Mirror & Makeup London Natural Organic Lipstick and Organic Lip Gloss - Review and Swatches

Hello lovelies! Today I am going to introduce you to a new all natural, halal, cruelty free cosmetics brand launched by UK based Pakistani entrepreneur, Ayesha. It is called Mirror and Makeup London and currently offers a nice range of essentials for nature loving makeup freaks like me. They were kind enough to send me a package so read on to learn what I discovered about their claims.

Brand Claims

Our mineral makeup is free from preservatives, fragrance, alcohols, oils and synthetic dyes. Our mineral makeup is Halal certified. All of our products are all natural, completely vegan, halal and cruelty free, and handmade in United Kingdom using only the best materials sourced from the most experienced suppliers!

Natural Organic Lipstick - Pink Lush

Ingredients

Ricinus Communis seed oil, Euphorbia Cerifera wax, Butyrospermum Parkii butter, Mica, Simmondsia Chinensis seed oil, Limnanthes Alba seed oil, Copernicia Cerifera cera, Citrus Nobilis peel oil, +/- CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499

Product Claims

Our Lipstick range is made of 100% natural & organic oils, waxes and minerals to achieving creamy, soft and hydrating lipstick with rich and vivid colours. Our lipsticks are highly pigmented in colour with luxurious texture that is creamy, soft and moisturising.

What Do I Think?

Now whenever you hear about a brand using natural alternatives to conventional chemicals, you probably wonder how it affects the performance of the product. I am pleased to say that there was nothing negative about the formula of this lipstick. In fact, it sits so comfortably on my lips that I hardly feel it there all thanks to the goodness of natural ingredients listed on the tube. The packaging is light holding 3g of product and made up of matte silver plastic with a metallic bullet case and the name of the brand and product on the front with its logo.

It has a soothing Cirtus scent which lingers for a while because of the tangor (tangerine-orange hybrid) essential oil in it. The pigmentation is good and buildable while the texture is creamy but not smear-y, if that makes sense to you. The point is that it doesn’t bleed all over the place. Pink Lush is basically a bright deep pink with tons of purple shimmer making it look like a pure orchid colour. It reminds me of Colourpop Ultra matte Liquid Lipstick in Sundae. I am sure most of you cringed when I mentioned shimmer. Let me assure you there is nothing nasty about the shine rather it imparts sophisticated duochrome sheen courtesy of the mineral, Mica. There is no grittiness or discomfort on the lips because of the Mica. It lasted well over 6 hours on my lips with no feathering or transfer of shimmer around my mouth until I had a meal at which point it faded evenly from the center of my lips. You have to be careful with removal so that you don’t end up looking like you just ate ball of glitter, with really bad table manners.

Organic Lip gloss - Lip Candy

Ingredients

Ricinus Communis seed oil, Euphorbia Cerifera wax, Butyrospermum Parkii butter, Mica, Simmondsia Chinensis seed oil, Citrus Nobilis peel oil, Mica, +/- CI 77491, CI 77492, CI 77499

Product Claims

Unavailable

What Do I Think?

Even though I am not a fan of Kylie Jenner, I have been looking for that oh-so-chic mauve brown that she made so popular. Lip Candy is like Kylie Jenner goes to Vegas (No product exists with this name). It comes in a short transparent 7 ml packaging with the ingredients are listed on it and a matte silver cap holding a stiff doe foot applicator which is perfect for its purpose. The colour is a warm brown with mauve shimmer sprinkled on top and the effect is uber pretty. This also includes Mica so the formula feels feather light and soft on the lips. Once I was done drooling over its duochrome gorgeousness, I noticed the pigmentation was really good too. Like the lipstick it also has the pleasant tangor scent to it. The formula is super comfortable and again it lasted well over 6 hours until I had a meal. Only the center of my lips looked bare while Lip Candy remained intact on the rest. It stays put where you apply it and doesn’t feel sticky in the least. What more could you possibly ask for in a lip gloss?

I must say I am quite impressed with these products and love them because of the formula. I agree they are expensive but if we rush to buy high end products with tons of chemicals surely we can spend some money on natural ones for sake of our health. I do wish the packaging was wow because of the price but that’s not a deal breaker for me personally. I hope they come out with a larger variety of lip shades in different finishes like cream, matte, satin, etc because most people steer clear of shimmery lips. If you can afford it, I highly recommend trying out their lipsticks and glosses because these have definitely earned a spot among my favorites.

Availability

Mirror & Makeup London

Price

Lipstick - £17.00

Lip gloss - Unavailable

Pros

All natural halal ingredients

Cruelty free

Good pigmentation

Comfortable formula

Long lasting

Lovely natural Citrus scent

Shimmer is sophisticated

Universally flattering shades

Cons

Pricey

Shimmer might be problematic during removal

Not suitable for those allergic to citrus fruits

What do you think of the products?

