Review - Jeffree Star Blood Sugar Palette and Love Sick Liquid Lipsticks

Ah, Jeffree Star. The guy who divides opinion up and down the internet, but most people outside the YouTube/beauty/MySpace communities have never actually heard of.

It's not always easy to find an unbiased review on his products due to his controversial past (and present, let's face it). You tend to either get the Jeffree stans who think he can do no wrong in life or business, or you get the people who think he's the worst kind of human to ever exist and therefore think everything he touches is dreadful.

So, as someone who collects and enjoys his makeup, but has no interest in being mates with the bloke, I'm gonna try and give this a go and be as unbiased as I can. There are things I like about these products, and there are things I don't like. I will state that I am not a fan of his Lip Ammunitions, so I didn't purchase those to review and I have absolutely zero interest in having "merch" from any kind of beauty influencer, so I gave the accessories a miss too. What I did purchase was the Blood Sugar palette and the 4 liquid lipsticks. I have collected the liquid lipsticks since the very first launch back in 2014, but I am more than willing to say if and when I find one to be crap (hello summer 2016 collection, I'm talking about you) as the different colours do not perform the same.

The Launch

So, if you are up to date with the gossip in the beauty community, you'll know that this palette launched on February 10th and sold out in 3 minutes. Yep, his first sell out in quite a while (I've not seen his products move this quickly since the launch of his Skin Frosts back in 2016), 100,000 units in 180 seconds. Even the pre orders for the next restock of palettes is sold out currently.

I managed to purchase my products with no problems at all. Added my items to the cart and checked out. I was placed in a queue at checkout but I waited no longer than 30 seconds. By the time I'd made my purchase and had a quick look through Facebook and Twitter, I was seeing people saying that they couldn't order the palette. This was a super fast sell out.

My main problem with Jeffree Star Cosmetics is their customer service. I very much prefer to buy from Beautylish if and when I can, because their customer service is second to none, and my parcels arrive from the USA in around 3 days. Despite paying extra for faster shipping on this order, it took 4 days for them to ship the package from their warehouse, and then a further 9 days for it to get here. I didn't experience any difference by paying the extra shipping costs and I think 4 days to ship out a parcel is ridiculous. Yes, all you Jeffree stans can sit there and bang on about how he's a small business and doesn't have the staff to move out 100,000 palettes, but this is a guy who haemorrages cash on nonsense like designer boomerangs and neon pink self driving cars, you can't tell me he doesnt have the financial means to employ a few more warehouse staff. However, it arrived packaged nicely with plenty of bubble wrap and despite my worries (I have seen a lot of people receive broken palettes) everything was in great condition, and no damage at all, so I was very pleased and incredibly relieved about that!

Blood Sugar Palette

Yep, another warm toned palette. Exactly what ALL of our eyeballs need right now, huh? If I'm honest, I was over the warm toned trend before it even began, I love cool tones and I love colour. I was drawn to this by the pops of colour - that bright pink and red were calling my name! I actually also really loved the look of the cool toned greige type colour in between the pink and purple shades. Actually, despite not being a fan of the warm toned red trend, there are very few colours I would never use in this palette. I don't think I will ever use the shades on the top and bottom right hand sides, or the brown shade, Ouch (I hate that shade name btw), but the others are all colours I will enjoy creating looks with.

The palette comes in what Jeffree describes as a "doctors case". Its very deep and I have to say, the packaging is probably the best I've seen in a very long time. The component is made from cardboard, with a faux leather outer and closes with silver clasps - a completely unneccessary but nonetheless incredibly clever and aesthetically pleasing touch. The palette comes in a cardboard sleeve, which has all of the ingredients etc on.

The shade names are, to put it politely, a little odd. In his reveal video, Jeffree claims that as the palette is based on a doctors case and it's named Blood Sugar, he has chosen lots of medical and dentistry themed names for the shades. I don't particularly associate dentists with diabetes, but I'm gonna let that one slide and go straight to wondering why "tongue pop" and "fresh meat" have been thrown in there. No thanks.

