SHINE, SHIMMER & SPARKLE

Hello :)

Hope your week is going good so far. 

I picked up 2 SLEEK MAKEUP Eyeshadow palettes recently - BAD GIRL in Joanna's (Miss Jology) spree and SPARKLE with Amy's (Purplio) impromptu "twitter spree". 

Since I conducted my own spree for the other LE palette in CIRCUS, I've come to love the SLEEK Palettes for several reasons:

• the eyeshadows are intensely pigmented

• there is an amazing variety of shades that hardly get repeated despite SLEEK producing numerous palettes; there may be 5 greens in 5 palettes but if you look closely enough, you'll realise that they are nuanced and have slight variations. With the exception of the standard black eyeshadow in each palette, I doubt I've found a spot-on dupe so far.

• Apart from the intense pigmentation and great variety of shades, the SLEEK palettes are really really affordable - at USD$10 a palette (eventual cost varies depending on how large the spree is as the flat international shipping rate is divided equally among all the buyers), SLEEK eyeshadow palettes are amazing value-for-money (but you all know that already!).  One MAC eyeshadow weighs 1.3gm; each shade in the SLEEK palette is 1.1gm - so that's a total of 13.2gm of SLEEK eyeshadows which is definitely less than what one MAC eyeshadow costs.

So BAD GIRL and SPARKLE join the little SLEEK Family of ACID, ORIGINAL, STORM, CIRCUS in my stash ... and the family may expand soon too! *wink*.

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Let's check out SPARKLE and BAD GIRL!

(Note: All swatches are on NC43-45 skintone, dry and with no base [unless otherwise indicated])

SLEEK SPARKLE PALETTE

SPARKLE is a LIMITED EDITION palette that made its debut for Holiday 2010.  It contains 12 smooth eyeshadows - 10 shades are velvety smooth, laced with silvery and some multicoloured sparkles while the other 2 shade, the pale gold and silver (bottom row, extreme right) are pearlescent. 

So in the swatch shot below, I've swatched the 12 eyeshadows dry and with no base.  The sparkles were not obvious unless I peered really closely and only in certain angles. 

So I decided to swatch them (dry still) with a base - to bring out the sparkly effect a little more, I used KATE GEL EYESHADOW in GD-1. And here is what they looked like a top a sparkly, sheer gold base:

L-R: CRANBERRY,   DREAM MAKER,   GALACTIC,   TWINKLE,  

STARLIGHT,   NOIR

L-R: ILLUSION,   FESTIVE,   MISTLETOE,   GLITZ & GLAMOUR,  

GOLD RIBBON,   TINSEL

Now, that looks much BETTER, right?! :D

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SLEEK BAD GIRL

SLEEK BAD GIRL is really an amazing palette - I really love the deep, intense shades BUT I do notice I have a fair amount of fallout with BAD GIRL.  So I am a little more careful when using this palette. But the effort is worth it!

And here are the swatches of the palette, dry, with NO BASE, on NC43-45 skintone:

L-R: INNOCENCE,   GULLIBLE,   BLADE,   GUNMETAL,  

UNDERGROUND,   NOIR

L-R: INTOXICATED,   ENVY,   OBNOXIOUS,   ABYSS,  

TWILIGHT,   REBEL

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I liked this palette so much that I used it several times in a row! Here are just a couple of eye-looks I came up with :)

Here, I applied OBNOXIOUS all over the lid and then applied INTOXICATED on the crease and upwards. 

(The eyeliner on the lower lash line is L'OREAL HIP CREAM LINER in TEAL)

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Here, I applied UNDERGROUND all over the lid and then patted on GUNMETAL to lighten the lid shade a little.  Using both UNDERGROUND and GUNMETAL together brought out some blue shimmer (in the slightly blurred 2nd shot) which I didn't notice when I swatched either of the shades separately.  I have TWILIGHT on the crease and upwards. 

(The eyeliner on the lower lashline is MAC PEARLGLIDE INTENSE EYELINER in BLACK RUSSIAN)

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Here, I applied TWILIGHT all over my lids.  Then I applied ENVY and lightened it out a touch with INTOXICATED on the crease and above.

(The eyeliner on the lowerlash line is URBAN DECAY 24/7 EYELINER in RANSOM)

In all 3 looks, I used:

EYESHADOW BASE: TOO FACED SHADOW INSURANCE

BROWBONE HIGHLIGHT: MAC GOLDMINE

EYELINER: KISS ME HEAVY ROTATION LIQUID EYELINER

MASCARA: HOURGLASS FILM NOIR FULL SPECTRUM MASCARA in ONYX (Review forthcoming!)

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That's all for this entry; hope you found the swatches useful :) Have a good week ahead!

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DISCLAIMER: I am neither affliated to SLEEK MAKEUP or HOURGLASS COSMETICS.  All SLEEK MAKEUP products were purchased with my own money.  HOURGLASS COSMETICS products were sent to me for consideration :)