If there ever was a brand name dreamed up before the days of websites, easily searched terms and other bits of internet frippery under the banner of SEO, Make Up Store is it. Go on, I dare you to search for ‘make up store swatches’ and see what totally irrelevant results you get. I’ll wait here.
…back? Good. I want to show you a rather nice impulse purchase I made a few weeks back – Make Up Store microshadow in Sunrise.
Sunrise is a saucy tropical orange absolutely packed to the gills with gold shimmer. It’s like the fiesty grown-up version of Firespot from MAC, just with the saturation turned up to the max and with enough pigmentation to make a shy girl blush. This is scary pigmented. Stain-your-skin pigmented. Dye-your-white-bristle-brushes pigmented. I think you get where I’m going with this.
The magic secret to this shadow seems to be all in the preparation. Prime like you’ve never primed before, because the very soft texture of this eyeshadow makes it a perfect candidate for being applied too thickly and being totally crease-tastic. I normally only use a dab of Too Faced Shadow Insurance on bare skin, but due to the megadose of pigment in this and not wanting to sport attractive orange stains on my peepers, I switched to a very thin layer of MAC Paint Pot in Bare Study on my upper lids to give a nice opaque base.
On my lower lids, given that there’s already a nice base of concealer and foundation powder to provide a barrier, I used a small amount of Shadow Insurance to give extra staying power. I finished the look with a burgundy eyeliner smudged along the upper and lower lashlines and then a liberal application of MAC Blacktrack gel eyeliner on the inner rims to really draw attention into my blue eyes. Lashings of black mascara really brought this whole intense look together and balanced each strong element.
Comparison time! All of these are applied in one stroke to bare skin. From top to bottom:
- MAC Coppering
- MAC Expensive Pink
- MAC Firespot
- Make Up Store Sunrise
- MAC Mythology
- MAC Goldmine
As an aside, Make Up Store aren’t exactly clear as to what the differences between ‘microshadows’ and ‘cybershadows’ are beyond some vague mentions that one is creamier and the other has more dimension. I’m guessing that cybershadow is their more foolproof day-to-day range and microshadow is the more pigment-dense range with more focus on effects (shimmers, pearls, etc). I’d welcome anyone from Make Up Store to clarify that for me though!
Make Up Store microshadow eyeshadows retail for AU$34 for 3.5g of product. Make Up Store products are available from their retail locations but have no online ordering from the Australian branch of their website. I purchased these from their Chatswood Chase location and cannot recommend the girls there highly enough!
Carla
17/01/2011
i agree! i would likely go nuts if they had online ordering. come on Make Up Store!
Amira
28/08/2010
It looks really good!
I’ve been wanting to try this brand for so long, but there’s nowhere to purchase their products in France. Bummer!
swatchgirl
29/08/2010
There have only been a couple of stores here for a handful of years – as far as I can tell it’s one of the few stores that runs on a McDonalds-like franchising system, which is very unusual for a beauty brand!
I wish they’d do online ordering though. It’s so odd in this day and age to find a brand who treat the internet as some sort of optional extra.