[Review and Swatches] Too Faced Sweet Peach Palette

 

Too Faced's new Sweet Peach collection boasts a delectable range of peach scented goodies. When I first got my hands on this palette, I really hated the scent of it because it was so strong and it was an artificial peach scent. Kind of like peach flavoured Impact Mints really. Fast forward five days into getting it, the smell definitely is not as strong (maybe I'm just getting used to it) and I am actually really digging this palette!

I got this palette expecting, and somewhat determined, to hate it. Before purchasing this, I've done extensive research on the colours and formula and came to a conclusion that the quality and pigmentation of this palette is not up to par as the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palettes. To be honest, as much as I love the Chocolate Bar and the Semi-Sweet Chocolate Bar palettes, I've never found them as pigmented as my Inglot or Zoeva eyeshadows, but for some reason, I just reach for those palettes a lot more than my other palettes.

I mean, the cute packaging does play a part. But that is besides the point.

Like all other Too Faced palettes that I own, this palette swatches badly. Very badly. I got home and was so excited to swatch this and when I did, I nearly flipped my table in frustration. It seems like every time I get a new palette from Too Faced, I will attempt to swatch them on my arm, stare at said swatches, get annoyed at how badly pigmented the shadows are, look up swatches online for the palette, and be puzzled over how badly my swatches are compared to those online.

Then I put some primer on my arm and voila. There we go. Well I'm not surprised at this point because I'm just disappointed that I did not think to do that since it was the exact same for my two other palettes.

So anyway. First Impression: BAD. To be fair, they do swatch beautifully if you use a primer underneath. But if my Inglot shadows can swatch so beautifully sans primer, I believe Too Faced shadows should be able to as well.

Let's just get on with the colours and swatches.

Overall, I feel like this palette sticks true to the whole peach theme in terms of the colours. It was mentioned that the colours picked for this palette reflects the different parts of a peach and I feel that it is very true. With the green and brown shades representing the leaf and stems. Now that I'm actually sitting down and analysing this palette, I do find that this palette is definitely very well-rounded with a decent balance of light, medium, and dark colours. 

On the other hand, I still find that this palette has one too many brown shades. Now, if you're a beginner who is looking to get your first full, high-end palette. Or if you are looking to get a palette that can give you some bright, fun looks without cutting off the possibility of creating neutral eye looks, this would be perfect for you. It has enough browns for you to create a solid every day neutral look and yet it gives you a good selection of peachy shades to give your everyday look a little twist.

If you're looking specifically to enhance your current collection with an arsenal of purely peach tones and you are very conscious about getting your money's worth. Then this is not for you. 

Makeup collectors. Well it doesn't matter because you are definitely getting this palette anyway. Amirite?

Quick break down of the colours before I end this post:

White Peach - Warm off-white colour with a satin finish. Lacks pigmentation if you're looking to feature this colour as the main colour. Does work very well as a subtle highlight. Good formula.

Nectar - Shimmery Light orange gold shade. Kind of reminds me of an orange cream soda float for some reason. Good formula and decent colour pay off. Can be used as a highlighting shade if you have a medium or darker skin tone.

Peaches 'n Cream - Pale yellowish peach. Matte. Excellent formula with a decent colour payoff. Perfect blending shade for lighter looks and would even be good as a matte highlight.

Luscious - Light peachy copper with a shimmery finish. Definitely one of the standout shades in the palette. Very good pigmentation and beautiful colour. As much as I love this shade, it doesn't feel awfully unique.

Cobbler - Satin earthy brown with a brick red tinge. One of the disappointments. Lacks pigmentation and looks very different from the pan. Will work as a transition shade or you could use it to deepen the crease to create dimension.

Georgia - Matte orange leaning peach colour. I personally feel that this is my favourite peach shade in the whole palette. Excellent formula.

Just Peachy -  Warm candy pink with gold shimmers. Almost identical to the Rose Gold blush by Sleek. Good formula and colour payoff.

Candied Peach - Matte pinky orange laced with pink glitters. I love the matte shades in this palettes but this goes on slightly patchy and needs a little more work to blend. Fades fairly fast on lid.

Caramelized - Deep frosty bronze. Beautiful colour payoff and formula. Not a unique shade at all.

Bless Her Heart - Muted warm olive with a hint of brown topped off with a gold shimmer. Gold finish very much like 'Just Peachy'. Looks very underwhelming when swatched but looks nice on lids. 