Swatches

I'll add my brush swatch pictures next. I did as I always do - primer, then build up the shadow to my desired opacity (or as opaque as I can get it). I do this because when you use a shadow on the eyes, you won't just swipe your brush over your eyes and think "Oh that's a patchy mess, I'll call it a day and finish now", you build up the colour until it looks good. I will say that after finger swatching these shadows, I can see why he didn't do live swatches on his reveal video - they swatch horribly with fingers, but most of the shades do build up nicely with a brush. Some take a little more work than others, but the pigment is there for most of the colours.

You can see that some of the swatches look quite messy, especially on the second image. This is because I cleaned up (or tried to) an awful lot of fallout from swatching. Fallout and kickup isn't something that bothers me at all really. Usually it means that a shadow has plenty of pigment, and I always do my eyeshadow before I do my base makeup so cleaning up isn't an issue for me. I definitely wanted to mention it though as I know a lot of people were raging about the amount of fallout from the shades in the ABH Subculture palette last year. I do think these shades are more densely packed than Subculture, but the fallout is definitely noticeable.

Is It Eye Safe?!

You may have heard that some shades in this palette are not considered "eye safe". Is this true? Well, the answer to this is that it depends where you live. If you live in the USA then there are shades in this palette that are not deemed to be eye safe, but if you live in the UK then crack on! 

The reason for this, is that certain ingredients that are known to stain the skin are not considered to be "eye safe" or to be used in the immediate eye area by the FDA. The UK has no such rules, we clearly don't care whether we have stained faces or not! So, if you use these shades then please don't worry about your face melting or your eyeballs falling out, all that'll happen is a bit of staining. I used the brightest colours in the palette for this eye look (over primer) and I have minimal staining after approximately 7 hours of wear. 

All in all, I don't think this is a terrible palette. Do I think it's that great that it should've shifted 100,000 units in 3 minutes? Probably not. Will I use it again? Yes, absolutely. Do I think it's worth the $52 price tag? Probably. A lot of the cost will go towards the cost of the packaging, this is much more impressive than the crappy cardboard components his previous palettes came in, BUT knowing that this is now a permanent item, if you're not absolutely desperate to get your hands on this then I'd say wait for one of the Jeffree Star Cosmetics sales and pick it up for a discount instead.

The Love Sick collection also featured 4 liquid lipsticks, 3 Lip Ammunitions and an assortment of "merch" including makeup bags, mirrors and some clothes (I think). I collect the Velour Liquid Lipsticks so I ordered two with the palette (Restraints and Self Control) and then I picked up the other two when they launched on Beauty Bay a few days later. The lipsticks come in the same component as always, but with the limited edition red chrome lids. I do wish he'd wrap in with the limited edition stuff, but I also understand it's a clever business move - make things seem unobtainable so that we want them more (it works like a dream on me, let me tell you).

Three of the four shades are nothing special. We have seen similar colours from him in the past (and in the case of Problematic, the very recent past) - Self Control is somewhere in the middle of Virginity and Blow Pony, Romeo is much like a more neon version of Rose Matter and Problematic just looks like hes chucked the leftovers from the Christmas shades Santa Baby and Berries on Ice in a red top tube. Restraints is completely unique to his collection, however. A metallic finish gunmetal shade, it's unlike anything he has previously released and I think that is fantastic. I fell in love with Jeffree Star Cosmetics because of the exciting shade range - rememeber how we all lost our shit over the blue collection? Or 714? That's what I expect from this brand, and it's been disappointing to see him churning out so many nude and red shades if I'm perfectly honest. I hope this latest release is a sign that he is moving back to his roots, experimenting with colours and having the most unique shade range on the market.

