Primers

Review: Benefit That Gal Primer

By Voxy  |  2010/07/27 13:44 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews  |  Comments (12)

Before I went on my Benefit Boycott, I had already picked up a container of their That Gal primer. Since it’s summer and I wanted to try a lighter primer (and, OK, because I could no longer return it), I got it out and road-tested it for a couple of days.

That Gal is a primer meant to “brighten” skin, which, based on the color of the product, evidently means “turn it pink” in Benefit-speak. Luckily, it fails in this regard. It actually fails in pretty much every regard. At least it’s consistent.

That Gal is a very pink primer that fortunately goes on lighter than it appears. However, on skin the color just seems to disappear (I had to use quite a bit for the swatch), so there is no brightening effect at all that I can see — and since my skin is on the fair side, you would think that results would show up on me. There is some silicone in it, though not a ton, so there is a slight smoothing effect, but the product feels light, which is about its only virtue.

So you can’t see it, and you can’t feel it. You wouldn’t even know you’re wearing it — and neither will anyone else because (at least on me) it had absolutely zero effect on improving the canvas of my skin for makeup, brightening the skin, or extending the wear-length of my makeup. Fail.

And, to add insult to insult, I also hate the dispensing mechanism. It reminds me of a Play-Doh toy that was advertised when I was a child. It surely was not called the Play-Doh Fake Meat Grinder And Extruder, but it ought to have been.

Photos and swatches:

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Benefit That Gal: $28

Provenance: Purchased.

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

Purchase again? Well, let me think about it … no.

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

Review: Smashbox Iconic Eyes Kit

By Voxy  |  2010/06/27 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews, brushes, eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara  |  Comments (11)

Dammit.

Dear Smashbox, I was *so* not going to get this kit. Really. Wasn’t gonna do it. Then you sucked me in with that gorgeous, gorgeous picture of the blue-and-brown smoky eye. And I admit it, I was tempted. Mostly because of the blue. That’s a really nice shade of blue. And then unfortunately I happened to stop by ULTA to pick up some facial cleanser (my brand of which they no longer appear to carry, WTF?) and there was the display/tester setup of the products in this kit. And because I was annoyed about not being able to get my facial cleanser, I decided that I would just test out that blue shadow, you know, just to see. Because the trip shouldn’t have been for nothing, right? And dammit AGAIN, that blue was a really nice shade on my hand. And the other colors in that palette were nice too. Crap. Smashbox, you suck.

Of course I bought it. What do you think I am made of, stone?

So. This little wonder-in-a-box contains the following: a mirrored eyeshadow quad (the shades seem, oddly, to be unnamed, but there’s a blue, a chocolate brown, and two highlighter shades, one peachy, one pinkish), a dual cream liner pot in “Infamous” (blue/brown), a deluxe sample size of Smashbox’s Photo Finish eyelid primer, a full-size Bionic Mascara, and two brushes (one shadow, one flat liner). Really, it’s quite a lot of product for $47, and it comes with instructions on how to create the various looks shown on the front of the box.

The four shades in the shadow quad are all quite nice; the darker shades are well-pigmented and the blue maintains its blue color and doesn’t go grey on skin (a pet peeve of mine about blue shadows). The highlighter colors are very light; it’s possible to blend the shadows to get a nice gradient from light to dark but you will need a bit of patience since they’re so far apart to start with.

I was excited to try the Photo Finish lid primer, and I used it instead of my regular TFSI. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a win for me, since I had some creasing and some color loss in the shadow as the day went on.

I haven’t had a huge amount of luck with Smashbox creme eyeliners; on me they have tended to smudge and fade. But, as with another recent review product, I haven’t tried them since I started wearing MAC paint pots as eyeshadow bases. So I’ll be trying them again, hopefully with better results. The brown half of the liner is a nice rich color; the blue half looks great in the pot but does that thing that I hate and turns to blue-grey on my skin. (I’ll be sticking with my MAC Petrol Blue Pearlglide eyeliner pencil for a blue liner.)

