Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict

Archives for May 2011

$5 TRESemmé Tres Two Extra Hold Hairspray Brings Back Aqua Net Memories for Me

by 18 Comments

TRESemme Tres Two Hairspray

I was really hoping my run of good luck with drugstore haircare products would continue when I gave TRESemmé’s Tres Two Extra Hold Hairspray a try. It’s supposed to offer excellent hold, frizz control and 24-hour humidity resistance without leaving hair crunchy or stiff. All good things, and I was mostly interested in seeing how well it controlled fly-away hairs.

As soon as I caught my first whiff of the stuff, I knew things weren’t working out. It has that classic old-school hairspray scent — like the way high school bathrooms used to smell during the Aqua Net years.

Ingredients

Alcohol Denat., Hydrofluorocarbon 152A, VA/Crotonates, Vinyl Neodecanoate Copolymer, Octylacrylamide, Acrylates, Butylaminoethyl Methacrylate Copolymer, Aminomethyl Propanol, Dimethyl Stearamine, Fragrance (Parfum), Linalool, Limonene, Butylphenyl Methylpropional, Amyl Cinnamal, Hexyl Cinnamal, Citronellol, Geraniol

But if I pinch my nose, I like almost everything else about it — the price ($5 for a big 11-oz. can), how soft and shiny it leaves my hair, how it retains the volume in my style and how it doesn’t flake when I run a brush through it.
[Continue reading…]

If Essie Summer 2011 Comes Calling, I’ll Be at the Beach

by 51 Comments

essie summer 2011

Yesterday I dug out my old surfing wetsuit and tried to put it on. No. Such. Luck. Not without a gallon of Crisco and a whole lot of prayer.

Le sigh…

I haven’t surfed up here in years, but I’m starting to get desperate. Since I don’t see a tropical trip on the horizon, either I brave these frigid waters again, or I dry up like a land-locked fish.

And the Essie Summer 2011 Color Me Braziliant Collection (six colors; $8 each) is only making things worse. It arrives in June, right around the time I’d love to be out galavanting on a beach vacation.

essie summer 2011
From the left: Brazilliant, Smooth Sailing and Meet Me at Sunset

Inspired by the daring, sexy beaches of Brazil, the collection, with its corals, reds and hot pinks, is also peppered with pretty splashes of light green and blue. I can’t remember seeing a more summery collection from Essie in a while.

Remember last year’s release with it’s dainty purples, pinks, corals and that shot of kelly green? I loved that collection, but I felt it also could have passed for something from spring (which is fine).

But with Braziliant, I didn’t give spring a second thought. These are bikini, beach and summer shades all the way. If last year’s collection was a demure girl in a floral dress sipping tea from a dainty cup, this year’s is that same girl hanging out at the beach in a beaded bandeau bikini. And she’s not afraid to wink at that Adonis with a surfboard.

essie summer 2011
From the left: Too Too Hot, Super Bossa Nova and Absolutely Shore

While there are lots of classic Essie cream finishes in Summer 2011, the collection also plays with glitter and pearl effects. It’s not as out there/full-on crazy as the neons from 2008 and 2009 (LOVE!), but still, it’s nice to see the line doing something I didn’t expect.

Some of the colors look so edgy, I think they’d pass for China Glaze, like Smooth Sailing, a blue topaz with silver glitter; and Super Bossa Nova, a hot pink with pink and purple glitter. I also see it in Braziliant, with its pink, orange and purple pearl pigment shifts. Cool.

Essie’s polishes have always performed pretty consistently for me. Two coats and I’m good, but I should note that the two shades I was looking forward to the most, Braziliant and Meet Me at Sunset, did leave some streaks, and with them I needed three coats to achieve the opaque look I like. The rest of the collection, however, looked great with two.

I only put these on yesterday afternoon, so I haven’t tested for wear time yet, but with other Essie polishes, as long as I use a sturdy base and top coat, I get at least seven days out of them with minimal chipping.

Here’s a look at the swatches. Let me know if you see something you like. 🙂

essie summer 2011 Meet me at sunset smooth sailing brazilliant
From the left: Brazilliant, Smooth Sailing and Meet Me at Sunset

essie summer 2011 brazilliant
Brazilliant
[Continue reading…]

Doing Laundry Just Got Cooler at This Laundromat: New Tocca Laundry Delicate Fine Fiber Wash

by 16 Comments

tocca laundry wash

It seems so obvious now, but I think I just figured out the real reason why Tabs has always preferred to sleep on the floor instead of the bed. The second I put fresh sheets down washed with the new Tocca Laundry Delicate Fine Fiber Wash, he was like, “Wow, this bed is AWESOME!” He couldn’t wait to roll around on the duvet cover and brush his cheeks on the pillows. Apparently, he has a taste for the finer things, and drugstore laundry detergents just won’t do.

I should have known. I love Tocca, too. The brand is known for their Italian-styled perfumes and candles, but maybe that’s about to change. I started collecting their scents about a year ago, and now I’m hopelessly addicted to a few (I’m in love, love, LOVE with Bianca, in particular).

