Global Goddess Blushes and Bronzer

I'm finally awake during the day so I thought I'd put myself back on track by swatching my Global Goddess Cheek products as I promised you guys months ago. Global Goddess is a line mostly intended for women of color; it's meant to match middle eastern and Indian skin tones, as well as darker ladies. There are 3 blushes in the Global Goddess line;
Mirik- a peach colored blush, matte
Chowrasta- light pink. There's no shimmer to this, but it still manages to be slightly glowy
Sattva- matte plum

Despite looking somewhat scary in the pan, all 3 are sheer and look nice and natural applied with a blush brush

The bronzer is 3 colored and has a pattern stamped on top in a shimmer overspray. The overspray is very sparkly and was dusted off before I used it. It is eye safe and can also be used as eyeshadow. It's not a bronzer I'd normally choose though; on my face it's just a slight golden glow. It's really nice, but strikes me as more of a highlighter than a bronzer on my skin. On lighter skin tones I'd imagine it might be nice as a bronzer
Here are the swatches of all 4 products. I had to layer these several times to get them this pigmented..my camera, unfortunately doesn't like picking up anything subtle. They're much more natural looking when applied to the face, b ut easily layered depending on your skin tone. I wouldn't particularly recommend Chowrasta on darker skin tones or Sattva on really light skin tones, but all 3 are quite nice.

Tarte Treasure Chest

So I have to admit with a certain degree of difficulty that I've fallen pretty far behind on swatching..the problem being that I'm pretty much not awake during the day anymore except at odd hours like this where the sun really hasn't risen out of the sky yet...so I've made you guys promises I have yet to keep...the last big thing I swatched was the Tarte Treasure chest close to a month ago and just let sit for a while as laziness overtook me...my bad, and my apologies...
Anyways, today's topic is one of the more decent sets this holiday, the Tarte Treasure Chest. This baby retails for $52 at Sephora and unlike Tarte's more recent palettes and last year's failure of a holiday palette, the quality's actually pretty good (Though I will admit that the blushes in last year's holiday palette were so nice I almost kept the darned thing just for those) This year's palette is also a lot bigger than last years; with 32 full sized eyeshadows instead of 16.
The palette comes in bejeweled casing that imo, is somewhat cute, but in a tacky way. (I find it kinda festive...it reminds me of Christmas tree ornaments) There's unfortunately a near fatal flaw to this packaging; if you tilt this forward at all, the "drawer" like design of the palette sends the lipgloss and cheek color layers flying out at you at a somewhat alarming speed. Luckily, this palette has some redeeming qualities, so it missed getting the axe. Nevertheless, this is definitely not a travel friendly palette.

Here's the palette all opened up...it's certainly a lot of makeup in one go...
There are two layers of eyeshadows in this palette. The top layer contains the more colorful, shimmery shades. I swatched these in columns this time. Pictures were taken in warm indoor lighting. All shades were fairly soft and buttery. Pigmentation of the shadows is excellent and they swatch pretty close to what they are in the pan on my arm, but turn muddy on my eyelids for some reason. I know one other person with the same problem, while others have no issues with them
column 1 contains a shimmery, slightly bronzy gold, a brown with gold shimmer, a peachy pink with gold shimmer, and a dark taupey color with gold shimmer.
column 2 contains a warm brown with gold shimmer, a shimmer gold, a light, frosty peachy pink, and a lightish purple with gold shimmer
Column 3 contains a shimmery red, a black based dark gren, a slightly olive green with gold shimmer, and a black based blue
Column 4 contains a black based wine color with lighter burgandy shimmer, a light turquoise with gold shimmer, a red based purple with purple shimmer, and a somewhat sparkly light silver
Layer 2 contains the most buttery matte shadows I've ever come across and are IMO the highlight of this palette. These, unlike the layer above it, do not turn muddy on me. They're also the reason why I keep this palette despite my disappointment with the layer above.
Column 1 contains a matte beige, a dark purple taupe, a matte peachy pink, and a warm brown shade
Column 2 contains a purpley taupe, a warm taupe, a blackish purplem and a tan eyeshadow
Column 3 contains a matte light pink, a pinkish purple, a warm grey taupe and a dark blue that looks slightly greyish in the pan
Column 4 contains a pinkish tan taupe, a red based brown, a matte white, and a matte grey
The 3rd layer contains 16 potted lip glosses and are the top layer of the pull out drawer. These apply easily with a lip brush and are a lot nicer than the ones in last year's palette. They are harder to apply with your fingers. I chose not to swatch these. They few that I've tried have been fairly nonsticky and nondrying. Because of how the palette is designed this year, it is possible to access this drawer without opening the powder layers, or keeping just this section closed while you access the powder layers, making it easy to keep the powder products from mucking up the lip products.
The last layer contains the cheek products; 4 blushes, a bronzer, and a luminizer/highlighter
All 4 blushes are shimmery. From left to right the colors are a light, slightly peachy pink with gold shimmer, a mauvy pink with silver sparkle, an orangey peach with gold shimmer, and a red/rust colored blush with gold shimmer. The luminizer is light pink. It's ok, but I don't care for it it much myself. The bronzer is Park Ave Princess, which I usually like, but I feel like the one I own separate from the palette is a slightly different color.

