New Spring 2014 Hard Candy Cosmetics!! (Photo Heavy!)

Hi guys!! Happy Friday!! I hope you all have been well!! I've been doing okay, little bit stressed out with some stuff at home but I'm slowly starting to feel better. I am also counting down the next 8 weeks until school is officially done with. I'm not graduating but after this semester I only have three classes left to take and I figure I can take them one at a time so they are less stressful.

Any way I'm sure that you did not come to the blog today to hear me rant about school or work, you came for whats in the title!

That's right Hard Candy put out a ton of new products for Spring 2014 and after seeing a master post on Nouveau Cheap  (Clicky click the link so you can see too!! ) I made a mental note of some of the products I most definitely wanted to try!

I have been a huge fan of Hard Candy when they hit Wal-Mart stores what seems like forever ago! The first thing I ever bought from them and sadly don't have anymore is a five shade eye shadow palette that came with a shadow primer. I thought I was so cool to finally have a shadow primer, and one that work well too!

Well with that said, Hard Candy has done a major upgrade to their eye shadow primer and has released it to be sold on its own not just with eye shadow sets.

Their new eye shadow primer is called Eyes The Limit and it claims to be a long wear eye shadow primer. The tube itself reminds me of the Too Faced Eye Shadow Insurance packaging but I think the Too Faced one is shorter and a little wider. I don't own the Too Faced Primer but I have seen it many times.

The tube contains just under half a fluid ounce of product, and a little goes a long way with this so I don't think I'll be running out anytime soon. The primer is skin toned colored, unlike the original primer that Hard Candy had where it was just a whitish-translucent silicone primer. This one feels silicone-y too but it sinks in to the skin nice and doesn't leave a slippery surface where your eye shadow would fall off.

Yesterday I did put the primer to a first impression  under some shadows from my new Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette. ( I just got it in my Sephora order!) I did a simple look for school yesterday morning since I don't normally have a ton of time to invest in to a detailed makeup look. Any how being at school for three hours by the time  I got home I noticed the shadow was still in place and the color was still visible even though I know I had been touching my face throughout the morning. You know how it is trying to stay awake! Before I ran out to do errands later that afternoon I touched up my makeup a bit more, adding a little bit more shadow and then proceeded to wear the look for about 8 hours, so around 915PM I went to take it off and there was no creasing, or fading, everything was still intact!! That makes me so happy! It outlasted my LORAC Behind the Scenes Primer!

For $5.00 I would totally recommend this eye shadow primer, its totally worth it!!

Next I was impressed when I saw that Hard Candy was introducing new Ombre Lipsticks. Just from the blog post I saw them in I knew I wanted to try them.

I picked up two # 759 Confidence which is a red and hot pink ombre and # 837 Faithful which is a hot pink and light rosy pink ombre. These lipsticks will run you $6.00 a piece if you want to try them and there are 10 shades to choose from!!

# 759 Confidence 

# 837 Faithful 

As you can see these don't look like traditional lipsticks, they are indeed square, with the darker shade being only about a quarter of the lipstick. I'm still unsure how to apply these to my lips, I tried the other night and I had the darker color on the outer portion of my lips, and to me it just didn't look right. I may have to try it with the larger color part as the outermost part and the darker color on the inside of the lips.

Here are some swatches.

Faithful 

Confidence 

The only downside I see with these is the shape of the lipstick, the square shape does kind of make applying it tricky. I found it hard staying on the  inside the lines of my lips and that these have a lot of shimmer and or glitter particles in it. Once I took it off I could see the glitter all over my face, even when I applied it some pieces fell out. . Otherwise the texture of the lipsticks are super creamy which is always nice, the colors are vivid and even if I  can't get the ombre effect and they just blend to one color I'm sure they will look really cool!

Lastly I got two cheek products. They are aptly named Cheeks and Balances, they are a cream blush and highlighter duo. There are three shades to choose from, with two I got being the only blush shades and the third is a contour/highlighter duo. The are $7.00 a piece.

I picked up # 767 Cheeky Pink and # 805 Sweet Cheeks. Both are rosy mauve pinks with a highlighter on top. I initially thought that the highlighter was the same on each, that was until I swatched it.

Sweet Cheeks

Cheeky Pink 

Now the blushes are very similar but Sweet Cheeks is tad bit darker and more rosy then Cheeky Pink, and as for the highlighters, Cheeky Pink's highlighter has a golden tone to it where Sweet Cheeks has a pink pearl tone to it.

Cheeky Pink 

Sweet Cheeks 

You can definitely see the difference in the photos above. I haven't tested these out on my face but when I did blend it out on my hand the color wasn't super prominent but the highlighter took over and made it look like a nice overall highlight. I'm not sure if I just didn't put enough on to really get it going. I will have to update this post the second I put them on my face!!

So that's it for today's post! I hope you found it useful and maybe peek your interest as to see if you would like any of these new products! These are just a handful remember so make sure you check out Nouveau Cheap's blog post linked above to see her master post, there are also new concealers and eye shadow and mascaras!!!

Talk to you all soon! Nicole <3