Sparkled Beauty

If you haven't heard, Illamasqua has arrived at the Bay (online and selected store locations) with pricing rivaling that in the US. We no longer have to put up with Sephora's markup on CAD, yay!

Not only that, Illamasqua offers us a (LE) the-Bay-exclusive nail polish shade called Gothiqua. You know anything Canada exclusive, which is rare nowadays, I have to have.

My order came two days ago and I have Gothiqua on my nails today :) I paid CAD17 (vs. CAD22 reg. price on Sephora, not that we can get Gothiqua there, but FYI anyway).

Want to see something cool in the bottle? Yeah, that beautiful green sheen that is visible in direct lighting. I was over the moon when I saw bottle pics on twitter, because of that green glow.

Unfortunately, as you can see in my pics, the colour on my nails is a pigmented dark plum, but no sign of green :( This took a little bit of magic away from Gothiqua in my book, but I still say it is a beautiful Fall colour.

Notice a little mess on my ring finger? I was going to redo it, but thought it might be helpful to show you the colour at one coat (at the edge) vs. two coat (on the rest of the nail).

So, Gothiqua has a strong red base, we can all see that. Naturally, I like it better after two coats as the burgundy/ plum plays out a little more. In indoor lighting, it looks even darker than this, which I am not complaining about.

Here it is again with more intense direct light source/ angle. The green is even more visible here, sigh...

Note: today is the last day to use the $15 off $100 code ("C3BEA08") on cosmetics/ fragrances on the Bay website. And with a $50 cosmetics/ fragrance purchase, you get a $10 saving card for next purchase.

Hope you all have a good week so far. I am just back from a conference in town, playing catch up now. If you haven't noticed the Annabelle #24Days series I am doing, check it out. I am posting pics on twitter almost every day and/or on here.

Don't know if you'd be surprised by this, but I haven't owned a single Illamasqua nail polish. When this Illamasqua Nail Varnish Duo showed up at the Sparkled Beauty HQ (i.e. my apartment lol), I was over the moon.

I have heard Illamasqua nail polishes are highly pigmented and wear very well. This duo, on top of that, is perfect for the holiday season. The colours look shockingly beautiful in the box, and show up just as good on the nails.

This is a beautiful start of the relationship between me and Illamasqua nail polish.

The first shade, Glitterari, described as a raspberry glittery shade, is much more than just that. It is everything I want right now - dark vampy colour, multi coloured and multi sized glitters with a semi matte finish.

The brush is wide enough to cover your nails with three strokes, and if you load enough nail polish on the brush, you only need one coat. I did two coats here for good measure.

All nails were without a top coat except the ring finger. As you can see, the polish did not dry glossy. It felt a little gritty too, but it did not bother me, as the top coat fixed that right up.

Close up to show you the glitters in their various sizes and colours. You can see red, pink and holographic glitters in small, round, hexa, even some random bar shapes.

And the raspberry/ dark red base colour, this is the kind of red I can wear. With the built-in glitters, saving me the extra work to glitterize the colour like I often do, I am sold.

Forgive my not so good cleanup job. I swear it did not look this bad IRL, but the camera shows what my eyes miss. I'm not normally this sloppy with application either, but I was a little impatient to swatch the duo.

Viridian, unlike Glitterari, is from Illamasqua's regular line. This peacock green has been raved about on nail blogs for a while now. And I can say now I know why.

It applied like a dream, was so pigmented that I only used one coat. I did not use a top coat on top, didn't think it was necessary.

Not advertised as a duochrome, and I'm not saying it is, but this type of colour gives you different shades of green/ teal depending on the angles. And it glows from the inside, comes to life under flash or direct sun light. Beautiful!

See the glow I just mentioned here, both on the nails and in the bottle. Another winner shade.

Illamasqua picked two perfect colours to make this holiday duo. For someone who hasn't owned any polish from the brand, I'm more than happy to have them. But for big collectors out there who already have Viridian, they would be in a dilemma when they want Glitterari.