Love,

Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

PR sample(s) for consideration. This, however, has not affected our sincere opinions as our loyalty is to the readers. For further details, check our Blog Policy.

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Sheer Class Jewellery Store – Haul & Review

I love me some bling so I was excited when Saadiah, the lovely owner of Sheer Class, a brand new Facebook jewellery store, offered me the chance to try out some pieces. I was told to select whatever caught my fancy and I wanted to try a mix of formal and casual stuff so here is what I ended up with!

What's In Store for You?

There is quite a variety of formal, semiformal and casual earrings, necklaces, ear cuffs, bracelets, etc. The style ranges from funky to chic to all time favourites of ladies. On top of the reasonable prices, there are special bundles and deals you can avail. Service was super fast and is explained in four easy steps so the whole process was a breeze. All the items arrived in perfect condition with no change in my order. If something is out of stock or unavailable at the moment, the owner is quick to inform you so you can modify the order according to your personal preferences. You also get a complete bill listing the details of your purchase.

So, let’s take a closer look at the beauties I got, shall we?

My Experience

First up is this ah-dorable tarnished silver bracelet which has not one but two cute owls that join at the head when you close it over your wrist. One is smaller and definitely my favourite of the two owls, which are studded with white crystals all over and silently observe you with their beady black eyes. What really killed me were those tiny silver beaks and those long pointy ears sticking out of their heads. Too cute! The material is sturdy and the mechanism flexible while none of the gems show any signs of falling out. I know most people wouldn’t wear this to formal events but I recently wore this to my cousin’s wedding. Yeah, I am weird like that.

Next I hit the jackpot with this gorgeous rose gold butterfly bracelet. My two favourite things in one chic piece of jewellery! A delicate chain loop dangles free from your wrist and the overall effect of the white crystals is simply classy so you could easily dazzle people at formal events with it. It may appear flimsy in the photos but it actually reflects a lot of quality in person.

I love pearls! Incidentally, my name means the oyster shell holding pearls. These dainty creations look like something Tinkerbell from Peter Pan would wear. They are very light weight and comfortable to wear but do not look cheap from any angle. You could go casual or formal with these and they would suit a lot of face shapes.

Red and gold is a classic jewellery combination well loved by Eastern women. This formal blend of deep red stones and tiny white crystals on a golden framework will work splendidly for mature ladies too. The ring has the same design as the earrings so no need to mix and match when you are in a hurry to attend an event.

I hope Sheer Class introduces gift packaging or special packaging for those who wish to gift their loved one presents from this store.  I am quite pleased with my experience with Sheer Class so I highly recommend you guys check it out next time you are looking for trendy artificial jewellery at reasonable rates online.

Availability

Sheer Class Store

Pros

Quick reliable service

What you see is what you get

Great customer care

Good prices

Attractive range

High quality

Safely wrapped

Cons

None

My Rating

4.5/5

Which pieces among these caught your eye?

Love,

Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

PR sample(s) for consideration. This, however, has not affected our sincere opinions as our loyalty is to the readers. For further details, check our Blog Policy.

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BH Cosmetics Carli Bybel Palette – Review & Swatches

Neutral eye shadows and highlighters are our weakness. Give us as much and we still drool over every other new neutrals palette out there. Since this time it was by Carli Bybel, whom we have been following for quite some time now, we had to give it a try. We ended up ordering from the first stock of the palettes which went out of stock within just a few days.

Product Description

Beauty expert and YouTube sensation Carli Bybel designed this versatile 14 Color Eyeshadow and Highlighter Palette to dial up the drama and add excitement to your look. Carli's taste for chic refinement and modern elegance inspired her to select a collection of earthy neutrals and plummy brown shadows with four face highlighters that complement every skin tone. The mix of mattes and shimmers makes it easy to go from amped-up evening intensity to toned-down daytime options.

Features & Benefits:

• Highlighting Powders Can Be Used for Face and Eyes
• Vegan 
• Paraben Free
• Non-Irritating
• Allergy Tested
• Clinically Tested
• Cruelty Free Product

What Do We Think?

The palette comes in a pretty unconventional white cardboard travel-friendly packaging. You get 10 eye-shadows out of which 4 are matte and 6 shimmers, 4 highlighters and a mirror inside. I smell new makeup, it’s weird but I cannot help it, and when I took a whiff from the pans of this palette it made me nostalgic about the old school days, the odour resembled the one that usually comes from brand new school shoes; yes I am not kidding guys. The odour however has vanished after the palette is in use for a few weeks now. The mirror is useless for me. My face appears squished from top and bottom and a lot broader in it most probably due to its rectangular shape plus I tried looking into it for a minute or so but couldn’t really focus on anything and my eyes started to hurt.

