Product Reviews

Review: Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer Lipstick in Natural Red

By Voxy  |  2010/09/04 18:33 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, Quest for the Perfect..., lipstick, red lipstick  |  Comments (5)

For some reason I’ve been on a red lipstick kick lately. While out of town I picked up two red Guerlain Kiss Kiss lipsticks (reviews to come as soon as I can swatch them) and just yesterday I got a lipstick sampler with two red lippies in it. I now have more red lippies than I know what to do with.

Fortunately for me, red lips are super-hot this fall, so at the very least I will be trendy. Poor, but trendy. Students will pass me on campus and say, “Pfft! Typical absent-minded professor, wearing threadbare clothes from 1972 with holes in them. Nice lipstick, though.”

One of my favorite recent buys is the Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer lipstick in Natural Red. Wasn’t someone asking a couple of months ago about whether or not there was a sheer red lipstick that would be a good starter red for someone who wasn’t yet red-dy (ha!) to take the plunge to a full-on scarlet? This is the answer to that problem: a sheer, gorgeous, mistake-proof, you-cannot-possibly-go-wrong-wearing-this-lipstick red.

That I even investigated these at all is purely due to the good PR that Inthelab gave Shiseido, which made me think maybe I should reconsider my former not-interested stance towards the brand. She should get a commission!

Shiseido’s Perfect Rouge Tender Sheers come in four colors: Tender (sheer petal pink), Natural Red (sheer deep red), Pout (sheer mauve rose), and Natural Wine (sheer burgundy wine, which I really want to try now). Natural Red looks terrifyingly dark in the tube but it really is sheer. One coat gives a slightly red glow to the lips, and two coats makes them positively pop.

Because it is sheer, it doesn’t stain as much as an opaque lipstick does, so expecting more than three or four hours out of this lippie is as futile as expecting Lindsay Lohan to stay out of jail for longer than six months at a stretch. After the shine has worn off, it leaves only a light stain, but the upside to that is that there’s little chance of it feathering or bleeding into fine lines. There is no scent that I can detect, and it feels very moisturizing. It fades evenly and doesn’t get crusty, so frequent touchups (while inconvenient) are not unpleasant or troublesome.

Close-up and swatch!

Naked lip:

Lip with two coats Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer in Natural Red:

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Shiseido Perfect Rouge Tender Sheer Lipstick in Natural Red: $25 (at Sephora, online only)

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Price itself is excellent, but I wish it had a longer wearlength.

Purchase again? Yes.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: LUSH Skin Nanny (and an update on Lovely Jubblies)

By Voxy  |  2010/08/29 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, Skincare, moisturizer  |  Comments (0)

All right, I know you all want to know about the Lovely Jubblies first.

When I was picking up all my other LUSH goodies, a salesperson made me a large deluxe sample of Lovely Jubblies so I could try it out for a few weeks. It smells kind of herbal and is a sort of ecru color. Now let’s get one thing straight: I was not expecting this product to turn my decolletage into something that could rival Christina Hendricks. But I did hope it would make my skin feel nice — and it really disappointed me in that regard. Most of their other products have a much nicer body-feel than this one (and I’m really not a fan of herbal-scented creams).

It also broke me out. And if there is one place worse than your face to have pimples, well, there it is.

On to something that so far my skin is liking a lot better than Lovely Jubblies: Skin Nanny!

The same salesperson had also given me a sample of Skin Nanny to try, and I liked it so much that on a return visit I bought a container. (Dear stores that don’t give samples: See?) As I’ve said before, and as the above experience indicates, LUSH skincare tends to make me break out. I haven’t tried it yet as an all-over facial moisturizer — it’s still too hot and humid here for a cream that is as thick as this one — but it turns out to be a stellar eye cream.

LUSH is almost as bad as Tarte in their marketing language. Maybe they use the same professional writers? Here’s what LUSH has to say about Skin Nanny:

Skin Nanny is the natural way to protect your skin from wrinkles. If you are going out in the sun and want to look after your skin, you’ve got to choose a moisturizer with some protection. Skin Nanny has natural AHAs from the fresh apple juice, helping to combat free radicals. It’s all part of our holistic approach to keeping your skin bright by using the whole fruit.

Heavy duty moisture soak.

Starflower oil moisturizes and hydrates your skin. Skin Nanny’s C and E vitamins come naturally with almond and hibiscus oils to penetrate your skin and smooth wrinkles.

