SHINE, SHIMMER & SPARKLE

Hi, hi hi!

So you might know that L'Oreal Paris Singapore had organised a blogger event last Saturday to touch-base with local makeup bloggers and to introduce us to their newly launched and limited edition eyeshadow palettes, OPEN EYES CHROME INTENSITY inspired by the myriad bright, iridescent colours of butterflies. 

It was great to finally meet the kinds folks at L'Oreal who had been in touch with me for a bit now - they have been very generous and friendly and I've had the opportunity to try a couple of their mascaras, lipsticks and eyeshadows. In addition, the 2 palettes just before the launch of this Open Eyes Chrome Intensity Series, the OPEN EYES series, were also great in terms of texture, pigmentation and pay-off and were a real pleasure to use.  So I was totally pleased at having the opportunity to swatch and try these new palettes ... did someone say CHROME and INTENSITY in the same sentence?! Wheeeee!

Before I go into the product swatches and comments, let me just share a few zany snapshots we took at the event. We were hosted at Fika, a halal-Swedish bistro along Arab Street and we had the event room upstairs all to ourselves.  What I really liked about the event was how relaxed, free and easy it was - we were allowed to play with the products ourselves and chat at our tables after the Introduction by Product Manager Jerraine. 

Makeover Area.  Snapshot courtesy of Tiphanie. 

While the makeovers were going on, the folks from L'Oreal came by and chatted with us, asking us our opinions on products and so on and making sure we ate our tasty lunches - I had the Swedish Pasta Bake (yummy - it was my 3rd visit to Fika and I knew this was a great entree to have!). 

As you can see, when left to our own devices, apart from swatching and analysing the products at hand, this is also what we end up doing, in such a relaxed environment:

Have a conference on how to hold / sell / use (?) a large camera .... that's not even mine to start off with ...

Borrow butterfly decor from the window panes and stick them in our hair ... and I think Mag and I made these look good and I think we totally rocked the butterfly theme! LOL!

(a la Will Smith in Men In Black in the iconic scene where he puts on his sunglasses - "I make these look good") LOL!

Touch up my lipstick after my pasta bake and then we all proceed to analyse what I carry in my makeup pouch ...

(The 3 cheeky, candid snapshots are courtesy of Iris of Rougedeluxe who was bent on capturing zany shots of me that day! LOL! Thanks, girl!)

Such events, where the participants are allowed to freely interact with one another is wonderful - not only do you get to share thoughts about beauty products with like-minded individuals, but you also get to hang out with and get to know the lovely folks with whom we often only get to "speak" online - I think the snapshots above are testimony to that!  So thanks to the team at L'Oreal Paris who gave us all the opportunity to have a great girls' day out! 

And let's get into the eyeshadows and the swatches!

I do like the packaging - nice and sturdy (somewhat heavy, so you know its not flimsy) and the clear window allows you to see the colours really clearly.

And swatches on my skintone (NC 43-45):

AQUADISIAC.  I really, really like this palette - the teal shade, Aquadisiac, is pigmented and is intense enough to keep it from being a pale, washed out teal-blue.  The medium blue, Blue Jean, is far from a flat navy blue and is almost like a duo-toned blue shade - I have dark blue shades in my stash but I really like how Blue Jean is both dark and vibrant at the same time.  And the teal/silver sparkles in the deep blue shade, Open Deep Blue just add that ooomph that I crave for. I already want to add more glitter to Open Deep Blue to make it really sparkle!

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PINK MANIA.  Ok, if you know me, you'll guess in a instant that I'll be all over the iridescent purple shade, which is incidentally called Purple Obsession (2nd from left).  The pink shade, Pink Mania, is a really sweet, cotton-candy pink and I'm glad to see it as I really don't have anything like it.  Check out the way the deep purple shade, Open Deep Purple, glimmers with the purple/silver micro-glitter!