I haven’t broken out the mascara yet, only because I already have a mascara open and since they go bad more quickly than other cosmetics I like to only have one going at a time. In case you are curious, the “Bionic”-ness of it is explained by Smashbox as follows: “BIONIC is the first-ever ionic formula mascara. The primary ingredient in BIONIC is a chain molecule with a positive charge. The friction caused by sweeping the mascara brush across lashes causes a negative charge. Since opposites attract, the positively charged formula adheres to the negatively charged lashes for a dramatic effect that lasts all day.” (We will ignore the fact that the first listed ingredient in the mascara is, er, water.) Since the Bionic mascara is also sold on its own, I may review it when I get around to changing mascaras.

I like Smashbox brushes a lot, though I’d have preferred a slanted liner brush to a squared-off one, since I find these easier to use in applying cream liners. The shadow brush is nice: not too large, grabs product well, blends well, no prickly bristles on sensitive eyelid skin.

Products and swatches:

Liner shades on left, shadow on right. You can hardly even see the two highlighter shades on my skin; that’s how light they are.

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Smashbox Iconic Eyes Kit: $47

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. If all of the products were as good as the shadow, it’d be Excellent.

Purchase again? Yes; in general I like their kits though I rarely have 100% success with all the products in them.

(Have you used these products? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Want ‘em? Give a holler in the comments!)

Review: Too Faced Lip Insurance Lip Primer

By Voxy  |  2010/06/06 07:00 Posted in Primers, Product Reviews  |  Comments (0)

“No matter how wet or sweaty you get – your lips aren’t going anywhere!”

Oh, wait, sorry — wrong product. (Sorry; I’m still laughing about that.)

As a fan of Too Faced Primed and Poreless facial primer and Shadow Insurance eyelid primer, I was chomping at the bit (sort-of pun sort-of intended) to try their new Lip Insurance lip primer. Result: hat trick for Too Faced on the primer front. This is an excellent and really useful product.

I love lip color, but, as an inherently lazy creature, hate to reapply. Seriously, I can research and write a book, do a 16-hour grading marathon, and spend hours on getting the color just exactly right in a visual art project, but apparently slapping on a second coat of lip gloss after lunch is just too demanding a task. This really does increase the wearlength of lipsticks, glosses, and stains.

Lip Insurance is a thin whitish cream that you apply to clean lips with a doe-foot applicator. Upon application it turns basically colorless and helps to smooth and fill in lip lines. It’s best to have your lipstick or gloss laid out and ready to go before applying, because if you apply this product and then spend five minutes picking out a lipstick, your lips will be dry and crunchy by the time you get the lipstick on. (Ask me how I know.)

I have to say I was really surprised by how well this product works. Anything but a long-wearing stain is usually off my lips in less than two hours, and this got my lipstick and gloss through a good four hours — and that’s four hours of talking and eating and doing all of the things you’re not supposed to do if you want your lipstick to last (which is, basically, everything). Yes, I lost some shine and color, but it was much better than the without-primer version.

I haven’t yet tried this with a bright red lipstick that might feather, so I can’t say whether or not it helps with lipstick bleeding outside the lip line. I have tried it with regular lipsticks, glosses, and balms, and it’s worked great with all three. This is a great product for everyday use, and would be especially useful before an event or party at which you need to look put-together for a long time but don’t want to be sneaking off every ten minutes to re-prettify your pout. Definitely a keeper.

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Too Faced Lip Insurance: $19 (The photo on Too Faced’s site shows a brush applicator but mine is a doe-foot, so there must have been some change in the product design; it also says the color is “colorless,” which it is, but then it shows a color that is far from colorless. Just so you know.)

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good, so far. We’ll see how long the tube lasts.

Purchase again? Yes.

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

Review: MAC Paint Pots

By Voxy  |  2010/06/02 07:00 Posted in Primers, Product Reviews, eyeshadow  |  Comments (3)

These have come up in the comments recently, so I thought I’d do a brief review/how-to on them.