Bellini - Rosy pink champagne colour. Shimmer. Good formula, not so unique colour.

Puree - Warm caramel. Matte. Very nice colour and good formula. Good transition shade.

Tempting - Black with brown tones and gold shimmery finish. This is a stunning shade! The formula is superb and the colour is intense. Two thumbs up for this one!

Peach Pit - Reddish dark brown. Satin finish. Good formula, again, not a unique colour.

Summer Yum - Matte terracotta. Excellent formula. I feel like they're really nailing it with the mattes in this palette. Unfortunately, once again, not a unique shade. Good crease shade.

Charmed I'm Sure - Cool muted brown with a silver satin finish. Very interesting shade. Looks completely matte in the pan but has this exquisite silver sheen to it. Decent formula and colour payoff but I'm not too sure on how to use this because it's so cool toned compared to the rest of the palette.

Delectable - Satin aubergine. Formula isn't the greatest. Quite patchy. Colour is not but again, not anything unique.

Talk Derby to Me - Blackened purple matte laced with purple glitters. I hated this. Off the top of my head when I swatched this, I thought that this was quite similar to M.A.C's 'Beauty Marked' or 'Blackheart' from the Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette. Horrible colour payoff, patchy and needs A LOT of work to make it look good.

TL:DR

1. Nothing particularly unique in this palette when you look at the individual shades.

2. Good well-rounded peach themed palette if you like peachy looks but still want your neutral shades.

3. Generally a bigger disappointment compared to the other palettes from Too Faced. Formula wise. But still not too bad at all

4. Colours still do come together very, very well when creating eye looks. Genuinely, pleasantly surprised at how nice it does look on my eyes.

I will definitely recommend getting this palette is you are into collecting makeup. I mean, it is such a pretty looking palette! Heck, I will even recommend this palette for beginners just because I feel this is a brilliant deviation from your standard neutral palettes. *Cough cough* Urban Decay *Cough*.

It's definitely NOT a must have at all. I think anyone can live without this palette. I say to trust your gut feeling after researching about this palette online. If it doesn't appeal to you and you're looking for a reason to, then don't buy it. Seriously, you will not be missing out on anything. I don't think this is necessarily something that you need to spend a ton of money on because this is quite pricey.

Well, that is all for now beauties! Are you getting the Sweet Peach Palette? Do you have and hate it or do you love it and can't live without it? Let me know by commenting below!

The Sweet Peach collection is available at Sephora Singapore online and in stores islandwide. This palette retails for SGD$76 and is currently sold out online and in most stores (as of 7th Feb 2017).

[Review and Swatches] Colourpop Ultra Matte Lip

Well this blogging regularly thing is going well. I think I might even hit my target of posting 2 entries per year!

My incompetence and laziness aside. I have finally decided to do a swatch post. And actually go back to posting swatches on my blog. And since the Colourpop Ultra Matte Liquid Lipsticks have been all the rage lately. I figured I might as well dedicate a post to them.

Got these and week-ish ago and I have also worn a few of them out so I'll probably put in a review at the end.

On to the swatches!

Avenue - Deep, yellow-toned red. I really like this one because it goes on a little bit brighter than it looks in the tube. 

Tulle - Dusty burgundy mauve. I probably will wear this very often because it is such a beautiful colour for both daytime and night time wear.

Mars - Straight up fuchsia. I rarely ever go for pink on my lips because they make my face look very yellow. The only other pink lipstick I have is Red Valentine (misleading much?) by L'oreal. I used to have Candy Yum yum by M.A.C. Bought it, tried it once, vowed to never wear pink on my lips again. But thanks to Red Valentine, I found that dark pinks look pretty good on me. So now I have a bit of faith and went ahead and got Mars, which looks pretty damn good on me to be honest.

Creeper - True, blue-toned red. Very similar to the Sephora Cream Lip Stain in 01. I don't know if that has a name because my tube does not display the name at all. The Sephora one is my holy grail red lipstick and I'm glad that Creeper looks very similar to it (Creeper is just a little bit brighter). Unfortunately, Creeper won't be replacing my Sephora Cream Lip Stain anytime soon. I'll get to the formula after the swatches,

Bumble - Dusty warm terracotta. I really love this! It's almost exactly like Brick-o-La by M.A.C except it's matte and a bit darker (I really love brick-o-la, my first M.A.C lipstick).

Trap - Greyish beige with a tiny hint of purple. I don't particularly like this, but it is okay enough for me to wear alone. If I'm going for a halloween party. Very much prefer to mix this with another darker colour.

