Shopping the Sales - Kiko Haul

Ah Kiko Milano.

If you're a regular reader, you might be wondering, "Why on Earth is Patricia so obsessed with make up right now?"

But not to worry friends, I will still be writing up my regular posts.

I just really want to start mixing in a bit of beauty, because I've found other blogger's advice/reviews to be extremely helpful in finding French products to replace my old American favorites.

Unfortunately, finding quality reviews on the Kiko products in English is pretty difficult. I imagine this is because Kiko is an Italian brand that's slowly becoming international, but hasn't quite hit world-wide status yet. Completely understandable, but I still hate buying make up with out knowing a little background first. I'm always afraid that I'll end up wasting tons of money on crappy products.

Skipping along now. 

I showed up in front of Kiko at 8 a.m. the first morning of les soldes (incorrectly) assuming there would be tons of people. Normally Kiko stores are packed to the point where I start feeling a bit claustrophobic. But I was the only client for at least half an hour. Totally lucked out.

The first thing I reached for was their Eye Base Primer, because my current favorite is running out. I'm still in the process of testing it out, but it holds my eye shadow on pretty well and only costs 6.90€.

I also picked up one of their Smart Lipsticks in the 901 color - such a shame that the name's not cuter. It's a good basic nude color and I'm excited to see how it looks with a smoky. For 3.90€ and with in store swatching, you really can't go wrong.

The only sale item I ended up buying was this one.

Colour Impact Eye Shadow Palette

01 Lounge Warm Tones

I'm on the hunt for a good Estee Lauder Raisins Duo dupe and was hoping that two of these colors might work for that. Definitely not a good dupe, but when I swatched them in the store, they were still pretty, highly pigmented, great texture, and not very expensive (€).

But after trying them out for several full days, these eye shadows ended up being really disappointing. They only lasted about 5 hours before they started creasing and fading, no matter what primer I was wearing.

A miss.

Just as a point of reference, with my Naked and Sleek palettes (and a great primer) my eye shadow stays put until I take it off at night. Creasing and fading are not regular problems for me.

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Have any of you tried Kiko products before? Do you have any recommendations? I'd really like to try out more of their line, but not sure what's worth checking out.