OK. First of all, I don’t know how much AHA apple juice provides, how much apple juice is in the product, what the concentrations of the AHAs are, and what the pH of the product is. But I do know that AHAs increase skin’s photosensitivity, so implying that an AHA cream will protect your skin from the sun seems problematic at best. Now it does have some sunscreen ingredients in it: ethylhexyl methoxycinnamate (Parsol) and butyl methoxydibenzoylmethane (avobenzone). Older reviews of this product that I dredged up on the web say it’s SPF 30, and one even cites that as part of LUSH’s marketing language, but at this time they are no longer advertising it as SPF 30 on the lushusa.com website. And given that the cream is really thick, I doubt you’d be applying enough for this to be a real substitute for a sunscreen.

As for wrinkle-fighting, it doesn’t contain any fancy peptides or moon rocks or fairy dust. But it does contain a well-blended mix of shea butter and cold-pressed oils (almond, coconut, jojoba, starflower, hibiscus, and ylang-ylang). So it combats wrinkles by plumping the skin up with emollients. This is, of course, just a temporary fix, but if you had a serum or a lighter lotion with fancier ingredients that you liked and felt did a better job against fine lines, there’s no reason you couldn’t put that on underneath. I must say, though, that for my dry undereyes, it does an excellent job of moisturizing for most of the day (and it also works well as a night cream) without clogging pores. And though it’s not cheap, it will last ages (or until the expiration date has passed, anyway) — I’ve been using it twice a day and still haven’t finished my sample, which was much smaller than the Lovely Jubblies sample.

If you want to use it on the whole face, the consistency makes it hard to spread evenly if you start out with dry skin. Try using a toner or a serum first, then rub the cream between your fingers to warm and melt it a little before pressing it lightly onto your skin. This will help it spread more easily, but you’ll still only need a tiny amount.

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LUSH Skin Nanny: $48.95

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (mid-range: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. I think their products are overpriced and I hate the packaging. I also wish they made smaller-sized products and sold them for less (which, to be fair, they do; I bought a trio of small jars of other body creams for, I think, about $8 total).

Purchase again? Maybe. Depends on how it gets me through the winter.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: MAC Superslick Eyeliners in Defiantly Feline, Signature Blue, Smoky Heir

By Voxy  |  2010/08/28 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, eyeliner  |  Comments (6)

Hot off the presses! (Literally — when my UPS guy delivered them, they were warm to the touch from sitting in the van all day in the sun.)

Superslick eyeliners are releasing as part of the MAC’s Fabulous Felines collection, but unlike some of the other items in the collection, these are permanent additions. Yay! They come in nine colors: Defiantly Feline (medium brown), Signature Blue (er, blue), Smoky Heir (deep purple), Nocturnal (silver), Pure Show (gold), Marked for Glamour (grey), On the Hunt (black), Desires & Devices (dirty olive), and Treat Me Nice (medium green). Most have a slight metallic luster. This review covers the first three mentioned above.

Liquid eyeliners always take a bit of patience. Pencil liners are easily smudgeable and you can get away with a little bit of imprecision. Even gel liners are more forgiving. Liquid requires (IMHO) the most control and the most precision. These are great for making sharp lines and for getting right down to the lashline, but they don’t smudge well. They remain wet for a few minutes, and once they’re dry these things do not move. That’s the advantage of liquid liners, so it all comes down to whether or not you’re willing to go through the hassle of precise application and then waiting for them to dry. When I use a liquid, I apply it before I do the rest of my eye makeup, because I don’t want to do a fabulous eye and then ruin it all by a jerky movement with the eyeliner. If I end up covering some of the liner when I apply shadow, I can always go over it again (and somehow it’s always easier to do it the second time, when you’re just tracing over what was there before!). This way if I need to remove it and start over, or edit the line with a Q-Tip dipped in makeup remover, I’m not ruining my shadow also.

The packaging is nice — pleasingly solid-feeling, with a screw-top lid (always nice for liquid products). I prefer brush tips that are really brush tips, not marker tips, but I have to say this one isn’t bad, though you do need a bit of skill to make sure it applies evenly. If you make the line too wide you may end up with some streakiness (you’ll see a little bit of this in the swatch photo). My only real criticism of the packaging is that I wish the brush housing were shorter — when you do your non-dominant side, the brush unit is slightly too long to work with comfortably. On the other hand, I’m particularly gifted in the nose department, so maybe if your schnozz is smaller than mine you won’t have such a hard time navigating.

