Four or More: Lips Edition

April 30, 2014Makeup, Miscellaneous, Swatches, TagsMaybelline, Milani, NYX, Revlon, RimmelChelle

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I saw EmilyNoel83 do a “Four or More Tag” and thought I’d follow suit. Usually if you own a ton of a particular product by a brand, you generally like them, or you’ve at least got a good idea of how the products work. (Or you’re stupid and bought a whole bunch without testing any out *cough* We’ll get to that later…) I’m sticking to lips for this edition because if I included eye makeup, we’d be here a loonnnng damn time. Onwards!

Out of all of the lip products I’m going to mention in this post, these are my absolute favourites. Rimmel‘s Apocalips (called Show Offs in the U.S.) are freaking stellar! They’re a liquid lipstick that dries to a creamy finish with amazing lasting power. Even the applicator with the extra dip in the doefoot wand makes it even easier to get the right amount of product on your lips. While the U.K. and (I think) the U.S. are blessed with the entire line, Canada has to make do with a reduced number of shades. I’ve heard some people complain about the scent of them, but they don’t bother me as I don’t find them overly pungent.

Rimmel Apocalips (l-r): Celestial, Big Bang, Luna, Stellar, Nude Eclipse

Revlon Super Lustrous Lipsticks – Creme formula

Another massive love! Revlon Super Lustrous Lipsticks, specifically in the Creme formula, are my most comfortable lipsticks to wear. They stay put, aren’t dehydrating on the lips and the colour selection is absolutely massive! I really like the swatches below – you can very clearly see that there is a lot of pink in Cherries in the Snow, however I often get comments on my “red lips” when I’m wearing it! Out of the ones I have though, Fire & Ice is my favourite.

Revlon Super Lustrous (l-r) – Pink Velvet, Cherries in the Snow, Black Cherry, Fire & Ice, Snow Peach

The Maybelline Vivids are what got me started on wearing bright, luminous, absolutely NEON lipstick. They have a sweet scent and taste, although it does dissipate after a while. Again, excellent lasting power and the colours are just gorgeous. If you want vibrancy in your lipstick, these are the way to go. Vivid Rose is my favourite out of the bunch. (Also, I had no idea thatMandarin Orange and Neon Red were so similar to each other.)

Maybelline Vivids (l-r): Shocking Coral, Vivid Rose, Mandarin Orange, Neon Red

I went insane and bought the entire NYX Butter Gloss line (the original line, before they released a whole bunch of new ones) after trying a couple of them a friend had given me. These are it for gloss for me. I don’t need, or want any other lip gloss in my life and I’ve completely avoided buying any other lip gloss since I picked these up. They’re non-sticky, easy to apply and don’t fade awkwardly. These are the be all, end all of glosses for me. I really can’t recommend these enough. (Full lip swatches can be found in my original review.)

NYX Butter Glosses (l-r): Strawberry Parfait, Eclair, Peaches and Cream, Merengue, Creme Brulee, Peach Cobbler, Tiramisu, Apple Strudel, Vanilla Cream Pie, Cherry Cheesecake, Maple Blondie, Cherry Pie

And the duds of the group. I’m so mad I bought all of these! Milani‘s Color Statement lipstick line has lovely colours – they’re vibrant and certainly attractive. Heck, even the tube is beautiful! But they all have this horrible fake watermelon taste that just never goes away. I’ve worn these lipsticks 6+ hours and the watermelon taste just sits on your lips. Bleughhhhh. If only I had bought one before going nutso and picking up so many.

Milani (l-r): Sweet Nectar, Flamingo Pose, Hot Pink Rage, Sangria, Naturally Chic, Nude Creme

That’s it for my Four or More: Lips Edition. Any lip products you own multiple of within the same line?

What I Bought This Month – April 2014 Haul

April 28, 2014HaulsBite Beauty, CoverGirl, Estee Lauder, Lavanila, OPIChelle

This month is definitely way less exciting than last month’s haul, but there’s a few goodies in here regardless.

Snatched this up at Winners for an incredibly low price. I’m getting low on the glitter polish I use for my toe nails and thought I’d give this one a shot. Although I normally use rainbow disco glitter polish for my toes, I thought I’d give OPI‘s The Glittering Night a shot just to change it up a bit.

CoverGirl Clump Crusher water resistant ($4.99 CAD)

Another score from Winners (it can really be hit or miss there sometimes) – CoverGirl‘s Clump Crusher is a favourite of mine and the current mascara I’m using is starting to get a bit old.

