Makeup

Guest Post! Review: Urban Decay Naked 2

By Voxy  |  2012/02/17 14:55 Posted in eyeshadow, Product Reviews  |  Comments (3)


Guest post and photos by Chaos!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since picking up my Naked palette (the original version) after searching for it in at least four Sephoras across two separate continents, I have not left the house without it. While this shows how much I love the thing, and also helps me justify my purchase of a new $50 friend for it, I am bringing it up because one of the things that really bothers me about the original Naked palette is that it is not really designed for carrying around. For a start, the packaging is velvety and so it picks up all the crap that lurks at the bottom of my bag, and the gold lettering across the front started to wear off pretty quickly. Also, it does not stay closed, meaning that the brush I store in it often comes out, and if the palette ends up too close to papers, they end up with a little more color on them than papers really should have. All this has changed with Naked2 – it is packaged in a metal case which clicks shut meaning it, my brush, and my papers will be safe from the horror that is the inside of my work bag.  This is good.

Speaking of brushes, the Naked2 palette comes with a really nice double-ended shadow and crease brush which, unlike many brushes that come with palettes, is actually usable. I did my whole eye with just the one brush when I was playing with this yesterday, so it should eliminate my need to carry three separate brushes with me. (I think I have re-applied my makeup while out about twice, however I feel… naked… without it in my bag just in case I need it, so I do carry it around slightly unnecessarily at all times.)

The colors (which can be seen in the swatches) are as follows:

Foxy: A beige/slightly yellow matte which is almost exactly the color of my skin

Half-Baked: Metallic gold (this one is also in the original Naked)

Bootycall: Shimmery beige, a little lighter than Foxy

Chopper: Glittery metallic bronze

Tease: Matte light brown

Snakebite: Shimmery dark brown (although this goes on more matte than it looks like it will)

Suspect: Shimmery light brown

Pistol: Shimmery dark brown, a little cooler than Snakebite

Verve: Shimmery greyish brown (this one is my favorite)

YDK (I do not know what this stands for, and that bothers me): Shimmery light copper

Busted: Matte dark brown

Blackout: Very black

Only Half-Baked is a repeat from Naked, and I am actually OK with UD putting that one in again – it goes very nicely with most of the other Naked2 shadows, so it makes sense to have it there ready to use without having to pick up another palette. (Yes, yes, I am lazy.) None of the other colors are so similar to the original Naked that you wouldn’t need want to own both. The shades in Naked2 are a lot cooler than Naked, which works better with my skin tone, and there are also more lighter shades in Naked2 which makes it a nicer palette for looks that are work appropriate.

There are not many bad things to say about this palette, but I would like to point out that I personally think they should have included a deeper brown shade instead of Blackout. Busted, the darkest brown in the palette, does not go on *quite* as nicely as the other shades, and Blackout is really too black to be used as anything other than a liner. While I occasionally do use black eyeshadow as a liner, UD itself makes such awesome liners that I am unlikely to do that on a regular basis, so I probably won’t get much use out of Blackout, and I am more likely to use Darkhorse from the original Naked if I want a dark brown instead of Busted. But 10 great shades out of 12 ain’t bad.

Naked2 also comes with a pink lip gloss which is a ‘meh’ shade on me, but tastes awesome, so if you feel like putting something on your lips just to lick it right off again, that gloss is for you.

Overall, Naked2 is really good value for the price, and you’re getting a great selection of shades. I recommend it especially for those of you who found the original Naked shades too warm – you’ll definitely find these shades easier to work with.

More photos and swatches!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Urban Decay Naked 2 eyeshadow palette: $50

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Excellent. It costs $50, which I believe is $6 more than the original Naked. Without taking into account that it comes with a brush, that’s just over $4 per shadow. You won’t find $4 shadows this nice elsewhere.

Purchase again? Yes. Not for a while, because they last a long time, but I would definitely buy it again if it ran out.

Review: Bare Minerals Insider’s Kit (with Cheek Tint and Color-Shift Eyeshadow)

By Voxy  |  2012/02/12 13:51 Posted in blush, eyeshadow, lip gloss, Product Reviews  |  Comments (0)

A few months ago, a friend and I sat down at ULTA and had little mini-makeovers, just for fun. This particular friend has a very busy telecommuting job and two small children, so she has had neither the time nor the external motivation to keep up her makeup routine, and I think she misses being girly. Anyhoo, she was fine with getting a little eye makeup done, and a little lip gloss, but when the brave ULTA sales associate advanced on her with a fan brush loaded with a startlingly pink neon blush (Smashbox, I think), she suddenly made a valiant effort to climb out of her skin in order to get away from the brush. Her eyes were as big as saucers! Undaunted, the SA flicked the fan brush over the apples of her cheeks and deposited a sheer flush of color that looked simply AH-MAZE-ING. (Even my friend agreed, after she had calmed down and had a martini to get over the shock.) Although at the time I didn’t end up buying that blush, I kept thinking about how good it looked — so when I saw this kit at Sephora with a super-bright pink cheek tint and a new “color-shift” eyeshadow, I grabbed onto it with my grimy little paws and would not let it go.

