Tarte Sweet Indulgence 3 in 1 Holiday Collection from QVC! Photo Heavy!

Good morning lovelies! Its 8 days until Christmas! I am about half way done with my Christmas shopping, I'm hoping to finish this week and if I have to I will to go to the store on Christmas eve. Any store on Christmas eve is a scary place.

Today I bring you a closer look at a holiday gift set that I showed fairly quickly in my Current Favorites video on YouTube.

It was also my very first purchase from QVC. Back when my aunt was alive she was obsessed with QVC and I could never really understand why, until now.

I purchased the Tarte Sweet Indulgence 3 in 1 Holiday Collection that was originally a Today's Special Value back in the beginning of November. I bought mine on Black Friday for a featured price. The original price of this set was $71.50, on the one day it was the TSV it was $59, then it was at a featured price of $65.94 and it was on Easy Pay.

Easy pay is when you can pay for a product on QVC monthly instead of footing the whole bill at once. I believe that QVC does it to products that can have monthly payments of three months or longer.

It didn't take long for my gift set to get here, I ordered it Black Friday and it was here that following Tuesday! So thanks QVC for having amazingly fast shipping.

Sadly I hate to say this now at this time this set is no longer available on QVC. Cue the sad faces I know, BUT, there is hope, you will have to wait until May 2015 to get it. Tarte will be releasing a spring version of this gift set then! So if you missed out this time around you can get the Spring Version! You can even see what its going to look like on the QVC Website, you just have to scroll down the page to a tab called "Second Shipment' and it shows you what will be coming in May!

Okay so enough rambling lets look at what came in this set!

In this amazing set you get three boxes set inside of a larger box. Each box contains something different. Lets take a look at the turquoise box!

 I think the turquoise box is by far my favorite. I mean I love all the boxes but I am a huge blush and lippie girl so this was fantastic. You get two full sized Tarte Amazonian Clay 12 hour wear blushes that are exclusive to this set! Then you also get a full size Tarte Lipsurgence Lip gloss and two Tarte Lipsurgence Lip Pencils!

The blushes are called Pampered and Savored. Papered is a bright light pink blush. The texture is smooth and its highly pigmented. I didn't see any visible shimmer in when I applied it to my cheeks, but you definitely cannot have a heavy hand with this blush, otherwise you will come out looking like a doll. Savored is a mauve-rose pink blush that also has a smooth texture but you can see it has a ton of shimmer too it. Savored unlike pampered is not a pigmented. When I swatched it I had to go back a few time to the blush to get the color you see in the photo  but on the cheek you still get great color payoff, you also still have to have a light hand so you don't get so much shimmer on your face. Its like the color knows when its on your cheek versus your arm.

Next in the turquoise box is the three lip products. I absolutely adore the lip pencils, they are right up my alley. I am not a huge lip gloss lover but I will wear this to use it up, I don't think it would be fair to let such a pretty color just sit there. The two lip pencils are called Wonder and Rare and the lip gloss is called Indulgence.

I like that all of these are bright pink colors, its very different for a holiday set, I'm still getting used to wearing bright lip colors. I have only just mastered wearing red. Each lip product has a minty scent so if your not into that they you may not like these. I have tried the lip pencils and I love the staying power of these, even when they wear off I can still see a stain of color on my lips!


Next in the purple box you get two 8 pan eye shadow palettes. I heard that this was a big hit this year since it didn't happen last year in the holiday collection. If you saw my Current Favorites video on my YouTube Channel then you saw I briefly mentioned this set and how much I loved the eye shadows and how wearable they are. They do stay in the neutral family so it suitable for anyone really.

You get a great mix of matte and shimmery shade with these two palettes and lately I have been using  matte shades to create eye looks. One of my favorite shades in this palette is the gold shade in the purple palette. Its called Dare to Be Gold. At first I thought that it was just a shadow with a glitter overlay but the glittery goodness goes all the way through! I have a feeling it will be in my look that I wear on Christmas eve at work next week!

