Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Villains Came Home With Me
I have officially lost it. Both my mind and a ton of money.
So far, I've been pretty successful at keeping my nose in the cheap side of cosmetics and items intended to make one look as presentable as possible. My personal buying motto of quantity over quality has served me well thus far, but ever since I've been having a steady income, the urge to spend has been quite overwhelming! And like a boxer with butter fingers, I haven't been putting up much of a fight against it.
My willpower officially went down the drain the day I happened to saunter (without putting up a fight again, you see) past a MAC outlet the day they launched their latest collection - a collaboration with Disney called the "Venomous Villains Collection".
Who's the champion now, wimpy princesses?
Instead of going the predictable route with a collection centered around characters that every little girl with fluttering eyelashes and bluebirds following her around longs to be, MAC made a collection based on the characters we love to hate! Disney villains are in a class of their own. With more devious plans than local politicians and methods of poisoning that would make you look upon apples and spinning wheels with unnecessary caution, they're a whole bunch of angry bitches out to get you.
Well, there are male Disney villains as well and MAC didn't want to leave that out.
The MAC Disney Venomous Villains Collection is based on 4 Disney villains namely Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians - 1961), the Evil Queen (Snow White - 1937), Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty - 1959) and Dr. Facilier (The Princess & The Frog - 2009). Each villain has a whole range of products like blushes, beauty powders, eyeshadows, lipglosses and such to their name and the packaging for most of it has the classic images of the villains printed on (as opposed to stickers like previous collections). This collection is huge and achieves many levels of epic.
I think the villains that they chose are spot on when it comes to their individual looks, especially Maleficent, who always looks a little green, and the Evil Queen with her red lips. Cruella could have used some eyebrow grooming lessons, but we'll forgive her for that. The odd one out for me was Dr. Facilier. He's one of the most recent Disney villains, while the others are classics. It's a really weird choice since not a lot of people know him (people like myself who completely ignored that movie) and he looks like he's about to spend the night in your closet and wait until you fall asleep.
How about choosing someone like Gaston from Beauty & the Beast? Or Jafar from Aladdin? At least they were nice to look at.
Optimism. It could have been worse.
I wanted to buy almost everything from the collection, mostly for the packaging though. I realise that when looking at it individually and looking at the entire collection as a whole, temptation levels tend to differ.
Since it was all insanely expensive (the perils of MAC), I decided to buy things that I know I would use (or most likely not end up in the dreaded "See-how" drawer) and luckily, they were from 2 villains whose design I liked the most!
First up, my first expensive (from someone who has only bought eyeshadow from warehouse sales) eyeshadow! From Maleficent's collection, I chose the "She Who Dares" Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo.
The boxes are designed with the original Disney sketches of each villain.
I've never used mineralized eyeshadow before and come to think of it, I never really use a lot of eyeshadow too. So it was quite an investment and the price tag was more than enough to make sure I actually try to use it.
"She Who Dares" Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo is a combination of a sapphire-ish navy blue with black undertones on 2/3 of it and a dirty forest green with black undertones on the other 1/3. Both colours are packed full of shimmer. Nothing a villain likes more than some shimmer to announce that she's got her eye on you.
Maleficent and her raven, the original Disney pirate and parrot duo.
Must. Stop. Staring. At. It.
Being an eyeshadow noob of the lowliest degree, I was kinda hesitant to buy this at first because I was pretty sure I was going to make a complete mess of things. I swatched it on my hand and the colours turned out a dull, messy black with barely noticeable shimmer. None of the bright blue and green colours I saw in the pan. I could barely tell the blue and green apart! How now brown cow??
Sensing that a customer was not about to plonk down a wad of cash into her register, a sales assistant came over to show me how it was done. She grabbed a black Greasepaint Stick (in "Slick Black" from Dr. Facilier's collection), smudged it over the back of her hand as a base and patted the Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo on top of it. I don't know how and why, but the heavens opened up (as they are wont to open at moments like these) and the colours emerged as bright and shimmery as I expected it to be the first time.
Learning my lesson, I discovered that these Mineralize Eyeshadows (and most eyeshadows for that matter) show up best with a base underneath. Depending on the look you're going for, the base could be a neutral skin colour, or the same colour as the eyeshadow itself. I decided that I was going to jump right in with smoky eye looks using this eyeshadow, so after some homework, I found a great eyeshadow base to start with - The Body Shop Kajal Eyeliner (special edition) in Charcoal, which is a basic black crayon-looking kajal eyeliner. It works great as a base for super basic black smoky eye look. I smudge it onto my eyelid, pat the Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo on top of it and it kinda works! Albeit a little messy and dangerously close to looking like bruised panda eyes zone.
I should have gotten the silver one too, but now it's sold out everywhere!
I would like to give myself a public pat on the back for successfully (I use the term loosely here) doing smoky eyes for 2 days in a row! I didnt dare use more than 1 colour since my blending skillz are not past Level 1 yet, but I think it looked quite alright!
Back to MAC! Focus, I no haz it.
The next thing I bought is from the Evil Queen's collection, which is the "Strange Potion" Lipglass.
It's actually a sleeve casing where you slide another box out from the inside and it's a basic MAC lipgloss box.
No Evil Queen is complete without an Evil Scowl.
Strange Potion Lipglass is a light peachy coral with very slight gold shimmer. It is opaque enough to be worn on its own and I absolutely love it.
True to MAC's Lipglass reputation, it's pretty a sticky formula, but the colour is so worth the risk of having your lips stuck together for a few seconds each time you open your mouth (solution? talk less when wearing this).
It looks a little dark coral here, but in real life it's at least 2 shades lighter. More peachy.
And that's my tiny haul from MAC'S Disney Venomous Villains Collection! You can bet I'll be trying to use these 2 products as often as possible to make it worth the price I paid. I've got a slight longing for one of the blushes from the Evil Queen's collection. I'll try not to go near a MAC store anytime soon.
Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo is RM85 and Lipglass is RM70. Not sure if that price is exclusively for this collection only though. I don't know MAC prices well enough. The Body Shop Kajal Eyeliner is RM35. What a steal!
The next MAC collection launching in a few months looks promising. Just in time for Christmas, the MAC A Tartan Tale Collection has me thinking of very fit Scottish lads in kilts. Short, short kilts, standing on a hill on a windy day.
Be still, my beating heart!!
*MAC A Tartan Tale pictures from Temptalia*
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