Today I’m sharing the items in my collection that I really regret buying. These, in general, are the items I reach for the least in my collection. Looking over the items I’ve pulled out, most of them are cheaper products which is a bit of a relief. I think this is because I tend to research more expensive products before purchasing them. Anyway, let’s see which items I’ve had a buyer’s remorse over!

One of my most recent purchases was such an immediate regret that I ended up taking it right back! It’s Illamasqua‘s Paranormal palette.

I’m reposting the exact same image from my haul just a few weeks ago because I used it twice, noticed the EXCESSIVE creasing, then hightailed my butt back to the Illamasqua counter and returned it. I had called them day before I returned it and had gotten some spiel about how my Urban Decay eyeshadow primer wasn’t good enough because these were cream to powder eyeshadows and I need to be using a creamy primer. I wasn’t buying it. Urban Decay‘s primer has NEVER lead me astray and I can’t remember the last time I had anything crease on my eyelids because of that primer! When I returned it, the woman was very lovely about it and didn’t give me any hassle. It takes a lot for me to return a product but this one was so expensive ($45 CAD) that there was no way I was going to keep it. I mean, just LOOK at the creasing:

At the end of the day, I do love the Illamasqua products I’ve tried, primarily their blushes and pigments, but I’m going to be avoiding these “cream to powder” products in the future.

Sigh. I bought this Physicians Formula product thinking since it was a bronzer and a blush in one, it’d be perfect for travelling. The truth is I’ve not travelled even once with this item in the year or so I’ve owned it. I love the shade of the bronzer, but I’ve not even touched the blush. And let’s be realistic… without a proper division between the two products, it’s pretty hard to get JUST the blush when you dip into the product.

These were just poor choices all around.

Buying an Urban Decay single eyeshadow (Mushroom) is just a bad idea when so many of their shades come in palettes at a much better value. Not to mention that I don’t need yet another taupey, silver-grey shade – I think there’s even an exact dupe in my Naked 2 palette. Plus, this just isn’t the kind of colour I reach for much anyway.

L’Oreal‘s  Pepsy Coral was an impulse buy at a warehouse sale I was at in October last year. It’s now three months later and I’ve still not used this shade. Plus it looks identical to MAC’s Paradisco which I already own.

Maybelline‘s Color Tattoo in Too Cool is a shimmery white cream shadow. It goes on patchy and the shade is very similar (if not identical) to MAC‘s Crystal Avalanche. Boo.

I am so over these chubby lipstick crayons. SO OVER IT. First of all, the CoverGirl one (Watermelon Twist) broke apart the first time I used it (the bullet fell right out of the tube). It also tastes awful. How does a drugstore product still taste terrible like this? Most of the other brands have grown out of the artificial, chemical smell of makeup from decades long past. The colour is okay, but I can’t get over the smell/taste. Although I do have to say… hot pink is not the colour I think of when the word “watermelon” is in the shade name.

As for the Revlon ones… also over it. They don’t actually stain that much. The lighter, peachier one (Charm) ends up staining my lips slightly pink (?!?). The red one tends to bleed outside my lip line quite a bit and reapplication only makes it look worse. On the bright side, they do have a nice minty smell, quite akin to dental floss actually, but I do like it! However, I’ve been avoiding any other crayon type lipstick once I realized how disappointed I was in these.

Oh man, I’ve seen people so divided over Urban Decay‘s Naked 2 palette.

There are some colours in here that I love – specifically Tease, Verve and Blackout (but really, that’s just a black). But there are a lot of shades in here that just seem to blend together into nothingness when I try to put a look together. Maybe I’m using the wrong colour combinations or something, but my looks with this palette have been pretty dismal.

It’s hard to regret something when you only paid £1 for it, but these matte lipsticks from MUA do frustrate me. These have decent pigmentation when swatched and they *are* lovely colours, but they feel terrible on the lips. They ball up, go tacky and they seem to fade awkwardly, which is especially weird for a matte lipstick. Plus, check out the bottom right-hand picture above: You have to apply the lipsticks so hard on your lips to get the colour you need that it causes huge indentation marks in the side of the bullet. When that happens, the bullet starts to ooze a clear substance which is just icky. As soon as I finish this post, they’re going straight into the garbage bin.

I didn’t notice till I sat down to write this post that both of my MAC mineralize eyeshadow regrets are both blue. Blue Flame is beautiful, but I rarely use it. Blue My Mind is… meh. The light side is a pale, powdery blue that can be kind of awkward to wear. The middle section is nice, but it needs to be applied damp to get a good colour payoff. Plus the middle strip is so small that you need a rather small brush in there. The last section is black and it’s okay… but it’s a bit underpigmented.

I bought Maybelline‘s gel liner in Blackest Black after hearing many raves reviews from people saying that this was better than MAC‘s Blacktrack. Unfortunately, for me, this wasn’t the case. This just didn’t feel as fluid or creamy as MAC’s gel liner does and I sometimes end up with skipping problems along my lash line despite using the same brush for both gels. Because it’s just not as nice to use as MAC’s product, I’ve since gone back to MAC‘s fluidline and emptied out the jar so I could put something else in it.

While I like the colours and they’re quite well pigmented, I just don’t reach for this palette that much. I was sucked in by the pretty green shade and the fact that this was on clearance since they were discontinuing this particular quad.

I regret this for no reason other than that this shade (Myth) looks like death warmed over on me. I love nude lipsticks, but this is not a shade I can pull off despite trying to make it work several times.

I forgot to photograph this with the rest of the group, but this is one downright awful product. It doesn’t ever dry down on the lips. If you talk, the product will magically disappear from your lips. If you lick your lips, the product completely disappears. But you definitely DON’T want to lick it off because the product tastes absolutely awful. This is another one going straight into the garbage bin as I can’t make this work even if I wanted to!

That’s it for me! Any products you’ve picked up that you regret buying?