You might have given up on it after reading until here but the good stuff is coming guys.

There are 4 matte and 6 shimmer shades. The matte shades include a cream-beige, a cool rosy-brown, a cool toned mauve and a burgundy. The burgundy is quite long lasting but that makes it a bit harder to blend than the others. They are not completely matte but do contain tiny very fine shimmer which you see only if you really look into the pans but the cool brown shade, which some may categorize as matte, contains a lot more visible yet fine shimmer. It has a greenish tinge to it which we are not huge fans of. The obviously visible shimmer shades include a cool-toned rose, a duo-chrome pale gold-pink, another duo-chrome but a lot more golden, a deep brown-toned bronze, a deep orange-toned copper. All of the shades are amazingly pigmented and feel really creamy at touch.

The best part of this palette, however, is the highlighters, which is actually why I bought it. Embossed with pretty floral design, a pink-champagne shade, a beige shade, a peachy-gold and a pretty bronze shade is included as highlighters. These are just as pigmented as the eye shadows so you only need a little product and they work wonderfully as eye shadows too. The brush really picks up a lot of the product so be careful. Highlighter shades are a lot more prone to fall out than the eye shadow shades and make the palette a mess. The formula is creamy powder which blends amazingly well even with fingers. The pink-champagne gives the most intense look and can be mixed with the others to get the shade you want. It gives a cool sheen to my medium complexion. I avoid using pink-toned highlighters because they do not really go well with my warm complexion but the one in this palette once blended out does not look odd at all. The beige shade is perfect for light to medium skin tones as a daytime highlight while the golden-toned highlighter works great for ultra-glam looks. The bronze shade works more like a bronzer on my medium skin tone and on lighter ones too.

Here are some comparisons between the similar looking shades in this palette by Sadaf on her fair to medium neutral skin. She was disappointed because they could have been substituted with more diverse colours. The mid-tone matte crease colours look the same on the eyes and some highlighters are way too close to some shimmer eye shadows in every sense.

Sadaf rummaged through her stash to check for dupes and here is what she ended up with.

With its considerable pros and some obvious cons, we think this palette is a great steal for the price even if not discounted.

Price

Original Price: $20.00

Sale Price: $12.50

Availability

Online at BH Cosmetics

Pros

Creamy texture

Very pigmented

Mix of mattes and shimmers

Easy to blend except for the burgundy shade

Travel-friendly packaging

Highlighters double as eye shadows

Affordable with a current discount

Cons

Mirror is difficult to work with

Highlighters are prone to fall-out

Some colour repetition

Our Rating

3.5/5

Have you tried this palette yet?

Love,

Fizzah & Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

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BH Cosmetics Wild Eyeshadow Palettes - Review & Swatches

Hello makeup junkies! Today we will be talking about baked eye shadows from the BH Cosmetics Wild series. It featured three nine-shade all baked shimmer eye shadow palettes, two of which I currently own: Wild Child and Wild & Free. The great thing about baked shadows is that they have a sophisticated shine, which is not over the top, and may be used wet or dry.

Product Claims

Build lustrous and exotic eye looks with this palette of nine totally gorgeous, baked eyeshadows. Whether you want to go neutral, bold or add a pop color-- you’re sure to find a shade to fit your mood. Featuring highly-pigmented, wet-to-dry shadows with a lightweight feel that delivers fierce color impact to satisfy your desire to be absolutely wild!

What Do I Think?

The Wild palettes come in light weight, travel-friendly, square cardboard packaging with a mirror incased on one side covered by a transparent plastic sheet and magnetic closure. They both showcase different themes so their designs vary too. Wild Child is based on neutrals with some corals and purples thrown in for good measure. It has a leopard print packaging with hints of pink. Wild & Free has tiger stripes running down its cover in black and teal and Aztec yellow around the mirror. It contains earthy greens and browns with splashes of blues and purples.

First let us look at Wild Child. If you love shimmers and prefer staying on the safe side with neutrals then this is for you. It has a creamy white, deep violet, mauve, golden brown, bright coral, antique gold, deep chocolate brown, pale coral and a light rosy brown. All these work wonderfully on the lid and the lighter colours serve to brighten up the inner corners. The texture is soft and creamy with minimal fall out using the right brush and technique. As you may notice from the swatches the lovely baked appearance dulls down the colour you actually see in the pan so it is appropriate for daytime as well.

I was very excited about Wild & Free but was disappointed by the shades I was anticipating the most. It contains a Nutella-brown, intense blue, pale frosty blue, light green with gold shimmer, vibrant copper, forest green, bright purple, sea green and a pale gold. The pale frosty blue, intense blue and bright purple had quite poor texture with loads of fallout and low pigmentation. You can make them work by using a pencil/cream base or a matte shadow underneath of a similar colour. A fixing spray like MAC Fix plus or the Stageline one could help solve some issues too. The rest of the shades presented no such problems and glided on smoothly.

