Happy Halloween!

Brazen Halloween Quick Swatches

Happy Wednesday!
I'm going to post more detailed photos/review later this afternoon, but I wanted to get these up as soon as possible. Sandi from Brazen Cosmetics sent me some things to review from her Halloween releases.

L-R, natural light: Bondage, Wicked, Dead of Night, Fleet Street, Hades, Diablo (glitter gel)

L-R, with flash: Bondage, Wicked, Dead of Night, Fleet Street, Hades, Diablo (glitter gel)

Bondage is easily my favorite out of the set- what a beautiful deep purple!

Monday Musings Vol. 2

It's a chilly Monday evening, and I'm lounging in the living room and looking up Halloween inspiration. What I should be doing is writing a paper, but I just can't make myself focus on it right now. I'd much rather look for good tentacle tutorials. Halloween has long been my favorite holiday and I tend to get pretty sucked up into crafty endeavors for my costumes.
I'm loving my halloween manicure, although I wish I could find some candy corn nail decals/stickers. I think my little skull from the Kiss Halloween nails set I found at Walgreens is pretty cute though.  I found a bottle of Wet n Wild's Buy Me A Drink hiding in the Halloween makeup at Fred Meyer, it's a very pretty vampy polish.

I'm excited to play with some Brazen goodies that arrived today- Sandi was kind enough to send me some of her Halloween products to review here at Glitter and Toucans! I told myself that I wasn't allowed to use them until I finish the paper I'm avoiding, so I'm hoping to have the review up tomorrow evening or Wednesday morning.

If anyone knows where I can get some candy corn nail stickers, please let me know! I've decided that Halloween manicures aren't just for October.

Friday Favorites

To go with my theme of structure, Friday posts will  be focused on three things that have caught my eye in the past week. So, here we go.

1. Just Peachy's Meow Cosmetic Swatches here . Great swatches, and I'm loving the looks of several shades there.

2.  Scrangie's spider nails here . I'm thinking that tomorrow, after the football game, I will come home and give myself a Halloween manicure.

3. Krystal's letter to her body here . I love the Power Femme blog- it combines makeup with deep thought. So many lovely photos, so many wonderfully thought-provoking posts.

What caught your eye this week?

Brazen Lip Swatches!

I'll do more in depth posts later with my usual skin swatches, but I just wanted to share a few pictures because I love Brazen's glosses so much. Seriously, I never liked lipgloss before I tried Brazen. Now I'm addicted.

Alchemy

Peep Show

Floozy

Floozy can be a bit hard to work with, but I love the color. It's just not good for days that I'm running low on patience.

Monday Musings

Once again, it's Monday morning. I was a bit concerned when my day started with picking up my keys to find that my Yoshi keychain was beheaded. However, with the help of some tacky glue, he's looking much better. That's the second keychain of mine that has broken in the past week or so. I'm trying something new for the blog, with scheduled weekly posts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Mostly to give myself some more structure so I can post more. Balancing structure and inspiration seems to be the way to go. Years ago, I had a blog that I posted in every day. I need to get back in the habit of that. So this is the first installation of "Monday Musings".
Have you seen the new Aromaleigh collection? I love the photo showing the inspiration for the collection.

(from http://www.aromaleigh.com/neftaliedeyc.html)

How's your Monday going?

Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter review and swatches

Today's adventure to Rite Aid introduced me to a new product- Revlon's Colorburst Lip Butters. It looked like the display had been put out in the last day or so, as nothing had been purchased from it yet. I went to Rite Aid in search of a tinted balm of sorts, so I decided to give this one a shot.

It is advertised as a "buttery balm + shiny color" that increases lip moisture by 156%. How well does it live up to these claims? I find that it has more drag on the lips than I would expect from a lip butter/ "buttery balm"during application, but once it's on it feels decently moisturizing. It's not nearly as emollient as, say, my beloved Burt's Bees balm, but it's more moisturizing than the standard lipstick. It does provide a nice shiny color. 156% more lip moisture? I wouldn't say it's that moisturizing. Although, I didn't really expect it to live up to such a claim. Numbers like that always make me skeptical.

I purchased one tube from the line- the Lollipop shade. This week, Rite Aid is having a 40% sale on Revlon lip, eye, and nail products plus a $2 +UP Reward with purchase. These are normally priced at $7.49 each, I was charged $4.49 for the tube. Once you subtract the $2 I now have for a future purchase, that brings the total down to $2.49. Was it worth $2.49? Yes. Do I think it's worth $7.49? Not particularly. 

I'm not a huge fan of the bulky stick, but it's manageable.

The packaging isn't bulky, but the tip of the product is a bit. I took some comparison shots with Lollipop next to MAC's Ruby Woo lipstick.

It's a bit too large for precise application, but it's alright for a somewhat sheer, buildable lip product.

Now for the swatches, all in natural light. The swatch on the left is one swipe of product, the right is 3 swipes.

1 swipe:

3 swipes:

The wear isn't anything impressive, here's how it looked after an episode of Pan Am and a few Lindor truffles:

Not completely gone, but significantly faded.

My overall thoughts:
It's a decent drugstore product. Nothing terribly exciting or innovative, but perhaps worth a shot if it's on sale and you want a wash of color. I've gotten spoiled by the high quality of the indie glosses and balms I've come to know and love, so most drugstore products don't quite do it for me anymore.

Have you tried the Revlon Colorburst Lip Butters?

Aromaleigh V.2

Good news for Aromaleigh lovers!

Aromaleigh is in the process of creating a new version of the MMU we've grown to love. The company will be under new management, but Kristen Leigh Bell (founder of Aromaleigh) will be acting as the Creative Director and Director of Product Formulation. I'm glad to hear that Kristen will be involved in the new Aromaleigh, as she has created a legacy of quality and originality. Aromaleigh is now in a transitional phase, during which select products and ingredients are available for purchase at the Aromaleigh website here. While the company works on creating a new product line and a new Aromaleigh, they are looking for customer input. You can vote in polls here. I love that the new management is making an effort to figure out what customers want as they give a second life to the company. Aromaleigh V.2 is not a silent operation- they are creating a presence throughout the internet on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aromaleigh-Mineral-Cosmetics-v2/280130105344850), Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/aromaleighV2), and their blog (http://aromaleighv2.wordpress.com/).

This kind of involvement and communication is what I love about indie cosmetic companies. I'm definitely looking forward to finding out what the new generation of Aromaleigh has in store for us.