Benefit Spring 2009 Creaseless Cream eyeshadows

The second part of my mall swatching experience involved heading into Sephora. The SAs there told me I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the store, so no product photos. (I'm not sure what the problem is really..it's not like I'm stealing) Either way, I decided to just swatch these today since there were 2 SAs hovering over me while I was in the store, which made me a little uncomfortable. They didn't ask me if I needed help, just kind of sneered at me. As such, I'll probably keep swatching trips to Sephora down to a minimum (though the SAs at this Sephora have always been particularly snarky) I will probably be eventually swatching Josie Maran stuff since it's not readily available in a lot of places (luckily I own about 1/2 the perm colors of e/s already so I can do that at home.) Anyways...here's the 3 limited edition cream shadows Benefit put out this year, applied kind of heavily for swatching, though it didn't come out quite as pigmented as it was rl. Sippin' n dippin' is a peach and gold duochrome. It looks a bit odd in the pot, but it's kind of pretty on. Samba-dy loves me is kind of a weird color to describe for me, maybe a milkyish slightly warm brown?, it mostly just boils down to a nice satiny slightly warm neutral shade. Flyin' down to fits it's description..it's a soft orchid color. The picture was taken in cool lighting and then color adjusted a bit so the temperature of the picture may be a bit off.

Chanel Summer 2009

So Today I decided to go down to the mall for some swatching..and so..here's some Chanel Summer stiff for you guys! I unfortunately didn't swatch any of the lipstuffs, cream shadows, or because I forgot to bring something to write down the names, and because I didn't want to remove my current polish before going to the mall (I'm ready for St. Paddy's day :P)
Picutres of the bottom stuff without the plastic blocking it. The JC is more coral RL...JCs really just don't photograph well

So what I DID swatch was the quad, the two singles, and In Love. The texture on the testers for the quad and the JC had very odd textures when I were swatching them; they had this weird rubbery sort of texture that I had trouble pulling color off of. I'm not really sure what the deal on those was. The quad, Plein Soleil, retails for $56 and is a quad of pink an pink bronzes. It seems like a quad that's difficult for a lot of people to wear. The soft touch singles, Island and Sand, had the regular soft, buttery texture. Island was a shimmery pink champagne color and Sand was a taupey matte tan. Both were very nice, but passable imo as they both seem very dupeable. The JC, In love was a somewhat reddish coral to me. The shimmer didn't really show up on me, but it could have been the strange texture of the tester. (I actually think there was something wrong with it) Either way, my impressions of this blush was that it was very similar to the coral blush in the Stila Blanc palette, but again...I find that it's a bit hard to tell given the wonky tester.

Here's a closeup of the LE stripey bronzer. I'm not sure what the name of this is, and I didn't swatch this because it was kind of light on my skin (it showed up, but it was an overcast day, I didn't know if it would photograph) It seemed like it'd be nice for light skintones, but it leans a bit orangey for me.

That's it for this little update I guess...should I go back and swatch the rest?

Dior Spring 2009--Elegante quint

From the Dior 2009 Spring Collection, I purchased the Elegante quint, a great quint of nude eyeshadows, sight unseen, from Sephora. which retails at $54 pretax. Sephora describes the shades as camel, golden ivory, pale gold, deep bronze, and peachy beige, which to me describes the shades perfectly. The eyeshadows are of Dior's usual soft, easy to blend formula and are much less shimmery than their usual quints. The shimmer in this quint is very polished and subtle and is just enough so that the colors are not flat and boring. (Though I'm sure that some people find nude eyeshadows boring, but that's a matter of opinion) To me, this quint is a perfect choice for colored eyeliners or stronger lip colors and I can definitely picture myself wearing this a lot. I have labeled the colors with numbers on my photo of it in order to distinguish them from each other as they aren't named individually.

Swatches were done on NC30 neutral leaning warm(medium neutral) skin over UDPP (Urban Decay Primer Potion) in indoor lighting that is slightly warm. I tried to picture the colors as accurately as possible, but there will be variance depending on the color settings on your screen. For those who have lighter skin, and would like to know what these shades would look like, KarlaSugar has some great swatches on her blog (http://karlasugar.blogspot.com)

I wasn't quite sure that this quint would show up with me, but I am definitely quite happy with it. It's very subtle on my eyes, but I definitely like this and would recommend that anyone with light-medium skin that likes nude colors. For those with darker skin, I probably would not recommend this, as I'm not sure this quint would show up.