Review: MUA Elysium Palette

I was in Superdrug, on a mission to buy cotton pads, when I stumbled across this little beauty on the MUA stand today:

An eyeshadow palette consisting of 10 eyeshadows and a double ended black eyeliner/pale pink highlighter pencil. This retails at just £6. Of course this made its way into my basket! 

Above is a picture of the back of the palette, with the names of the shadows. 

And a picture of the ingredients. As you can see, these shadows do contain parabens, so if you're tempted to buy these then please use a primer (paraben free if possible!) underneath to stop your body from absorbing them. 

I noticed that at least 6 of the colours bore a striking resemblance to 6 of the colours in the Naked 3 palette...

"Air" and "Cherub" look very similar to Naked 3's "Strange" and "Dust".

"Charm" is an amazing dupe for N3's "Limit".

"Refine" is also a great dupe for N3's "Nooner" (one of my fave matte crease/blending colours).

"Adore" is similar to N3's "Blackheart".

"Astral" is a very good dupe for N3's "Buzz".

The other four eyeshadows don't much resemble the Naked 3 palette, but I really love this palette as a cheap dupe. It has 5 metallic colours, four mattes and one black matte with red sparkle (Adore). 

Of course I had to try this palette out (sorry, swatches turned out crap on my phone so I deleted the pics), so I did this look for college today:

For this look I used Charm as a transition/blending colour, then Refine in the crease and lower lash line. I used Cherub on my eyelid, Adore in the outer third of my eyelid and on the outer third of my lower lash line, lined my upper lash line with the black eyeliner pencil and set it with some more Adore. I then used a highlighter around my inner eyes to bring light to this look, lined my waterline with black waterproof gel liner and curled my lashes and added plenty of mascara (around 3/4 coats) to pull the whole look together. 

My thoughts: I absolutely love this palette, it's a fantastic price, the colours are well pigmented (the metallic ones are super creamy and beautiful to wear), has some brilliant Naked 3 palette colour dupes and they apply and blend amazingly well. The only negative thing I can think of (other than the shadows containing parabens) is that the double ended pencil (the size it is now with the lids on both ends) fits perfectly in the palette, but once the pencil is sharpened, it'll be shorter and it won't be able to fit, so will fall out easier and perhaps even get lost. But! That's only a minor negative - I'm sure I can move the pencil to somewhere safer! I will definitely be using this palette a lot in the future and I recommend it to anyone on a budget or that doesn't want to fork out £37 for the Naked 3. 

Hugs x

Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette Swatches!

Yes, yes, oh God, yes!!! Ahem... I mean... So my Naked 3 palette turned up today and I wasn't excited in the slightest *cough, lie! cough*.

I've been wanting to get this palette since I first saw Kandee Johnson (amazing girl from YouTube, I adore her) show this palette last year. And now it's mine at last!!! Mwahahahahahaaaaaa!!!

I do apologise! And now for the rest of my blog...

So before I show you the shadows, I'll show you a neat little freebie that Urban Decay have kindly added for their buyers so that they can make the most of their eyeshadows... 

There's a booklet, and inside this booklet there are four - yes, four - samples of their famous eyeshadow primer. 

They're tucked handily in the sleeves in this booklet, with each different primer's name, colour and effect written on the package for your convenience.

I think that these are a brilliant way to advertise their own primers for anyone that hasn't tried them so they can make up their mind. I used to be a huge fan of UD e/s primer (original) but ended up using MAC Paint Pots. 

Anyway, swatch time! 

I am so excited to use this palette; the first eight colours are light enough for me to use on a regular basis (with Naked 2 I can only use the first five - the rest are too dark or too grey), the colours are beautiful, pigmented, creamy and a delight to use. I am very happy with this palette indeed! 

As for the primers, I won't be using the samples, I'll stick with my Paint Pots. I had a very bad experience with UD Sin (creased within an hour, no matter how I applied it) so I'm not tempted to use anything but the original, but I'm hoping my sister might take these off my hands... *hint hint, mei mei!* 

Do you like/hate the Naked Palettes? Got a palette you recommend? I'd love to know xx

My First Bridal Makeup Experience...

So this weekend has been so busy, I haven't had a chance to blog about makeup or beauty at all!

On Friday (22nd August) I went to my friend's wedding. The Bride's makeup artist said she couldn't do her makeup last minute due to timing, so she asked me to do it. I've never done Bridal makeup, and I had no time to practice on her for a trial run (she asked me on 21st in the evening when we were super busy doing last minute running around), so you can imagine I was under a lot of pressure to get it right first time. 

I can't even begin to tell you how nervous I was. To make things even harder, she'd gotten a spray tan done two days before the wedding, which means that none of her foundations were the right colour anymore. 

So I turned up armed with all of my foundations, half of my makeup stash and most of my eyeshadow and blending brushes, plus face & concealer brushes. 

Above is the makeup & palettes I used on the Bride. I ended up using my own foundation that I use every day (Estée Lauder Double Wear Light, Intensity 3.0) on her as it is light but super hard-wearing. 

I tell you, it was so stressful, trying to make a bride look perfect for her special day; my hands shook and I was sweating buckets. Plus, she blinked her eyes insessantly when I applied all of her eye makeup; doing her eyeliner and mascara was a real challenge.

Then to top it off, with only 40 minutes to go until she was due down the aisle, she suddenly asked me if it would be ok if I did her maid of honour's makeup too. I was shocked and dumbfounded, to say the least. Good makeup takes care and time to apply; 40 minutes was only enough for a hasty, half-done job! So I prayed for a miracle and rushed (carefully) through her maid of honour's makeup too, then I ran out of the house, ran to the car and sped to the church ahead of them. 

As it turns out I never even managed to get a close up of her (or her maid of honour's) face the entire day! But I'll show you some pics of the day... 

The last picture ^ is the bride and her MoH (plus her gorgeous flower girls, who were adorably cute).

Although doing bridal makeup for the first time was scary, it has only deepened my love for cosmetics and made me appreciate makeup and makeup artistry even more. I know that all I want to do is follow this path of beauty and cosmetics until the bitter end!