When I first ventured out to other MMU companies, I found the Kaleidescope colors from Pure Luxe. I fell in love with them because of the colorshifting qualities. (Initially I thought this could be achieved by adding multiple colored micas to a base oxide color. Nope…turns out you have to use a mica that's a duochrome to start with, otherwise you just get multicolored glitter…which isn't necessarily bad, but wasn't the color I wanted.) When I found TKB Trading, I was able to see the duochrome-colorshift ingredient in the Kaleidescope colors: the Interplanetary Traveller micas. Pure Luxe's Kaleidescope colors are gorgeous, but they're rather lightly pigmented - and there are only seven of them. I saw the possibility to make my own kaleidescopes, using the base colors of my choosing. So now I'm a little closer to my goal…I just have to find a good, inexpensive, highly pigmented base color or ten.

When I donated to DonorsChoose.org through Aromaleigh v1's Angels program and received a gift of a custom eyeshadow, I requested a periwinkle base with a true duochrome effect - “like the Pure Luxe Kaleidescope colors” as I said in my email to Kristen. The resulting color was a lovely periwinkle, but a little more lightly pigmented than a shadow I'd expect from Aromaleigh - and the duochrome effect wasn't as pronounced as I'd hoped. From responses from Kristen (comments, mostly, on her blog) I learned that adding the duochrome ingredient caused the base color to lighten and soften. Good to know: so apparently I may have a tradeoff between base color and duochrome effect, OR the base color may lighten from a dark blue to a medium-dark blue (for example), or both. But I still don't really know how to mix a good base color, and don't care to pay $8 a jar for Aromaleigh v1's mattes while I'm essentially still experimenting. (Bare Escentuals' mattes are more expensive; Pure Luxe has few matte colors to speak of, and most of those are more expensive than their standard line; The SheSpace's mattes are all rather sheer to begin with, and none are very rich; and I don't care to start poking around other MMU companies just to try and find low-cost, good-adhesion, highly-pigmented jeweltone mattes.)

I have several of the Rocks! Sonic eyeshadows from Aromaleigh. When I first started purchasing them, I made notes of which were the blacklight-reflective colors (to get the most bang for my buck) and noticed that a lot of the colors had a matte and a sparkle version…which let me reduce my “want-it” list a lot. A little over a month ago, they announced that the entire line would be getting a reformulation-makeover, and that all current inventory was reduced in price. I bought extras of the colors I had…and then I started buying several jars of the matte colors. At just under $3.50 a jar, it's a great deal.

I'm going to franken the whey out of them.

From the Rocks! Sonic Eyes collection, I have the following jars of matte colors, ready for mixing:

• Atomic — bright glowing yellow matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Bigneonglitter)
• Blueorchid — deep lush royal-indigo matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Ladystardust)
• Endlesssea — vivid ocean-blue-green matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Oceanrain)
• Funkytown — intense violet-blue matte (blacklight-reactive)
• Newrose — hot pink matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Personalitycrisis)
• Obsession — magenta fuchsia matte (blacklight-reactive) (I don't own the sparkly version of this color; I went with the straight-hot-pink Iwantcandy instead.)
• Ozone — superrich deep teal blue matte (I also own the sparkly version, Moonagedaydream)
• Poisonivy — lush green matte (I also own the sparkly version, Lazysod)
• Prettyvacant — intense tangerine matte (blacklight-reactive) (I do not own the sparkly version of this color - it was just too intense for me. I'm hoping that the intensity will be slightly diminished when I add in the colorshifting mica.)
• Swampthing — muted blue-grey-green matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Avalon)
• Strychnine — cool green matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Justlikeheaven)
• Teenagekicks — bright fuchsia matte (blacklight-reactive) (I also own the sparkly version, Psychocandy)

I have the complete Interplanetary Traveller sampler set (in multiples):

• Travel to Mercury
• Travel to Venus
• Travel to Earth
• Travel to Mars
• Travel to Jupiter
• Travel to Neptune
• Travel to Pluto

I don't know that I'll use Travel to Mercury, simply because it's so highly saturated that I don't know that any base color would come through much. Still, that leaves me six colorshifting micas to play with, and twelve base colors. I can have quite the bit of fun with this...

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