Subscription Box & Swatches: Hello Waffle Dec 2014 Visage Box

I finally got around swatching my December Hello Waffle Visage box! I'm not sure when it arrived since it arrived while I was in LA between Dec 20-Jan 6. Check out how pretty it is!

So much thought in the wrapping!

Yeah, the labels are a bit more haphazard than what I'm used to for HW's quality, but it was a busy holiday month.

So here's what's in this month's box:

• Eyeshadow Minis:
• Ghost of Christmas Past
• Ghost of Christmas Present
• Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
• Bah! Humbug

• Highlighter: Scrooge 

• Bronzer: Marley

• Lipstick: Galactic by Tilt/Shift Cosmetics 

Quick note on the mini jars, despite Christine's best efforts (check out the cute sticker!), they still leak a bit. It's very, very minimal leakage and I barely lost any product, but I thought it's worth noting for people who may be thinking of taking the mini jars traveling –they may leak during the trip.

You can see traces of shimmer on my fingers from handling the jars.

Anyway, this is unfortunately my last subscription box. While I'll miss the feeling of getting a "present" once a month, it makes sense to cancel my subscription box because:

• I've realized that the guest indies mean that I may inadvertently support unethical companies that I just cannot support. For example, January's guest indie was Victorian Disco, a company I personally believe is bordering on being a scam. I've written a post documenting my harrowing experience with this company in this previous post, which also contains links to many, many accounts from other people suffering the same exact issues as me.

• I have too much make up so I run a high risk of getting dupes of what I already have

Anyway, here are swatches of this month's goods!

Eyeshadow Swatches

Yeah, Ghost of Christmas Present unfortunately totally falls off bare skin, but it looks sooo gorgeous foiled with water!

Galactica Lipstick Swatches

All under natural light

These lipsticks are lightly flavoured with peppermint. They're pretty buildable, and as you can see from the swatches, it takes about 3-4 swipes to reach full opacity.

UPDATE Jan 2015: They got waxier and harder with time, and by now they're unusable. Very disappointed.

UPDATE July 2015: Here's the reply from the owner:

Bronzer & Highlighter Swatches

Under natural light. My arm got a bit more tanned from my dive trip.

Marley is now my favourite bronzer, it's such a great colour for paler skin tones since it's so light! Unfortunately, I can see it disappearing on darker skin tones.

The grey in Scrooge is supposed to be subtle, but it's not as subtle as it seems and definitely shows up as grey on my face. It's not too obvious in my FOTDs below, but er....today is the 2nd day I'm wearing it and one of the security guards in my office building got all concerned, pulled me aside, and asked me if I was trying to hide bruises on my cheeks. I'm going to have to make sure I don't wear it tomorrow to prove that it's make up.


So here are the FOTDs:

FOTD #1: 

Sorry for the pissed expression. I just returned to Jakarta the night before and was still feeling slightly floaty after being on a boat for 4 days. I'm still not sure if I'm still adjusting or I'm ignoring a bunch of earthquakes.

Eye close up:

Monolid lining ftw!
Bah! Humbug

FOTD #2: 

Eye close up:

Eyeshadows used: Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Ghost of Christmas Past

Product List:

• Dior Hydralife BB Cream (Luminous Beige)
• Sana Brow Mascara & Pencil (CB1) (FOTD #2)
• Make Up Store Cover All
• Fiberwig mascara
• Maybelline Falsies mascara
• Eyeshadows:
• Ghost of Christmas Past
• Ghost of Christmas Present
• Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
• Bah! Humbug
• HW Highlighter (Scrooge)
• HW Bronzer (Marley)
• Tilt/Shift Cosmetics' lipstick (Galactic)
• Primer: UDPP (FOTD #1), NYX White Eyeshadow Base (FOTD #2)

Subscription Box: Hello Waffle's November 2014 Visage Box

I recently subscribed to the Hello Waffle Visage box and only got my box 2 days ago. The packaging is AWESOME. I couldn't stop myself from squealing constantly from excitement. Christine seriously put a lot of effort into this. Check out how it arrived!

Here's what I got in the box:

• Hello Waffle Full-Size Eyeshadows (Beast, Eight Days, Garden): $6 each
• Hello Waffle Halfling-Size Blush (Winter Rose): $5.25
• Life's Entropy's Lip Theory (Tundra): $8

Total Value: $31.25

So exciting!

Tundra Lip Theory

Check out the label art!

The box is definitely worth it, for $25 including international shipping, you get $30+ worth of products (not including shipping)! I love how Christine takes shipping prices into account. A lot of subscription boxes are not worth it for international customers thanks to international shipping, but this definitely is.

