2 recent FOTDs featuring my beloved Sleek iDivine palettes

It's been forever since I posted an FOTD--mostly because I haven't been wearing a whole lot of makeup lately. We all that cosmetics + intense heat = eyes like Tammy Faye Bakker on a crying jag, so I've been opting mostly for either a completely nekkid face or just mascara + lip balm. 

But my hunger for color got the best of me this weekend and I busted out my Sleek i-Divine palettes and went to town. This is what happens when I go on a DVR RuPaul's Drag U viewing binge. I am absolutely endlessly inspired by drag queens, their astounding makeup wizardry & their ability to use color, contour, light, shadow--and of course glitter--to whip up a wholly different persona for themselves to inhabit. Oh if I only had those kinds of skills...

Saturday's Look:

                                          

                                          

                                                  

~~PRODUCTS USED~~

Face:

E.L.F. Translucent Mattifying powder

E.L.F. HD powder

NYC Color Wheel Allover Bronze Glow

NYC Color Wheel Pink Cheek Glow

E.L.F. Golden Bronzer (as highlight)

Eyes:

Garnier Anti-Dark Circle eye roller

NYX HD eyeshadow base

Sleek Curacao i-Divine palette 

Sleek Ultra Matte Vol 1 i-Divine palette

Maybelline Lasting Drama gel liner

Wet N Wild ColorIcon shadow single in Panther

Jordana Extreme Volumizing Mascara

Wet N Wild Acapulco Glow bronzer (to blend out shadow and highlight browbone)

NYC brow kit

Lips:

L'Oreal Colour Riche Audacious Amazon lipstick (from last year's Project Runway LE collection)

 Sunday's Look:

~~PRODUCTS USED~~

Face:

Physicians Formula Healthy Wear Powder foundation in Translucent Light

E.L.F. HD Powder

NYC Colorwheel in Pink Cheek Glow

NYC Colorwheel in Allover Bronze Glow

Wet N Wild Bronzer as highlight

Eyes:

Garnier Anti-dark circle eye roller

NYX HD eyeshadow base

Sleek Curacao & Ultra Matte Vol 2 i-Divine Palettes

Wet N Wild ColorIcon shadow single in Panther

Jordana Extreme Volumizing mascara

NYC brow kit

Lips:

L'Oreal Colour Riche Audacious Amazon

Revlon Colorburst Lipgloss in Decadent

Who are your glam idols & makeup inspirations?

who's got 2 thumbs and just got over the most gnarly summer cold ever???

ME!!! And to celebrate, here's a nice, colorful FOTD:

(click to enlarge)

Yes I coordinated my makeup to my outfit and hair yet again. Also, you can see I'm off my neutral kick and strung out on color yet again. I know I've shown this color combo on here before, but this time,  I did it with different shadows--namely a bunch of shadows from my beloved Sleek palettes. Oh how I lovez me some Sleek. Too bad I live on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Thank you Ebay for helping me get my hands on these amaze-balls UK pretties!! At this point, I own 6 Sleek i-Divine shadow palettes: the Acid Palette; both the bright and dark matte palettes; the Monaco palette; the original palette & the Curacao Palette...and word in the blogosphere is Sleek is releasing a new "Glory" palette on July 4th to celebrate the 2012 Olympic games in London. And you bet I'll  be scouring the interwebz for that one, too! For now I will just have to drool over Musical Houses' swatches here.

Anyway, onto products used:

Face:

Wet N Wild Tinted moisturizer

Physicians Formula Healthy Wear powder foundation

L'Oreal Charming Cockatoo blush (from the LE project runway collection--which you can track down on Ebay--damn you Ebay!!)

NYC Color Wheel mosaic powder in Bronze Glow

Femme Couture Baked highlighting powder

Eyes:

Garnier anti-dark circle eye-roller

NYX HD shadow base

yellow shade from Sleek bright matte palette

lime green shade from Sleek bright matte palette

shimmering green shade from Sleek Monaco palette

Wet N Wild bronzzer Acapulco glow as brow highlight

Maybelline Lasting Drama gel liner in black

Maybelline Falsies Flared mascara

NYC brow kit

ELF brow gel

Lips:

Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Lovesick

So do you have any overseas beauty loves that force you to resort to Ebay in order to get your fix?

yesterday's FOTD featuring Sleek Acid palette

After I did my Sleek Acid Palette swatch post yesterday, I created a simple look using a few of the shadows but I haven't had a chance to post it til now. 

