Tag: Swatches

Rom&nd x INAPSquare Black Spectrum Collection Swatches

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Ever since my fiancé and I traveled to Japan last year, Asian beauty has absolutely captured my attention – specifically from Korean, Japanese, and Chinese brands. They all have such innovative products overall, and their style and formulas are completely different from anything in the American market – so much so that we’re starting to see Western companies release products that are very obviously inspired by these same Asian beauty trends.

So while in Japan, I was dragging my fiancé along to so many stores (specifically a lot of Don Quijotes, iykyk) after watching various YouTube videos discussing top products and recommendations. I then walked into a WONDERLAND, I’m talking AISLES and AISLES of affordable products and gorgeous packaging and I just needed it all. Because of this, I was an absolute gremlin and came home with a suitcase almost full to bursting of new beauty products (you gotta save on shipping when you can). I’m not promising I’m now going to become the expert on Asian beauty – we’ll still have plenty of American brands to review – but I hope to feature it on the blog more and more because I’m won’t be stopping my purchases anytime soon.

So okay yes, I introduce this post by talking about traveling to Japan, and now I’m going to talk about a Korean brand – hear me out, it makes sense. While Japanese beauty is of course it’s own thing, K-Beauty is absolutely massive, with whole stores dedicated to it (many brands have their own dedicated stores in multiple Japanese locations, and then there are also places gathering multiple brands under one roof like Olive Young). K-beauty is HUGE and it’s starting to get more and more traction over here in the states as well.

After browsing all the products in person and loving my new purchases, I had then been perusing online and keeping up with more new releases while back home here in Chicago. I had found my way onto YesStyle – another site that sells a huge range of Asian beauty, not just K-Beauty (though the stock of Chinese brands has now been put into limbo because of the new tariffs) (if you’ve been questioning at all, I’ll say it outright here – I absolutely do not support anything about this current administration). Once you start browsing that site, it’s dangerous and you can just lose yourself in a rabbit hole of interesting products, filling up carts and wishlists. (I do have a little rewards code, M2JQ8E that if you enter when checking out allows me to get rewards points to use on their site for future orders! No pressure, I’m just here to give you some little discounts to try out and enjoy Asian beauty like I do. I do also love that as you shop more on the site, you steadily get more of a discount.) Each product will have an estimated shipping time underneath it – some can take up to a month since they’re shipping from overseas, while others are fully “in stock” and can ship within 24 hours – allowing you to always know when you’ll get your products. It’s normal that ordering any sort of Asian beauty comes with longer shipping times, but so far it’s always been worth the wait.

Hopping back in, I was scrolling Instagram when I saw the first hints and teasers drop for this collection we’re looking at today. This is from a brand called ‘Rom&nd’ (I believe pronounced Romand) in collaboration with the company INAPSquare. From what I’ve read INAPSquare is a lifestyle brand, and their signature style features black and white with fun little illustrations all throughout.

Now everyone got excited from these teasers–black packaging–and we were all asking “are we actually getting black colored products from a Korean brand?? From K-Beauty that’s famously known for softer, neutral, pinky tones? Black lip products??” I’ll spoil this for you right now, we did not get actual black lip products. We have mainly neutrals here, just wrapped up in that black packaging with cute little illustrations on them. We do get a quad of gorgeous black and white shades, but overall we’re neutral.

And if you were a touch disappointed from that lack of black, I will say all of those comments and requests did lead to Rom&nd actually creating a trio of black lip products, which you can purchase on YesStyle now! It does currently say limited edition, but maybe we can bully them again into making it permanent.

Alright, we’re not talking about those, let’s dive on into these swatches already.

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NYX x Beetlejuice Collection 2024 – Swatches & Review

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That’s not nail polish, you’re correct! Today we’re looking at makeup! Gasp!

If you’ve been following this blog for a while now – shoutout to you – you’ll remember a couple that I dabbled in adding makeup reviews as well, that would pop up here and there in between all of the nail collections. But eventually they petered out and we were back to only nails.

Now I’ll be honest, I’m definitely not wearing makeup as often as I did before. Like a lot of others, my working from home status has continued past Covid, so without the push of going into an office every weekday, my wear of makeup has significantly decreased. But that definitely hasn’t stopped my purchasing of makeup. (It’s obviously from the money I’ve saved on train passes). Therefore I just need a little push to wear and test out all of these beautiful and interesting products I’ve been collecting up like a little squirrel. I must give them the light of day, and THUS, I want to bring makeup posts back to the blog.

Makeup has always been up there as a love for me, just as much as nail polish – in fact even before nail polish. I was caking it on (to cover teenage acne) and testing out wild eyeshadow combinations way back in high school. This blog already contains so much of me and my interests, it only makes sense to expand to a new set of drawers.