If you’re new to liquid liner, let me offer some tips:

1. Start with the eye on your dominant side: i.e., if you’re right-handed, start with your right eye. Rest your pinky finger against your cheekbone to steady the hand. (And by the way, this should definitely be done before coffee!)

2. Start by laying the brush almost sideways against the upper lashline at the widest part of the eye, usually somewhere in the middle. Pull a little bit towards the outside of the eye, letting the brush rest against the lashline. Don’t go too fast. Let the knuckles of the hand flex so that your pinky finger stays on your cheekbone while your hand moves around it.

3. Overlap strokes until you get to the outside of the eye. Figure out what you want the end of the line to look like — if you’re doing a cat eye, you’ll want an upwards flick, for instance. I decided to do a less deliberate look below, and so I just brought the liner in at the outside corner.

4. Reposition the brush a little bit more towards the inside of the eye, and make a new stroke that overlaps where you started. Keep repeating this until you get as far towards the inner end of the eye as you want to go. With these strokes, always start as if you were bringing the liner up from underneath the eyelid — you can get a very nice, sharp line this way.

5. By changing where the thickest part of the line is, you can change the visual weight/proportion of your eye. If you want the eye to look rounder, make the line a little thicker from the center towards the outer end, and taper in at the outer end. If you want the eye to look longer, then make the outer edge the heaviest (and you’ll probably be doing some kind of flick here). Play around and see what works best for your face.

6. This is where I stop; I prefer a pencil liner on the bottom. But if you like a liquid liner there, you can follow the same procedure: start in the middle, bring it out to the outer edge, then fill in closer to the inner end gradually.

7. When you do the non-dominant side, if you’re able to turn the hand around so that you can again have the pinky resting against the cheekbone, more power to you. In that case, it’s the same as these directions. If that doesn’t work for you (and most of the time it doesn’t work for me), then you’ll end up resting your hand on your nose instead. Again, I start in the middle, but this time I pull towards the inner eye first, because it’s easier, and then I work my way to the outer edge.

Warning: These things are a bitch to remove. And when I say “bitch,” I’m talking Mommie Dearest level. Cleanser and water barely touch them. If you rub (not recommended), you will eventually loosen the liner enough that you can (no kidding) pinch one end of the liner between your fingers and peel it off your eyelid.

o_O

To get the swatches off my arm, I first tried regular makeup remover, to which they were impervious, and then waterproof makeup remover, which fared little better. After that I tried my Shu Uemura cleansing oil, and finally resorted to scraping the swatches off with my nails. Be warned.

Swatches and photos! (It was an allergy-riffic day, so I did take the liberty of Photoshopping out my bloodshot eyes. Nothing else was altered or corrected.)

Left to right: Smoky Heir, Defiantly Feline, Signature Blue

Below is Defiantly Feline just on its own. Other products used: TFSI, MAC Paint Pot in Painterly, Tarte emphasEYES brow pencil in Medium Brown.

Then I added shadow on top. Highlight: the gold shade from the Stila Goddess eyeshadow trio; Crease: the copper shade from the same compact. Lid: UD Toasted (in the Naked palette). Lower lashline: Neutrogena Spiced Chocolate pencil eyeliner. Mascara: MAC Zoomlash, which I’m currently testing.

Then I did a look on the other eye with Signature Blue. I wanted to smudge the liner a bit, but I think pencil liners are much easier to smudge than liquid, so I used MAC Pearlglide liner in Petrol Blue and smudged that. I also used the unnamed blue shade from the Smashbox Iconic Eyes palette on the lid, UD Gunmetal (from the Naked palette) at the top of the lid and into the crease, and ULTA Cocoa as a wash up to the browbone. Bottom liner is MUFE Aqua Eyes liner in Dark Grey 21L (from the Aqua Eyes kit). Mascara is again MAC Zoomlash.

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MAC Superslick Liquid Eyeliner: $17.50

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (midrange: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? Yes, I think so; they’re well-made and reasonably easy to use, and if I’m traveling and it’s a choice between this and a gel liner, I’ll take the pen just for ease and rapidity of application.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: LORAC Private Affair Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/08/24 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, eyeshadow, fall  |  Comments (10)

This post is entirely the fault of Chaosbydesign, who seduced me into breaking my low-buy and running to Sephora to pick up this palette. Just so you know.