Sephora’s 15% sale coupon is pretty much what spurred me to pick up anything at all of significance. It’s a terrible mentality to get in, but the whole “well I’m going to buy it eventually anyway, I might as well save money” idea does creep in.

Perfume is always an expensive purchase, and it can be very risky when buying a new scent you’re not overly familiar or comfortable with. I had heard plenty about Lavanila‘s perfumes but had never wanted to dump the money on them. I’m also almost exclusively an aquatic perfume person so I wasn’t sure how well this one was going to sit with me. All this to say… despite my skepticism, after trying a few of their scents, I settled on the Vanilla Grapefruit one. There’s a slight kick to the vanilla scent that makes it really, really beautiful. And I have to say I have become absolutely obsessed with this fragrance despite it being something I would not normally go for. Lavanila claims their fragrances are all natural and there must be something true to that because this is the only perfume I have ever worn where I didn’t have to “adapt” to it. And by adapt, I mean I usually go through a headache phase with every new perfume I try – it usually lasts about a week before my sniffer gets used to the scent and the headaches go away. This perfume didn’t cause me any of that grief and I find myself slightly intoxicated by the scent of it. The wear time is better than anything else I currently own too – it’ll last through the entire workday and into the evening as well. I love this so much that I’m definitely going to look into their other scents at some point.

This is another splurge item and I was really happy to use that 15% off. Bite Beauty is much raved about so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Massive points for packaging, the bullet and tube are just beautiful. I did, unfortunately, manage to break the bullet the first time I used it, so I returned it and got a replacement for the shade Fig. I’m curious to see if I break this replacement. At $28, this lipstick should be able to stay intact!

Estee Lauder – Sumptuous Infinite mascara (free)

The sales person at Sephora gave me a deluxe sample size of Estee Lauder‘s Sumptuous Infinite mascara with the rest of my Sephora order. I’m happy for the freebie, but I wish they’d give out something other than mascaras all the time!

Fitness Friday: Garmin 220 Review

April 25, 2014FitnessGarminChelle

For about four years, I’ve been using a Nike+ foot pod and sensor in my iPod to track my runs. However, when I discovered a friend was using a Garmin to track their improvements and distance during runs I started to get very curious about picking one up for myself. I loved that the Garmin could display your heart rate, speed, estimated calories burned and a map of where you’d run. I had been using my Nike+ foot pod for years and was concerned that it was inaccurate since my race times were turning out to be significantly different from my estimated pace via the Nike+ application. The only thing that was holding me back from buying one was the fact that the Garmin models didn’t seem to have an indoor mode -something to monitor your pace while you’re indoors and can’t connect to a satellite.

So when Garmin introduced their 220 model which had a built in accelerometer for indoor usage, I knew I had to pick it up. It’s not a cheap piece of equipment – it ran me $314.99 (the watch and the heart rate strap) before tax, but oh man is it ever worth it.

Garmin watch on the left (waiting to get a satellite signal) and the Nike+ receiver on the right plugged into my iPod

One of the first things I wanted to test was distance comparison between my Nike+ foot pod and the Garmin. The Nike+ foot pod is a little disk that is inserted into a hole in the sole of your shoe (there’s a space under all shoe linings now) and it measures the distance you run by connecting to a receiver that connects to your iPod. It estimates your distance based on the acceleration (it has an accelerometer in the bit that goes under your sole) and your weight. The Garmin, however, uses satellites to calculate your distance.

Surprisingly, the difference between the two is not that extreme. Outdoors, the Nike+ will tend to undercalculate about 500 meters on a 7 kilometer run. So, where the Garmin will tell me I’ve done 7k, the Nike+ app will tell me I’ve only done 6.5k. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge difference, but it can be annoying enough not knowing how far you’re actually running and what pace you’re doing it at! Indoors, the difference between the Nike+ and the Garmin is negligible, but slightly worse than outdoors. They both undercalculate by about 100m for every kilometer run which really isn’t that bad.

So while I did pay a rather large price tag to find out my Nike+ foot pod isn’t that bad of a distance calculator, I have to say having the Garmin is supremely nice with all its extra bells and whistles. It’s incredibly motivational for getting me to run outside versus indoors on a track – if only so I can see the little map as to where I’ve run! The heart rate and speed estimations are really neat to look at, although I’ve not noticed any particular decrease in my heart rate over my continued distance training.