Overall, the palette is pretty nice, though I wish that at least 1 of the blushes had been matte. Either way, it's a great buy for the price and I feel like it'd make a nice gift for someone without a lot of makeup.

Smashbox Holiday 2009- Wish for the Perfect Palette

This year, Smashbox has once again, put out a "blockbuster style" palette containing 64 eyeshadows, 8 lip glosses, 8 cream liners, a brow tech palette, 2 blushes, 2 highlighters, and a bronzer. The palette retails for $59 is an Ulta exclusive and can be found at Ulta and Smashbox's website only. In my excitement, I of course ordered one, despite having last year's with the reasoning that the colors in this year's are different from last year's...which they are. This year's palette is certainly a lot brighter than last years, which for me unfortunately meant that the palette as a whole was a lot less wearable than last year's. Additionally, I noticed that this year's palette was scented..which tends to bother me, but luckily the scent doesn't transfer to my face. There were some improvements over last year's..like the brushes for example, but they don't increase my excitement for the palette by much.


The eyeshadows in this year's palette are a lot brighter and warmer than last year's palette, which was very neutral; EVERY shade in last year's palette was wearable, which to me is no small feat since there were 70 eyeshadows in last year's palette. Consequently, I found that the majority of the shades would not work super well on me. The other thing I noticed when swatching the colors is that the quality of the eyeshadows this year are inferior to that of last year's. Last year's palette was smooth, buttery goodness, while this year, only a few were buttery, and a few were downright chalky and hard to scrape any real color from. Swatches were again done in columns...




The blushes in the palette, however, are nicer than last year's. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good pic of these swatched..for some reason all the swatches after I finished swatching the eyeshadows came out impossibly warm..for this reason the cheek colors came out way more orange/brown than they should be.
The cream liners in this year's palette are also an improvement over last year's. For some reason, they were difficult to work with in last year's palette as they were significantly drier than their normal texture. This year's are nice and creamy
The lip glosses are also an improvement from last year's and are my favorite part of the palette. They're fairly nonsticky and don't have any scent or flavor, unlike last year's, which had a disgustingly sweet taste to them.

Overall, I'd say it's a palette I have very mixed feelings over, some of it is really nice, but to me, it's not really worth paying $59 + tax for. Then again, my stash is a monstrousity and I have a LOT of palettes...but in general I'm finding myself kind of disappointed with this year's holiday releases (with the exception of one...but you guys will see that later). The other thing that bothers me about the palette is the way it opens up..it came apart one already when I was sliding it open. It didn't break exactly..just came apart. It was easily fixed (it snapped back together), but it just left the feeling of very cheap quality.

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?

Josie Maran Palettes

Josie Maran, who's a super hot model and terrible actress, has within the last couple of years, started her own makeup brand, which is currently one of my favorite brands around. It's a great brand of neutrals made of organic products encased in cute corn plastic casing. Today I will be reviewing and swatching the two powder palettes that she has available at the moment. It's a great time for this since Josie Maran Cosmetics is currently having a Valentine's Day Sale at 30% off. You do have to sign up for their newsletter to get the poromo code, but hey..you can always unsubscribe later on :)

First up is the Favorite Powders palette:

This palette has 5 e/s, two blushes, and a bronzing powder, all of which are permanent to the collection's regular line. All of the products in this palette are soft and buttery and as an added bonus, I experience absolutely no fallout with any of the shades..even without tapping or blowing off any excess on my brushes. Unfortunately with the heavy rain out the last few days, I couldn't get good pictures of the palettes themselves.

