Illamasqua - Human Fundamentalism - Lips

Of the four shades of lipstick available as part of Illamasqua's Human Fundamentalism collection, I bought two & already owned a third.

There's also an additional Illamasqua lippie being thrown in here. It isn't part of the collection, but I thought I'd add it to this post.

First up; Apocalips.

A stunning matte teal lipstick. I've never seen one quite like Apocalips, as I have a thing for teal, I had to try it. For such an unusual lipstick colour, it's surprisingly flattering.
With a lot of matte lipsticks, I've found they can be quite drying, this isn't a problem with Apocalips. It's also hugely pigmented; you won't have to pile this on to achieve a good result.

Illamasqua Haul - Theatre of the Nameless

Small haul from Illamasqua's latest collection, two of the Pure Pigments, one of the lipglosses & the new Masquara.

Pure Pigment in Beguile

Looking at the website swatches doesn't do Beguile justice. It looks like a shimmery white, but in person it's so much more. Reminiscent of the Static pure pigment, whereas Static has purple & pink shimmer, Beguile has green & pink shimmer. The shimmer is smaller than that in Static, so this one also makes a great highlighter shade (it looks great over blusher for a really glam night-out look).

Beguile

Kat Von D - Foiled Love Lipstick in Valentine

As soon as I saw this on the Sephora site, I fell in love. Valentine is described as being a metallic hot pink with iridescent micro glitter.

The packaging is stunning. As with previous KVD lippies, it has a beautiful rose design on the lid & the end of the tube is clear so you can see the shade of lipstick. Unlike the other lippies, this comes in a metallic silver tube.

MAC - Surf, Baby! - Small Haul

I finally managed to get to a local MAC counter to check out the rest of the Surf, Baby! collection. I came away with the two eye shadows I wanted to look at, Surf USA & Swell Baby, and one of the Suntints lip balms.

I wasn't overly taken with the other shadow colours. I already have Saffron, Short Shorts wasn't on the display stand & Sun Blonde had the unfortunate effect of looking like a yellow bruise on my skin when I swatched it. I was, however, really taken with My Paradise Cheek Powder. I didn't pick it up, which is something I'll probably come to regret since it was a really nice peach shade.

MAC - Quite Cute

A very small haul from this collection - just the quad & the screaming pink goodness that is Candy Yum Yum lipstick.

Although I'm not huge on pastels as a rule, I do rather like this quad. I've only used it once since I got it, but can see it getting more use for those days when I feel like doing something a little more understated.

The four shades in the quad are Moshi Moshi, Goody Goody Gum Drop, Boycrazy & Azuki Bean. Although there's no matte shade, it's not all extreme shimmer: Goody Goody Gum Drop is a Satin finish.

Kat Von D - Adora Lipstick

It's rare that I find myself lusting after a lippie, usually I'm too busy swooning over eye shadows. Adora captured my attention, however. I'm more of a burgundy-lip girl, I feel more comfortable with a darker lip if I'm not doing a nude lip.

Adora is a beautiful, bright, metallic red. It may well be that it was the metallic aspect that drew me to it. As far as the colour goes, it's a much warmer red than I usually wear. That's not to say that it's verging on orange,  it isn't. It's just not a bright, cool-toned red.

So far, I've experimented with a couple of lip-liners in tandem with Adora. Brick & Redd (both by MAC) are the ones I've tried thus far. I preferred the way Brick looked, purely because Redd is a warmer liner & it made Adora warmer still. It did look very pretty, but not for my preferences.
Cherry & Burgundy (MAC, again) are two more that I'm going to try. Cherry because it's cooler toned, Burgundy to darken the overall colour.