Whimsical and ethereal, the new Artdeco Butterfly Dreams Collection is sure to appeal to girls with a soft spot for pastels. There's a beautiful selection of nail polishes and lipsticks that flatter Asian skin, as well as new eye definition products such as a felt tip eyeliner and a volumizing mascara.

Pretty eh? I'll be reviewing a couple of products fully in the future (that blush definitely deserves a whole post of its own), but for now I'll be sharing quick reviews and a look I did using the collection. 

The best kind of eyeshadow palette is one where you can choose all the colors yourself. Agree/ agree? I've been collecting MAC eyeshadows in the 15-pan palette, but I haven't completed it yet considering it costs roughly P16,000 all things considered. I also have a Shu Uemura customizeable palette (one of my faves!) but it costs around P4,000 for a four-color case. Not too bad if you don't mind investing, but if you're a student on a budget, that can be unrealistic.

So when I was a student, guess what I got for myself? Artdeco eyeshadows! I think I had six of them back then. Since I was too cheap to buy the magnetic palette, I kept them in a small tin case that used to house chocolates. What can I say - when you're saving, you have to improvise!

That's not to say that Artdeco eyeshadows are cheap ha. They're still pricey at P350 each, with the palette selling for P450 (four slots, if I remember correctly).

There is an unfortunate scarcity of good, locally-available eyeshadow bases in the country. I talked to a couple of people who works with local beauty brands, and you know what they said? They don't make eyeshadow bases simply because there is no demand for it. Filipinas aren't really that advanced when it comes to makeup application, so they don't have a need for an eyeshadow base.

In other words, only people who know makeup know why they need a proper eyeshadow base. And not a lot of people really know makeup, so let's pat ourselves in the back! :P

Anyway! Good thing that ArtDeco is back here. Why? Because the brand has one of the most popular eyeshadow bases out there: the ArtDeco Eyeshadow Base (P450 at Beauty Bar). I tried getting this three, two years ago, but it was always out of stock! Swear. There's a lot of rave reviews about it online, even getting a solid 4.3/5 at Makeupalley (98 reviews). 

So is it worth all the attention? Well yes, but I am not going to give it a mega rave review. Here's why!

What I love about the product

• It intensifies eyeshadows extremely well - perhaps even better than UDPP. This ArtDeco base doesn't dry up immediately, so a coated lid grabs more pigment compared to the cult classic. 
• Eyeshadows are easier to blend on top of this compared to UDPP.

I can't think about ArtDeco makeup without being nostalgic. I first discovered it when I was a poor college student somewhere in Padre Faura. I was just starting my blog then and didn't have that much money to build my makeup collection. I didn't want to buy the usual drugstore fodder because I wanted to invest in the good stuff, but I couldn't afford the high end brands either. 

ArtDeco, a cosmetics brand from Germany, was my best solution. The products felt consistently high-end, but the price was quite affordable. Most of the items were less than P600; the face makeup topped at around P1,200. I remember that I bought the foundation, eyeshadows, concealer, blush, and lip gloss before! They were worth all the saving I had to do. :P

Makeup wonderland

So, I hope you understand why I'm super psyched that ArtDeco is back in the Philippines. I was bummed when they left two years ago, but now the brand is back with the complete line at the same affordable prices. I was actually expecting that ArtDeco would be more expensive since Beauty Bar (of SSI) brought them in but that's not the case.

Here's a mini-tour of the ArtDeco stand in Beauty Bar, Greenbelt 5!

The eyeshadows are to die for! The're only P350 each too.