Venomous Cosmetics review

A short while ago I was contacted by Tracy from Venomous cosmetics. She said that she'd seen that some of Venomous' lip poisons are on my wishlist and offered to send me a few of my choice for review. I of course leapt upon the offer greedily but as often happens I couldn't decide what colours to try so asked her to pick some for me. Originally I was supposed to get 4 mini glosses but instead Tracy astounded me with her genorousity by sending me 6 mini glosses, 3 pressed eyeshadow samples and 8 loose eyeshadow samples.   

As I was sent these I can't review how long it takes from shipping to recieving the order, or the actual ordering process but I can say that the communication was great, my enquiries were answered really quickly and there was a slight accident with the email containing my address going missing, even though I was being sent the products free of charge Tracy was extremely apologetic about the delay in shipping. My package arrived a bit after a week after it was sent, which is pretty good from the US!

There's a LOT of photos under the cut :) 

First I''ll talk about the loose samples I was sent. 

  

Of the three different products I was sent I was looking forward to trying these the least of all because, well, every indie makeup company does loose shadows. However they're really good examples of loose shadows and some of the colours are really beautiful and unusual.

   

Left-right:

'Fairy Godmother' - gorgeous jade green with pink sparkle

'Prince Charming' - cobalt blue with pinky sparkle

'The Most Beautiful Princess'- medium pink with golden shimmer. 

The sparkle is a lot more intense and obvious in real life. All three are from the 'My Fairytale' collection.

'Light of the Fireworks' - from a now discontinued 4th of July collection. It's a dark bluey purple with multicoloured sparkle

'Bravest Astronaut' - from the Spaced Out collection. Bright reddish magenta with a strong blue shift.

 

Sea Anemone - shimmery purple with sparkle (the photo makes it look bluer than it is)

Man O' War - slightly shimmery blue

   

Stiletto Snake - matte black with a tiny hint of silver sparkle

Fire Ant - Matte orangey red with red glitter. 

My favourites are Prince Charming and Fairy Godmother from the My Fairytale collection because the pink sparkle makes them really unique, Bravest Astronaut because I love lip products of similar shades but have never seen an eye product like it before and Fire Ant because it is just so cool!

Most of the shadows were all really pigmented, buttery smooth and really easy to blend. I found Man O War and Fire Ant slightly less creamy than the others, but they were still fine to apply to apply and Stiletto Snake which felt a bit chalky and 'stiff' I find this is the case with quite a few matte shadows.

I found the wear time on these very good. Here's a look I did with The Most Beautiful princess, Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming on my bare eye (no primer/foiling)

 

 

And here it is after 6 or 7 hours of wear:

 

 

You can see the colours have faded a little but there's been very little creasing and the sparkle remains sparkly :P

If you've not seen reviews of Venomous Cosmetics before then you might be thinking: 'Pressed samples?? How is that even possible?' well somehow Tracy found some tiny pans and they are absolutely adorable!

Lookit the little things!

 

They're about the size of a 5p piece, so dinky and cute! Swatching was a bit hard for me as I have quite big hands and fat fingers, but it was possible and getting an eyeshadow brush into the pan is a doddle.  

I recieved the colours Under a Spell from the My Fairytale collection and Meteor and Constellation from the Spaced Out collection.  

 

 

Under A Spell - from the My Fairytale Collection. A lime green with a hint of gold and whiteish reflects,

Constellation - from the Spaced Out Collection. Plummy colour with darker purplish and brighter pinkish reflects

Meteor - Spaced Out again. It's a light taupey colour with a gold/green/pink iridescence. I think this might be a dupe of Mac Vex. 

Compared to the loose shadows I found these a little less pigmented. They're still beautiful but it takes a couple of layers to get opaque coverage. The colours seem a bit more complex to me though, more multi-layered. 

The wear time on these seemed about the same as the loose shadows.

Here I'm wearing Meteor all over my lid with a touch of Constellation in the crease (again no primer or foiling or anything)

 

  

And this is after 6 or 7 hours.

 

 

The shadows seem to have faded slightly and there's a tiny bit of creasing but really nothing bad at all.
Finally the product I've been wanting to try for aaaages, the Lip Poisons.

 

Lip Poisons are a sort of thick, non-sticky,  opaque lip gloss. They have a very slight minty flavour, come in plastic lip gloss tubes with doe foot applicators (these are mini sized, 3.7 ml, you can get full sizes of 5.9ml) and they are love-er-lee!

  

Zero Gravity - a semi sheer milky pink with very strong green/blue flash. I think this may be best applied sheer or as a layer over another colour, it makes my lips look a bit weird on it's own, but it's so cool!

 

Hazy - a gorgeous perfect purple with a blue flash. This one applied a tiny bit streaky but not unworkable and it's such a gorgeous colour.

 

Genie - bright pink with strong blue interference

 

Dazed - fantastic orangey tomato red 

 

You can also apply a thinner layer of these for a sheerer look. Here's a lighter application of Dazed, it's still very pigmented but not quite opaque.

 

Deep space - amazing darkblue/purple/silver/green colour. MUCH more complex than it looks here.

  

Austin Boy - fantastic bright almost neon Barbie pink.

I absolutely LOVE this colour but sadly my tube had a little misshap, when I tried to use it the doefoot part of the applicator sort of fell off into the tube! D: 

 

Unfortunately the applicator part is now blocking the opening to the tube so I can't even apply it with a lip brush :(  This seems to have been a freak occurance, I've checked the other tubes and the applicators all seem sturdy.

I really really loved these, they reminded me of  my Illamasqua Intesne Lipglosses, which are my favourite ever glosses. There are really opaque and shiny but don't feel sticky and don't feather, even on my ultra-feathery lips!. I also find the wear on them pretty good.

Here's Austin Boy after about 3 hours:

 

You can see it needs reapplying but for a gloss I really don't think it's bad, for the first hour or so it remained opaque.

I'm absolutely delighted with what I got from Venomous Cosmetics. I always feel a bit weird posting entirely positive reviews when I've been sent products but I honestly don't have many negatives at all and I'm not going to make up bad things for the sake of it as that's just as disengenous as making up positives. A couple of the loose eyeshadows didn't apply as easily as the others and I had the problem with one of the gloss applicators but otherwise everything was pretty much great. I'll be making an order myself soon, I need a replacement of Austin boy and there are a lot of other colours of glosses I want. I'm also intrigued by some of the other loose and pressed shadow shades. The prices seem very fare too, loose samples are $1 for 1/8 tsp, pressed samples are $2 for a 15mm pan and mini or 'purse' sized LipgPoisons are $3.50. Full sizes are $5 for a full size Lip Poison, $6.50 for a 5 gram jar of loose eyeshadow or a 26mm pressed pan.

The My Fairytale Collection is actually being discontinued today so if you want anything from it go order now!

*I was sent these for review but all thoughts are my own*