Shade Highlight: TKB Trading Luna Blue Pigment

I love pigments. And I've been trying and collecting them since before I started blogging. TKB Trading is my default place to go for pigments, and some of my faves in recent years have been the multidimensional synthetic fluorophylogopite formulas. 

Don't be scared off by the name. These are synthetic pigments which have a slight edge over natural mica in the sense that they have stronger shine, beautiful translucence, and can be shaped in a spherical way to give holographic effects in nail polishes and eye shadows. They're also used in lots of glosses. Natural mica pigments are unable to throw off so much shine and color when blended with other pigments. They often get muddy and dull. But not these synthetic ones.

Which makes them FANTASTIC for layering over other shadows or mixing into other loose shadows. And they are also great mixed into top coats and applied over other polishes. It's magic - try it.

It's hard to capture on camera; these look so much cooler in real life or when suspended in nail polish formulas. In real life, Luna Blue shifts from rosy-violet to blue to teal. I couldn't capture that on camera swatched on the skin, but I did manage to get a shot below where Luna Blue is throwing off 2 shades (blue and green) at least. You can probably see all 3 colors by looking at the sacket above; rose (center), green (bottom), and blue (top) tones.

This is what makes them different from natural duochrome/interference mica, which can only reflect 1 different color.

Synthetic Mica is more expensive than natural mica. It's $15 for a 1oz bag, compared to other pigments which can cost only a few dollars. But most people will typically only need to get a sample size sachet, which costs $2.95 and will last you ages and ages. Highly recommend you check it out if you love playing with fairy dust.

This type of sparkly mica will dust off your skin easily, so especially if you're layering it over other shadows I suggest dampening your finger in something like an alcohol-free toner, then dabbing it in a small amount of pigment, and gently rubbing and pressing it onto your lid. This helps the pigment to adhere instead of all falling off onto your cheeks, and also helps you get a more intense shine right where you need it.

In this look, I actually have a deep dark brown shadow on most of my lids and a bronze gold around the socket and inner corners.

I rubbed Luna Blue around just the center of my lids and along my lower lash line (I love the dewy sparkly gleam below the eyes), and left my inner and outer corners alone.

This gives a very unique, hard to describe effect, because you have a warm smoky eye, but depending on the angle of the light, your shadow will suddenly shift to blue, then back to bronze, then to teal, then sometimes violet.

Absolute magic.

There are 5 shades in the Moon Dust collection, and I love all of them. You can go on the site to search for individual colors but I recommend getting a whole set of sachets for just USD$12.