So here's the TAT:

• Payment: 29th of each month
• Shipped: Nov 13
• Received: Dec 3

Now this is my small complaint. I kind of wish that Christine will prioritize customers based in Asia/Australia/NZ since shipping all the way here takes a longer time. That means that by the time we get our Visage Boxes, the discount code we got have expired. I also got charged for next month's box before I even received my first box. Luckily, I've seen tons of reviews for the Visage boxes, so I know the boxes will be worth it. For people who may not see the reviews, I can see it being pretty scary getting charged for a 2nd box before you can see the 1st box to decide whether or not you'd like to continue your subscription. 

Based on posts on /r/indiemakeupandmore, I know some people got their Visage boxes shipped out 29 days ago on Nov 4. It's just 9 days earlier but that means receiving your box on Nov 24 and having the time to use your coupon or decide on whether or not you should continue your subscription.

Anyway, here are swatches!

Hello Waffle Eyeshadows in Garden, Eight Days & Beast

All done under natural light. There was enough sun so I didn't need an artificial light to capture the shimmer in Garden.
The glitter glue is Darling Girl's Glitter Glue, the primer is UDPP

Hello Waffle Blush in Winter Rose

Under natural light, blended into a gradient to show how blendable it is.

This blush is so easy to blend! This is over bare skin, since I assume most people will not be foiling blushes over their face or using primers/glitter glues. A lot of the shimmer falls off against bare skin, but when I use it on my face over my BB cream, it has a subtle highlighting effect. Extremely pretty!

Life's Entropy's Lip Theory in Tundra

Under natural light

So you know how lip theories last forever on you? So here's my November 2014 Visage Box FOTD: 

 Left is how it looks on first application, right  is after breakfast. Barely a change (besides looking less wet) in the lip colour.

Oh, and I cheated for this FOTD. My dermatologist ordered me not to put anything on my face to detox, but the blush looked so pretty, I had to try it out. And since I'm using a blush, might as well use my BB cream. Here's more of the FOTD:

Products:

• Dior Hydralife BB Cream (Luminous Beige)
• MUS Cover All Concealer
• Hello Waffle Eyeshadows (Beast, Eight Days, Garden)
• Hello Waffle Blush (Winter Rose)
• Life's Entropy's Lip Theory (Tundra)
• Maybelline Falsies Mascara
• Fiberwig Mascara

And the eye close up:

This is how much is hidden under my monolids

Making New Colours With My Hello Waffle Tinted Lip Balms

I really love how Hello Waffle's Ginger Kitties mixed with Cotton Candy looks on me, but I'm getting a bit too lazy to carry two colours with me at all times. So I thought I might as well try combining them!

First, I disinfected eveything and then put a chunk of Cotton Candy & a chunk of Ginger Kitties in a microwave-safe bowl. 

I love disinfecting stuff...

Next I microwaved then until they melted. I can't give an estimation of how long it took since I'm way too impatient and kept opening the microwave after every round the bowl made.

Mix that all up!

Next, I just poured it into an old lip balm tube (disinfected, of course) I have and let it set. It set in about 20 min for me!

Preeetttyyyy....

Now, since I was only using a bit of the tinted balms (in case this mucking around failed terribly), I twisted the lip balm tube about 2/3s to 3/4s up. Unfortunately, I twisted it up too high and ended up with some left overs. While rumaging for a spare eyeshadow tub to pour the leftovers into, I noticed this: 

Lip-safe, you say...? Interesting...

So I re-melted the leftovers and dumped some Schubert in:

Mixing in eyeshadow is messier than I thought...

Only had enough for this little blob, but it's good enough!

Now swatches!

Top: Cotton Candy + Ginger Kitties
Bottom:  Cotton Candy + Ginger Kitties + Schubert

 Cotton Candy + Ginger Kitties

Cotton Candy + Ginger Kitties + Schubert
There's a more purple-ish tint IRL

So on to the most important question! Did I ruin the tinted lip balms? Nope!

Taste-wise, they're still the same. Texture-wise, the graininess in both seem to have gotten finer. The Schubert mix is even finer and I'm not sure if it's because of something in the eyeshadow, the lowered percentage of carnauba wax content, or the product getting melted twice. 

The pigmentation is just as rich as before, so no worries there. I think I'm about to have a lot more lip colours soon!

Turning Indie Eyeshadows Into Nail Art..ish.