Lets take a look at swatches!

These first two swatch photos are of the shadows in the purple palette. I forgot to add the names of each shadow in the photo so I will list them here.  We have; Pinky Promise, Taupe of the World, You Look Mauveless, Just Malt Away, Pampered Pink, Dare To Be Gold, Show Plum Love and Wind Down Brown. 

These are the shadows in the Teal Palette; Vanilla Candles, (which is my skin tone shade and can't see), Coming Up Roses, Hazelnut Bon Bons, Champagne Bubble Bath, Bronze Cuff, Feeling Grey-t
Espresso Yourself, and Cinnamon Latte.


All of these shades are super buttery and very pigmented, especially all of the dark shades. I found using a cleanse off oil was the best way to get them off without leaving any residue behind.

And finally in the last box, the gold box you get two full sized Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes, 4 in1 Mascara. That's right TWO! Plus you get three eye pencils.

I'm not a huge fan of the eyeliners, but look at what other bloggers were saying is that they were not fans either. These eye pencils sad to say are not long wearing and not water proof and smudge easily. I wore one as a liner on my upper lash line one day and when I accidentally rubbed my eye without thinking, boom, there went my eyeliner. 

However the mascara makes up for the bad eyeliners, hell everything else makes up for the bad eye liners. Can I say how much I freaking love this mascara! I think I might have found my holy grail mascara here, Lights, Camera, Lashes gives me the longest, most full, and curled without a lash curler lashes I have ever seen! 

I'm still getting used to the formula on it though. Its much more wet than in any other mascara I have used before. But I can say that it has been a standout in testing. I haven't seen any smudging or flaking at all when I wear this. It holds up way longer than a normal 8 hour shift and I am just so impressed with that. The only downside I have about this mascara is that it makes your lashes very crunch and hard and can be a bit stubborn to get off. But I think that's the price you have to pay for all the pros you get.  

Overall I think this was a great investment piece for myself. I think its a great beginners set too, if someone you know loves makeup and doesn't really have a collection going or needs one then this might work. Like I said above and in my Current Favorites video this particular set isn't available any more but by the looks of the QVC Website they are getting a whole new set in May! So if you are looking to get this you will have to wait, but I think it will be worth it! 

I hope you guys enjoyed this post! I will talk to you all next week! 

<3 Nicole 

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

Happy New Year!! Maybelline Color Show: Pretty In Peach.

Happy 2014 you guys!!

I hope your new years eve rocked. I spent mine at home watching Netflix, eating good food, and definitely reflecting on the year. But its a new year now and time for new beginnings!

So today's polish is by Maybelline, they release some new Color Show Polishes back in December and they just hit my Rite Aid just before New Years. I picked out one color from the display that caught my eye. It was one of the brighter colors.

Its called Pretty In Peach, and the color is exactly as the title says. I love me a peach colored polish. I think though that this is only maybe my third in my collection ha ha.

I have quite a few of the Color Show polishes, mostly of the limited edition ones but none the less I overall really quite like them. The quality is good and the collections that Maybelline puts out always gets me to get at least one, otherwise if I got all of them every time I would be broke!

This polish looks florescent in the light but is not a neon, its just a beautifully bright color. You can achieve opacity in two coats with this polish. The first coat isn't nearly as streaky as some creme polishes are. The formula is not thick but thick enough that if you had a pretty steady hand and could balance the right amount of polish on the brush you could maybe get a thin one coater!

I took so many photos of this polish, that it was hard to narrow it down to just four, usually I only get two-three good shots.

I feel like that these Color Show Polish bottles are a little bit heavier than the limited edition ones. It might just be me but who knows. I am definitely looking forward to seeing other colors in 2014 from Maybelline.

So if there is one polish to pick up from the new Color Show's to help brighten up your new year and winter, this is a winner!

Till next time
<3 Nicole