After the Estee Lauder Companies’ launch of their Beautiful Earth Campaign yesterday, I managed to go over to MAC at Pavilion for a peek at the Surf, Baby! Collection which isn’t on display yet but the testers are available. It will only be officially displayed at Pavilion next week.
What about the star of this collection, the My Paradise Cheek Powder? Well, it is beautiful to look at although a far cry from last year’s intricate seahorse design (Marine Life) but at least we Malaysians can identify with this year’s hibiscus design since it is our national flower.
Similar to Marine Life, the hibiscus is merely an overspray and when I applied it on the back of my hand with a brush, the surface of the cheek powder immediately became quite powdery and the gold from the hibiscus added to the glitter. Avoid the hibiscus if you don’t want too much gold on your cheeks.
The coral-orange shade doesn’t appeal to me but just like Marine Life, this will probably sell out soon. There is a lot of product in this and you’d have to absolutely love the shade as it will last for a long, long time. It’s hard enough for me to finish a cheek product half the size of this within a year.
There are 5 eyeshadows, 3 of them bright shades which are perfect for summer. It was a bit difficult getting some of the colours to show up on my skin. They may apply better with eyeshadow brushes but if you are unsure of which colour to get, the best thing is to ask one of the MAC makeup artists to apply it on your eyes. I thought I would fall for Surf USA but I am rather in love with my Inglot teal pigment at the moment and teal eyeshadow can never be as intense as a teal pigment.
As for the 2 sets of Crushed Metallic Pigment, I’m sure that most people would prefer the “Surf The Ocean” set over the “Summer Stash” set as “Surf The Ocean” contains more outstanding and unique colours such as the beautiful graphite and gold-bronze. The pigments, particularly in the “Surf The Ocean” set are bigger and chunkier than the Crushed Metallic Pigments in the Spring Forecast Collection of last year, which were in the same stacked packaging.
There are nude, violet, coral, peach and brown colours in the lip glosses and lipsticks but unfortunately, there isn’t anything in rose tones so I’m skipping these. Actually, there haven’t been any shades in their previous collections which have made my day for a long time. I’m hoping there will be more rose tones in upcoming lip products.
The Studio Careblend/Pressed and Bronzing Powders are in such tanned tones that I’m not sure how they will look on those with fair skins. Perhaps they will be useful for contouring/shading purposes but I wouldn’t use them all over my face otherwise I would have to apply them all over my body as well.
Surprisingly, it’s the Powerpoint Eye Pencils that appeal to me the most, especially the teal “Blue Noon” which I initially thought was “Blue Moon”. It’s good that these are Powerpoint Pencils because they are more waterproof than Pearlglide Liners.
Last but not least, there are the nail lacquers:-
For a complete list of prices, please refer to my earlier post.
