This Naked Cosmetics Ivory Stack is a group of absolutely gorgeous duochrome pigment that all start off with a white base, but reflects a beautiful colour!
Since the colours are so pale, I decided to swatch them with both a white and a black base so you can see just how much the colour changes.
Maybelline, like any drug store brand, has put out a lot of mascaras over the years. I’ve tried a few of them, but I’ve never come to the point of falling in love with any of them… until now.
The new Maybelline Lash Sensational Luscious Full Fan Effect mascara (WHAT THE HELL – long enough name???) was sitting at the back of my stash of products to “get to” and it was only once I’d finished my beloved Make Up For Ever Smoky Stretch that I finally reached for this one. And funnily enough, this mascara shares a lot of similar properties with the far more expensive MUFE one.
The brush is made of plastic, which I know will turn some people off right away, but honestly, it’s worth it to try new things sometimes! I used to hate plastic wands myself but I’ve come around! It starts larger and comes to a more tapered point. The bristles are spaced out enough to allow a lot of product to collect into the crevices of the wand.
The first thing I noticed, and that I’ve continued to notice now that I’ve been using it for over a month, is that this one hell of a wet formula. Probably the wettest one I have ever tried. It also hasn’t dried out yet and it’s already a half and a month later and it’s performing exactly the same as when I opened it. I *love* wet formula mascaras so this is an enormous bonus for me.
And that’s how it plays out on my lashes. I’m a one coat mascara kind of person and this mascara delivers right away. I honestly don’t see much of a difference between one and two coats… maybe a slight increase in volume at the roots? For me, this really beefed up the size of my lashes and made them enormous. I do love the way it fans out my lashes and I’m honestly okay with the little amount of clumping there is because there’s enough lashes that are fanned out to make it look both defining and volumizing, which isn’t something I get to experience often (usually I get one or the other).
The Maybelline Lash Sensational Full Fan Effect mascara is giving my higher end MUFE mascara a solid run for the money. I’m at the point where I’m starting to build my Sephora VIB sale event list (I’m writing this in March btw, in case the sale has already happened!) and I’m half wondering if I should even bother getting it because I’m so freaking in love with this Maybelline one. (I’m a little surprised at myself for even typing that out quite frankly.)
I love the super wet formula. I love that it doesn’t flake as badly as most mascaras do on me (nothing is perfect however, I will get a flake or two throughout the work day). I love how voluminous it makes my lashes and I LOVE that it’s not a break the bank kind of product. Well done Maybelline. Well done!
Note: I think this is called the Maybelline Lash Sensational Luscious with Oil Blend in the US.
The Maybelline Lash Sensational Luscious mascara can be purchased on ulta.com for $8.99 USD.
Clinique keeps adding more and more beautiful shades and textures to their Pop lineup and it always excites me to see what new they’ve come up with next! Say hello the Pop Lacquers!
Clinique describes their Pop Lacquers as “a luscious pop of liquid, high-shine colour in one, full-coverage coat. Luxurious yet lightweight formula with built-in primer glides on effortlessly, wears for up to six hours”. Sadly, I kind of struggled with these.
My first complant is that the applicator isn’t the usual doe-foot, and instead it’s more like a lightbulb shape. It’s round the entire way around which seems to really facilitate poor application. I ended up with streaks and too much product pushed out to the edges of my lip line (so it kind of gave me that lip liner look…).
When I finally did get the lip product on right, it definitely didn’t wear anywhere near six hours and instead started to fade off within about an hour. Even worse was that after only an hour I had intense lip line bleed out around the edges of my lips. And it’s not like I had been talking either when I noticed this. I had been sitting at my desk for the last hour, sipping water from a straw so as not to disturb the lip colour and I might’ve answered my phone once. If that’s what happened from such little activity, I absolutely cannot trust this to last me if I’m out having drinks – I would end up with this all over my face!
The colours, if you can make the formula work, are lovely however! They are intensely bright and beautiful to behold. These are definitely a tacky gloss and I found them very reminiscent of MAC’s lip glasses.
Happy Pop is a gorgeous vibrant mandarin orange.
Sweetie Pop is a vibrant pink that’s bordering on neon.
Love Pop is a muted mauve/pink with a bit of shimmer. The shimmer is not actually apparent on the lips though!
Peace Pop is an intense purple with hints of red.
Sadly, although I was really excited to try out the Clinique Pop Lacquers, they just didn’t work out for me. The very short wear time/fading off combined with the lip line bleed out make it impossible for me to wear these without constantly glancing in a mirror. Although my face shots above show a decent looking lip product, the reality is that those were taken in quick succession and were only worn momentarily (you can make any product look good for a brief moment in time!). In practice, they just didn’t hold up for me. 🙁 That being said, my friend Zoë over at Writing Whimsy had a better experience with these, so please be sure to check out her post!
The Clinique Pop Lacquers can be purchased on sephora.ca for $21 CAD each or on sephora.com for $18 USD each.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.