MAC Paint Pots are opaquely pigmented creams that are most often used as eyeshadow bases. Colors range from neutrals to brights and finishes from matte to shimmer. (The shades in the permanent collection tend to be neutrals; brights tend to be part of LE releases.) Their major selling point is that they make eyeshadow color more intense and last longer while also preventing or reducing creasing. I apply mine over TFSI and have only had one creasing problem, ever; it was with a cream shadow and I haven’t had a single problem with creasing using powder shadows since I added a paint pot to my makeup routine. Shadows last all day with the same intensity and color they had when you first applied them. These are great little products.

That said, there are some tricks to working with them.

If you’re just starting with these, I recommend beginning with one of the neutral colors. If you are light-skinned with pink undertones (like me), try Painterly; if you’re light-skinned with yellow undertones, try Soft Ochre. (I use both of these depending on what I’m going to put on top; if I’m going to do a bronze eye, I use Soft Ochre; purple or nude eyes get Painterly.) If these are too light for you, try Groundwork (which MAC describes as “midtone neutral taupe”) or Quite Natural (chocolate brown). The opacity of the paint pot will totally cover up eyelid redness or veins. Magic, I tell you!

The biggest complaint you will hear about paint pots is that they can dry out and then need to be re-creamified with Visine. (See: Dear Cosmetics Companies, Please Make Your Products Smaller And Charge Less For Them So We Do Not Waste Money On Products That We Will Never See The Bottom Of.) In order to prevent this, the interwebz cosmetics community has come up with the superstition that if you store them upside down, this won’t happen. Of course this makes no difference at all — but it does allow you to see which color is which if you have a bunch of them in your makeup drawer. In general I like MAC’s packaging, but those big opaque black lids do make it difficult to distinguish different shades of the same product from one another.

I try to stave off the drying-out problem by applying with a damp brush, and so far this has worked well for me. This is a product for which a brush is far superior than fingertips for application.

First I apply my TFSI, and after about a minute, when I’m sure it’s dry, I run a flat concealer brush under the faucet briefly, wipe the excess water on my arm, and swipe it several times across the face of the product. I apply to one eyelid at a time, being sure to blend the edges out well and quickly — once it sets, it’s set, so you will want to be sure you have really blended it well and have gotten it all the way down to the lash line on the upper lid. You can also try using it as a concealer — for me it works better in the inner corner of the eye than as an undereye concealer, but your mileage may vary. As it dries, it will develop a slightly sticky texture (which is why fingertips aren’t so great for application; you end up pulling on the skin of the eyelid a lot and the application tends to be blotchy). You will get the best results if you start applying eye products before it gets too dry, so I next apply an all-over eye color in something that is as close as possible to whichever paint pot I’m using. Most of the time the paint pot is Painterly, and most of the time the eye color is MAC Brule. This serves as a nearly-invisible setting powder, and now the canvas is perfectly prepped for the application of other colors.

Shadows applied to a lid prepped with a paint pot keep their color and intensity all day — it’s really impressive. TFSI by itself does a great job of keeping shadow on the lid, but there is some fading. With a paint pot underneath, the shadows not only stay on the lid, but they keep their color without graying out.

The darker or brighter shades are fun to use under particular eyeshadow colors. Rubenesque is a light rosy-peachy-gold shimmer; Indianwood is an antiqued bronze; Coral Crepe (new with this spring’s collections) is, well, coral.

Swatches of Soft Ochre and Painterly:

Soft Ochre:

Painterly:

Man, fingers are funny-looking things, huh?

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MAC Paint Pots: $16.50

Provenance: Purchased.

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

Purchase again? Yes, this is a must-have for me.

