Swatches: Revolution Renaissance Lipliner in Greatest

I realised as I sorted through my makeup stash the other day that I have a little obsession with lipliners. Not as off the scale as my lipstick or gloss collection, but I do own a fair few. I rarely wear a lip product without lining first; it helps shape the lips and usually gives the gloss or lipstick something to adhere to and therefore last a little longer. I'm also very fond of using them as a colour themselves, not necessarily alone, but say a dark plum liner with pink lipstick to create a unique mauve shade. I have a couple of expensive ones I bought in the last year that are sitting waiting to be swatched, but I got this super inexpensive one last week and couldn't wait to trial it. It's the Revolution Renaissance Lipliner and costs £2.50! Rare you find something that cheap in the beauty department these days.

Makeup Revolution & MUA: £1 Lip Swatches

I recently had to order replacement toothbrush heads, exciting I know (!) and while doing so, I thought I'd check out the makeup. As you know, I'm a big beauty buff, but rarely manage to wear makeup these days, though I have maintained my usual skin and body care routines. For the past year, I've been aiming to wear makeup on the rare occasions I do leave the house and am starting to buy makeup again. It seemed so wasteful when I was very ill, to buy stuff I'd never get the chance to use at the time. It's an area I'm still hugely interested in though, so I've been keeping an eye on new releases (GWP's are still my ultimate weakness), but I'd say I've been spending more on skincare and less on makeup, when it used to be the other way around. I'm also keen to get back into blogging regularly about beauty and hope this is something you'll be interested in seeing here. So back to the toothbrush head order and I saw it was 3 for 2 on makeup with these lipsticks priced at £1 each. It was such a bargain, I was able to order guilt-free! I partly ordered these as an inexpensive treat and partly out of curiosity for blogging purposes! Naturally I gravitated towards the nude colours and for the third item, I picked up a lip liner, as it was also £1. Both Makeup Revolution and Makeup Academy, have really made names for themselves with trendy, quality but affordable items and I was genuinely interested to see how they fared.

Comparison Swatches: MAC Alluring Aquatic

As promised, here are my comparison swatches of some of my MAC 'Alluring Aquatic' pieces. I raided my MAC lipstick tray to find something similar-rather randomly I might add! It's been so long since I've looked at makeup that I'm forgetting shade names and colours and had to check/open each one. However, I easily found several similar ones, some swatched very similarly, others not so much.

Haul & Swatches: MAC Alluring Aquatic

I've been a little out of the loop in regards to MAC collections lately. Nothing has caught my eye online (I have no physical counter near here) and for some reason they no longer bother to email me (even if I sign up for their limited releases), so I've dissed them a bit! However my eye was definitely transfixed when I spied this gorgeous turquoise metallic packaging last week. Sadly, it had already been out for a couple of days and with me not being able for the computer much just now, some had already sold-out. I started googling some of the shades to see if any were decent and then I discovered the really cool thing about the packaging and started making a list of must-haves!

Comparison Swatches: MAC Subculture Lip Pencil

I mentioned my MAC Subculture lip pencil was very similar to others in my collection and here's the evidence. These lip liners are your darker than nude, but not quite dark brown shades. Here's how they compare to Subculture.

*No7 Perfect Lips Liner in 20 Nude is the lightest of the bunch, although I think this was an older version (I can't find a new one-I have tonnes but they are hiding!), it's more of a peachy terracotta.

*Pout Lip Pencil in 32A is now discontinued but it's lighter than MAC and more orangey.

*17 Perfect Pout Lip Liner in In The Buff (again this is an old version-the newer one would be Buff I reckon), it's a duller more brown version than MAC.

*Urban Decay Lip Pencil in Midnight Cowboy is the darkest here along the same shade as 17.

*Estee Lauder Auto Pencil For lips in 21 Fig is much pinker than MAC.

*Hard Candy Get Personal Lip Pencil in LMAO : ) is more orangey brown.

MAC Haul & Swatches

I mentioned that I purchased some more MAC items in order to receive the free mascara they were offering when their website relaunched. I bought a couple of Plushglass glosses from the main line because I'd fallen in love with the one I purchased earlier from Quite Cute. I also got another lip pencil and a lipstick. When my order arrived (so much quicker than Debenhams fyi) I didn't get the mascara. I was calling MAC every name under the sun, considering I'd just spent over £50 on things I didn't need and I had placed so much hope on the rare chance of getting something free from MAC!