The Favorite Powders compact contains 4 shimmer shades and 1 matte shade

Chianti- Sephora describes this as a red plum shade, however I feel that it is more of a deep red-bronze shade. Although kinda scary looking in the pan, it's really not as bad as it looks, especially there is considerably more brown in the shade than it appears in the pan and the color can be applied sheerly.

Valentine- a sheer pink shade. I usually can't wear pink shades on my eyes, but this one is miraculously okay on me.

Cinnamon- a shimmery pink chanpagne shade. This shade makes a great highlight/base shade.

Embrace- Sephora describes this as a shimmery coppery brown, but on my skin this is a shimmery bronzey gold.

Maple- the only matte shade in the palette. This shade is a tanish taupe on me. This is my least favorite shade in the palette as it is not as smooth and buttery as the rest of the shades and has poor color payoff.

There are two matte blushes and 1 bronzer in this palette. All three products are soft and buttery and require only a soft tap of the brush on the powder.

The bronzer, Beach #1, is a bit of an orangey peach and is nothing like a brozer on me. I'm actually not quite sure qhat to use it for, but maybe someone who has lighter skin can use it as a bronzer.

Both blushes are quite tiny in this palette, and a regular sized blush brush does not fit in the pan.

Fever- Sephora describes this shade as a soft brown, which is fairly innacurate.. In the pan, this color is a dull pink. On my skin, it does have a hint of brown to it, but it remains pink for the most part.

Passion is a brightish light pink.

This palette has 5 e/s, 4 of which are new shades not sold separately from this palette (at least not yet) and are not quite as soft as the e/s from the favorite powders...and maybe thus not quite as pigmented, making them soft, subtle colors that gently enhance your features (though i'm not sure why you would want the lavendar shade to be pigmented as it's a pastel shade) All of the shades have a perfect, soft shimmer that is just enough to keep the shades from being flat and dull....and again, I experience absolutely no fallout with any of the shades..even without tapping or blowing off any excess on my brushes!

The shades are:Lilac-which is a soft lavendar color with very soft glitter throughout the shade. Now I HATE glitter...and I STILL love this color. The glitter is more like larger shimmer pieces and is again very subtle...and still creates no fallout problems during application...I don't even have to use the patting/rolling method to apply this...it just sticks to the lids VERY well...no glitter on my cheeks or anything <3plum->
The "bronzing" powder in the palette is actually a highlighter called Posey and I have to say I like this quite a bit...Sephora lists this as a shimmering pink, but i feel that it's more of a light shimmering peach...and it makes a perfect base shade as an eyeshadow...and can also be used on the cheeks the give a very subtle glow.

There are two blushes in the palette:

Little Kisses is a bit of a dissapointment to me: although beautiful in the pan, it really didn't show up very well on my skin...it was kinda of a "if you look closely...there's a LITTLE bit of color there..."

Baby Cheeks- I had better luck with baby cheeks..the soft rose color...which gave me a bit of a nice healthy color that I quite like...The other reasons I removed a lippie was due to the size of the palette as well as the packaging of the palette.

These palettes are VERY small for something that cost a good $45...it has absolutely no trouble fitting into my back pocket and is roughly the same size as a pack of dentyne ice gum. While this makes for great portability...I'm not so impressed by the price to size ratio.The packaging, while sleek and chic, is also a disapointment to me for one reason: the pans are held in by what appears to be rubber cement...and are therefore quite loose... I could excuse the size for the superior product quality, but I really dislike that the pans in the palette are loose and feel like they would fall out easily. That said, I'd probably buy the full sized products of what is in these palettes as the full sized prodects seem a bit better made. It is definitely a great way to try out her products though, which I absolutely love (with the exception of the lip palettes...those were quite awful)