Here’s a conversation that I doubt actually happened at LORAC product headquarters:

“Hey, Ed?”

“Yeah, Bill?”

“I have a problem with the packaging for the new Private Affair palette.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

“Well, Ed, it … uh … kind of looks like a coffin.”

::pause::

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, Ed, it kind of does.”

“Maybe we should put more handles on it.”

“Actually, I think that would make it worse.”

… but like I said, I doubt this conversation took place because they made the damn thing anyway and it DOES look like a coffin. I know that Twilight is still coasting on its (hopefully short-lived) wave of popularity, but come on, people. LORAC is above this. Right? Right?

Anyhoo. Yes, I just did a LORAC palette review the other day, but this one is just out and I want to review it now so you can pick it up for fall if you’re interested.

Purple is very, very hip for fall, which is just fine by me. No blush in this one — it’s six shades of eyeshadow, plus (in the little pull-out drawer) a mini version of LORAC’s Behind the Scenes eye primer and a completely useless double-ended brush which you ought to just throw out immediately because it’s so prickly it’ll poke your eyes out. Had they not bothered with the drawer, the palette 1) would not look like a coffin, and b) would be so much more slim and suitable for travel (as CBD pointed out in her comment on a previous post). I’m going to try to figure out if I can put anything else in that drawer; there’s a divider in it that isn’t meant to be removable, but that divider hasn’t met me yet, so we’ll see who wins on that one.

Like the shadows in the Croc palette, these are a little too loosely pressed, I think. Too much shadow gets kicked up by the brush, and it’s more work to prevent fallout than it ought to be. The texture is generally up to LORAC’s standard, but I wish that some of the colors had been tweaked just a bit. I did an eye look below using only shadows from the palette, but I suspect that in real life I’ll end up mixing them with other shades from other brands.

The colors are listed as follows: creamy beige with pearl (I’d describe this as champagne gold), champagne rose with shimmer (this is the cooler, more silvery version of the first one), soft taupe with pearl, platinum grey with pearl, deep wine with shimmer (this one is the biggest win in the set), and black with sparkle (it’s not really black, and the sparkle is purple and quite noticeable).

Closeup, swatches, and a look done with the palette:

A look done with the LORAC Private Affair palette. This is just a little too dark for work, but I’d definitely wear it for an evening out. From left-to-right in the photo above, shades 1 & 2 used as highlighter, 3 and 5 on the lid, 5 in the crease, and 6 in the outer corner and as eyeliner (applied with a liner brush; not the one that came with the palette, though). Shadows applied over TFSI; mascara is Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes! I have some other, less-dramatic looks in mind for this palette, or at least for some of the colors in it.

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LORAC Private Affair Palette: $38, exclusively at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased. Under duress. By Chaosbydesign. She made me.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Only a “Fair” on this one, because of the unnecessary inclusion of the scratchy brush and the poor packaging.

Purchase again? Oof! I hope that I hate their holiday palette so that I won’t be running to Sephora or ULTA to pick it up.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: NARS Blush in Amour

By Voxy  |  2010/08/22 09:08 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, blush  |  Comments (3)

That’s “amour,” not “armour.” For some bizarre reason I keep wanting to put an extra R in there — and it’s not even Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day! Arrr!

Regrettably, I have been unsuccessful in achieving satisfaction with NARS Orgasm, after repeated attempts. (There. Happy? Enough double entendre there for you?) I also tested other NARS blushes in-store that seemed to be more glitter than pigment, so in spite of the general squeeing over NARS blushes I was doubtful that I’d find one I could wear without looking like a disco ball.

NARS Amour, I am happy to say, has exactly zero glitter or shimmer (it’s completely matte, as far as I can see), and is a lovely shade of rose. Other web descriptions call it “peachy-pink,” but there ain’t no peaches in here as fur as I can see. It’s pink. And a very pretty shade of pink, I must say — unless you accidentally put on too much (which is too say, you look at the container slightly too hard), in which case it starts to be a feverish sunburn shade of pinkish-red.

Like other NARS powder blushes, Amour comes in a rectangular case that’s exactly the same as the ELF studio blushes except that the NARS case is slightly rubberized on the outside. Does this mean it’s actually less likely to shatter if you should happen to drop it, or does it just make you think that? In either case, not an experiment I’m willing to conduct.

