Brace yourselves, this is a big one. I’ll include reviews for some of the products if I’ve used them long enough to form an opinion.
Out of sheer frustration with my Maybelline gel liner, I picked up MAC‘s fluidline inBlacktrack. I had used up an entire tub of it before, but had decided to try the cheaperMaybelline one to see if I preferred it. What a mistake. The Maybelline one had a nasty habit of smearing near the outer corners of my eyes, a problem I’ve never encountered with MAC‘s gel liner. The Maybelline one was also significantly stiffer and less fluid to apply. I certainly don’t intend to stray from this MAC product again!
This product absolutely enrages me. I love Wet n Wild (although I’ve never used any of their cream products) and Fantasy Makers is a derivative of that company. I picked up this glitter palette in Fairy Flight shortly after Halloween (as it was a leftover from their Halloween display at the drug store) thinking that I could use the glitters for something fun.
Wrong. So wrong.
These aren’t even GLITTERY! There’s an overspray of glitter, but it certainly doesn’t go any deeper into the product. That gorgeous dark blue with shimmer on it? It’s just black underneath. The first swipe removes all of the glitter and you’re left with nothing but a black base. The same is true of all the colours – any of the glitter that you see is just an overspray. So frustrating.
Not to be deterred, I thought I’d at least give the products a shot. I decided to use them as a base for eyeshadows (over top of my usual primer from Urban Decay). I tried out the pale green and the darker green, but within four hours of application my makeup was almost completely disintegrated. It got SO BAD that I actually took my eye makeup off at work. Which is something I don’t think I’ve ever done.
Here’s a look at it. The shot on the left was before I left for work, and the one on the right was taken around noon (so about four hours into wearing the makeup).
I haven’t tried them again on my eye, but just for laughs, I thought I’d swatch them on my hand as I’m typing this to see if maybe I could use them as face paint later on. But ten minutes later, they’re still wet, and smudgy, which makes them pretty much unusable for anything at all. Straight into the bin with this one! What a waste.
MUA is a company I’ve always looked at whenever I visited the UK, but not one I ever purchased products from. They were recently having free international shipping so I took advantage. I picked up their matte foundation in Shade 1 Soft Sand. I do especially like that even though it doesn’t come with a pump, it is at least a squeeze tube with a nozzle which makes it very easy for dispensing product.
At £4, this was one of the most expensive items I picked up from MUA. Having never tried a BB cream before (I know, shock, horror), I decided the best idea would be to pick up a cheap one. (There’s some sarcasm in that statement!) At the moment, MUA‘s BB Cream inLight is just way too light for my skin. I’ll need to wait for the dead of winter before trying this one out again. Again with the nozzle – love it.
I picked up a few of MUA‘s matte lipsticks since they’ve received quite good reviews in the beauty blogging world. They swatch semi decently (and I only say that because Wild Berrywas particularly awful to swatch, but the others were not). At a pound each, they’re quite easy on your wallet. So far I’ve only worn Scarlet Siren and I loved the colour of it on my lips.
These eyeshadows by MUA are absolutely insane. They’re a single pound each and they wear like a dream. The colour payoff is unbelievable and the dimension to the shades is absolutely unheard of in a product that is just so cheap! These are definitely worth purchasing from MUA.
The other “expensive” product from MUA was their 12 pan eyeshadow palette in Pretty Pastels. While going through their palettes on their web site, this one struck me because it was unlike most colours I have in my eyeshadow collection. This palette has a lot of soft colours that will mix well with a lot of my brighter shades. The colour payoff is what you’d expect with pastels – very pale, sometimes sheer. As a total surprise though… that innocuous looking light shade in the top left corner? It looks boring as hell, but it has a beautiful pink duochrome to it. Very lovely colour.
MAC‘s Prep + Prime for Lips is something that I can no longer be without. If I’m wearing a lipstick, I have to have this underneath as a base layer for my lips. I discussed it at length in my recent empties blog post, but, in short, this prevents bleeding, feathering and makes my lipstick stay on for hours. You need this in your life.
I had a credit for amazon.com and decided to pick up some products that are not regularly available in Canada. The Real Techniques kits are sold at Walmart here, but the individual brushes are not. I don’t have enough face brushes, so I picked up the Expert Face Brush(which has been much raved about in the beauty community) and the Blush Brush. I’ve never actually owned a “proper” blush brush and have been using my MAC 130 dual fiber brush for blush. I’m loving the soft fluffiness of the Blush Brush and have used it to apply my blush every day since I got it (it does work better for softer products though. I find it struggles to pick up product with “harder” blushes). I do like the Expert Face Brush as well although it does feel rather small for applying foundation.
Oddly enough, Maybelline‘s Vivids line in Canada does not include Neon Red. Why we get some shades, but not all of them (this goes for various makeup brands), I’ll never know. I love the entirety of the Vivids line and this is no exception. The shade does lean rather orange.
As one of Revlon‘s longest standing lipstick shades (from the 1950s), I’m really curious as to why Cherries in the Snow is not available in Canada. I searched many a drugstore for this one and was never able to find it. As I was making my amazon.com order, I made sure to include this shade. While I see a lot of pink to this shade, almost everyone who commented on this lipstick while I was wearing it referred to it as red. /shrugs All I know is that I love it!