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

Review: Tarte Clean Slate Primer

By Voxy  |  2010/05/07 07:00 Posted in Primers, Product Reviews  |  Comments (2)

If you like silicone primers, and are interested in one that a) is colorless, and 2) purports to have skin-rejuvenating abilities to boot, then get thee out posthaste and trade thy chickens and goats for Tarte’s Clean Slate Primer. It costs $30, so I don’t know exactly how many chickens and goats that would be, but it can’t be very many.

In the “Voxy’s Favorite Primers” cagematch, this is proving an equal competitor to Too Faced’s Primed and Poreless primer in terms of performance. They are both silicone-based and leave a very smooth finish. Too Faced’s primer is also $30, or the equivalent number of chickens and goats, but it is only 1 oz. whereas the Tarte Clean Slate is 1.16 oz., so the Tarte is a little bit better value for the money. Performance-wise, they’re about equal; I don’t notice a significant difference between them.

If you are new to primers, they go on between moisturizer and foundation, and help your foundation, bronzer, and/or blush to last longer. I was anti-primer for a long time, since I hadn’t found any that made a difference for me, and then the Too Faced product won me over. (They are also the makers of Too Faced Shadow Insurance [TFSI], which is a great eyeshadow primer, and they’ve just come out with Lip Insurance, which is a primer for … well, I bet you can guess. I’m hoping the Lip Insurance will be in stock at Sephora next time I’m there so I can test it!) I also use them under tinted moisturizers, since I think of TMs as basically just a kind of foundation, and they really do make a difference. This product has a silicone base; they’ve just come out with a non-silicone primer as well (part of their ReCreate line), so if you are not a fan of silicone you might want to try that one instead.

Does it have “skin-rejuvenating” abilities? I can’t really say; I slather a lot of other products on my face every day and so it’s pretty hard to tell. It doesn’t seem to be doing me any harm, though, so I suppose that’s a step in the right direction.

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Tarte Clean Slate Primer: $30

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Of course things could always cost a little less in terms of chickens and goats, but this is acceptable, and I really like the product.

Purchase again? Yes, but this and Primed & Poreless are going to have to share the love.

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

Beauty on the Cheap: 3 Foxalicious Upgrades to the $50 Challenge

By Voxy  |  2010/03/24 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews, blush, mineral, steal  |  Comments (1)

So let’s say you already have some of those things I mentioned yesterday. Let’s assume that somewhere in your life you managed to acquire a lip gloss, or a blush, or a tube of foundation that you like. Now you’re probably rattling around with all sorts of loose change in your pockets, since you didn’t spend all of your $50, and wondering what else you could buy.

Why yes, of course I have suggestions. ;)

These suggestions are going to go a bit beyond the basic. So if you already have the elements of a starter kit and are ready to add a product or two, keep reading. I’m no longer working within the $50 limit, but I am keeping this to drugstore products only.

Primer

L’Oreal has just come out with a really, really nice primer that’s newly available at Target. It’s called the L’Oreal Studio Secrets Secret No. 1 Magic Perfecting Base, and it normally retails for $10.99 (right now it’s 10% off at my Target and online). I haven’t seen it anywhere else yet, but I’m sure it’s on the way. Both Targets at which I’ve seen the product also have a tester available in the display, so you can try it on the back of your hand. I was so impressed with it that I bought one (again, the fact that it was on sale and I had a small Target gift card burning a hole in my removable wallet helped) and will do a full review of it soon. It has the same smooth silicon texture as high-end primers. If you’re interested in seeing what a primer is like, this is the one I’d recommend starting with. It looks pink in the container, but when it’s on your skin it’s translucent and basically colorless, so don’t be put off by that. This would go on before your foundation.

Cream Blush

I love a nice cream or gel blush, and the Almay SmartShade ones are really nice for drugstore products. They have terrifically long staying power, and although it’s certainly possible to apply them boldly, I was also really impressed by how subtly they can be used and still last all day. There are three shades: Pink Rose (light-medium pink), Natural (more peachy/brown-toned), and Berry (slightly deeper pink). There’s also a bronzer if you’d like to experiment with that. These are all $8.39 at drugstore.com (I forgot to price them at Target; sorry!).

