Review: NYX Elements Palettes: ‘Earth’ & ‘Fire’

 

Nearing the end of summer, NYX put out a whole ‘In Your Element’ palette collection. There were 6 palettes with 12 shades each, inspired by different elements. I picked up 2 of them, in ‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’. I’ve had these for quite a while now, and have played with them so much, so I’m putting up a review!

Let’s get out there right away and say, my one gripe about these is honestly the price. These are $30 a piece. I KNOW RIGHT. NYX has built their brand on being affordable and known for their high quality, with a lower price. So when they dropped $30 eyeshadow palettes, I was honestly taken aback.

When these were at Ulta, they had an amazing sale on all of NYX, so I got them for $21 each instead. However, they seem to have been limited edition to Ulta, as they’re not available on their website anymore. They are still available on NYX’s website, but you won’t get the Ulta sales or points unfortunately.

At least with the higher price, they really have beautiful packaging. They come in nice, sturdy and thick plastic packaging, with unique designs to each palette. They also have nice large full size mirrors, so they’re good if you want to take them to travel. The pans on these are large as well, giving you a good amount of product.

I’ll still just mention the higher prices, especially because my whole blog is based on affordable makeup. So this will be a honest review of the product, and then from there you can decide if you want to spend a little more on it. Obviously, it’s still a much cheaper option than most higher end palettes – so always something to remember.

Even though they are more pricey, I honestly love them (spoiler) and still have the other shades on my wishlist.

 

PalettesPackaging

So let’s get into the review. Since both palettes had the same formula, I’ll just talk about both here, and then show swatches for each individual palette after!

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Review: China Glaze ‘Happily Never After’ Halloween 2017

Happy Halloween 31st, y’all! I’ve been spending my evening hiding away from the neighborhood kids because there’s a lot of them, and I have absolutely no candy. Meanwhile, my adult Halloween festivities took place on Saturday.

Did you have any fun plans for Halloween?

And what’s better for Halloween than a Halloween collection review? That’s right, I finally have the Halloween collection from China Glaze! This collection is making quite a buzz in the nail community, and now that I have it I understand why.

Long story short, all the formulas are really nice. So let’s just get right into it.

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Review: Wet n Wild Fantasy Makers 2017 – Liquid Catsuits & Megalast Lipsticks

As soon as I started seeing promo photos for the new Fantasy Makers collection for this year, especially that they had new lipstick shades coming out, I basically had them in my cart and ready to buy on their website. However, I got lucky, and when I walked into Walmart one day, they had a huge 4 sided untouched display of all the products, so I snatched up all of the colors I had my eye on.

They put out a lot more items in this collection that are more specifically geared towards Halloween. I was honestly most interested in the lip products, so that was all I picked up to review today. You can see and buy all of the other products on their website, wetnwildbeauty.com.

They also have 6 shade cream color palettes and 2 cream paint pots for face makeup, stencil packs, body crayons, lip glosses (I’m not a huge lip gloss fan), glitter eyeliners (I wasn’t incredibly wowed by the ones in the Fall collection), colored mascaras, glitter palettes, and new shades of their glitter pigments. So lots of fun colors and items that you can use for great and colorful Halloween looks.

But today I have some shades of the lip products to review!

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Swatch: Sinful Colors ‘Undead Red’ & ‘Bite Me’ – Halloween 2017

I’ve been falling a little behind on my Sinful Colors posts – I still have yet to figure out which Walgreens store down here will be my hookup – if you live in the Chicago area (did I mention I live in Chicago now?), lemme know if you have a go-to Walgreens that actually gets in the new Sinful Colors collections.

But before I moved, I did find two of the shades from the Sinful Colors Halloween 2017 collection. This year’s collection is called ‘Night of the Living Red’. It has 2 glow in the dark shades as well as the normal glow in the dark top coat – I didn’t like the glow in the dark shades from last year so I didn’t bother picking them up. It also has 4 repromotes, as well as 4 new shades. I found 2 of the new shades for today. All of the Walgreens stores I went to only had the smaller displays so I never found the other two shades. But they’re called ‘If You’ve Got it Haunt It’ and ‘Pumpkin Spice’.

I at least have the two shimmery red shades that I wanted to show you today as part of my Halloween palooza on the blog this weekend! So let’s jump right into it.

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Review: Wet N Wild ‘Midnight Mermaid’ Fall 2017 Collection

Alright, alright, alright, this collection might have already been talked to death. But you know, I walked into a Walgreens out of town, and found a full display of it finally, and had some Walgreens points saved up, so I really had to. So enjoy my 2 cents on it, because I’m putting it out there anyways. And it’s beautiful so who doesn’t want to see more photos of it.

Wet N Wild is one of my absolute favorite drugstore brands because 1: They’re so goddamn affordable. Even in the way of drugstore prices, they’re on the lower end and 2: they have been absolutely killing it with their products this year. They’ve been putting out incredible releases and just amping up the quality of their items. So anytime I see a new collection out, I need my grabby hands on it.

This collection is called the ‘Midnight Mermaid’ collection and it’s one of the vampiest things I’ve seen in the world – perfect for my dark soul. I found this at a local Walgreens, and you can still buy it on their website in separate pieces.

For a hot second, everybody and their brother was raving about this collection, and now that it’s in my hands, I understand why.

