{GIVEAWAY & Review} MAC Stroke of Midnight Collection

Welcome 2015. I hope everyone had an awesome festive season and here’s to new beginnings. I’ve decided to start this year off with a bang. I did a MAC haul some time ago and picked up two limited edition sets at a really great price and decided to gift one to one of my readers. Yes I know they are outdated but if you’d like to win one anyway, then keep on reading.

For myself I picked up the MAC Stroke of Midnight brush set. I had been wanting to try out MAC brushes but felt that individually their price was quite steep and their only brush sets are launched during the holiday season and not available in store all year round, which brings me to where I stumbled across them.

There is a tiny store in Woodmead Retail Park called The Cosmetics Company. They stock many ‘high-end, luxury cosmetics brands such as Estee Lauder, Clinique, Aramis and Designer Fragrances, Lab Series, MAC, Bobbi Brown and Tom Ford for sale for at least 30% less than at retail’.

My sister sent me there to pick up some MAC Mineralize foundation for R200 ($17) and for those of you who don’t know, it usually retails for R370 ($32). So here I am standing in the store wondering if the items are genuine as they only have a few selected shades and only a few items from the range. Upon enquiring from one of the consultants I learned that they house all overstocked and discontinued items that didn’t sell at department stores.

Unfortunately they didn’t have MY shade available in stock but did let me know that they had another branch at the Estee Lauder Company in Kyalami. Because I stay on the complete opposite side of the city, it took me a couple of weeks to make my way there. Needless to say, I broke my purse and credit card on that little trip. In this post I will only be reviewing the brush kit and the rest of the haul items will follow suit.

The MAC Stroke of Midnight Mineralize brush kit consists of 4 travel-sized brushes and comes with a cute monochrome bag with gold accents. It’s very classy and perfect to carry the brushes but since it has no pockets it can be used as a wallet or to carry small makeup items. I decided to review the brushes even though the set is not available anymore because the full-sized brushes can still be purchased individually from MAC.

All the brushes in the kit are beautifully soft and after washing them about 8 times, I only experienced a little bit of fall out of the brush hairs. The brushes are made from a combination of synthetic and natural fibres and don’t absorb too much product so it creates an even layer of application and there is little to no product wastage.

 

MAC 159SE Duo Fibre Blush brush – This brush is designed for the precise application of blush or highlighter. I use this brush for applying a powder bronzer for contouring because of its precision but still prefer larger headed brushes for blusher application.

MAC 187SE Duo Fibre Face brush – This duo-fibre brush is designed for the application of face powder. I don’t really like this brush as it is not as soft as the blush brush and for me it does not pick up enough product each time I use a compact powder. It’s sitting pretty for the days I use my loose powder and then it applies like a dream.

MAC 286 Duo Fibre Tapered Blending brush – My favourite brush in this kit. This brush is designed to blend out eye shadow. Whether wet or dry, I find that this is THE best blending brush I own as it never leaves any harsh lines and blends the eye shadow out very quickly without losing any precision or pigmentation.

MAC 287 Duo Fibre Eye Shadow brush – This brush is designed to apply and blend eye shadow. Another brush that I hardly reach for, I find that this brush applies the shadow evenly on my lid but is just too harsh and wayward to blend in the crease. I prefer using it to blend concealer or contour the sides of my nose.

Overall for people like myself that own a lot of makeup brushes, this might be a bit of a let-down, but for someone that is just starting out, these are good value for money while being of great quality.

So now on to the exciting part.

For my giveaway I will be gifting the MAC Stroke of Midnight Lip and Cheek bag in Coral. This kit contains 5 items housed in a similar monochromatic bag with gold striping.

• 129SE Powder/Blush brush
• ‘Margin’ Powder Blush (peach with golden shimmer)
• ‘Pure Sophistication’ Lipglass (gold frost)
• ‘Night to remember’ Cremesheen lipstick (warm red frost)
• Slim Mirror in protective sleeve

Rules to Enter:

• Competition is open internationally.
• Please enter using the Rafflecopter widget in the link below as I will be moderating entries this way. There are a couple of ways to enter with the number of points each entry will be counted. You can enter choosing one, multiple or all of them to gain more entries.
• Competition ends on 25^th January 2015 at 00:00 CAT.
• Winner will be contacted via email.
• Prizes not claimed within 48 hours will be redistributed.

Good luck Bellas!!!

Click here to ENTER the GIVEAWAY

LOTS OF LOVE

Belle BluSHH ❤