MAC Surf, Baby! Haul

As soon as I saw the product pictures for MAC's Surf, Baby! collection, I fell in love with the Cheek Blush, 'My Paradise'. Strangely, the collection was available to buy in the UK before the USA, so I didn't have many swatch pics or YouTube videos to go by, and I didn't want to make the mistake of ordering without swatching again (yes Viva Glam Gaga 2,  I'm talking about you!) I waited until Thursday, the day it was launched in stores in the UK, and was literally the first person in store - it had sold out online and I wanted to make sure if I liked it, I got it! I am particularly fond of coral colours at the moment, and I love the gold overspray on the pan.

With My Paradise, you get 12g of product, compared with the usual 6g you get in a standard MAC blush. Even the Mineralize Skinfinish's are only 10g, so for £19 you really are getting a lot of product for your money. The main blusher is a coral peach colour, which is buildable depending on how much impact you want to make. The gold hibiscus overspray is very gold and shimmery. If you are careful with your brush you can use them both separately, or the easiest way seems to me to swirl your brush over both. The gold doesn't go all the way down to the bottom of the pan - I have photographed so you can see how thick the gold layer is (I'm thinking this might be where the additional 2g of weight comes from!)

Here it is swatched on my hand (both colours swirled together):

The only lipstick I bought from the collection was Hibiscus. I had been tempted by Naturally Eccentric online, it looked like a lovely nude - and I do love a lovely nude, but in real life it was rather white. I did um and ahh over it for a bit, but as soon as I put Hibiscus on my lips, all thoughts of Naturally Eccentric flew out the window!

I love this colour - the texture of it, as a Cremesheen, is really moisturising - it glides on the lips effortlessly (although this is such a bold colour, a lip brush is recommended!), and is such a beautiful colour. The website describes it as a "bright orange coral" which I would tend to disagree with. I would still call it coral, but not orange - essentially, it's an orange toned red. When you look closely at the lipstick it has teeny tiny bits of shimmer in it, making it look really pretty on the lips. I also find it looks completely different inside and out - I had it on in the shop and thought it looked rather orangey, then once I was back in my car it looked rather red. Whatevs, love it. This one will definitely be coming to Ibiza with me, it looks great now, but it's going to look even better with a tan.

Although one of my favourite bronzers is a cheapy Natural Collection one which is shimmery, I have been on the lookout for a matte bronzer as my Benefit Hoola is wearing very thin. I really liked the Give Me Sun bronzer which was used in my MAC make up lesson but when I saw that the two bronzers in the Surf, Baby! Collection were embossed with the MAC logo, I was swayed! I'm such a sucker for a gimmick like this, I think it's totally cute!

There are two bronzers in the collection - the other, Gold-go Lightly, is suited to more olivey skin tones, which I definitely am not, and not wanting to look like an Oompa Loompa I went with Lushlight Bronze. It is a Stufio Careblend/Pressed powder, which apparently means that it's "Creamy, blend-able, no-streak bronzing powder that provides a naturally matte, lightly luminous finish. Antioxidant formula ups the care factor." It tends to live up to that claim!

Strange Potion lipglass is a repromotion, I bought it last year when it was released with the Disney Venomous Villains collection, hence it saying Disney on the packaging of the one I have photographed. At the time I wasn't too keen on it, but now I'm in coral-mode I really love it and wear it quite a lot during the day. Perhaps I just see it as more of a summer colour, rather than Autum/Winter when it originally came out.

It is a soft, coral-peach colour, with a slightly frosty finish to it. The colour lasts quite some time on the lips and is really opaque compared to some other of the lipglasses I have tried. It works well on top of lipstick - ontop of Hue is pretty, as it would be over any other nude lipstick I imagine. If you wanted to be really bold, you could wear it over Hibiscus for a double-coral punch of POW!

This is the swatch pic I took of it last time round:

I had also hoped to try out the Summer Stash Crushed Metallic Pigments, but there was a delay in them coming in and were unable to tell me when they would get them. I love the purpley shades and have seen gorgeous swatches on Temptalia's site. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that my purse will thank me for.

Overall I am really happy with the products I got. Although the off-white casing is meant to give that summer surf-dude feel,  I do think it cheapens the look and they are bound to get grubby - even in my swatch pics of the casing I can see marks, and I hadn't even owned them for a day at that point!

Here is a photo I took which included My Paradise, Lushlight Bronze and Hibiscus. Think I went a bit OTT with the bronzer on my forehead, a light hand is definitley required with this one!

What do you think? Have you bought anything from the collection? Have I missed out on anything?!