Yup, today I'm going to talk a little more about the Lanmei pigments. I already showed the ones I own and their swatches here, this time I'm going to show you how they look on the eyes and do a little water test. In case you don't know what a pigment water test means, it's a little test to help you decide if a pigment is safe to use or not. When you mix pigments with water, safe pigments will remain intact and unsafe pigments mix with the water. This is defintely not what you want, when a pigment completely mixes with water (some pigments will mix a little, but still have particals left) this is a sign that it's not make-up, but probably some sort of dye/paint.

Why I want to test the Lanmei pigments? I have two reasons for that, they're cheap (cheap colourful pigments are just a bit suspicious) and people complain about how the pigments stain their eyelids (doesn't sound very promising).

First, I want to show a look with the Lanmei pigments. I've used a black base (NYX black bean), 3 Lanmei pigments, some white eyeliner and mascara:

I wasn't really impressed by them, unfortunately. I already expected it, but you can hardly see a difference between pigment 007, 043 and 044. I'll show 2 more pictures, one with the pigments and one with the look and the pigment numbers:

I find them pretty difficult to blend and overall the pigmentation pretty much...sucks. This is not 'a little goes a long way' kind of product, although that would have been okay if the pigmentation was awesome. I don't know how the matte ones are (I bought the 12 glitter pigment set) but these are definitely not on my favourites list. They might be nice to add some shimmer to your looks, but I wouldn't get them if you expect great pigmentation.

Now it's time for the exciting part, a little testing! I picked pigment number 012 (the bright orange) to be my victim.

We start off with a little cup filled with clean & simple water.

Next it's time to add some pigment to it, you'll only need a tiny bit.

This is how it looks in the water, now it's time to stir everything.

It does make the water a tiny bit orange, but the pigment doesn't comepletely dissolve.

As you can see, the water and the pigment didn't mix together. That's a relief, you're not buying yourself some hair dye in stead of make-up.

However, I wouldn't recommend them to anyone. If you're looking for nice and cheap pigments, I'd suggest trying NYX. These ones are cheap and wouldn't really hurt your budget, but they're definitely not must-haves. They're okay if you just want something extra to play around with and if you don't mind weak pigmentation, but I'd stay away from them if you're looking for good quality and some 'easy to work with' pigments.

I know that winter isn't here yet but I just love how they look ;) It's easy, quick and will definitely lead to some compliments.

To get nails like that, you'll need a sheer white nail polish (like the kind you can use for a french manicure), a blue glitter and a sheer blue nail polish. I also used a base coat.

You start with a thin layer of white nail polish (after the base coat), this doesn't have to be neat and definitely not 100% covering.

Next, you can use the blue nail polish to create the 'frozen' effect. You want to work in layers so it's important that it's a sheer blue (I have one layer on my pinky in the picture, that's the kind of sheer you're looking for) and then you just move a bit higher and add another bit of nail polish. How many layers you'll need depends a little on how long your nails are, just let the blue gradually get deeper.

Last but not least are the glitters, I kept the bigger ones on the blue bits but you can apply the glitters all over the nail if you want more sparkle.

Here you can see how it looks on my nail art wheel, the blue goes a little lower and the glitter is pretty much all over the place.

If you really want to be an Ice Queen you can add some cute snowflakes as well. I used slices of fimo, but there are snowflake nail art stickers out there as well if that's easier to work with :)

And that's all you'll have to do to get yourself some cute nails! :)

Lanmei pigments can be found on Ebay and they are pretty cheap, I ordered myself a couple to experiment with and today I'm going to share the swatches! Pigments can be a mess to work with, but I just have a soft spot for those little jars. The Lanmei jars are a lot easier to work with than the ones from NYX, so that definitely earned them some points.

Here you can see how the jar looks, it's not very big but when you put it next to an eyeshadow (the ones above are from a Sleek palette) it doesn't look extremely small either. They have their numbers (no names unfortunately) on the bottom.

I'm starting with the neutral colours, a white (015), a beige (043) and a brown (013).

The first colour, the white, looks pretty nice here when applied wet but I tried to use it on my eyelids today and it was a disaster (zero colour pay off) so I'm not satisfied with that one. The beige is pretty surprising, because it gets a blue sheen over it (I couldn't get a picture of that) which is really unique looking. The brown is very nice, I used that one as well on the eyes today and it looks nice in the crease, it blends very nicely as well.

