Tag: #eyeglitters

IMATS 2017 – The Greatest Makeup Extravaganza of the Year!

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Hello lovely followers,

I hope you are all having a great week so far!

This post has been a very long time coming! I attended IMATS back in May this year and it has been on my draft list for ages! I first attended IMATS with a friend a few years ago, long before I became a makeup artist and beauty blogger, and even then I was hooked!

So what is IMATS?

IMATS stands for International Makeup Artist Trade Show! It is the world’s largest celebration of makeup artistry and creativity. Every year, thousands of make-up artists, exhibitors, and enthusiasts attend the how to discuss, display and collect the best the makeup industry has to offer. Professionals from the fashion and film sectors also attend to provide education and demonstrations at IMATS, and new products often debut there. IMATS also features a make-up museum and the Battle of the Brushes student makeup competitions, where international makeup students race to create winning looks! It’s basically a makeup lovers paradise!

Before IMATS, there were no trade shows specifically designed for make-up artists so to address this, Emmy Award-winning make-up artist and Make-Up Artist magazine publisher Michael Key held the first IMATS in August 1997 in Los Angeles. IMATS then expanded to Europe in 2002, with the debut of IMATS London and now you can attend it in many different places around the globe – the show is held six times annually in Los Angeles; New York; London; Vancouver, B.C.; Sydney; and Toronto.

IMATS 2017

This year’s IMATS was, as expected, amazing! I booked my ticket to go months in advance for £45 and by the time the day finally arrived I was so excited I could barely sit still! It was at this year’s event that I actually found out you can sign up for a Pro card which provides lots of additional benefits depending on which level of card you qualify for. I will definitely be applying for the card for next year’s show – you can find out more here.

This year, I attended the event alone and despite arriving pretty early I still had to queue to get in. However, the buzz in the queue was great and everyone was super excited! Once I arrived at the entrance, this is what I walked into:

   

   

The atmosphere was crazy! Everywhere you looked there were people shopping, trying makeup, displaying artistic work – it was overwhelming! The first thing I decided to do was find my bearings, as there were loads of makeup brand stands I wanted to visit. Looking back and through the many photographs I took, which are all shared in this post, I am sure there were some I missed!

The Brands

Where do I start? There were some familiar loved makeup brands and then a whole host of brands I had never heard of or tried before. I was literally in heaven! I’ll start with the brands we all know and love:

  • Nars
  • Kat Von D
  • MAC
  • Inglot
  • Urban Decay
  • Beauty Bakerie
  • Lime Crime
  • Nyx
  • Makeup Forever
  • Bobbi Brown

As you can imagine all these stands were busy all day long! A few of them I could not even get close enough to look at the displays!

   

   

    

  

You can see all the brands had good sized displays and there were some lovely products to buy! Most of the items were available in their normal stores although some of the brands did have offers purely for the show. Watch out for my next post with details of all the makeup I spoilt myself with!

The lesser known brands and those that I had never heard of or bought anything from were:

  • Kryolan
  • Velour
  • Treasure House of Makeup
  • Royal Langnickel
  • Graftobian
  • Makeup Atelier
  • Sugarpill
  • Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics
  • The Makeup Outlet
  • Guru Makeup Emporium
  • Bdellium Tools
  • Louise Young
  • Naked Cosmetics
  • Provoc
  • Thalia
  • Lash Unlimited
  • Ben Nye
  • Hakuhodo
  • Mehron
  • Screenface

    

    

Exploring these brands was the most fun for me! They sold general makeup and accessories to heavy duty theatrical face and body cosmetics! I got to test makeup by brands I had always wanted to try like Makeup Atelier and Ben Nye and play with lashes by Velour! One of my favourite discoveries was Guru Makeup Emporium which stocked Danessa Myricks photographic makeup – her makeup is exceptional! But my highlight had to be visiting the HakuHodo stand! This brand produces some of the finest makeup brushes in the world! There were so many to pick from, I was like a child in a candy shop! You could tell just from the feel of them that they were going to deliver excellent results and the available ranges covered every type of brush possible.

Was it worth attending IMATS 2017?

Without a doubt yes! If you love makeup and meeting other people that love makeup, this is the event you have to attend each year. You’ll see what treasures I picked up in my next post, but even without spending, it is such a fun and vibrant day out, filled with colour and variety and just by talking to the brand staff you can learn so much. I am already planning for 2018 IMATS – tickets will go on sale 6 months before the day, which will be in May again. For full information check out the IMATS website here. Who’s going to join me? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to follow and subscribe!

Watch out for my next makeup reveal post on my gorgeous IMATS purchases!

Dips xxx

The Professional Beauty Show 2017 -Was it worth attending?

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Hi beautiful people!

I hope you have all had a great weekend and you’re enjoying your Sundays before the working week starts again! My week has been crazy in my day job and a busy weekend so far but finally found time to sit down and write! I have a growing list of blogs to prepare and it keeps getting longer!

The Professional Beauty Show

So, a few weeks ago I attended the Professional Beauty Show 2017 in London. If you follow me on social media you will know that at this event I also met the inventor of the Stylpro brush cleaner which was a massive highlight for me! It was the first time I attended this event and I have to say, it was really worthwhile trekking to London for it!

