I love a happy surprise. You know, when you're expecting something to really suck and then it turns out to be pretty darn cool. That happened to me on Friday when I was in London with my lil sis and we were strolling down Carnaby Street on our way to Illamasqua. I've often wandered past Make Up Store and peeped through the window to try and see the goodies they have on offer but never ventured in before, mainly I think because I've never read a review of their products or been recommended any of their products by a friend or in a magazine. This time though, sis spotted some lashes through the window and wanted to check them out so we nipped through the door and in amongst the brightly lit shelves.
As Laura looked at the lashes I wandered over to the lipsticks and lip glosses and spotted some amazing bright fuscias. I turned around to show one of them to Laura and spotted a tower of little pots glittering away in the first aisle and headed straight for them. There was a veritable rainbow shimmering there and we immediately started trying out all the colours ending up with hands covered in glitzy streaks of colour - I genuinely could have bought them all right then and there but decided to pick out three (originally I was going to grab just two but then the sales lady told me they had 20% off that day so I went for broke and grabbed another colour too). The colours I chose were 'Bronze Sepia' a wonderfully metallic antiquey bronze, 'Hot' a beautiful shimmery rose gold and 'Empire' a deep sparkling mauve.
The metallic shimmer to all of these colours is just dreamy. Used straight from the pot they give a really nice, blendable layer of colour which can be built up to create a bolder pop - I've found that applying them with a brush gives a mush subtler finish than applying with your ring finger so if you want a stronger look try applying that way. Today I am actually wearing Empire as a liquid liner - just wet your brush a little and mix it into a bit of the powder until you have a bright shiny liquid and then apply as you would a normal liner. Applied this way it's almost like having liquid metal around your eyes and if you choose the right shade can really emphasise the colour of your eyes.
I'm not massively keen on the containers - I actually got two different kinds one with a central hole to let the poweder through which has a click down plastic shield to stop it escaping (I did like that bit) and the other with a turn top like you would get on talcum powder that you twist to open and let some of the colour out, however because of the design when you closed it after you were done it brought through quite a large amount of the powder into the open top so results in a little poof of lost colour whenever you open it again. Not a major issue, but I would prefer if it was just an open top like with other powder pigments I have tried.
I'm not sure if I had a duff batch or maybe it's just because it's a new pot, but my Empire is much darker and less metallic when used dry as the tester was in the store which I was really disappointed by. There is some black shadow mixed in with the metallic purple and I think maybe too much was added to my batch because it kind of kills the shine as you can see from the picture above. When you add water it dies down and the metal sheen comes back though so it's not a lost cause.
The price point on these isn't too bad at £11 a pot as you only use a little at a time, however when going on the site to link to the eyedust's I realised that you can't buy online so if you want some you'll have to head to Carnaby Street to the store. Next time I'm there I'm going to check out the lipsticks a little more closeley and take a look at their skincare range too.
Hopefully I'll have a few more chances to play with these over the coming weeks and will learn better ways to use them and perfect blending them together - if I come up with anything good I'll make sure I share pictures.