Early in February I picked up a rumor about a new upcoming brush kit from Sigma Makeup, and naturally I was anxious to see what they had in store for us. I recently decided to get their Professional Brush Kit with the brush roll, and I had the black Travel Brush Set from before. When their Hollywood Collection was launched I got the black retractable kabuki brush, and I haven’t regretted any of my purchases as of yet.

When the news finally hit us I was amazed! This new brush kit contained several brushes that I’ve been eyeballing at M·A·C, but couldn’t afford to buy. This kit contains the total of 15 brushes and a brush roll. There are 14 new face and eye brushes, seven of each, plus 1 new lip brush. I know some people was upset that these brushes weren’t sold individually or even without the brush roll, but even though I had a few of these brushes already, I didn’t think twice about getting the full kit. The brush roll is made of some kind soft, synthetic material resembling leather, and has a magnetic snap closure. It’s also got “Sigma Makeup” embossed on the flap – and it’s ideal to store your brushes in.

The plan was to wait a little before ordering, but I ended up ordering the Premium Kit right after the launch, and when I received them 11 working days later I was absolutely thrilled. I love them!

I have said it before, but I’m not going to stop saying it: having good tools is everything! I’m still not saying that cheap is good, but getting those good tools doesn’t have to be expensive. As already mentioned the Premium Kit has three brushes more than the Professional Kit, and the price has been increased by $60. I can understand that people are reacting, but when you think about it it’s no more than $20 per brush, and that’s absolutely reasonable for these brushes. For comparison reasons I want to mention that the 134 Large Powder Brush from M·A·C costs $52 alone. If you break it down you’ll discover that you actually pay less than $10 a brush with this Sigma Makeup Premium Brush Kit, and you get a nice brush roll to accompany your tools.

Brushes in the Premium Kit:
• SS227 Large Fluff Brush
• SS192 Large Concealer Brush
• SS131 Duo Fibre Powder Brush
• SS165 Tapered Highlighter Brush
• SS129 Powder/Blush Brush
• SS138 Tapered Face Brush
• SS134 Large Powder Brush
• SS222 Tapered Blending Brush
• SS226 Small Tapered Blending Brush
• SS217 Blending Brush
• SS195 Concealer Brush
• SS212 Flat Definer Brush
• SS214 Short Shader Brush
• SS316 Lip Brush
• SS210 Small Eye Liner Brush

You get 15 brushes in a convenient brush roll for $149 plus shipping, as opposed to the Professional Kit which is $89 with the brush roll. Keep in mind that several of these brushes are expensive if you are to buy them individually from a brand like M·A·C, to mention one of them. Even thought most of them are comparable in name, size and area of use, it’s up to you to decide which ones you prefer. There are small differences between the two brands, even though they have similar names. I’m also hoping that several, if not all of these brushes will be available as individual brushes later on, making it possible to buy backups or replace them without having to buy another complete kit. I know I’ll keep buying my brushes from Sigma Makeup in the future.

Have I tickled your curiousity?
Order your very own Sigma brushes here.

I have not accepted any free products or compensation to write this review.
The views and opinions expressed in this review are purely mine.

Photo © Sigma Makeup

Øyvind made a small road trip to IKEA to pick up a new pillow for me, “Gosa Raps”. I was borrowing his while my neck was acting up, and since it felt a lot better than mine I decided to get one of my own. Please don’t propose Tempur, I can’t stand that crap. While he was there he also bought a pack of three polyester baskets like these for Theo. The original thought was to keep some of his toys gathered in one of them, instead of all over the floor, but funny enough he seems to be afraid of it! Now he’s sitting on the floor, within safe distance from it, whining.

With these small dogs there’s always a relatively large possibility that you have to take them to the veterinarian when they start shedding their baby teeth, to avoid later problems with the new and permanent teeth. I was crossing my fingers and hoping that this wouldn’t be a problem with Theo, and I’m extremely happy to tell you that he has lost all but two or three of his baby teeth, which are loose and about to fall out on their own. I’m really against putting animals under anesthetics if it’s not absolutely necessary, so I’m relieved. He has still got both his upper canines intact, so we’ll have to pay close attention to them. As far as we can tell he has now got a very nice 6+6 scissor bite, with all his new teeth and all, and I’m hoping it’ll stay like that. On April 11th we’re possibly attending a puppy show nearby, just for the fun of it, unless something unexpected happens. I’m hoping Theo will enjoy it, so we can do it again this summer. I’ve got big plans for our little ball of fur, provided that he’s comfortable with the whole setting.

In this picture he barely dared to pull that toy dog over the edge of the basket, where it’s still hanging. Sometimes he’s just difficult to understand, but he’s awfully cute in the process of being a tiny little weirdo!

