“It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel.”
SEKHMET: THE LIONESS HEADED GODDESS OF UPPER EGYPT.
In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet, was originally the warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing for Upper Egypt, when the kingdom of Egypt was divided. She is depicted as a lioness, the fiercest hunter known to the Egyptians. She is also known as the “lady of slaughter” because in her aspect as the “eye of Ra” she stained the battlefields red with the blood of humans. It was said that her breath formed the desert.
NYX Dreamcatcher Palettes ($15, available at most Targets, Ultas, and even a few CVSs)
so far here in this blog-quest I have posted no negative reviews. this is not because I am not a negative person; on the contrary, I hate lots of things. I hate cargo shorts, and Coors Light, and the Foo Fighters. I hate mediocrity, and fascism, and people who say they're "spiritual but not religious". I hate Dragon Age, which is a contentious subject in my circle of fellow fantasy-nerd friends. I even hate most of Maybelline’s mascaras, with the exception of Full & Soft. I'm difficult and cantankerous. the thing is, unless I really hate something, I have a hard time writing about stuff I’m just not jazzed about. I promise one of these days I will post some of my more negative reviews, but today I’m kind of doing the opposite: I’m coming to the defense of a product I feel doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
I’ve seen a lot of negative-to-meh reviews on NYX’s Dreamcatcher palettes, introduced earlier in the year, and I love these enough to want to ride to their rescue. hit the cut for swatches, and a bit more about why these palettes are an underdog favorite of mine.
Dusk Til Dawn has a really gorgeous plummy purple with a gold shimmer, a peach I use a bunch, a great rose gold, and a respectable sooty black.
Stormy Skies is an interesting set of mostly cooler colors. I use that mid-tone taupe one on the bottom row second from the left a whole bunch, and the purplish-slate one on the top left is a favorite of mine. the matte white is surprisingly decent, and that's saying a lot if you know your drugstore shadows and how hard it is to find a real matte white that isn't utter shit.
Golden Horizons I had to split up into two shots here, sorry. this one is my least favorite of the bunch but it has a nice smoky purple, a really gorgeous gold, another pretty good white, a good pearly pink, and another above-average black. as always these are all done dry without primer and in natural indirect light.
I think the primary source of divisiveness for these palettes is their formula. some people find it dry, or hard to work with, whereas I find it to be smooth and very forgiving. it’s not “buttery” but it’s not “chalky” either; it’s a fine, pillowy-soft powder. there’s a little fallout with the more glittery shades but I do my eyes last and have never had to clean up my foundation afterwards. the matte shades aren’t super pigmented, but they’re buildable and they don’t kick up a ton of dust like a lot of drugstore matte shadows. since these aren’t too dry or too creamy, they’re exceptionally easy to blend, and they stay well on my oily lids. I always wear primer with shadows, because otherwise I’d be walking around with one big dark line on my eyelids, but I tried these without it out of professional curiosity and they held out for a couple of hours admirably. here's a very simple look I did with a couple of the purple shades and the gold from Golden Horizons:
while I love the product contained within their little plastic clamshells, I’m not in love with the clunky packaging; it’s bulky, doesn’t fit well in my vanity, and they have a totally goofball mirror that is a waste of everyone’s time. but they are a nice change of pace from basic black, they look good, and I think more palettes should have those little windows so you can see all the shades without opening them. the bulkiness does facilitate the generous amount of shadow you get in each of the wells, and even my biggest shadow brush fits well in them.
Verdict: these are a great mix of soft, usable, easy-to-blend colors. there are warm and cool tones in each set, and there’s a good combination of a pair of matte finishes, mostly satins, and a couple of glittery shades. the three sets aren’t different enough for me to really justify recommend picking up all of them, and yet I own all of them. at regular price they’re reasonable if a little high, on sale they’re perfect. I enjoy these because they're just so pleasurable to use; they lend themselves to soft everyday looks and to easy, unfussy smoky eyes. they’d make a great gift for beginners, but they’re unique enough to be fun for the more advanced shadow-lover too. haters hatin’.
