Evil Shades Review

I didn't intend to take so long to post swatches of these... What I really wanted to do was post a bunch of looks using these colors, but I've been in such a creative rut lately... I haven't been able to think of any cool combinations! D'oh.

But here are some swatches from Evil Shades- a company owned by a fellow blogger- EvilAngel from Black Nail Polish and Lipgloss!

Some of the darker shades, indoors and in sunlight.
(Left to right)
Devil's Bonfire, Necropolis, Acolyte, Double Barrel, Abyss, Zombie, Souls Torment, Mordant.

Some of the colorful shades, indoors and in sunlight.
(left to right)
Heartless Queen, Errinye, Neritic, Mad People, Twinkle Twinkle, Steele Green, Reondite, Wanderflower, Nymphette, Chusi, Nightshade

As always, you can click the images to enlarge and view more detail.

I also got to try a blush and a cuticle creme sample (not pictures, hopefully to do another review later!) and these really pigmented Deviant lipsticks:





(left to right)
Primrose Path, Corruption, Devilista

So now that you've seen some examples of the types of fun colors she sells, I bet you're wondering about the formula..... And I'm pleased to say that it's really nice!

I haven't used all of the shades for full looks yet but I have used about half of them on the eyes and I am pretty impressed. They're really smooth and pigmented. I normally have to use mineral-type shadows wet in order to achieve decent opacity and pigmentation but these were pretty good on their own. Even better wet. All of the colors have something special to them- they didn't look very vibrant in the plastic sample bags but once you put them on your skin they pop- some have secret colored shimmer, some have glitter (holo glitter too!), some have a faint reflective sheen to them.

The lipsticks were fantastic. I normally don't wear lipstick because it's drying and these aren't. These are almost a balm, but super crazy pigmentation. Devilista was like WHOA- amazing coverage and POW! color. You will want to use a lip brush with that one, color like that needs a precision application! Corruption is my favorite and I wear it pretty often now- a soft silvery-grey-purple shade with a little blue shimmer. Primrose Path is rather demure but works nicely to balance a dark and dramatic eye. On top of the great pigmentation and creamy formula, they smell nice. Really nice. I don't know exactly like what, but it's sweet and pleasant. I'm super into my lip products being scented- I've been known to not buy lip products because they were unscented- and I'm quite happy that these have a nice sweet scent to them! Makes them a little more fun.

There were a few things I didn't like. They are purely my personal preference and are not flaws with the product itself, but I felt I should give my honest opinion.

My main disappointment is with the packaging. It's very plain and a bit home-made looking. One one hand it adds to the charm and indie feeling, but on the other hand it seems a bit unprofessional. It is purely aesthetic- the product inside is great! But the little bags and plain black lip balm tubes with slightly off-center stickers don't seem to reflect what's inside. I do understand that it's only packaging and that it may not be feasible financially or time-wise for a one-woman-business to have custom labels and packaging for all their products.

The other thing that I didn't quite enjoy was that the samples come in bags. Again, this is my own personal preference and doesn't reflect the quality of the product. Some people love bag samples because they're less expensive and easier to store. I find them messy to use. For one, it's hard to get the pigment onto the brush because it's all settled onto the sides of the bag and I usually get my fingers a little dirty cause it ends up on the sides of the brush. Another reason why I prefer jars over bags is that I can't use the pigments wet when they're in a bag like I can when they're in a jar. In a jar I can put some mixing medium on the lid and mix a little of the shadow into it. And one other reason I don't like bag samples is that they don't make the colors look nice! Some of the shimmer tends to stick to the bag while some of the more colorful or pigmented parts in the shadow sink to the bottom, giving the illusion that it's a plain frosty shimmer... Only when you open the bag and touch the shadow do you see the true color.

I can see why the packaging would be this way- it keeps costs down! Makes it more accessible. No one likes to pay more for a fancy package, it's what's inside that counts! Except... I totally would pay more for a fancy package, it's part of the fun of makeup for me. But, that's just me.

I did remember to take pictures of one of the looks I did using Evil Shades (and there was also that look I did with Heartless Queen, my favorite... unfortunately I was using that damn Falsies mascara so my lashes look like crap!):



I don't remember everything I used for this look, but I do know that I used Acolyte and Devil's Bonfire mixed together in the crease. I think the lid color may have been Fyrinnae Electric Stardust. You can see how nice and sparkly and rich the crease color looks- that's not even used wet!

Evil Shades. Cool names. Creative colors. Nice formula on all the products I've tried. Very affordable prices. I also really, really love the dark alternative theme of the company- much better suited for me :)

Hopefully I'll find some creativity and get over my makeup block (kinda like writer's block?) so I can post some better looks using these!

(These products were sent to me for review.)

All MAC Browns

I don't normally go for browns on my eyes unless there's glitter involved, but thought I'd venture out of my comfort zone and do an all brown look...




