Loose Powder

When shopping at Target, I usually take a look at the e.l.f. fixture to see what might catch my eye. Recently, I picked up a set of three eyelid primers for $3.

The primers come in Nude (standard primer color), Pearl (white with shimmer), and Champagne (light brown with shimmer).

The swatches on the left are just the primer while the ones on the right have Everyday Minerals eyeshadow in Laptop over it – the first stripe is the eyeshadow without primer.

I didn’t like these primers at all. Overall, the application was a bit dry and chalky. The Pearl was too shimmery and also was kind of patchy when applied. The Champagne was too dark and I don’t think I’d use it at all. Thankfully, I didn’t spend too much money on these.

How many of you are using eye shadow primers to extend the life of your look for the day? Here’s a look at four primers I’ve been trying, including a new one by Glory Box Cosmetics.

The testing group includes the Glory Box primer, Fyrinnae’s Pixie Epoxy, e.l.f.’s Mineral Primer, and The All Natural Face’s Eyeshadow Primer.

Since, it’s new and I haven’t talked about it before, Glory Box Cosmetics’ TKO Eyeshadow Primer boasts all day wear without creasing. The 7ml tube of white primer applies clear and a tiny amount goes a long way. It goes on feeling slippery, like a silicone face primer, and the company advises that you wait 15-20 seconds before applying your eye shadow.

For the stripe tests, I used Glory Box Cosmetics’ Battersea aqua eye shadow and applied with a brush using the same amount for each stripe.

The first swatch is the eye shadow without primer. Next is Glory Box, then Fyrinnae, e.l.f, and finally The All Natural Face.

The Glory Box and All Natural Face primers both made the color a bit darker and bolder. Glory Box also seemed to bring out more of the shimmer. Fyrinnae’s Pixie epoxy was the next in terms of bringing out the color in the eye shadow, while e.l.f.’s primer didn’t do much but add a lighter base.

I let the swatches sit for about half an hour and then just brushed them lightly a couple times with my hand. This was the result:

Without primer, the eye shadow was mostly gone. The Glory Box primer did about as well as the All Natural Face primer. The e.l.f. primer actually did worse than no primer – it’s almost gone. The best performance came from Fyrinnae’s Pixie Epoxy – there was a bit of shadow lost, but it’s still mostly there.

I did another quick swipe with my  hand a few minutes later:

Again, the Glory Box and All Natural Face primers performed more or less equally. The stripe without primer and he one with e.l.f. primer are both pretty much gone. The Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy performed the best, once again.

My preferred eye shadow primer for long wear is always going to be Fyrinnae’s Pixie Epoxy. For daily use, I would either go with The All Natural Face or Glory Box – even though they didn’t do well on the rubbing test, they work find during the day if you’re not touching your eyelid all the time. I give up on e.l.f. primers.

All of these primers were easily removed with soap & water or your usual make-up remover.

Pixie Epoxy is available from Fyrinnae‘s site (lately it’s been down a lot, but orders still seem to be making it out). The All Natural Face sells their primer on their website and their Etsy shop. Glory Box Cosmetics also has an Etsy shop and the e.l.f. Mineral eye primer is available from their website.

ELF’s Makeup Remover Cleansing Cloths are great for traveling, since they are pretty much all you need to remove your makeup at the end of the day. Another plus is that these remover cloths also remove waterproof makeup and it is not oily.

These cloths are a good size at 7’ x 7’ (18cm x 18 cm). The pre-moistened cloths are very soft and great as you wipe it over your skin. Additionally, there is a nice light scent. When I wipe my eyelids with these cloths, it does not irritate or scratch my skin. Also the aloe extract added into the formula also keeps my skin smooth and soft. I also like that these cloths can be rinsed in water, so you can use it to towel dry or clean any excess makeup or dirt you missed during your first wipe through.

However, there is alcohol in these wipes, so if your skin is sensitive to alcohol, be warned. Aside from that, I recommend these cleansing cloths due to its handiness and effective makeup removing formula as well as its soft cloths.

I use eye pencils as eyeliner for years, and it never occurred to me that sharpeners made a difference because aren’t eye pencils are just pencils with softer tips? With this mentality, I’ve been using a cheap Wet ‘n’ Wild sharpener I got for $0.99. Generally, the sharpener worked… to an extent. But at the time, I was using cheap eyeliner pencils that cost no more than a dollar or two. So if the tips kept breaking and the sharpeners chewed the pencils like a wood chuck, I didn’t really care. But now that I am actually investing money and purchasing better eyeliners, such as, Urban Decay’s 24/7 Glide-on eye pencils, I did not want to have half of my eye pencil eaten up by a faulty sharpener, especially at $17 an eye pencil.

