Makeup Monday: Ulta-Exclusive LORAC Multidimensional Beauty Kit

I was so excited to get this when I ordered it, and then things got crazy and I never got to finish my post.... I'm still excited about it, actually, and I've had it for a couple months already.

LORAC Multidimensional Beauty collection. This is an Ulta exclusive and I'm pretty sure it's limited edition. In case you can't tell from this picture, the box is HOLO:

See?! How cool is that?? I know it's just a cardboard box, but it's a hologram cardboard box and you know what a sucker I am for good packaging.

But the outer carton isn't the only thing that's holo-esque... This kit comes with a metal-plated makeup bag that is pretty much the most amazing thing ever. My only complaint is that it's not big enough to carry as a purse. I took a million pictures.

The left hand side of the bag has a rainbow pattern that's always visible, but the right hand side has no stripes.

It changes colors depending on the angle. It's mesmerizing to look at. See down toward the opposite edge of the bag, where it looks like it's lighting up aqua? It looks even better in real life. Holo makeup bag. Gaaaaah so awesome....


Okay, enough about the bag already. Here's what's inside:

Three full sized eyeshadows in 3D-Luxe, 3D-Mension and 3D-Licious plus an Ulta exclusive shade of LORAC 3D Multiplex lipgloss in Ulta Glam.

3D-Luxe is a light ivory with peachy tinted duochrome and subtle iridescent sparkle, 3D-Mension is a plain metallic bronze and 3D-Licious is a MAC Club dupe (red toned brown with green-blue duochrome shimmer).

3D-Luxe is my favorite one... it's so gorgeous, none of my pictures come close to capturing how beautiful it is. It has such delicate iridescent sparkle and just a faint sheen of duochrome across the color...

If you enlarge these, you might be able to pick up a little of the depth of the color. You sorta have to see it in person to fully appreciate it.

The Ulta Glam shade of Multiplex gloss is just as mesmerizing... I think the purchase of the kit was worth it just for this beauty:
Ulta Glam is a copper rose shimmer base, sheer, with strong brassy gold duochrome at one angle and darker pink-rose duochrome at another angle plus lots of iridescent microglitter that also adds to the color-shiftiness. The best part? There's BLUE MICROGLITTER. Blue!!! Glitter!!


Swatched dry over bare skin: 3D-Luxe, 3D-Mension and 3D-Licious shadows and Ulta Glam Multiplex 3D gloss. You can kinda see the blue sparkles in the gloss, right?

This also came with a gift with purchase that I thought was pretty neat:

A sample of LORAC's new Multiplex 3D Lashes mascara that comes on a holo card, in a tube with holo text. Yep, no denying it, I'm easily swayed by how much holo foil comes on the package... The mascara itself it's something I'd normally use. I like the curved plastic pointy bristle brush, but the formula doesn't add any volume. It makes your lashes super long and defined, but doesn't add any thickness. It kinda seems like it makes them curl like those old curling mascaras, but it could just be my imagination....

The formula on the shadows seems consistent with the other LORAC shadows I've tried. Like I've mentioned before, I'm really new to LORAC shadows and I'm still not sure if this is the normal quality and texture or not. The texture is disturbingly soft and loose- I say disturbing because it seems like it loosens so much product every time I touch it with my brush that I could use the entire shadow in a week. Very loosely pressed, soft and powdery. Medium pigmentation and payoff, not super pigmented or opaque. Suitable for wet use to intensify the payoff and color. I'd recommend wet use if you like your colors intense like I do. They don't seem to wear very well due to the super soft light texture; they tend to fade a bit and wear off by the end of the day (I always use primer and it behaves the same over all primers I tried). The colors themselves are pretty and go well together and they look light and luminous on.

The gloss is amazing. I love the Multiplex formula. It's smooth and silky, lasts a reasonable amount of time and tastes/smells amazing. Is it lychee? I have no idea what the scent is, but it's light and fruity and soft and I really really like it. The Ulta Glam shade in this kit does not disappoint. It's super duochrome but also full of microglitter so it's sparkly on top of being duochrome. The only downside is that the glitter is kinda gritty.

I love this kit. I really hope LORAC keeps doing the whole multiplex 3D theme. They enable me in my duochrome addiction... Just wish they'd lower the price on their Multiplex glosses!

This is gone from the Ulta website already, but I've seen plenty of kits still in stock in-store recently, so you should be able to find one if you have an Ulta nearby. The whole kit is only $35 so it's an excellent value- a Multiplex gloss alone is $22 (and no, I won't stop complaining about the price) and a LORAC shadow single is $19.