This is one of the most pigmented blushes I’ve ever used, which I’m not sure is a good thing. On the one hand, no one wants to spend 20 minutes putting layer after layer of blush on until you get a teeny tiny bit of glow. On the other hand, it is so, so easy to put on too much of this product without half trying. In the end I found that either a fan brush or a stippling brush is best (for stippling, I use the Sigma version of the MAC 188, which is the smaller of the two stippling brushes).

The other difficulty this creates for me is that because you end up using so little product, the color doesn’t last on me as long as I’d like, even when I use a setting powder on top. It’s really just a matter of quantity of product — if you only put on a tiny bit, then when a tiny bit wears away, you got nothin’. I haven’t tried it with a makeup fixing spray yet, but I will the next time I wear it. I’ve been so spoiled by the “immovable-object” quality of cream and gel blushes and stains that anything else seems like a huge inconvenience. Still, the color is really beautiful and so it’s worth continuing to work at it.

Close-up and swatch!

I don’t know how I got that light of a swatch. I think maybe I just waved my arm over the compact and thought happy thoughts.

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NARS Blush in Amour: $26

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. You’re not going to get a high-end blush for much less than this, but I do need it to last all day.

Purchase again? Mais oui. Arrrr!

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: LORAC Croc Palette

By Voxy  |  2010/08/20 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, blush, eyeshadow  |  Comments (4)

Don’t hate me.

I think I found a palette that I like better than the UD Naked Palette.

<ducks to avoid flying pieces of rotten vegetables>

All right, as well as the UD Naked Palette. OK?

I still love my UD, but I picked this one up for travel and ended up using it almost every day I was away, which is really rare for me (I am so fickle!). The colors appealed to me because they lean towards copper rather than bronze, and they make my green eyes pop really well. The Naked palette tends to lean towards yellower shades, and those make me look a little jaundiced if I’m not careful. I purchased some LORAC shadows from HauteLook several months ago and hated them, so I was really dubious about these, but the colors were just too nice to resist.

The LORAC Croc Palette has four eyeshadows: Moonstone (soft champagne), Serenity (peachy champagne bronze), Garnet (copper), and Suede (chocolate). Suede is matte; all the others have shimmer. The palette also includes a powder blush in shade Soul, which is a browned rose that I probably won’t use much until fall really kicks in; it’s a little dark for summer. The eyeshadows are nicely well-pigmented and very smooth; I had a little bit of fallout during application, but nothing that wasn’t easily removed — and that frankly couldn’t have been prevented had I been less hasty in application. They did not crease over TFSI and they stayed vibrant all day. The palette does not come with a brush (yay!!! no extra cost for bad mini-brushes!), so you’ll have to use your own, which is better anyway. The outside of the case is faux croc, and it has a magnetic closure, which is nice to make sure the palette doesn’t open itself up in your purse.

Moonstone and Serenity are not all that different from one another; I used Moonstone as a wash, Serenity on the lid, Garnet in the crease, and Suede in the outer corner. The photos below show the colors applied over TFSI with Neutrogena Spiced Chocolate eyeliner, Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes! mascara, and Tarte emphasEYES brow pencil. (Unrelated: New Blogger Lesson #51 — Taking pictures of eye makeup is hard. I just discovered a whole new thing I suck at!)

Swatches and photos:

L-R: Soul blush; Suede, Garnet, Serenity, Moonlight eyeshadows

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LORAC Croc Palette: $36

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good.

Purchase again? Yes, and they’ve got a new one out for the fall that’s tempting me.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Thursday Tossup: On the Deflation of Lemmings; Sales

By Voxy  |  2010/08/19 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, sale  |  Comments (0)

Well, isn’t he a cutie-pie! He seems to be missing his 235897623985 friends, though.

While I was away I had the opportunity to swatch some of the things I’d been seeing around on the web but hadn’t had access to in-person, resulting in the swift (and merciful) release of some lemmings. Here are some things I didn’t buy while away:

• Smashbox fall 2010 O-Gloss Noir: I was pretty much slavering over this one until I tested it and saw that it actually comes out of the container black (and yes, I know it has the word “noir” in it, but that’s usually not a literal descriptor for a lip product) and ends up being an utterly unremarkable shade on lips. The best product in the O- line is still the O-Gloss Shimmer, which came in the Smashbox Master’s Class kit. (And I really wish they would fix that. It’s a “master class,” not a “master’s class.”)

