Rimmel 002 and Kate/MM comparison

*This is a scheduled post*

SWATCH: Rimmel "Smokey Brun 002"

As I described in my last post, this is definitely my "go to" palette. The texture isn't all that great.. I feel like I sort of have to dig in my brush to get enough color for some of the lighter shades (but hey, I'm NC37). The dark brown goes on easily enough, as does the lightest shade. I would describe the colors as (lightest to darkest): A light yellow/gold-ed out white (what I imagine MAC's Ricepaper to look like--though I don't have it for comparison), a beige-champagne, copper and a brownie (food) cool-toned brown. The darkest brown doesn't show up very well in this swatch.. scroll down a little bit to see a better color representation.

Here, I swatched them with my other brow-highlight shades:

Top L-->R: Wet and Wild "Fine Wink", MAC Shroom (go-to brow h-light color), MAC Phloof

Bottom L-->R: Rimmel eyeshadows

You can see that they're all really quite different.. though "Fine Wink" and "Phloof" are sort of similar, except for "Phloof" has more silver shimmer to it and is lighter.. and "Fine Wink" has more traces of pink. These colors really aren't that dark.. I didn't brighten the photo in Photoshop because I wanted to really see the color tone difference that you couldn't normally see if the colors were brighter and more washed-out.

L-->R: Rimmel vs MAC "Handwritten"

As evidenced, "Handwritten" is a much warmer (reddish?) shade of brown than Rimmel (which also contains some silver glitter). Texture-wise, I prefer MAC over Rimmel though if you're on a budget (like me), this palette will be a great addition and it's perfect for every day wear, though you could totally use more of the dark brown to smoke out your look for night time!

KATE vs MAJOLOOK

The darkest blue shade on both are pretty good dupes for each other. The Kate (K1) blue glitter is much more noticeable than the one in the MM (M).. Plus I think the Kate glitter is slightly larger. The Kate blue looks slightly more blackish while the MM looks slightly more grey-toned. I'm not sure why I swatched (K2) which is the second darkest shade in the palette.. but there you go, hahaha. I would loooooove a nail polish that looked like K1!

KATE: There's definitely your blue spectrum in this one palette, and it makes it very easy to grab ONE palette and go, especially with you lucky gals who can use 5 colors in one look and have it ALL show (grumbles a bit about having monolids--not that there's ANYthing wrong with that!). The texture of these shadows is smooth but a little more powdery.. I keep feeling like I would have a bunch of fall out, but I don't. The fact that there's a cream shadow on the rightmost side kind of annoys me, since I don't tend to use cream shadows, but it's not enough to turn me away from using the palette. All of the shadows have some glitter in them.

MM: This has a nice variety of colors that I wouldn't normally think to put together. Fuzkittie made a great "vintage" look using just this palette--definitely one of the main reasons why I bough it in the first place. All of the shadows are shimmery and have this amazing buttery-soft texture to them. The issue I have is whenever I use MM palettes, they seem to fade like crazy on me! Maybe I just need to use a better base or I have super oily lids, who knows; I haven't heard many complaints about that from other people.

OVERALL: Even though I think the Kate palette is slightly more pigmented than the MM one, I find myself reaching for the MM palette more often.. mostly because of the color variety, and the fact that I don't tend to do all-blue EOTD's. I find myself hard-pressed whenever I think about putting EITHER of them up on blogsale though..

Wet n' Wild 409D Shameless

I felt kind of bored and lonely so I decided to do a mani (so far only on my left hand, hahaha--does anyone else get lazy when it comes to painting their dominant hand??) with one of the MANY prizes I received from winning Katie's giveaway (girlabouttown88)--she was SO generous! I came back from my vaca wondering what this HUGE package was that was sitting in the kitchen. Thank you thank you thank you :) x33 I'm glad you like my photography! ^__^

Anyway, on to the swatch~

Wet n' Wild 409D (she's real fine my 409 lalalaa) "Shameless"

This is two coats + 1 coat of Seche Vite top coat

This picture is a more true representation of the actual nail polish color.. it's this weird.. blue-lavender. I sort of want to say it's periwinkle xD since it's what I imagine periwinkle to be but I know periwinkle's actually a much deeper color (since I just googled it to make sure.. LOL).

And this picture (obviously much warmer) is a more true color representation of the pink shimmer.. definitely a medium-leaning-towards-hot-pink pink.

Of course you can't really SEE the shimmer when it's small, so click to enlarge! I apologize for the state of my cuticles and my messy application.. I even had to Photoshop a bit just because it was SO bad. It's funny that you don't notice things until AFTER you take the picture. D'OH!

Side note:

And you can see that I'm working on my squoval shape.. it was MORE squoval looking before I filed my nails, but I can't seem to stand having long nails anymore! This is now my comfortable length--probably because somewhere subconsciously I know that my nails are more likely to chip and peel at longer lengths. Boo.

Texture?

Very streaky and sort of.. globby. It'll probably be better if I thin it out, but I don't really have anything to thin out polish with since I'm not that big of a nail freak yet xD though my collection is definitely growing! I thought I was grabbing enough polish but every time, I had to redip my brush.

In contrast, when I was applying Seche Vite, I ended up grabbing too much.. and I was using the same "dipping" technique (not that there's really a technique huh? hahaha).

Though after it dried, the streaks seemed to go away.

Is it opaque?

I face my nails to my desk lamp (finger pads towards the lamp and nails facing me), I can still see streaks. But, in any other sort of light, it looks opaque.

Is it worth it?

In my collection, yes, since I don't have any other colors that are like this. I think I have a NuSkin color that's more of a pearly white with a pink sheen.. but, that's at home, two hours away. I'm definitely going to have to look into a nail polish thinner before I readily grab this for my next mani though. Definitely a pretty spring color on a budget!

What do you guys think?