Layering Nail Of The Day plus Random Eye of the Day!

Need to take a little break from doing spring/summer collection reviews. I still have a lot of things left to post until I'm all caught up, but right now I just want to post something fun and random. How about a manicure and an eye look from last week? I really liked these...


Nubar Ruby Red Glitz (one coat) over BB Couture Laced Corset (two coats). I started out with Laced Corset... It was the last thing I swatched (hope to have that review finished soon XD) and I left it on because I liked the color so much. But then I was thinking... It needs more sparkle. I wanted red. I actually wanted to do Revlon Slipper over it, but I couldn't find it. Ruby Red Glitz caught my eye and I decided on that. It turned out to be exactly what I wanted. The purple still shows through the red sheer base of Ruby Red Glitz, and the glitter in Ruby is sparse enough to not completely cover the base with chunky opaque glitter. Dare I say... this combination even looks a little 230-ish? Of course, nowhere near being a dupe or anything, but that red sparkle on top of purple with hints of gold sure makes me think of 230.

This is the eye look I was playing with last week:

This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Wet n Wild Blue Had Me At Hello Palette:
Left Side Browbone shade on lid
Left Side Eyelid shade on outer lid
Left Side Definer shade in crease
Right Side Eyelid on lower lashline
Urban Decay 24/7 Shadow Pencil in Clash on lower lashline (as a base for Wet n Wild Eyelid)
Stila Stay All Day Waterproof Liner in Indigo
Cargo Highlight from the Warm Neutral Essential palette as highlight
Revlon Grow Luscious Mascara

And hey... My brows are almost entirely grown back now! That took a while.

I've been doing variations on this look for the past couple weeks, trying it with different colors of upper and lower liner... Adding glitter... I love that Wet n Wild Blue Had Me At Hello palette. Those shadows are amazing, Except... like Color Club Nothing But Truffle, this palette has accidentally given itself a new name due to the filename of a photo of it: Blue Had Meat Hello. Blue had meat, hello? Blue had Meat Hello? It's stuck. I can't help myself.

Makeup Monday: Cargo Voyages Gloss Collection Spring 2011: Voyages Gloss Set

While I was flipping through the new Ulta sale flier this week, I noticed that there was a new Cargo Voyages kit for summer in there. It's almost time for the summer collection and I still haven't finished posting the spring collection that I have to review! Eep! Well, there's still time.. here it is!

The Cargo Voyages Gloss Collection is a set of five travel-sized glosses in cute travel-themed packaging.


The five shades are:

Serengeti, which was in the Safari kit as well. It's a sheer peachy shade with microglitter.


Tokyo, which is a sheer shimmer-free warm rosy pink.

Las Vegas, which is a sheer champagne shimmer with golden microglitter.


Morocco, which is a sheer plum mauve with microglitter.



Paris, a sheer rose mauve with frosty shimmer.

Swatched:


Paris, Las Vegas, Tokyo, Morocco and Serengeti. You may need to enlarge these to see the pretty microglitter. Las Vegas and Morocco are especially sparkly.

The formula on these is smooth and thin. It's slick feeling and the glitter shades are a touch gritty. It's not large, chunky glitter, it's very very tiny, but you can still feel it if you rub your lips together. Due to the thinness of the formula, it's not a very long-lasting gloss.

There's no particular strong or detectable taste or scent. Once they're on your lips, there's practically no scent at all and only a light unflavored gloss base taste.

While the gloss formula is nice and the colors are pretty, there are a few downsides for me.

The most noticeable flaw is the size of the gloss. They're tiny. There's an optical illusion created by the thickness of the plastic tube that makes them appear larger and fuller. However, when the wand is removed, you can see that the tube is barely half full of gloss. These each contain 0.45g / 0.015oz.

On one hand, this is a flaw if you are expecting something bigger. On the other hand, this is convenient if you bought these for travel. They're small enough to take on a plane, they're tiny enough to fit in a pocket, and you could conceivably finish them during the trip and not have to take them back with you.

The other downside, for me at least, is that the colors are very sheer. They add sparkle and shine, but not much color. Only a sheer tint.

And, lastly, again, this is my personal preference, but... They're not scented! Plain, unscented gloss is boring for me, I'm a little disappointed that they're so plain.