• The new Burberry line of cosmetics, available exclusively at Nordstrom’s. I’m not a huge fan of Burberry plaid, but the lipsticks are so cunningly molded that I couldn’t help but be tempted. They didn’t have the whole line out, and I’m sure there are some shades that might still end up calling to me, but I wasn’t as blown away by the products in person as I’d expected to be. This is good, because I hate being forced to buy at a counter with the attendant sales pressure. Eventually I may pick up something out of this line, but it’s not a must-have for me right now.

• As I mentioned on Monday, Stila Custom Color powder blush is another deflated lemming. It’s marketed as another of these “changes-when-it-hits-your-skin-to-be-the-perfect-pink-for-YOU” products, but as far as I can see, it just goes on a nice cool pale pink. Which is fine, and if you are in the market for a nice cool pale pink blush, then go right ahead and pick it up. But I can’t see it doing any serious pH-based magic.

• Chanel Joues Contraste blush in Pink Explosion. The first luxury beauty product I ever bought was a Chanel blush, and in retrospect I think it was the wrong color for me, but ever since then I’ve had a nostalgic little yearning in my heart for another one. Pink Explosion looked great, but when I got my paws on it in-store, I found that it was really hard to pick up any pigment either with a brush or with my fingers, and that what I did pick up had not nearly enough Pink and way too much Explosion (of glitter). That lemming will have to hang on until some other season, I guess. However, lots of other people must be loving it, because I can’t find any link to an online source other than eBay that’s still got it in stock. (It was in stock at all the department store counters I visited, though, so if you are interested I suggest you call your nearest Chanel counter.)

Sales!

Becca is offering 25% off with code DC0810; ending date unknown on this one. Lots of their products are lovely; I’ve got a cream blush coming up for review in September or early October (it’s a fall shade so I’ve not done much more than test it at present).

Meow Cosmetics (an indie mineral makeup company) is offering 25% off with code PARTYON. Shipping is free over $60. Also no known end date for this one at the moment.

Philosophy is offering 15% off skincare through Friday 8/20 with code GREATSKIN.

Beauty360 (CVS’s niche/prestige cosmetics & skincare arm) is offering 20% off your Beauty360 or CVS online order with code SIZZLE. Again, no ending date known (but I’m guessing 8/31 for most of these at the latest).

Juara is offering 20% off through 8/31 with code SECRET20.

And for all of you MAC fans, the Fabulous Felines collection is set to release next Thursday, 8/26. Often products go up on the website a day or two before, so you might want to be looking out on Tuesday or Wednesday if you’ve got your eye on something you think is going to cause a flashmob (Stereo Rose, I’m looking at you).

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgleditsch/2484633208/

Review: LUSH Colour Supplement in Light Pink

By Voxy  |  2010/08/17 13:18 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, foundation  |  Comments (0)

Did you ever find yourself dating the same kind of guy over and over again? You get infatuated, you think things are going to turn out great, you get each other perfectly, it’s a match made in heaven, and then suddenly he turns out to be not right for you at all and you wonder why you ever got involved in the first place? And then, instead of learning from the experience, you do the same thing with That Guy 2.0, and That Guy 3.0, etc.

For me, LUSH is That Guy. Versions one through infinity. It always starts out great, you know? Maybe this time, this time it won’t end in tears, irritation, and breakouts.

Fortunately, it’s not often that I’m actually at a LUSH store, so opportunities for falling down the rabbit hole don’t cross my path that frequently. However — you guessed it — while on my summer travels I flirted with disaster and bought some. Dammit.

LUSH Colour Supplement was something I was curious about when it first came out, but I definitely wasn’t going to spring for it unswatched. It’s an opaque tinted cream that you mix with your moisturizer to create … uh, a tinted moisturizer. I’ve previously used Dr. Hauschka Translucent Bronze Concentrate for this, but I’m always open to other options, and right now, in my infatuation phase, this seems like a very nice alternative. Like many LUSH products, it is vegan and contains lots of natural ingredients; you’ll the expiration date (and the name and picture of the person who made that particular batch) on a sticker on the bottom of the container.