I actually really like all of these shades. Self Control is a very wearable, cool toned lilac. I find that Virginity is far too light for me, and Blow Pony is quite extreme for every day wear, but this shade sits nicely in the middle of the two and I would wear this as an every day lip colour.

Problematic, as I said, is very similar to the berry tones in the Christmas collection, however I much prefer the formula of this to either of the other two. It's a very bold shade, but unlike his previous berry shades, this one applies nicely and isn't patchy or streaky at all. It stained my lips slightly after around 7 hours of wear.

Romeo is a very bright, almost but not quite neon, shade of pink. I love pinks, and I'm a big fan of his shade Rose Matter. This is kind of like Rose Matter on a night out, much more bright and in your face, but also quite wearable if you want to try something a little brighter than a regular nude shade.

Restraints is a very sheer formula. Like most metallic liquid lipsticks, it does take some building up. I found that I needed two coats and had to press the wand onto my lips a little to finish off the application, but it dried down nicely and the extra coat didn't cause any discomfort or irritability to my lips like some brands do when I try and build the colours up.

I love these lipsticks. I have had lots of hits with his liquid lipsticks and plenty of misses too, but these 4 shades are all really nice to apply and wear and very much reminiscent of the "old school" Jeffree lipsticks that applied super opaque in one swipe and lasted forever on the lips, I'm very much hoping that this standard of formula stays!

Sugarpill x Little Twin Stars Collection

Behold! The most beautiful makeup collection my eyes ever did see!

On January 22nd, Sugarpill announced a mystery collaboration on their Instagram page. I didn't know what it was but I knew I was going to have this! Sugarpill is by far my favourite makeup brand in the world, and I absolutely adore the quality of their makeup, and the packaging is always absolutely perfect.

There was much speculation online about who the collab could be with. Given Amy (Sugarpill's owner)'s love of drag and her close friendships with many celebrity drag queens, most people were guessing a collab with another queen, much like Sugarpill's Kim Chi products. However, on January 24th, the brand announced that the collaboration was with Little Twin Stars, a pair of adorable Sanrio characters who were popular during the 1980's (another point from me, I am obsessed with anything from the 80's).

The collection consists of an eyeshadow palette, two liquid lipsticks and a makeup bag. The eyeshadow palette is available to purchase separately, and you can also purchase the liquid lipsticks as a twin set. They aren't available as singles, and the makeup bag only comes with the whole collection.

The collection launched on February 1st and once it has sold out, will  not be returning (and unlike most brands, I actually believe Sugarpill when they say this stuff....remember the Pumpkin Spice eyeshadow and lipstick? Man, I wish they'd bring those back). The products are currently available from the Sugarpill website and Beautylish, but keep in mind that when you are buying from the US you will have to pay an import fee. I bought mine from Beautylish and the fees were £16, but if I had bought through Sugarpill I'd have had to pay another £8 on top of that for the Royal Mail handling fee.

I have contacted Beauty Bay and Love-Makeup.co.uk who both told me that they will be getting the collection in, but neither of them would give me a launch date. I absolutely needed this in my hands as soon as possible so I chose to buy through Beautylish as I know that their shipping is really fast (and they use FedEx so no Royal Mail fee) and I would probably get this collection before Beauty Bay launched it. As of the time I am writing this blog, the products are fully stocked at Beautylish and Sugarpill and have just been launched on Beauty Bay and Love-Makeup in the UK.

The prices appear to be different on both UK sites, with Beauty Bay listing the full collection at £60, the lip duo at £30 and the palette at £32. Love-Makeup are selling the whole collection at £63, the palette at £30 and the lip duo at £28.

Let's take a look at the collection:

The collection comes packaged in this really pretty little keepsake box. The box is made from cardboard and has a magnetic closure. It's fairly sturdy so can be kept to store things inside - I think I will keep my single highlighters in this box since they are currently taking over the drawer that they live in at the moment!

