Giveaway: All Pink-ed Out!

My Pretty Zombie and one of my favorite beauty bloggers mNg have teamed up for this amazing giveaway! These custom colors were created by MPZ and mNg and here's your chance to get them before anyone else can! I really love these colors and they're some of the most amazing pink eye shadows I have seen. So get on over to "I'm Not Skinny, So What?" and enter away!

Read More

MIA for the month of May

Hey everyone! I feel like I've been rather MIA lately and for those of you wondering what happened to my swatches and reviews well they will make their appearances again soon (I hope). I have lots and lots of things that need to be swatched, photographed and reviewed but I have not had any time lately to do any of it. With my wedding fast approaching (18 days left!!), I am finding I still have a million things left to do for it and not enough time in a day so please excuse my lack of posting and swatching.

It's a bit overwhelming for me as I feel so torn between wedding and my makeup addiction...lol. I currently have 2 Darling Girl Cosmetics hauls, 2 Fyrinnae hauls, a Persephone Minerals haul, a large NYX haul, Urban Decay's Naked Palette, Silk Natural's Naked Palette Dupes, Urban Decay's 15th anniversary 24/7 pencils collection and tons of Aromaleigh left to photograph and swatch. It might take me a few months to actually get through it all.

Just to give you an advanced heads up, May will be a month with very little to no blog posting from me because of my wedding and honeymoon and adjusting to being married. I promise I will make it up to you though as I am planning a big giveaway in June! Oh and to those of you entered in my Aromaleigh Ooops Giveaway don't worry! I will still announce the winner as scheduled on May 6th!

Read More

Aromaleigh Ooops Giveaway! (CLOSED)

Are you ready for my first giveaway?? I AM!!! So here's the prize, I will be giving away 6 5g jars of Aromaleigh Ooops eye shadows. These were colors that were not added to the AL collections or core line for various reasons but are still the same high quality as any other eye shadow from AL. I can tell you right now that all of these are really gorgeous and sparkley!

All of these eye shadows have been repotted from baggies. In case you're wondering how sanitary this is, I swabbed the jars with alcohol, covered my work area with a paper towel and I wore nitrile gloves the entire time. Each jar has a sealed sifter to prevent product loss.

This is what the winner will receive!

One winner will receive all 6 5g jars of Aromaleigh Ooops eye shadows. The colors are as follows:

Ooops #1 - Silvery gray with copper sparkles and a hint of rainbow sparkle
Ooops #2 - Medium blue/green with rainbow sparkle
Ooops #3 - Golden beige with rainbow sparkle
Ooops #4 - Light pink/purple with aqua sparkle
Ooops #5 - Medium green with green and rainbow sparkle
Ooops #6 - Dark dusty purple with holographic sparkle

Entry and Rules:

1. Please read EVERYTHING before entering
2. This giveaway is open internationally
3. Please leave 1 comment for every entry
4. You must be a follower of my blog and leave a comment below with your name and email address (1 entry)
5. Blog about my giveaway and leave the link in a comment below (5 entries)
6. Tell me 1 random fact about yourself (1 entry)
7. Tell me your favorite Indie makeup company (1 entry)
8. Tell me about one of your holy grail products (1 entry)
9. If you were stuck on a desert island and could only bring 5 items what would they be? Tell me what they are. (1 entry)
10. Tweet about my giveaway (1 entry/tweet. Max 5 tweets and all tweets must be on different days)
11. Maximum number of entries per person is 15
12. This contest will end on May 5th at 12pm PST. Any entries entered after that time will not be counted.
13. The winner will be chosen by using Microsoft Excel and random.org
14. I will announce the winner on my blog within 24 hours after the contest end time.
15. The winner will be notified by email and this blog. You will have 48 hours after you receive a winning notification by email to contact me and email me your information. If I don't not hear back within the 48 hours I will choose another winner.
16. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at: glittersandbubblesblog@gmail.com

Read More

Aromaleigh Cosmetics Part 1: Wonderstruck Collection

Epic Aromaleigh Haul!

 I had found AL back in Sept or Oct of 2010 but didn't really bother ordering from them until now which is really sad since AL is now closed forever. =( So to make up for all the times I should have ordered from AL but didn't I ended up ordering 33 individual shades from her Spells, Mythos, Wonderstruck, Astronomical and <3 collections as well as 7 of her mega grab bags each containing 20 baggies with approximately 2-3 grams of eye shadow in each of them.

