Great news for Canadians! Winky Luxe products are now available at Shoppers Drug Mart! I recently got the Kitten Palette from my friend Julie, so it’s perfect timing for me to swatch it now that us Canadians can purchase them more easily!
Hands down the coolest shade in this palette is Holographic. And while it’s not actually holographic, it’s incredible. In a swatch it kind of comes across as a pink brown, but in person it also has a teal reflect to it!
When Tarte came out with their “Icy Betch” palette on April 1st, and then quickly pointed out it was a joke, I was so damn mad. I wanted that palette in all it’s blue and green goodness! (See more on that Icy Betch April Fool’s Day joke here.)
So when a few brands started duping the colours and putting the colours together in a palette, I was so frigging happy. And then even MORE happy when my friend Sam gave me the palette that Face Candy had come up with that were exact shade dupes!
Face Candy is one of those brands that dupes popular palettes, but the hilarity is that this was never really an actual palette – just a hypothetical one. So the fake Tarte Icy Betch palette has now become a real life Face Candy palette called Atlantis. Face Candy can be bought through Shop Hush.
For a full review and five eye looks you can check out my YouTube video above, but if you’re here just for swatches, then here you go:
There’s a LOT of highlighters on the market, not only at the higher end stores like Sephora and Ulta, but we’re seeing them filter down into the drugstore more and more as well. Which is honestly kind of a relief. For ages it felt like the only way you could get a face highlighter was to go spend a lot of money because (often) you were never really sure if the drugstore ones were going to be able to perform just like the higher end ones.
Well, you may not have to look any further than the Maybelline Master Chromes. I’ve only recently just started trying out the shade featured in this post (Molten Rose Gold) and I may have to swear fealty to the Maybelline highlighter brand because this product is INCREDIBLE.
I don’t really have a good reason as to why I haven’t tried out the Master Chromes till now – other than maybe I’ve been too saturated with highlighters and just wanted to stick to the usual suspects, but this has got to be the best ones I’ve tried at the drugstore… and dare I say it rivals the higher end ones as well? (Because it really does.)
The Maybelline Master Chrome Metallic Highlighter comes with 6.7 grams of product, and will only set you back about $13 CAD/$8 USD, which makes it one of the cheaper options at the drugstore. The product itself is picked up easily by a brush, although you may get a bit of kick up. Alternatively, if you dip your paws into the pan you can feel just how soft, smooth and buttery the formula feels under your finger tips.
A heavy swatch made Molten Rose Gold look like it might potentially be too deep of a shade on my (roughly) NW20 skin, however I found that in practice the colour in the pan isn’t as obvious on the face.
The reflect of Molten Rose Gold is beautiful – soft, ethereal and glorious. I’m wearing the product lightly above, but you can buff it in and/or use the product wet to get more of a metallic sheen. I was quite pleased (and surprised) with just how much I liked the softer look on myself. It looked beautiful all day and I found myself quite enchanted with my own appearance whenever I caught a glance of my cheekbones in a reflection (yes, really!). It’s just got that really healthy glow to it!
Why oh WHY did I not try these out sooner?? The Maybelline Master Chrome Highlighter in Molten Rose Gold is absolutely beautiful and now it has me curious about the other ones that Maybelline has out on the market. Two massive thumbs up!
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
WOW! Covergirl! WELL DONE! I’m so pleased to see such a bright palette out of the drugstore! This rainbow beauty is the Covergirl Trunaked Dazed palette and it’s now available in stores.
In my video where I hauled this palette, I had commented that I wish they hadn’t put two purples in the palette as the first colour looks like a red-toned purple in the pan. Come to find out that when swatched, that particular colour actually goes QUITE red!
See??
So far I only see the Covergirl Trunaked Dazed available online at amazon.ca for $12.99 CAD, but I bought mine at Shoppers Drug Mart in stores.
This post contains affiliate links.
Oh man… Tarte Amazonian Clay Blushes… you have stolen my heart over and over again over the years. In my whole collection, Tarte blushes are the ones that are definitely the most numerous – be it in singular format, or in palettes – I’ve got a lot of them!
I really feel like Tarte‘s blushes are the original powerhouse behind the brand. In my mind, they’re the real reason the brand started to get more and more recognition about eight or so years ago. Everyone was picking up these blushes, and with good reason – they are LOVELY!
The Amazonian Clay Blushes have gone through a little bit of repackaging over the years I’ve been snatching them up. They used to come with a little swirl pattern around the logo (which I preferred), but in more recent years they’ve removed the flower swirl and put only their logo on the front of the compact.
I also love that you can pop out each pan from their compact! And this isn’t a new feature either – the shot above of is of my oldest Tarte blush (Blissful) and I think it’s about 7 years old! This is fantastic for people who like to depot their blushes – you won’t have to deal with breaking up the glue to remove the pan and risk smashing your powder.
My single pan compacts get a lot of love from me. Blissful was the first shade I ever owned (my husband bought it for me for Christmas one year), and I just fell head over heels after that. Exposed is clearly my most used (that’s the one with the pan showing!) – it’s the most boring shade in the pan, but holy smokes does it ever look gorgeous on the cheeks! It absolutely transforms my face! Natural Beauty (the red) is a shade I go back to all the time for that “come in from the cold” look that I’m fond of in the winter (plus it works GREAT for any red lipstick or red eyeshadow look I put together!).
Heavily swatched, the Tarte Blushes are full of pigment and colour, but don’t worry, they blend out easily. One thing worth mentioning is that I do find the product to be a bit stiff in the pan. While they do bush out nicely, you need a solid brush to pick up the colour. I find that most “typical” blush brushes don’t work very well, so I prefer to use a short duo fiber brush like the MAC 130 to work the blush into my cheeks.
I never picked up the Pin Up Girl Palette, but a lovely reader of mine (hi Tanya!) sent this holiday launch to me a few years back when she realized how much I loved Tarte blushes!
What I love about this particular palette is that the breadth of colours was extensive – it pretty much runs the gamut from nude through to mauve. I was incredibly impressed with the variety – this is what I love to see in a blush palettes! I want wildly different colours, not iterations of the same colour over and over again.
I’ve saved the best for last – Tarte‘s Off The Cuff palette from Holiday 2013. This palette is a mainstay in my travel makeup bag – I take it practically everywhere with me because the blush colours are (once again) extremely varied, AND it has a bronzer in it! I wish more blush/face palettes were like this one – give me a bronzer and/or highlighter alongside the blushes please!
Crave is easily my favourite shade in the palette as it’s a bright coral, but I’ve also fallen really hard for Dollface. Dollface is one of those shades, much like Exposed, that everyone used to talk about. For me, it’s not a shade I’m drawn to because it’s a cool-toned baby pink and to me that shade is too “girly” for my liking. Well low and behold it’s hands down one of the most flattering shades I own!
I freaking LOVE Tarte‘s blushes! While I don’t find myself snatching up all of the latest colours or palettes in more recent years, it’s because I’ve already got such a huge array of shades in my collection via singles and palettes. Exposed and Blissful are my absolute favourite shades, and thankfully they’re both still available (a few of the shades mentioned in this post have been discontinued over the years). And the fact that I actually hit pan on a blush? Well that speaks volumes I think! (It’s literally the first and ONLY blush I’ve ever hit pan on!) My only regret? I never got the shade Tipsy while it was available – it will forever be the one that got away!
Tarte Amazonian Clay Blushes can be purchased on sephora.ca for $38 CAD each or on sephora.com for $29 USD each.
The blush "Sensual" was sent to me for consideration, a reader sent me the Pin Up Girl palette and everything else was purchased by me. Post contains affiliate links.