Finishing Powder

A liquid/cream foundation is nice, but sometimes you want a dusting of powder on top to blend products, cover any remaining shine, give a soft-focus effect, or create a velvety texture. For a drugstore product, one of the best choices (in my humble opinion) is Cover Girl Professional Loose Powder (about $5.25-$5.50 depending on where you shop). These powders are translucent rather than opaquely pigmented, so they’re not good as a foundation unless you are quite young and have excellent skin to start out with — you just don’t get a lot of coverage. But if your skin is good and you just want something to use to reduce shine, they’re an excellent choice, and because they are translucent, they work well as a finishing powder over other makeup. Please throw the poofy thing out immediately. Use the fluffiest powder brush you have, or a skunk brush if you happen to own one (note: not actually made from skunk).

L’Oreal also makes one of these in their Bare Naturale line; it’s called Bare Naturale Mineral Finish and it comes in two slightly tinted shades (Translucent and Translucent Medium), one shimmery shade (Luminizing) and one mattifying shade (called, er, Mattifying). I use the palest tinted shade, the Translucent, as one of the ingredients in my custom mineral powder blend; it sheers out the mixture and makes it a little less opaque. The Mattifying shade is one I haven’t tried but it seems to be similar to the Make Up For Ever HD powder that I reviewed previously — it’s also silica-based, although it has considerably more ingredients than the MUFE product. (One of those ingredients is carnauba wax, and I can’t quite figure out what that’s doing in a mattifying powder since it is more often used to hold emulsions together and make them shiny — think lipstick.) These are all $12.49 at Target.

So there are some variations for you. I’d love to hear about any other great drugstore finds and/or steals you’ve discovered, so please post them in the comments!

Review: Benefit Stay Don’t Stray Eye Primer

By Voxy  |  2010/03/19 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews, concealer  |  Comments (0)

I recently read some internet posts by Benefit sales associates describing Benefit’s aggressive sales practices (as in: your job is to go forth into other departments of, say, Nordstrom’s, and come up to women while they are looking at, say, shoes, and pull them over to the Benefit counter and try to sell them, say, makeup) that make me not really want to buy anything else from this company, and that kind of make me regret having bought the few Benefit products I already own. I don’t want to encourage any company that advocates such aggressive sales tactics. It’s rude.

Nevertheless, I thought I should finish this review I started of Benefit’s Stay Don’t Stray Eye Primer, and we’ll see how likely I am to buy or review Benefit products in future.

I am a staunch fan of Too Faced Shadow Insurance eyeshadow primer (which I have reviewed previously), so it would take a lot to get me to abandon that product. However, when I swatched this product at Sephora, I was impressed by the coverage, and so I thought I would add it to my arsenal. (My TFSI was a little jealous at first but has gotten over it.)

Benefit’s Stay Don’t Stray primer is supposed to be a combination primer and concealer, which is what’s attractive about it. According to Benefit, you can use it both on the eyelid and on the undereye area. Whereas TFSI goes on a sheer cappuccino color but dries nude, Stay Don’t Stray goes on a sort of light camel color (definitely more yellow than pink) and stays that way. It’s relatively opaque. TFSI does not offer anything in the way of coverage, really, but does provide a nice smooth canvas for eyeshadows and helps the color stay fresh.

The pump takes some getting used to, as it is really better thought of not as a “pump” at all. If you use it like a regular pump, which is to say by putting your finger on the top of it and pressing down, you will get far, far too much product, even if you try to use a very light touch. Instead, tap the top of the pump with your index finger several times, like maybe 10-20, until you start to see product appear at the spout. You can keep tapping to get the amount you want. It seems weird, but it works. (The very first time you use the product, you might want to try the traditional pump method, just to make sure product is flowing all the way up the pump, but after that, the tapping method works infinitely better.)

