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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Mega Sephora Haul - Blushes and Eyeliners and Lip Pencils, Oh My!

I had another binge shopping spree at Sephora and I got a ton of fun new products and some replacements.  This post will be very picture heavy so bear with me!  My hands and arms are totally discolored from all the swatches.


Shipping was sooo fast!  I love opening up a big package with so many fun and pretty things!



So let's do the boring stuff first.  Restocked on a couple essentials.  DDF Sulfur Therapeutic Mask and Sephora nail corrector pen.  I don't know if this mask does anything for my zits because even after using it as a mask or as overnight spot treatment my zits remain exactly the same.  It does, however, absorb all my excess oil and so I use it about once a week in the warmer weather months.  The Sephora nail corrector pen is a huge help to me with my nails.  I am just beginning to get the hang of painting my own nails and this helps to get rid of all the mistakes.  It's a bit liquidy and greasy seeming at first, but so long as you're careful it works fabulously.
And here are a couple samples I got in exchange for some of my Sephora points.  I've tried the DDF Acne Control Treatment before and it's ok.  Salicylic acid is not that effective for me and my zits but I want a travel sized zit cream and this will do.  The Dior Pore Refining Perfecting Moisturizer was an accidental grab.  I clicked the box without realizing it until after I was reviewing my order confirmation.  Oh wells!  
Ok, now the fun stuff!  First up is the Givenchy Blush Gelee in Candide Pink.  It's the only shade available through Sephora's website and I've been dying to try this out for a while.  I rarely use powder blush anymore and love love love cream or gel blushes.  I wanted to get some more liquidy/gel blushes for the warmer weather.   
After several clicks, the blush starts to come up through the sponge applicator.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of a sponge applicator.  How do I clean it?!
This is after I used it for a swatch on my arm.
And here's a swatch on my arm.  It's like a cool liquid going on but dries completely with no residue.  It's almost like a stain.  LOVE.  The color may be a bit too cool pink for me but meh, I am a blush fiend and have no qualms over having clown cheeks.  
Next up are two Hourglass Aqua Sheer Cheek Stain
First up is Flush.  After clicking the bottom like a 100x, the blush finally came up in a gross and disturbing way.  It kind of reminded me of blood seeping through a bandage. 
After testing it, it looked a little less disturbing and more like blush.  Again I don't know how I can clean these cloth applicators.
Swatch - Such a pretty color!  Like the Givenchy blush it goes on a little liquidy but dries completely with no residue.  Love!
And here's the Rouge gross blood stain.  It also reminds me of lady time.  :P 
Swatch of Rouge.  It comes out much lighter than how it looks in the applicator.
And below are the swatches together: From left to right Givenchy Candide Pink, Hourglass Flush, Hourglass Rouge.  As you can see Givenchy is definitely a more cool pink.  Flush is a bit of a darker and reddish shade. And Rouge is a more rose-ish color.  All very pretty.  All go on very light and liquidy but dry quickly as stains.  I imagine I'll have to blend quickly before these dry since they don't budge once dry. 
Oh and here's Essie's Over the Top on my fat little toes.  I LOVE this color especially on my fat toes! This was not part of my Sephora haul but I had mentioned recently about loving this shade on my toes and wanted to take a photo before I forget.
Now soon you are going to see photos of swatches on my hands.  I am warning you that my hands are super dry and gnarly.  I haven't been as diligent with the hand cream, plus I've been doing my nails so often the nail polish remover has been drying out my fingers, plus the weather here all of a sudden dropped this week and it's like winter is back again, drying out my hands and legs.  Apologies in advance!  But this Dior Fortifying Cream for Nails should help!  I was totally enamored with this cuticle cream online and it got such good reviews!
They recommend that you use this at night.  Will do tonight!
I love Dior packaging.  I wish I could work for Dior or some other makeup company and just test all of their packaging.  They would have them roll out on a conveyor belt and then measure my reaction and squeals to see which are most effective and alluring to consumers.
I mean look at this, even the foil cover is pretty!
Whoa!  Totally not what I expected!  I thought it would be more of a hard waxy kind of cream.  This is very goopy and dense and pink!
Omg so much of the cream on the foil lid!  I'll have to use the foil portion first.  I saved it for later tonight.  My nails and fingers are so happy.  Can't wait!