The product is not moisturizing on its own, so it definitely needs a moisturizer as a carrier. I think even if you have oily skin you will still want to mix this with something, because it doesn’t spread and settle nicely on its own. Mixed with a dab of moisturizer in the hand, though, it’s quite nice. I used this often while I was away for days when I didn’t want to put on a whole face of foundation but wanted a bit of coverage. It stayed on well all day, performed just fine under makeup, and was easy to remove. You’ll have to determine the right proportions for you; since it’s opaque, you can sheer it out to a certain degree, but it will never be as sheer as a tinted moisturizer made with, say, the Dr. Hauschka product. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a little more coverage, this might work well.

The only caveat I have is that the shades are limited and mixing with (white) moisturizer only changes the tint, not the actual hue, so your skin tone needs to fit into one of their categories for this product to work with you. You might be able to mix it with other tinted moisturizers or with moisturizing foundation if one of your current products needs a color adjustment, but it isn’t one of those super-adaptable color-changing hoop-de-doos. The four shades are Light Pink, Dark Pink, Light Yellow, and Dark Yellow. My NW20 skin is almost a perfect fit for Light Pink.

So right now, after about 2 weeks of use, I’m tentatively giving this a thumbs-up. If it turns out that this product is That Guy — if it breaks me out, irritates my skin, clogs my pores, or makes me greasy — I’ll update and let you know.

Swatch!

The link below contains info on the ingredients and suggested application techniques as well, so be sure to scroll down if you want to read that info. I’ve linked to the Light Pink shade, which LUSH describes as their “most versatile,” but you can get to any of the other shades as well.

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LUSH Colour Supplement: $13.95

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (mid-range: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent.

Purchase again? Ask me again after the honeymoon phase is over.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Guerlain Rouge G Lipstick in Galante

By Voxy  |  2010/08/15 08:33 Posted in Product Reviews, lipstick  |  Comments (4)

Now that I’m back from my summer travels, it’s time to go through the (embarrassingly large) stash of products I came back with and start reviewing them!

One of my trips just happened to be to a city with multiple large Sephoras. (Did I visit them all? Every one? Of course I did!) Some of these stores had displays and testers of products that my own Sephora doesn’t carry and that I’d been hoping to swatch in-store before purchasing. I’ll buy blind online for some things, but I was in the market for some lipsticks and those are just so dangerous to buy unswatched. This is especially true when the price of the lipstick is several body parts and a second mortgage. But I’d been wanting a Guerlain lipstick for awhile, and the Rouge G is their top-line lippie. (I also picked up a few of the less-expensive Guerlain Kiss Kiss Strasse lipsticks, which I’ll be reviewing after I photograph them.) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try some on. (Fortunately, this one was the only one that really suited me out of the ones for which they had testers, a small tragedy for which my removable wallet is extremely thankful.)

Guerlain lipsticks are lusciously creamy and have a wonderful lip-feel: smooth and silky but not greasy. They are non-drying and have a slight fragrance, but I don’t find it objectionable, and I stop noticing it as soon as I’m done applying. For me, the wearlength was normal (about 3-4 hours over TFLI); because Galante is a My Lips But Better shade, it didn’t leave a noticeable stain after it wore off. The deeper, more pigmented colors — which are lovely, just not on me — might leave a stain, so you might in effect get a slightly longer wearlength. Anyone who tries to tell you that these are “long-wearing” lipsticks, though, is pulling your leg.

It might seem odd to spend this amount of money on a MLBB shade, which tend more towards the subtle than the sublime, but really, if you’re going to do My Lips But Better, you might as well do My Lips But Way More Fabulous. The description of Galante on the Sephora site is “rosy plum,” and I’d say that’s pretty fair. It’s a color that will be good year-round but that will be particularly nice for fall as it will complement jewel-toned eyeshadows nicely. All the Rouge G shade names begin with G, which I find just a little precious. Then again, I coordinate the color of the pencil I’m using on any given day to match what I’m wearing, so who am I to talk?

The packaging is the other big deal about this lippie. When closed, it’s a heavy, bullet-like thing. In fact, if you were to throw it at someone who was attacking you in a dark alley I bet you could do some serious internal damage. As soon as you loosen the lipstick from its case, the top part opens and a mirror smoothly unfolds itself with the grace and poise of a Ginger Rogers développé. This is utterly captivating for the first five minutes, and I guarantee you will sit there for quite awhile just opening and closing your lipstick and clapping your hands together gleefully. Then it becomes Really Freaking Annoying. It weighs a ton and frankly it’s packaging I just don’t need. The lipstick tube cannot stand up on its own since the bottom is rounded. It’s kind of like a Weeble, except that it does in fact fall down, which is dangerously unsanitary if you’re using it in, say, a public bathroom. Of course, if you actually get out a Rouge G lipstick in a public bathroom, it will probably squeal in horror and dive back into the darkest recesses of your purse.

