Urban Decay Naked Basics 2 Palette - Review & Monolid Tutorial

Lorac Pro Matte Palette - Review & Monolid Makeup Look

The Lorac Pro Matte Palette was one of the many addition made to my makeup collection while I visited the United States a couple of months ago. Lorac can be purchased from Sephora here in Australia, but Perth is currently lacking a brick and mortar store and I've heard too many horror stories about Luxola - I mean Online Sephora - to ever make a purchase from them.

What drew me to this palette was the fact that it was all matte. I prefer matte shades over shimmer because I find them much easier to wear during the day since I usually go overboard with my highlighter so shimmer eyeshadows can make me look like a disco ball. And how good does that burgundy colour look?



You can see that the two rows follow a light to dark pattern, with varying shades of brown. All the colours are more warm than cool, which is something to consider if you find that warmer tones don't work too well for you. What I love the most is how versatile all the shades are, so I can use it for both a simple day time look or a smokey night time look.



The palette itself is extremely thin, which is a feature Lorac palette seem to all have. This makes it super easy to travel with and will definitely be taken with me the next time I venture out of Perth.




Left to right: Bare, Latte, Corduroy, Chocolate

I found Bare to be quite patchy to apply and although it appears quite pigmented in the swatch, once applied on the eyelid takes a little while to build up colour. I use this one more as a base colour more than anything else because it's pretty similar to my own skin tone. You can see that Latte is a bit more powdery when swatched than the others, but still applies nicely on the skin. Corduroy and Chocolate are similar in colour, with Chocolate being a little darker than Corduroy, but the difference isn't obvious once applied.


Left to right: Linen, Pink Mauve, Burgundy, Jet Black

Minimal editing has been done on the above two photos as I tried to keep true to the colours that they appeared, but I still don't feel like I captured the true colour of Pink Mauve. It is definitely slightly more pink than it appears in the swatch above, but I would describe it as a brown-pink. Burgundy wasn't as red-based as I expected it to be, but it was more of a dark brown with slight red undertones.

Overall, the eyeshadows are quite powdery, with some much more so than others. Although I do most of the colour in this little palette, I wish that there was a shade between Latte and Chocolate, because I found that Corduroy was too close of a colour to Chocolate, and it would've been perfect if it was a little lighter. Also, if Burgundy was a touch more red, I think I would've loved it so much more as well. But at the end of the day, if you're after a super versatile palette that is easy to take with you every where, this is one that I would definitely recommend.

I thought I would end this post with a mini tutorial showing you how well the colour show up on my monolids.





Here I did a quick look with a few of the colours to achieve a daytime smokey look - something I don't wear very often. I started off with Bare as my base colour, and used Corduroy all over the lid, focusing on the outer corners and making a small winged shape. Then I used Burgundy to go over Corduroy to intensify the colour and smoke it out a little. To add a bit more depth I used Jet Black to emphasise the wing a little and put a bit of shadow only to the other corners. For my bottom, I smudged out Corduroy and then went over it with Jet Black to darken the colour closest to my waterline. Linen was also placed at my inner corners to highlight. Add a bit of eyeliner to your inner corners to carve out your eye shape, and mascara to both your top and bottom lashes.

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What's In My TRAVEL MAKEUP Bag

As you're reading this I'm probably driving somewhere along the south-west coast of Western Australia, with this very makeup bag packed away in the boot of the car. (You can follow my adventures on Snapchat (@neshpa), and Instagram!) I plan to do a bit more travelling this month, so I decided what better post to do than a "What's In My Bag" post? I personally love snooping through other peoples bag, and I'm sure there are more people out there like me.



Left to right: Maybelline Mineral Powder Blush in Soft Mauve, Cybercolors Zero Pore Primer, Covergirl Outlast Stay Fabulous foundation in 842 - Medium Beige, Maybelline Fit Me Concealer in Sand, Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade in Medium Brown, and Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder in Transparent.

Let's begin with face products. This Covergirl foundation is my favourite foundation to use thus far in my makeup journey - it is medium to full coverage, and lasts all day without caking up, especially when I use it in conjunction with the Cybercolors face primer. I'm never without my Maybelline concealer so it was a no-brainer that I would be taking it along with me as well. It's great at covering up any darkness or spots that I have and it has quite a thin consistency, which makes it easy to blend out. And to set everything, I've brought along my Rimmel pressed powder. It doesn't have the most travel friendly packaging since the plastic lid easily cracks, but I didn't want to bring a loose powder.

Finally, that leaves my brows and cheeks. Ever since I discovered the dipbrow pomade by Anastasia Beverly Hills, my life has been changed and now I'm one of those people who can't leave the house without my brows on, so there was no way I was leaving without this baby. Since my eyes are going to be left quite neutral and light, I wanted to go a little bolder for my blush so I took this mauve blush.



It was a little hard to get a true photo of the colour of this blush. It looks a little darker and more pink in person, whereas it looks a browner in the photo.



