November 23, 2009

As promised yesterday, I'm posting pictures of makeup I bought with quick initial thoughts. I will be doing swatches and full reviews of everything I bought as I use these and get a better feeling for the products. Oh, I took all these pics on our drive back from TO, so that's why you can kinda see the car seat in some of them. I had to take the pictures then as it's now too dark by the time I get home from work. I wanted to make this post early this week and not on the weekend.

Ben Nye


As mentioned in my previous post, Ben Nye was selling their products from Malabar as they are the official distributor in Canada. My local Malabar usually has only a few Ben Nye products on hand so it was nice to be able to test more products in person. I ended up getting a huge jar of their translucent setting powder in shade invisible, Final Seal spray as well as Tangerine Lumiere eyeshadow. I wanted to buy the Grand Lumiere palette but let's face it I have the dupes for more than half of the palette so it didn't seem that reasonable. Tangerine is a beautiful orange shimmery colour. I don't have many oranges so I thought this one was a nice addition. I was in need of a setting powder and I got a great deal on the huge jar I got ($16). I also heard great things about Final Seal and I'm hoping it's all I heard and better.

Kryolan


I have wanted to try out Kryolan for ever so this was a great opportunity. I did some research on their website prior to attending IMATS and saw that they have these gorgeous eyeshadow palettes in matte or shimmery finishes. Each palette contains 5 eyeshadows that apply very pigmented. I swatched them all and ended up with the most neutral palette called Cairo. Most of my stash consists on shimmery and bold colours and I needed more matte and neutral colours. Once again, the swatches for this palette will be coming up in the next week or so. I wanted to try out their Eye Dust too but they hadn't brought any to the exhibit.

Makeup Forever


My list for MUFE was not very long as I already have a full palette of MUFE eyeshadow as well as HD and Duo Mat foundations. I wanted to give their Face and Body a shot though so I bought a bottle of that in shade 32. I was told by the MA's that I can wear both 30 and 32 but I should stick with 32 as 30 might be too light in the summer. I also bought eyeshadow refills in #75 and #83. I will be swatching the eyeshadow with the rest of my MUFE colour collection soon. MUFE offered 40% of their retail price and as a result their counter was extremly busy.

Naked Cosmetics


Naked comstics makes beautiful pure pigments with no fillers. Their pigments come in stalks of 6 mini pigments organized by collections based on a theme colour. I picked up the Ebony and Ivory collections (haha!). Ebony reminds me of MAC Style Black in terms of the darkness and glitteriness of the pigments. There's dark blue, dark purple, black with silver glitter, dark green and dark burgundy. The ivory set has 6 nude pigments that have various duochrome effects like reflections of pale yellow, pink, lavender, blue and green. I love these two sets. I took me a while to decide which sets I wanted though as they were all gorgeous. These sets were $30 each or two for $50. This is the purchase I'm the most excited about. I cannot wait to play with these babies!

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics


I already have a few of the OCC pigments and quite like them so I was excited to try out more and also test the lip tars. To my disappointment, they didn't have any of the pure colour pigments. But I did get some regular pigments (Lafayette and Clove) and two of the lip tars (Pageant and Plum) and a nail polish (Something). The lip tar packaging is much smaller than I expected but they are insanely pigmented! I wanted to get more of the tars but honestly I'm a little lazy with mixing lip products so I got only the two. I love Lafayette pigment as it's the exact colour of my eyes. I have a weakness of taupe eyeshadows and anything blue, hence the purchase of Clove p/m and Something nail polish.

Crown Brushes


The price of these brushes was amazing. I wanted to buy one of each brush! The selection is very sizable so it took a while again to come up with a decision. As I'm pretty happy with my MAC brushes, so I bought a few of these to compliment my existing stash. I purchased a shading brush, a 242 lookalike (I cannot find my 242 half the time I'm doing my makeup), a fluffy 217 lookalike (this one I will give to my mom) and a less fluffy two ended brush (concealer/lip brush). The price range for these was between $2 - $5.

Royal Brushes



As per above, I also picked up some brushes from Royal brush. I purchased a mini angled kabuki brush. This brush is so soft and efficient (I used it this morning to apply powder). I also got a bent eyeliner brush, and angled shading brush like the 272 and a fluffy angled blending brush. The price range for these was between $2 - $7.

Pari Professional


I purchased bottle of brush cleaner from these guys as they had excellent reviews online and I had grown tired of the old school shampooing method of brush cleaning. They demonstrated the method to me before purchase. You spray some product into a paper towel, dip the dirty brush in and make some quick circles, wait about a minute for it to dry, et voila! This should make life so much easier for me.

Nars


Nars was not actually having a discount sale but I wanted the Sex Machine Velvet Matte pencil for a while so I thought I might as well pick it up at IMATS. I had tried this shade on at Sephora before and loved the texture and the feel of it on my lips. I also wanted Dragon Girl and Dolce Vita but I will go back to Sephora for those at a later time.

Ok, that's all for my IMATS haul. Full review and swatches are still upcoming starting this weekend. Hope you guys enjoyed my rambling :)

November 22, 2009

As promised, I took many pictures when attending the IMATS show tried to take in as much as I could so I can share it with you guys. First of all, the day started kind of stressful. The hubby and I got lost as we went to Princess Blv instead of Prince's blv. It wasn't really our fault though the website for the IMATS venue (Heritage Court) had the incorrect address. We did get there at around 9:30 am.