And I feel like there’s a little niche I can slot on into with this blog in the makeup world as well. I’ve always chosen to focus on more affordable products, both drugstore and more indie brands, mainly because of budget. Yes, it was definitely more rough to find something good, but with where the drugstore is now, it deserves far more coverage. Affordable brands are always coming out with interesting products and fun releases, and there’s room for more coverage of them! I always talk about how I want this blog to be a nail reference, so it’s time I expand out to a makeup reference I’ve been wanting myself.

Yes, I’m rambling, and there’s this whole novel before we even get into the swatches themselves. It’s just a “new” chapter for this blog, and we all know how much I love to ramble and explain. It won’t be happening every time, I promise. So let’s do it, on into the makeup.

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China Glaze ‘Mystic Bloom’ Spring 2022 Collection – Swatches & Review

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Once again she finds herself on blogging catch up after accidentally abandoning it for a couple months. WHOOPS. Listen, I’ve been moving to a new place and traveling, and this is all to say follow my Instagram as I post there daily, and the swatches will always go here first!! But also okay, take a shot every single time I’ve said I’ll catch up on all of the blog posts, but THIS TIME I MEAN IT. It’s HAPPENING. I’ve missed y’all, okay, and I’m never going fully away. I love having this blog as a resource to be able to readily look back on and reference past collections and swatches. So let’s start this catch up already and update the resource.

We have another Spring mainstream collection on our hands today. This one is the China Glaze ‘Mystic Bloom’ collection for Spring 2022. It features 8 shades of all sorts of shifty and shimmery and glittery and interesting finishes to it, and in the normal pastel shades of spring we normally get (listen, I still always love those too, okay, don’t get it twisted) this was a release that got me INTRIGUED.

As always, I purchased this set from my favorite place, polishpick.com. You’ve heard all of my praise for this site many times before, but it’s my go-to for purchasing OPI and China Glaze. The best prices and fastest shipping always. (If you ever find yourself purchasing from there, let ’em know I sent you. Not at all any sort of sponsoring or affiliate codes here, just helps the company to see where the traffic is coming from).

Alright, let’s get on into the swatches already!

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ELF Cosmetics ‘Mint Melt’ Eyeshadow Palette & Shadow Stick – Swatches & Review

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Elf has been releasing a whole slew of new products lately, and they’ve been really upping the quality and creativity of their products, so I’ve been so intrigued to try their newer releases as they come out! And especially when I saw this whole collection, from the packaging to the colors to the products, I was in love and was just so excited to try it out. Their newest collection is the ‘Mint Melt’ collection, and features a mint green theme to the all of their products.

They released some new makeup products, along with some new skincare. Along with two eyeshadow palettes, 3 shadow sticks, 4 lip glosses, and a brush set, they also released a Mint Melt cooling face primer (I did grab that one as well and will review it in a separate post), a Whipped face mask, and a Minty Fresh Cooling Cleanser. I didn’t grab either of the two skincare items just because my skin is -sensitive- and I didn’t want to mess with the routine I already had.

I also only grabbed one of the eyeshadow palettes and one of the shadow sticks in the colors that truly interested me in a moment of -self control-. I grabbed these right off of the Elf website, along with some other new products to try. As I always do with makeup reviews, I’ll show swatches, eye looks and then a review. Feel free to click to any of the links above to skip to certain parts of the review.

So let’s get right into the swatches and review!

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Wet N Wild NEW Color Icon 10-Pan Eyeshadow Palettes 2021 – Swatches

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I’ve mentioned before that I want to bring consistent makeup reviews back to the blog, and I’m enjoying testing out new makeup to post about here. And to add to that, I want to start adding in swatch posts as well! These will come with multi-part reviews, like this one, or for larger palettes that will require longer amounts of testing. With this post being the first, this will feature purely just swatches and images of the palettes, and then as I finish each individual palette review, I’ll link it above. I’m sure it’ll shift as I continue figuring out my style and process, but for now that’s what I’m aiming for!

I wanted to get these swatches out, so you can at least see the color stories, and how they look on my skin tone, and get a little bit of an idea of how the shadows will perform. Of course, swatches never tell the whole story, and the true test is always how the shades perform on the eyes. But I know I always still like to see swatches to see if I’m interested in the first place.

***

Alright, so today we’re looking at a new release from Wet N Wild.

These are the new Color Icon 10 Pan Eyeshadow Palettes. If these sound familiar, it’s because it’s a new version of a fairly recent product. They had the original Color Icon 8 pan palettes way back in the day, and those were updated with the last version of the Color Icon palettes, only released in 2017, with some later versions coming in later in 2018, so they’re not that old at all. They still have these older Color Icon eyeshadow palettes available for purchase on their website, with no discount at all. There’s only one color overlap with ‘Nude Awakening’, so I can’t tell if these will eventually replace these, and they’ll release all of the same palettes later on or what. Intrigued on why they chose to change them up again, but all I knew is I saw new Wet N Wild eyeshadows so I had to try them out and see what was up.

