stila sparkle eye liner "curacao"this is a brand that i've wanted to try for a while, starting chiefly from the fact that my first exposure to them came from seeing their name on early iterations of companies that don't perform animal testing. while it's a lot easier to find companies who meet that criteria nowadays, i was still always interested to see what stila did. it's just that i could never find them. for whatever reason, their products never seemed to be on sale any place i could actually get to. reluctant to make my first experience an online exchange, i waited and was recently rewarded when i went into murale and found that the lise watier display had been uprooted in favour of a shiny new stila one. [smart move on their part- watier is available everywhere in montreal, whereas this is the only location in the downtown area that has stila.
i was a blank slate, having no idea where to even start with the brand, so i was surprised when what really caught my eye was a bright blue sparkly liquid liner called "curacao". i say surprised because i'm not normally much for eye liner in any colour other than black and, in particular, blue is a colour i tend to avoid since i find it makes my actual eye colour look faded. it's just that this one looked some damn pretty and so damn unique compared to just about anything else on display. the colour when i tried it on the back of my hand was intense and i figured that, if i was going to try something new, i might as well go all the way new. and as it turns out, these particular liquid liners are new to stila as well.
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| curacao sparkle liner |
the reason people tend to avoid liquid liners is because they can be really, really finicky and messy to apply. however with these, that's not so much the case. aside from the fact that you can clear away an "oops" pretty quickly, the long, conical applicator gives you a great deal of control over where the product goes and is not prone to dripping where you don't want it. i found the application smooth, even and neat, despite having to layer the product to get the intensity i wanted.
that layering is actually my biggest problem with these liners [or at least with the one i've tried]. the applicator makes it easier to do, but to me, trying to line up layers of eye liner is just asking for problems. once i did get the colour where i wanted it, though, i do have to say that it's very beautiful. i love the way it shimmers when it catches the light and adds just a flash of blue to my eyes. that effect can be more subtle when worn with other colours, or could be more dramatic if used on its own against a nude/ neutral base.
there are eight shades available of the sparkle liners. i would characterise them as "standards"- black, brown, olive, purple, blue and teal for colour. curacao is more original- more of a royal blue than a cyan base and a sort of ultraviolet reflect. there is also a mauve-grey ["starry"] that looks a little more distinctive than most dark grey shades available.
stile sparkle liners are $22usd/ $30cad, which puts them firmly on my s**t list for currency gouging, but the product is nice enough to warrant giving a try to whichever colours grabs your fancy.
available from sephora and murale [canada].
benefit full-finish lipstick "mod squad"oh benefit, i so want to love you, with your slyly humourous marketing and your highly specialised products designed to meet needs i didn't realise i had, but we just never quite seem to connect. i'm extremely glad to see that the california-based company who celebrate both femininity and feminine power have grown to such a success and i still believe that their "bad gal" mascara is something to which all other mascaras secretly aspire [which makes me wonder why they've launched a new one this summer], but i just seem to have very little luck using their products myself.
their "high beam" highlighter is a beautiful, moonlit shade, but it settles in my pores something wicked. "dr. feelgood" priming balm makes my skin feel like velvet, but after a few days' use, it has a tendency to make me break out. their "creaseless cream" shadows work far better on me than most creams, but i still find they leave my lids feeling "sweaty" and can irritate the corners of my eyes [although they're not nearly so irritating as the mac "big bounce" shadows]. i keep going back to them because i love their attitude, their products are inventive enough to keep me interested and both "bad gal" and their ubiquitous boxed blushes are standouts.
their lipstick crossed my path when i had a hankering for a summer version of a lighter, cooler pink, something a little less heavy than mac's "saint germain" and a little more neutral than guerlain's "fuchsia delice". "mod squad" fit the bill quite nicely, because, despite the name invoking visions of opaque sixties white-pink kissers, the shade is quite sheer and, while definitely a cooler nude pink, it reads as quite natural with a single pass.
it surprises me that this is listed as a "full finish" lipstick, since i find the formula to be quite light. while it's not sheer, the colour of my lips definitely pokes through a little. if i layer the colour [which brings it closer to that light, cool "mod pink"], this becomes more pronounced, since the colour of my lips "fights" with the colour of the lipstick. personally, i didn't like the effect of the lipstick once it was layered- it seemed to apply very unevenly and the formula is slippery enough that it becomes more uneven every time your lips move. as a light, fairly sheer shade, i liked it very much, so whether or not this is the colour for you may depend largely on what you want to get from it.
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| mod squad- the cat hair is simon's touch |
there are definitely things that i like about this shade and some of the things i don't like, i can forgive because they're not as noticeable in a light/ sheer colour as they would be on the kind of colour i normally wear. but, once again, it seems that benefit and i are just doomed to be a little bit out of synch.
benefit full-finish lipstick is available in 20 permanent shades. $18usd/ $22cad [gets a slight growl, but canadian customers can order directly from benefit's web site].
available at sephora, murale, select shopper's drug mart/ pharmaprix locations and on line from www.benefitcosmetics.com
here's a quick look incorporating both products.
face
lush colour supplement "jackie oates"diorskin nude hydrating concealer "001"
mac mineralize skinfinish natural "light"
eyes
mac e/s "neutral pink"
mac e/s "prussian"
mac megametal e/s "prance"
stila sparkle eye liner "curacao"
diorshow mascara
mac mineralize skinfinish "pink power"
lips
benefit full-finish lipstick "mod squad"
nails [visible above, so i figured i'd share]
nars "desperado"