My 4 Aromaleigh bundles bursting with sparklies

Look at all the goodies!

I'm really not going to bother reviewing this company since it is now closed so I'm just going to jump straight into swatching! I'm going to start off with the individual shadows that I ordered from the Wonderstruck collection.

Wonderstruck

We're All Mad Here - light pastel green with a slight gold shift

Curious Dream - medium blue green with iridescent sparkle

The Wrong Alice - medium blue with teal and iridescent sparkle

Looking Glass - light silvery gray with copper and rainbow sparkle

L-R: We're All Made Here, Curious Dream, The Wrong Alice, Looking Glass

Opiate Advice - gorgeous lilac with aqua and iridescent sparkle

Frumious - dark plum purple with iridescent sparkle

Temper Temper - dark maroon with iridescent sparkle

L-R: Opiate Advice, Frumious, Temper Temper

I think the one thing that really struck me about these shadows was how smooth and sparkley they were! These are so much more beautiful in real life than they are in pictures. It kind of made me sad to swatch them knowing that the company that made these amazingly gorgeous eye shadows is now gone. AL shadows are definitely going to hold a special place in my collection. =)

PS. Sorry it took forever to post this! It took me a long time to sort through everything... =P

Read More

Brazen Cosmetics Haul

Ok, so I've had this haul for several weeks now and probably should have posted this a LONG time ago but yea, I've been busy and all these goodies take up a lot of time to play with! Brazen Cosmetics is quickly becoming one of my favorite indie MMUCs to purchase from. Sandi is such a doll and her products are amazing! Opening her packages is like opening Christmas presents! You can really tell that she puts a lot of time and effort in making everything really pretty and I greatly appreciate it! Look at the next set of pictures and DROOL!

All my goodies wrapped up!

LE Spring Lovelies Collection

LE Gummie Glazes!

LE Cirque Collection

Lip scrubs, lip glosses and a few other things all wrapped up!

Lip scrubs, glosses, eye shadow and a free sample of her Hi-Def powder

Ok, so now that I have all of you green with envy, on to the swatches...lol. I'll start with the Spring Lovelies collection. This is a gorgeous trio of pastel shades that is perfect for Spring! She had a contest to name the three shades and I love the ones she chose as they are all very fitting.

L-R: New Growth, Clarity, Visionary

New Growth - Beautiful pastel green with a hint of a gold shift. 

Clarity - A gorgeous pool blue shimmery shadow with a hint of blue sparkle.

Visionary - Pale shimmery lilac.

Next up are the Gummie Glazes! Sandi was super awesome and let me purchase these before she even released them to her FB fans! <3 Honestly out of all the products I have from Brazen these are my absolute FAVORITE! All of them are gummie bear flavored and are perfect for layering over other glosses or lipsticks. In the swatches below, I think I accidentally mixed a bit of the Orange with the Cherry gummie glaze in the last swatch... :/

L-R: Lime, Pineapple, Orange, Cherry

The Cirque collection I purchased because of the swatches I saw on a fellow blogger's post. I fell head over heels in love with the super bright colors in this collection!

L-R:  Show Off, Cirque, Side Show

Show Off - Bright pink with pink shimmer.

Cirque - Bright teal with teal shimmer. This is my favorite of this collection...but then again I am obsessed with teals/aquas at the moment...lol.

Side Show - Bright fuschia. This picture makes it look a bit more pink than it does in real life. It's actually more purple.

Main Attraction - Dark chocolate brown with a hint of gold shimmer.

L-R: Side Show, Spectacle, Main Attraction

The last eye shadow I ordered was Shenanigans...OMG just look at the picture of this eye shadow! It has got to be the most gorgeous dark green shade ever! I LOVE the gold shift and sparkle in this shadow. It's just absolutely perfect! I could stare at it all day...if I had the time...hehehe. This was originally an LE shade for St. Patrick's day but I believe Sandi has made this a permanent addition to her line!

Shenanigans

Finally, I give you the Passion Pot Lip Glosses. I believe out of these 5 three of them are LE; Forbidden Fruit, Au Natural and Lola. Sandi's glosses really are freaking amazing! Very pigmented and they last quite a long time on your lips. The nice thing is that even her bright colors can be applied very sheerly for just a hint of color.

