Review: Sydney Grace Pressed Eyeshadows

Hi everyone! Back in early August, I spoke about my experience hauling from Sydney Grace during their Christmas in July sale. After using their products for two months, I am ready to review of the products that I hauled! This review will include swatches as well as some eye looks.

My haul consisted of all pressed eyeshadows, so that’s what I will be reviewing today. I also received a mystery bag which was filled with more random products, and I will be reviewing the products included in that bag in my next review. In the meantime, read on to see what I think about Sydney Grace’s pressed shadows!

Eyeshadow I’ve Forgotten I Own

Hi everyone! Lately, I’ve been feeling really unmotivated and find myself not being able to focus on anything in particular. All this extra time of doing nothing has given me a lot of time to dig around my makeup collection, swatching and playing with everything. Going through my drawers, I found a lot of eyeshadows I’ve kind of forgotten about. Products like blushes and highlighters, I don’t really neglect because I cycle through them often, but I have a lot of eyeshadows that I don’t really use regularly. After going through a bunch of them, I wanted to share what I found on my blog.

Review: Too Faced Just Peachy Mattes Eyeshadow Palette

Hi everyone! Today’s post is a review of the Too Faced Just Peachy Mattes palette. This palette was released last August so I’m more than a little late to the game, but that’s okay! When this palette first came out, I really wanted it, but after sleeping on it for a few weeks, I decided I wasn’t going to get it. As pretty as the palette was, I know my own taste in eye looks, and I knew I wasn’t going to get much use out of a bunch of red-based shades.

Fast-forward to this July, and I saw that this palette was part of the Sephora Weekly Wow sale. At half the original price, I was happy to add the palette to my collection. I was still a little skeptical on how often I would use the palette, but at least I wouldn’t be paying full price for a palette I might rarely touch. Read on to see what I think about this palette that I was unsure about!

August Low-Buy

Today’s post is on everything I picked up in the month of August, and to share how I did in my August low-buy! I know today is only the 30th, but I know I won’t be picking anything up in the last two days off the month, so it’s safe to do this post!

LipstickontheLake Giveaway Goodies

Recently, Robyn from Lipstickonthelake started self-hosting her blog, and she hosted a giveaway as a celebration. I was so pleased and surprised when she emailed me saying that I was the giveaway winner! Go check out Robyn’s blog if you aren’t already following it – not only is her blog now self-hosted, but she also just reached her one year blogging anniversary. Thank you for the generous giveaway, Robyn, and a big congratulations to you!

The prize for the giveaway was an Urban Decay Naked Palette of my choice. I already own the Naked 1 palette, which I absolutely love and is my fall-back palette on days I don’t know what to use. I was trying to decide between Naked 2 and 3, and ended up choosing Naked 2. As much as I love the pink/rosy shades in Naked 3, I have a feeling I’ll get more use out of the taupey shades in Naked 2, plus Robyn said that one was her favourite.

Anyways, today I just wanted to share some quick pics of what came in the mail! Swatches will come in a separate post at a later date 🙂

Engagement Shoot Makeup Look

I have mostly either been doing makeup posts or wedding posts, but today’s post is both of these topics combined! We just had our engagement shoot this past Sunday. Since we got engaged by the water, we wanted to reflect that and decided to do the shoot at a lake in the Rocky Mountains.

A few months ago, our wedding photographer asked us if we were okay doing the shoot at 6 in the morning on a Sunday, since apparently the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset is considered “golden hour” for photography. Without thinking, we said, “Yeah, sure, whatever makes the photos look the most flattering!” We are both morning people, but when it actually came down to it the morning of, it was a little tough. Since we had to be at the lake by 6 am and the drive out there is roughly an hour and a half, I couldn’t get my hair and makeup done that morning since no one would be available to do for me at 3:00am (lol). With hair, I needed serious help as I am completely useless with doing my own hair. I got my hair done Saturday afternoon and basically tried to not sleep on it that night.

2016 Mid-Year Favourites

I am the type of person that always goes back to the same product over and over again, and don’t use enough new products on a daily basis to justify doing a monthly, or even quarterly favourites. Hence, I thought that doing a mid-year favourites post for the first half of the year would be more appropriate. I discovered a lot of new products these first six months of 2016, a lot of which I liked, but not all of them I found myself going back to over and over again. In this post, I wanted to focus mostly on new products I discovered in the first half of the year that I reach for constantly, instead of older favourites which have become holy grail status for me. I also didn’t want to include anything TOO recent (purchases from May or June) because I wanted to give myself more time to try them out – if I love any of them, they will end up in my July-December 2016 Favourites!

Review: Teeez Cosmetics Products

While I was on vacation in Toronto, I visited the Hudson’s Bay in the Eaton Centre and found my way to the Teeez counter. The counter is located in The Bay’s Beauty Underground section, which features many indie or hard-to-find brands. The SA who was helping me at the counter was really great, and gave me a solid background on the company. Teeez is a brand from the Netherlands, where a large majority of their colour makeup is a part of limited edition collections with limited edition packaging. They launch a new collection every season, and once the collection is gone, you will never get the same shade or the same packaging again. The idea of that makes me panic and want to buy everything before they’re gone!

I found the packaging of this brand to be a little edgy with all the colourful abstract graphics. At the time I was at the counter, the Sugar Rush collection was out. All of the packaging for this collection was mirrored, so it was difficult to take pictures of the exterior of the compacts without catching myself in the reflection!

 

Vacation Beauty Haul, Part 2

Today’s blog post is a continuation of Tuesday’s post, which was Part 1 of my Toronto Haul. In the last post, I mentioned the purchases I made at Sephora, Muji, and H&M Beauty. Today covers the last half of the trip, and features products from Inglot, NYX and The Bay.

Vacation Beauty Haul, Part 1

First of all, I want to apologize for disappearing for over a month. I hate using the excuse of being busy and blah blah blah, but between hell breaking loose at work (we did major layoffs last month) and stepping up the wedding planning, my brain has been too scattered to blog. Anyways, I’m really hoping to get back into a regular blogging routine.

Part of the reason why I disappeared was because I went on vacation this month to Toronto and Montreal – more on our wonderful trip in a separate blog! Today is all about the hauling I did while I was there. I was very happy with what I bought (except for two items which I will be talking about), and I feel like I didn’t go TOO crazy. With that being said, I still had to separate my haul into two separate posts, otherwise this post would be way too wordy. My makeup low-buy budget was $40.68, and ahem, I may have blown that budget a little. And by a little, I mean a lot.