Instead of the more flimsy black plastic of the previous ones, we have a more sturdy white plastic packaging. I will say it feels thicker and a little more higher quality than the previous, so that $1 price increase makes sense. I had issues with the hinges breaking on the other ones, and I don’t think you’ll have that issue with these.

We have 4 of these new 10 pans. I grabbed a few from a new display in Walgreens, and ordered the other shades I was missing right off of Wet N Wild’s website. They retail for $5.99 each and feature 10 shades.

Alright enough rambling, let’s look at these swatches already!

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OPI ‘Fiji’ Spring 2017 Collection + Comparisons

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I know, I know. I’m a little late to the game with this, but I’m still posting it. Hey man, it’s my blog isn’t it? I’ll have the summer collection from OPI coming up soon as well!

But for now, let’s stick to spring. As usual this is a 12 piece collection (OPI is how I go bankrupt with these 12 piece collections), full of mostly creams inspired by the tropical island of Fiji. I picked mine up off Ulta’s website when I had a buy one get one free coupon for OPI.

Into the swatches! Comparisons will also be at the bottom! My lighting is a little different on this one too – I’m at my parents house so I went with good ol’ fashioned daylight! But they’re all color accurate.

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Essie Spring 2017 Swatch/Review

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I’m trying my best to catch up on all the spring collections. THERE’S JUST SO MANY. But we’re getting there. And I mean, it’s technically still spring. Spring just arrived in the UP 2 weeks ago, so I’m technically right on time. That’s right, I’m making excuses for myself – it’s my blog, I do what I want.

Better late than never I say.

Anyways, as you can see from the title, we’re looking at the Essie Spring collection! You know, OPI is my one true love, but Essie is slowly creeping into my heart as well. Especially with this collection – spoiler alert. Ever since I’ve gotten into blogging, and therefore been reviewing the newest Essie collections, they’ve been killing it on formulas.

And this collection is no exception, so let’s get right into it.

This spring collection is another 6 bottle collection, like normal. It features 6 cream colors. Onto the swatches!

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Swatch/Review: Sinful Colors Kandee Johnson ‘Vintage Anime’ FULL COLLECTION

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Another Kandee Johnson collection? THAT’S RIGHT. The first collection was called ‘Pretty Vintage’ and was all cream colors with a lovely matte or textured finish – see my post about it here. This collection is called the ‘Vintage Anime’ collection and features all lovely glitters and a range of fun toppers.

Of course I needed both.

Now there are 12 polishes in this full collection. I found them on a larger standalone display in my Walgreens, separate from where new Sinful Colors displays usually are. There’s a variety of finishes in this collection, but pretty much all of them have glitter or shimmer in them.

These have rose gold shiny tops, instead of just matte black like normal, a little like the Sinful Shine line, but are still part of the normal Sinful Colors line. But they also retail for $3 each, instead of the normal 2. They all have the ‘Kandee Johnson for Sinful Colors’ sticker on the caps as well.

I was going to go in numerical order, but many of the polishes that have similar finishes aren’t numerically after one another (why, God, why), so I’m going to go in little sections. I’m going to group them by different finishes and formulas.

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Swatch/Review: Sinful Colors Kandee Johnson ‘Pretty Vintage’ *Updated* FULL Collection

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The first nail post of 2017 is here! I know there’s been a lot of makeup lately, but I’m going back to where I started – with Sinful Colors. You can always count on me reviewing the newest Sinful Colors collections here (provided I find them in my Walgreens).

Today I have the Kandee Johnson ‘Pretty Vintage’ collection! As soon as I saw advertising for this, I basically ran to my Walgreens to snatch it up. I had to have it. Now Kandee Johnson has 2 collections out with Sinful Colors – this is the ‘Pretty Vintage’ one full of cream colors. The other is the ‘Vintage Anime’ and had more glitters.

This collection is a collaboration with, obviously, YouTuber Kandee Johnson. Kandee is so absolutely talented, and just seems like such a lovely person, so I was very excited to see these, especially when I saw the colors! This is a 12 color collection, but I was able to find 7 of the shades that are in the most popular display – apparently the others are a little hard to find. If I ever find them, I’ll be sure to update the post. *UPDATE* I found one of the full displays that has all 12 shades on it, so I have the full collection now! I’ll start with the first 7, and then put the newest ones I’m found at the end.

I’m going to go in numerical order for these ones, so let’s just hop right in! Onto the swatches!

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SwatchWeek – Day 5 – Revlon

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It’s the last day of SwatchWeek! We made it! I survived a whole week of swatching polishes at my parents house with inadequate lighting. I think that’s a Christmas miracle in itself. I honestly had a lot of fun doing this, and it allowed me to try out the polishes of lesser known brands I had sitting in my collection. I definitely have some new favorites! I hope to do this again sometime.

Now let’s get on in to the final day of SwatchWeek! Today I have 6 polishes from Revlon. These are their normal polishes from their core line. Some of these I did find discounted down to $2, so be sure to watch out in your Walgreens!

Let’s start!

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