Ok, don't judge!  Next up is the Hello Kitty Apple Balm.  Yes, I am a grown woman.  And yes I purchased a hello kitty cosmetic.  BUT, in my defense, this got very good reviews and I read about it in this month's Allure issue.  That's a grown up magazine so that means it's totally acceptable!  
I must admit the packaging is very very cute.
SMOOTH.
I love new products before I use them.  They're so smooth and clean looking.  This apple balm smells super sweet.  Not sure how I feel about that just yet.  I don't want any super sweet smelling makeup, but it's better than the smell of some makeup out there.  Seriously, some makeup smells so bad or like old lady makeup.
Testing it out.  Sigh, first dip into the balm.  Now it's USED.
Swatch on my dry dry hand.  I was relieved to see that it wasn't as bright as it looked at first.  And it was surprisingly smooth and nice feeling.
I also bought the Clinique Bottom Lash Mascara.  It's only $10!  But it is tiny.  I wanted to try it out since my bottom lashes are almost nonexistent and I can never use regular mascara there.  I also want to test it out on my upper lashes since I also have sparse and small lashes there and don't like too heavy looking mascara in general.
Tiny tiny mascara brush!
I confess I also got a Hello Kitty Sweet Gloss.  A lot of the Hello Kitty products got good reviews!  And I figured I should at least try them out in case they might be awesome.  I got Charmmy.  Oops I started opening it before I remembered to take pics of the packaging.
Nothing too special about the casing.  Kind of reminds me of when I was young and had random cutesy makeup. 
But the shade is not cutesy at all.  It's a very mature and pretty sheer brownish red neutral.
Here's a swatch so you can see how sheer it really is.  Feels a teeny bit sticky going on, but that's expected since it's called a gloss.  I love the idea of a solid gloss and not the gross liquidy tacky feeling ones.
And moving onto eyes, here's an Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Shadow Pencil in Sin.
Sin was not my top choice, but as you'll see I ended up getting a ton of Urban Decay eyeliners in all the shades I would have wanted so I figured I should get something different.
It's a pretty shade but maybe a bit too metallicy for my tastes.
All right, I confess again!  I got some Hello Kitty Eyeshadow Sticks too!  Ack!  I got Birthday Cake and Playground.
Here's Playground.  I wanted a black one that I could use to blend out my eyeliner and create a smudgey eye.  I don't really like using traditional eye shadow powders.  I don't know why.  I have them and never ever use them.  So I decided to try the stick form.  I wish it had a bit of a sharper point though.
Here's a swatch above my Urban Decay swatch.
And here's Birthday Cake. 
A very pretty brown.  I like this one but then again I'm a boring neutral eye shadow kind of girl. 
Hmm, not sure about the staying power though.  I rubbed my hand a couple quick times and the shadows smeared a bit.  See?
I also got Peter Thomas Roth's Retinol Fusion because I'm getting old and decrepit and need something to help my acne AND wrinkle prone skin.  My skin has been aging considerably this past year all of a sudden!  I tried using the Murad acne and wrinkle treatment but it didn't do anything and I think it was causing some new breakouts.  So no more of that!  I hope this works out, but I haven't used a retinol product in a loooong time, since my teenage acne prescription cream days.  I hope there's not as bad of a breaking in phase with this as I had with those prescription creams!
It's a clear liquid inside with a drop applicator.
Jumping back to more lip products!  I am really intrigued by the Tarte Lip Surgence Natural Lip Lusters!  I love the idea of a thick creamy lip pencil.  I only have bad memories with lip pencils in the past - thin and hard, only meant to line the lips.  I could never get into using those lip pencils to fill in my entire lips.  Yes, the staying power must be better, but the texture was hard and it took forever to fill in my big ol lips.  So I'm hoping that Tarte will turn a new leaf for me.  I chose this over Clinique because this one seemed to have better reviews and colors and I'm not a huge fan of most Clinique products.
I chose Buff and Adored.  I really wanted others, but I already had a huge shopping cart and decided to try out just these two for now.  If I like them I can always get more later!
Here's Buff.  A beautiful thick nude colored pencil..
Here's Adored.  A lovely pink.
