Milani Amore Matte Metallic Lip Crème in The Ultimatte

I have to say I simply love the new metallic matte lipsticks that are beginning to make their way to shops! This one is called The Ultimatte, and it's a Milani Amore Matte Metallic Lip Crème, what a mouthful! The shade is basically a cool dark pink with a metallic sheen. A simple and easy colour, and looks great with my skin tone. The product looks a bit darker in the tube, but on my lips this is the perfect tone. They staying power is amazing, I barely have to touch it up once or twice during an eight hour work day with lunch.

The Ultimatte is one of the newest shades in the range. I picked mine up from a CVS at San Francisco. It looks like the Nordic online shops don't yet carry this shade, but I hope they will get the new ones, as I'd love to try the other shades as well. 

Lets see if my matte lipstick obsession will move towards the metallics, as more appear. So far I only have this one and a metallic Velvetine from Lime Crime, and both look gorgeous. While matte finishes allow you to shape your lips easily, the metallics make lips look more plump and are maybe a little bit less drying than mattes. I still love the liquid-to-matte formula that makes the lippie stay in place with no smudging or feathering. This is the best of both worlds!

Sugarpill Trinket

I'm a big fan of Sugarpill products, as you might already know. When they came out with liquid to matte lipsticks, I just had to try them out! I have so far tried three: Trinket (pictured here), Kim Chi and Strange Love, the lippie from Sugarpill's Valentine's set. Kim Chi was insanely hard to get to work with my skin tone, and Strange Love wasn't as dark on me as in the shop pictures, so those two have gone to new loving homes.

Sugarpill Trinket

Trinket has stuck, and maybe you can see why. The shade is very unique, a peachy pink with golden glitter. In my pics the lipstick is freshly applied, but the glitter becomes more obvious with wear. Trinket leans towards orange on me, but it just somehow works amazingly.

The golden glitter makes the shade appear more orange than the peachy base on its own. It's still not too orange, but just the perfect golden peachy blush shade that is hard to capture and describe. The formula is very nice, lightweight and stays forever. I'm not a big fan of the truffle scent, but it doesn't linger long on the lips, so I can live with that. For some reason the printed markings on my tube seem to fade very fast when I keep the lipstick in my bag or a pocket. They don't stand as much wear as what I'm used to with lippies. It's a minor issue, but makes the tube look a but untidy.

Trinket is very easy to apply and I don't need to touch it up in hours. It is a bit demanding on the eye make-up, I would maybe not do very colourful looks to go with it since Trinket is so bright. I find this to be a good thing, as I can just put on mascara and add Trinket and be all ready to go. A lovely product!

Kat von D Shade + Light Plum Quad and Two Looks

I had had my eye on the Shade + Light Plum Quad by Kat von D for some time, but since I didn't come across any lightly used previously owned ones, I picked one up from Debenhams at London. They had a wonderful counter with shiny black antique furniture and lovely sales reps.

I didn't catch that the the palette has actual bevelled letters on the cover until I took it out of the cardboard box. I love it!
I really like the shape of the palette and the lettering is gorgeous.

Plum shades usually work very well on my eyes, bringing out the green in them. For some reason this palette is quite tricky to get to show correctly in photos. I think it looks too red in my pictures, when IRL the two middle shades, especially the darker one, lean more towards purple.

The shades don't seem to have names, so I'll call them by their use. Base is a pinkish beige, a bit darker than my skin but not much. Define is a deep plum, less red than in my pictures, but still with red undertones to make it nicely bring out green eyes. Contour is much like a darker version of base, but slightly more taupe and cool. Highlight is a very light warm pink. All of the are matte.

I did two different looks with the palette so far. All of the shadows are very pigmented but are still easy to blend. With so much pigment you really need the base shade to use as help when blending out the edges of the darker shades. I often use the same brush and just lightly brush off the pigment to switch to another shade, but with these shades you really need to grab a new brush if you go for a lighter shade. The two middle ones are intense and dark.

Highlight on inner corner and brow bone, define at the crease and outer edge, contour on the lid and blended up. I blended the edges of contour with the base shade. The liner is Urban Decay Delinquent, a dark purple with some glitter.

 I'm still learning how to do make-up after the eye lift, but I'm pretty happy with my lids now! I don't have to bring the crease shadow as high up as I used to, so I have much more space for blending it out towards the brows. Also my lids is more visible, so it allows better use of light shades on the lid, instead of everything looking like a smoky eye when the hooded part of the lid fell over the moving lid to hide anything I put there.

Naturally I wanted to try a smoky eye next!

For the smoky eye look, I put higlight on the inner corner and brow bone. The I added countour on the whole lid and blended up with the help of base. I then put define on the lash line on both upper and lower lid, and just a touch in the crease. The lipstick is a metallic liquid-to-matte from Milani. The look is quite dark, but that's just how I like it!

Look how the scar is almost invisible already! It's been a little over three weeks since the operation.

I would have wished for the shades to be even more red, to have a more stunning effect on my eyes. I have one ancient pressed eyeshadow that is just the right shade of plum to make my eyes look vividly green, but I have not been able to find anything that does the same. I still do like the Kat von D quad, it's easy to use, the highlight shade is good (I mention this because for some reason palettes rarely have light enough highlight shades for my pale skin) and you can do many kinds of looks with the four shades. The pigment is amazing and the texture of the shades is great, they are easy to blend and all the shades work well together. While this palette may not be the one I pick up for party looks, it is a very nice palette for sculpted matte looks and matte smoky eyes. 

Green Liner

This is me on the first day of my life when eyeliner pencil actually stayed where I put it instead of transferring to my upper lid or smudging to the crease! When my eyes are open, the scars from the eye lift are hidden. I absolutely love it that I can finally do winged liner properly and use eyeliner pencils without them smudging! I have not yet put eyeshadow on, and the scars are a bit bumpy and red, but healing well.