One of the best things is that the Garmin doesn’t have to be used just for running. I’ve used it for rollerblading, cross country skiing, snowboarding, playing soccer and even just flat out walking.

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The heart rate monitor strap does take some getting used to. I’ve been using it for almost five months now and I still don’t really know how I like to wear it. The left shot you can see it sitting firmly below my sportsbra, but it really doesn’t sit comfortably there. On the right, it sits tucked inside my bra, barely peeking out at the front. This seems to be the best method for me, but during my 10K race in New York City, the darn thing rode up too high and ended up chaffing the underside of my breasts – which of course then hurt for a darn week as it scabbed up and healed. Has anyone out there figured out how to wear these things comfortably?!

The only negatives I can think of, aside from the HRM strap riding up a bit (I’d blame user error for that though) is that if you live in a downtown area like I do and have a lot of tall building near you, you’ll often find that the signal on the map printout will often bounce around a lot as it searches for where the heck you actually are. This can lead to some hilarious maps where it looks like I’ve actually run through a building or two, but obviously it causes some inaccuracies.

For me, the best part of the Garmin is all the extras. I love the maps, the charts and everything that gets recorded as you run. I can see where I struggled on inclines as my heart rate increases significantly or how hard I worked during a soccer game. None of this is necessary, of course, as I’m hardly a professional athlete, but it is very, very fun to use and the motivation to get outside and do something active is a huge incentive. So if you were interested in picking up a GPS/HRM system, I’d definitely encourage you to check out the Garmin.

What’s in my Makeup Drawer @ Work

April 23, 2014MiscellaneousCoverGirl, Hard Candy, MAC, RevlonChelle

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Being the only female I know who doesn’t own a purse (by choice!), this very obviously makes doing a “What’s in my Purse” post completely impossible. So instead I’m showing you what beauty products I have stuffed into one of my drawers at work for emergency moments. These items are permanent fixtures… they never leave the office!

The wee compartment that holds my goodies

These products are a mix of necessity and/or items that can be used in a pinch if I have a really destructive day on my makeup (i.e., I walked to work in the rain and it completely dissolved my face).

So let’s take a closer look as to what’s in my stash at work.

Hard Candy pencil sharpener and CoverGirl Liquiline Blast pencil in Black Fire

First up is a really nasty looking pencil sharpener, but this is the best one I have ever owned. It’s better than my MAC one and my NYX one. This is a Hard Candy sharpener (the ollllllldHard Candy that used to be sold in department stores at high end prices, not the revamped one you see in Walmart now) that I picked up in 1997. It might be a relic, but I’ve yet to find anything better! (And yes, it has been disinfected a few times over the years! ;))

The second item is a liner from CoverGirl. It’s a straight black (Black Fire, to be precise) and it’s from their Liquiline Blast collection. It’ll do in a pinch, but it’s not great. It smears, smudges and transfers. The smudger on the end is also pretty much garbage. That being said, this has helped to fill in the occasional gap on my eyes that I missed at home and, of course, it can double as an eyeshadow if you blend it out enough.

This Revlon Just Bitten Lipstain + Balm in Twilight is part of my “To Use Up” products of 2014, so I keep it at work for those days when I forget to bring in a lip product to wear that day. It’s a wonderful stain – very intense, and can be built up to a very strong, dark raspberry shade. I even like the balm on the other end.

I’ve sung the praises of MAC‘s Prep + Prime for lips before so I’ll keep it brief. This is the second open tube I have of this product right now – I keep one at work and one at home. This tube is almost gone – it’s actually rolled up as far as it’ll go. This is an absolute necessity for me when I wear lipstick.

MAC Tinted Lip Conditioner in Petting Pink

When I need a balm or some kind of lip conditioner, I’ll reach for MAC’s Lip Conditioner in Petting Pink. This product doesn’t have opaque coverage, so you really only get a faint hint of colour to the lips when you wear this. I’ve owned this for about three years and it takes forever to go through the pot!

CoverGirl & Olay Simply Ageless Eye Concealer in 210

I’m not much of a concealer person, so this products sits there rather neglected. CoverGirl & Olay‘s Simply Ageless Eye Concealer in 210 doesn’t work on my undereye area – it’s way too stiff of a product and drying, which you can easily see because the product is actually CRACKING – but it does work for blemishes. I’m not acne prone, so this really does sit untouched in my desk. BUT… it’s there if I ever need it!

