7 Indie Holy Grail Favourite Beauty Products

In no particular order here are some of my most used and loved indie cosmetic products.

1. Kiss My Sass Cosmetics: Tarnished Halo Eyeshadow
At the moment it looks like they only have the darker version Fireside Glow in stock but I have had no problem contacting the owner of Kiss My Sass Cosmetics in the past to ask for when it would be up in the shop again.

Tarnished Halo watched over primer

I have to say Tarnished Halo is one of my all time favourites. I love how romantic it looks on the eye. Soft, slightly smokey, pale matte grey with an intense copper sheen, this shade goes with a ton of different looks day or night. It has I would say medium coverage but only because it can be built up even more with a second layer for a really intense look. The full size, which will likely last me forever is priced at $6.00 USD. As with all non-matte loose shadows I do recommend a sticky base over your primer, which brings me to my next favourite.

2. Fyrinnae: Pixie Epoxy Eyeshadow Base
This is my all time favourite base when I use loose shadows or I really want to make my eyeshadows look more intense or foiled. It's not recommended for straight matte shades however, so keep that in mind. Pixie Epoxy is a slightly tacky gel of which you only require the smallest amount. A tiny dab for the whole eye-lid is all that is needed. I then like to use my finger and spread out the product before I apply my eyeshadow like normal or through a patting motion depending on how I want the end result to look. I love that this lasts all day, doesn't feel tacky for very long and has a shelf-life of 24-36 months. Plus it's not too expensive either at $6.50 USD for the full size.

3. Notoriously Morbid: Changeling Top Coat (Siren and Leshy)
Changeling Top Coat is such a neat lip product. It's a sheer liquid lipstick that is designed to add a duochrome-like sheen to whatever base lip colour you have on your lips.

Left Siren, Right Leshy

Available in a variety of shades I love my two in Siren (a light blue) and Leshy (a light green). They go on easily and lightly on the lips and dry down completely matte for a long-lasting look. They make so many more lip looks possible! They're only $10.00 USD for two shades.

4. Sugarpill Cosmetics: Loose Eyeshadows in Lumi and Goldilux
At $14.00 USD each these are the most pricey of my list but they are stunning. Both vegan, and in cute fairly large jars these loose shadows are worth the price.

Left Goldilux, Right Lumi

Lumi is a stunning white-blue with turquoise iridescent overlay and turquoise sparks. Very otherworldly. Goldilux on the other-hand is big time glam. The most sparkly, shiny, metallic, intense true gold shade I've tried. Only the smallest amount can amp up an eyeshadow look.

5. Scaredy Cat Cosmetics: Loose Mineral Eyeshadows in Hedgerow, Arctic Royale and customized
This little known brand has some true gems, plus their artwork is adorable!

L-R: Hedgerow, Arctic Royale, Custom with Draconia base, Custom with Cirrina base

Arctic Royale is a gorgeous silvered purple shade. Hedgerow is my favourite, it's a duo-chrome light purple/ turquoise, so ethereal. All of their shades retail for only $5.00 USD too. In addition you can do a customized shade in that you can take any of their shades and add a opaque or translucent glitter to it, which is such an awesome way to spunk up any shade that strikes your fancy. The only thing about the custom shades to keep in mind is that you'll need a sticky base for them. The customized shades are only $5.50 USD.

6. Haus of Gloi: Perfume Oil in Depravity
I love the long lasting scent that these perfume oils have. I personally like to dab some in my elbows and on the ends of my hair (as my skin tends to breakout in most areas due to fractioned coconut oil which is what is used as the base in these). You can also use these in a warmer for a room. They cost $12 USD for 5ml which lasts a decent amount of time as you need so little. Depravity is my favourite, they describe the scent best as: Pure corruption: clove, nutmeg lurk amongst the sweetest offerings of coconut, on a bed of rich golden amber, laden with dustings of sandalwood and spilled wine.

7. Limnit Lipsticks: in Olly Olly Oxen Free
These lipsticks are great. Long-lasting, comfortable mattes with great pigmentation, and they only cost $12.95 USD.

Olly Olly Oxen Free swatch

Olly Olly Oxen free is a deep ox-blood shade with a slightly purple undertone (which I prefer to the brown tones some oxblood shades have). I also like the clear portion of the packaging so you can see the actual shade through the tube. Plus, if you don't like this shade they have 22 more.

So these are my current top 7 indie favourites. I personally love indie companies, they seem to be more innovative and focus on having really great formulas. If there are any indie products out there you love or want to know more about let me know which ones, I'd love to test out some more and report here for you!

Disclaimer: All these products were purchased by me.