The box has a cardboard sleeve with the Little Twin Stars in colour, and this slides off to reveal the Little Twin Stars in gold, with the Sugarpill logo on the box itself. 

Once you open the box, there's a removable insert which holds all the pieces of the collection. The packaging on this set is just beautiful. It's so detailed and true to both the Little Twin Stars and Sugarpill aesthetics. I generally don't keep the boxes that my makeup comes in, but I will definitely be using this box again. 

Inside the box you can see the 6 eyeshadow palette, makeup bag and two liquid lipsticks. The eyeshadow palette is the same size as the previous Sugarpill x Edward Scissorhands palette, for reference. 

The palette comes with 6 rectangular eyeshadow pans, weighing 2.5g each, slightly smaller than a regular sized Sugarpill pressed shadow which is 3g. This palette contains three foiled shadows, two frost shades and one matte. I know most people would prefer to have more than one matte shade in a palette, but I have so many eyeshadows that it really doesn't bother me. I very rarely use one palette per eye look anyway. 

L-R: Wish, Sky Candy, Dream Dust, Twinkle Twinkle, Star Ribbon, Cloud Maker

The shadows swatch beautifully and perform really nicely, just as I would expect from any Sugarpill shadows. They are very pale in colour but can be built up for intensity or applied with a damp brush to really bring out the foiled aspect of the shades.

The lipsticks are absolutely adorable. There is one lip colour to represent each of the twins hair colours. Kiki is a beautiful aqua shade with gold sparkles, and Lala is a bright bubblegum pink which also has the gold sparkles running through it.

Please excuse my awful swatches, I tapped them to bring out the glitter before they had dried! Both of these shades can be worn on the eyes, and I like to use Kiki in my waterline if I'm wearing the eyeshadow palette, I think it goes so well with Star Ribbon! When I was playing about with this collection, I mixed the two colours together and got this muted purple colour, which is probably much more wearable as an every day shade than either of the two lipsticks alone.

The makeup bag is fairly small, but it can fit a decent amount of products inside. I am not a collector of makeup bags really, I prefer to have everything out so that I can see it, and I don't ever travel at all but this is very cute. I like the frosted plastic on the front, which means you can see what's inside but you can't see through the bag completely. It's a very cute design with the Little Twin Stars sitting on a cloud and the zipper is the Sugarpill logo.

I'm so pleased with this collection. I think it's so cute and such a refreshing change from the constant stream of warm toned red and orange palettes we've been bombarded with lately. Yes, you may need to incorporate another palette if you're using this one for a full eye look but it isn't necessary and the foiled shades make a great accent to a neutral look if you want to change up your eye look now and again. I absolutely adore the lip colours, but if you're a nude lip kind of girl then you might want to skip the lip duo and just go for the eyeshadow palette - or give bold lips a try, you never know, you might love them!

Review - Oh My Glitter by Robyn McCattrall Liquid Lipstick - Sakura

Oh My Glitter by Robyn McCattrall - Image from www.facebook.com/OhMyGlitterOMG

About a week or so ago, a Facebook page that I had been keeping my eye on, but never actually purchased from made a post that caught my eye.

I  have been following Oh My Glitter by Robyn McCattrall for a little while, I think I had seen her products mentioned in one of the many Facebook makeup groups I'm in, although after receiving my lipstick I reached out to Robyn for a little chat as I wanted to write this blog. 

Robyn Makes eyeshadows, highlighters, pressed glitters and lipsticks. Robyn started her business around 7 months ago, after her friends had mentioned that they struggled to find vegan and cruelty free makeup so she created some products to pass around friends and after the great response she got, she decided to look into making and selling her own makeup. 

You will probably recognise this very pretty packaging as being similar to a certain well known fashion designer's lip gloss component. Very expensive looking, with a mermaid scale design on the bottle, these lipsticks are a packaging lovers dream (and at a fraction of the price of the designer lip gloss)!