Sephora has a couple of Bare Minerals kits on offer right now, two of which contain this mysterious “color-shift eyeshadow.” By the way, the Bare Escentuals store that is about 50 yards away from the Sephora in one of my local malls had never heard of the stuff, which is slightly worrisome. As of right now there are two colors available, and each one is only available with purchase of a kit (in other words, you can’t buy just the eyeshadow, more’s the pity). Fortunately this particular kit had some other stuff I was drawn to, so it worked out.

In this particular Insider’s Kit, you get the following: Cheek Tint (Bare Minerals’ first cheek stain, as they call it) in shade Flirt, a color-shift shadow in Panache (a bright peach, which, upon buffing, acquires a lavender duotone), liner shadow in Twilight Violet (a sort of purple-gray with sparkles), Natural Lipgloss in Cherry Bomb, and a dual-ended brush.

The cheek tint is frighteningly bright in the container. And when I say “frightening,” I mean “sleep with the lights on”, “put a baseball bat under your bed”, “have your teddy bear on speed dial” frightening. Please DO NOT drop this on your carpet, as it will stain. Unless, that is, you already have a hot pink neon carpet, in which case I want to come to your house and see it. I admit that I have not tried applying the cheek tint with the provided brush. This is because I am terrified that I will go from zero to Krazy Klown Face in less time than it takes to say “Krazy Klown Face,” which isn’t really very much time at all. Instead, I’ve been using a fan brush, and this has worked so far. Like the blush the ULTA SA put on my friend, it delivers a sheer pop of bright color. Because it is sheer, it’s wearable for pretty much everyone. If I can pull it off, anyone who has darker skin than me (which is to say, almost everyone) can probably also do so.

The color-shift eyeshadow is the surprise winner here. In general I’m a skeptic about these kinds of things, but Oh My Goodness Gracious Me It Looks Fantastic. There are two things I really like about it: 1. the peach shade by itself is a lovely eye brightener, and 2. when you blend it out into purple, the transition is very nice (it passes through a pinky stage) and the two colors both look good together and are surprisingly easily incorporated into an overall look. Just for grins, I tried it wet to see what would happen, and the peach color turned into a neon sort of pink. In general I think dry application is better than wet here. The swatches below don’t do it justice; I found it hard to capture the purple tones on film. (Well, digital film, but whatev.) I’m surprised by how nice it is on my eyes. There is another shade available in another kit, which goes on a kind of dirty greenish-gold and buffs out to a fairly intense sky blue.

The lipgloss is … meh. It doesn’t do anything for me, but it won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t have bought it on its own. The color in the tube is fantastic, but on lips it doesn’t have much of an effect. Maybe this is just my lips.

The shadow liner is best worked with wet rather than dry. If you use it dry, there is a lot of fallout. Wet, it’s a nice shade of gray with hints of purple, and the glitter stays where it’s supposed to stay. And unlike the color-shift eyeshadow, when you wet this one it stays the same color it was originally. I’m not a huge fan of it, but I don’t hate it either, and I’m sure I’ll use it from time to time.

The brush is nice, but as I said earlier I haven’t tried to use it with the cheek tint. YMMV.

So in the kit, the winners are the cheek tint, the color-shift eyeshadow, and the brush. The gloss and liner shadow are OK but I wouldn’t have bought them separately.

Swatches!

Closeup of the color-shift eyeshadow in Panache.

 

This is how Panache goes on…

 

… and this is what happens when you buff it. It was incredibly hard to capture the lavender tone on my camera; this is kind of a fail.

 

Cheek Tint in Flirt.

 

Swatch of cheek tint in Flirt, with a sprinkle of powder on the left and a blended-out bit on the right.

 

Liner shadow closeup

 

Swatch of liner shadow (left) and lipgloss (right).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bare Escentuals BareMinerals Insider Introducing Cheek Tint: $36 at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Would have preferred to purchase products separately.

Purchase again? N/A, but I’d buy other kits if they had what I wanted.

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

Review: Chanel Blush Horizons Blush Éclat Douceur

By Voxy  |  2012/01/23 21:20 Posted in blush, Makeup, Product Reviews  |  Comments (0)

I am so glad to see the return of blush for spring. Not that it ever totally disappeared, but the seasonal focus is so often on lips or eyes that poor blush gets the bum’s rush.