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TIMELESS GREEN.  This is also another great colour combination - woodsy, foresty ... reminds me of something I once said to someone, who commented that green did not go with brown; I asked the chap "Have you ever seen a mismatched tree?" Hee hee!  The green shade, Timeless Green, has a great gold undertone in it.  I'm not tooo crazy about brown shades in general, but Cacao Mania has that touch of bronze in it that I hope will work for me.

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MAGIC AMBER.  Ok, this gold-themed palette is unfortunately only available in department stores (I imagine Robinsons, John Littles?).  Magic Amber is a really deep ... well, amber shade but thankfully, there is enough gold in it that keeps it from pulling orange.  I know that the pale gold shade, Addictive Yellow, is likely meant as a lid shade but I think I'd like it as a highlight shade for me! Again, this palette houses a brown shade, Open Deep Brown, but this is a rich, chocolaty brown, unlike the bronze-toned brown of the Timeless Green palette.  Being the glitter glutton, I think it would have been really really pretty had Open Deep Brown been infused with some gold micro-shimmer.

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My Initial Thoughts on the palettes?

So, honestly, after swatching these, I really do like how they look and feel - there's this silky, smooth texture and the pearlised glimmer of the eyeshadows, similar to the OPEN STELLAR palette I reviewed earlier on; like the OPEN STELLAR palette, I hope these can also be used wet! Also, I noticed that the micro-glitter in the deep shades did not fall all over the place (the same I noted in the Open Stellar palette).  All these swatches were medium swatches - at no point did I need to swipe 3 or 4 times in order to get the colours as you see, thanks to the "Pure Refined Micro-Pigments" used in these palettes.  According to L'Oreal, this technology ensures high colour pay-off, easy application and eyeshadow that promises to be long-wearing.  Of course, I would definitely recommend using a good eyeshadow base with these to ensure intense colour - for me, eyeshadow bases are a total must-have, regardless of what eyeshadow I apply, given my oily skin and our humid weather. 

The only thing I wished they had done with these palettes is this: the highlight shades in Aquadisiac, Pink Mania and Timeless Green are all the same, silvery white highlight shade.  I totally wished there were different highlight shades in each of the palettes, like how Magic Amber has a gold-tinged highlight shade?  It would have been wonderfully superb (superlative overload but don't mind me!) if say, they had included an iridescent or duochrome silvery-teal highlight shade for Aquadisiac, a sweet pinky-purple duochrome highlight shade for Pink Mania and a glimmering green-gold highlight shade for Timeless Green ... I would have totally been smitten to bits by that! And I think having different highlight shades might also give incentives for folks to collect all 4 palettes given that you get 16 mesmerising, high-intensity, pearlised shades! Wow! Then again, L'Oreal might have had a reason for not doing so (but if anyone's listening, how about some lovely douchrome or varied highlight shades next time pls? Hee hee! A girl can wish right?)

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Apart from these, we also received a goodie bag containing the Ultra Volume Collagene Mascara (you can read the UVC Mascara review here), the Super Liner 24 Hr Gel Liner (you can find the Super Liner review here) and 3 of their latest range of Color Riche lipsticks in Red Passion (featured in my LOTD here), Intense Fuschia and Burning Rose.  Here are the swatches of the lipsticks:

Top: Intense Fuschia - a straight-up fuschia-pink shade

Middle: Burning Rose - a pinked-coral shade packed with gold glimmer

Bottom: Red Passion - look at that RED! How can I not be smitten by that? This and Chanel Rouge Coco in Cambon totally changed my perspective on red lipsticks and encouraged me to pick up MAC Brave Red recently!

That's all for now; I'm hoping to use the eyeshadow palettes real soon! Hope you found the swatches useful!

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DISCLAIMER: I am neither affiliated to, no is this a paid/sponsored advertisment by L'Oreal. All products mentioned were sent to me to try and I did not pay for them.  All opinions expressed are my own and have not been influenced by anyone.