Close-up and swatch!

Naked lip:

Lip with Guerlain Rouge G in Galante:

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Guerlain Rouge G Lipstick in Galante: $46 at Sephora (you cannot buy directly from the Guerlain website; in fact, much of the time you cannot even get the Guerlain website to load)

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): If sophisticated and elegant packaging is important to you, then Good. Otherwise, Fair. I’d rather have the same lipstick in a less luxe case for less money. However, there are lippies on the market that cost more than this.

Purchase again? Probably not. I really hate that packaging.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Kate Somerville Exfolikate

By Voxy  |  2010/08/11 07:00 Posted in Product Reviews, Skincare, exfoliate  |  Comments (0)

In accordance with the cult status of this product, you will not be able to read this review unless you know the secret handshake, can display the secret tattoo, can say the secret password three times backwards, or have otherwise proven yourselves worthy (which is to say, you have a credit or debit card).

Oh! Looks like we’re all here then.

I feel like I should speak the name of this product in hushed, reverent tones. From the amount of buzz it generates, you would think it was made up of shreds of the Shroud of Turin, the blood of Alexander the Great, and essences extracted from materials that the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and the Archbishop of Canterbury had all personally blessed and prayed over. It should glow. Choirs of angels should appear and sing every time the container is opened.

Sadly, none of that happens. But it is a pretty darn good product.

Exfolikate is, as you might have guessed, an exfoliant. It has some small gritty granules in it, but the primary exfoliating ingredient is fruit enzymes. I used to be terribly sensitive to fruit enzymes — there was a pumpkin papaya mask that came out several years ago that made my face burn for hours after I used it — so I was really leery of this. But, you know, blood of Alexander the Great and everything. So it came up on HauteLook and I decided to buy it (for a price that was considerably lower than the retail price I’ll be quoting at the end of the post).

To my distinct relief, Exfolikate treats my skin much more nicely than that other product. It does have fruit enzymes (papaya fruit extract and bromelain, which comes from pineapples and which is what makes your tongue hurt if you eat too much of it, as my friend Sarah found out to her great discomfort) as well as lactic acid, a gentle but effective exfoliant. Other ingredients include aloe, salicylic acid, and essential oils of bergamot, lavender, rosewood, orange, and cassia.

The product is dark green in color and has a noticeable herbal/grassy/wet-leaves scent. You are supposed to apply it in an even layer to clean, wet skin and DO NOT RUB. The directions say to leave it on only for 20 to 30 seconds and then rinse, but the label warns that redness may occur and persist for up to 20 minutes later due to increased circulation. The small polyethylene granules are not, I suspect, meant to function as a real mechanical exfoliant, but rather to help you know when you’ve completely rinsed the product off your face, as otherwise it might be hard to tell and you definitely don’t want to leave that stuff on there.

I’m pleased that I haven’t suffered any irritation from this. It is a little difficult to get the product on in an even layer, as it tends to glob up (especially on wet fingers), but overall it’s worked fine.

The big question is whether or not it’s worth the price tag, which is hefty. You need very little, so even the smaller-sized container will last for months. I will probably still not be finished with this tube by the time I’m ready for Social Security, if Social Security even exists then. I like that it’s effective and gentle. I’m not wild about the scent. I love that you only need to leave it on for 30 seconds. This makes it really easy to include in your everyday skincare regimen (not that you would use this every day, but I mean you don’t have to set aside a whole evening for a special facial treatment).

So if you want to splurge on something as a well-deserved reward, or if you come across it at a greatly reduced price, it’s worth picking up. Otherwise I can’t really justify the price tag.

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Kate Somerville Exfolikate: $85 for 2 oz., $175 for 5 oz.

Provenance: Purchased. (ON SALE. ON A BIG SALE.)

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): After a lot of flip-flopping, I have to go with Fair. It’s egregiously expensive, but it will last a long time.

Purchase again? God forbid I ever need to.

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Give a holler in the comments!)