L-R: Forbidden Fruit, Au Natural, Burlesque, Lola, Cherry Bomb

Forbidden Fruit - Bright coral. This is the perfect coral lip color, at least for me anyways.

Au Natural - A great frosty nude color. I love this lip gloss for every day when you just want a hint of color.

Burlesque - Bright pink with a purple base.

Lola - Beautiful deep red with gold shimmer. This is one of my faves!

Cherry Bomb -  The perfect bright red lip gloss! This is probably the best red lip gloss I own.

Read More

NYX Cosmetics on HauteLook.com today!

Hey everyone! NYX Cosmetics is on sale on HauteLook.com today! Prices on these are between 50-80% off so go check it out! I ordered the Diamond Sparkle Lip Gloss Set and the Set 2 - Chrome Loose Eye Shadow Set. I am planning on using some of the products I receive for a giveaway sometimes soon so stay tuned! =)

Read More

Urban Decay Naked Palette

Urban Decay Haul

I finally got my hands on my own Urban Decay Naked Palette! This palette has perpetually been sold out so when I saw that Urban Decay had it back in stock on their website I jumped on it. Since UD offers free shipping on orders over $50 I also purchased a travel size UDPP in Eden to bring my order to slightly over $50.  I placed my order on April 12 and received it April 15 so order processing and shipping was really quick. In addition to the items I ordered, I received a free sample of their lipstick in Gash.

Naked Palette!

The packaging of this palette is really awesome! I love the velvet feel of the case even though I know it'll be prone to getting dirty quickly. It's a really solid and sturdy case that definitely does not feel cheap. A travel size UDPP is also included in this set. I love how UD really takes the time to make their packaging look good. Even the back of the box the palette came in was beautifully illustrated with all the shadows in this palette, their names and the brush that comes with it.

Back of the Naked Palette box

The shades themselves are really really gorgeous. If you're traveling and can only take a limited amount of makeup with you I would definitely recommend taking this palette. It has everything you need to create beautiful every day looks as well as smoking hot evening looks. In fact, I'm planning on bringing only this palette with me on my honeymoon. ;) I will not be swatching this palette in this post because I want to do a comparison post between the UD version and the Silk Naturals clones so stay tuned for that post!

Inside the Naked Palette

I would highly recommend purchasing this palette when it is in stock! I really can't believe how quickly this palette sells out online and in stores considering it has been around for awhile. This palette is definitely going to become one of my favorite go-to palettes. I think UrbanDecay.com currently has some in stock so grab it while you can!

5 out of 5 Glittery Bubbles

**All products were purchased by me with my own money. I was not compensated in any way, shape or form for this review. All opinions are my own. 

Read More

Silk Naturals Urban Decay Naked Palette Clone

Silk Naturals Haul

I ordered from Silk Naturals (SN) based on reviews by Phyrra and Grey at Gothique. I really wanted to see how their Naked Palette clone stacked up against the original Urban Decay version. So I ordered their entire UD Naked Palette clone set. I also received Nekkid, their MAC Naked Lunch clone, free as all orders over $30 will receive one free eye shadow of your choice.

All the shadows in my order

I placed my order on April 1 and received a notification it was shipped on April 4. I believe I received it on April 6 so TAT was less than 1 week. The order was shipped in a standard bubble mailer with the invoice included. The UD clones were packaged together in a black organza bag and my freebie Nekkid was wrapped separately. A quick note was also handwritten on the invoice. One thing I noticed right away was that there were no ingredients listed on the individual eye shadows. I was sent a general ingredients list that can also be found on their website but it doesn't actually list all the ingredients in each eye shadow.

Urban Decay Naked Palette clone swatches

The palette consists of a mixture of matte and shimmer shades just like the original. I found all of them to be very pigmented and easy to blend. I did have a little more difficulty with the matte shadows in blending them but I've found that to be the case with every matte loose shadow I've tried so far. I am not going to go into detail about every color like I usually do since I'm going to do a comparison post and swatch these side by side with the original when I get the chance, whenever that will be...lol.