That’s it! Not a whole lot in that drawer, but they’re handy when I need them. Do you keep anything in particular at work? Or do you carry your products back and forth every day?

Challenge Week: A few of my Favorite Things

April 21, 2014Makeup, TutorialsToo FacedChelle

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Too Faced‘s holiday 2013 palette, A few of my Favorite Things, may be considered old news by this point, but this is one of my favourite purchases in the last year. For the sake of this challenge, I was only strictly going to use the eyeshadows.

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The challenge week started off with a bang – I was extremely pleased with how this one turned out. Tealy blue-greens always looks really stunning – both in person and in photographs. It’s something about the shiny vibrance of the colour that is just really pretty to look at.

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Eyes

Party Time all over the lid (this colour is a lot more sheer than you expect it to be).
Blue Satin Sashes on the outer third of the lid and smudged under the lower lash line.
Pure Glam in a v-shape in the very outer corner and used as a liner on the upper lash line.
Chocolate Milk at the top of the crease.

Cream Colored Ponies to highlight the brow and L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon mascara on my lashes. MAC Feline Kohl Power pencil on the waterline.

Rest of the Face

Foundation: CoverGirl CC Cream in 110 Classic Ivory and Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum in 51 Light Vanilla
Bronzer: Joe Fresh Sand Bronzer
Blush: Milani Luminoso
Lips: Milani Nude Creme

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Ehhhhhh not as keen on this one. But I needed something not too bold since I was trying to wear a pretty bright lip colour.

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Eyes

Coquet all over the lid.
Crisp Apple Strudel on the outer third of the eye.

Cream Colored Ponies to highlight the brow and Dark Chocolate to lightly line the upper lash line. L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black mascara on my lashes.

Rest of the Face

Foundation: CoverGirl CC Cream in 110 Classic Ivory and Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum in 51 Light Vanilla
Blush: Tarte Blissful
Bronzer: NYC Sun n Bronze in Fire Island Tan
Lips: Too Faced Bon Bon

And a much better (and brighter) one!

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Eyes

Ooh La Orchid all over the entire lid.
Snowflakes on the center of the lid (really pack this one on – it’s very sheer and very prone to fallout).
Chocolate Milk to blend out the crease.

Cream Colored Ponies to highlight the brow and Sephora Full Action Extreme Effect Purple mascara on my lashes.

Rest of the Face

Foundation: none
Bronzer: Joe Fresh Sand Bronzer
Blush: Wet n Wild Pearlescent Pink
Lips: NYX Merengue

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Another neutral one. This was kind of a “whoopsie” day because I forgot to bring the lip colour I wanted to wear to work and had to make do with whatever was in my drawer.

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Eyes

Buche de Noel all over the lid.
Dark Chocolate in the outer corner.

Cream Colored Ponies to highlight the brow and L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black mascara on my lashes.

Rest of the Face

Foundation: CoverGirl CC Cream in 110 Classic Ivory and Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum in 51 Light Vanilla
Bronzer: Joe Fresh Sand Bronzer
Blush: Tarte Blissful
Lips: Revlon Lipstain + Balm in Twilight

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This one was really cool. It’s unlike anything I ever do and as I was throwing in the crease colour I was thinking “oh man, this is going to look like hell…” but in the end I really love it. It’s nice to try something different (to me anyway) every now and again. I’m getting into pink crease colours and it’s given a really neat spin on some eye looks lately.

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Eyes

Tinsel on the inner two-thirds of the lid.
Bluff on the outer two-thirds of the lid.
Taffy through the crease.

Cream Colored Ponies to highlight the brow and L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black mascara on my lashes.

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Last one of the week! I was running out of creative inspiration at this point.

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Eyes

Moon on their Wings all over the lid (I put some Too Faced Glitter Glue down before applying this shade since it’s really flakey and glittery).
Soiree on the outer third of the lid and through the crease.

Whiskers on Kittens to highlight the brow and L’Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black mascara on my lashes.

Rest of the Face

Foundation: CoverGirl CC Cream in 110 Classic Ivory and Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum in 51 Light Vanilla
Bronzer: Joe Fresh Sand Bronzer
Blush: Bobbi Brown Apricot
Highlighter: Too Faced Absolutely Invisible Candlelight Powder
Lips: bareMinerals Get Ready

And that’s it for this palette!