I didn't want to throw out the bat decorations I had on my door for Halloween so I put them around my vanity to really have an "evil witch queen" thing going on.
Hard Candy Glossaholic Lip Gloss ($5 at Wal-Mart, $5-10 on Amazon)
I love coffee. I don’t mean like, "tee-hee I lurrrvv coffee please give me a venti of half sugar and half hot whipped cream", I mean like I drink a pot or two a day and I own four or five coffee-making devices and I have to bleach my teeth twice a week. it’s a problem. so any time I see something is coffee flavored or scented I get all wound up. especially for beauty products because that’s usually the domain of one of my least favorite smells in the world: the fake apple stink that every drugstore hair product has, or the Bath and Body Works super-sweet vanilla-and-treacle deathshroud, or sometimes the melted Jolly Rancher aura that surrounds Milani lipsticks (which I admit to finding weirdly attractive).
Hard Candy’s got a line of super-shiny, super-glittery super-90s lipglosses called Glossaholics, and recently they put out two new little gimmicky ones that are “infused with mood-altering elixirs”. one is “Chill Out”, which is vanilla-scented with lavender and hemp oil, just like your hippie roommate from college. the other is “Rise and Shine”, coffee-scented and infused with licorice and caffeine, just like me when I was still smoking cloves like an asshole. I can’t comment on the supposed pharmacological effects of these, since I’m sure there aren’t any, other than the good vibes I get from a nice lipgloss, which these are. while applying these you could light some incense and put on some Black Angels or the Stone Roses or whatever your psychedelica jam is and that might help. once you’ve done that you can join me beyond the cut for mood-altering photos and some further review-like thoughts.
these glosses have the weirdest friggin applicator. it’s a “ginormous” (straight from Hard Candy’s copy! for size comparison that’s my index finger) stiff foam thingy and I wanted to hate it. yet here I am, happily sticking these things on my mouth hole. it actually works pretty well to deliver an even amount of product. payoff-wise they’re mostly sheer-ish with a nice wash of super-shiny color, and a bunch of holo-flake glitter. they manage to not feel gritty, which is nothing short of miraculous considering just how much glitter-per-square-centimeter these things pack in. now I’m not normally much of a fan of glitter, but the unique shape and effect of it here makes me like these way more. they’re a little sticky but nowhere near as bad as the lipglosses of my youth.
here's Rise and Shine on the left with a really awesome gold-and-reddish holo effect that looks like sparks, and Chill Out on the right with a unique lavender-purple and gold. these “mood altering” ones smell like a pretty nice vanilla, and something that in no way resembles coffee, respectively. I got my hopes so up for this dumbass coffee smell and it smells like...I don’t know, a coffee jelly bean. whatever, it’s a change of pace from the other candy scents you usually get with these, so I’ll get over it.
here's Tipsy on the left and Fairy on the right. Tipsy is a pinkish red with a very pretty pink shift, and Fairy is a very pale pink with silver glitter that was sort of hard to photograph. these regular versions smell like a lot of other 90’s style tweenage-y lipglosses, in that they're like if cake batter were a Disney princess. below I'm wearing Rise and Shine over Maybelline's Brazen Berry, and Showstopper by itself.
like most Hard Candy products, I love the packaging too, especially since they’re in cute little fat bottles like MAC glasses, AND they have real metal caps! fancy, considering they’re 5 buckaroos. these are cute as heck on their own but they're really neat over lipsticks. I've played with all of these over different lip products and they can create some fun effects.
Verdict: I went back and forth on these initially, until I realized I didn’t have a lot of other glosses like them, and that they were really unique, fun, and collectible. if you like a good nostalgic lipgloss with a super-glittery shift that’s surprisingly wearable, pick these up. or you can just buy a couple to sniff while you're doing the rest of your makeup and feel like you're 15 again, but this time you work in a fairy bakery.
I will mourn for Ned until the end of my days, but I must think of the living. I want my daughters back, and the queen holds them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father’s seat. I want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my husband.
it's freezing out and I have nothing better to do, so I'm spending a Saturday night taking gratuitous pictures of my Super Lustrous collection. priorities.
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