It is Land of Blush in the Voxpartment. There are blushes everywhere. Because you never know when you might be, say, watching TV, and suddenly need to put on some blush. Also, they are pretty and I like to have them around. Anyway, I have a couple of gems from the spring collections. (Did you hear that? SPRING COLLECTIONS! YAYAYAYAY!!!!)

 

 

Watch out for that last one. It’s a doozy. I suggest wearing earplugs.

In the grab-it-while-you-still-can department, Chanel’s Blush Horizon compact for Spring 2012 is flying off shelves. Not by itself, obvs. This is the compact for those of us who were too stupid to rush out and buy Guerlain Blush G Serie Noir blush last year. [whacks self on head]

Like the Guerlain product, Chanel’s compact features several different shades of blush arranged in horizontal stripes. While technically I suppose you could try to get a brush in them singly, let’s be realistic. You’re going to mash your brush up in there and mix all the colors together. Right? Because who has time for being soooo finicky with blush?

Besides me, I mean. What? No other hands up? Barbarians.

One of the very first luxe products I ever owned was a Chanel blush, which I now think was probably the wrong shade for me, but which filled me with frissons of indulgent delight whenever I used it. I want to be more in love with the aesthetics of the Blush Horizon compact than I am, but sadly, I’m not. It’s slightly too “Ladies Who Lunch” for me. However — the product inside is one of the best powder blushes I’ve used in a long time. I love cream and liquid blushes so much that a powder blush has basically got to feed Africa, calculate the square root of 2139, and name all fifty state capitals in alphabetical order before it can tempt me. I went several rounds with this blush in the store, visiting it over the course of a couple weeks and testing it. With a lot of effort, I managed to convince myself it wasn’t worth buying. “Too sparkly,” I said, and “remember you don’t like powder blushes anymore,” I said, and “stupid Guerlain Blush G, being so awesome.” Well, only that last one is really true.

It’s not too sparkly, which is nice. It’s a lovely shade of pink, more pigmented than I thought it would be from the swatch, but lighter in pigmentation than most Chanel blushes, which is a good thing. Still, the first time I used it, I almost ended up with Crazy Clown Cheeks. There is a bit of shimmer, but it’s very subtle — and I am paranoid about shimmer on cheeks, so if even I think it’s OK, you are probably good to go. It wore remarkably well all day, much better than some of my other powder blushes.

Color-wise, it is definitely cool (I’m speaking of the color you get when you mix all the stripes together), but not untenable for warm-toned beauties. There is a bit of melon in the bottom stripes, so if you want a slightly peachier tint you can finagle the brush in there accordingly.

If you want it, get it now. Seriously, FLYING off shelves.

Close-up and swatch!

I had to pile it on fairly thickly for the swatch so that it would really show up.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chanel Blush Horizon de Chanel Blush Éclat Douceur: $58

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Poor. Come on, I love Chanel, but $58 for a blush is outrageous.

Purchase again? Hopefully I will never hit pan.

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

 

Review: Benefit Watt’s Up! Highlighter

By Voxy  |  2012/01/18 21:20 Posted in Makeup, Product Reviews, shimmer  |  Comments (2)

OMG, you guys, I have picked up so many unexpectedly fabulous products lately that I can’t stop squeeing as I put on my makeup in the morning. If you hear a sound like a stuck pig coming from somewhere in the Midwest, that’s me.

I also feel a little bit guilty about it because I’ve bought a couple of things from brands I’ve previously decried — and what’s worse, I like them. Oh, bad Voxy. Hopefully you will be able to forgive me. And by the way, that doesn’t mean these brands are back in my good graces. It’s the “even a stopped clock is right twice a day” phenomenon. One of these is Benefit. I KNOW! I hate Benefit. Hate ‘em. Except for a couple of products — and not their famous ones, either. Here is one of those stopped-clock products: their Watt’s Up! highlighter.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: no matter how you slice it, this product name is improperly punctuated. It’s either a question (“What’s up?” -> “Watt’s up?”), in which case it should have a question mark, or it’s an exclamation (implying that “watts” may be used in the same way “volume” is used: turn up the volume -> turn up the watts -> watts up!), in which case it shouldn’t have an apostrophe. Of course, you don’t say “turn up the decibels,” which are units of loudness, so I don’t know why you would say “turn up the watts” either. I have a feeling that they were going for the first option, a play on “what’s up?”, but that their marketing people told them that exclamation! points! are! more! exciting! than! question! marks!!!!!! — and they probably figured no one would notice. Or care. Which is pretty much true, except for those of us here in this corner of the interwebz. Stay strong, ladies. Don’t let the haters bring you down.

