Ardency Inn Modster Manuka Honey Enriched Pigment in 'Rose Gold'

The endless pursuit of the perfect rose gold shadow ends here, folks.  Rose gold has been hugely trendy for the past couple years and I've hopped right onto that train from my jewelry to makeup.  I think rose gold is a hard color to get perfect...it can lean too yellow/orange or too pink really easily and miss the happy medium we all lust after.  I saw swatches of Ardency Inn's modster shadow in 'Rose Gold' and knew they had captured the color perfectly.

First of all, I love the shadow's packaging.  The shadow comes in a thin plastic container that is much flatter and sleeker than a MAC shadow. 'H' is printed on the top in a graphic pattern, I am assuming standing for the honey that is infused into the shadow blend.  The brand boasts that they are the first to use honey from the nectar of the Manuka tree in color shadows adding to their creaminess.  The lid opens and closes with a magnetic closure.

As you can see, the color is quite rosey in the pan.  The pan holds 0.06oz of product and will set you back $20. 

I love Rose Gold on me personally because it makes my blue eyes pop. If we chat about color theory for a sec, colors opposite to blue on the color wheel are your yellows and oranges--so for my blue-eyed babes out there, golds, coppers, ambers, and rose golds are what are really going to make your blue eyes pop! 

Above is me wearing this shadow pressed all over the lid and under my lower lash line with some soft warm brown buffed into my crease. My eyes look so blue and almost green!

I found that using your finger and pressing the shadow onto your lid gives much greater color payoff than using a brush. I don't mind this since I intend to use this as a lid color, but just a heads up to any girls out there that don't like kickin' it old school and using your fingers Kindergarten style.... but hey, kindergarteners can be cool as hell so I don't see an issue with it.

Check this color out if you're interested in that perfect rose gold shadow and don't mind dropping some hard earned cash for some quality product.  If you're interested, purchase it if you see it in stock! This particular shade sells out fast!

Check it out at Sephora here: Ardency Inn 'Rose Gold' eyeshadow at Sephora

xxSJ

Review: Bite Beauty Luminous Creme Lipstick Duo

Bite Beauty is the current hot name in all things lip related. Bite Beauty is a pretty pricey prestigious brand that touts lip products that are made from all edible ingredients! I think that's pretty cool for something we're slappin' on our mouths everyday! I decided to try out the brand by purchasing the Luminous Creme Lipstick Duo.  It is a small double-ended stick that has two mini lippies on either side. I got the more neutral duo in 'Musk/Lychee.'

Keep in mind that this lippie is really TINY! Granted, that makes this lil' guy fantastic for toting around in your purse, but I'm sad that this won't last very long since there is so little product.

This lippie is pretty interesting because the colors look SO similar in their tube form. But swatched you can see that Musk is deep brownish pink color while Lychee is a lighter warm pink color. 

The top picture above is my bare lips, the middle picture is with 'Lychee' and the bottom picture is with 'Musk.' These lipsticks feel really moisturizing! I don't find they get that long of wear time when I'm eating and drinking, but I love that they fade evenly and don't leave lines or rings of product on your lips.

Overall I love this little product and it has led to me asking for a full size bite lipstick for Christmas this year! I really like the thought this brand puts into their ingredients and product as a whole. This double-ended lipstick actually isn't the best value when you look at price per ounce of lipstick, but it is certainly a great way to try out two different lip colors and for only $12 it won't break the bank completely. A full size luminous creme lipstick from Bite Beauty will set you back $24 for 0.15oz of product (for comparison sake a MAC lipstick houses 0.10oz of product).

Get your own here!

NARS Lipgloss: 'Orgasm'

NARS just relaunched their lipglosses with whole new formulations and brand spankin' new packaging. To help promote this relaunch, Sephora had a mini version of the new gloss as a 100 point perk in one of the most popular shades, 'Orgasm.'

It's so cute!! I knew I had to get my hands on this to try out the new ish. First off, let's start with the packaging. The classic NARS matte black rubberized texture is used on the cap with the bright white logo printed on to it. I think it looks super classic and sheek. The container is now a perfectly clear acrylic as opposed to the almost completely opaque old packaging which allowed you to see a hint of the color inside. This new packaging gets an A+!

The new spongy doe-foot applicator is really nice and my favorite type of applicator for glosses. The most important detail of this gloss for me was the smell. The old NARS lip glosses smelled like plastic and chemicals. It wasn't necessarily the most pleasant thing to have on your lips all day, and for that reason, I never reached for the NARS glosses I owned. This new formulation has NO SCENT whatsoever. Yay! They must have taken a hint from what seems to be the number 1 complaint of NARS lovers out there and taken out whatever smelly bandit was stinkin' up the place!

Orgasm is a peachy pink gloss with gold glitter streaks running through out. It is the color that I always tend to drift toward and also is my favorite blush color (jumpin' on the band wagon... I know).

The gloss on its own adds quite a bit of pigment to the lips and the wear time is about 3 hours with no touch-ups or reapplication. The glosses are noticeably less sticky than the original formula, but still have a stickier feel to them which is good because it means the gloss isn't sliding anywhere off your lips!
I noticed that this gloss looks extremely similar to another lipgloss I own, which is Revlon's Super Lustrous gloss in 'Peony:'

Peony is a little bit more dark pink, but otherwise, its pretty damn close. This dupe alert brings me to another point about NARS' new glosses: The price. These glosses will set you back $26 a pop and the reformulation included less product per container compared to the old ones. That's pretty steep for a gloss considering a MAC gloss will only set you back about $16.
The glosses are gorgeous and are of much higher quality than their predecessors, but I think if you can find as close a dupe as this Revlon gloss, go for the cheaper alternative. For the more unique colors in the new collection (they've kept the 23 old colors and tacked on 7 brand new ones!) there's nothing wrong with a splurge here and there if you're a gloss or NARS junkie. Guilty!

xxSJ