This review is for three sharpeners that I have in my makeup bag, and does price really make a difference in sharpeners?

Wet ‘n’ Wild

I got this sharpener a long time ago. I think the sharpeners that Wet ‘n’ Wild puts out now are silver in color, and I don’t know if they have improved their product or not, but after using this one. I’m not tempted to try even if it is only a couple bucks. However, this is a dual sharpener and has a sharpener for the jumbo eye pencil as well.

This sharpener did its job. It sharpened my eye pencils, but it sharpened the pencils like a regular No. 2 pencil. We’ve all experience the sharpened pencil where one side is the lead and the other is side a wood point, and just when you thought you had about half a centimeter of lead left, you find that you can’t write normally anymore and you have to start writing at a ridiculously odd angle because the sharpener does not sharpen evenly around the pencil.

Now this is a problem for eye pencils because when you’re lining your eyes and reach near the end of the tip, the wood strip at the end can scratch your eyelids, and I’ve done this a bunch of times when I didn’t pay attention to the bluntness of my eye pencils. Believe me, it hurts!

In addition to getting scratched eyelids, this sharpener has a tendency to break the tips while sharpening, and this happened quite often. So often that I would give up and only half sharpen the pencil enough to give me enough of a point to line my eyes, but that problem still led to my eyelids getting scratched. I can’t win!

Maybe Wet ‘n’ Wild has changed the blade in their silver sharpeners, but I won’t be trying it anytime soon unless I get it for free, then maybe I’ll give it a go.

ELF Sharpener

I actually forgot I had this sharpener. I received this sharpener through the ELF “Get the Look” set and just tossed it into my makeup bag and never looked back until now. In fact, I have three of these sharpeners.

Since ELF sells these sharpeners at about $1.00, I assumed they were as bad as the Wet ‘n’ Wild one I have, but since I had them, I thought I’d try them out. These ELF sharpeners are a hit or miss. The first sharpener I grabbed was bad. It did not sharpen at all. I stuck the pencil into the sharpener and twisted and twisted and nothing happened. I even tried pressing the pencil closer to the blade thinking if it “caught” it would start sharpening. No luck. Just as I was about to write off these sharpeners, I remembered I had another one in my bag and tried that one out.

This sharpener looked exactly like the one I just tried, but instead it sharpened my eye pencil like a breeze. It didn’t get stuck, didn’t break the tip, or make a big mess. In fact, I was able to sharpen my eye pencil to a pretty sharp point without any breakage. Also it didn’t sharpen the pencil like a No. 2 pencil, so no scratchy eyelids.

I also tried the third sharpener I had, and that one worked fine as well. So if you want a cheap sharpener, the ELF sharpener is good… if you get one that works. 2 out of 3, I guess those odds are too bad. Another downside is that this sharpener only has one size, so if you have a jumbo eye pencil you’re going to need another sharpener. However, ELF does have a Dual pencil sharpener for sale that comes with two sharpeners for $1.00, which is a great deal. Apparently the ones I have were the “bonus” sharpeners.

Urban Decay: Grind House

After a couple weeks of watching my Urban Decay eye pencils get mutilated, I bit the bullet and bought Grind House. I figured that Urban Decay must make a sharpener that is made for their eye pencils, and they did.

I have never been happier with a sharpener than with Grind House. With just a few twists, my blunt eye pencils were sharp again without any breakage or wooden points to scratch my eyelids. Grind House is basically a sharpener with a built in container to hold the pencil shavings so you don’t have to be standing over a trash can to sharpen your eye pencils. But be warned that the cap is not very tight and can come off if it is being tossed around in your makeup bag or purse, so I recommend emptying the container of shavings before putting it away to prevent shavings littering your bag.

I also like that Grind House comes with two sizes, so my regular eye pencils are covered and so are my jumbo pencils. But I have noticed that for the jumbo pencil side of the sharpener, the plastic point stopper prevents my jumbo pencil from getting too sharp. I would like my jumbo pencils a bit sharper, but this is not a huge problem for me.

At $9 a pop, Grind House is expensive, but it is worth it. Also it has a very interesting design on the cap that includes a butterfly, a heart, a flower, a worm or caterpillar, a skull, and a gun. A perfect design that goes with the Urban Decay brand.

