CS Contour & Blush Palette

This has been on my lemming list since I saw this on the Coastal Scents website last year. A few weeks ago I pre-ordered it from a local re-seller since it is cheaper than ordering directly. The shipping fee alone is $15.25 just for this palette.

Here it is now:


Case is matte black.



The palettes are huge!



See how big it is in relation to my hand. I think each is as big as my palm (and my hands are pretty big).



I did some swatches so just follow the numbers. I swatched them all dry with no base. All the pigments are matte which is essential to contouring and highlighting because they have to look natural (and not shiny). They're not powdery or chalky when I swiped them on my finger.




with flash:



no flash:


The shade #2 does not show up on my skin tone because it has the exact same shade.

You can check out the videos on the Coastal Scents website or You Tube. I still need to learn and figure out how to use this palette on myself. I am so excited to start!

Palettes & the Christmas Tree

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend (or Thanksgiving vacation)!

Got myself 3 palettes to put my pressed minerals in yesterday. Took me a long time trying to figure out what palette to get and I was going back and forth 2 stores trying to choose. There were a lot to choose from and they weren't exactly cheap (converted into $$$ they might seem cheap???). I ended up with the following:

1. Elianto empty 6-hole palette. There was a 4-hole, 6-hole, 10-hole and 20-hole palette but the 6-hole had solid sides. The others had a hard foam to make or form the holes and I guess they're really for the e/s or blushes in pans that you can put in there. I got this for less than $5 converted.





This also has a big mirror on 1 side and since the holes are big, I could put in 6 blushes.

**Elianto is a popular Malaysian brand for skincare and cosmetics.

Was also choosing between this one and the Makeup Forever palette but that was much more expensive at $13-$14 each for a 6-hole and 4-hole.

2. 24 shade eyeshadow palette

3. 12 shade eyeshadow palette



** Both 2 and 3 are by a local brand called Ever Bilena and cost less than $3 each converted. There was a lot to choose from here and I just ended up with these 2 so I could put in 36 eyeshadows! I'll just remove all the e/s in the palette first since they are not mineral makeup.

The 24's has a big mirror making it easy to put on eyeshadow. Even if they're not mmu, the shades look very nice.

*** I have put in 4 blushes today in the 6-hole palette. It seems that the 20 gram jars I used to press my blushes in before had big cracks all around the base.

Has this happened to any of your 5-, 10- and 20- gram jars of mmu? I found my empty jars with cracks even if they're empty and just inside a plastic tackle box (where I store empty jars).

Still a mystery to me as to why these happened.

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My mom started to put up the Christmas tree last night after we bought new trimmings yesterday. I saw my daughter helping out and hanging the Christmas balls and I was able to get pictures.



Blue was the color motif this year and we got blue and silver Christmas balls, ribbons, silk flowers and other ornaments plus additional Christmas lights.
There was also this pair of very cute blue birds we found which could be added as accent to catch your eye on the tree:



Cute isn't it?

The tree isn't finished yet since we still have to find the Angel to put on top. It's hidden somewhere in the storage room.

Has anybody else put up Christmas decors?