hint of pink. I love it so much!
Wet n Wild Zodiac Collection – Lip Gloss
To finish off the collection, Wet n Wild has created a shade intended to be themed after each astrological symbol. Each shade is in their usual Color Icon formula, but the finish varies a lot amongst the shades. Some are glittery, some are creamy, some translucent and some are heckin’ packed with colour.
Holy pigment! Aries has a ton of colour in it! While the shade is gorgeous, because it’s a gloss it has a tendency to move around. Wear this on top of a lip pencil or lipstick that’s similar in shade and you’ll look amazing though!
Taurus is so much paler on the lips than I thought it would be. I thought this would look like Urban Decay’s Fireball eyeshadow in a gloss, but it really just comes across as a subtle wash of pink.
Gemini is freaking cool. It’s a pale, pale gold with a lot of colour. I think most people would opt to wear this on top of a lipstick to add some interest to the center of their lip. Frigging love the colour!
Cancer ended up being my least favourite. It was a milky mess on my lips and wouldn’t really stay put. I struggle with super pale, white-based lip gloss shades like this so it’s a pass for me.
Leo is like a more subtle Taurus. My lips but with a hint of sheen and glitter.
Virgo is so cool – it’s like a blue/brown pigment for the lips. I found this oddly wearable with the Air eyeshadow palette. Such a fun shade!
Libra is essentially a clear base with some pink glitter in it (feels a bit gritty). I’d wear this on top of another lipstick.
Scorpio is OUT OF THIS WORLD! It’s a deep red-purple with blue glitter in it and it’s incredible. I do struggle with colours like this right out of the tube though, so I *have* to wear this on top of another lipstick in order to keep it from moving around. This isn’t a fault with the Wet n Wild formula by the way – I encounter this issue with any highly pigmented gloss – I just need a base under it to keep it in place.
This shade is unreal though – I’ve never seen anything like this!
Sagittarius is one that has just enough pigment but not too much so that I can wear it on its own (without lipstick, lip liner, etc.). It’s a deep burgundy with red and pink glitter. I adore this shade.
Capricorn is similar to Sagittarius but it’s more molten and shimmery.
Aquarius is potentially the most wearable out of the entire collection, but it’s still fairly unique because although the base is peach, it has beautiful gold glitters thrown into it.
And lastly, we have Pisces – a clear base with teal glitter. This one would work best over top of something else on you lips.
Final Thoughts
PHEW! That was a lot of products and a lot of typing! Here’s your TL;DR:
- For the love of all that is holy, get the Loose Highlighting Powder in Written In The Stars if you think the colour might work for your skintone – this was my favourite item in the whole collection!
- The Fire eyeshadow palette is a winner, and maybe the Water one too. Earth was decent, but left me feeling like it needed less neutrals (that’s a ME thing though). The Air one was a total dud. Although I think it’s neat what they tried to do with the unique eyeshadow sizes in a single pan, I feel like it’s a bit annoying to use and will only get worse over time as you wear the shadows down.
- The highlighting bars are freaking lovely… except Water. Hard pass on that one!
- The lip glosses are some of the most unique and varied shades I’ve ever seen in a collection. I like the super pigmented ones, because the colours are unlike anything I’ve seen before. The pale to medium tones glittery ones would be fun to spice up a regular old lipstick. The only one I didn’t like was Cancer – I’d skip that one. Personal favourites were Scorpio, Virgo and Sagittarius.
Let me know if you’re grabbing anything from this collection!
The Wet n Wild Zodiac collection can be purchased on Walmart.com or on Wetnwildbeauty.com.
Products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.