So basically, there are cheap sharpeners that work as well as expensive sharpeners, but just beware “you get what you give”.

Since I’ve been planning on going on vacation for a week, I’ve been looking for alternatives for removing makeup without violating the “no fluids over 3.4 oz.” policy if I wanted to carry my makeup with me. One of the non-liquid solutions I found was ELF’s Nail Polish Remover Pads.

The Nail Polish Remover Pads container is the same shape and size as the Eye Makeup Remover Pads. It contains 18 thin saturated cotton pads. When you open the container, you’re not bombarded with the pungent smell of acetone. Instead you get a nice “fresh citrus scent” which is labeled on the container.

I was trying out a lot of colors I got recently off ebay and I had painted my nails ten different colors. Most of the colors were light and shimmery pastel in color.  There were also some dark blues and glitter in the mix as well. Each nail had about four coats of polish on it, and they were completely dried before I tried removing them.

I used one remover pad and was able to remove all polish on all ten fingers rather cleanly. Though I would recommend using two pads, one for each hand, because when I got to the ninth or tenth finger, it was getting difficult to clean off the polish since the pad was starting to dry.

After cleaning off my nails, I noticed that the remover pad left an oily residue on my fingers, so I had to wash my hands immediately afterwards to remove the oily film.

These nail polish remover pads would have been perfect if it weren’t for the oily residue it left on your hands, but this con is not enough for me to leave it at home when I go on vacation. It’s just a bit inconvenient.

This is less a review and more a post on a look I put together for my trip out to Seattle this month. I wanted something fun and funky, but easy to remove with ELF’s polish remover pads. I also wanted something that wouldn’t look awful when it chipped — meaning no bold, solid colors.

I started off with two coats of Love Letters by China Glaze:

Next, I used BundleMonster fauxnad plate BM20 with Rimmel‘s Lasting Finish Pro in Violet Metal:

And then I used BundleMonster fauxnad plate BM17 with e.l.f. polish in black for a fancy french tip and Bundlemonster BM08 for with the same black polish for an accent:

In the last picture, I’ve applied a coat of Nutra Nail High Gloss Top Coat.

My konad is a little messy in some places, but I like the look overall.  I actually can’t wait to try a full nail application of Rimmel’s Violet Metal – check out that purple flash you get when the light hits it just right!

I’m hoping this mani will last me most of the week before I have to take it off.

Slate blue polish is amazingly difficult to find. Thankfully, Sally Hansen has one for an affordable price: Gray By Gray.

This polish had the same separation/mixing problem that I had with Fairy Teal, but thankfully it didn’t have the staining problem. I was able to get bottle color in two coats and just some edge wear after five days.

The Konad design is BundleMonster plate B21 with e.l.f. polish in black.

Here are some bonus Konad looks I did for friends:

The first is from Konad plate m24. Jessie had already painted her nails that hot pink and applied a clear top coat. Bardi Party wanted the fish bones from BundleMonster plate bm04 on her middle fingers only. They were applied on a clean nail with a top coat over it after stamping.

When I purchased Parlez-Vous OPI, I also ordered a bottle of OPI’s Do You Lilac It? which looked like a similar but more saturated purple.

This color is a very pretty, bright, pastel purple. It took two coats to get the coverage I wanted. With a top coat, there was minimal chipping after 5 days of wear.

For this manicure, I used e.l.f. polish in black to stamp on some stars from the Bundle Monster fauxnad plates.

Do You Lilac It? is a fun color for summer, but between the two, Parlez-Vous OPI is my favorite.

After a referral from Cyn, I have become an Eyes Lips Face (ELF) fan mainly because their products are good and at great prices. Additionally, they always have great coupon deals on their website. So much so that sometimes it feels like they are spamming your inbox.

As a result of the excess amount of coupons they send out, I discovered the ELF Professional Eye Makeup Remover Pads. Since they were only $1, I thought I’d give it a try. The small round container contains 18 single use pads, and it is advertised as fragrance free. The only fragrance that I can detect is a light soap cleanser scent.

Each cotton pad is pretty thin, but each pad is soaked in cleanser and one pad is more than enough to clean off heavy makeup on one eye. I’ve tried using one pad for two eyes with heavy dark eye makeup, and the pad takes off quite a bit of the makeup, but you still end up having streaks of color residue around the eyes and might need another pad anyway. I recommend using one pad for each eye if you have on heavy eye makeup. However, you can get away with using one pad for both eyes if you have lighter eye makeup on.