Next are the pink tones, we have a peachy pink (023), a light pink (011) and a darker one (pretty raspberry ish in real life) with number 010.

I like the peachy pink but the other two look very alike. I gave number 011 to my sister because I didn't really need two similar colours (at that time I didn't know that more would follow...). The one in the middle is 011 and the row above belongs to 010. It seems that if the numbers are close together, the colours are really close together as well.

Here we have a minty blue (019), a light blue (020) and a nice grass green (018).

The green one looks gorgeous wet, as if it has little crystals in it :) With a base however, it's not as bright as I hoped for. The other two look really alike again, the first one is 019 and the one in the middle 020.

Here we have a bright orange (012), a mid-tone blue (007) and a grey ish blue (044).

First row is 044 and it just reminds me of those other blues. I expected number 007 (last row) to be a lot darker too. The orange doesn't look nearly as bright as in the jar, but I'm kind of happy because it's a lot more wearable this way.

I really wanted to like those pigments, and I do like a few, but overall I'm a little bit disapponted. To get some colour pay off you'd need to apply them wet, a base helps a little bit but not for all of them. Some of the colours look a bit dull compared to the pigment in the jar and/or very alike to others, which means 1/3 of what you buy is more or less a waste of money. I'd have loved a black, yellow, deep purple or some more greens.

On the other side, they are very cheap and some colours are still nice to have to play around with. I haven't used all of them on my eyes yet, so I plan to use a couple of these in tutorials and that they'll (hopefully) look amazing. Some of the colours (like the beige and green) look really pretty.

In short, my biggest problem with them is that some colours are alike. What I like most is their cheap price and the jars (they close tightly, are nice to work with and you can see the colour right away).

School is almost going to start again for me and my younger sister, so I decided to help her with an everyday look for school. She's 14 now and getting interested in make-up (...could be my fault) but I wanted to show her how she can look pretty without putting too much make-up on her face. Personally, I don't like it much when young girls walk around with bright lips and those dark smokey eyes. So, it was time for me to give my sister a hand to help her to survive highschool!

This is the look, next are the products she used:

And this is what she did: She used a daycream, concealer and a little bit of powder for her face. For the eyes, she used a skincoloured base, white eyepencil to brighten the inner corners of her eyes and a light brown to line her waterline, she applied a beige colour all over her eyelid and a light brown in her crease & she added a bit of mascara. She darkened her eyebrows and used a tiny bit of white eyeshadow to highlight her browbone. For the lips, she used lipbalm, a neutral lipliner (all over the lips) and a tiny bit of pink lipgloss for the center of her lips.

Well, this is my own look. It's practically the same = very neutral. Here are the products:

I used foundation mixed with daycream, eyecream followed by concealer (yay for dark circles and getting old) and some powder for my face. For the eyes, I used the taupe colour all over the eyelid, the deep purple went into the crease and the beige was my highlight colour. I used black eyeliner for my waterline and some mascara to finish everything. The lips had to be satisfied with just some lipbalm and a neutral lipcolour.

Thankfully my sister loves the neutral look, so mission accomplished!

Today I'm going to show a Quatuor by Lise Watier, I've had it for a couple of months now and love the colours but failed to completely fall in love with it. Earlier today I decided to swatch it again to give it another chance (Yay for lonely project 10 pan moments) :P and I'm really happy that I did that.

First of all, the packaging is really classy looking and fresh. The colours aren't typically neutral but nothing 'too much' either, perfect for daytime. Even those sponge tip applicators look pretty nice to me, I like black sponge tips more than the white ones.

Here we have the colours, I like how they have different sizes, because some could be used all over the eye and others just look best when you apply a little in the crease area. You get a nice beige colour, a lavender ish taupe, a deep purple and a copper with a slight pink tone to it. They are really soft and nice to blend.

To be honest, when I swatched them for the first time (without using anything as a primer/base) I felt a bit disappointed and put the quatuor aside without using it. I'm glad that I picked it up again because I love how the colours look when you apply them wet! Sure, with a base they show up better, but I believe that a tiny bit of moisture just brings them alive. They get more shimmery that way, with(out) the base only the copper one has what I'd call shimmer, and the others are more inbetween, not matte but not really shimmery either.

I waited 8 hours and took another picture, this is what I got. I'm pretty surprised that the 'wet' swatches still look that nice, the 'nothing' row was not much to begin with, although I guess I'm also surprised that you still see some eyeshadow there. The row with the base lasts nicely but again, I think the 'wet' row just looks more vivid so I prefer that row. If you don't want too much shimmer on your face, using a base would be nicest.