And here are swatches on my dry hand.  The top one is Adored and the bottom is Buff.  Adored is a little bit more of a cool pink and Buff is a little bit more brown than I initially thought these would be.  But when I Googled these before I noticed that the colors look different on people's lips as opposed to swatches on hands and arms.  So I'll reserve judgment until I try these out on my lips!
Remember how I am aging at a rapid rate?  Well I also need a good eye cream.  I used Dior Capture Totale back in the day and really liked it.  It was lightweight and didn't give me any millia.  I used up my Shu red eye cream which was nice but now it's too much of a hassle to get Shu products (other than hair!) in the US.  And  I've been using the Boscia amino-ag eye treatment recently based on Fuzkittie's recommendation.  But that one is a big giant MEH.  It hasn't done any harm but I don't really see it doing any good either.  It's super lightweight but I need something more.  Enter Dior Pro-Youth Sorbet Eye Creme.
I chose this instead of Capture Totale because it got better reviews and I figured I might as well try it out.  It comes with a spatula applicator thingy that I will never use but will keep in a drawer for the next 5 years thinking I might find it useful at some point in the future but never will.
It's a nice heavy glass container in an oval shape.
Omg, even their safety seal is pretty and has a Dior label on it!  Love their packaging!
Sheesh, so sanitary and safe that even after peeling off the safety seal (which was really really hard to remove and required some judicious use of my nails) there's a plastic lid.  If they are that concerned with the cleanliness of this, they should have put it in a pump or tube form then!  I love Dior packaging, but I generally hate anything in tub form.
Deliciously velvety smooth eye cream.
Let's try this bad boy out.
Here I swabbed some onto my dry hand.
And blended it in.
Whoa!  Do you see the difference in my hand?  The very left side is where I rubbed in the eye cream.  The middle to right part is my regular dry ol hand.  The cream is sooooo light and fluffy and blends in like a dream!  It's a sorbet indeed!
Oh I also got a lighted Tweezerman mirror.  This is for my plucking.
The light is kinda small and dinky and to the side.  But it'll do.
I saved this for last because it's the biggest.  Behold!  The Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencils 15 Year Anniversary Collection!  It comes in a ginormous box, beautifully displayed, and with a pencil sharpener with one small hole and one big hole.  This is pricy, but a great deal for the number of pencils you get.  I was adding the pencils into my shopping car separately and quickly realized that the better bargain would be to get this set.
Beautiful!!
And here are some tiny swatches.  There are a ton of swatches online from others if you want to see bigger swatches.  These are, from left to right: Stray Dog (shimmering taupe brown), Corrupt (dark metallic brown with silver glitter), Bourbon (medium brown with sparkle), Midnight Cowboy (Beige Sparkle), Baked (Bronze), Stash (mossy gold-green), Mildew (deep mossy green), Perversion (blackest (and they mean blackest!) carbon black), Electric (bright blue), Binge (deep metallic blue), Ransom (bright purple), Asphyxia (pinky iridescent purple), Rockstar (deep reddish purple), Zero (black), and Uzi (sparkling gunmetal gray).
These really do glide on like a dream!  So smooth!  I imagine that there will be no tugging or having to pencil over and over again to get some color (e.g., Nars and Shu I'm looking at you!).  My favorites so far are Stray Dog, Baked, Stash, Mossy, Binge, Ransom and Rockstar.  I probably will never use Electric, except to draw smiley faces on my arm.  And the other colors are all still very nice but I have other eye pencils that are similar to those.  And the difference between Perversion and Zero is that Perversion is BLACK black, while Zero is regular black.  Below is a pic with flash.  My flash always washes out my photos.
Here's the pencil sharpener it comes with.  Nothing special but it's nice to have the two different sized holes.
 Love these eye pencils so much!  I tried rubbing them off my arm and they wouldn't budge!  Below is a photo after I rubbed my index finger repeatedly back and forth.  Amazing! 
Don't believe me?  Look, this is the finger I used to rub my arm.  It's interesting because you can see some of it rubbed off on my finger but it doesn't LOOK smeared or faded on my arm.  Wonderful!!  I hope these really do last all day and are waterproof because I've been having issues with my lower lid which is so watery (I blame my contacts) and can't hold a line.
Phew!!!  Sorry for the super duper long post but I wanted to share all my swatches and thoughts on my new and fun products!  So happy! :D