Loose Powder

After finally using up my old eye makeup remover, I decided to try the bottle of Benefit’s Gee… that was quick! oil-free makeup remover I had lying around.

This makeup remover is advertised as “oil-free makeup remover for eyes & face”, and it does live up to its advertisement of being oil-free. When I wipe my face with this remover, my foundation is easily cleaned off and my face feels fresh and clean without any oily residue left behind.

However, this remover is not good for removing waterproof eye makeup. It removed my eye shadow pretty well. I’ve read reviews about this remover having problems with waterproof eyeliner. I used Urban Decay’s 24/7 glide on liner and Physician’s Formula gel liner, and I didn’t have too much problems in removing those, but it did take a bit more remover than when I used the oil based removers to clean everything. The main problem came from waterproof mascara. I usually only wear one coat of waterproof mascara and I was having problems removing the mascara. Even after adding more remover and wiping my eyes a couple more times, I still had some mascara cling to my lashes and I ended up with bad raccoon eyes that need more cleansing.

But this remover worked great when I only had regular mascara on. I recommend this makeup remover because it is great for removing foundation and non-waterproof makeup and some waterproof eyeliners, but if you want a good remover for waterproof makeup, then move along.

I got Benefit’s Gee… that was Quick! oil-free makeup remover as a free gift from Sephora. At retail, you can get the 8 oz. bottle of remover for $21.  That is pretty pricey for a makeup remover, especially one that doesn’t really remove waterproof makeup. But if you like Benefit, don’t mind the price, and just want an oil-free remover for your face, Gee… that was Quick! is a decent choice since it does make your face feel very clean and refreshed.

While on my many excursions to Sally Beauty, I found the Savvy Shimmer collection on sale for $1.99. I picked up quite a few of them and will probably review them slowly, but the first one I tried is a very sheer, glittery coral called Magic Pumpkin.

There are two coats here, but you could probably build it up a bit more if you wanted. The sheer coral base is filled with a very fine green/gold shimmer, which you can see depending on the angle.

I really love this color a lot, even though it’s very sheer, and I can’t wait to try the color colors from this collection. From what I understand, however, this might be the most pigmented of the group, so the others might be better used as top coats.

Savvy nail polishes are available at Sally Beauty Supply.

Shower Together is from China Glaze‘s Spring 2008 Ecollection. I purchased this online while I was hunting for a slate blue polish. Instead, I ended up with this great looking polish that’s a bit closer to the blue side of teal.

The application of this polish was a little tricky. It was bit thick to work with, so my manicure ended up a little streaky after two coats. A third one might have fixed it, but I left it at two and used a clear top coat.

It’s probably not a unique color, but I certainly don’t have anything like it, so I love it.

One of my local beauty supply stores carries the whole range of Color Club polishes. A few weeks ago, I finally picked up a few because of their lower price point (I think they were $3.99?) and the reviews I’d read for the brand were all positive.

The first color I decided to try was a Regatta Red. This red creme leans a bit closer to a magenta, but isn’t too pink. I found the application to be very easy – two coats, no brush strokes – and it dried rather quickly!

I didn’t put a top coat over this and there was a bit of edge wear after two days. It didn’t matter, though, because I ended up putting a coat of my newly-acquired China Glaze Fairy Dust over the top of it!

In the second photo you can see the silver microglitter as well as the holo microglitter! Very pretty.

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”.

If you’ve seen the latest episodes of Doctor Who, you’ll have seen Amy Pond and her fantastic nail polishes. I’ve written previously about the grayish purple polish and now I’m in search of a dupe for the orange she had in “The Lodger” and “The Pandorica Opens.”

It looks a bit like three different shades, depending on the lighting, so I’m not sure what color it is, really. I think it’s a dusty pumpkin?

So far, the closest I’ve come is OPI’s Hot & Spicy:

I bought this at a local beauty supply shop and it’s much more saturated than I’m looking for. I’m hoping that one of the new Fall or Halloween collections might have something closer, or maybe I’ll try OPI’s In My Back Pocket if I can find it.

The polish itself is great, though. Typical OPI! Smooth application and two coats to get bottle color. It’s not what I was looking for, but it’s actually a great color and has encouraged me to try more orange polishes.

Some other colors that I’m going to look at as a dupe for Amy’s orange polish are Color Club’s Oh Naturale, China Glaze’s Peachy Keen, and Nubar’s Orange Cream, which was featured on the London runways earlier this year.

I’ve been on a huge polish binge for the last month or so, especially once I discovered two Sally stores in my area. They had this polish from the China Glaze Poolside Summer Collection on sale, so I had to pick it up!

Towel Boy Toy is a bright (not quite neon) blue with a very subtle frost. It dries to a matte finish, so you’ll have to use a top coat if you want a glossy finish. I left it as it, though. Apologies for the messy application!