Watt’s Up (I refuse to put in the exclamation point) is a cream highlighter, a type of product which up until now I have had zero use for. I couldn’t figure out why, if we spend money and energy on products that are supposed to make our faces less shiny, we would then want to turn around and buy another product to make them shiny again. And I don’t really understand the whole “it’s not shine, it’s GLOW” euphemism. There are plenty of celebrities whose skin in photos is described by the media as “glowy” and by me as “a giant sweaty oil slick.”

So why I ever picked this up in the store and tested it on my hand is kind of a mystery. But I did — and it was a lovely shade somewhere between peach and champagne, and not terribly shiny glowy. I am fair-skinned and highlighters have, in the past, given me something of a Tin Man look, which is frankly unappealing except as a Halloween getup. This looked like it actually might work on my skin. Maybe now I would be able to enter the Elysian Fields of highlighter love, in which lissome models scamper about with glowy skin, frolicking with butterflies. (I think this is also where they film perfume commercials.)

Alas, no Elysian Fields guest pass included. BUT this has turned out to be a really nice product, especially once I figured out how to apply it. Often, People Who Know About Makeup will say that highlighter should be applied last, but this inevitably leads to Shiny Tin Man Face for me. What has worked nicely for me with this product is to put it on over my foundation (cream/liquid/stick) but before my setting powder. This way I can blend it into the foundation, and then the setting powder takes the edge off the shine. One end of the applicator is a little round sponge, which you can use for blending. The other end of the applicator is the highlighter itself, which is a creamy stick of product the same diameter as the small/deluxe-sample Tarte cheek stains.

The other big problem with highlighter is where to apply. Conventional wisdom says some combination of the following: above the cheekbones, above the brows, below the brows, on the temple, on the forehead, on your nose, on your Cupid’s bow, and under the lip. I usually use it in only three of these places: above the cheekbone, below the brows, and either on my Cupid’s bow or below my lips. One or the other, not both. If my face were more angular, and my forehead and nose smaller, I might try it other places, but as it is, highlighting those areas doesn’t do much for me. But above the cheekbone at the end of the orbital socket, it’s very nice.

If you’ve been curious about highlighters, but don’t really know where or how to use them, this is a good product for experimenting with. I was really surprised by how much I liked it.

Swatch!

See? Subtle. Nice!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Benefit Watt’s Up! (!) highlighter: $30

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. $30 is $30, and a highlighter is really an optional product. I wish it were cheaper.

Purchase again? Probably won’t need to.

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

Review: LORAC Co-Stars Long-Wearing Lip Color in French Kiss, Hot Kiss, Steamy Kiss

By Voxy  |  2012/01/02 19:33 Posted in lip gloss, lipstick, Product Reviews  |  Comments (2)

Geez, I need a cigarette just after typing the title of the review. And I don’t even smoke.

I’ve had two of these clunking around in my lipstick drawer for awhile: French Kiss and Hot Kiss — which is why the brushes on those two are clearly not entirely white in the top photo. Sorry; I normally don’t photograph used products, but I had forgotten just how good they were until I came across them the other day. And since ULTA is having a sale through 1/21/12 and these LORAC Co-Stars are reduced in price to $9.99 from their normal price of $20, at 50% off you should definitely consider picking up a few.

Like most iterations of the “long-wearing” variety of lip color, this is a double-ended wand with a stain on one end and a gloss on the other. You apply the stain first, then gloss. Ideally, the only maintenance they should need throughout the day is a gloss touch-up, but  if you need it to perform perfectly from 8 am to midnight, you’ll probably want to touch up the stain as well as the gloss at some point. These formulas tend to be pretty effective at delivering long-lasting color, but the danger is that they tend to be drying on lips. These avoid that pitfall pretty well. There’s no way you could  call them “moisturizing,” at least not with a straight face, but they’re reasonably comfortable to wear; I find these more comfortable than MAC’s Pro Longwear Lipcolor by a long shot. And besides, it gives you such a good reason to expand your lip balm collection. (See? I’m helping. I’m a helper.)

French Kiss is a dusty rose, Hot Kiss is a terracotta color, and Steamy Kiss is a pinkish red — vivid but not blinding. French Kiss and Hot Kiss photograph more similarly than they appear in life, so I’ve put a few comparison photos in at the end.

Application is reasonably easy; the stain end has a doe-foot wand and the gloss end has a brush. Because the color is a stain, you will want to be careful applying around the edges of your lips; lip pencil helps a lot here. The stain on all three of the ones I own is very long-lasting indeed. It wears pretty evenly for the most part; the French Kiss is closest to my natural lip color so when that one starts to wear it’s not very noticeable. Hot Kiss starts to look a bit patchy after about 5 or 6 hours, which is still pretty darn good. I’ve just bought Steamy Kiss, so I haven’t tested its all-day wear yet, but school is starting again, so that’ll happen soon. In any event, you will definitely get a full evening’s wear out of it (or an MLA interview, just sayin’) with no touch-ups and no smearing.