This was:

MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
MAC Patina on lid
MAC Smut in crease
MAC Glitter Liner in Enbronze

I tried to get a blurry shot to show the glitter in Enbronze, but I could only get a few sparkles to show up:


See the sparkles? It's not really a very glittery glitter liner, but it does have some sparkle to it. It flakes if you apply too much, though. I prefer Too Faced's glitter liners over MAC, but sometimes MAC has really nice colors.

Patina is a really nice shade. It's a really soft light brown with some read pearl in it, sort of duochrome-ish, you get the brown/tan base and then at some angles you get the red pearl. Very soft color.

Fyrinnae Purple, Green and Peach look

I haven't been taking any pictures of my makeup lately. Truth is, seeing all these macro pictures of my eyebrows made me a little neurotic, so I did something I know I should never, ever do... I sat down in front of the 16x magnifying mirror and over-tweezed my eyebrows. D'oh. So I've been growing them out again and they look really rough right now and I can't bear to look at them in macro.

But, I do have a lot of older pictures I haven't gotten around to posting. This one's from July and I really liked the peachy-gold and purple combination with my eye color:




This was (to the best of my memory):

Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Fyrinnae Rapunzel Had Extensions applied wet on lid
MAC Purple Shower in crease, topped with a little Fyrinnae Meerkat
Fyrinnae Dragon's Wing wet as liner
Cover Girl Lash Blast

Rapunzel Had Extensions is a Fyrinnae must have if you ask me. It's just so pretty and easy to wear. Peachy-pinky gold duochrome. Very lovely. Goes well with a lot of different colors.

I think I may have mentioned that I gave up on The Falsies mascara and I'm onto Revlon Grow Luscious now. There was nothing wrong with my beloved Lash Blast, but you know me... Always wanting to try something new even if the thing I currently have works just fine. But yeah, that Revlon Grow Luscious? AWESOME. I may even like it better than Lash Blast. It makes my lashes so... what's the word I'm looking for? Luxurious? Lush? Lush, that's it. Really full and lush looking. I'm glad I tried it. It was on sale at CVS and had a free eyeliner packaged with it so I had to get it. I like the eyeliner, too, it's a Color Stay black retractable eyeliner. Maybe I'll do a review. I want to, I get distracted easily so I always forget these things...

Iridescent Purple eyes of the day

I had to get this color from Meow after I saw it on Phyrra and I'm really glad I did. I liked it so much that I wore this look for three days in a row! I did try different eyeliner colors every day, but I used the same two main colors. I think this is one of my favorite looks now, it may become part of my "I'm lazy, I can't think of what to wear" insta-look rotation!

I took a lot of pictures of this... Needed to show how awesomely duochrome this shadow is!






You may need to enlarge the pictures to see the color shift in this eyeshadow. See the pinky-gold-orange flash on top of the periwinkle blue type color?? Isn't it awesome?! I can't get enough of it!

This was:
MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
Meow Friday the 13th shadow in Skeptic applied wet on lid
MAC Grape pigment in crease and on lower lashline
MAC Sugarshot highlight
Wet n Wild liquid liner in Black
Maybelline The Falsies Mascara

The Falsies is starting to look better, too. I'm still not sure about it, though. It's better than it was before, but it's still not as smooth and volumizing as my Lash Blast.

The Skeptic shadow kinda pissed me off at first. I tried to apply it dry and had a horrible sheer streaky patchy disaster on my lids. Some of the color would stick, but then it wouldn't stick in other places... I'd have smears of the pink-orange shimmer in patches all over my lid and very little of the blue would show up... Ugh...

I knew I'd probably have to use it wet but I wanted to try it 'natural' first.... it confirmed my suspicions. It works beautifully wet, though! Woohoo!

And then here's pretty much the same look again, except it didn't turn out as good because of the primer I used:





I like the red liner much better than the black!

This was:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Meow Skeptic applied wet on lid
MAC Grape pigment in crease and lower lashline
Urban Decay Gash liquid liner
MAC Sugarshot highlight
The Falsies mascara

This one isn't blended as well as the first one and I blame it on Urban Decay Primer Potion. I normally like it but it is a lot more finicky than other primers. The main problem I have with it is that if I apply too much it doesn't let your shadow blend evenly. Sometimes it's hard to tell how much you're applying when you're at the end of a tube. With a new tube you can dot it on and visually gauge how much is there, but when the tube is near empty you have to kinda smear it on and it's not as clear how much you've applied. It seems to grab the shadow in some spots and not let the shadow adhere in others, and then you get weird patches and sharp lines and that's no good!

I think I may switch to Too Faced Shadow Insurance permanently when I finish the rest of my tubes of Primer Potion. The packaging is better, the application is smoother and it doesn't to that dry-patchy-streaky thing. I love it.