Midi - Pinkish neutral beige. Again, do not like. I look like I'm sick and dying in this. But, it's great when mixed with Tulle or Bumble. Which are two combinations I will wear on a regular basis.

Colour Payoff - These babies are so opaque, I can easily cover tattoos with this (if they made it in my skin tone). One thin layer is all you need to get the colour that you see in the tube. No need to build up the colour and there's no way you're going to wear these sheer.

Formula - Now this I am not the most impressed with, but they do have pros and cons.

PROS:

These dry insanely fast. Good thing for me because I hate waiting around for my lipstick to set and dry. Bad thing if you tend to need a little bit more time with application. I do my lips relatively fast because i have pretty pigmented and full lips. So I already have a pretty decent guide for my lipstick.

The lipsticks are very watery, but they don't drip nor do they bleed (thanks to how fast they set). They go on so smooth and easy, it's a dream to apply.

These last forever. Drinking and eating is not a worry any more. But you're going to have Korean barbeque or anything that is super oily, then you might have to touch up.

CONS:

They are extremely dry. But nothing my lips cannot handle. Before I received these, I was looking around at tons of reviews to get a feel of their formula and how they swatch (at this point of time I had already placed my order and these were on their way to me). A lot of people say that the Colourpop Ultra Matte Lips are so drying to the point where it feels like they have sandpaper on their lips. Some even felt that they were unbearable to wear. So that's one thing.

Another point that many people mentioned was that these lipsticks crack and flake off very easily. Which is a huge concern for me because I don't want to spend so much money on these lipsticks just to not be able to wear them! I've had a pretty bad experience with Menow Liquid Lipsticks because they flake off and crack so badly whenever I smile or press my lips together. From the countless reviews I have watched or read online, like half of it mentioned that the Colourpop ones tend to flake. 

So these are the two biggest cons that everyone was talking about. About the dryness of the Colourpop Ultra Matte Lips, I'd say that if you are a regular matte liquid lipstick wearer, and if you can handle the dryness of M.A.C's matte lipsticks, then these should be alright for you. 

Tips (and any other random things I want to point out):

Everytime I wear these, I put in a lot of effort to make sure they don't dry out my lips. Exfoliate, then dab on a bit of baby oil to moisturise my lips, and then a layer of Smith's Rosebud Salve to act as a barrier. Make sure your lips are soft and very smooth before you apply the colourpop lipsticks. Otherwise you will not be pleased with the way they look because you will see every single line on your lips (even when you've prepped your lips).

If you tend to be slower when applying lip products, try to apply it one lip at a time. Do your upper or bottom lip, take your time to make sure it looks perfect, then proceed to do your other lip. That way you have more time to perfect your application. DO NOT press your lips together when the lipstick is half set/dry. There will be flakes and your lips will stick together and be peeled away from one lip. Press your lips together when they are completely dry OR if you work fast and the product is still completely wet. But NEVER when they are tacky.

Many people say that these are a pain to remove, so here's a tip for removing these. Use an oil based remover or you can use olive oil, baby oil, or even petroleum jelly. Coat your lips with a layer of oil/vaseline and massage it till it dissolves, then blot off all the oil. The product will gradually get taken off so you don't need to furiously rub your lips with remover. I need to repeat the steps about three times then voila! All gone, and I didn't even need to be rough with my lips.

Verdict - For close to 10 SGD a piece, why the hell not! It's about a third the price of many popular liquid lipsticks (Stila, Limecrime, Anastasia Beverly Hills). Comes in 25 shades so I'm sure you will find at least one colour that will suit you. Sure it does need a bit more preparation but hey just think of all the money you can save when you buy 7, just like I did. That's like. S$140 saved. I am pretty sure I can buy like ten years' supply of lip balm, baby oil, and lip exfoliator with that money!

That is it, I apologise for such a lengthy post but I do have a lot to say about this. Colourpop does not ship to Singapore but you can always look at sellers on Carousell who take orders for these. Just download the app and search away! They're currently out of stock at the moment and will be back in stock in August. So stay tuned to their twitter and instagram for updates!

I did buy and ship mine using comgateway. Got them about a week ago. So you may want to check out that option as well.

Hope I've been helpful this post. Do leave a comment if you have any questions at all and I will reply them! :D

If you have read to the end, then thank you for being such a great reader! You will hear from me sometime in the future!

xoxo

MsFroufrou