If you have oily skin, or are eighteen and have perfect skin, you will probably like this product a lot. If, like me, you are not eighteen (shocker, I know) and/or have drier skin, this may not be a good choice for you. With TFSI, eyeshadows apply very smoothly. Stay Don’t Stray leaves the lid much drier and very matte, so I have a harder time getting a smooth application. Similar complaints about dryness are often made about Urban Decay Primer Potion, so I suspect it’s a deliberate choice of formulation on Benefit’s part rather than some sort of weird unanticipated side effect. Due to the trouble with blending, I haven’t tried it with any complicated eye makeup looks, just with a simple 2-shade look (lighter on the lid, darker in the crease) and with pencil and gel eyeliners. Shadows do not seem to wander off my eyelid, but I don’t think the staying power is any better than TFSI. Because Stay Don’t Stray is yellow-toned and opaque, however, it does brilliantly cover redness/purpleness at the upper lash line, which I sometimes have in the morning after a bad night, so I’m definitely keeping it around to cover that.

It does cover undereye circles if they aren’t too dark, but I’ve had trouble combining it with other products, again because of the dryness. It makes any other concealer that I’ve tried with or on top of it (liquid, cream, or powder) get dry and crusty and settle into lines — but by itself it isn’t quite enough for me. Maybe in the summer, when dryness is less of an issue, this will work better for me. In the meanwhile, I’ll keep it for covering severe red/purpleness on the upper eyelid near the lash line, but I’m sticking with TFSI as a shadow primer and sticking with my regular undereye concealers for dark circles.

For this amount of money, I’d say skip it unless you either a) are a Benefit-aholic, or 2) have eyelids that are oily enough that TFSI doesn’t work for you.

And watch out the next time you go to a department store shoe section! You may be ambushed by a Benefit sales associate hiding behind the clearance rack. Bring pepper spray.

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Benefit Stay Don’t Stray Eye Primer: $24

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Given how little you use, it will probably last a long time. Wish it were about $5 cheaper.

Purchase again? Probably not; other products serve my needs better. Also, feeling pretty anti-Benefit at the moment.

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

Review: Josie Maran Argan Primer Mist

By Voxy  |  2010/03/02 07:00 Posted in Primers, Product Reviews, lemming  |  Comments (0)

Lemming, meet Fox.

So I finally got my little paws on Josie Maran’s brand spanking new Argan Primer Mist. You know I’ve been jonesing for a spray-on serum of some sort for quite awhile, and I had some high hopes for this one, which contains the much-hyped argan oil, supposedly the most exciting cosmetic event since the discovery of cold cream.

Argan oil is produced by putting Argonauts in a blender and … no, of course I’m kidding. Really. The argan tree is native to Morocco, where it has managed to survive since the earth’s Tertiary Age, which ended a mere ~2.6 million years ago. Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about argan oil, such as that in days of yore it used to be produced by picking undigested argan pits out of goat feces and then grinding and pressing them to get the oil out. But don’t worry! Wikipedia says the argan oil used in modern products has “most likely” been harvested and processed in a “verifiably clean and sanitary way.” Most likely.

Anyway, argan oil is full of all of the kinds of things that are good for skin: vitamin E, squalene, carotenes, etc. And, you can also eat it, which I didn’t know. I wonder what it tastes like. (No, I am not going to squirt my Argan Primer Mist in my mouth, so don’t even think about daring me to.)

While I was waiting for this product to arrive in my mailbox, I just happened to find myself in a brick-and-mortar Sephora (other people find themselves on mountaintops or vision quests; I find myself in Sephora… that’s probably indicative of something) and I tested the pure argan oil on my hand. I wanted there to be light suddenly streaming down from heaven and a choir of angels and clouds and stuff, but it was sort of anticlimactic. The oil was — an oil. A light oil that absorbed into my skin and … pretty much did nothing for it. I asked the sales associate whether it’s meant to be applied directly to skin, and she said, in that certain way that says I don’t really know exactly what you’re supposed to do with it, but I bet the more things I can come up with, the more likely it is I can convince you to buy some, “Sure, you can put it right on your skin, or, uh, you can mix it with your moisturizer, or, uh, you can use it on your cuticles, or, uh, hey, have you tried these Josie Maran facial wipes?”