Since the colors are almost opaque, they apply pretty true to the color that’s in the tube, which is a nice surprise. You don’t have to use LORAC’s gloss, of course; you can use any one you like. I haven’t noticed any difference in performance between LORAC’s gloss and any of my regular go-to products.

Swatches!

French Kiss:

Hot Kiss:

Hand swatch. L-R: French Kiss, Hot Kiss, Steamy Kiss:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LORAC Co-Stars Long-Wearing Lip Color: $20 (on sale through 1/21/12 for $9.99 at ULTA)

Provenance: Purchased

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair if full price; excellent if on sale!

Purchase again? Yes. More colors plz.

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


Review: Kat von D Foiled Lipstick in Adora

By Voxy  |  2011/11/06 21:39 Posted in lipstick, Product Reviews, red lipstick  |  Comments (2)

Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder, once opined that women buy lipstick during shaky economic times as a quick and inexpensive way to make themselves feel better. (I think he meant “inexpensive” as compared to, say, a fur coat, not an ice cream cone.)

Although things now are economically better than they were a few years ago, retail makeup therapy still works an awful lot of the time, especially in or after stressful situations. I recently had one of these, and we don’t need to go into details except that it involved me and three other cars and everyone is OK. Also, buy Toyota.

So after a harrowing experience, I think it’s totally natural to have indulged in a little lip splurge, even though yes, yes, Sephora is just about to have a VIB 20% off sale and wouldn’t it have been smarter to wait until next weekend. To which I say, “Pthhhhbbbttt,” and “Pffffffft,” and “shut up, I was just in a car accident and I will buy whatever I like.”

This lippie wasn’t originally on my to-buy list, though I did swatch it in the store when I did those red lippie swatches a few weeks ago, but it was awfully cheerful, and the person I was with swore it wasn’t too bright for me. (You may make your own decision below. Most of the time I’ll end up buffering it with a gloss of some sort, because really it is very bright.)

Kat von D “foiled” lipsticks are so named because they have a metallic finish. It’s a pity Kat wasn’t making these in the 80s, because I think Pat Benatar would have happily worn this onto the battlefield, or at least in the music video. I think she and Joan Jett might have gotten in a catfight over them.

Adora is what I would call a light red. That is not the same as pink, although in both the hand and lip swatch photos I took, it pulls distinctly pink. When I look at myself in the same lighting, it’s clearly red. Yes, it’s a blue-based red, but it’s definitely red. The metallic finish not so much a frost or a chromelike gleam but rather a sheen, like stainless steel. Because of the finish, I can’t call it either matte or glossy. It’s neither drying nor particularly moisturizing on the lips.

I haven’t given it an all-day go yet, but these foiled lippies stain like nobody’s business, so I would be very surprised not to get several hours’ wearlength out of this. The swatch I put on my hand for the picture below was on my hand for maybe five minutes in total and left a pink stain that hours later I haven’t been able to get rid of even with diligent scrubbing. On the lip, after I removed what I’d put on for a lip swatch, I got beautiful results by putting balm over the remaining stain. Although it looks terrifyingly bright when applied full-force, it turns out to be surprisingly versatile when coupled with other products. It would also make a gorgeous, gorgeous blush if you needed a quick touch-up. (You will, obviously, want to apply very lightly!)

Swatches!

Hand swatch:

(This definitely pulls pink in the swatch. In real life it is redder.)

Naked lip:

Lip with Kat von D Foiled Lipstick in Adora:

(Sorry, I was a little crooked there. Oops.)

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kat von D Foiled Love Lipstick in Adora: $18 at Sephora

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Good. Less expensive than many other similarly-positioned brands.

Purchase again? Sure, if I found another color that worked for me.

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


 

Some Red Lipstick Swatches

By Voxy  |  2011/10/09 20:21 Posted in lipstick, Makeup, red lipstick  |  Comments (6)

For those of you from Over There who have been asking about red lipstick, I thought I would swatch some when I was at Sephora the other day. After seeing all of these on my hand, the friend who was with me said something to the effect of, “you know, they all look pretty much the same, don’t they?” and I had to say “yes, yes they do.”

There are a couple of pictures in different lighting, none of which are studio or light-box quality. For reference, my skin tone is NW20 in MAC, which is medium fair and pink-toned.

 

 

The third picture (the unlabeled one) is probably the one that shows the texture/opacity of the various shades the best. The two on the far right on the bottom “row” (I use the term loosely) are the two foiled lipsticks from Kat von D. Adora is a bright but light red; Beranice is pinker. Of all of these, those two left the most stain, even a full day and several hand-washings later.