I ordered a mini liquid lipstick in the shade Sakura. This is a VERY pale pinky nude with a gold duochrome shift to it, and it is absolutely stunning. I'm very fair skinned so I do prefer to wear it on top of another lip colour, although I have worn it alone a couple of times. Here's a swatch of Sakura.

And a lip swatch.

And Sakura on top of a purple liquid lipstick.

I do really like this lipstick. I paid £8.99 for a mini, and the full size versions retail at £14.99. Postage (within the UK) took two days and I don't remember the cost but it was certainly reasonable.

I find that when applying this lipstick I do need to dip the applicator back into the tube a few times, but I wonder if that could be an issue with the actual doe foot applicator than the product itself. The product is not at all lumpy or patchy, just a nice smooth formula that dries down completely  matte and most importantly, is comfortable to wear.

I have to say, the last time I wore this lipstick out I ate like a pig (burger and ice cream) and it barely budged. A bit had come away from the inner bottom lip, but I had expected it to have completely vanished, especially with it being such a pale colour.

I am certainly more than impressed with the wear time and formula of this lipstick and I can't wait to try more colours and maybe even one of Robyn's subscription boxes!

Robyn's Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/OhMyGlitterOMG

Robyn's Website: www.ohmyglitteromg.com

Jeffree Star Holiday Collection - Review

Jeffree Star's second holiday collection launched on Black Friday. Seven liquid lipsticks in limited edition red packaging, with two new Skin Frost highlighters launching at the same time. Both Skin Frosts are pink - Regina George, a hot pink and Princess Cut, a baby pink.
The lipstick shades are Deceased, described on his website as a "mauve greige", Checkmate, a bright orange-red, Chrysanthemum, a pink based nude with gold sparkle, Sagittarius, a nude mauve, Crocodile Tears, a deep forest green, Designer Blood, a deep red with gold shimmer and Pumpkin Pie, a beautiful autumnal orange.
Each liquid lipstick retails for $18, or the bundle of all seven is $99.99. The Skin Frosts Retail at $29 each.

The holiday collection is available from the Jeffree Star Cosmetics website and Beautylish. Beauty Bay will be stocking this collection in the future, but as yet there is no confirmed date.

I prefer to buy from Beautylish where possible, as they calculate customs charges for you and you pay on ordering which speeds up the delivery process and you avoid that £8 Royal Mail handling fee which I always begrudge paying! Beautylish also have the most adorable packaging, I love how everything comes wrapped in brown paper with the black and white string, it's so sweet.

Now, on to the lipsticks (I may review the Skin Frosts at a later date).

Here are the arm swatches

Top to bottom; Designer Blood, Crocodile Tears, Chrysanthemum, Sagittarius, Pumpkin Pie, Checkmate, Deceased

They swatch beautifully, and I had no problems with application on my lips either. I had seen someone comment online that Chrysanthemum was patchy, but I did not experience that. For a light colour, it applied really nicely and I had no issues with patchy or streaky application. This is my favourite colour out of the collection.

Apologies, I'm stuck using an iPhone camera for now so my images are pretty dreadful! 

I wasn't expecting Chrysanthemum to last very long on my lips at all due to the pale colour, but I was very pleasantly surprised! It dried down completely and lasted for the 4 hours I wore it. Not a full day's wear but I did eat while I had this on and it didn't budge. This shade also smells AMAZING! Only two of the collection appear to be scented, Chrysanthemum and Sagittarius. Jeffree described it as "cotton candy scented" and while I personally don't get cotton candy from the scent, it is a lovely sweet smell.

Pumpkin Pie was a surprise hit for me. I was not expecting to like this shade. Autumnal colours and warm shades are not something I tend to reach for, but I fell in love with this as soon as I swatched it. 

Pumpkin Pie lip swatch. I know my lips are asymmetrical and I hate them!

When I first swatched Pumpkin Pie I thought it would look great with an eye look using the Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance palette so I had a go at some "fall inspired makeup".