Venomous Cosmetics Swatches- Fear and They All Believed in Dragons

These upcoming swatches are from my latest Venomous Cosmetics order. It includes a mismash of the Fear collection (from Halloween- no longer available), the Shifty collection (a lip poison subtle coloured collection up now), and the They All Believed in Dragons collection (also up now and really awesome!) I've also got a comparison swatch between a previous lip poison (Wicked Witch) from the Fairy Tale collection and the currently available Drowning lip poison. For reference here is which shades below belong to which collection.

Fear Collection: Paranormal loose eyeshadow, Nightmare loose eyeshadow, Apocalypse pressed eyeshadow, Claustrophobic pressed shadow, Curse of the Werewolf loose eyeshadow, and Drowning lip poison.

Shifty Collection: Venom lip poison

Once, They All Believed in Dragons...: Zu loose eyeshadow, Creature of the Night loose eyeshadow, Scales of Gold loose eyeshadow

Fairy Tale: Wicked Witch lip poison

L: Zu, T-B: Creature of the Night, Scales of Gold, Paranormal, Nightmare, Apocalypse

T-B: Creature of the Night, Scales of Gold, Paranormal, Nightmare

L: Zu, T-B: Paranormal, Nightmare, Apocalypse, Claustrophobic, Curse of the Werewolf

L: Zu, T-B: Apocalypse, Claustrophobic, Curse of the Werewolf, Venom Lip Poison, Drowning Lip Poison, Wicked Witch Lip Poison

L: Zu, T-B: Creature of the Night, Scales of Gold, Paranormal, Nightmare, Apocalypse, Claustrophobic, Curse of the Werewolf, Venom Lip Poison

Of these shades my favourites have to be Paranormal (it has the most amazing shimmer in real life and it's so pigmented!), Curse of the Werewolf (lovely rich bronze with gold shimmer), Apocalypse (which also has a neat sheen, it goes from periwinkle to light blue-based grey) and Venom which is gold shimmer in a clear base and pretty much goes with everything!

Note! There is a Venomous Cosmetics weekend sale going on with certain shades offered at $4. Worth taking a look. Have a good day!

Fyrinnae Haul, eyeshadow swatches and opinions

All the eyeshadow samples I purchased from Fyrinnae

I recently received my Fyrinnae order- actually on my blog birthday! This is my second time I've ordered from them and they are a truly wonderful company. Excellent costumer service (even with all the issues they've been having staff-wise) and fantastic products. In total I ordered 19 eyeshadows, and two face setting powders (Fluff and oil-control) on top of this I received a sample of Calavera Cupcakes eyeshadow and a sample of their silica gel primer because I couldn't find it on the site when I ordered and asked them if they could include it! How nice is that? I'll be having a review soonish on the primer and the two powders but for now onto the fantastic shadows I bought! All the shadow swatches are over Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy (an awesome base for shadows that are loose or prone to fallout!)

T-B: Calavera Cupcakes, Sakura, Crimson Ghost, Rapunzel had Extensions, Polar Bear, Damn Paladins

T-B: Polar Bear, Damn Paladins, Atomic Afterglow, Fire Opal, Valhalla, Ravens and Writing Desks, Dragon's Wing, Javan Rhino

T-B: Damn Paladins, Atomic Afterglow, Fire Opal, Valhalla, Ravens and Writing Desks, Dragon's Wing, Javan Rhino

T-B: Faerie Glamour, Mephisto, Catrina Cabaret

T-B: Faerie Glamour, Mephisto, Catrina Cabaret, Wicked

T-B: Wicked, The Randy Ferret, Vodka, Dokklafar

T-B: The Randy Ferret, Vodka, Dokklafar, Pumpkinfire

So what do you think? Some of these are pretty amazing eh? The ones I was actually blown away by were Wicked, Faerie Glamour, Damn Paladins, Atomic Afterglow, Polar Bear and Fire Opal.

Wicked is one of my new favourite eyeshadows. OMG, this is absolutely stunning, I couldn't believe how amazing this was, especially in the sunlight. My photos don't do it justice! Just wow. Faerie Glamour too is amazing- so vivd and bright even in the shade. 

Most of these photos don't show the intensity and details of these shadows but I tried my best! Dokklafar and Pumpkinfire are black with some amazing coloured glitter which doesn't show. Vodka is an intense smoky silver that would work well for a smoky eye look. 

I was a little disappointed in a couple shades as they were a bit patchy or the eyeshadow wasn't as intensely coloured as I thought they were going to be. Catrina Cabaret, and The Randy Ferret were two of these. I also thought Mephisto was going to be a purple with red but it ended up turning to the ruby seen above when swatched. 

Damn Paladins really surprised me though! I didn't expect much from it but I know that it's a popular shade so I opted to get the shadow. In the pot it just looks like a boring brown. Then swatched in the sun and you can see a light green shimmer in it. Such a unique neutral! I think it would be perfect for someone in an office job. Non-offensive inside and pow! a little bit of spice outside!