L-R: MAC Naked Lunch, Silk Naturals Nekkid swatched over MAC Painterly Paint Pot

I am however going to go a little bit in depth with the Naked Lunch/Nekkid clone. Naked Lunch is probably one of my favorite highlight/neutral shades from MAC. It really complements my skin color and I can use this with just about anything. I was curious to see you close Nekkid would be to Naked Lunch which is why I requested it as my freebie. I could tell just from looking at the color in the jar that Nekkid would be more golden in color than Naked Lunch. Naked Lunch is a shimmery pale champagne pink that almost matches the skin color on the inside of my arm. Nekkid is more champagne than pink and has a more golden hue to it. It is also more shimmery than Naked Lunch If you're looking for an exact Naked Lunch dupe, sorry, this isn't it.  I'd say it's about an 80% match. I still prefer my Naked Lunch over Nekkid but if you're looking for a pretty champagne color this is worth buying.

Overall great company with a huge range of eye shadows. They do have a lot of clones from big companies like MAC, Nars, BeneFit, Stila, Bare Escentuals and even Bobbi Brown so if their eye shadows, blushes or glosses are a bit out of your price range you can check out SN for their dupes of different colors as SN is definitely a lot cheaper. Customer service is excellent and TAT is also good, what more could you want? =)

4.75 out of 5 Glittery Bubbles

**All products were purchased by me with my own money. I was not compensated in any way, shape or form for this review. All opinions are my own.

Read More

Antoinette's Revolution Cosmetics

Yay! I finally received Marie and Liasons from ARC! Racheal was out of those two particular colors when I first placed my order with her so she said she'd send them out to me when they were available again. In addition to my full sizes of Liasons and Marie I received a free sample of Guillotine. So without further ado here are the swatches. All are swatched over MAC Painterly Paint Pot and photographed in natural light.

L-R: Liasons, Marie and Guillotine

Liasons -  This is a gorgeous bright pink with bright pink sparkle.

Marie -  One of the most beautiful baby blue colors with a slight gold shift and pink sparkle. This is a very light blue which unfortunately looks almost white in this particular picture. The pink sparkle also was hard to capture in pictures or at least in the lighting I had available to me.

Guillotine -  Extremely bright red with red glitter. If it weren't for the red glitter I think this would a true matte red.  It's probably the brightest red I have ever seen!

Read More

Anderson Soap Company

Whipped Soaps and Lip Balm

I decided to order from Anderson Soap Co. (ASC) because of a deal they had on Heartsy.com. I paid $15 for a $35 voucher for ASC. Lately I've been in love with the whipped soaps from Savor so I decided to give the whipped soaps from ASC a try. My order arrived wrapped in bubble wrap in a flat rate priority envelope. I was a bit surprised that the whipped soaps themselves weren't shrink wrapped but the lip balm tube was. I ordered 4 whipped soaps in Cotton Candy, Peppermint Patty, Waterfall and Intimate Romance. I also ordered their luscious lip balm in Watermelon Patch. My order total ended up being exactly $35.75 and ASC was kind enough to waive the remaining 75 cents for me! =)

Cotton Candy Whipped Soap texture

The texture of the soap itself was amazing! They are really soft and creamy and feels almost like a lotion. The scents are also really nice and light. The candy scented ones were a bit stronger and really sweet. I really liked Peppermint Patty because it smelled exactly like a York peppermint patty. Cotton Candy was too sweet for me and I wasn't a big fan of it. Waterfall has a really light clean scent and is perfect for the guys as well. My favorite out of all of them was Intimate Romance. It smells very similar to Victoria's Secret Love Spell and that particular scent is one of my VS faves so having it as a whipped soap is awesome!

Luscious Lip Balm in Watermelon Patch

I already know the lip balm is going to be one of my absolute favorite lip balms after having tried it a few times. The scent reminds me of Watermelon Jolly Ranchers! The best part though is how this balm feels on your lips. It has a really soft texture which glides on your lips like a dream. It might be slightly too shiny/glossy on the lips for a guy to wear but for me it is perfect. This balm has pretty good staying power on the lips as well and doesn't disappear completely for a couple hours even through eating and drinking. I'm beginning to wish I had ordered more of the lip balms instead of all the whipped soaps!