This set is priced at a very affordable $22 for the five. But, I must mention... that's $22 for only 2.25g / 0.075oz of product. For comparison, a single MAC Lipglass is 4.8g / .17oz and costs $14.50. Basically, you get half the amount of product as one MAC Lipglass for $7.50 more. I think what you're paying for here is the travel-sized convenience.

So, to recap: Cute package that looks like a postcard, tiny travel sized sheer gloss, good texture but not long lasting, no scent.

This set is cute and the colors are nice, but it's not as good of a deal as that awesome Safari kit from this spring Voyages collection. I'd recommend that kit just for the gorgeous Coral Beach Beach Blush alone. Either way, both the kits are still available from CargoCosmetics.com.

(This was sent to me for review.)

Makeup Monday: Anastasia Illumin8 Eyeshadow with Youthful Synergy Complex

That name's quite a mouthful, isn't it? Actually, I think the full name is Anastasia Beverly Hills Illumin8 with Youthful Synergy™ Complex Eyeshadow Palette. I get winded just typing that. Despite the epically long name, this eyeshadow is pretty awesome.

The thing that draws me in about this shadow is that it's both eyeshadow and anti-aging skincare at the same time. You can read about some of the claims right on the front flap of the packaging:

It does say that most results were seen after four weeks of use. That means, in order to properly test and review these, I'd have to wear the same eyeshadow for four weeks straight! You all know me well enough by now to know that's pretty much and impossible task for me. After all, my favorite thing is variety. But, I did pretty well. I had enough of a variety of colors that I was able to make it the whole four weeks wearing mostly the Anastasia shadows. More on that after I show you the gorgeous colors.

I tried two palettes, #4 and #5. The #4 and #5 palettes are brand new for 2011.

The front of the palette is this stunning mirrored silver with the Anastasia Beverly Hills logo printed on the top side and a regular label sticker on the underside. Reminds me a bit of the ModelCo holiday palette from a few years back... anyone remember that?

When you open the lid, you're greeted by this:

This is the #4 palette. It contains five shadows (white with gold glitter/shimmer, drab olive shimmer, duochrome purple/blue shimmer, lime green shimmer, deep green brown shimmer) and a double sided brush which is actually of decent and usable quality. I mention the quality of the brush because often the brushes that come with palettes are cheap and useless. This one's a little on the scratchy side, but I was able to use it to do my whole look.


You may like to enlarge this to see the shimmer in the shadows and the duochrome effect on that marvelous purple.


Here are the #4 palette's shadows in order, swatched dry over bare skin (no base). I believe the shadows are named, but the names are only numbers, 1-5, in the order that they appear in the palette. The colors in this palette are so utterly gorgeous on my brown eyes... I'm in love with it.


Now for the #5 palette:

A pale peach-pink with large glitter/shimmer, a metallic bronze, a deep teal shimmer, a metallic brown and a dark blackened navy shimmer.


You can see the sparkle in the pink best in this picture. Like always, click to enlarge and see it in full detail.


The #5 palette, shades 1-5, swatched dry on bare skin (no base). You can just barely see that pink on the far left; it's nearly the same color as my skin. Only the contrasting warm tone and slight sparkle gives it away!

I mention that I swatched these dry only because the company suggests that they can be worn wet or dry. I have not used them wet, the pigmentation and payoff was good enough that I just didn't need to add an extra step!

The texture of the eyeshadows is slightly varied, but overall nice. The pigmentation on most of the shades is excellent. The least pigmented shades are the teal and navy in the #5 palette; I needed a to layer them a few times to build a good, opaque layer of color. The rest of the shades are marvelous.

About half the shades in these palettes are smooth and the other half have what I can only describe as a creamy-scratchy texture. They feel smooth and silky but at the same time have a little bit of a roughness to them, which is odd. It may be due to the diamond core powder that's included in the formula for these shadows.

Like most shadows, there's a little fallout when applied with a brush, but nothing significant. It's mostly just with the darker shades as they seem to be more powdery textured than the others. The blending on these is a dream. They blend effortlessly and seamlessly. I'm very impressed with how well even the dark navy blends without streaking.

The only major downside for me is that the beautiful bright lime shade in the #4 palette seems to fade and dull after wearing it for only an hour or so. It doesn't disappear or fade away completely, but it does lose its edge. It doesn't look as bright and fresh as when it's newly applied.