I’ve had a really productive day already. The time is only 3:57 PM and I’ve done a lot of things. I woke up a little before 9:00 AM, and that’s a first for me! The weather has been very shifting, from sunny to rainy to minor blizzard. Fascinating. First I had a meeting with two caseworkers from the local authority concerning my personal assistance. I really dreaded it. I don’t know why, it was more a formality than anything else, but I have such bad experience with the local authority from back home. I’m always anticipating a knife in my back the second I turn around – not a very healthy attitude, but it’s the bad experience I tell you. The meeting went well, or at least I think it did, and as I already knew it was mostly a formality. Feels good to have it out of the way, so the next thing on my agenda is to try to obtain an answer regarding my “little secret”. God, I hate waiting. I can’t understand why everything has to go so slowly? I need an answer, damnit.

Apart from all that we’ve finally managed to clear the living room of boxes. Yes, after living here for seven months we still had three cardboard boxes standing behind the couch, and they’ve been bugging us both for a long time. Now they’re all gone, and everything that was in them has either been thrown away, or put in its correct place. I even found my two Guinness mugs which I bought when I was in Dublin in 2006! Sometimes I think it would have been better just to throw away the boxes without looking in them first, but I would be throwing away a lot of things with memories attached to them – and I couldn’t handle that. I’m a collector, or maybe a hoarder rather. Let’s just blame it on the fact that I had to move from a house to an apartment, downgrading my space, which meant a lot less room to clutter up. And I’m not even a fan of knick-knacks, trinkets or ornaments!

It’s been a long day, so I’m going to bed.
Happy 17th birthday, Aleksander! Best wishes on your day.

Imagine that, I’ve actually written 901 posts counting this one. Impressive!

Just to give a little update on myself, I’m happy to announce that I’m finally feeling better. It’s been one of those weeks.. consisting of intense pain in my neck, headaches which felt like my skull was being crushed – slowly and calculated, throwing up, seeing the underneath of our bed covers, being bored to death and sleeping. Oh, and painkillers. Lots of painkillers. Did I mention that some painkillers cause nausea? At least with me, so I had to choose between two evils, and I decided that it would be better to be relieved of some pain for a few hours and vomit from the medicine, instead of feeling suicidal from the pain. Neat! It’s on days like these I’m forever thankful that I have parents that care, friends that care, a boyfriend who loves me and takes care of me, and a little dog who generally just loves everyone – including me. That certainly keeps my spirit up, no matter how much pain I’m in. Now I’m finally up and about again, and I’ve been off the heavy painkillers for two days – which is good. I’m still feeling a little nauseous, and like I have an aura of a possible headache hanging over me, but I’m hoping that I’ll feel even better tomorrow. Keep those fingers crossed!

I haven’t been online much lately, mostly just from my iPhone now and then to check my e-mail and Twitter, so the abstinence started to hit me hard. So I’ve been doing all kinds of stuff online today, including opening up a Flickr account for myself. I wanted a quick and easy way of uploading my images, mainly those of Theo, so I could share them with everyone who wants to see him develop. I used to have a gallery online with all sorts of pictures from vacations and such, but it kinda drowned in spam comments, so I ended up deleting the whole thing. Anyway, Flickr works absolutely perfect!

Mr. Postman also came knocking today. Finally! He brought me a very nice black box from Sigma Makeup, but I’ll get back to that later in an individual post. This time the package took 11 working days, which is a little longer than I’m used to, but still not bad at all. I haven’t seen any sign of my shipment from Asos, where I ordered that incredibly cute little coin purse, and it’s already been 13 working days. The one week I really needed some mail to cheer me up nothing arrives. Sucks!

Anyway, I’m alive.
Just wanted to let you all know.

I was supposed to post this in February, but I forgot all about it. I think I need to admit that I’m an addict. I’m heavily addicted to.. well, mail. What else? I love mail, mail makes me happy. Unless it’s bills, they tend to take me down a notch. More bills means less money for fun, like shopping on the Internet, which naturally results in mail.

In mid February I received another package containing two more LE i-Divine palettes from Sleek MakeUP named “Safari” and “Curious”. I got both on eBay, and was very happy to discover that I could whisk them away at retail price. Retail! How often does that happen? eBay is filled with greedy people who’s desire to become rich is a lot stronger than their sense of honesty, selling heavily overpriced makeup (and other items) that might not even be authentic. As I already said, both these palettes are LE and not available through Sleek MakeUP anymore. “Safari” is a gorgeous metallic palette with 12 colors that instantly made me think of the wilderness, lions, rhinos, giraffes and large, open plains with grassing Zebras! A very suitable name, indeed. “Curious” on the other hand is a rather strange palette, as it’s an odd mixture of shimmering and metallic colors (three blues, one teal, one yellow, one purple and so on). I do like it though, it’s just strange curious! Maybe it’s not so bad after all, at least I’m getting the correct associations to the given name.

Sleek MakeUP i-Divine Palette in Safari

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