A week of Indie makeup Day 1 - Evil Shades

http://www.evilshades.com/

Evil Shades is a small independent mineral makeup company owned and run entirely by one woman - Andrea Miller AKA Evil Angel. The company has only been around for a year or so but has already branched out into making lip glosses, several kinds of eyeshadows, blush and even limited edition nail polishes!
Now before i start on the actual review of the products i wanted to say a little about the owner. Andrea is one of the sweetest people i have met through my blog, she is always kind, complimentary and helpful, runs a great blog (http://blacknailpolishandlipgloss.blogspot.com/) and is just a beautiful person inside and out. For instance as i am beginning to play around with making makeup myself she gave me some pointers, something i would assume most cosmetics companies would be hesitant to do in case i used her tips to create a rival company.

Anyway on to the actual review!

Ordering from evil Shades is really easy. International customers like me simply choose what they want, email Andrea and she'll send you an invoice with your shipping total. I think if you're in the US there's an ordinary shopping cart thing. All the products are entirely animal testing free and Andrea points out any non-vegan shades as well as showing the ingredients clearly.

I wanted to try out as much as i could so i ordered a sample of every eyeshadow Evil Shades had at the time and 1 of each lipglosses. So in total that was 22 eyeshadow samples and 11 fullsize lip glosses. My total, including shipping to the UK came to $53.72 or about £34. Her prices are just incredible! The full size shadow prices depend upn which sort of shadow you want, but none are more than $6, a blush is $5, lip glosses are either $3.25 or $3.50 and the nail polish is $4. This is the most inexpensive indie company i've encountered, but does this mean the products are lower quality? Well let's see.

I ordered a lot of different Indie brands on the same day and Evil Shades was the first to arrive at my house, taking about 2 weeks to get to me. My order came beautifully wrapped in fancy tissue paper (i took a photo but can' find it on the computer) and a business card. I can't remember if there was an invoice or not. Included were 2 free samples of eyeshadow in some new shades (not up on the website yet) and a really special lip gloss. Andrea had created a new shade of her 'wicked' gloss just for me called 'Lillian's Light'. I actually sobbed a bit when i saw this, i was just so happy, it's one of the kindest things anyone's done for me.



The 2 free eyeshadow samples i recievered were 'Punk chic' and 'Rocker chic' a gorgeous bubblegum pink and lilac matte respectively. Absolutely gorgeous, I love Matte shades. I haven't tried a look using these yet so i can't tell you about their blendability (im certain that's not a word :P) but the pigmentation is amazing and they aren't at all 'chalky' like some mattes can be.



Punk chic is on top, Rocker chic is on bottom.

As well as my special 'Lillian's Light' i purchased the 2 other shades of 'Wicked' gloss available, 'Diana's Bow' which is described as a 'sweet bubble gum pink with sparkling light blue flecks suspended' but to me has almost a green duochrome and ' Sasha's Heart' which Andrea says is 'Lushious dark plum with amazing luminous green flecks suspended within' the green sparkles in this are amazing but to me the main colour is quite a dull brown rather than a plum. 'Lillian's Light' is really hard to describe it's sort of silver with pink and lilac sparkle. These glosses are quite sheer but have an amazing colour-changing effect when seen in different lights. I can imagine they would be gorgeous over a complimentary lipstick or liner.

Here is the best photo i could get of them, it doesn't show the complexity of the shades though:


Diana's Bow, Lillian's Light, Sascha's Heart.



I also got one each of Evil Shade's regular lip gloss collection. The glosses come in 5 gram jars and are absolutely filled to the brim. A lot of people dislike lip products in jars, though personally i have no problem with it, also i'm not sure if these could be put in lip gloss tube or bottles as the fomula is quite thick and creamy instead of runny or sticky.

The colours tend to differ in their opacity and some constructive criticism i could offer would be that it would be good if there was a more in depth description of the shades, as the site only lists the name and a basic colour description. All of the shades have some shimmer in them (though a lot less than in the wicked glosses) and a couple 13th Hour and Guilty as Sin have extra added glitter and sparkle.

In a couple of the shades there were some tiny solid lumps of gloss base, though this wasn't really a problem as once I applied the glosses these lumps melted away. The glosses are incredibly moisturising and left my lips feeling really soft, the colour was quite longlasting but as they're glosses they're not going to stay on your lips like a lipstick would. They all have different scents, some of which i liked more than others of course, but most of them were absolutely delicious and edible smelling, the only one i didn't like was sinister which was cherry-ish but more chemically than the others.

Swatches (I hope you can see the difference in opacity and the glitter in a few of the shades):


No Angel, 13th Hour, Banshee, Sinister, Deadly, Venom, Suffocation, Lethal Kiss, Guilty as Sin.

My favourites are No Angel, which is a fierce, opaque bright red and Banshee which is a gorgeous cyan blue.

Something that i really liked about my Evil Shades eyeshadows is that all 4 different 'sets' of shadows i recieved have different finishes. The regular evil shades are sort of shimmery, the 4 'illusion' shadows are shimmery with holographic glitter (LOVE these), the 2 free shadows i recieved were plain matte and the Alice shades are hard to explain because they are somehow both matte and glittery. I think the base colours are matte and then there is some added glitter or shimmer, anyway they are gorgeous.



Mysteria (this doesnt show the amazing holographic glitter), Banshee, Sinister, Panic, Silver Bullet, Suffocation, Moonlit, Erinnye

This is a better picture of mysteria:




Coffin, Zombie, Abyss, Double Barrel



Acolyte, 13th Hour, Venom, Devils Bonfire.

Wonderland collection:


Sweet Alice, Whooo Are you, Twinkle Twinkle, Mad people, Hearltess Queen, Madd Hat, Chesire.

Trying to show the fact that they are matte but with sparkle:


I haven't tried all of the colours, but the ones i have are easy to blend and are beautifully bright. I wore a look using only Evil Shades over primer and they lasted amazingly. Over 12 hours of wear with no fading or creasing whatsoever.

As Evil Shades is such a small company they may not have as many products and shades as a bigger indie makeup company such as Fyrrinae or Aromaleigh but the ones they do have are just as high quality and just as beautiful in my opinion.

Would i buy again? Absolutely! I'm desperate for a full size of all the illusion glosses, Heartless Queen, Mad people and several others I would also love to try a sample set of blushes and the new nail polish. The prices are amazing, quality is wonderful and i really love supporting the company. I can just tell that Andrea is amazingly passionate about what she is doing.

Lip swatches of all glosses coming soon :)