Entries for Monday June 04

Persephone Minerals’ Asteri

• Vendor: Persephone Minerals
• Availability: part of the regular line
• Color Range: dark teal shimmer
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4
• Cost/Amount: ...I forget...
• Would you purchase again: no
• Similar shades: Aromaleigh v1's Drama Teal

Persephone Minerals has shut down for the forseeable future…but I still have a good chunk of colors that I got from them in fall and winter 2011, and I intend to share the swatches. There are some lovely colors - lots of duochromes and duotones. So naturally the first color I showcase is a lovely but rather straightforward blackened teal.

This color looks nice enough in the pot, but the shimmer doesn’t carry through to application. There is some shimmer, but it’s kind of sparse. I love the color, though - blackened deep teal. I’ve used this as an inner-vee accent color, but it would probably work quite well as a liner shade. I do wish that this color showed a bit more of the teal when applied wet, though. The damp-application shade seems to be a black with teal tones, somewhat similar to Aromaleigh’s Drama Teal minus the metallic finish. I like this shade, and I got it on seasonal clearance price (which I cannot, for the life of me, remember what the actual original price was) but I would not buy this particular shade from Persephone again. I’d buy one of the duochromes instead, and try to find a blackened teal with more ‘teal’ and less ‘blackened’.

TKB Trading’s Yellow Oxide

• Vendor: TKB Trading
• Availability: part of the regular line
• Color Range: sunflower-yellow matte
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4
• Cost/Amount: USD$14 for one ounce
• Would you purchase again: yes
• Similar shades:

TKB Trading is a wholesaler, which means that you can get straight oxides from them as well as the various micas. I really wanted a yellow that wasn’t gold or pale yellow, and that was just this sunflower/harvest shade, so I broke down and got the straight yellow oxide. Like any other raw ingredient, oxides need to be applied just a little differently than eyeshadows with some kind of base, the oxide colorants, and the mica(s). This one applies very well, and because it’s a straight oxide, the color payoff is excellent. Look at that, that’s a wall of color! No fading, no bald patches, nada. The downside of oxides - or at least of this oxide - is that they don’t blend quite as easily as other eyeshadows. I can see using this under something like Newcastle, to get this rich yellow color and the amazing sparkle from Newcastle.

My Pretty Zombie’s Lady Killer

• Vendor: My Pretty Zombie
• Availability: part of the regular line
• Color Range: pale silver-grey shimmer
• Staying Power: 3 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$5 for 1.4 grams
• Would you purchase again: not necessarily
• Similar shades:

A soft silver-grey, nearly metallic but not quite. The opacity is a little less than I’d like; but the color blends well. The blues and greens, the jeweltone shades I’ve gotten from My Pretty Zombie have all been above-average to fairly good. The whites and greys…have not thrilled me quite as much. I know of other vendors for more opaque silver-greys, and some of them cost about the same for their eyeshadows. I wouldn’t have a problem piggybacking this on another order I was making from My Pretty Zombie, but this wouldn’t be the only item I’d order, or the reason I’d order. (The colors from the Animal Husbandry or Blue Period Trio, now…THOSE are gorgeous, and they would be the reason I’d place an order.) Maybe it’s because this is a shimmer finish rather than a “packed with glitter” shade, but I feel like the shimmer is more even and makes more of an impact in Lady Killer, than in Law Firm Lamb Cake or Unicorn Pee.

Fyrinnae’s Newcastle

• Vendor: Fyrinnae
• Availability: released in 2005; part of the regular line
• Color Range: gold-brown sparkle
• Staying Power: 4 out of 4 stars
• Cost/Amount: USD$5.90 for 3 grams
• Would you purchase again: no
• Similar shades:

Originally I thought this had been released in a pub- or English-place-name themed collection…but nope, I was wrong about that.This was released in 2005 before I became a regular-ish customer. Newcastle is a brown with a lot of gold shimmer and sparkle. It’s almost like the golder cousin of Shenanigans, a shade that Fyrinnae released in March 2012 (or thereabouts.) I don’t love the fact that this is more sparkle than shadow, and you really have to apply this over a base - even if you’re foiling it. (You can see my wet application wasn’t exactly spot on…but even my dry application, over UDPP, is nearly opaque but has a few tiny bare spots.) If you’re looking for a deeper gold near-glitter that isn’t actually glitter, this one can work. It probably also applies better if you use something like Stick ‘em, or Fyrinnae’s Pixie Epoxy. Fyrinnae’s Newcastle is a lovely shade with lots of glam, just a bit more particular in how it wants to be applied.