It's growing on me... Fourth and Fifth tries with The Falsies Mascara

I've been forgetting to take pictures of my makeup every day! I wanted to show the process of this mascara evolving from 'suck' to 'pretty good.' I used it again yesterday and you know what? I actually kinda liked it. It was chunky-textured but much better! It's weird how each time I use this it gets less clumpy and adds more volume. Weird. Here's #4 and #5.


This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
MAC Sugarshot on lid
L'Oreal HIP Platinum silver side, just a tiny hint dabbed on middle of lids
MAC Bell-Bottom Blue in crease
MAC Blue Storm in crease and lower lashline
MAC Copper Sparkle pigment applied wet as liner
Maybelline The Falsies Volum' Express Mascara

Another attempt to use more blue eyeshadow. I was afraid this was going to turn out really frosty-80's-tacky blue eyeshadow but it ended up looking kinda beachy and ghostly... kinda sheer and shimmery with a whisper of color... very unusual for me and quite outside my comfort zone. I did like it, though... Maybe blue is becoming more comfortable for me...

And see how the mascara looks less like insect legs and more like eyelashes now? Definitely getting better the more the tube dries out...

Except this time it clumped my lashes together more! I did comb them, but you can only comb so much before it takes off too much mascara and you have to start over!

This was:
MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
Evil Shades Heartless Queen on lid
Evil Shades Devil's Bonfire in crease and on upper and lower lashline
Don't remember what I used for highlight
Maybelline The Falsies Volum' Express Mascara

I'm in love with Evil Shades Heartless Queen. It's a bright red matte with a little bit of subtle silver sparkle thrown in... The sparkles are on the larger side so they're not the main focus of the shadow- it looks like a matte red with silver accents. I like it very much. And Devil's Bonfire is SUPER black. I've been looking for a blacker-black and this one is really, really black. And not just black, but black with holo glitter. Sadly, I couldn't get the holo glitter to stay on my eye, I'll have to use it differently next time to keep the glitter in there...


So... what do you think? Should I still chuck it? It's getting less clumpy and chunky every time I use it so maybe I should hold out another week or so. It's still no Cover Girl Lash Blast, but... it has a gimmick and I wanted to try it! And I'm always looking for new beauty products to try. Plus, the tube is purple.

Second try with The Falsies (featuring Overall Beauty's Gabrielle Faust Collection)

This is my second try using The Falsies. Not as bad as the first, but still chunky and skinny like insect legs! And I know I have speckles of mascara on my eyelid. I totally didn't notice until I looked at the pictures. How embarrassing.

This is also my first time using Minerals by Overall Beauty. You know Overall Beauty, the one that sells BB Couture nail polish? Kim also makes her own mineral makeup and she sent me samples to test of the new line inspired/designed by Gabrielle Faust (though I'm not really sure who that is). I'll do a full review of the collection as soon as I've used and swatched all the colors, but this is what I came up with on my first try.






This was:
Too Faced Shadow Insurance
Overall Hourglass Sand on lid and as highlight
Overall Vampire Kiss in crease
Overall Misanthrope to darken crease and on lower lashline
Overall Karmic Night applied wet as liner
Maybelline The Falsies Volum' Express mascara

Lashes are less clumped together and a little longer but they're still kinda squirrely looking.

The Overall Beauty Minerals were actually nicer than I expected. Not that I expected them to be bad, but I'm just not that much of a matte user and I anticipated chalky patchiness like some mattes, but these applied quite well. A little muddy color-wise, but smooth and silky as far as texture goes. Will have to play around more before I can fully evaluate.

First try with The Falsies....

Well... here it is. First attempt with a new mascara! I usually have trouble when I first use a brand new tube of mascara and then it usually evens out by the third or fourth time I use it. I'm on my fourth try now and it has gotten better, but my first try was pretty scary looking.

This was:

MAC Paint Pot in Painterly
Aromaleigh Viviane applied wet on lid
Stila Ebony in crease
Aromaleigh Mirielle on lower lash line and over Ebony in the crease
Stila Wheat highlight
Milani Liquif-Eye in Gold
Maybelline The Falsies Volum' Express mascara

Eek... it looks like I have a grasshopper leg or something coming off of my eye! When I first applied it to my lashes it immediately clumped them together into four groups... like four clumps of spikes... it was odd. I kept brushing through with my lash comb but it was removing too much mascara and made my lashes look skinny and short. So, after fighting with it for ten minutes or so I ended up with this compromise- short but dark and clumpy lashes!

Second time wasn't so good either, I'll post that in a bit. Third try was marginally better but I forgot to take pictures of it!

The eyeshadows were pretty at least. So much beautiful sparkle in those Aromaleigh shades. Shame. *sigh* Oh, and the eyeliner? Milani Liquif'Eye? Phenomenal. I like them even better than Urban Decay 24/7s... they just don't come in as many colors. I've been meaning to review them. They're awesome, total drugstore hidden gem, I can't believe they're under $7!