The duo is Limited Edition, retails for CAD32 at  Sephora. Single nail polish shades are CAD17, not a big saving for the duo, but like I said, the colours are worth it.

Omg, Sunday was the most beautiful fall day in history! It was sunny and WARM. 16 degrees for fall? Yeah, I'll take it any time! But the weather wasn't the only thing I was so excited about, as I just picked up my swap package from Scotland.

Has this picture peeked your curiosity yet? My very first Illamasqua!!! Feel. Intense. Bruised. Fallen. Truth. and Imagine.

Lyndsay at Robert Smith's Mistress Makeup Wonderland was looking for an international swap and I jumped right on the offer. You all know that I love to get my hands on UK makeup (I even did a post on UK makeup brands to help with my lemmings).

Illamasqua wasn't originally on the wishlist I sent to Lyndsay, as I honestly can't afford it. Their price point is £14.00 and up :-)

Photo credit: gossmakeupartist.blogspot.com

During the swap, however, I was very lucky to find a blog sale that offered Illamasqua powder shadows in bulks with amazing price, and free shipping within the UK. Lyndsay helped me out with getting a pack of these beauties, and I am really thankful.

The shades that I got:
First row, from L-R: Intense (deep blue green), Feel (bronzy brown), Imagine (light blue/purple)
Second row: Bruised (red), Fallen (purple), Truth (taupe).

My picture is taken with flash, so the colours are really washed out. I tried, but it was very hard to capture the shades in camera. I am a bit worried that the 2 brown/neutral shades wouldn't show up well with my skin tone. But nevertheless, I'm so happy to own Illamasqua items :-)

The rest of the swap items aren't any less exciting. First reason would be they were out of reach to lots of us outside UK. Second, they are of great quality and great price. What else there to not want them?

Here is the famous Sleek i-divine paltte in Chaos, with the most colourful combination. I love all the shades, which might be a bit of a dilemma, lol. I was waiting like forever since Sleek announced their international online shopping site will be up next Spring. Now I could tie myself over with Chaos.

I also got the Pout Polish SPF15 in Electro Peach. Despite the fact that it doesn't come in a tube, I still want to try it badly :-)

Sleek has so many products, it wasn't easy to pick out just one or two.

And lastly, my Collection 2000 items.

First row are the Dazzle Me! Eye Dust, from L-R: Enigma, Sugarplum and HazyDaze. The jars came with shifters (with stickers on top to avoid spilling). These will be a nice addition to my pigment family.

Second row: Hot Looks Fast Dry Nail polish in BMX Bandit, Wham and Button Moon. These colours have been featured a lot in UK beauty blogs that I have to have for myself. The bottles, though, are tiny (9ml). What if I run out, lol?

Thank you so much Lyndsay for this swap. I am one step closer to UK makeup :-) Check out her post for what I sent her.

Have a lovely day, everyone!

So... August is my birthday month, and I like to think it's fun to "celebrate" the whole month instead of just one day. So I'll make an effort to blog everyday this month, to be a good blogger and all, lol. Will see how that works out. Ok, back to the topic.

I bet you all have heard of (or purchased from) Illamasqua by now. There have been countless reviews on the web about products of this UK brand, and most were positive. I like the idea of a new brand that is comparable to MAC and that has a good marketing sense to promote their products to Sephora . With the newly opened Sephora in NY, the brand has made a grand entrance to the US market. Needless to say, makeup lovers are all over Illamasqua powder/ cream blushes ($23), pigments ($24), liquid metals ($24), nail polishes ($14), etc. The price range is not really within my reach, but I'm fine with not shopping this brand, just like I'm fine with not shopping MAC (I'm weird huh?). But it's still an exciment to the makeup world, as maybe it's time for MAC to share the throne with someone else.

