Kat Von D recently released a brand new line of lipsticks called the Studded Kiss Lipsticks. At $26CAD, they're a $3 price increase over her older line. Everyone went crazy when they dropped and the line had some gorgeous colours so I picked up 3. I debated about Poe (which I saw reviewed on Temptalia before purchasing the 3 I have now), but I decided to get colours I knew I would actually wear on a daily basis.

First impressions - the lipstick itself is beautiful. The casing is studded and it's oh so gorgeous. Only con, this makes it a bit difficult to grasp properly. There's also probably more wasted plastic than necessary with this line of lipstick. There's 0.1oz of product, so that's 0.01oz more than the Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick, which is the same price. Her older line however, holds 0.11oz of products. For $3 more, I don't quite understand why I'm getting 0.01oz less... For $1 less, you could go with the Too Faced Melted Liquified Long Wear Lipstick, which comes with an amazing 0.4oz of product! But anyways, I digress. There was a scent (vanilla I think?) that I detected as soon as I opened the lipsticks, but I'm going to attribute that to them being brand new. The scent became unnoticeable as I swatched them.

And now, onto the swatches!

With flash

No flash, yellow lighting

A-Go-Go swatched beautifully. It's a bright, obnoxious orange which I've been searching for. It felt like it would tug at my lips though. Wonderchilde did not swatch as nicely. It was patchy, and I had to build up the colour for  the swatch. The specks of microglitter felt gritty as well. I don't think this will do well on my lips :( May possibly have to return this (and I was very excited for this colour). Prayer also swatched unevenly. It's a beautiful matte colour, but it'll probably have to be swiped across my lips a few times to get that colour.

Additionally, I realized as I swatched Prayer that I had some similar colours in my collection. None of them were matte though, so I'll probably keep Prayer if I like it on my face.

With flash

No flash, yellow lighting

The thickish lines you see in the Revlon Black Cherry swatches are just my arm hairs caught in the swatch ^^" NYX's Chloe was probably the closest to Prayer but it's not a matte finish and looks quite dark on my lips. Interested to see how different Prayer will look on my lips as compared to NYX's Chloe.

Out of these three colours, I'm most excited for A-Go-Go, as it swatched the best and it was the orange I have been searching for. I've been really into matte finish lipsticks lately, so I've been picking those up more.

TL;DR: Kat Von D Studded Kiss Lipsticks are quite pretty and I'm excited to play with my new lipsticks! Some shades are better than others obviously, but I was quite disappointed by how Wonderchilde swatched (as the only non-matte shade I picked up). Temptalia did give raving reviews to some of the other shimmery shades though, so perhaps this is just the only one that sucks. I don't think they're worth the $26 price tag however.

As a note, I was unable to actually pick up the colours I wanted (except A-Go-Go) at my local Sephora and my Sephora is in the biggest and most tourist-populated mall in Ontario. The saleswoman told me that they were limited edition (which is false) and that they were a brand new product, which was why there were only 5 available. However, she hinted that they had other colours in stock in the back, and that she would be able to get them for me if I wanted. They wouldn't be able to open a tester for me so I couldn't even swatch the colours I wanted in the first place. Something about limited stock. I resorted to buying them online (sigh... the duties and taxes for Canadian shoppers though).

This month's Ipsy kinda sucked. Out of all the things I received, I'd only use one of them and that would be the Bare Minerals eyeshadow. In this month's Ipsy, I received a lip tint, a blue nail polish, a tanning oil and a bronzer.

The bronzer is a joke. It's heavily discounted at Target so I'm not sure what Michelle Phan and her team were thinking when they included it into this month's Ipsy. It's also got tons of microglitter in it, so I can't use it as a contour. I don't bronze my face because I'm rather pale for an Asian, and I prefer to not have that tanned look.

As usual, my phone wouldn't focus properly

The tanning oil is just ridiculous. Firstly, it has SPF 8. For something that I'm supposed to wear out in the sun, this thing would provide absolutely no SPF protection. Additionally, in an email someone sent to Ipsy about this product, they advised her to only wear this product under clothes because the SPF was so low. That makes no sense. It's supposed to be a tanning oil. What was Ipsy thinking?