Don't worry, my brows have been reshaped now!!

Once again, no issues with application (this is the same for all of the colours to be honest, they apply like a dream). This is one of the unscented shades. I know a lot of people don't like the unscented liquid lipsticks, but personally, anything that doesn't smell like vanilla is good with me!

Pumpkin Pie wore nicely, although it did start to wear away on the insides of my lips after eating. These lipsticks layer without any issue though, so a quick touch up and you're good to go.

Today I wore Sagittarius. Very close in colour to Deceased, as you can see in the arm swatch, Sagittarius is a pretty nude mauve. Deceased is more grey toned, and pulls quite brown on me (although I didn't get a lip swatch, sorry!) so they do look quite different when they're applied on the lips.

Sagittarius

This is a pretty wearable, every day shade in my opinion. It's just purple enough to stand out from the crowd, but still pretty nude. I paired it with an eye look from the Kat Von D Metal Matte palette today, but this colour would go with most looks.

I applied this lipstick at 2pm and ate a pretty greasy meal (home made chips, I promise I'll join a gym in the new year) and it didn't even wear away on the insides. It's now just after midnight and I still have most of the colour on my top lip and probably about half on the bottom lip. I am incredibly impressed with the staying power of this one!

I haven't had chance to road test the other colours yet, but I can do a part two if you'd like. So far, I am really impressed with this collection. After the summer collection didn't receive the best reviews, I really feel like Jeffree has taken people's concerns and criticism into account and made a good quality collection with a variety of wearable shades. If you can get your hands on this collection, you won't regret it!

Sugarpill Kimchi - Review

I ordered Kimchi from the Sugarpill website (quite a while ago, I just haven't got round to writing this review) with no problems at all. The lipstick was $18, I forget how much shipping was but I didn't have to pay any additional customs costs on delivery so I was a very happy makeup addict! I had wanted to get Trinket too but it was out of stock at the time, so my review for that will come later.

The lipstick arrived in around a week and was posted through my door. When I opened the packaging this very cute yellow and gold box was inside, along with the most adorable sticker I have ever seen! I love pink and I'm a bit of a crazy cat lady so I definitely appreciated this, it now lives on my laptop.

Now, on to the product itself. If you are familiar with the packaging on Jeffree Star Cosmetics, Dose of Colours or Makeup Monsters liquid lipstick then you'll recognise this bottle! Amy herself said on Instagram that they get the packaging from the same suppliers but the product inside is different. The wand on these lipsticks is the same as the Jeffree Star Cosmetics liquid lipsticks which I LOVE because it is my all time favourite wand ever!

The lipstick is a muted lilac shade, leaning ever so slightly grey. It's very pretty and has tiny sparkles of glitter in it if you rub it when it's dry. I have to say that I have not had much luck with getting the sparkles to show up very well, but I am happy without them (something I never thought I would say!) as the colour is just beautiful. Here's a swatch of it before rubbing to activate the glitter.

As you can see, its a cool toned nude lilac colour and I have been wearing this almost daily lately. I keep forgetting to take a picture in good light of a lip swatch which is a pain, but I will insert a terrible selfie of me wearing it so you can see what it looks like on my NW10 skin.

Yikes, that eye makeup is dreadful - the joys of having hooded eyes and being silly enough to put glitter on your lids!

This lipstick goes on really nicely, the curved wand really helps to get a nice line around your lips and the flexibility of the applicator means it hugs the curves of your lips to ensure really great coverage and flawless application. I like to wear this with some lilac highlighter (Anastasia Beverly Hills Purple Horseshoe or Jeffree Star Cosmetics Lavender Snow) on my cupids bow just to make my lips stand out.

The lipstick wears really nicely, I get a good few hours out of it and after eating I don't feel like it needs touching up unless I have something particularly oily to eat.

All in all, I love this lipstick and cannot wait to try Trinket and Pumpkin Spice!