Morgana Cryptoria Vegan Lipstick in Golden Peach Morgana Cryptoria Vegan Lipstick in Metallic Seafoam Morgana Cryptoria Vegan Lipstick in Sugar Plum Morgana Cryptoria Vegan Lipstick in Aslyum

I haven’t done lip swatches of anything in awhile, and my skin is pretty shit right now, but the lighting is extremely forgiving so here are lip swatches of my Morgana’s Cryptoria order. It took a month to get to me, which was really annoying, but also not unexpected as it’s stated on the website processing will take awhile. I am unsure if you will be able to purchase all of these at the moment, some of these were on Clearance or LE but she has a lot of colors on the website so you might find a similar one. These are vegan, also. 

  1. Golden Peach - (unavailable) - I feel bad even talking about this cause she isn’t selling it anymore (I’ve had this sitting on my desk for a month, lol) but whatever. It’s a shimmery, indeed ‘golden’ based orange. Wouldn’t really call it a peach color. It’s kind of like a shimmery, paler color I use when Revlon’s Siren is too orange for me. Since this has shimmer in it, it can settle into your liplines. I like using this with lipgloss or topping it off with some lip balm. Not QUITE as pigmented on the first swipe as I’d like, either. I’ve give it a solid B.
  2. Metallic Seafoam - ($10) - I just tend to accumulate a lot of blues, purples, and black lip colors… I have way more than I do reds and corals and “”nude”” colors. Quite a dry formulation, I wouldn’t ever wear it alone because it’d be too dry and patchy (click the picture to see what I mean). I think this looks really nice underneath a gloss or lip tar, though. This is a B-.
  3. Sugar Plum - ($7) - Where has this lipstick been all of my life? Um, obsessed. It is not a perfect formulation — it has slip, more than I’d like. If it were Illamasqua’s formulation, a little dryer (this is the least dry out of the bunch) I think it’d be perfect. I’d give this an A- and that is because I haven’t worn it for long long lengths of time. I feel like this is also a good dupe for that Limecrime color if you were looking for one.
  4. Asylum - ($5) - Bleh. I mean, it’s a beautiful color, yes, but also you need a base color or it’s going to look like you have a weird mouth disease. Here is it on my bare lips. I think, if you wore black lipliner or a black lipstick underneath it, it would look really beautiful though. I guess this is a C+. With a base, it’d be a B.

I mean, my grades for these products are mediocre but I do think they are a great value and especially considering they are in really nice packaging especially for indie brands — Morgana uses bullets. The packaging isn’t uniform throughout the lipsticks though, which I personally find irritating. However, for the value — similarly pigmented lipcolors in these shades are going for like $15+ in Sephora and elsewhere, so you should definitely check her out.

Black Indigo Bridge Purple Cloud Artificial Amethyst

Months ago I received samples from Portland Black Lipstick Company but I went overseas so I waited until last week to make an actual purchase. I decided on Black and Indigo Bridge, and received samples of Purple Cloud and Artificial Amethyst. Shipping was $4 for 2 lipsticks, and really fast. 

PBCO lipsticks are super affordable ($9 a tube) and come in chapstick containers with sticker labels (really cute ones). I don’t have any indie makeup lipstick, just eyeshadow, so I can’t say if this is unusual or not, though I think other indie makeup companies do a mix of chapstick tubes and regular lipstick bullets. The chapstick tubes make application for these more difficult than a bullet would, I definitely used a q-tip each look to fix things up. You’ll likely have to do the same and/or use a lip brush for application. 

The overall formula was really creamy and lovely! Probably one of the softest formulations I’ve used. I think the lipsticks with a bit of dimension— Artificial Amethyst, Indigo Bridge — are marginally better than Black and Purple Cloud, because the flat ones (another descriptor escapes me, though they’re both creme and not matte) you can see shift on your lips a little and you have to pucker. Nothing too bad though, and for the fact these aren’t drying and so pigmented and so inexpensive? Awesome. 

Obviously Purple Cloud is not exactly my color, it’s too cool toned for me, but it’s still lovely. My fave is definitely Artificial Amethyst — gonna buy that next. I think these are great, unique lipsticks and I highly recommend them! If they came in bullet containers, they’d get an A++ for me. Maybe in the future. 

bright blue, majestic, envy, black majestic envy both of them

I bought some mascaras on impulse from Medusa’s Makeup because I was so inspired by my beautiful friend Alex’s GPOY with purple mascara. In total they were about $21— there was a deal for $15 for all of the mascaras and shipping was $6.95 and they arrived in 4 days, which was nice. 

Sorry for the weird example photos, I put on some glitter liner from NYX but it photographed weird. I’m not a fan the NYX Glitter Liners anymore I think, they don’t last very long and don’t look nice in these photos! But the point of this post is mascara so let me get back to it:

Here are some quick swatch looks with Majestic and Envy, the purple and green ones.  I initially only wanted to buy the purple one but I think Envy shows up more on my eyelashes. I’ll do looks with the rest of the mascaras in the future. For $5 a pop they’re totally worth it if you like strange colored mascaras, though I do think you need to layer a bit. The brush was better than I expected, too. 

Here is some background on Medusa’s Makeup if you’re thinking about purchasing from them:

  • They are PETA certified and don’t test on animals.
  • Their pressed eyeshadows are simply repackaged eyeshadows i.e they don’t make them themselves, they buy them from a private label manufacturer (as do several other ‘indie’ brands). That being said, their eye dusts are also suspected of being repackaged but i’m not sure. 
  • They make their lipglosses and mascaras themselves in their own factory and some of their other products too. You can see swatches of a lot of their products on Phyrra’s blog.

What I’m wearing besides the mascara: OCC Foxfire, Aromaleigh Estranged, Tarina Tarantino Hyperliner, NYX Glitter Liner.

aromaleigh eyeshadows

I like indie makeup brands, and my favorite is/was Aromaleigh. Unfortunately it went out of business recently but I wisely capitalized on the going out of business clearance. The owner was selling grab bags of eyeshadow in ziplocks for $16 and I swiped one up immediately. I kind of regret not buying more, I actually prefer this brand to my MAC and Estee Lauder eyeshadows. One day I’ll press them because it’s annoying to use sifters and eyeshadow jars. Anyway, the other night I finally transferred the eyshadows from their baggies to eyeshadow jars I got off of ebay. 

All of them lined up….it looked neater last night  but then again, it was 2AM…..

This is a long post so I’ll put it under a cut. Video and swatches after the jump.

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