I swatched the nail polish (no pics sorry!) and it was okay. It was a brand I've never heard of before, and it doesn't look like it's available in any stores in Canada, meaning that I will not be purchasing anything from this brand in the future. Nail polish is too vulnerable to breaking during shipping. The blue was not as dark as I was expecting however. But overall, the nail polish itself was okay; not on par with OPI or Essie or Revlon, but higher than that $2.99 Sally Hansen nail polish.

Now the lip tint. It's a red shade, which I do like but the tint factor does nothing for me. I like my lipsticks to be completely opaque, not some sheer colour. I have not opened this, because I will probably swap or gift it away, but I've read comments from others saying that it has a very heavy cherry scent. I'm assuming it to be the medicinal cherry scent (or fake cherry candy scent), which I do not like at all.

The Bare Minerals eyeshadow is pretty good. I haven't worn it yet, but I have swatched it and the color payoff for the darker shade is really nice. The light pink probably won't show up on my eyelids as well, so I might use that as a inner corner kind of color. According to the Ipsy site, this weighs 0.03oz compared to the full sized 0.1oz according to Sephora. For a sample, a difference of 0.07oz is on the okay side (to me at least), and especially as this is eyeshadow and it takes a while to hit pan on eyeshadow regardless, I don't mind.

So this month's Ipsy was kind of a bust, but I'm going to stick it out for a bit longer, as I've only been subscribed for two months in total. It kind of sucks having random summer items thrown in (like the tanning oil, even though I specified in my quiz somewhere that I didn't like tanning products).

I bought eopenmarket's lucky box for about $10 and it came with a crapload of samples. I'm never going to go through all of them T^T There's just that many. But anyways, onto the first of many Asian cosmetics/skincare samples!

eopenmarket was kind enough to give 2 of each sample (except for a select few), so I depotted (well, they weren't really in a pot/container, but you know what I mean) some into containers for easier containment. I really dislike samples sometimes, cause you know you'll get more than one use out of them but you can't zip them back up and then they'll just dry out before you finish using them. Anyways! 

This is the Etude House Nymph Aura Volumer. Essentially, it gives your face that dewy/glowy look that Koreans love. 

I actually had no idea how to use it at first, so I referred to the instructions above. What you're supposed to do is take some of the volumer and mix it with your foundation. The image tells you to use your hands, but I used a brush because I am not a clean person...

I use the Armani Maestro foundation, so it's a bit watery/runny hence the trail running down my hand. There's more volumer but it's covered under my foundation. I used a smallish amount, because I wasn't sure how much to use but I guess you could play around with it.

After I mixed it and started putting it on my face, I noticed that it made my face feel more oilier/greasier. My foundation feels pretty matte, but by mixing it with the volumer, it felt stickier going on. Even when I touched my face afterwards, my skin felt pretty oily, but I suppose that's a side-effect from the volumer. 

Left side: with powder on
Right side: no powder

I made the mistake of putting powder on one half of my face, but I guess it just shows the contrast between a usually matte foundation vs a dewy foundation base. I used the flash, and the glowiness was really contrasted. I looked like I had oily skin. I did not like it. 

In essence, the volumer is really good for those of you who want to take part in the Korean trend of "dewy" skin, but in my opinion, "dewy" skin is NOT AT ALL dewy and more like oily. In endorsement photos or celebrity photos, you can see the idols all have this oily shine to their face. That's the volumer/dewy product they put on. 

Imagine living in a humid climate and having all this "dew" on your face. Someone needs to powder down these bitches seriously. This "dewy" skin trend to me looks like you've been sweating throughout the day but couldn't wipe down your face or something. 

But anyways, the verdict of the product. It made my face feel oilier/greasier and that was not a feeling I liked. However, the product works well and there are no faults with it. I would not purchase this product though. I prefer my foundation to be matte.