Makeup

Worth it? Color Switch by Vera Mona

by

I picked up the Color Switch by Vera Mona during the most recent BI sale. I find myself using the same few brushes again and again, even in the same look. Wiping brushes off on a tissue doesn’t do much, and although I love Cinema Secrets, I don’t want to use it in my brushes every day I wear makeup.

Okay, but what is it?

The $18 Color Switch is a tin filled with a disc-shaped, rough mesh sponge not unlike the material used in a bun ring . As bristles are drawn across the surface, product is jostled away and falls down into the cells of the sponge.

There is a slightly smaller $14 one as well.

Does it Work?

Read more

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

by

This is a legacy post that I’ve given a facelift because who doesn’t want to be warned about shockingly bad foundation? Opinions are the same, but is formatted and edited for easier reading and flow.

I wore Nars Sheer Matte on my wedding day, and while it photographed beautifully, it was heavy. I felt it all evening. NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation came out earlier this year (2015) and, as it often happens, the blogger and vlogger world was abuzz. I saw a lot of positive feedback about the product (go figure).

I didn’t put any stock in it because it seems when a notable brand comes out with something new, everyone is hyped over it. Oh, and unlike its sisters Sheer Glow and Sheer Matte it has a damn pump – so that’s nice. I hadn’t seen amazing results on other people, though, so I ignored it.

NARS All Day Luminous Weightless FoundationNARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation

Skeptical Match

Fast forward to June, I had a wedding to attend to and a faux tan thanks to self-tanning…and no foundation that matched. I ventured to Sephora, did the silly ColorIQ thing and spent a lot of time with the ladies there trying to sort out my shade. I told them I prefer MUFE HD and UD, but could do NARS Sheer Matte. Instead, they matched me to NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation because I didn’t have a shade in the others. She assured me that it was fine for oily skin, can be applied with a brush or sponge without issue, photographs well, etc.

Application

I applied the product with a Sigma F80 flat-top kabuki on top of Benefit Porefessional; fairly standard procedure for special event makeup. I noticed that although it did not have the consistency of the Sheer Matte, NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation was on the heavier side. It also required significant effort to blend…and like the Sheer Matte, I had to bust out a beautyblender to help me do so. I set with translucent powder (Rimmel Stay Matte, what I always use) and Urban Decay All-Nighter – again, standard procedure for me for makeup that needs to last.

Wear

The ceremony was outdoors at 5PM (about 15 minutes after I finished painting my face), and brief; the weather was pleasant, not raining or even stiflingly humid. My husband and I headed in for the cocktail hour and he noticed that the foundation was:

  • Breaking up at my jawline
  • Beaking up between my eyes and
  • that it was making a dry patch (that I usually have NO ISSUE with) near my nose awkwardly visible.

I checked it out, and it wasn’t looking good – all the things my husband noticed were definitely the case, and more; it had settled into my smile lines and the lines on my forehead. I tried to blot it, thinking, “Maybe I’m just a bit on the oily side today,” nope – I’m wasn’t, a ton of foundation smeared and lifted when I blotted. I remained blotchy. What the hell?!

Read more

Lorac PRO Palettes, Compared

by

The Lorac PRO was my first palette. I still have it, and it is a workhorse. I loved it so much that I purchased, without question, Lorac PRO 2 and Lorac PRO 3, which later had posts.

I don’t own any of the Mega PRO palettes; I am more than a bit jaded on mega palettes and holiday palettes at this point. Now, I’ve owned all (regular) PRO palettes for a while and have had time to put them through their paces.

The Original, $44Lorac PRO Palettes, Compared

My first and for several months only palette once I got into makeup, the first Lorac PRO palette served me extraordinarily well. As a neutral, light-to-medium-at-most skintone, it had everything I needed to handle work, evening, weddings, etc. Garnet looks incredible applied with a wet brush.

Read more

Unpopular Opinion: On Urban Decay Druggie at Sephora

by

Over the past week, I’ve seen entirely too many articles decrying Sephora for selling an eyeshadow named, “Druggie.” I anticipate my opinion on this matter to be fairly unpopular – and while I welcome dissent and discussion in the comments, let’s keep it civil.

Making Light of It

Those upset say that the shade name is insensitive; that it makes light of the losses so many have experienced related to addiction. There’s even a Change.org petition with over a thousand signatures begging Sephora to pull the shade. They even go so far as to suggest alternate names.

Urban Decay Druggie

Interestingly enough, these articles and people are largely targeting Sephora, like they made the damn shade name. Fun fact, people: Sephora doesn’t own Urban Decay or Urban Decay Druggie eyeshadow or the After Dark palette. Efforts would be better focused there, or at their parent company, L’Oreal.

Read more

2016 Favorites

by

I’m sticking to last year’s annual favorites format because it worked well.

2016 Favorites - Garnier & Simple Micellar Water

Garnier Micellar Water, $7; Simple Micellar Water, $8

If I had to pick a single type of product to name as a favorite in 2016, I’d have to say micellar water is it. I like both of these and purchase whichever is a better value at the time. I’ve totally given up makeup wipes in favor of using this with cotton pads or a reusable makeup removing cloth.

Pantene Pro-V Stylers Mousse, $6

This mousse is my, “daily driver.” Out of the (average) 135 days per year I blow-dry my hair, this product is in my hair at least 95 of them. (The remaining ~40 is either hyper-lazy, product-free, or calls for the big guns.) It is accessible, inexpensive, and reliable – and it works well on my hair.

Gimme Brow

Read more

MISSHA Perfect Cover BB Cream

by

MISSHA Perfect Cover

MISSHA Perfect Cover BB Cream

I was obsessed with a now-discontinued, American BB (or, you know, a tinted moisturizer being a poser). You may have seen one of my twelve thousand references to it. I’m now out of my backup stash. Although Naked Skin Foundation in 3.25 worked for me in summer, it doesn’t now – and I’ve decided to approach sunless tanning in a more casual fashion anyway. What came to mind was MISSHA Perfect Cover BB Cream – from Korea, it’s legit, and highly rated for a reason. You can get it stateside from Target ($22) or MISSHA’s site (same price usually, on sale at the moment), but I decided to take a chance on saving money and buy mine from Amazon Marketplace seller BeautyBest LLC.

The Packaging

The Box

…is a shiny, metallic gold and brown with normal things you’d expect on a product box. There’s a mix of Korean and English, and certainly enough of the latter for an English-speaking consumer to make sense of. Drug facts and ingredients are listed in English, too. I find it frustrating to buy foreign products and lose that easy reference to see if there are ingredients that disagree with you; I’m glad to have missed that with this. Some of the translated sections are a little shaky, but by no means incoherent (looking at you, Elma & Sana).

On the front, beneath the branding, it reads:

MISSHA M Perfect Cover BB Cream offers a novel skincare concept with BB cream which lightens skin tone by healing visible wrinkles and blemishes with excellent skin-cover ability and prevents skin aging through effective whitening and anti-wrinkle properties.

Ingredients are to the left of the front of the packaging, and can be found for each shade here. Other info, including product shade and directions are to the right of the front. The back is nearly 100% Korean. This guide on spotting fakes from SumWearCo is a good reference as well.

The Tube

…is an airless pump. This is exciting! Airless pumps have a few cool advantages:

Read more