Before I left for my exchange, my uni friend and fellow beauty junkie tippied me about the IMATS that was happening in Toronto in November and I made it a point to not miss it. To a student, the trip wasn't exactly cheap - the coach and IMATS ticket cost about CAD$120 - and I went alone, meaning that I had venture into this unknown place without any help or companions. That said, it was worth every penny and the cold feet I had the night before.
IMATS Toronto 2011 was held at the Toronto Congress Centre, which is quite a pain in the butt to get to as it is not in the downtown area at all. It's near to the Toronto airport actually, but I managed to make my way there without any trouble.
I actually took a midnight coach from Montreal down to Toronto so that I can be at the event bright and early. I even had some time to put on some makeup, so here's my LOTD:
The IMATS was held in one of the exhibition halls, and it was end autumn and approaching winter, hence the bare trees and rather bland atmosphere.
Oh yeah, it was cold, so I quickly hurried into the hall. This was the first thing I saw, it was so exhilarating!
I remembered I reached at about 9 plus, and there was already quite a queue forming. But the registration did not take long.
Armed with my IMATS shopping bag and my green wrist band, I was all ready to experience IMATS 2011!!!
Just right at the door of the hall was Make Up For Ever. I did my preparation work before going for this event, reading up on tips and tricks, and a lot of people advise going to the MUFE booth first because 1) They have huge discounts 2) The queue is going to get crazier. And as you can see, at nearing 10 am, there's already a lot of people there!
Almost their whole range was there I think, and they were giving 40% off which is a huge discount. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact prices for the products. You can spot some prices in the pics below, but I do know it's a lot cheaper than our SG prices (if you don't include the MUFE annual sale).
And here's the queue for MUFE. At 10 a.m. in the morning. This is crazy.
MUFE also had a live makeup demo going on. I was loitering around for quite a while at the booth cos I wanted to see how the transformation went. The model looked stunning at the end of it!
Right next to MUFE was Obseessive Compulsive Cosmetics (OCC). Needless to say I got my hands on some lip tars (see Part 2).
After MUFE and OCC, I explored the hall to see what other companies were there.
Royal and Langnickel brushes were there, being the official sponsor of the event.
They had a crap ton of brushes!
CAD$7 for kabuki brushes! They were soooo soft, but I held myself back from geting one as I already have a good kabuki brush and I was on a budget.
Crown brushes were there too (with another crap ton of brushes). I got myself a few brushes from Crown, cos they were so inexpensive.
Lit and Naked Cosmetics were there. Omg, glitter and pigment heaven!! They were giving free demos, but I didn't go for it as I already had my makeup on.
Yaby was there, with their miniscule pans of eyeshadows, lol!
Face Atelier was there..
..and so was Graftobian, with all their cream foundations.
Hakuhodo was there. Omg, I laid hands on their brushes...and I couldn't let go. Their brushes are the softest of any brush I've ever touched! But oh so expensive! ): So I just stayed there for 5 mins, fondling the brushes like a brush pervert.
I spot myself some Ben Nye (hello there)!
And my face went like this "-___-lll" when I saw the price tag on the palettes.
Bdellium tools were there! I was quite impressed by their brushes; though not as soft as Hakuhodo's (duh!), their prices are a lot more affordable and some of the brushes were really good. Those green vegan brushes were sooo cute!
NARS was there, not a lot of people were at their booth though.
They also had a live makeup demo, and the makeup was pretty pretty pretty~
Alcone was there, but I didn't care much for it cos I'm not familiar with the brand.
And I saw bottles upon bottles of brush cleanser, lol!
Airbrush makeup companies, Temptu and Dinair, were there as well. That sales assistant at Dinair had some crazy hair and makeup going on!
It's not surprising for MAC Pro to be there, but it was definitely surprising for them to be selling products there with a 20% discount! Sadly, I didn't buy anything, kinda regretted. ):
Moving on, Eve Pearl and her famous salmon concealer was there.
Embryolisse, a skincare company, and Pari Beauty were there. Again, I'm not familiar about these companies so I didn't pay much attention to them.
Last but not least, NYX had a giant booth right smack in the middle of the hall. And the queue was crazy! I only poked around a bit, and honestly, the discounts weren't that good and we could easily find the products in our SG blogshops, so I didn't buy anything.
Interspersed throughout the day, there were talks and panel conferences by reknown makeup artists and youtube gurus at the main and forum stages. I attended a few of them, partly to glean some tips from the experts and also to rest my tired legs.
The first talk I attended was EnKore's (Koren).
He was wearing this Hello Kitty apron thing that was so adorable!
He was teaching us how to use colours to compliment and intensify our eyes, and it involved the colour wheel and all those complicated stuff, but he did a demo on a model with a palette from Sugar Pill.
But...if you asked me, honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the completed look. =/
After the talk, I spotted both Koren and Elessa from Pursebuzz working on a model at Jordana cosmetics.
So that's about 80% covered on the event itself, phew! In part 2, I'll be showing you guys the student's competition and my haul! Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!