Left to right: Too Faced Shadow Insurance Eye Primer, NYX Love in Paris eyeshadow palette in Parisian Chic, Sheseido eyelash curler, Maybelline Colossal Mascara in Black Waterproof, and DollyWink liquid eyeliner in Deep Black.

Along with having an oily skin, my eyelids are also quite oily, so I must always have an eyelid primer underneath all my eye makeup (including eyeliner and mascara) so that it doesn't slide and smudge throughout the day. My go-to eyeshadow palette would be this one from NYX because it's cheap, and easy to travel with because it contains the sort of browns I would tend to gravitate towards. I have also been blessed with Asian monolids, which makes things like eye liner and mascara a little harder to do.

This DollyWink eyeliner has reached holy grail status for me because even without primer, it last all day without smudging or flaking, but is still so easy to take off at the end of the day. The Maybelline mascara is also a favourite: it lengthens, volumises, and holds my curls, which is all that I can ask for. It does smudge a little through out the day, but I just run my pinky underneath for a quick imperfect fix.



Here is a closeup of the shades that come with the NYX eyeshadow palette. Sorry about the dirtiness of it! I've had it for a long time now and you just can't help some fallout every now and again. As you can tell, I've hit pan with the middle matte brown shade as I use that almost every day as an all over lid colour. I mostly use the last row of colours as well, and neglect the white and taupe shades because they're not as pigmented at the other colours. I also love using the top-middle shade as an highlight for my inner corners.



Left to right: Revlon Lip Butters in Candy Apple and Macaroon, MAC matte lipstick in Velvet Teddy, and Nivea lipbalm in Milk and Honey.

Three lipsticks might be a little too many to bring on a quick trip, but I'm the sort of person who brings different shades "just in case!". I like my lipstick to match the mood I'm in for the day, and no one feels the same everyday, do they? Below, I took some quick lip swatches of each lipstick.



Candy Apple is a sheer warm-red colour. What I love most about this shade is how juicy they make my lips look and gives me the red-lip confidence without being too dark and overpowering.



Macaroon is a sheer maroon, my-lips-but-better colour that I normally use when I feel like my face is looking a little pale. I have a natural purple-ish undertone to my lips, so this helps to brighten up my look whilst keeping to the natural shade of my lips.



Velvet Teddy is a matte deep-toned beige, that needs no further introduction because I'm sure everyone and their mums have heard about this lipstick made famous by Kylie Jenner. Even though it's a matte shade, I don't find it drying at all and is actually very comfortable to wear on the lips.

This post turned out to be more wordy than I had anticipated, but I hoped you enjoyed having a sneak peek of what I have in my make up bag. I would love to know what product you can't travel without, so let me know in the comments!

Also, let me know if you'd like to see a more indepth review of any of the products I've mentioned today, and I'll be sure to get right on it for you.

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Antipodes Aura Manuka Honey Mask

After hearing Estee rave about this mask, I decided to pick up a tube the next time I was at Priceline. Antipodes is a New Zealand based skincare company that prides itself on not testing on animals, no cross-contamination during production, free from GMOs and vegetarian. This particular promises intense hydration to your skin with the antibacterial properties of manuka honey, and an cleansing and antioxidising treatment.





Ingredients: Aqua (water), leptospermum scoparium mel (manuka honey), persea gratissima (avocado) oil, glycerin, cetearyl alcohol, stearic acid, glycerol stearate, gluconolactone, sodium benzoate, calcium gluconate, vitis vinifera (Vinanza Grape grapeseed) extract, daucus carota sativa (carrot) oil, metrosideros excelsa (pohutukawa) flower extract, tocopherol (Vitamin E), essential oil fragrances of vanilla & mandarin: coumarin*, d-limonene*, linalool*. *Component of essential oil



This mask comes out as a pale yellow cream, similar to a thick moisturiser. However once applied to the skin, it glides very smoothly making it easy to get a nice even layer. The first thing I noticed about this mask was the smell - there was a definite vanilla scent mixed in with the very smallest hint of citrus from the mandarin. I personally found it very pleasant and not too overbearing like some masks can be. Immediately the mask has a cooling effect on the skin and due to the texture of the mask, my skin already felt moisturised. The directions advises for the mask to be used twice a week for 15 minutes, but since it is such a comfortable mask to use I always let it sit on my face for as long as I can, which is usually an hour or so.




After washing the mask off with warm water, my skin already felt smoother and plumper. I even stalled doing the rest of my skincare routine because I didn't have that immediate "I need moisture!" feeling that I usually do after washing my face. Although I didn't notice any difference in the redness of my face, it definitely soothed a pimple I had forming in the morning. My final verdict is that I wouldn't use this mask based on it's "blemish controlling" claims, but if you have dry skin you should pick this up next time you're on the hunt for a new mask.

Price: $48.99
Where: Priceline