I know these swatches are messy and untidy, but I thought they might be useful. And I do intend to buy one of these that I swatched, but you’ll have to guess which. ;)

Review: bareMinerals Pretty Amazing Lipcolor in Courage

By Voxy  |  2011/06/14 09:29 Posted in lipstick, Product Reviews  |  Comments (0)

Gee, do you think bareMinerals took (let’s say “borrowed”) a page from Bobbi Brown in terms of product titling? Bobbi Brown Spring 2011: “Pretty Powerful” campaign; bareMinerals Summer 2011: “Pretty Amazing” lipcolor. Huh. Pretty Suspicious, if you ask me.

People tend to be either lovers or haters when it comes to bareMinerals. As usual, I am the outlier. I really like some products and really dislike others. (Love: bareMinerals Multi-Tasking Face powder concealer in Bisque and SPF 15 Matte Foundation — even though I have to buy two different shades and mix them together to get a match for my skin tone. Hate: Original “dewy” SPF 15 Foundation, All-Over Face Color [no "face color" should be "all-over"], pretentious capitalization.)

I’m mostly on the bM bandwagon for the “Pretty Amazing” lipcolor. I have maybe one foot trailing on the ground in terms of caveats, but I’m mostly on the wagon. At the mo’ there are eight shades of this liquid lipcolor available, in colors ranging from bold to bright to unwearable. (Srsly, who looks good in ghostly pink? No one. Sorry, MAC Viva Glam Gaga — NO ONE looks good in this color.) Do NOT buy this product unswatched. And don’t buy based solely on some swatches you saw on the internet (including here). Go to the store — Sephora, ULTA, a bareMinerals store, wherever — and swatch it on yourself. These lipcolors are almost opaque, and when you see how that color that sounds so lovely really looks on your skin, you may be surprised. “Courage” was not the shade I intended to buy, but it was one of only two shades that were wearable for me. The one I’d originally had in mind would have looked fuglicious.

It’s a comfortable product to wear — not drying like some longwear lipcolors can be, and the wearlength is really very good (at least four hours in my timed trial, after which point I forgot to keep checking). Touchups or a midmorning dollop of gloss are not strictly necessary but do help the color wear evenly. Blotchiness as the product wears off is a built-in problem for opaque lipcolor, but these manage it reasonably well. Because they are so opaque, you’ll have to finesse it with lip pencil if you don’t want a hard lip line, and you’ll have to find a color that really matches. (For “Courage,” I’ll recommend UD 24/7 lip liner pencil in Paranoid, and not just because I like the juxtaposition of those two words.)

And speaking of the juxtaposition of words, I have to share with you the bM blurb about the product.

“The innovative hydrating glaze of our Pretty Amazing Lipcolor cocoons your lips in opaque high-impact lipcolor. The cushiony texture, insatiable shine and seriously polished appearance will propel you into an elevated state of gorgeousness. And our precision applicator handles like a racecar, cornering, sculpting and accentuating every curve of your luscious lips for enduring color with real staying power. Pretty Amazing.”

1. What is “high-impact” lipcolor? Is it like high-impact aerobics? Do I need to buy it sneakers and a Jane Fonda leotard?
2. “Insatiable shine.” What? What is that? You know that “insatiable” already has a meaning, right? And that in this context, that meaning makes no sense? Right. Just checking.
3. This is my favorite bit. The applicator handles like a racecar. Let me guess: it zooms around your mouth at speeds of up to 200 mph, you can only move the applicator to the left, and if you get bumped by the person next to you at the ladies’ room mirror while you’re applying, you will flip over and die in a ball of fire. (P.S.: “Cornering” also has a meaning — several, in fact, and none of them is appropriate to putting on lipcolor.)

Swatches!

Naked lip:

Lip with bareMinerals Pretty Amazing Lipcolor in Courage:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

bareMinerals Pretty Amazing Lipcolor in Courage: $16 for 0.13 oz

Provenance: Purchased.

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

Purchase again? Probably, but they’ll have to come out with some more shades that are wearable.

UPDATE! Bare Escentuals is having a Friends & Family sale from Thursday 6/16 through Sunday 6/19. Get 20% off with code LOVE at checkout.

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

Review: Hourglass Extreme Sheen High Shine Lip Gloss in Siren, Truth, Primal

By Voxy  |  2011/06/08 21:18 Posted in lip gloss, Product Reviews  |  Comments (2)

I’m not quite sure what to make of Hourglass, and I’m not sure Hourglass is quite sure what to make of Hourglass either. Which is probably part of the problem.

For the record, the problem doesn’t seem to be with the quality of the products themselves, but with the packaging and marketing strategies. You know the saying “a camel is a horse that was designed by a committee”? Yeah, well, most of Hourglass’ products seem to be packed in camels. Fortunately they don’t spit at you when you open them.