Below is all the shadows in their little pots. I'll likely press most of these but I wanted to show you them in their loose form. Sorry if they're a bit blurry- I wanted to show the sparkle and shimmer! :D

Pumpkinfire

Polar Bear

Ravens and Writing Desks

Wicked

Damn Paladins

Valhalla

Sakura

Calavera Cupcakes

Mephisto

Javan Rhino

Catrina Cabaret

Atomic Afterglow

Crimson Ghost

Faerie Glamour

The Randy Ferret

Dokklafar

Dragon's Wing

Vodka

Rapunzel Had Extensions

Fire Opal

High Voltage Cosmetics~ Review and Swatches

A couple months ago I had ordered a ton of samples from High Voltage Cosmetics, an indie company that has a high variety of eyeshadow colours as well as some lip products (which I didn't get samples of). Everything came nicely packaged in a bubble-wrapped envelope with the samples in little baggies with the names on little stickers. All the baggies were placed together in a larger baggie with gold stars on it which I thought was nice. There was also a small hand written thank-you as well. Unfortunately, I didn't receive all the samples I ordered and though I've e-mailed multiple times I've yet to get a response in return.

The best thing about High Voltage eyeshadows I think is the wonderful duochrome options. Truly unique and absolutely fabulous, there are options available for everyone! I ordered the entire Norse Mythology collection as well as some from the permanent lines too. I certainly have some favourites but some I was a bit disappointed in too. One thing I was kinda disappointed about was that one of my shadow samples was missing- part of the collection was the shadow Mani and Sol from the Norse Mythology Collection but I never recieved it. I did however recieve 2 Vali and 2 Uggdrasil for some reason. I received a couple other extra shadow samples in my order too but I would have liked the Mani and Sol alot I think.

Favourites- Vali (MOST FAVOURITE!), Stiletto Strut, Twilight Symphony, Vor, Baldr, Thorr, Radio Waves, Born to Rock (not shown- was mixed into the purple mix), Sif, Aasgard

Disappointments- Smoke and Mirrors (darker than I wanted- not as pigmented as I wanted), Snotra wasn't unique enough, Mead of Suttungr (kind of patchy- looks white instead of off-white on), Manhatten (too dark- not really different than alot of charcoals out there), Tyr (really looks rust like to me, too close to rust coloured for me to want to wear).

I did attempt to contact the owner of High Voltage cosmetics twice and never heard back from her. I had asked her a bunch of questions about her company and herself- even just getting a response saying they were happy I was reviewing their shadows but can't take the time to fill out my questions would have been appreciated. But I didn't have any issues with the service at all- cheap shipping, good sample prices, lots of variety and fairly quick shipping. The only downside was the one shadow missing.

I found the sample baggies a pain due to their finickiness and difficultly to not get the shadow everywhere using them though they were well labeled. The samples weren't large enough to even press a shadow pan a quarter of the way filled- the mixes were three or four shadows combined together and the shadow pans still weren't full- which was a shame as I was hoping to press them to use. When I use them out of the bags I get the powder all over my hands and the surface I'm working over. Also, the website could really benefit from a search bar! I found it hard to find certain shades a second time browsing the website.

All in all though I do like the company and I think there are some great options here. However unless you can handle eyeshadows from little baggies I don't recommend ordering any samples unless you're really unsure of a colour- just choose wisely based on online swatches and order the full size. Anyways here are my many swatches- Enjoy!

Top to Bottom: Green Mix, Purple Mix, Stiletto Strut, Acoustic, Smoke &; Mirrors

Top to Bottom: Green Mix, Purple Mix, Stiletto Strut, Acoustic, Smoke &; Mirrors

The Green Mix is Prince Charming, Odin and Einherjer samples mixed together; the Purple Mix is Ala Rock, Frozen Love and Born to Rock  samples all together.

Top to Bottom: Himinbjorg, Gefjon, Vali, Ragnarok, Thorr, Lofn, Vor, Snotra, Twilight Symphony, Baldr, Aasgard, Frigg

Top to Bottom: Himinbjorg, Gefjon, Vali, Ragnarok, Thorr

Top to Bottom: Thorr, Lofn, Vor, Snotra, Twilight Symphony

Top to Bottom: Snotra, Twilight Symphony, Baldr, Aasgard, Frigg

Top to Bottom: Mead of Suttungr, Freyja, Manhatten, Freyr, Weth, Reverb, Valhalla, Stargazer, Aandlang, Uggdrasil, Radio Waves, Loki, Tyr, Sif

Top to Bottom: Mead of Suttungr, Freyja, Manhatten, Freyr, Weth, Reverb

Top to Bottom: Freyr, Weth, Reverb, Valhalla, Stargazer, Aandlang, Uggdrasil

Top to Bottom: Uggdrasil, Radio Waves, Loki, Tyr, Sif