Something Hip

Dupes!

March 5, 2011 at 4:52 pm (Uncategorized) (amethyst, amour, beauty, candy, coochie, decay, dupes, eye, faced, flash, frosted, grifter, hard, lilly, mac, maybelline, parfait, rush, secret, shadow, sparklewash, supernova, taboo, too, urban, victoria's)

I just realized how many purple e/s I have. The good news is, half of them were free. The bad news, the one’s i like the most were the expensive ones with the exception of one. (I apologize in advance for the crappy picture, my fancy camera’s battery is dead)

The one exception is the Victoria’s Secret Beauty Rush “Plum Crazy”. While not super cheap ($7 full price), the pigmentation isn’t terrible. For my swatches I used Urban Decay Primer in Eden under everything. I also did all of the swatches with a wet brush so the colors may vary depending on your use. I found the Plum Crazy to be a nice dark purple but it really has way too much glitter in it. I suppose if you love glitter and wanted to do some sort of “club” look, it wouldn’t be a bad choice. The other issue I have with this shade is that it’s really chalky unless you use it wet and doesn’t blend well unless, again, your brush is damp.
I seem to have a lot of pastel looking frosted purples which I can’t really explain because I don’t use them that much and they all look pretty much identical. My favorite of the pastels would have to be the Clinique in “Frosted Lilly”. The consistancy is much better than the others and has no glitter, which I like. My runner up is the Urban Decay (it’s kind of hard to see in this picture), in “Grifter”. This color has glitter and is a slightly more intense and less sheer purple than the Clinique. Another pastel I swatched called “Taboo” by Victoria’s Secret is a bit sparkely but ends up a little bit red and is like a bad knock off of “Grifter”.
Another great color is the MAC “Parfait Amour” which is a frosted color and applies pretty sheer. I wish this color were more matte with a dry application because the color is so pretty but this can be worked around if you don’t mind using it wet.
The failures of the group were the Hard Candy in “Supernova” and the Maybelline pallet in “Amethyst”. The Hard Candy was really chalky even with a damp brush and while I kind of like the really dark matte purple, it’s just too hard to work with. The Maybelline pallet has a great frosty white highlight color that I use from time to time but the two purples included are not the best. The “lid” color has a nice shine but it’s really much too red and blends weird. The “crease” color in the pallet is a bit chalky and for lack of a better word, a bit blah.
The only shade I am torn about is the Victoria’s Secret Beauty Rush in “Sparklewash”. While it’s pretty, it’s mostly glitter much like the name would suggest. It’s very pastel and much easier to work with than the “Plum Crazy” when dry. It’s not a bad choice but I’m not a huge fan of glitter all over the place so again, I would recommend this color for a club type look or if you’re into the glitter thing.
And lastly, I have a Too Faced duo in “Coochie Coochie” which I’m pretty sure they don’t carry any more. The purple in the duo isn’t as frosted as any of the other pastels I have and has only a small bit of glitter. I had to keep applying this color in order to get a dark enough swatch so it’s really very sheer. It’s another one of those colors I never use because it lacks anything that interesting.

Overall, my favorite of the group is Urban Decay in “Flash”. You can’t really tell in the picture, but it is very pigmented, a bit frosty, and a really fun pop color. I guess you could call it electric purple even. It has a great consistency and the times that I have used it, it seemed to stay in its place pretty well and not fade.

Whelp, that’s my run down of my purple collection and now I can finally stop buying this color. Seriously, who needs 11 shades of purple? Ridiculous.
I think I’ll post a look later today with my favorite purples so stay tuned!

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