The remover does pretty decently in removing waterproof mascara and waterproof eyeliner, but there are some waterproof mascara that are a bit tougher to remove, but I found that if I leave the pad on the area a little longer before wiping, it will be able to remove more of the mascara.

Another positive for these eye makeup remover pads are that they do not leave an oily residue around the eye that other removers leave behind. After wiping off my eye makeup, my eye area feels very clean and fresh.

Even though this only costs $1, for 18 single use pads, it can become expensive especially if you are one to use heavy eye makeup, which means that this container would only last you a little over a week.  However, I think these remover pads would be great for traveling because it’s small and compact and not a liquid (no more spills!). Also these pads also eliminate the need to search for a cotton pad or tissue to use with your liquid removers, so that’s one less thing to carry in your makeup bag when you travel.

Pros: small and compact, no liquid, not oily, cleans off waterproof makeup well, great for travel

Cons: Only contains 18 single use pads

I have never used a foundation primer until I went to Sephora and had a little bit applied onto my face as I got color matched for some bareMineral foundation. After that little taste of foundation primer and how soft and silky it made my skin feel, I was hooked. However, I was not hooked enough to want to spend $21 on a tiny bottle of primer. So before going on a splurge, I got a couple samples of bareMinerals Prime Time Foundation Primer and the Oil Control version to make sure they didn’t cause me to breakout.

Prime Time Foundation Primer (1 fl oz. – $21)

This primer goes on smoothly and evens out my skin. I love the silky feeling I get from the primer, and it also keeps my foundation powder on longer. The silky feeling from the primer isn’t very oil and is quickly absorbed into the skin though after using this for a couple days it caused me to have minor breakouts.

Pros: makes skin feel soft and silky, not too oily, a good foundation primer

Cons: Expensive, causes minor breakouts on my oily skin.

Prime Time Oil Control Foundation Primer (1 fl oz. – $21)

This primer is a lot thicker than the regular formula. The sample mini jar I had had a dollop of primer and it remained that way until I used it all. As for the regular primer, it is a lot oilier and the moment it was put in the jar it just started to coat the bottom of the jar, but the primer isn’t runny or watery just a bit viscous and not a thick gel like the Oil Control.

I found that because of the thickness of the Oil Control primer, I had to use more primer to cover my whole face, and it did not leave the nice silky feeling that the regular primer had. Also after about two hours, my face would feel very oily, oiler than usual, and I would have to blot out excess facial oil with blotting tissue. Maybe that is the function of oil control and it supposed to keep oil off the skin, but I really did not like the feeling of oil all over my T-zone. Also the primer sort of smelled like glue.

Despite these issues I had with the Oil Control Primer, the primer still did its job in keeping my foundation on; smoothing out my face and making my pores look smaller.

Pros: Works well as primer for mineral powders, did not cause breakouts

Cons: Expensive, primer is thick, does not have silky texture when applied, makes my skin feel very oily, smells like glue

After trying out these samples, I still could not bring myself to spend $21 on a tiny bottle of primer. But Cyn directed me to the Eyes Lips Face (E.L.F.) website and mentioned their primer ran for nearly half of the price of bareMinerals. So I figured it couldn’t hurt and gave it a try.

E.L.F. Mineral Infused Face Primer (.49 fl oz. – $6)

This primer was everything that I hoped for. Just a little pump and I have enough primer to cover my whole face. My face feels silky smooth and it does not cause me to break out. The primer is a great base for my powder foundation and does everything that the bareMinerals primer did. Though the main difference between primers is that it is not as viscous as the bareMinerals Prime Time formula, but the E.L.F primer is far from watery. Though the first time I used the primer, it did come out very watery, but it might have been because it was a really hot day because the next time I used it, the primer came out as a gel and has always been a gel-like texture ever since.

There have been complaints about the bottle pump being cheaply made and it stops pumping after several uses, but I have been using my bottle for a while and have not had any problems with the pump. The only minor problem I have is that the cap for the bottle is a bit loose and has a tendency to fall off when in my makeup bag.

Also you don’t need a lot of the primer to cover your whole face. I usually use only half a pump and it is more than enough to cover my entire face, so this little bottle should last you a while.

Overall I am very happy with the E.L.F. primer and will probably stick to it because it is much more cost effective for my tight budget.

Pros: Makes skin feel silky and soft, cheaper price, good foundation primer for mineral powders, has not caused me to breakout yet, don’t need a lot for whole face

Cons: A bit small, but two bottles of these still costs less than the other brand, cap for bottle not tight