Loose Powder

The theme for January’s Birchbox is Clarity and to help us start the year off, this box includes some lovely samples!

My box for this month included:

• Origins Checks and Balances Frothy Face Wash – multi-tasking cleanser for combination skin
• Stila Smudge Stick Waterproof Eye Liner – in peacock
• VMV Hypoallergenics Re-Everything Face-Hand-Body Lotion
• Juicy Couture Viva La Juicy fragrance
• Extra: Larabar mini bar
• Extra: Birchbox logo magnet

I’ll be reviewing the Stila Smudge Stick in a future review once I’ve had some more time to use it.

Larabars are great snack bars to have when you’re out and about. I usually keep one of these or a Luna bar in my purse so I have something when my blood sugar gets low.

The Origins Checks & Balances cleanser has a very fresh scent and leaves my face feeling clean without drying it out.

Overall, this was another great Birchbox! Can’t wait to see what I get next month!

I got this sample size of Stila‘s Forever Your Curl mascara with a Sephora order a couple months back.

It’s a very tiny tube, but certainly good for traveling. I wouldn’t have purchased a full size of this without trying, so the sample was great to get.

The brush has very short bristles – almost as short as the plastic type brushes I like. I found the formula rather dry, though that meant it didn’t weight down my curled lashes and also didn’t leave globs of mascara in them.

Here are a few before and after sets:

The results are pretty subtle… I might as well not be wearing mascara at all. It definitely doesn’t give me noticeable length or volume. It did hold the curl better than some other mascaras, but i think that’s due to the drier formula that doesn’t weight the lashes down.

This is not a waterproof mascara, so it was easy to wash off with soap & water or eye makeup remover.

There was no flaking with this mascara and it wore all right, but the lackluster results are not worth $22 in my opinion. The mascara hunt continues!

My October Birchbox arrived yesterday and of course I had to open it up right away and see what goodies I got this month! The theme for this month is Prep & Finish.

I love the way Birchbox packages the items inside and it’s always fun to open them to see what I’ve gotten. I’m a huge fan of the items in this month’s box!

Here’s a list of the items from the box:

• blinc mascara
• Caudalie Vinoperfect Cell Renewal Night Cream
• Korres Guava Body Butter
• Stila Eyeshadow in Rain
• Extra: The Laundress Delicate Wash detergent

I’m pretty excited to try out the blinc mascara! I’ve tried a couple fiber mascaras before, but blinc is the brand lots of people love. I have tried the blinc eyeliner from a previous Birchbox, but I didn’t really like it.

The Stila eyeshadow is a nice brown color that will be great for contouring. I think I’m going to have to look into getting a Stila magnetic palette soon!

I love the Korres brand, of course, and this body butter will make a great travel item. The Caudalie night cream is not something I will probably use regularly, but it would be great for a travel bag.

My mom’s Birchbox came with a few different items like a Laura Geller tinted primer and a bag of bath salts. She also got a Stila Forever Your Curl mascara which she gave me since she doesn’t use mascara.

This month’s Birchbox was a great selection of things I will certainly be using. Totally worth the subscription price!

Wonderful in Waikiki is Stila’s July 2011 Stila Girl Beach Palette. These $14 palettes are great for travel and each includes four eyeshadow colors, a blush, bronzer, and a mirror on the inside.

I wanted to get this palette for the coppery color – Sarong. It’s the sort of burnt orange-y color that I was on the search for and it’s a great shade!

Here are some more photos of the packaging and the makeup.

The eye colors in the palette are:

• Wahine (sandy shimmer)
• Sarong (coppery bronze)
• Coconut (brown with slight gold shimmer)
• Surf (bright matte blue)

You also get cheek colors in North Shore (orange-y blush) and Hanauma Bay (bronze orange).

From left to right: Wahine, Sarong, Coconut, Surf, North Shore, Hanauma Bay.

The quality of these shadows is nice and much improved on last year’s palette collection. They apply smoothly and blend well and, with a primer, last all day. I’m probably not getting any of the other collections this year as I don’t think the colors in them are good for my skin tone, but I would recommend them to anyone who wanted to try them out.

Stila Girl Beach Palettes are available from Stila’s website as well as Amazon and Zappos.

I’m a big fan of the single Stila eyeshadows…when they are smooth and not chalky. Thankfully, though, Wheat is a really soft, blendable color.

In the swatch, the patch on the left is without primer and the one on the right is over The All Natural Face’s primer.

I love this shimmery neutral color. It’s a great every day shade paired it with some black eye liner. I also like to use Coco to add color in the outer corners.

Stila eyeshadows are available on Stila’s website and at Sephora.

The May Birchbox featured Stila eyeshadows – which I sadly didn’t get in my box! As a new member, I was given a discount for my first order and at Birchbox, the current month’s items ship for free… so I knew exactly what I was getting.

Now, I haven’t always been a fan of Stila’s shadows as I find their quality inconsistent – sometimes they are chalky and other times they are smooth. The same can be said for the pigmentation of their eye shadows. However, with the discount, it made it affordable for me to try out some neutrals I’ve been after.

I decided to pick up Dune (a matte beige) and Coco (matte brown) for my first Stila shadows. Great choices, I think! The shadows are smooth and they blend easily.

Coco on the left and Dune is on the right; the swatch is made on bare skin with no primer.

The formulation of these eye shadows are great and I have been using Dune nearly every day as an all over eye color, then accenting with Coco or another eye color. I do use an eye primer to help the look stay all day.

Stila eye shadows are available at Birchbox.com, Sephora, and Stilacosmetics.com.

Last year summer, Stila issued four $10 travel palettes and is issuing four more this summer! The $14 Beach Palettes each contain four eyeshadows, a cheek color, and a bronzer/highlighter.