I did not purchase.

Anyhoo, I’m of two minds about the Argan Primer Mist. Mind number one says that it’s way too expensive and isn’t the magic product I hoped it would be. Mind number two notes that it does have an effect, that it’s not a completely useless product, and that maybe the more I use it the more results I will see.

I have tried using this two ways. First, as the package directs, by spritzing it on over moisturizer and before applying makeup. But I can’t really get much effect out of it that way, and it doesn’t seem to really do much for me as a primer. The other way I’ve tried it is after using my cleanser and toner; I spray my face a few times and pat it into the skin before applying other serums and moisturizers. This way seems to work better for me, at least so far. There is a difference in my skin when I subsequently apply another product; it feels like more moisture is retained in the skin. Of course, since we’re still in winter, and indoor heating sucks all of the moisture out of one’s skin anyway, I’m not sure whether there’s a net gain. I have also heard that you could spritz it over your made-up face as a sort of “refresher” in the middle of the day, but I’ve never really been on that train. I kind of think that after spending half an hour on making your face up, it’s kind of silly to spritz it with water midday. But there must be people for whom that works well and doesn’t result in spotty, runny makeup.

So the jury is still out on this. I might find that I notice more of a payoff in springtime as the weather gets warmer and less dry. I’m going to keep using it but at this point am uncertain about buying another bottle.

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Josie Maran Argan Primer Mist: $36 at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased,

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Poor to fair. Spritz-on things should not cost $36.

Purchase again? Highly debatable. Depends which of my two minds is in charge that day.

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

Review: Too Faced Primed and Poreless Face Primer

By Voxy  |  2010/01/17 10:33 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews  |  Comments (5)

I am not sure whether at this point the best movie-scene metaphor for (what I devoutly hope is) the end of my quest for a facial primer would be the finale of Chariots of Fire, with the slow-motion running towards victory and the sense that the outcome has been, if not divinely ordained, then at least divinely sanctioned, or the Mt. Doom scene from The Return of the King, in which Frodo, filthy, exhausted, wild-eyed, and slightly insane, manages to save the world by giving up and losing a fight, and also losing a finger in the process.

Hmm. Tough call. I’m going with Frodo, though I still have all my fingers.

While I would not describe my quest for a great facial primer as “epic” (except in my own mind), you all know that in general I have been unimpressed with every primer I’ve tried, to the point at which I was, in Frodo-like fashion, ready to give up on the quest, having been driven mad by the lure of the magic products — oh, forget the damn metaphor: I wanted primers to work for me and they didn’t. The End.

But I do love Too Faced’s Shadow Insurance eyelid primer (reviewed here), and when I saw that they had come out with a facial primer, I couldn’t resist one last attempt. If they could make an eyelid primer that worked for me, then maybe there was an outside chance that their facial primer would also work?

Well, cue the Vangelis music: Primed and Poreless is a winner for me. I have stopped short of lifting the bottle to my shoulders and carrying it on a victory lap around the house, but that’s only because the neighbors would see me.

Like lots and lots and lots of other primers, Primed and Poreless is a sheer, silicone-based product that goes on after moisturizer and before foundation. My complaint with other primers has been that I really don’t notice a difference in my appearance between when I’m wearing them and when I’m not. None of the ones I’ve tried have done things that primers are supposed to do: even skin tone, reduce visible pore size, make makeup last longer and stay in place better, keep skin from getting oily, etc. And I’ve tried most of the major players in the primer game, products that thousands of other people rave about, so I figured it was probably just me.