Sleek is another makeup brand from the UK that I recently discovered. Its iDivine shadow palettes) have been a hit in the blogger world. I personally don't own any, as so far it is UK-exclusive, but judging by people's raves over them, I'm curious to try. The company is working on an online-shop website so that people outside UK could put in their orders, which is exciting. The price is about £4.49 which isn't bad. The website only features 3 palettes (Original, Chaos and Storm and the new Curious palette (in the picture) coming out this August, but I have read about a few more (Acid, Safari, Jewels, etc.). Lots of them are LE, but I really hope Sleek will have more than 4 different palettes online. I love shadows, especially with drugstore price, so this might be something I could afford. And it's from the UK, probably my first experience ever buying anything from there :-)

Barry M is another brand on the affordable side. Their most famous products are the Dazzle Dusts (£4.50) - in the picture, and nail paints (£2.95), but there are a lot more on the website. The good thing is they do ship internationally, but I can't tell what the shipping cost is like, as customers are asked to contact the company for a quote. With the exchange rate, the prices would come out a bit higher than I would normally pay for my mineral pigments or nail polishes. Also, the colours aren't LE, so I'm not in a rush to order.

Another brand which isn't popular outside UK yet: Collection 2000. I was intriqued seeing this brand popping up in a few blog posts. The Dazzle Me! Eye Dusts are said to be a "rip-off" of Barry M Dazzle Dusts, as they are only at half of the price in bigger pots with a few similar shades. And the quality is good, no complains. And then, there are the Hot Looks nail polishes (featured in the pic in the most famous shade "Dynasty"), around £1.80 each. They are said to be comparable to Barry M polishes as well. Are you confused with too many alternatives yet?

Unfortunately, there is no option to buy directly from the company website. They point visitors to boots.com or superdrug.com, and these 2 sites certainly do not deliver outside UK. So the only solution, if you want some Collection 2000, would be asking a UK friend for a shopping favour, or find a swap :-)

Lastly, beautyuk, another less popular brand. How gorgeous is this eyeshadow collection palette? I spent quite some time on the website looking at their products, liked the shades and the price point. They have single shadows (£1.99), quads (£3.49), lots of nail shades (£1.79) as well, but I am only interested in the palettes for now. 4 options to choose from: Pastels, Brights, Glitters and Neutrals, £3.49 each. Not available online, though, only at Superdrug. Just imagine if one day I go to the UK, my first stop would probably be Superdrug, lol.

At least I'm glad to have full access to Rimmel, Boots No7 and Gosh from drugstores around here. Well, Gosh is a Denmark brand, not UK, but you know what I mean - brands from that part of the world that isn't always accessible. If I miss a brand that you like from there, let me know and I'll add it to the post.

EDIT TO ADD:
B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful, a sister brand of Lush, is known for its vegan cosmetic line and its super cute packaging. Can you guess what's in that "jewelled hinged pot"? It's their Lip Cream in Bitten (£9.30), with a 24K gold leaf for look. Their Pressed Shadows are very cool too, a little to the expensive side (£8.30) though. Refills are available, so you can continue using their cute packaging one shadow at a time. Imagine you have a little army of these babies, they could be great decorations to your vanity and you don't have to worry about organizing them in a drawer.

The thing is they haven't been expanding very much, only have 3 stores in the UK so far. They for sure ship within UK, Japan and Austria but ask that customers from any other country contacting them for shipping availability. In short, I'm not sure they ship to Canada.

Eyeko is another fun brand to try out. Their manga-styled packaging is eye catching, and so is their "free shipping world wide on all orders" policy. Who doesn't love that?

Their most popular product is probably the 3-in-1 Cream (£6 or $9), and its tinted version too. It is said to work as a moisturizer, a highlighter and an eye cream at the same time. Most bloggers said they mostly use the cream for highlighting, as it adds a nice glow above your cheek bone and emphasizes your blush.

Their little bottles of nail polishe are cute too. Check out the swatches at Scrangie if you are interested.

Note: Make sure to click on the little $ sign on the side bar to see the price in $, as the default is in £ and the exchange rate they use does change over time.

Photo credit: illamasqua.com, sleekmakeup.com, barrym.com, collection2000.co.uk, beautyuk.org., bnevertoobusytobebeautiful.com and eyeko.com