Benefit World Famous Neutrals - Most Glamourous Nudes Ever - Photos and Swatches

**All products mentioned were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

Last weekend I stopped in Sephora to see if anything new caught my eye. I did pick up one of the new Hourglass Ambient Light Powders in Mood which I hope to review at some point after I've used it for a bit. The other thing that caught my eye were the new neutral eye kits from Benefit. There are three of them out. One is straight up neutral shades, one focuses more on cool shades, and the one I picked focuses on warmer tones.

The kit comes with four pressed shadows and 2 mini creaseless cream shadows. The packaging is a little boxy and would be a bit much for travel unfortunately. It is really cute though as most Benefit packaging is. You can take out the tray with the eyeshadows and reuse the box although it's small so I'm not sure what you would do with it. 

I swatched the peach shade in the warm tone kit at the store and loved it so much I had to get this. I tend to gravitate more toward warmer shades during the late spring/summer anyway so I know I'll get a lot of use out of this kit. 

The colors are as follows:

Call My Buff - Ivory with a bit of a slight golden sheen

Kiss Me I'm Tipsy - Dark Brown with a bit of a reddish bronze sheen

It's Complicated - Gorgeous pinky peach with a golden sheen

Gilt-y Pleasure - Gold Shimmer

Birthday Suit - Hard to describe this shade. Sephora describes it as a brushed chrome. I'd probably agree with that. It's definitely more of a taupe metallic shade. 

My Two Cents - Gorgeous true copper metallic 

Now for some swatches. All shades were swatched over Urban Decay Eden primer potion. From left to right, top to bottom: Birthday Suit, Call My Buff, Kiss Me I'm Tipsy, My Two Cents, It's Complicated, Gilt-y Pleasure. 

All of the four shadows have some form of shimmer or sheen to them and great payoff. There are no matte shades in the kit so you'll need to supplement with something like Urban Decay Naked Basics to avoid shimmer overload. The creaseless cream shadows both have a metallic finish and have a really nice smooth almost slippery consistency to them.  

You can pick up the kit at Sephora. I believe it is exclusive to them. Cost is $30 which I think is great for the amount of product you get and the quality of the shadows. I won't be purchasing the other two kits. I wasn't blown away by the plain neutrals kit although I do think that one had a couple of matte shades in it and could make a nice pairing with the warm toned kit if you needed some mattes to mix in. I really don't gravitate toward cooler shades during the spring/summer so I didn't feel the need to check out the cooler purple based one. 

Have you picked up any of these new kits from Benefit lately? What are your thoughts? 

David's Tea - Red Velvet Cake Tea Review

**All items were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**

I'm going to be doing a series on tea. I've recently updated the name of my blog to marry together two of my addictions: makeup and tea. I'm hoping to make this a series where I will review one tea from my stash each week and give you my opinion on it.

This week's tea is from David's Tea and is their Red Velvet Cake black tea. This was officially launched as their tea of the month during February but they had a soft launch of it on the site during the holidays. I actually grabbed one of the special holiday canisters during their post Holiday sale and have been happily drinking it ever since.

The ingredients in this loose leaf tea are as follows: Black tea, semi-sweet chocolate bits, white chocolate bits, beetroot powder, sprinkles, natural and artificial flavouring. Here it is in all its loose leaf gorgeousness. 

It really is such a photogenic tea

And here is how it fairs during the brew process:

All the little sprinkles floating around. These eventually dissolve for the most part and add to the sweetness of the tea. 

It brews up a nice deep reddish orange shade. 

I always add milk to my black teas. It kind of looks like a sugar cookie with the red particles from the sprinkles floating on top. 

And now for the part that you've been waiting for: Soooo, how does it taste? One word sums it up for me. This tea tastes Awesome! It tastes like liquid chocolate cake, but it has that signature edge to it that sets red velvet cake apart from just any old chocolate cake. They really nailed this tea. I love everything about this tea: the way it looks, the way it smells in the can, the aroma it sets off while brewing, and the smooth taste that it provides while drinking. I honestly have zero complaints about it and will be purchasing more once I work my way through my tin. 

This tea can be purchased on the David's Tea website at www.davidstea.com. Or if you are lucky enough to have a David's Tea store nearby, you can always check there. Sadly we don't have any in New Jersey yet.  

Are you a tea lover too? Let me know your thoughts if you've also tried this tea. 

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Too Faced Summer Eyes Palette - Photos and Swatches

I recently picked up a few new beauty items and I thought that I would share one of them with you today. I picked up the new Too Faced Summer Eyes palette. I never purchased the one they had out last year, but from what I recall it had a similar color scheme so if you purchased that one, you may not need to get this one.

After the long winter we have had I'm seriously looking forward to spring and warmer weather in general. This packaging really makes me think of the spring and summer with the floral and water patterns. The compact itself is the newer style palette that Too Faced has been putting out. It's similar in style to the Budoir Eyes palette in that the case is metal. I find it to be rather compact and would be easy to travel with.

Now on to the shadows

There are 9 shadows in the palette. True to form for the Too Faced palette layout, 3 of the shadows are in a larger size (2.0 grams), and six are smaller (0.9 grams). The colors are from top to bottom, left to right:

Day Look - Seashell, Plumeria, and Cocoa Beach

Classic Look - Peach Fuzz, Coral Crush, and Chocolate Sun

Fashion Look - Sunbeam, Mermaid, and Toasted Coconut

Next: swatches and finishes. These shades were swatched in the order they are in the palette. I applied some light facial moisturizer to my hand followed by a thin layer of Urban Decay's Primer Potion in Eden. Then I swatched the shadows.  Click for a closer view.

As you can see the majority of the shadows in the palette have some form of shimmer or sheen to them. I don't consider this surprising since summer looks tend to incorporate more shimmer overall. I also think the level of shimmer is pretty standard for Too Faced palettes.

Color thoughts:

Seashell - Pretty much the only shade that comes close to being a matte shade in the palette. This is a great shade and has wonderful pigmentation as you can see in the swatches. Out of the three larger colors in the palette, I believe this is the one I'll use most since I tend to like to combine different finishes of eyeshadows in my eye looks.

Peach Fuzz and Sunbeam - Both of these give more of a shimmer wash than actually providing color payoff. They really are very similar except Sunbeam is more of a yellow based shimmer highlight and Peach Fuzz gives more of a peachy skin toned highlight. These actually could probably double as highlighters on the face.  

Plumeria - Frosty medium pink shade. Great payoff.

Coral Crush - Shimmery golden coral. Great payoff again.

Mermaid - So pretty. Gorgeous deep teal green with shimmer. Makes me think of the ocean.

Cocoa Beach - A taupey cool brown shade with a bit of a purpleish sheen. Definitely was made to be paired with Plumeria.

Chocolate Sun - The darkest of the browns. Deep dark chocolate with gold shimmer.

Toasted Coconut - The warmest brown. A medium brown with a golden sheen.

Overall, I'm happy with the palette. I picked mine up at Ulta for $36 and received a 0.5 oz deluxe sample of Primed and Poreless due to the promotion they were running which was a nice perk. Looking forward to trying that out. This palette currently is not available at Sephora.

(ETA - I actually double checked and a lot of the colors are repeats of last years palette with a few substitutions. So if you have that palette, you definitely will not need this one.)

**All items were purchased by me. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned.**