I've been trying to create a splattered effect on my nails and I got an idea about experimenting with my indie eyeshadows.  So this is what happened:

I sprinkled eyeshadow into a tub of water and jabbed my finger repeatedly into it.

Kinda splatter-ish

Then I got another idea I tried out:

I let the eyeshadow float on the water, then dip my nail in face down.

Looks like crumpled tissue

The green nail polish is a mini OPI I got as a gift, there's no name on it. The green eyeshadow is Hello Waffle's Wonderland!

Swatches: Hello Waffles (23 + 1 colour)

I feel so bad to Christine but it turns out that it takes me longer than expected to do swatches, so I'm only done now >.< (took me 8 days, including a break when I ran out of tape)

I did a quick swatch of all the colours and wrote a review before, but I haven't had time to do a more detailed swatch until now. So here's the 23 + 1 colours! Why +1? Well...I can't find my sample of Sloth and I'm really sad about it. I think it may have dropped on the floor, and anything on the floor is immediately claimed by my sister's dogs. You'll never see it again. All I have of it is my old swatch over glitter glue only. RIP Sloth. May you have your revenge by giving the dogs glittery poo. 

For these swatches, I swatched over:

• Bare skin
• Bare skin with a wet brush
• Darling Girl's Glitter Glue
• NYX HD Eye Primer or Urban Decay Primer Potion (I was using UDPP until I realized how much I was using, so I switched to a cheaper alternative. UDPP doesn't sell in Indonesia, so it's very precious to me)
• Over NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils in Milk & Slate

2 big things I learnt after doing these brushes:

1. Do oil cleansing. NYX Milk & Slate are pretty tough to get rid off, even after I used a very harsh handsoap & my facial soap. Meanwhile, my oil cleanser removes everything so cleanly and gently, even when my skin got stained. Now I'm sold. My foam cleanser isn't clean enough for my face, I need an oil cleanser.  

2. UDPP is much better than NYX's HD Eye Primer. NYX's primer darkens a lot of colours, and dulls the sparkle too. I also ended up with stains on my skin with a lot of the dark colours while using NYX. I didn't have the staining problem with UDPP, and the colours are a bit sparklier (not as sparkly as glitter glue though).

I just woke up and my skin was still crumpled..

More sparkly IRL! You can see some of the blue glitter glimmering in this pic, but IRL, there's billions of these blue sparks. You feel like you have sparkling gems on your eyes!

Very sparkly IRL, and you gan see green & blue glitter! Looks prettiest when applied with a wet brush.

IRL, this is very sparkly and you can see the blue-green glitter! I used the NYX primer for this and it darkened the colour.

The shift is much stronger IRL. You really see the blue pop against the purple!

So glittery IRL. It looks like fresh asphalt glimmering in the sun. Sorry about the patchy glitter glue swatch, I got impatient and swatched too fast.

The shift is stronger IRL. It's like mauve with a greenish shift. 

So glittery. It's like you're looking into a million little mirrors. Gorgeous colour! 

It's a much stronger shift IRL. It looks kinda pink here, but IRL, it's more white, with a pink highlight.

It's not showing up here, but IRL, it's a purple-ish pink.

The golden highlights is more obvious IRL. This colour looks amazing as a highlighting blush.

NYX Milk seem to darken this colour for some reason. IRL, the colour actually looks prettiest applied on bare skin. 

More sparkly and gorgeous IRL. It looks a bit brown-ish in the picture but IRL, it's a dark, purplish-pink with golden glitter everywhere. Such a mesmerizing colour!

This is a more red version of Bach.

This is just so beautiful! It's brown with a copper shift. In the picture, it just looks like a red-ish brown but IRL, it looks like a dark brown that shifts to red at certain angles!

This is just sooo pretty IRL. It looks a bit orane-ish here, but IRL, it's more pink with a strong, golden shift.

Shows up as very metallic, especially when applied wet IRL. I like it best applied wet.

The colour looks like a plain peach here, but it looks peach with a golden shift IRL. 

Unfortunately, all I have of Sloth is this swatch over glitter glue :(

In case you're curious, texture wise, these eyeshadows are great. Very smooth and non-streaky application. You do need to either apply them wet or apply them over something. Most colours don't stick well on your bare skin or go bald glitter-wise if you apply it alone. There is a bit of a flyaway problem like a lot of loose powder shadows, but it's not as bad as Darling Girl's eyeshadows where I'd get a glitter rain down my face while applying. I still love the DG's shades I got though. I just stick tissues on my face burqa-style to shield myself from the glitter bomb while applying them.