Packaging, which includes not just the swankiness of the box the thing comes in but also the design of the product container and the delivery mechanism, the choice of typefaces and graphic elements, and the overall look and presentation of the product, should be an visual translation of the brand message. Well, not “should be,” I guess — it is a visual translation of the brand message. Based on the unholy mess of design elements going on, the brand message that Hourglass seems to be sending at the moment is “We’re confused.” And given the price point on most of Hourglass’ products, “confused” is something they really cannot afford to be.

They have a certain typeface for the brand name. It’s sort of Art Nouveau. Great. But this appears to be just a logotype or wordmark — it is used consistently for the brand name when the brand name is imprinted on products, but nothing else in the packaging uses that font. But OK, I’m now prepared to see Hourglass as Art Nouveau: curvaceous, slightly decadent, sensual, Maxfield Parrish, you get the idea.

Then we see the words “extreme sheen” that are written in Gothic blackletter. Uh, wait. Didn’t we just say Art Nouveau? Curvaceous? Decadent? That doesn’t go with blackletter at all. Plus, Kat von D sort of already cornered the market with blackletter product names. See?

So you’re Art Nouveau and also … goth? Or, wait, you want to be Kat von D. Or, you didn’t do your research. Either way, you already have two animals in your design cage that don’t play well together (one of which immediately makes me think of another company, which is probably not a good marketing ploy).

Then there’s a third typeface on the front of the package (you now have at least one too many by most design standards), and it’s a plain sans-serif — in all caps for some reason, which just adds to the confusion, especially since the “extreme sheen” portion is all lowercase. What’s that doing there? And which way do you mean for me to hold the darn box? If I hold it horizontally, I can read the brand name and your sans-serif text. If I hold it vertically, I can read the “extreme sheen” portion of the product name and the fact that it is 7 g/0.24 oz.

I don’t think I should really have to choose, do you?

On to the product container itself: OK, going with the darkened copper chrome for the cap, very sophisticated. But did it occur to you that that color looks pretty gosh-darn awful when it’s butted up against any shade of pink or red, which are largely the colors of the glosses we’re going to see in that tube? Also, did you copy your product design from Urban Decay? It’s got the length of a Lip Junkie gloss but the flatness of a Pocket Rocket. (To your credit, at least yours don’t have pictures of men in their underwear on them, so yay you.)

On the other hand, I do see that you’re trying to create a package that has a different feel to it than any other. The UD glosses are squeezy tubes while yours is rigid and comes with a flattened doe-foot applicator. OK, I give you points for effort. But you know how I can tell which gloss is the Hourglass one when I reach into my bag — which routinely contains, on average, 18 lip products? It’s the one that keeps slipping out of my hands because it’s an unwieldy shape. It’s therefore the last one I pull out, so if I’m at all impatient, I’ve already decided something else in my bag will do and I stop hunting. I see, by the way, that this wasn’t the original package design for the extreme sheen HIGH SHINE LIP GLOSS (hey, just want to be sure I get your capitalization correct). I therefore conclude that you went to this one because you thought it was an improvement.

I also think that you went to this packaging to mimic the look of your other gloss, the Prodigy hydrating lip gloss. This one, for readers who have not seen it, is roughly the height and width of a credit card, and less than 1/2″ thick at its thickest point (like the extreme sheen HIGH SHINE LIP GLOSS, it tapers at both ends). Apparently, Hourglass touts the shape as being “perfectly contoured to fit into the palm of the hand” — because that’s where I hold a lipgloss when I’m applying it, in my palm — and also mentions it could be discreetly slipped into a pocket. Because:

a) I buy pants that have pockets on the ass
b) I would want to keep something in those pockets on my ass
c) What I would really like to keep in the pocket on my ass is LIPGLOSS.

And no, it’s not any better if you are talking about pockets in the front. Other bloggers may have been drawn in by the packaging hype, but I’m not one of those other bloggers, and the audience for this blog isn’t like the audience for other blogs. Someone needs to give the marketing folks a serious talking to. (The website, by the way, is another design disaster, for some of the same reasons. A high-end line needs to aim higher than that.)

Now that the marketing folks are done cringing, let me get on to the portion of the review that will make the product developers and formulators happy — it’s a great lip gloss. Really. I like it very much. It’s non-sticky and it smells like cake batter. So that just wins me over right there.

I purchased it in Siren first and then went back for two more shades, Truth and Primal. Siren, pictured at the top of the page, is fire-engine red. When worn on its own, it’s easy to get opaque coverage (actually, when worn on its own, it’s hard not to get opaque coverage). It wears well and doesn’t stain, which is surprising given how bright the color is. I can easily see adding it to my red-lippie rotation during the holiday season; right now I primarily wear it by dotting it on top of another lippie or gloss, which kicks up the color of what’s underneath and lets me get a more sheer version of Siren. In this role it is very versatile and I’ve been wearing it a lot.

