This week’s 5 Things Friday features some skin care items on the more natural side of things. By ‘natural,’ I just mean that they are made from relatively a few ingredients that are easily derived from nature. Kinda like a DIY, except someone else did it for me and repackaged them in a convenient(ish) manner. I know there isn’t a lot of variety here, but I think it’s a good place to start!
I shuffle between products, and it’s always a joy to discover new combinations that become solutions to problems I mysteriously always run into. I’ve been trying to use up some products, so the others I have often get neglected. In this iteration of a face base, I chiefly used three products to blur out the pores on my cheeks. After moisturizing my face, I applied the BECCA Resurfacing Primer, which worked out better than I remembered it to in my original review. I then topped it off with a few layers of Ellana Minerals Loose Powder Foundation in Caramel Latte.* After that, I used the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette, mostly Dim Light on the cheek area as well as my forehead, but I used Incandescent Light to highlight and Radiant light on the outer edges of my cheeks. What is your favorite face base concoction right now? * PR Sample. All the products featured in this post are cruelty-free. Follow me: Bloglovin' • Twitter • Instagram • YouTube • Facebook
I picked up a few things from the Illamasqua super sale during the holidays and have been taking them out on a road test for the past month or so. These cream blushers went from £18 to £7.50 each, so I got three. Obviously… I have Promise, Rude, and Dixie, and they are all permanent shades.
Hey all! Sorry for the lack of posts. I have been testing many things (they all kind of arrived at the same time…) so I have a lot of drafts in place, but only one face to test everything on, so it’s been quite a weird past few days. I’ve also been out of the house most of the time (there’s an Art Fair going on in Manila now—though today is the last day—and I’m there for a few hours everyday). Anyway. I was looking for indie companies on Etsy to support and I found my way to Glory Boon, which seems to be one of the more successful and visible ones (correct me if I’m wrong?). They have quite a bit of skin care stuff so I wanted to try those out, too. For the makeup bits, I got eyeshadow (predictably), concealer (because it seems to be their bestseller), a lip butter/gloss. I feel predictable, but here, I bought the Chicka Chicka eyeshadow, since it looked good for everyday, like a warm & bright …
Oh NARS, you have done it again. But let’s stop pretending that we didn’t know this was going to happen… A few of you actually asked me if I was planning on buying the NARSissist Eyeshadow Palette when it first came out. I was yoyo-ing with my feelings (haha) and was coming up with pretty good reasons as to why I shouldn’t get this palette. After all, it’s another neutral palette. On the other hand, I’ve been meaning to get more into NARS Eyeshadows (for whatever reason). This palette has 14 permanent shades, plus 1 LE shade that was just released, so this would be actually be great introduction for a NARS n00b. The NARSissist Eyeshadow Palette launched into a chorus of mixed reviews. A lot of people said that the shadows in this palette weren’t on par with the originals. As someone who is pretty familiar with the ‘NARS Syndrome,’ I knew that the shades would be hit or miss… but I wasn’t expecting a discrepancy in quality. Finally, after much deliberation, I just …
One of my resolutions this year (that I seem to be following to a ‘T’…) is to try and discover more indie and local cosmetics companies. They are usually cruelty-free (sometimes even vegan!) which ties in to my whole transition to CF cosmetics. One of the more prominent brands I’ve been seeing around is Femme Fatale. I think this operation might be bigger than most indie companies, but I still wanted to try them since they seem to be quite popular in the indie cosmetics realm. Luckily, they had a 10-Sampler Pack, which I snatched up immediately. My order came a few weeks later in a simple letter envelope from Australia. I got my 10 samples (8 eyeshadows, 2 blushes) and a free eyeshadow sample.
You know sometimes how you keep on putting off buying certain things, but then can’t get them out of your head that you eventually cave? Yep, that’s the situation right here. These are two NARS makeup items that I finally got around to “crossing off” my imaginary shopping list—the Eyeshadow Duo in Charade and the Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Damned. The eyeshadow duo is, I admit, very much an influence of Ingrid/Missglamorazzi on YouTube. When she started her channel, she was pretty much a NARS loyalist, so I knew I could count on her opinion when it comes to eyeshadow duos. I actually went into NARS to buy this, but was unimpressed and left with both Grand Palais and Dogon instead. Well, I couldn’t forget about Charade.
Softly Sometimes 