Shiro Cosmetics, made of win.

I was finally able to make my first order with Shiro Cosmetics after hearing so many good things about this indie cosmetics brand with awesomely geeky products. Caitlin, the founder, has a wicked sense of humour and a talent for creating vibrant, vegan and quality lip glosses and eye shadows; each product is named after an internet or gaming meme, and while I’m not a big gamer I can certainly get behind the femme gamer vibe! Now that I think about it, it’d be awesome if Shiro did a Minecraft themed collection because that’s the one game I have played a lot of lately. Glowstone, redstone, lapis, creepers… they’d look fabulous on me.

Top: My make up order all wrapped up with bonus lollies; Bottom: My Intertubes, eyeshadows and samples.
Swatches of Forty Cakes, Yo Dawg, Shoop Da Whoop, Sad Keanu, Still Alive, Vileplume, For Science and Rattata on the back of my hand.

I took just a few photos of the lip glosses and shadows I got, but please don’t expect make up blogger levels of perfection! I’m just a regular lady blogger! In fact, to demonstrate my ineptitude, I decided to just put a little concealer and BB cream on as a base and managed to discover my eyes DO NOT like the new Maybelline concealer I bought recently. They were watering and stinging all afternoon after I took all the make up off. If I could find an indie make up company that does concealer with super effective coverage I would be all over that (anyone have recs?)

A kind of blurry photo of light green (Still Alive) and mauve (Vileplume) eyeshadow on my eyelid.
Purple (Rattata), mauve (Vileplume) and gold/ peach (For Science) eyeshadow on my eyelid.

I bought Rattata and For Science and got samples of Still Alive and Vileplume, and in these two photos I applied the pigments over Hi-Fi Cosmetics High Impact Shadow Fix. If you’ve never used mineral pigments I highly recommend getting something like this so that the shadow fixes to your skin. Rattata is brilliant, I’ve been looking for a highly pigmented bright purple eyeshadow for a long time and Rattata is my holy grail! In the photo above I’ve blended it into the Vileplume and haven’t used a lot, but you can see from the swatch on my hand that it’s pretty intensely purple. Still Alive was a wonderful surprise, I might buy some when I order next. I can’t wait to play more with these pigments.

Wearing a light pink lip gloss (Forty Cakes).
Wearing a strawberry coloured lip gloss (Yo Dawg).
Wearing a red orange lip gloss (Shoop Da Whoop).
Wearing dark purple lip gloss (Sad Keanu).

The Intertubes lip glosses are basically amazing. I can’t rave enough about the ones I got, and my stand out favourite is Sad Keanu. I know dark purple/ black lips are terribly “Blogger Trendy” right now, but I had to find out what Sad Keanu looked like on me. And I love it! It’s also the most pigmented of the lot. I’m really happy with the colours I chose and I was surprised that the formula is so creamy; I avoid lipstick because many feel too drying so finding such pigmented glosses is perfect for me.

In conclusion: Shiro Cosmetics are awesome and affordable paints for your face and I am pleased to count myself a fan and proselyte! The only negative thing I can say (with great reluctance) is that there are no swatches on the website, so you’ll need to employ Google when looking for swatches of Shiro colours. Shiro do have a tumblr with photos of eye make up created with their product, so that’s handy too.

My lips perfect the femme sneer while wearing Sad Keanu.

13 comments

  1. omgomg waaaaaaant

    SAD KEANU AND FOR SCIENCE, YOU WILL BE MIIIIIINE
    (also maybe Team Buffy?)

  2. I’ve always preferred lipstick to gloss, although I’ve tried for years to love the gloss.  It just never has the color saturation I want.  My favorite gloss was L’oreal’s Lip Pulp, which was kind of a lipstick-y gloss – basically a thicker gloss that wasn’t as sheer as most glosses and had great color saturation.  But sadly, L’oreal no longer makes it.  The glosses you’re reviewing here are the first I’ve seen that match L’oreal’s Lip Pulp formulation, and I love the colors.  I especially love Shoop Da Woop (the name alone cracks me up), but I like the color better on your hand than how it appears on lips.  Too orange for me, so good to know.  Yo Dawg is a great color (and looks fab on you, as does Forty Cakes), so I may have to give it a try.  Thanks for the review.  I always love to support small business owners and vegan-made.

  3. I am so in love with Still Alive.  That name plus that colour?  Geek-niche-marketing GENIUS.

  4. forty cakes looks nice.
    get rid of the nose ring though, looks like you’re just waiting to be chained up in the farm.

  5. i’m curious, did you apply these straight from the tube or with a lip brush? cuz my sad keanu makes me a sad panda. it comes out streaky from the tube. :( also i got mine b4 she came out with the new batch n maybe she changed the formula? idk. the new ones seem alot creamier to me. idk if i should use a lip brush to apply it but it looks awesome on ur lips whichever way u did it. :)

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