Beauty: getting to know Kryolan

Kryolan is a brand not many of us are familiar with, unless you are as serious about Halloween (or other getting-dressed-up opportunities) as I am. Most party shops carry some Kryolan products, but there's so much more out there. The brand is very popular among make up artists who do speciale effects stuff or editorial looks, as the brand offers quality that rivals brands like MAC, but at a lower price point. Don't let their reputation as a product for professionals scare you away, though: Kryolan offers loads of amazing, affordable products that would work just as well in the makeup bag of your everyday beauty lover. I was sent over three products and some lipstick samples to get to know the brand and introduce you guys to them, so sit tight for a full review.

First product I received was this HD cream liner, in Ebony and Ruby Red. I was excited to play with these for one important reason: they were my first forray into cream eyeliners. I love a good cat eye, and over the years I've tried almost everything to limit the amount of stress and frustration that invariably comes with doing a cat eye. I've used liquid liner with a thin brush, liquid liner with a thicker, inflexible applier, felt tip eyeliners, pencils and angled brushes. All of those have their own specific pros and cons, but none of them made me not sort of hate the process of trial and error that comes with doing a cat eye. Did the Kryolan HD cream liner change that for me? Well, it actually really kinda did!

First things first: the super thin brush is a lot easier to work with than the angled brush you see in many tutorials for cream or gel liner. It allows you the most freedom of developing a swoop that works best with your eyeshape, and ending in a nice, sharp tip. It also lets you keep the liner as thin or as thick as you'd like. Second, the product itself: the HD cream liner has a consistency that is very soft, is easily picked up by the brush, yet isn't too runny. This means that if you mess up by having your brush softly stray beyond the lines of where you want your cat eye to go, you won't immediately have a thick stripe of liner there. You have to push the brush down a bit to really get the product on your skin. This makes application a lot more intentional, and less messy. The wear is also great: if you put it on over a primer or a basecoat of eyeshadow, your liner should remain sharp as a knife all day. No smudging.

Third, these come in a wide range of shades. I got the black and the red because black is a classic and red is my current eye makeup obsession, but this also comes in colours like emerald green, rose gold or yellow. Check out the colours for yourself! And finally: this isn't just an eyeliner, you can also use the HD cream liner as a primer or even for lip looks if you're planning an artsy photoshoot, although I wouldn't recommend them for everyday wear on the lips. Too drying. The HD cream liners go for €12.50.

I also received a nice, bright iridescent eyeshadow in the shade SM G, which is a very bright, saturated hot pink. I'm still further expanding my collection of eyeproducts in the red family, so this one would work nicely with what I already had. Kryolan's iridescent eyeshadow monos are €9.

Swatches!

As you can see, the eyeshadow isn't super opaque when I swatch it on the back of my hand. It performs gorgeously on the eyelid, though, as you're about to see. The liners are both super opaque and pigmented. Ruby Red obviously leans a bit pink.

Let's see what these look like on the eye: here I'm wearing the SM G eyeshadow on the outer lid and lower lashline, paired with Makeup Geek's Mai Tai in the inner corners and a bit of Bitten in the outer corners, and Kryolan's HD cream liner in ebony.

Lurv itttt. My makeup remained flawless all day and the pink was intense yet wearable. I'll never get sick of a good, warm eyemakeup look.

And here's the eyeliner in Ruby Red!

SO COOL right?? I paired it with Essence 08 Don't Stop the Nude. Love this combo, kind of anime-esque. For some reason, I always associate intense red eyemakeup with that manga/anime look.

Finally, let's look at the lipstick samples I received. They're matt and bright and everything nice.

SUPER bright, right? The colours also translate quite differently onto the skin compared to how they look in the pan. EOS is much more tangerine orange, and Aurora is brighter.

I don't wear these cool toned bright pinks often anymore, but this is a lovely colour that reminds me a lot of Bourjois Paris Color Sensational in Fuchsia Flash which you can see on me here. Basically dupes! The coverage was good, I like the formula of all of these as well: not too creamy nor too dry, more waxy if that makes sense. Makes you not over-apply product, not cause any buildup. The colours wear off evenly across the lip and leave you with some stain because of how pigmented they are.

EOS is a love-hate thing for me. While I love the bright, popping orange colour, the application was hard because the colour applied a bit patchy, and going over the same spot made me move the product around more than that it let me build up the colour. Maybe it was because I was working with a brush rather than straight from a tube, I can't say for sure, but I didn't have that issue with the other two.

And this is what you call saving the best for last. Aurora is a shade I'd probably never pick up on my own. It's the kind of deep rose/super cool toned and neon red that you don't see often either, it's so bright it's hard to capture in pictures. But it looks so friggin good on me. Like, we all *know* that some colours flatter us while others are just fine or even bad on our complexion, but I've never seen that difference between flattering and "ok" as clearly as when I compared these different lipsticks. Aurora looks like it was made for me, or vice versa. The image pops and my skin has extra glow. The other two are good, but not Aurora-good. I definitely want to pick up a full tube of this one. The Kryolan Matt lipsticks are €15 a pop.

So! Do you have any Kryolan experiences to share, or are you eager to check any of these out for yourself?