I can say with 100% certainty that I’ve never been this excited to do laundry in my life. 🙂

The new Laundry Washes are based on four fragrances from Tocca’s collection of perfumes — Stella, Cleopatra, Florence and Touch. They’re sold either individually, as 8-oz. bottles for $15 apiece, or together in the $22 Delicato da Viaggio Laundry Travel Set, which includes smaller 2-oz. bottles of all four scents.

tocca laundry 4

The perfume versions of Stella, Cleopatra and Florence have been in my rotation for a while, and compared to those perfumes, I find the Laundry Washes to have crisper scents. Tocca turned down the warm base notes and turned up the fruity florals at the middle and top. To me, the resulting washes seem brighter and more citrusy.

Stella, my favorite of the four, reminds me of blood oranges (strong citrus notes, as well as lily and freesia). I also really like Florence, with its gardenia, violet and Italian bergamot; and Touch, which reminds me of Hawaiian tiare flowers. My least favorite of the bunch, Cleopatra, which Tocca describes as a grapefruit and cucumber scent, smells more like gum balls to me (odd)!

Tocca designed these detergents for delicates, either washed by hand or using the delicate cycle on a washing machine. The directions call for using five cap-fulls per machine load, or the equivalent of about a quarter of each of the smaller 2-oz. bottles (YIKES!). If you plan to hand wash a small number of items in the sink, however, one or two cap-fulls should suffice.

So far, I’ve used these to wash the bedding, a couple of sweaters, my pajamas and some random underthings in the machine. No really serious stains like grass, dirt or oil to test them against, but I did wash a couple of sweaty, funky-smelling sports bras and socks, and the Washes also took care of those.

tocca laundry bag
[Continue reading…]

Burberry Summer for Women 2011

by 2 Comments


The new limited edition Burberry Summer for Women Eau de Toilette ($79), a fruity floral green scent available now.

The official fragrance notes include…

  • Top notes: pomegranate, orange, mandarin and green leaf
  • Middle notes: rose, freesia and lily of the valley
  • Base notes: cedar wood, sandal wood and white musk

Have you sniffed this yet? The bottle’s pretty, yeah?

A Stila Stunning in Sayulita Palette Hump Day Face of the Day

by 80 Comments

Rise and shine, morning glory. 🙂 I felt like wearing my green dress today, so I thought I’d incorporate some green in my eye look, too. A color called Palm Tree from Stila’s new Stunning in Sayulita Palette provided the green.

The $14 palette (BARGAIN ALERT!) comes with four powder shadows, a powder blush and a bronzing powder, which, hello, is so light that it probably performs better as a highlighter on my tan skin.

For this look, I followed the little tutorial that comes with the palette (I appreciate when companies include these things; they’re cheap to make and great for ideas and inspiration) and then wrapped it up with Bobbi Brown’s High Shimmer Lip Glosses in Bellini on my lips.


[Continue reading…]

Hold That Curl (Temporarily, at Least)! New Stila Forever Your Curl Mascara

by 12 Comments

“Hey, baby! You’ve got to remember (got to remember)… I’m forever your curl!” It sounds like someone over at Stila HQ rocked out to this song back in the day because the name of their new lash lengthening and curling mascara is practically a titular dupe.


Forever Your Girl, Paula Abdul, 1988

I LOVED that song. Nevermind Paula’s sometimes questionable singing in it or how the song sounded auto-tuned (I don’t know if it was). Gotta give the gal credit for turning lemons into lemonade.

I remember a trip back in eighth grade with my friend to Great America, one of the Six Flags amusement parks, and they had this thing that was kinda like a karaoke booth, where you could sing along to a song that they’d turn into a taped recording for you. My friend and I sang Forever Your Girl. And it was awful. It was absolutely terrible.

Thankfully, I have no idea where that tape is now. 🙂 If I did, I’d probably be tempted to share it on the blog (NOOOOO!).

New for summer, Forever Your Curl joins the Stila permanent line, and I wanted to meet her mostly because of a claim Stila makes. They say it curls lashes immediately AND over time.

“Forever Your Curl Mascara contains an encapsulated raw ingredient that enhances lash-curl memory and a proprietary styling resin that dries down and holds the curl of the lashes. A film forming polymer also wraps lashes and lengthens without fibers. Plus, a patent-pending brush coats and extends each lash, from base to tip, dramatically lengthening and curling…”

–StilaCosmetics.com

Interesting concept, right? Since my lashes are naturally so dang straight that I sometimes think they have anti-curling powers, I couldn’t wait to give it a try.

But after wearing it daily for one full week, all I can say is…

Eh.

For regular, temporary lash curling, yep, I think it delivers, but it seems no more potent than that. It’s just a straight-up curling and lengthening mascara, as far as I can tell, fine for cute doe-eyed looks.

And that would have been good enough if it wasn’t for the claim: that it also curls “over time.” I suppose I haven’t used it long enough to realize long-term benefits yet (I’m impatient), but still. My lashes look just as straight as they did before.

Even as a regular mascara, it has its flaws. The brush tends to deposit more product than it should (even when I dilute/attempt to remove the visible excess), and I see smudges along my lower lash line after just a few hours.


Before


After two coats
[Continue reading…]

Copyright © 2025 Makeup and Beauty Blog. Get in touch.