Jasmine Honey – Light cream beige (frost)

Fuji Pink -Pale peach with low level pearl (frost)

Moon Beach Warm light beige with pearl (frost)

Cherry Fest-Rose with high level pearl (frost)

Sweet Bean- Cool beige with pearl (frost)

Almond Blossom- Pale pink with high level pearl (frost)

Mango Sheen- Bright coral with pearl (frost)

Asian Butterfly- Lilac with pearl (frost)

Imperial Red -Bright rose with pearl (frost)

Dress Kimono- Mid-tone frosted plum (frost)

Black Tea- Deep brown with pearl (frost)

Good for skin  ingredients include Galaxuara, a deep sea red algae known to be   calcium rich and   have  vitamins A and E . Then there is SPF of  30 for high protection.

Illamasqua Expose Blush

Illamasqua Expose Blush

Illamasqua Expose Blush

Illamasqua Expose Blush

I’m a huge fan of Bobbi Brown’s Rich Lip Color–the formula really resonated with me when it initially debuted. The formula is supposed to be long-wearing, moisturizing, and yield “pure, crisp color.” It’s a lightweight lipstick with rich, opaque color payoff. The look is creamy, but there’s not too much slip once applied yet it applies easily and glides over the lips for full color coverage in a single pass. While not all the formula’s shades wear as long, this deeper shade wore well for just over six hours and needed a reapplication after eight hours. My lips didn’t feel dry or parched at all after the eight hours I wore this shade. This lipstick is both scent- and taste-free, which is a nice touch.

The texture is soft without being powdery, so it applies subtly at first but the color can be built up. There’s a soft glowy finish, because the shimmer is downplayed, the sheen is more emphasized. On my skin tone, it adds a peach glow. It should work as a blusher on light to medium skin tones, but darker complexions may find it acts more as a warm highlighter. Bobbi Brown’s blush formula, when I tested out this shade, wore well for eight hours.   I like that you can easily pop out the blushes to put into palettes, but I’m not so keen on the minimal quantity provided–0.13 oz. is about a third to a half the size of your average blush.  If you own more than a handful of blushes, you’re not likely to finish this quickly by any means, though.

Estee Lauder Topaz Chameleon Pure Color Illuminating Powder Gelee ($40.00 for 0.17 oz.) is described as “high polish for your skin.” It’s a liquid, powder, and gel formula all-in-one. Estee Lauder says it “smooths on as an all-over soft sheen” and “builds for luminous pearl highlighting.” I wouldn’t describe it as an all-over powder or really so much a highlighting product–maybe a highlighting bronzer. The product is very, very intense. The pigmentation is insane; one tap of the brush, and it’s more than enough color to add a bronzed look to my cheeks. To achieve mere highlighting, I found that a fan brush and a very, very light hand (think of just a tap) was the only way to get just a faint sheen. If you use a regular blush or highlighting brush, and you use your typical method, you’ll probably find there’s too much for just a highlighted sheen.

This is a product that would be really lovely on deeper, golden-toned skin. It’s a rich coppery bronze with red undertones and a molten gold shimmer and sheen. theBalm Betty Lou-Manizer is browner, less orange and red. Urban Decay Gilded is a little lighter, more orange and less red-toned, but compares to the softer swatch of Topaz Chameleon.  If you want to bring out the metallic sheen, you can use the powder with a wet or damp brush.

I feel like this product is too pigmented if its aim is to be an all-over highlight.  Even on darker skin tones, I can’t imagine using this all over.  It’s very metallic and frosty, so it does emphasize the texture of the skin slightly.  The brush that Estee Lauder includes applies this more heavily if you aren’t careful (light hand, tapping away excess).  As a bronzer, it should work on warmer skin tones.  There are strong copper and orange tones, so I’m not sure if this would work as well on cooler complexions.  Estee Lauder just doesn’t call this product out as a bronzer, when it just feels and looks so much like one.

It can be used as a highlighter, but the application is more difficult and takes some practice.  It looks very dirty on my skin tone as a bronzer, but with a fan brush, a light hand, and a buffing brush, it can yield a softer, more manageable golden sheen.  The texture is soft but has this dry feel; it’s a different texture compared to most powders, but it is similar to Estee Lauder’s recent formulas like this.  When I wore this as a bronzer, it lasted for seven hours before beginning to fade.  I wish it would blend out more easily, because it’s just too easy to over-apply, so a more blendable texture would make for a more forgiving application.

I had a tough time trying to figure out exactly what Estee Lauder was going for here and whether this product should have been sheerer or if the pigmentation was on point.  I decided that since Estee Lauder said it was buildable (and it is) and didn’t mention it being sheer, the product would receive full marks for pigmentation.  Because achieving the highlighting the brand describes is more difficult, this was reflected in the application score.

Tarte Amused Amazonian 12-Hour Clay Blush ($25.00 for 0.20 oz.) is described as a “bright pink.”  It’s bright, all right!  It looks practically glowing in the pan, but if you’re like me and fear more pigmented blushes, it can be blended out to look like a soft pop of pink.  It’s very easily a brightened, medium-dark pink with cool blue undertones set in a satiny finish.  There’s just a hint of sheen but nothing shimmery or frosty. MAC Overdyed has a similar intensity, but it’s less pink, more purple. MAC Amazon Princess is also less pink, more purple–but not quite as purple as Overdyed. MAC Her Blooming Cheek is just slightly less pink but similar. Make Up For Ever #3 is a bit darker.