I was overwhelmed at the beginning as I was trying to run to all the counters at once, lol! I noticed immediately that there's a huuuuge lineup in front of the MUFE counter so decided I don't want to start with them. The venue actually seem smaller than what I had imagined but it was still pretty roomy. I met up with a fellow blogger, Nepenthe, and hauling with her made the experience so much more fun! I ended up hitting OCC, MUFE, Nars, Crown brushes, Royal brushes, Ben Nye, Kryolan, Pari and Naked Pigments. I also attended the MAC Pro and Enkore Makeup seminars and I would say I learned a lot from both. If I wasn't only there for one day of IMATS, I would be attending more seminars as they really completed the event. Oh, I got to meet Enkore Makeup as well, he's very sweet and down to earth in person.

MUFE had a great deal on their product by offering 40% of their regular price. As a result, they had the busiest counter. Ben Nye sold their product through Malabar and I would say they were also doing pretty well. My top two brands to try were Kryolan and Naked Pigments and I was pleased to see that they had good deals as well. In general, all exhibitors were very friendly and helpful. My favourite exhibitors were OCC and Ben Nye mostly in terms of friendliness of the staff. I guess most of the exhibitors were pleasantly surprised about the nice weather in Toronto. Seem like they were all expecting a snow storm, haha!

I was there till 12, then left to have lunch with the hubby. I came back at around 3 pm and by then the place wasn't as busy. I was able to wrap up my shopping, and chat with more exhibitors before they closed down. Overall, I would say this was an amazing experience for me. I got the opportunity to meet some amazing makeup artists, the talents behind many fabulous brands (like OCC and Yaby) while enjoying great deals on tried and true and new brand makeup.

I will be making another post tomorrow with my haul and more details on the deals we got. But for now enjoy these pics, I'm off to bed :)


inside the hall


body painting


Ben Nye counter


Kryolan


Crown Brushes


movie head samples


with Enkore Makeup


Enkore doing makeup on Pursebuzz


End of show, with my bag!

November 22, 2009

I literally got back to Ottawa about an hour ago. I had a great time at IMATS and am still excited about it (even though it's passed, lol). I wanted to start sharing the experienced right now though I'm still tired from the trip back to Ottawa. This is gonna take a few posts over the course of today and tomorrow so please bear with me.

I'm gonna start by posting the look I wore to the show. I decided to go for my best colours, green and teal. I took these pics when we left for lunch so the eyeliner is a little bit smudgy :/

Face
Cover FX Primer
Lise Watier Concealer Wheel
MUFE HD 118
Nars Deep Throat

Eyes
Bare Canvas paint - base
Bio Green e/s - lid
Plumage e/s - to cut and blend crease
Gulf Stream e/s - above crease
Blanc Type e/s - highlight
Blacktrack f/l
Feline
Lancome Hypnose mascara

Lips
Blankety l/s
Rags to Riches d/g

November 20, 2009

Just a quick note to let you guys know that I'm leaving Ottawa in about an hour so there will be no posts from me this weekend. I will be attending the IMATS show in Toronto tomorrow so stay tuned for pictures to come once I get back to Ottawa. Right now I'm just running around the office trying to finish loads of work before I take off.; it's 3:00 pm and I haven't had lunch yet. I'm soooo gonna relax this weekend!

Will be posting again soon. Hope everyone has a great weekend :)

November 14, 2009



I finally came up with a potential wishlist for IMATS. Honestly, I'm mostly attending for the experience and not to buy stuff. But that doesn't stop me from checking some of the brands that are not readily available or use the show discount on some of the tried and true brands like MUFE.

So right now I'm thinking:

MUFE
Primer Elixir
Face n Body Foundation (can anyone help me with my shade?)
e/s #116, 166, 33 and 165

Ben Nye
Final Seal
Translucent Powder

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
Pageant tar
Hush Tar
Burnin p/m
Chlorophyl p/m
Lafayette p/m

Naked Cosmetics
One of their collections (either Ebony or Ivory)

Kryolan
Eye Dust in Robin's Egg

Crown/Royal Brushes
I need a 217 lookalike and a bent eyeliner brush...possibly a blush brush too

Nars
Afghan Red l/s

Obviously, I'm not gonna buy all of this. This is just sort of a guideline for me so I know what I need and don't overspend (which might happen lol). I'm taking Marc with me so hopefully he'll stop me from buying "everything" I like.

Does anyone have any recommendation for me? This is my first makeup show so any recommendation (product wise) would be great.

October 17, 2009


Picture from IMATS website

I'm still feeling under the weather so I've been home resting all day. I guess even though my weekend is ruined at least I don't have to take sick days next week (when I will be extremely busy at work). The only productive thing I did all day was to finally book my ticket to the IMATS show this November. The show is on November 21 and 22 but I will only be going the first day. You can book your tickets now from Makeup Bag:

http://www.makeupmag.com/featured/id/388/

I spent some time browsing the website and am so excited about the exhibitors! I've been meaning to try the Obsessive Compulsive Lips Tars and as they are present, this will be a great opportunity. I've also heard great things about Yaby eyeshadows, Kryolan transulecnet powder and Ben Nye pencil liners. And of course Makeup Forever will also be there and you know how I've fallen in love with their products. I need to start putting a wishlist together so I don't overspend. Is anyone else going to IMATS Toronto? Please do let me know I would love to meet other bloggers and makeup enthusiasts.

Oh and before I forget, I posted my first contest here. If you live in Canada, it will be a great opportunity to win an awesome Harajuku Lovers fragrance set. I think that's about it for me now. I gotta go back to bed and nurse this flue :/