 

The Brands

The first thing that I found amazing is that the event is FREE. This was a huge exhibition of many beauty, skincare and makeup distributors. You would think there would be a hefty ticket price too go with the size of the event, but there was no charge and no catches! Some of the well-known brands such as Murad, Dermalogica and OPI attended, to name a few:

   

   

Secondly, you were spoilt for choice. I am pretty sure I did not get chance to visit every single exhibitor due to the sheer number of them! I tried to work around as many of the makeup stands as possible and visited some of the skin care brands too. There were some expected favourites such as Nyx Professional and Inglot and also a few companies I had not heard of:

As you can imagine, the queues were crazy! There were also some unexpected surprises which I was thrilled to see! Spectrum had a stand, whose brushes I have long coveted and Kryolan had a stand, which is one of the best and most established professional makeup brands. I naturally visited both!

I decided against buying any Spectrum brushes on this occasion as it was simply too busy to have a proper look. Getting close enough was hard but I know that buying some in the future is a definite!

However, I wasn’t quite so restrained at the Kryolan stand! I have long been a fan of this brand but never had the opportunity to check out the full range. I ended up buying an eyeshadow palette and 2 fine glitter pigments from there! The quality of the makeup is exceptional, the pigmentation of the eyeshadow is excellent and the glitters are stunning. They actually come in different textures, from the very chunky glitters to the super fine, but they are all beautiful.

Glitter Heaven

On the subject of glitters, this show was glitter heaven! There were several stands selling various glitters in an array of colours and I was in my element!

 

I ended up buying several different glitters but tried to pick colours that I did not already have! They were all good quality and very reasonably priced so it was worth attending the event just for that! The only brand I could not properly look at was Magpie Beauty because it was swamped with fans!

Demonstrations

Finally, you were also able, despite the number of attendees, to take part in demonstrations. Most exhibitors were testing samples on visitors, doing demonstrations and offering treatments. I thought this was very ambitious but also essential to pulling in customers. I ended up assisting in a demo for the Stylpro brush cleaner and giving a review which was posted on Twitter! My aunt had a foundation and concealer makeover by Supercover Professional Makeup, which was actually very impressive:

Suffice it to say, she ended up buying some of their products and has since told me how pleased she is with them!

Would I attend the event again?

So, would I recommend attending this event? Hell yes! Not only was it free, there was a huge amount of information to gain and amazing brands to explore. I have only touched on some of the companies I spoke to but there were brush brands such as Crown Brushes, hair extension brands, makeup storage companies, the list goes on. I also used the opportunity to hand out some of my beauty blog cards to reps and discussed possible collaborations or reviewing products for them, which is so much easier to do in person than through emails etc. Then there’s the fact I was able to use my love of this industry to speak to someone like Tom Pellereau of Stylpro and I was able to gain social media exposure as a result!

All in all, this show will be a date to save for 2018 and I hope it is even better than this year was! I will soon be reviewing the lovely products I bought at the show but for now, here’s a little sneak peek:

I hope you found this blog fun and interesting! If you have any questions about the show do feel free to comment below! As always, if you like reading my blogs, remember to follow, like and subscribe!

Dips

xxx

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Certifeye Rainbow Glitter

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Hi, there beauty lovers!

Its been a busy couple of weeks for me so I have not had a chance to post a blog before now, but I finally managed to find time today to prepare this one!

A little while ago, I posted a video of these beautiful glitters on my Instagram:

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Since then, I have taken the time to swatch each colour properly and they are amazing! I have not had an opportunity to use them in my makeup looks yet but they will be a regular feature during the Spring and Summer! This particular collection is called Galaxy, but there a variety of packs you can buy on the Certifeye website (www.certifeye.co.uk) as well as singles colours. You can also buy brushes and eyelashes – I ordered lashes with my collection in style Cosmo and they are one of the best false eyelashes I have ever used!

So let’s take a closer look:

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The glitters are very fine rather than ‘chunky’ making it easier to blend them on the skin. They adhere well and once on the skin they don’t move and retain the colour intensity. All the colours catch the light beautifully and could be used on their own or over eyeshadow depending on the look you want to achieve.

Starting from the left the colours are:

  1.   Fairyland Sparkle

This is a red-pink colour with gold flecks – a great one for Christmas!

2.   Twinkle Tiara

This is a full pink glitter with silver flecks – perfect for a Valentine’s look!

3.   Sahara

This is a deep almost burnished gold colour with a hint of silver – it would work well with a smoky eye or an Indian bridal look

4.   Lemonade

This is an iridescent glitter with gold, silver and rainbow flecks – definitely going to be one of my favourites!

5.   Limelight

As the name suggests, this is a bright green colour with gold flecks – also likely to be a favourite!

6.   Ocean Star

This is an unusual colour, mixing turquoise, gold and silver glitters

7.   Aquamarine

This is a bright blue glitter with a hint of silver running through

8.   Midnight Magic

This is a gorgeous deep blue with silver flecks

9.   Supernova

This is a dusky pink, similar to a rose gold colour with gold flecks

10.  Mermaid

This is a rich purple glitter with hints of green and silver – it will be a staple in the festive season!

11.  Quasar

This is a mixture of black and iridescent glitters giving a lovely multi-dimensional effect – really looking forward to using it!

And now, the swatches for each colour – I am hoping I have captured the colours sufficiently!

The photos really don’t do justice to how pigmented and sparkling these glitters are. I have dozens of different glitters in my makeup collection but none of them looks as brilliant in colour as these do. If you are a ‘magpie’ like me, I would definitely recommend looking at Certifeye’s website – its glitter heaven!

Thanks for reading this blog and watch out for makeup looks incorporating these glitters! If you have not already subscribed to my blog, don’t forget to use the links on the right!

Dips xxx

N.B. This blog is not sponsored or endorsed by Certifeye and is purely based on my personal opinion.