Just a quick primer regarding my infrequent and irregular posts: If you missed my earlier post (you can read it here), the quick summation is that someone very close to me has been through a lot of medical trials and tribulations which has basically taken up most of my time. To add to it, someone else has also fallen ill on and off and I have pretty much just been trying to hold on to some semblance of sanity. Things have been improving since it all began about a week before Thanksgiving, but there’s still a long road ahead. So posts may be quite patchy and not up to the normal standard I would hope to hold myself to. On the upswing, my family finally had a chance to celebrate Christmas together this last week and we all had a really nice time. But let’s get into the actual interesting stuff!
I’m not quite sure how I managed to snag this first item before it sold out later that day on Sephora, but I had heard about the new NARS All Day Luminous Weightless Foundation and knew I needed to try it. I actually hated the Sheer Glow, but this sounded completely different – and it is. My first impression was that it was freakin’ fantastic! I never rely on my initial reaction though and after trying it a few more times, I’m not as convinced that it’s spectacular. It is definitely good, but I’m not sure it’s my new must have foundation. It is definitely weightless, wears incredibly well, looks quite natural with pretty impressive coverage (not sure how that’s possible, but it looks like skin, while having great coverage. Weird!) However, it can be kind of tricky to apply. Fingers are definitely the way to go with this foundation, which is actually my preferred method of application anyway. My main waffle is whether it looks cakey and if it settles into my pores. I can’t decide...so the testing continues! J
Underneath the NARS Foundation I’ve been trying something that I actually had no interest in when I purchased it. That sounds weird, but Wet n Wild has a Prep & Prime Set out right now that I wanted to try for the Primer in the set. Well, I have yet to touch the primer, but surprised myself by grabbing the cream Coverall Correcting Palette. Specifically the green shade. Yup. Green. J Since I always seem to have stubborn redness from prior or current breakouts, I’m always desperate to find a better way to hide it. Layers of concealer are time consuming and can look heavy and often draw even more attention to the problem. I have always known that green concealers are intended to correct such issues, but I have had a definite fear of trying them. For some unknown reason, I just grabbed the pretty colored wheel of thick cream correctors to just see how it went. Well, I’m impressed! Definitely helps disguise the redness quickly and effectively, but since this is my first go with green correctors, I’m hesitant to say that this particular one is worth raving about. That began a quest for other green products to make me look even scarier for a few minutes. J So the testing continues….
Hourglass has released their new Modernist Eye Shadow Palettes, which are just stunning to look at. I watched a rave review from Wayne Goss (check him out if you haven’t already – he knows his sh*t!) and decided I had to try them. It was insanely difficult to pick a color palette, but I finally settled on the Monochrome. It’s really beautiful to look at and the shadows blend like a dream. However, they are really powdery. A lot of product is kicked up from just a subtle touch of the brush. I feel like the shadow itself won’t last very long and the looks this particular palette (and I’m guessing most of them) creates are very natural and almost a no-makeup kind of look. I really like the looks I’ve done and I love the blendability of the shadows, I’m just not sure that the price tag is justified. For $58, I kind of want more. On the fence here.
For lips, I’ve gone back to a product I tried months ago and wasn’t terribly impressed by. I’m not sure why I decided to give it another go, but I did and I’ve been loving it! I’m just not 100% convinced it works better than everything else in this category. I should mention what it is, huh? J It’s the Paula’s Choice Lip Perfecting Gentle Scrub with Micro-Beads. I feel like it works better than sugar scrubs for exfoliating the lips, and I actually find it kind of grossly satisfying to see the dead skin just flaking right off my lips. It’s working wonders, but I may have managed to over do it one day to the point of having my lips bleed…not good either, but I’m not certain that it was the product’s fault. So still on the fence. Apparently they are trying to reformulate it as well to use jojoba beads instead of polyethylene microbeads because the plastic beads currently used are not good for the environment. Not happy about bad-for-the-environment ingredients, but not convinced that jojoba beads will work as well. So again, we’ll see.
Finally is a skin care product. It is the Moroccan Lava Rose-Vedic Blemish Relief Mask from Shea Terra Organics that claims to purify skin, heal acne, regenerate skin to heal blemishes faster and basically just clear up your skin. I’ve only used it 2 or 3 times, but I will say that I feel like it is definitely helping…a lot! I can’t make up my mind on a skincare product so quickly though, so I must keep using it. It also kind of burns a bit as it dries, but it’s not unbearable to me. It is definitely too intense for some, but I swear that the redness from prior breakouts is rapidly diminishing and I don’t really have much in the way of active breakouts right now. Yea for that, but I’m not sure I can completely attribute it to this though. I will gladly continue slapping on this mud-laced concoction until I make up my mind though! J
So there you have a quick round up of some products that I’ve been giving the old college try, as my dad would say. Let me know if you’ve tried any of these products and how you feel about them…I need to catch up on comments too! So much to do, so little time and energy. Grrrr! Anyway, if you’ve had experience with anything or are currently testing something too, I’d love to hear about it! Also, let me know if you like this kind of post. I’m trying to include more variety on the blog, but struggle for ideas that don’t make me feel like I just ripped the idea off of someone else’s blog. I hope this was enjoyable and helpful in some fashion. Hopefully I will have a few favorites to write about next week and will get it up in time! J Fingers crossed. Until then, thanks so much for stopping by and I hope to see you all again soon!!! J