I only needed two coats to get bottle color and the application was pretty smooth. I used a base coat and top coat and was able to get about a week of wear out of this manicure.

China Glaze polishes are DBP, toluene, and formaldehyde free.

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.

Here’s a quick mani with Essie polish and a chunky glitter top coat that’s probably better for winter than summer. Oh well.

I started off with two coats of Essie‘s Barbados Blue. Then I topped it with a coat of New York Color‘s Starry Silver Glitter.

The result is a satiny baby blue with blue & pink hexagonal glitter with micro- silver & holo glitter! Quick and easy. The NYC glitter is a bit bumpy, so you’ll probably want a top coat to smooth it out.

After reading a bunch of reviews online about various types of mineral powders with SPF protection, I decided to try Sheer Miracle. I purchased sample sizes of their foundation, finishing powder, blush, bronzer, and green and pink concealers.

The samples come in 1g jars, and they are sealed and clearly labeled. I was surprised to see that the foundation and finishing veils were full 1g jars with sifters. They were definitely worth the $2.50 price. It looks as though the foundation and mineral veils sample would last me about a month of daily use, since I only use a light coverage. The Green concealer and blush are also a decent amount, they are nowhere near full, but they do have quite a few uses in them. For the Pink concealer, since it is a cream it only comes with literally one tiny drop in the jar. For $2.50 I think that is a bit much. I’m sure there are a few uses in the sample, but it would be nice if the single drop were a bit bigger.

Mineral Foundation – Medium Light Neutral and Medium Tan

I generally use Medium Beige for Bare Escentuals foundations, and since I wasn’t sure what color I was for Sheer Miracle, I decided to try the Medium Light Neutral and the Medium Tan. Unfortunately, both colors didn’t work for me. The Medium Light Neutral ended up having a yellow undertone instead of a neutral undertone. As for the Medium Tan, even after being out in the sun hiking for hours, it was still a bit dark for me. Maybe after vacationing in Hawaii for a week, I can use the Medium Tan.

Aside from the poor color matching, the foundations are not matte so they still have a light shimmer to the powders, but not as much as the Bare Escentuals Original foundation, but the light shimmers does not bother me. The foundation gives pretty decent coverage and feels very light. Additionally, it is SPF 30 and I am all for longer sun protection for my face. It’s too bad the colors did not work for me. I would have loved to have had an alternate brand of foundation that cost less than Bare Escentuals.

Bronzer

Sheer Miracle only has one color for bronzer. I found the color to be a bit dark. I prefer my bronzer to be a bit lighter since my skin is already slightly tanned. But I guess with the darker bronzer color I just need very little of the bronzer, so the product would definitely last me a long time.

Blush – Sienna Rose

I picked Sienna Rose because it was recommended for those with Medium complexion. The sample has quite a bit of blush, and the blush is very pigmented like the bronzer. Just a very tiny bit of blush is enough to give your cheeks some color. I usually just tap the excess blush powder off of the cap and dip my brush lightly on the residual blush powder clinging to the cap for the amount of blush I use on my cheek, which is still ample color to give me a rosy hue. At first I thought it might be too much pigment to my liking, but the blush blends very well and gave me natural rosy cheeks with a hint of rouge.

The blush color is a rose color and has a bit of a shimmer in it, but when it is applied to the face, I don’t notice any shimmer on my face.

Finishing Veil – Matte

I really like this finishing veil. The veil is very light and you only need a little bit of powder for your whole face. Usually I would just dunk my kabuki brush once into the jar and that is more than enough to cover my whole face. This finishing veil kind of reminds me of the E.L.F. HD powder.

1g jar with sifter

Finishing Veil – Glow

Apparently, Sparkle is the new “Glow” because this finishing veil is SPARKLY. When I say sparkly, I mean sparkly because just after a dunk of my brush and a once over on my face, I looked like Twilight vampire. A couple years ago, this look might be fun, but if you do not want to look like the latest vampire fad. I would avoid this veil and stick to the matte. However, if you plan to be a sparkling fairy for Halloween, this veil would be perfect.

Concealer – Green

The Green concealer works pretty well, but because I wear such a light coverage of foundation on my face, I have to work a bit on blending the green in to prevent looking like I have splotches of green on face. However, the concealer does give decent coverage. I may prefer using this concealer under a liquid foundation, but that’s just me.

Concealer – Pink

This pink under eye concealer is a cream and “more than meets the eye” is the first thing that pops into mind when I see the little pink dot in the sample jar. The little dot sample of the pink concealer does go a long way because you need very little to get the coverage you need under your eyes. I’ve used this sample for a while, and I still have quite a lot of the tiny dot left. The light pink color works well to lighten the dark under eye circles and goes on very smoothly. Also because of the lightness of the pink it blends easily with foundation.