Be still my heart. This is a thing of beauty. With Sephora’s VIB sale fast approaching, I knew I wanted to pick up Tarte‘s Off The Cuff palette since I had missed out on their holiday blush set the previous year by waiting too long. Of course, the first day of the VIB sale I discovered I wasn’t ACTUALLY a VIB member of Sephora and couldn’t get this with the 20% discount. At this point it didn’t matter, I just wanted to get my hands on it. Tarte‘s Blissful was the first blush I ever owned and they remain my favourite blushes to this day. I don’t have a lot of them as they are quite expensive individually, so this was a perfect opportunity to get more bang for my buck.
The palette comes with four blush shades (Crave, Dazzled, Darling and Dollface) and their infamous Park Avenue Princess bronzer. The texture of the blushes is consistent with Tarte‘s standards and I’m really happy I picked this one up while I did because that very same day they sold out online and in stores. Phew!
This Artist palette is my first introduction to Laura Mercier products. This is another one I waited for Sephora’s VIB sale to pick up. However, despite not actually being VIB status, the woman at the cash sold it to me at the discounted price anyway, which I didn’t even notice until after I’d paid! I had to make a mad dash between Sephora stores as the one near my office sold out before I got there (and this also sold out online as well). I’ve used it several times since I picked it up and I love the feel of these eyeshadows – they blend beautifully and the pigmentation is fantastic. (The matte shades remind me a lot of MAC‘s Matte2 formula.) The shimmery purple with gold in it, African Violet, is a particular favourite of mine.
Oh man, I’m not even going to pretend like I have a reasonable explanation for this one. A lovely friend of mine in the US sent me two of NYX‘s butter glosses after I lamented about how I couldn’t find them anywhere in Toronto. Being the wonderful person that she is, she sent me two as a surprise (Creme Brulee and Maple Blondie). I received them, freaked out, applied them, freaked out again, logged online and ordered the whole damn set from a vendor on Ebay. It was like instantaneous loss of willpower. I BOUGHT THE WHOLE SET AND I’M NOT (completely) ASHAMED! These smell like vanilla, cream and candy.
Since the numbering/colouring system of these glosses seems to be totally out of whack, I decided to put them in some kind of colour gradient order. Which certainly isn’t helping me now that I want to name them. Ugh. Well done Chelle. Anyway, as per the above picture, the colours are (left to right): Strawberry Parfait, Merengue, Eclair, Vanilla Cream Pie, Tiramisu, Creme Brulee, Apple Strudel, Maple Blondie, Peaches and Cream, Cherry Cheese Cake, Peach Cobbler, Cherry Pie. And that’s it. I’m so done with glosses. I don’t need ANY more.
Garnier Cleansing Cloths were on sale for $5.99 (regular price is somewhere around the eleven dollar mark). I’ve never tried them before, but as I’ve said in the past, if it says it removes waterproof makeup, it’s worth a shot!
The Body Shop was having another sale on selected types of Body Butters. I already ownSatsuma, but I’ve been doing quite the number on it (and the smell is just absolutely amazing) so I picked up another one and grabbed a Shea Butter one at the same. Now, I’m not sure what Shea Butter actually smells like, but I thought it would be slightly nutty. I don’t smell any nuts in the Shea scented one. If anything, it smells slightly like a mens cologne! Lovely scent though.
I came across Revlon‘s Parfumerie stand in a Rexall by accident. Although they had been popping up all over US drug stores, I hadn’t expected to see them in Canada so soon (we normally get drugstore makeup releases very late in comparison with the US. And sometimes we don’t even get them at all!). The Parfumerie collection appears to be a permanent addition to Revlon’s range, so don’t feel you need to pick up all of the colours immediately!
I’d heard mixed reviews as to the potency of the scent, but I loved the look of Autumn Spiceso I wanted to give it a try. I had thought that this shade/scent was more reddish, but on the nails it’s definitely brown with sparkle. There may be some red to it, but there isn’t a whole lot that’s apparent. In the bottle, you’ll only be able to smell nail polish, but once you get it on the nails and it dries down, it definitely smells of spices. So much so that while I was sleeping at night, I had to change the position of my hands as they were far too close to my face and I was just constantly inhaling spices. I had several people sniff my nails over the next few days (and yes, asking them to do that is as awkward as it sounds!) and all of them said my nails smelled like cinnamon. I didn’t use a top coat to ensure that the smell would be as potent as possible. However, after this scent trial, I will definitely be applying top coat from now on as the polish was chipping within a few days.
And that’s my beauty and makeup shopping done for the month of November!
Since I was still somewhat active, it became a matter of watching what I ate. The first 20 or so pounds came off predominantly from cutting down portions (No, I didn’t need that second burrito!), however I also picked up running during this time. The best thing I ever did was pick up a Nike+ foot pod and sensor for my iPod. Tracking and monitoring my runs was hugely motivational. It also showed me that I couldn’t run nearly as long or as far as I thought I could and so that became even more incentive. We started out running 1 or 2 kilometers and eventually built it up. Finally hitting 5k was a relief as that’s what I felt I should’ve been doing all along.
