This post seems ridiculously late I know, but the final pics have been sitting here waiting for the write-up through half term, so here goes.
Having covered two thirds of the hall I found my self at the
PAM stand, and surprised Louise Young with an early morning pic. Her brushes are gorgeous. I won a set of 8 in a PAM twitter giveaway later last year, but really wanted to add the much talked about -
Visionary Beauty, Pixiwoo, The Non-Blonde - LY38 to my collection - thankfully I waited for
Jane to arrive before purchasing, as I really couldn't remember the number.
The
Super Fan Brush LY20 -
see above pic - felt amazing - and saw much demand as it had sold out during the pro only hours the day before.
I also succumbed to the Essential Eye Palette. If I'm picking up shadows at all right now, they are inevitably matte. Again this is one I'd been by tempted on line;
The Non-Blonde,
Pixiwoo and was interested to check out in person. In an intimate on stand demo from Louise, she described them as the 5 colours she had previously had to constantly mixed up for herself when working. Mr Sparklz was slightly scandalised by this purchase....not being my normal blingfest.....for using on other people however, I think this is going to come in extremely handy and I'm very pleased to have it to play with.
One of these days I might get interested in the Mac counter.....maybe.....
By now,
if you're not IMATS'd out and bothering to read this at all ;p you'll know that the
Illamasqua stand was the busiest stand at IMATS all day Saturday and by all accounts, though with much lower stock levels the next day too. As Head of NPD, David Horne has been continuing his
reduction of the number of SKUs (stock keeping unit) that Illamasqua carry, whilst developing amazing new product lines, like
Skin Base and Cream Pigments. The fabulous price reductions of the recent sale and IMATS offerings -
what I could see of them through the crush - reflected this. I would have liked a better look, but realistically knew that most of what I'd wanted from the sale, I already now owned. The following Sunday Illamasqua made the deals on offer at IMATS available to their other customers, in the form of a Colour Pop Shop at the Beak Street store - again I was most tempted to take a look after Sunday's
fiasco, but felt the kids were in need of some Mummy at home time after the previous weekend.
Although I've once again seen criticism of the stand not being big enough, a couple of changes I've just noted from my
comments on the stand last year were definitely positive.
I wasn't at all drawn by the bundles on offer last year, and this year it was individual items. Might have made for slower moving queues, but great for consumer choice.
Also I felt that the makeup demonstrations being held behind the counter didn't engage the audience as much as the previous year - As you can see from the pic above, (although nothing appeared to be under way at this point), the demonstration area was more approachable once more.
IMAN Cosmetics had a small stand which didn't, on my early morning visit, appear to be selling, only demoing what was available.
Inglot, finally tempted me with some delicious greens and 3 shade shadow pans, when I headed back there late on Saturday. I wanted to get some more of their nail varnish remover and started playing as you do. Whilst they had a massive stand, the number of staff available to serve at 10 minutes to closing time was totally lacking. Eventually I had to admit defeat and make for home :(
Treasure House Make-up always tempt me with their Ben Nye offerings:
Vargas for Royal & Langnickel
My last IMATS pics for 2012 are totally out of order as they are from
Crown Brush, at the other end of the hall from Royal & Langnickel, got myself a bit mixed up there. Koren Zander of EnKore working on a 3D body painting. We also checked out his 'Done and Gone in Seven Minutes (or Less)' talk for Crown Brush. Whilst he made some interesting and useful points during the talk, overall it was a little of a disappointment, given that the 7 minute demo of the title was left until the end and the session was over running. The model for most of the talk had arrived in full heavy make-up, so Koren had to spend some of the early part of the session, somewhat unsuccessfully, removing it. I think more care needs to be taken with the presentation of such demos. Models need to be ready in advance, and the choice of one who is so obviously not comfortable with a natural makeup -
in comparison to the heavier look which suited her style much better that she had been wearing - was perhaps not the best choice. For the finale, a member of the audience - who also had to have her makeup removed - was chosen.... with the over run eating into our final hour, and what looked to be not the greatest application - with the speed necessitated - we left before the look was complete.
As always, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at IMATS and am already looking forward to next year. I'd also like to thank
Make-Up Artist Magazine, who stage the event in a growing number of cities around the world;
New York,
Los Angeles,
Vancouver,
Sydney and
Toronto
I purchased my ticket for Saturday, but did receive a press pass for Sunday which I was sadly unable to use due to the snow.