Customer service in my case was non-existent. It would have been nice to receive a shipping confirmation email but my etsy status was updated to "shipped". I do understand that at this time things might be a little crazy for the people over at ASC due to the high volume of sales from the Heartsy.com sale. TAT was pretty quick all things considered and I think I received everything in about a week to a week and a half . Overall I highly recommend this company and checking out their products!

5 out of 5 Glittery Bubbles

**All products were purchased by me with my own money. I was not compensated in any way, shape or form for this review. All opinions are my own.

PS Sorry if this review sounds a bit rushed! I have a large backlog of items I want to finish reviews for at the moment. =)

Read More

Persephone Minerals Review

Persephone Minerals Haul

I decided to purchase from Persephone Minerals thanks to the review and swatches by Phyrra on the Sailor Senshi collections. I really loved the swatches of the crystal power shades so I ordered all the crystal power shades plus Moon Prism Power and Sailor Moon.

Pretty little packaging

I placed my order on March 29 and my order was marked shipped April 4 which falls exactly in her TAT of 5-10 business days. I received my package on April 7 so it took slightly over a week to receive my order which is not bad at all. My package was shipped to me in a standard bubble mailer and my shadows were enclosed in a pretty gold organza bag with 2 samples, the ingredients list for all the shadows I ordered as well as my invoice.

Product packaging was very simple and plain. The jar lids had a silver sticker with "Persephone Minerals" on the top and the bottom of the jar had the shade name and collection it was from. All the jars were shrink wrapped which is definitely a good thing in this case since there were no sifters in these jars.

Shrink wrapped jar

One thing I didn't like was that the ingredients are not printed on the labels on the jars. Instead I received a half sheet of paper with the shade names and the ingredients in each one. While I am glad that I received a list of ingredients, I would rather see this type of information printed on the product labels because I will probably end up losing this piece of paper in the near future. The samples did not have any ingredients listed.

Ingredients list

I also was not a fan of no sifters in the jars. I personally prefer sifters as it just helps to prevent product loss especially when I have butter fingers. I do however understand that not having sifters in these jars allows for more product to be packed into them and these babies are definitely packed full. I am debating whether or not I want to repot these into my own 5g jars with sifters.

3g jar packed full

Ok so on to the swatches. I have to tell you right off the bat, these babies are hard to photograph. I must have taken like a million pics and these were the best I could come up with. I will have to try photographing them again later in direct and indirect sunlight outside sometime as these I took in the evening in my bathroom because generally that's the only time I have to play with makeup. All are swatched over MAC painterly paint pot. None of these pics do ANY justice to these shades which is so sad because these are super amazing in person. I'll repost swatches when I have the chance to redo them but at this point I really need to get this review up since I have a rather large backlog at the moment.

L-R: Jupiter Crystal Power, Venus Crystal Power, Moon Prism Power

Jupiter Crystal Power - light green with a gold shift.

Venus Crystal Power - orangey yellow with a gold shift

Moon Prism Power - off-white shade with a pink/violet shift

L-R: Mercury Crystal Power, Moon Crystal Power, Sailor Moon

Mercury Crystal Power - light baby blue with a gold shift.

Moon Crystal Power - gorgeous medium pink with an orange/gold shift. So much brighter in person than in this photo...ugh. This is seriously an amazing shade. One of my faves.

Sailor Moon -  Lovely coppery/gold shade with green, blue and red glitter. Again, freaking amazing and not done any justice by this photo.

L-R: Free Samples of Chara Mystical Highlight and Toffee Iced Coffee

Chara - a light peachy pink shimmer meant to be used as a highlight. Personally it seems a tad too light for my skin tone to be used as a highlight.

Toffee Iced Coffee - an almost matte coffee brown shade. I personally did not like this shade as it did not seem to blend very well. I had a hard time getting a clean looking swatch with it. Also it's not a color I could wear very well either.

Gorgeous shimmery goodness

This gives a better idea of the gold shifts in the shadows

A better idea of the true shadow colors

Hopefully my bad pictures do not deter you from purchasing from Persephone Minerals because seriously they are some of the most beautiful and unique shadows I own and that is saying quite a bit considering the current size of my collection. I will definitely purchasing from Persephone Minerals again in the future and hope to one day own the entire Sailor Senshi collection!

4.5 out of 5 Glittery Bubbles

** All products were purchased by me with my own money. I was not compensated in any way, shape or form for this review. All opinions are my own.

Read More