I really like the texture, finish, and feel of the formula, but the wear definitely doesn’t get to 12 hours for me.  Amused managed to look mostly fresh for eight hours but did look noticeably faded after ten hours.  The lighter shades in the range don’t do quite as well, but these really intense shades seem to linger for longer.  The powder is very finely-milled and soft, but it’s also so soft that powder easily gets disturbed, and it’s easy to get too much on the brush.  Since this shade is so intensely pigmented, I recommend a stippling brush and/or gently tapping the excess off for light to medium color coverage.

Guerlain Les Gris Eyeshadow Palette ($59.00 for 0.25 oz.) consists of four eyeshadows that center around a cool-toned, gray theme.  Guerlain’s eyeshadow formula doesn’t always hit all the bells and whistles for me, even though their color selections are rarely off.  The textures of these shades are soft, smooth, and decadent, but the payoff could be a little more intense.  Without a primer, these wear for around eight hours with just slight creasing, and with a primer, there’s no creasing even after twelve hours.

The first shade, on the very left of the palette, is a brown-based gray with a satin-matte finish; it’s not quite matte, but the satin sheen is very subtle. It shares the qualities of most mattes in that it tends to perform better applied than it does swatched. When swatched, there’s some sheerness and dryness, but once applied, it goes on soft and smooth, and that dryness transforms to blendability on the eye. It looks a bit like MAC Scene but without the bluish tone. Chanel Gris Exquis is a couple of steps lighter with less brown in it.

The top shade is a pale gray-taupe; it’s on the edge of taupe, but both the silvery-gray sheen and lightness of it make it appear grayer overall. It has more of a soft, frosted finish, because it has both noticeable shimmer and sheen. The texture is soft and light, and the pigmentation is good. MAC Hold That Pose has a slightly rosy tint in comparison. Guerlain Les Ombres de Nuit has a shade very similar to this, perhaps slightly warmer.

The bottom shade is a dark navy blue with cool undertones and a frosted finish. There’s a subdued quality about the color that makes it less like your average navy blue (which is gorgeous still!). The color reminded me a bit of MAC Prussian, but the finishes are very different.

The last shade, which is on the right side of the palette, is a silver with hints of brown wrapped in a metallic finish that’s just shy of being foil-like. It has a larger shimmer compared to the other two shimmery shades in the palette, though it is not chunky or prone to fall out. The color payoff is good. It’s lighter than theBalm Muppetational. It’s similar to Bobbi Brown Silver when it’s used dry.

As with most Multiples, Laguna works best as cheeks/face, because it’s very drying on the lips.  It just has this uncomfortably dry feeling when applied to lips that continues and leaves lips parched after an hour or two of wear (it doesn’t even wear well or long!).  On the brow bone, it’s more practical, but on the lid itself, I wasn’t able to get it to stay longer than a few hours before there was noticeable creasing.  Applied to cheeks, Laguna wore for four and a half hours.  By five hours, it looked a bit faded and patchy.

The texture of Laguna is creamy but there’s a dryness to it, which I found difficult to blend over foundation.  It’s easier to apply and blend over bare skin, but I’m not blessed with beautiful skin so it’s not a product I could use without foundation.  You can layer foundation over it, but it makes the routine slightly more complicated and precision will count, so you don’t layer so much that you cover up the bronzer!

I wish I liked Multiples better, but I don’t find they’re nearly as multi-talented as they claim to be!  I’m always a bit disappointed in the wear (four to five hours isn’t good!).  I get better wear out of NARS’ powder blushes!  Laguna may not work for all skin tones; I found it looked a little dirty on me–you might need to have some natural redness or pinkness in your undertones so it brings out the golden hues of the color.

It has nice color payoff and doesn’t require a lot of product to deliver the results seen in swatches, though it’s not as glossy as true lipgloss. The texture feels gritty over time as the color wears away but the glitter lingers on. With Flashy, I was able to get four hours of wear. It’s not perfectly non-sticky, but it doesn’t feel tacky overall, and my lips felt about the same after wearing these–not drier. I didn’t experience any bleeding or feathering of color with this shade.  They look and feel more like a lipstick with extra shine.

If you’ve wanted to try (or have already tried and are a fan of) Urban Decay Super Saturated High Gloss Lip Color, this is a good budget-friendly alternative, because Flash is an exact dupe of Urban Decay Big Bang. The two formulas feel very, very similar; I doubt I could point out the differences in a blind test. Some other similar shades include MAC Quite the Thing (slightly darker) and MAC Rare Exotic (brighter, no shimmer).

I’m not in love with the format or the feel of these, which is the same way I felt about Urban Decay’s version. I don’t love the grittiness that gets more noticeable as you wear the color, and sharpening them can be frustrating. Readers have recommended freezing pencils prior to sharpening to minimize waste, because of the soft, creamy texture, there can be a lot of waste when sharpened at room temperature. Sometimes the excess gets caught in the sharpener and smears more than it disappears when you go to wipe it away!