This is your tax dollars at work, people.

As some of you may know, Jacquie and I work together, and for the first time in a year or so, we are sitting together again. This is an excellent excuse to do some important work-related investigations such as the difference between colours in NYX singles and NYX trios (we did it on our tea break, honest).

This is Champagne - you'll have to excuse the rubbish quality of the photos because they have been taken on my iphone in cruddy office lighting with the blinds closed to keep the heat of the Adelaide summer out. However, you can still see that they are different.

From left: Champagne in the NYX Trio Barely There/Champagne/Root Beer, Champagne Single Eyeshadow.

And this is Salmon - it's a bit harder to tell in this picture because it's crap, but there's definitely a pinker tint to the single eyeshadow shade.

From left: Salmon from NYX Trio Platinum Pink/Salmon/Jazzy Bronze, Salmon Single Eyeshadow

I am baffled about why NYX would do this. I think I'm going to write to them and ask.

NYX Root Beer vs... NYX Root Beer

A while back I read on a blog or forum or somewhere in my travels that the colours in NYX eyeshadow trios are different from the single eyeshadow colours of the same name. It was one of those trivial bits of information that I tucked away in my head somewhere, and I was reminded of it again the other day while looking at femputer's NYX Trio swatches. I didn't think I had any doubles to compare them, but this morning I was rummaging around for something else and discovered that I do actually have one - Root Beer.

Root Beer is the colour on the far right of the trio, which is Barely There/Champagne/Root Beer, and you can see just from the photo above that it's different to the single eyeshadow. Now check out the swatches:

L-R: Trio Root Beer, Single Root Beer.

They're completely different! I don't understand why NYX would do that - it seems really weird.

Do you have any doubles of the NYX single/trio eyeshadows? Are they different?

The last of my MAC dupes and a bit of a ramble.

When I first started up my other blog, it was because I had a lot of feelings* about a lot of my non-beauty interests, and I wanted somewhere to bang on about them. And then I got lazy and fell into a reading slump, and I couldn't cook because of my stupid renovations, and I've only been updating it sporadically. I've decided I'm going to make it more of a general "life" kind of blog. Don't worry, I won't be listing my chores for the day or anything like that. But I want it to be a bit more random so I can write whatever I feel like at the time. And from now on, any non-beauty posts - such as my recent renovation sagas, for example - will be posted there.

Anyway, that said, let's move on to my last MAC dupe. This one was mentioned in a couple of lists and debunked in a couple of others, so I'm not sure whether it's just one person going around random places claiming it's a dupe or not. But let's have a look see at them.

 

This is NYX Jazzy Bronze and MAC Mythology. Hmmm. Not really seeing it, but let's check the swatches. 

Mythology on the left, Jazzy Bronze on the right. My opinion?

*A virtual Tim Tam for you if you get that reference.

Derp derp dupe.

Noodle Arms and I watched this really cool little horror movie this morning called Trick'r Treat. I'd never heard of it before, which is odd because it had some pretty well-known actors in it (Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Dylan Baker). We always watch horror movies during the day because although we enjoy them, we are also weiners who get freaked out by anything even slightly scary.

Anyway, on to the next in my MAC dupe series. I only have one more after this one; I don't own that many MAC items. Humid is a colour I've been wanting for ages, mostly because I love green eyeshadows and it's one that always gets a mention when people talk about green eyeshadows (along with Urban Decay's Mildew, which I also don't have and would love to try). I picked it up a while back from ACW, and although I do really like it, if I'm honest I already have about eleventy million other greens that are similar to it. Including the green bit of the Wet'n'Wild Cool As A Cucumber palette.

They don't really look all that alike in the palette. The Cool As A cucumber one has more of a grey/blue tinge to it. But what about the swatches?

This one is taken outside in natural light. Humid is on the left, Cool As A Cucumber on the right. Not an exact match (you can see that the Cucumber is slightly more grey/blue leaning), but pretty good. Certainly on one's eyes I doubt you could tell the difference.

This one is taken inside - the difference is a little more obvious here, with the clearer "greenness" of Humid showing up more. But again, pretty darn close. I think I could have probably stuck with Cucumber and not bothered buying Humid.

What do you think?

Another alleged MAC dupe.

I have read many times in various blogs and beauty forums that Wet'n'Wild Penny is an exact dupe for MAC Expensive Pink, so let's see how that holds up.

In real life, they do look more alike, though why is it called Expensive Pink? It's not pink at all, it's sort of a shimmery peach/salmon colour. (Ohhhhh, missed opportunity again - I wonder how this compares with NYX Salmon or Peach...?).

Expensive Pink is on the left, Penny is on the right. Hmmm. They're pretty similar, but Penny is just a liiiiiitle bit darker. Though in real life, they do look almost exactly alike, so as dupes go I'd say it's one of the better ones. And Penny costs about ten times less than Expensive Pink, so it's definitely a worthy candidate for consideration.

What do you guys think?

MAC Dupes..... or arrrrre theyyyyy.... *shifty eyes*

The other day I was looking for things to do in order to avoid something I was supposed to be doing, and I decided to check out some supposed MAC dupes to see how close they were. These were swatched over Benefit LemonAid, as usual (look, I have bucketloads of the stuff and I need to get rid of it, okay?), and modelled by the lovely and obliging Noodle Arms. Just after I'd finished applying all of swatches and we were about to go outside with the camera, she suddenly turned pale and said, "I feel sick!", and bolted off to the toilet. I'm slightly ashamed to say that my first thought was, "Don't smudge the swatches if you throw up!" She didn't, and it was a false alarm - a momentary feeling of nausea. After a few minutes we were back on track. I made caring noises and asked her if she was okay to do the photos, and she carried on like the trooper she is. Hurrah for Noodles!

First up we have MAC Shimmermoss and CoverGirl Aqua Paradise. Aqua Paradise is one of the items I bought in my recent Drugstore.com haul, and I bought it specifically because it is supposed to be a dupe of Shimmermoss and I wanted to see if that was true. It was only $2.50, so I didn't really care one way or the other what it was like. Just as well, because it's arse. You can see it's all kind of crushed and mushed. I did that, trying to get some colour from it. It's really hard and impossible to use without scraping the hell out of it. Even then the colour wasn't great. I had to pack on a ton to get a comparable level of depth to Shimmermoss. Here's a closer look of the mess I had to make of it.

But aside from the issue of its general crapness, is Aqua Paradise a dupe for Shimmermoss?

Shimmermoss is on the left, Aqua Paradise is on the right. They're similar, but not exactly the same - Aqua Paradise is a bit more blue. It's just occurred to me now that I have quite a few teal eye shadows and can probably find a closer dupe for Shimmermoss. I should have thought to do that - perhaps I'll do it later this week.

Anyway, what do you think? Dupe - yay or nay? I have a couple more of these - are you interested in seeing them, or am I just banging on about something everyone already knows about?

MAC Syrup vs Rimmel Vintage Pink

A couple of days ago I was looking through Temptalia's updated dupe list, and noticed that Rimmel's Vintage Pink lipstick is listed as a dupe for MAC Syrup. Since I have both, I decided to pull them out and see for myself. 



As you can see, Vintage Pink is darker and more opaque than Syrup, with less shimmer. Noodles agreed to model them both for me on her lips, but insisted on applying them herself, and was a bit slapdash due to us not currently having a proper bathroom (and therefore only teeny mirrors), so forgive the application.









They're definitely similar, but I can see enough of a difference to warrant owning both. What do you reckon?