Here are a few looks I did using the palettes:


This is using all the shades in the # palette, all over a base of Too Faced Shadow Insurance. The lime shade on the lid, the olive in the crease with the dark green-brown in the inner crease to deepen it and the blue/purple duochrome on the lower lashline. I tried the white and gold shade on my browbone as a highlight but it was too white and frosty so I wiped most of it off. Instead, I dabbed a tiny amount onto the very center of my lid, just above the pupil, to add a bit of a dimensional effect. I used Cargo Khaki eyeliner to do the subtle line along the lashes.


Here's a slightly different spin on the same look:


The difference here is that I added my beloved winged liner (Stila Stay All Day Waterproof Eye Liner in Dark Brown), used only the purple on the lower lashline and didn't use any of the white.


This look uses the #5 palette over a base of Too Faced Shadow Insurance. It's the bronze shade on the lid, the teal in the crease and on the lower lashline, the navy used very lightly in the outer V just to deepen it and the pale pink on the browbone. The liner is Stila Glitter Liner in Kitten.


I also did a look using the #5 palette to make a smoky eye with only the pale pink and the dark navy. I did the pale pink all over and the dark navy in the crease and upper and lower lashlines, smudged and smoked out to create the typical 'smoky' look. Unfortunately, I don't think I took a picture of that one. Either that, or it's lost within the bowels of my hard drive...

So, what about all those skin-enhancing, line-smoothing, anti-aging claims? Well... to be honest... I'm undecided!

Since I don't have any lines or wrinkles yet, I can't actually say whether or not using these shadows for four weeks improved them. I don't really have hooded lids so I can't speak on that either. However, the rest of the claims seem to be true (my comments in pink):

Clinically proven results:
Clinical result reported at 1 hour is:
• 29% increase in skin hydration. (I don't know how I would even measure this, so I'm not sure on this one.)

Clinical results reported at 4 weeks are:
• Appearance of fine lines and wrinkles on upper eyelid and brow area are reduced. (I have no wrinkles or fine lines just yet so no results observed.)
• Appearance of upper eyelid puffiness is reduced. (I did notice this result. My eyes have been a little puffy lately and this did actually help reduce that a little.)

Consumer test results after 4 weeks of use:
70% noticed reduction of the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles on the eyelid
77% noticed eye area appears illuminated (I don't know if I'd used the word 'illuminated', but my eye area did look brighter without makeup.)
83% noticed eyelid appears smoother (My eyelids were smoother looking after using these.)
70% noticed eyelid appears firmer (I noticed this result, too. Both with shadow on and without.)
68% noticed hooded lid appears less visible
83% noticed overall eye area appears lighter/brighter (I think this one can piggyback on the second one, but my eyelids/eye area looked less dark and shadowed/bruised without makeup after using these for 4 weeks.)

Clinical test results after 4 weeks this eye area appears:
• Firmer
• Smoother
• Lighter
• Less Puffy
(Yep, yep, yep, yep)

Results may vary, though significant results were seen after 1 hour of application.

I gotta say, I'm always extremely skeptical when it comes to products that make claims, but this actually did do what it said for the most part. My eyelids looked and felt better without makeup after consistently using these. Nothing crazy dramatic, and probably not noticeable by anyone other than me, but I did see a difference. I liked the lightening/brightening effect the best, as darkness in my eye area is one of my main problems. But, like I said, no wrinkles yet (*knock on wood*) so I can't say whether or not it helped in that area.

After using these, I would definitely buy them again. I'd probably pick only #4 because the colors are just so absolutely perfect on me. I actually wanted to wear it for a week straight. Seriously, it's gorgeous. It has purple duochrome and lime green, what more could a brown eyed girl want?

These shadow palettes are marginally pricier than other peer/midrange brands at $40 a piece for five shades. You do get a rather large amount of shadow for the price, though. According to the manufacturer's ingredient list, each single/duo is 10g/0.063oz. If I'm understanding the wording correctly, that's pretty much a full size shadow in each pan. For comparison, a full-sized NARS shadow is just slightly larger at 0.07oz and costs $23 for one. An Urban Decay Urban Ammo palette contains ten .03oz shadows (slightly more product than Anastasia's four .06oz shadows) and costs $38.

So, fairly reasonable price, good amount of shadow, nice packaging, decent brush, good color payoff, pretty, well-coordinated colors and the lovely added bonus of a skin-improving formula. I really, really love that they actually do something to improve your skin while you're wearing them instead of just sitting there doing nothing. More brands should follow Anastasia's lead and make anti-aging shadows. I just love products that work overtime.

These are available at Sephora and the Anastasia Beverly Hills website.

(These were sent to me for review.)