I decided on a simple look only using 3 of the shadows because the shadows were pretty difficult to work with. They applied very patchy--even with primer and NYX JEP in Milk, I had a hard time just getting even coverage. I had to pack on the shadows really heavily and every time I tried to blend, they would just disappear. I ended up having to do a ton of spot touch ups with additional primer  and shadow applied with my ELF small precision brush. I gotta say, though, when I was out I had tons of people oohing and aahhing over this look and asking me where on earth I got such bright shadows...the compliments were nice but were they worth the pain in the ass application? Still trying to decide...

(btw yes I am wearing my fuzzy pink bathrobe with froggies all over it. I didn't mean for it to coordinate with my hair/makeup lol but I kinda like the effect...

FACE

Garnier anti-dark circle eye-roller

Almay Clear Complexion foundation, powder and concealor

ELF Studio blush in Pink Passion

Wet N Wild Bronzzer in Acapulco Glow

EYES

NYX HD Eyeshadow base

NYX JEP in Milk

Sleek Acid Palette (the neon green, yellow and white shades)

Jordana Fabuliner

Wet N Wild ColorIcon in white (water line)

The Falsies Flared mascara

BROWS:

ELF brow kit in medium

ELF clear mascara/brow-setting gel

Lips: Maybelline Baby Lips (the peppermint one in the bright green tube whose name I am totally blanking on right now)

Milani Haute Flash lipgloss (The LE version) in In a Flash

Do you think the application hassle is worth it if the color of the product in question is freaking off the hook?

My Sleek Acid palette came!

A while ago, I tweeted that The Hubz scored me a Sleek Acid palette on Ebay. Well, it finally got here and, despite being up to my eye-balls in dirty diapers and dishes and laundry (gross, I know), I HAD to make time to do some swatches!

Of course, my camera had a melt-down in the face of all the fluorescence, so the pics show the shadows only about half as neon as they are in person...

palette outdoors natural light no flash

palette indoors natural light no flash

See how the camera, coupled with my lack of photography skills just sucks all the awesome right out of these? The indoor shot shows how these shadows glow a little better but seriously, in person, these shadows GLOW, like you half expect them to be frickin radioactive & hot to the touch or something.

Swatch of the top row outdoors in the shade. Column 1 is no primer, column 2 is over NYX HD eyeshadow base.

Outdoors in the sun.

indoors.

The indoor shot gives you a better idea of how bright these are in real life--it's 1980s neon all over my arm. Now I'm not gonna lie. These shadows were a pain in the butt to work with. With the exception of the 2 blue shades, which are both shimmers, the other 4 (orange, yellow and white matte and pearly magenta) shades are pretty stiff and it took some work to build them up to the opacity you see on my arm. But, if neon shadows are anything like neon polishes (which are notoriously hard to work with), then I guess it could have been much worse. I do have to say I WAS able to get all  shades in this row to look pretty much the same as they do in the pan. Well, except for that white shade, which was pretty much useless but, honestly, I didn't want this palette for the white, so I don't really care if it is good or not. 

Swatches of 2nd row of shadows--can you guess which ones are over primer and which ones are not?

The second row of shadows had a lot of the same issues that the first row has: the stiffness and the heavy application required to get the color to look like it does in the pan. The hot pink shade in particular is insanely hard. I basically had to scrape and rake the brush over it to get any color out of it and although it is a vibrant neon pink in the pan, it looks deeper and less neon on the skin--which was a major disappointment for me. The purple, pink, and bright green are all matte while the army green has a slight pearlyness to it and the silver is a shimmer. All the shimmers in this palette are much easier to work with--but that is usually the case with most shadows as far as I've experienced, so I'm not going to take points off for that...

Over all, I'm glad to have this palette in my collection. I simply have never seen shadows this bright. The neon orange, yellow and green alone are worth owning this palette for--also the pearly magenta shade is really gorgeous and the shimmery blues are nice too. Really, the only true duds are the white and the hot pink shades but I have other whites and hot pinks in other palettes so I can deal with the ones in this palette sucking. Also, I haven't tried using these shadows for a look, so I can't form a full opinion on them just yet...

If you want this palette in the US, you'll have to get a friend overseas to hook you up or you can do like my husband did and snatch one off Ebay. So far as I know, though the Sleek cosmetics company DOES have a website and does have international shipping, they cannot ship this particular palette to the US because it contains some fluorescent pigments that are not approved by the FDA here (please feel free to correct me if I am wrong)...I don't know about you, but I kinda like the idea of having a little bit of contraband in my makeup stash. Now lets see if the FDA police come a'knockin on my door to snatch my Sleek away...