The first of these palettes is Stunning in Sayulita, which was issued in April. This palette has some very lovely neutrals and I was hoping the eyeshadow formulation was better this time around.

These are the colors in the palette:

Eye Shadows:
- Starfish
- Sandbar
- Getaway
- Palm Trees

Cheek Color (powder blush):
- Playa

Highlighter/Bronzer:
- Banderas Bay

The eye shadows from top left, clockwise are: starfish, sandbar, getaway, and palm trees. The top rectangular color is the cheeky color (playa) and the bottom one is the highlighter (banderas bay).

Here are some swatches:

From left to right: Playa, Sandbar, Getaway, Palm Trees, Playa, Banderas Pay.

These colors were a lot nicer to apply than the last Stila travel palettes. The eye shadows are not as chalky, but they’re still not that pigmented. However, for $14, these are some great neutrals and I like the powder blush a lot more than the cream convertible color form last year.

Stila Beach Palettes are available from the Stila website, Sephora, and Zappos.com.

Last month Stila introduced their special $10 Stila Girl Travel Palettes. It was the first in a series of five to be released one a month until December.

The first one is called Road to Radiance Across the U.S.A. The cardboard palette has a mirror on the inside of the lid and contains four eye shadows and a convertible color.

The theme for this palette seems to be pink & lilac:

Four Eye Shadows:
- Snow Bunny (shimmery champagne)
- Southern Belle (mauve)
- Valley Girl (pink)
- City Chick (alloy)

Convertible Color:
- Hibiscus

The pigments are light a bit light, so I had to build up the color a bit. Eye primer did help and they’d probably be a bit darker if applied wet. Also, I’m not sure if this is the same formulation as their regular shadows, but the application felt a bit chalky (there is talc in the ingredients list). I didn’t use the convertible color much but I’m not a huge fan of cream blushes and it felt a bit drying on my lips. I do like the darkest color eyeshadow and Snow Bunny makes a nice highlighter/accent.

Overall, I’m not sure if I would purchase this again. The shadows are not as pigmented as I would like and I don’t have a need for the convertible color. I might get one of the three remaining yet-to-be-released palettes depending on the shadow colors, though, so I guess I didn’t dislike this enough to not buy any more!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last review! I’ve got quite a few lined up, though, so look for those in the coming weeks.

First up is a review of a neutral colors Stila palette called The It Girl Palette. I purchased this from their site last month for $10, which I thought was a great deal for three large shadow pans. It should be noted that these are a little bit smaller than their individual shadow pans, but if you’re looking to try out some Stila shades, this would be a great way to jump in.

The palette itself is a nice black plastic, not cardboard like many of Stila’s other palettes. There is no mirror on the inside of the lid, but that didn’t really matter to me.

The shades you get are Lamé (gold shimmer), Chloe (bronze shimmer), and Stila’s award winning shade, Kitten (nude pink shimmer).

These eyeshadows are formulated without parabens. Here are the ingredients as listed on the site:

ingredients: talc, zinc stearate, dimethicone, ethylhexyl palmitate, mineral oil\paraffinum liquidum\huile minerale, tocopheryl acetate, lauroyl lysine, caprylyl glycol, hexylene glycol, silica, boron nitride, magnesium carbonate, nylon-12, phenoxyethanol, calcium sodium borosilicate, may contain [+/- ] mica,  titanium dioxide (ci 77891), iron oxides (ci 77491, ci 77492, ci 77499), aluminum powder (ci 77000) , bismuth oxychloride (ci 77163), blue 1 lake (ci 42090), carmine (ci 75470), chromium hydroxide green (ci 77289), chromium oxide greens (ci 77288), ferric ferrocyanide (ci 77510),  manganese violet (ci 77742), ultramarines (ci 77007),yellow 5 lake (ci 19140) <iln c91027>

I do love these colors and find them very wearable. However, without any kind of eye primer, the wear with these was very short for me – a few hours at best. With a primer, though, they are great! I’ve been wearing Kitten on the inner corner, Chloe in the middle, and then an accent color (purple or aqua) on the outer corner. Sometimes I’ll blend with Lame for a nice gold shimmer.

Overall, I think this palette is a quite nice for the price. If you’re at Stila’s site looking at other items, add this to your cart!

Stila is a brand that I’ve always looked at in Sephora, but never purchased any products from. I found the price a bit high, I guess. However, there are a few products on the Stila site that are very affordable! One of these is their Charmed Eye Shadow Palette.

Description from the site: Adorned with authentic Indian bindis, this palette features four highly-pigmented new shadow shades all infused with genuine 24kt gold. Long revered for its skin revitalizing properties, this luxurious metal helps minimize the appearance of fine lines and creates a rich, shimmering effect.

There are four colors in this palette: coppery gold, warm gold, teal, and black/burgundy, all with a gold shimmer.

The palette itself is constructed of paper, but it seems rather sturdy.

I find the shadows very smooth and easily picked up with a brush. Here are some swatches:

From left: teal, black/burgundy, copper, warm gold.

The colors were easy to work with and blend, but they weren’t as pigmented as I was hoping. It might have been the e.l.f. mineral eye primer, though. I will have to try it again with Pixie Epoxie to see.

I used the warm gold all over my eyelids and above the crease first, then added the teal on my eye lid and blended it in. I used the black/burgundy on the outer corner to darken it a bit. Then I used a black gel eyeliner to finish my eyes.

To finish this look, I am wearing Fyrinnae Glow Blush in Enchant, Stainiac Lip Stain in Beauty Queen, and Korres gloss in Fuchsia.

It’s a great little palette and the four colors you get are good for every day wear or going out. Overall, I think this was a good purchase for the price.