About a month before Christmas the lovely girls over at Beauty is Perfection decided to organize a worldwide (beauty) Secret Santa. Having never participated in any sort of bloggers’ exchange before, I loved the idea and promptly registered my interest.

According to the “rules” we were all meant to choose a budget and offer some info re: our beauty likes and dislikes, allergies etc. in order to be matched to someone (I got matched to LiAnn from Sparklecrack Central), then had a couple of weeks to shop/ festively wrap and send out our purchases.

Now, in theory we were all meant to have received our packages during the holiday season – in order to post about them before the new year. Unfortunately however, Hellenic Post being even worst than usual during the holidays, my package didn’t arrive until the 12th of January. I immediately let everyone involved know that the metaphorical eagle had landed & took pictures of everything with the honest intention of writing up a post asap. Then life (& being back at work full-time) got in the way… and here we are 19 (!) days later.  Better late than never,  though,  right?

The lovely LiAnn sent me a Missha, M Perfect Cover BB Cream (for those of you who are not that up to date with Korean products, this is one of the cult-est BB creams out there) and two gorgeous Sleek i- Divine eye shadow palettes (Ultra Mattes V2 and Bad Girl).

The BB cream comes in a gorgeous packaging and is quite lush but unfortunately way too light (& a tad grey) for my Mediterranean skin tone. It is therefore sitting patiently on my bathroom shelf, waiting for me to find it a suitable and appreciative new owner.

The Sleek palettes are a different matter, though. I’ve always lusted after Sleek products (which I can’t get my hands on in Greece) and these certainly did not disappoint. Their long journey from the US meant that a few of the shades were damaged (not beyond repair though, they are now good as new thanks to this little trick). As soon as I put them back in working order I started experimenting – and boy did I love the results. These are soft and easily blendable, highly pigmented and have wonderful color payoff. I love both palettes but I think the Bad Girl one is my favorite. Preferred colors? I’d have to say… Ink, Maple, Paper Bag and Fern from the Ultra Mattes one and Blade, Gunmetal, Intoxicated and Twilight from the Bad Girl one.

All in all, I’m very happy with my SS (thanks a mill LiAnn, hope you like yours as much as I do mine) and have greatly enjoyed the whole international gift swapping experience (thank you Kirsty & Jasmine for putting it all together!). If you have never participated in a Secret Santa before I highly recommend that you do – I know I will again, when Christmas rolls around.