Cult Cosmetics Review Part 2: INSPIRED BY: BEYONCÉ

Hi! Here is part 2 of our Cult Cosmetics review. Annie already shared a bit of information about the company here. So being lazy me I will just skip ahead to my review :)

Ahead, you'll also see the first 2 pictures is Annie's!

My kit also included a similar cult sticker!

my kit is on the right :)

The kit I am reviewing today is the Inspired By: Beyonce kit.

pic credit: Cult Cosmetics

Inspired By: Beyonce Kit is priced at $19.99 and is supposed to include:

4 polishes: (0.5 fl oz /15 mL each)
- Essie's Butler Please*, In The Cab-ana and Blanc.
- Color Club Almost Famous.

1 nail art pen: (0.067 fl oz / 2ml)
- Mash's Black nail art pen

Sponges.
- This was missing from my pack, but can be easily replaced with any cosmetic type sponge.



*Butler please is my own, I already had it and gave the one inside the kit to Annie. This is why it may look different.

colours in natural light

colours under flash

First off, I would like to admit..... I can't draw for beans lol! ... I have the skills of a 1st grader so bear with me as you continue with this post. I also have no nail art experience other than making dots ahahah!
Because of my struggles with keep my nails nice and nail art, I decided to try this on a nail wheel.

I think this kit was pretty good. The colours play well with each other and it matches the Beyonce H&M ad!!  When I first got the kit and saw the manicure, I was quite intimidated lol. Sponging......fine line art...sharplines....eep! :X
But to my surprise, this was easier than I thought!! I did it quite quickly and it was a learning experience.

I love the pen!

My first attempt for the sponging was quite funny. I kept sponging and sponging and sponging and I was like this is not opaque?!! and it looked like a blob hahah.. Then I put on a white base first and it looked a lot better.

my first attempt - this was like 3 layers!!

For sponging, after painting the base coat I took a piece of scrap paper and put droplets of polishes I wanted to sponge with. Then I took my sponge, dabbed it into the polish and start dabbing the nail. I continued this until I get a 'blob' I am ok with :P

The design was pretty straight forward, it gives you a bit of room for mistakes / cover up, especially when sponging.

here is what I mostly came up with.

Ignoring the one I blotched out, the sponging was quite fun but because the nails were quite close together, sometimes I accidentally sponged the next nail :( . It's quite easy once you get the hang of it.

From left to right: 

1. Essie's Butler Please as base with Butler Please and Essie's Blanc mixed for sponging

2. Blanc as base with Color Club's Almost Famous sponged on the top and Essie's In The Cab-ana for the bottom

3. Blanc as base w/ Butler Please, Almost Famous, Blanc and In The Cab-ana mixed for sponging

4. Same as #2

5. Same as #3 but without Blanc as base. 

As I tried to recreate the manicure, the crisp lines of the yellow bikini seemed to be the hardest as I thought of how to paint super straight lines. I thought of a cheat which would be easy to do. Tape manicure! So I took a piece of tape, cut a triangle and placed it onto the nail. Because of its curve it's a little hard to place it flat. TIP: Make sure the edges are all sealed! If you see the picture below, on the left side there was a small pocket of air - this will allow polish to seep into it and ruin the crisp lines!

sorry for the super blurry picture!

 Next you take your polish (I used Color Club Almost Famous to follow the manicure) and paint 2 layers or until it's opaque.

 I waited for about 1 minute before the polish completely dries to peel off the tape. I wish I used less tacky tape because I almost snapped off the nail!! haha but the wheel was quite flimsy to begin with.

note: see the left is not as clean b/c of the air pocket

And there you have it, the yellow bikini nail!

Before I tried the pen, I was like OH NO! What if the pen was like the Ciate Chalkboard ones, how will I ever recreate the silhouettes? But this turned out to be the EASIEST part of the manicure. The pen was firm, sharp-tipped and AMAZING. Exactly how I hoped the Ciate pens should have been!

If you scroll back up, you can see the tip was original white. I stuck it onto a piece of paper and pumped it about 35 times until the polish came out. It went on like a dream, no blobs, no bleeding - just sharp and perfect lines!!!!! 

pen or polish? hahaha MASH nail art pen is so precise.

 So, although my art is pretty bad, it had a really nice application. Because I didn't do these on my nails, I decided to venture out and do a few more designs..

From left to right:

1. I decided with the darker blue background to do an undersea drawing.. I drew some seaweed, 2 whales and fishy looking dots around  (hahah)

2. Because of my horrible drawing of palm trees, I decided to save myself and drew a hammock in-between in hopes I had to draw one less palm tree!

3. Sponging w/ Blanc as base

4. A copy of the original manicure - a mass of palm trees

5. Tape manicure yellow bikini top

6. Sponging w/o a base

So...how did I do? 

Now a surprise - I liked the pen a lot and I tried to make another manicure, one which I saw in a Japanese nail art magazine many many years ago! I wanted to do but at that time, my nails were SUPER short and it couldn't be done :(

It was called 'The Bee' lol..but I decided to add in a little bear and some 'flowers' 

It's a very easy manicure, but it's very cute!!! I just used the colours from the kit, because I was too lazy to go downstairs and pick up a few other colours hhehe..

I start off with 2 coats of Essie's Blanc for all 5 nails. Wait for it to completely dry! Noticed on the thumb I didn't and I kind of ruined the bear's face.

Then I drew my design. I drew bear's face a little on the slant then I followed the bee's path..decided to do it a little bit cute with the loop and the heart. 

The original design did all 4 nails with only the trail then the 5th to have the bee. Since I wanted to include flowers, I put the bee on the 4th nail.

I did the outline with the MASH nail art pen, then took a brush which Annie gave me from her Cult Cosmetics kit and painted the body yellow. Then I added the stripes when it was dried.

On the 5th nail, I did the sponging technique again, this time I did it more heavily and on top an extra layer of Almost Famous. I knew I would suck at doing flowers, so I opted for the more 'artsy' & 'abstract' design!! Yay or Nay?

So there you have it my friends, two very different manicures using one kit! Do you have this kit or bought a similar one..? What other fantastic ideas can you come up with? I cannot wait for you to share it with us!!!!!

Shipping is free for orders over $40, otherwise it's $5 to ship. I received my package in less than a weeks time which is pretty darn fast for shipping to Canada from the US.

Be sure to check out the Cult Cosmetics site or their Facebook page.


Until next time,
Mir

***Products were generously sent for review, opinions are my own***