2014, Week 18 summary: Femme Fatale and BFTE and Meow and Shiro (oh my!)

Posted on Sunday, at bought • 815 views

A chunk of interesting happenings in the indie world this week! Femme Fatale released their Post-Apocalyptic collection to much fanfare and a site-crashing launch day; Beauty from the Earth re-opened with a new collection launch; Shiro Cosmetics celebrated its fourth birthday; Meow re-released its Summer Spirits collection, albeit for a very brief window (tomorrow's the last day to get it before it goes back in the vault!).

On my side of the fence, the photo reformatting proceeds…slowly. I've got a LOT of photos to reformat! On the other hand, overall image processing time is going quicker now that I'm not creating the large images and separate thumbnail images. It's “one and done.”

2014, Week 18 summary: Femme Fatale and BFTE and Meow and Shiro (oh my!)

It's always exciting to see people reaching milestones. Shiro Cosmetics has been around since 2010 - it's starting its fourth year!! The lineup is relatively small, but they're all solid performers. The eyeshadows and blushes are excellent, with good coverage and colors and longevity all around. The monthly colors are wonderful treats. Though…I do kind of wish that they'd stop changing the lineup of the Legends collection. This is the third time that they're culling colors, but it also looks like there have been some name changes as well. (Dammit…I'll have to re-do my grids again!!!)

Femme Fatale Cosmetics has been showing photos of their Post-Apocalyptic colors on Facebook for just over a month now, leading up to this collection's release on May 1. Most of Femme's eyeshadow collections have been half a dozen shades, so this one - with 21 eyeshadows and three blushes - drew a lot of attention! The shades are all over the place too, with a mix of softer iridescent shades, some pastel mattes, and rich jeweltones. The blushes are likewise gorgeous - one hot pink, one coral-pink, one gilded peach. I managed to get my order placed a few minutes after the collection launched…once the site was back up, that is! There were some temporary technical problems that caused a brief outage, but the site was back up fairly quickly. The site will be closed for most of May, because Femme Fatale will be moving into their new building. Congratulations, Sophie!! (I remember reading her blog back when she was talking about launching Femme Fatale. In particular she wanted to be able to provide other Aussie beauty lovers a way to easily get all of the indie nail polishes she was seeing. That was back in…what…2010? 2011? I forget now.) Beginning on May 7th and going through May 20th, you won't be able to order anything from Femme. On the upside, those of us who did place the orders -=may=- get them during that time, and you'll be able to see additional swatch-photos so that you can build up your wish-list.

Photos that show how the product actually performs...! See how I create my swatches

2014, Week 18 summary: Femme Fatale and BFTE and Meow and Shiro (oh my!)

Along with Femme Fatale's launch-and-relocation, another much-loved player is back on the scene. Beauty from the Earth Cosmetics was sold at the beginning of this year, and the new owner has opened with a “sequel” to the Coffee Shop collection! It's currently listed in the “Limited” section of the site, so I'm assuming that at some point it won't be available any longer. The rest of the site is slowly being repopulated, so if you go looking for old favorites they may not be there yet. A few blushes that were pulled down during the last days of BFTE's first phase, have reappeared; and it looks like a few eyeshadows have also been put back into the store. The site still has a few kinks (the menu doesn't quite work, the images for the new collection could be formatted just a bit more consistently) but that's part of the joys of launching any new site: the bugs. No matter how careful you are, there will always be some gotchas lurking. While I don't yet see some colors that I know were very popular (like Illusion) I do see Spellbound - a lovely jeweltone blue that, I think, was not available for purchase toward the end of BFTE's first phase of operations. The new owner has said that she'll be keeping the same pricing and sizes, and will have 80-90% of the same colors that BFTE had.

Meow Cosmetics has re-released its Summer Spirits collection, though apparently it's only going to be around through Cinco De Mayo. (Or as I like to call it, Revenge of the Fifth. Because it comes right after Star Wars day [May the Fourth Be With You]) I only have a few of the colors from this collection, largely out of personal preference. Wasted is an interesting shade! It's a pewter-grey with reddish undertones. It's definitely not what I expected when I read the shade description, but I like it. Tequila Sunrise is a bit more yellow-orange than the buttery gold that it looks like on the vendor's page, but it's a great softer summery shade. Mint Julep is a lighter green with gold shimmer that I find myself rediscovering every spring! On The Rocks is great if you want a brighter silvery-grey that is nearly, but not quite, a full metallic-finish. I do hope that Meow re-releases this collection again later in the season. Unless you're a die-hard neutrals-only person, I think everyone can find one or two colors in this collection that become either seasonal refavorites, or daily go-to shades.

I'd like to thank the folks who have updates to their Facebook page linked to their Twitter account. Facebook has now done away with the ability to sort one's newsfeed by “most recent” posts if you use Facebook as your page instead of “as you.” I have never used Facebook “as me” because 1) I don't want to see the ads or play any of the games; and 2) when I post to the various walls I want to post and interact as my page, not as “me.” From a business-analysis perspective, I understand their decision to do this. Facebook is now a publicly-traded company, they really have to rely on ad revenues to make money and give their investors a return. Their customers don't want to advertise to, or get aggregate data about, the activities of businesses; they want to focus on selling to individuals. That doesn't mean that I have to agree to essentially be “the product” (my data and usage habits) that Facebook is selling, or the captive audience to whom they and their advertisers are selling to. So…I've pretty much stopped using Facebook. I get all the feeds from the pages that I want to follow, straight into my RSS reader. I see everything, I get them in chronological order, and I can go and reply if I want…or get the link to the blog post, or whatever's being shared. I'm sure that Facebook will block this soon, too; and when that happens I'll only get updates through raw RSS feeds from the sites that provide them. (If you are on Blogspot, you have an RSS feed, even if you aren't personally aware of it. Most other sites have them, too - even without setting up something like Feedly.)

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