Truth is a MLBB shade; it’s very close to my natural lip color and also wears very well. Because it’s so close to my natural lip color, I should probably wear a lip pencil under it to be sure that there’s no visual bleed effect at the lip line. (I didn’t do that in the photo below.)

Primal is a very lovely raspberry color. It will be excellent in the late summer and fall to get you through that weird period where summer things no longer feel quite right but you’re not ready for wine-colored lipsticks or blackberry glosses.

Wearlength on all three of these colors is pretty good. So, overall, the packaging has some identity issues, but what’s inside it is worth buying.

Swatches!

Siren (and by the way you have no idea how difficult it was to get this picture, since the tube has a beveled edge that makes it near impossible to balance it on the edge by itself, let alone with a box on top of it — if the whole blogging thing doesn’t work out, maybe I could make a living stacking Zen rocks):

Hand swatch of Siren:

Hand swatch of Truth (L), Primal (R). I swear the above and below photos are of the same hand in the same light tent. Still workin’ on those skillz.

Naked lip:

Lip with Siren:

Lip with Truth:

Lip with Primal:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hourglass Extreme Sheen high Shine Lip Gloss in Siren, Truth, Primal: $28

Provenance: Purchased

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

Purchase again? Yes, but I really hope they put some serious thought into branding and design.

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

Review: Make Up For Ever Aqua Liner in #3 (Emerald Green)

By Voxy  |  2011/06/05 11:56 Posted in eyeliner, Product Reviews  |  Comments (0)

I never learn.

In spite of my avowed disaffection for liquid eyeliners, I have managed, somehow, to buy five of them in the last six weeks. Because, you know, this one will be different. This one won’t dry into a shrunken vinyl mess that clings to my lashline with more determination than Romeo to the corpse of Juliet.

(Unnecessarily macabre?)

And, I suppose, technically inaccurate to boot, since she’s actually still alive when he finds her in her tomb… but, as usual, I digress. The point, if there is one, is that like those of our star-crossed lovers, my hopes for joyful union with Make Up For Ever’s new Aqua Liners must perforce end in tragedy.

OK, I am being a little melodramatic. There’s really not much wrong with these liners, but unfortunately that’s as much rah-rah as I can muster.

Like many of the newer liquid liners, MUFE’s version has a tapered application tip that’s not actually a brush as much as … well, a sort of felt marker tip. It is relatively inflexible, so if you want a product with an actual applicator brush, one that you can really work with control-wise, this is not the product for you. Unfortunately, those kinds of brushes are becoming more and more endangered by the second. I should start a sanctuary.

The formulation is more-or-less the same as that of other liquid liners, although it does have a kind of nifty quick-fix feature that will allow you to correct a mistake in the few seconds before it dries. If you end up getting product where you don’t want it, it can be removed while still wet with a Q-tip — or, if necessary, a finger. And the removal (at this stage, at least) is easy and clean: it’ll actually brush away in a sort of powder residue, like eraser shavings or dry-erase marker fuzz. Once dry, it does shrink up against the lashline as many long-wearing waterproof formulas do.

It will, indeed, last all day. I didn’t try swimming with it on or putting my face in a puddle to test its waterproof-ness, but from the above-mentioned death grip it has on your lashline, I don’t think mere water could do it in. But now we come to the main problem — removal. It will come off with cleanser and water, or with makeup remover, but you have to be very persistent, which can cause a lot of eye irritation — and you will probably give up before you get all of it off. It comes off in rubbery (vinyl-y?) little strings, and you can easily take out an eyelash along with the liner while you’re at it, so I advise caution.

MUFE’s Aqua Liners come in 16 shades, of which only 15 are available in the US (#2 is missing). The colors range from standard (including three shades of black) to outrageous (red, hot pink, diamond white). Several colors are disappointingly muddy when applied to skin: the dark blue and the dark purple look so much like black that I didn’t bother with them. I picked #3, Emerald Green, because green is a color I don’t have in liquid liner form.

If you’re dead set on picking up a liquid liner for long-wear in hot summer days, I’d advise that you skip these unless there is a color in the lineup that you feel you absolutely have to have. I’ll have a review coming up later in the week of one of the other brands of liquid liners I’ve tried that I’d recommend over these, so stay tuned to find out which those are!

Swatch!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MAKE UP FOR EVER Aqua Liner in #3 (Emerald Green): $23 at Sephora (exclusive retailer)

Provenance: Purchased.

Price/Value Ratio (mid/high-end: poor/fair/good/excellent): Fair. If you don’t really love the colors, skip ‘em.

Purchase again? Nope.

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