Do you have anything from this brand? I've seen the other Quatuors and they look VERY pretty. They have neutrals, greys, greens etc. you can see all of them here :)

Hey everyone! Today I'm going to talk about something that landed on the doormat this morning: my new (gorgeous looking) brushes. I can't review them yet because I want to try all of the brushes out before I give a thumbs up or not, but a little sneak peek won't hurt ;)

There will be quite a few pictures and I'll randomly talk about what I like and don't like about the brushes, at the end of this post I'll sum things up :)

This is how the brush roll looks (...wrapped in plastic that is), which is also one of the reasons I wanted this set. I didn't own a brush roll yet, I always tucked my brushes in a cosmetic bag = big mess. I like this one a lot, great colour, not too small/big and it looks easy to clean.

I just really hate how those magnet things that keep it closed show up through the leather case. It's a shame because it's a very pretty brush roll. That one thing really bugs me though >.< And that's how it looks when you open it, everything is nicely protected and secure. The brush roll comes with 16 brushes, in the colour purple of course! The arrow points at the plastic that's attached to the bag to protect your brushes. Well, I don't like that plastic flap. It feels and looks cheap, It would look better without it in my opinion.

Before I talk about the brushes, I want to show a couple of pictures first to show how they look inside the brush roll :)

The face brushes have an extra plastic protector that helps to keep the hairs in shape.

The other brushes (yup, without the extra protection to keep the hairs in shape) look like that.

All of the brush handles are wrapped in plastic as well.

First, I'll introduce you to some of the face brushes. On the right we have the large powder brush, in the middle we have the medium powder brush and on the left an angled powder brush. Cute and fluffy!

Here we have 5 round eyeshadow brushes of different sizes but unfortunately, the same shape. I'd have loved it if they replaced one of those with a blending brush, although I can always find other purposes for those brushes. I'm thinking about using at least one of hem as a little concealer brush.

On the right there's eye shadow brush number 6, this one is pretty small compared to the rest. Next to it we have a lip brush, followed by an eyeliner brush and on the right there's a little angled brush.

You'll also find a fan brush inside, I don't use fan brushes that often but this one is very pretty. It looked thin to me at first, so I was happy to find out that it's actually very dense and soft. All of the brushes are VERY soft actually, a huge plus :)

Well, I always call these 'fillers' because you practically find them in every set but in my case, they are hardly used or even if they are, I just don't need brow comb number 27...(Well okay, I 'only' have three other ones). In case you've never seen them before, from left to right we have a foam tip eye applicator, a lash/brow comb brush and a mascara brush.

The foam tip one was quite wobbly, I thought it was broken but you can actually take the top part out and replace it (I tried some other foam tip applicators and they do fit). I guess they made the brush that way so you can replace the foam tip when it gets worn out.

And now our brush roll is empty! Boo :< I want to show how vibrant the coulors are before I continue with the 'judgement' ;) They go from a soft lavender to a vivid bright purple. I absolutely love the colours, the maroon coloured handles are also gorgeous.

With that being said, it's time to get sweet and critical. I haven't used them yet so my thoughts so far are purely based on my first impressions:

The things I like:

-The brushes look great and they feel very soft, the brush roll has great colours as well.
-It's not an expensive set and easy to get online.
-The plastic hair protectors are really useful to have.
-It's a nice set for starters, you get a lot of basic brushes to play around with. For example, you can try out how you like to contour (angled brush or not?) or what kind of eye liner brush works best (again, the angled or 'normal' one?). With 16 brushes, there's enough to experiment with.

The things I don't like:

-I don't like how the brush roll closes and I'm not a fan of the plastic flap inside either.
-The brushes could have been more diverse. Some could have been left out (like the lash/brow comb for example) and others just look really alike. There are so many other nice options like a blending brush, stippling brush, foundation brush, crease brush, smudge brush etc.

Is it a good buy or not? That question will have to wait until I've tried all of those brushes out ;) So far I'm pretty positive but all of that could change if they start smelling horribly after a wash or start to shed like crazy. More information will follow!

During their try-out period, I will keep them in that super cute cup :P (Okay, I just need to think of a good way to store my brushes) ^^'

In case you are (already) interested in these brushes, I got them from Ebay. You can type something like 'purple brush set' in the search bar, or visit the seller I got them from to get more information. I got them within a week, and they cost around 14 dollars (the brushes+shipping).