Primed and Poreless is the first primer I’ve tried that really does improve the appearance of everything that goes on over it. It comes out of the tube a light beige color, but when applied the color vanishes and I can’t tell it’s on there. It improves the appearance of both liquid and powder foundation, and the pores on the sides of my nose are a lot less obvious. Although it is mostly silicone, I can put it on top of a silicone-containing moisturizer without getting that annoying sloughing and pilling that can happen when you combine silicone products, and at the end of the day it is much easier to remove than my Dior, Make Up For Ever, Dr. Brandt, or Smashbox primers, all of which seem to add a water-resistant layer to my skin that takes an extra washing to remove. Primed and Poreless comes off using my regular cleansing routine.

Too Faced says it contains retinol, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any serious anti-aging effects.

If you already have a primer that you love, then there’s no real need to change, but if you are still hunting around to find one that actually works for you and is not a needless extra step in your makeup routine with no visible benefit, I highly recommend that you give this one a try.

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Too Faced Primed and Poreless Face Primer: $30

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair to good. We’ll see how long the tube lasts.

Purchase again? Probably, unless (miracle of miracles) something even better comes along! But this is definitely going to have a place in my makeup bag for some time.

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

Review: Dior Skinflash Primer

By Voxy  |  2009/12/10 07:00 Posted in Makeup, Primers, Product Reviews  |  Comments (2)

dior skinflash 1Something is wrong with me. I’m sure of it.

You see, not once, but twice in my makeup-wearing career I have failed to fall in love with a Dior product.

<sobs, covers face with hands> I know! Don’t look at me, I’m a monster! Mothers, hold tightly to your children, and look away, look away!

The first of my failures was a Dior Addict lip gloss that I thought was OK but nothing to write home about. I did not say anything to anyone about this, of course. It was my secret shame. The only brand that is less socially acceptable to disdain among cosmetic junkies than Dior is MAC. I think that if you say anything bad about a MAC product the makeup police come to your house and confiscate all of your makeup except your blue eyeshadow from 1988, which you are then sentenced to wear every day for the rest of your life. You think Hester Prynne had it bad? I’m telling you, a scarlet A has nothing, nothing on powder-blue shimmer eyeshadow.

And now, my second Failure to Love — Dior Skinflash primer.

I like it just fine, but I must admit that I have failed to love it, in spite of its highly lemminged status. It is sheer, light, easily absorbed, and leaves a velvety finish. It comes in a beautiful silver container. It is a perfectly good primer. I’m just not sure it’s the best primer ever, and I think if it’s Dior, it ought to be.

Then again, I seem to be face-primer-challenged in general. I also fail to love the Smashbox Photo Finish Foundation Primer, in spite of the two facts that a) it has a cult following and b) there are tons of Smashbox products that I love and want to marry. I’ve tried others, and continue to try them, but I’ve yet to find one that makes me swoon. I think I still like the Dr. Brandt Pores No More, which I reviewed previously, the best of the bunch. And I recently picked up a travel-size container of the MakeUpForEver HD primer, which I’ll be trying soon.

There are a couple of genuine objections I have to this product besides its general failure to bring about world peace, and they both have to do with the delivery system. This is another one of those turn-the-base-and-the-product-comes-up-through-the-built-in-brush deals. Unlike some of those products, though, the clicker only works one way. So you twist the base to the left (or right, depending on what your point of reference is), gingerly at first because you don’t want the product to come gushing out the brush. Then, after you’ve waited patiently and nothing happens, you give it a slightly more assertive turn, and then, when nothing continues to happen, you give it a good wrench and suddenly you’ve got product all over the place. You cannot at this point turn the base in the other direction to suck the excess product back down the channel. Nope, you now have enough primer to cover your bathroom wall as well as your face. I’m also not a huge fan of the permanently-attached-brush delivery method, because those brushes are pretty impossible to really clean.

So there it is. I fail Dior.

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Dior Skinflash Primer: $40, Sephora

Provenance: Purchased.

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

Purchase again?

(Have you used this product? Love it? Hate it? Want it? Let us know in the comments!)