The swatches were taken dry over a drugstore eye primer. I highly suggest using a good eye primer and matte eye shadow in a similar or nude colour underneath all the shades to increase longevity. They cannot withstand oily lids on their own if you are getting dolled up for an event. They start creasing after 5-6 hours even with an eye primer if you have oily eyelids or a habit of applying moisturizer on your eye lids like me.

If you can grab these at retail or sale price then it is a good bargain. However, if you plan to pre-order them or get from a Facebook page’s instock items, they may cost around PKR 1500 each. Since the quality is inconsistent and I have not yet tried the third one: Wild at Heart, I don’t recommend Wild & Free to regular folks. Unless you are an eye palette hoarder like me and don’t mind spending a few extra bucks or effort in making some shadows work, steer clear. Wild Child is the one I would recommend because I have no complaints about its quality and I adore the shade range.

Price

PKR 1500

Availability

BH Cosmetics official website

Pros

Good texture

Minimal fallout

Good shade range

Attractive packaging

Travel friendly

Use wet or dry

Affordable

Cons

Some problematic shades

My Rating

Wild Child 4/5

Wild & Free 3/5

Have you tried any of the BH Wild baked eye shadow palettes?

Love,

Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

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ColourPop Ultra Matte Lip– Review and Swatches

Our love affair with liquid lipsticks continues...

They came, they saw, they conquered. This is true for ColourPop. Their products, especially the liquid lipsticks, are all the hype these days! We were so excited to try them out when we received our first ColourPop package. I, for one, am a huge fan of bold lips. To be honest, flushed cheeks, a highlighter and a bright lip is all that I ask for. Although my stash is full of similar bright hued lipsticks, I chose to go for some eye-catching colours from ColourPop Ultra Matte Lip range yet again.

Product Claims

The thin and lightweight formula glides onto the lips smoothly and leaves super intense pigment-rich colour with a bold, ultra matte look. It's very long wearing and completely kiss-proof!

What Do I Think?

The packaging consists of a simple but good quality plastic tube that comes enclosed within a white box. These have thinnest formula among the ones I have tried up till now. The others have a creamy consistency, which takes a bit longer to dry and set. This isn’t the case with ColourPop liquid lipsticks. Since the formula is quite thin, these dry within a few seconds so you need to be very quick at application. The pigmentation and staying power is the best I have seen until now in any liquid lipstick I have used. These stay put on your lips for 7 hours straight before they begin to chip off. Completely water-proof (haven’t checked the kiss-proof claim though :-D). Sadaf has kissed her stuff toys while wearing it and supports this claim. You have heard it all before, right? On the downside, these are quite tricky to apply especially if it’s the first time you are using any liquid lipstick.

Here are a few tips that will help you get the smoothest and most flawless application with ColourPop liquid lipsticks.

• The formula of these lipsticks isn’t best friends with flaky lips. Therefore, scrubbing your lips really helps it go on smoothly.
• When I first applied these I felt my lips withered under the product when it dried! (Yes, that’s the effect an ultra-matte lipstick has). It wasn’t the most comfortable experience. I realized later where I was going wrong. Applying these on dry lips won’t leave you comfortable with the product so make sure your lips are hydrated.
• Line your lips first. Unless your hands can move with the amazing speed of The Flash, I would not suggest skipping lip liner. Lining your lips directly with the product’s applicator may require you to go over and over again on your lips which will only create a mess.
• You get a blob of the product on the applicator when you take it out of the tube. Instead of removing the excess, stretch your lips very slightly. Then apply that blob starting in the middle and spread it evenly over your lips. Do this twice, once for the upper lip and once for the lower. Let it dry and do not press the lips together until the product has dried completely.
• Do not layer it up because you don’t need to. One swipe and that's all you need to get opaque coverage. I tried layering it up but it did nothing except ruin the intact layer beneath.

Ouiji: Neon coral. The perfect summer coral.

Highball: Hot pink. A universal blue-hued bright pink.

Mars: Bright fuchsia. A shade that anybody can rock.

Price

$6.00 USD

Availability

ColourPop’s Official Website. We got ours from the Facebook store Indelath.

Pros

Thin and lightweight formula

Dries matte within a few seconds

Ah-mazing pigmentation!
Opaque coverage in a single swipe

Transfer-proof

Water-proof

Long Lasting

Kiss-proof

Cons

Drying

Tricky to work with

My Rating

4.5/5

Have you tried these? Yay or Nay?

Love,

Fizzah and Sadaf

Disclaimer: This is a personal blog edited by its owners and the opinions expressed here belong solely to its owner's. For questions and queries please email at thepoutpainter@gmail.com

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