I emailed them and never heard back (they still advertised the offer on their site even although it had expired 3 days earlier which irked me even more). Then I got a package through the post one day with my complimentary mascara, so all was forgiven. You redeemed yourself MAC! In the email I'd asked if they still had plenty badges left because I really wanted them for my sister (yet another free offer) and thought I could always order yet another Plushglass from QC to qualify (seeing as I'd already bought everything I wanted from QC and you can't pass up freebies from MAC don't you know!) but of course having not heard back I didn't want to risk having to complain again. Then I realised when you added any QC item, the badges automatically showed up in your basket, so I ordered yet again! Here's all my goodies....

The free Haught & Naughty Mascara (haven't tried it yet), definitely one of the fanciest mascara tubes I've ever owned!
The beautiful Honeylove (matte) lipstick from the permanent line. I happened to have Viva Glam Gaga 2 close to hand so compared them, surprisingly Honeylove was much pinker.

I was a little disappointed with the lipliner. Subculture looks to be your standard brownish nude, like No7 Nude etc and I already have loads like it, I was hoping for something a little more unique and not quite so dark. My search to replace Test Pattern (TP) continues! I've photographed and swatched my other 2 liners, TP and Naked Liner that I bought in the last haul.
(the lipsticks are mislabelled below-sorry)
Two Plushglass glosses-both permanent colours; Wildly Lush is at the front and Ample Pink at the back.
The separate order; Girl ♥ Boy Plushglass from Quite Cute along with the free pins. Really pretty colours and my sis loves them!
All my plushies together! From the front, Wildly Lush, Bubble Tea (Quite Cute), Ample Pink and Girl ♥ Boy (Quite cute). Cannot rave enough about these!
They have a gorgeous glassy, gloss finish.

Haul & Swatches: MAC Quite Cute

My MAC order finally arrived last week and I was really pleased with everything I bought. My only criticism of ordering through Debenhams is that the delivery time is slow, it took from the Friday I ordered until the next Friday to receive it, even although dispatch times are quick (it was sent on the Saturday). Really what is a package doing from Saturday to Friday? It's ridiculous! Anyway, you get your beauty card points, they had 10% off again and I got a couple of fragrance samples with my order. So let's take a took at the goodies...
Sakura Mineralize Blush, wasn't quite as lilac as I was expecting (just an observation, not good or bad) and it's incredibly soft. As I said pre-purchase it's impossible to use the two colours separately unless you're using an eyeshadow brush and using it for a small application like on the eye. The pink heart is very vivid, metallic and will add a nice punch to the cool lilac when swirled together.
Playing Koi (satin) Lipstick, I actually squealed when I took this out, so pretty in the tube. It's a bright peach nude and I can see how it wouldn't work on many complexions (i.e. on darker skin it's going to look white). On me it erases my natural lip colour and my lips look ever so slightly darker and peachier than my skin-it's what a true nude should look like. Adding a gloss over this will bring it to life a little more, but I can see me wearing this a lot anyway. Lips must be thoroughly scrubbed and moisturised with this though as it can settle into lines or dry, flaky skin.
Naked Liner Lip Pencil-I didn't expect this to be a good match necessarily with Playing Koi, but it seems my trio of lip products could be my new nude heroes! It's brighter than I expected and a little more drying than the Test Pattern pencil I already own by MAC.
Now for the star buy, Bubble Tea Plushglass, a plumping gloss which I've never tried before. It looks similar to tinted lipglass, the same size and packaging but with a matte lid rather than glossy. Now, I have a sometime addiction to lip plumpers. If you've tried any type of gloss that tingles or stings you may know what I mean. Some of them hurt like hell, but then you actually grow to like it and need that buzz every time you apply! Anyway...this one isn't the baddest ass of the burners, it's pretty tame, in fact it's more like my beloved Pout Plump which cools rather than burns and I find that much more lip friendly (so much so that I wear PP in bed every night)! I really, really like this gloss, so much so that I placed an order with MAC last night to grab another couple of colours to try out. This one was probably the darkest in the Quite Cute collection and the colour is sheer, but there is a hint of nude there and such a gorgeous, glossy shine that does indeed make your lips look fuller. The gloss itself isn't sticky and although it doesn't taste of anything it smells amazing, like cake mixture (rather than the usual vanilla) and it was practically for that reason alone that I reordered. I have other lip products that smell exactly the same but off the top of my head, I can't think of which ones they are! I seriously recommend these and am disappointed in myself for not trying them sooner.
My latest order is for Ample Pink and Wildly Lush (both permanent items), plus Honeylove lipstick and I got another lip pencil to try, Subculture. I'm sorry I didn't have time to let you know the MAC site was back up and running, if you have placed an order between the 6th-10th you should receive a free Haute & Naughty mascara automatically with your order. On that note Clinique and Estee Lauder are also back selling on their site, so here's a couple of discount codes for some free gifts with your order.