It’s made up of 4 of their Liquid Catsuits in Metallic Mattes, 4 Metallic Liquid Cream Eyeshadows, 3 liquid eyeliners, and 1 highlighter.

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Pure Ice ‘Fangtastic Color’ Halloween 2017 Collection

‘TIS THE SEASON OF SHIMMERY ORANGES AND I’M HERE FOR IT.

We’re full on in the fall and Halloween seasons, and I’ve been loving it. It’s fitting that everyone has been putting out lovely oranges in their collections, and I say keep ’em comin’. And Pure Ice did not disappoint.

Pure Ice is a brand exclusive to Walmart, and honestly I haven’t been really found a terrible formula in their polishes. It can be expected, since these polishes are only TWO DOLLARS, but they don’t feel like it. So when I saw advertising for their Halloween polishes I had to hunt them down.

It’s a 5 piece limited edition collection, and each bottle cap has an orange “Limited Edition” sticker on it. There are 4 polishes that stand on their own, and then one topper.

They also had a glow in the dark polish on the display, but I’m honestly not a fan of glow in the dark polishes, so I skipped on it.

So let’s get right into the swatches (and a couple comparisons)!

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NOTD & a Little Update

Hey friends and readers – I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, let alone since I’ve been posting regularly.

My life has been going through some switches – I recently got a job at Starbucks, so that schedule was all over the place and I was trying to adjust and figure out time to paint my nails. It was harder considering I couldn’t wear nail polish while working so I was really losing any motivation to paint on polish just to take it off again.

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Review: Essie Summer 2017 + Comparisons

You know 4 days before the official start of fall is the best time to finish up reviewing summer collections, right? As always, BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.

I’m finally getting some sort of set schedule down with work, and an actual income, so collection reviews are popping back up on my blog! It was almost a little break, but I’m trying my best to get back into it!

This is my first post with my shorter little nails. Working as a barista, I broke basically all of my longer nails within the first week of work – sigh, the barista life. They’re growing back slowly. Also, please do not mind my ragged, dry cuticles. The constant hand washing is just wreaking havoc on my fingers and skin, and they’re just a hot mess. FOCUS ON THE NAIL POLISH INSTEAD.

So here we go, the last summer collection I’m reviewing. It’s the Essie Summer 2017 6-piece collection! It’s based off of Paris, and is something I was just waiting to get my hands on.

It has 3 creams, 2 shimmers, and 1 metallic foil. I have comparisons at the bottom as well, so let’s get right into it!

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Review: China Glaze ‘Summer Reign’ Summer 2017 Collection

Good lord, how is it almost September already? Well, I always say September is the perfect time to review summer collections, right? heh

I finally am getting around to reviewing summer collections (thank you new job and spending money once again), so look out for the Essie and Orly summer collections coming soon!

But today I have the China Glaze collection from summer 2017. As always, this is a 12 bottle collection, and I purchased mine off transdesign.com.

Let’s just get right into the swatches because there’s a lot of them!

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Hauling! Maybelline, L’Oreal, Essence + More!

I’ve recently had some gift cards so I think that justifies most of this haul. Well I also didn’t have gift cards, but it’s been a while since I’ve done a major haul so it’s fine. Everything I do is for the blog remember? I do this just for you guys. All I do is give.

Most of its from Ulta, but let’s go over the one thing not from there first. I finally got the China Glaze Summer collection (just in time for the end of summer, right?). I’m catching up on my summer collections now that I have a job and spending money again, so just bear with my timeline. That review of that full collection will be up on the blog in the next couple days! (If it helps, half the collection feels like fall to me).

But for the rest of the haul I blame Ulta. First, they send me that 20% off coupon. Then it’s 5x points on lip products, which are my true vice. Then I had a gift card, so you know, it would have been a true sin if I didn’t order anything from Ulta. (In other news, Ulta just sent out ANOTHER 20% coupon and I have another gift card. I’m being ATTACKED I tell you).

So you’ll see there’s a lot of lip products in the photo. I don’t have individual photos since I’ll be reviewing all of these more in depth in the next coming weeks. So stay tuned for these reviews and more!

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I’ll do a quick run through of the products I’ll be writing about!

From L’Oreal:
-the Lash Paradise mascara in ‘Blackest Black’
-one of their new matte lipsticks in ‘At the Drop of a Matte’, a bright purple color

From Maybelline:
-2 of the Super Stay Matte Ink Lip Color in ‘Loyalist’ and ‘Escapist’ – a light nude, and then a deep, vampy purple
-3 more shades of the metallic matte lipsticks in ‘White Gold’, ‘Pure Gold’, and Silk Stone. I absolutely love Maybelline’s lipsticks so when I see new ones, I want them all, and the fact that they’re metallic is even better. These join the other shade I picked up earlier in ‘Molten Bronze’.

From Revlon:
-2 of their shades of the Metallic matte lip colors (can you tell I want to try all of the metallic matte shades?) in ‘Glam’ and ‘Luster’

Finally from Essence:
-2 of their Metal Shock lipsticks in 02 and 08. (Again, with the metallic lipstick trend, I digress).

For most of these new formulas I wanted to pick up a couple shades from different sides of the range of colors to test out, and if I liked them, I would pick up more. I’m a lip product junkie, so I really can’t wait to try these all out. Be ready for all of the lip posts coming up in the next weeks!

So that’s my recent haul! See any products you’re excited about? Stay tuned for the reviews!

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