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
I think I may have discovered a potentially life-changing beauty packing hack this morning.
And here it is: instead of bringing the biggest makeup bag I own (which is what I usually do, BIG surprise!), I’ll bring a small one and only allow myself whatever will fit into it on the trip.
:O
Yes, I know this is Captain Obvious, but hear me out.
Clearly, someone out there has figured this out before, but it never occurred to me. Seriously, OMG! SHRINK THE BAG, KAREN!
I don’t go to regular drugstores as much as I used to, mostly because of Ulta and Target, which is basically a drugstore, only a million times bigger, but ever since I was a kid cruising the makeup aisles at Thrifty (of course, I had to get a Thrifty ice cream cone while I did this), I’ve been a drugstore beauty addict.
And over the past few years, drugstore makeup has gotten MUCH better — like next level sh*t. You can be a woman of color now and find a foundation that actually matches your skin tone, and within those foundation families, you’ve got dewy finishes, matte finishes and satins. Nowadays you can also find good drugstore cream shadows, where once you could only get those at department stores.
As for drugstores colors, you aren’t just limited to a narrow neutral range anymore. Now you can find all sorts of drugstore color craziness. It’s an exciting time for affordable makeup! That’s for sure.
Here are five drugstore products I tried this week, and whether I think they’re “needs” or “nopes.”
If you were a fan of Maybelline Great Lash Mascara in Royal Blue back in the day, it’s back for a limited time exclusively at Walmart for $6.40. It had been discontinued some time ago.
Honestly, I’ve never quite understood the Great Lash Mascara love out there. For me…it’s just OK. Decent lift and separation, but with regard to Royal Blue, I can barely see the blue color on my lashes. I have to pile it on and look in a magnifying mirror.
If you have lighter lashes than I do, I’m sure the blue will pop more.
THE VERDICT: Nope! For me, this is a nope, but I know there are lots of Great Lash fans out there.
Maybelline’s new $10 liquid highlighter is some seriously hardcore disco frost! — and it isn’t for the faint of heart. No, these big bits of glitter are probably better suited for a crew heading to da club than a gang going to a playgroup.
I’d belong to the latter group, although if somebody started bumping Murder She Wrote at the playground — not gonna lie — I’d bust out the Butterfly, no shame (but I’d have to stretch first!). 🙂
Throwback to my clubbing days
I’m going to leave this product to the ladies who don’t have to deal with pores/fine lines/being over 40. If you’re interested, they’re $9.99 each and available in three super shimmery shades.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. How’s it going tonight? I’m over here trying to find something to watch on TV… Got any recs? 🙂
[whisper] I’ll admit it, when it comes to drugstore concealers, I’ve always been kind of a snob.[/whisper]
I blame it on my teenage years… I started out wearing mostly drugstore products (back in the ’90s), and I had SUCH a hard time finding face products, like foundations and concealers, that matched my skin tone.
It was a ROUGH time for tan girls back then, lemme tell you! Thank goodness we didn’t have selfies and Instagram back in the day, because I already have way too many Polaroid pictures of myself from that era with my face and under-eye area a completely different color than my neck.
Oh, and the drugstore formulas didn’t work as well as the stuff I’d find at the mall, so I’d be wearing concealer for like two seconds before it disappeared.
When it comes to drugstore face makeup, those were not the good ol’ days…
Fast forward to today, and Maybelline’s new $7.99 Dream Illuminating Brightening Creamy Concealer, which coms in six shades designed for the under-eye area.
Baby lips, as in the lips of wee babes, are FASCINATING. They’re so smooth and perfectly pigmented, and completely lacking vertical lip lines. I can’t believe that I had baby lips once upon a time…
Well, other than these new ones from Maybelline. 🙂 They’re called the Baby Lips Color Balm Crayons, and they’re $6.99 each and new for spring in eight shades.
Ingredients
Octyldodecanol, Diisostearyl Malate, Petrolatum, Polybutene, Bis-Diglyceryl Polyacyladipate-2, Polyethylene, Butyrospermum Parkii Butter / Shea Butter, HDI/Trimethylol Hexyllactone Crosspolymer, Alumina, Silica Silylate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Calcium Aluminum Borosilicate, Aroma/Flavor, Limonene and Silica
These are fairly moisturizing oil-based balms, but I wouldn’t whip one out if my lips were severely chapped. They would get the job done most of the time, but I don’t think they’re as hydrating as hardcore balms like Hourglass Lip Oil or Nuxe Reve de Miel.
I’ve been having a moment with Maybelline lately. I really, really like their new Dream Cushion Foundation, their Inti-Matte Lipsticks, the 24K Nudes Eyeshadow Palette, and I just had a long conversation with a friend last week (Hi, Shakun!) who loves their Matte and Poreless Foundation, which is apparently the ish, so I’m dying to try it.
With all of that said, I started testing the new Maybelline Expert Wear Eyeshadows, which come out this month (Jan. 2017), assuming they’d be great.
Buuut…
OK, that’s the end of that nonsense. My name is Karen, and I cannot rap! Nope. I am terrible at improv lyrical wordsmith-ing.
But hey, girl, haaay, I can do other things…like obsess over outrageously good gold, bronze and brown eye palettes. Yeah, I can totally do that. Been doing it for years, actually. 🙂
Here’s one: the new $11.99 Maybelline The 24K Nudes Eyeshadow Palette.
All 12 of these warm, shimmery shades are right up my alley. For an $11.99 palette, this one’s a divine drugstore darling with bronze, brown, purple and khaki. They’re all nicely pigmented (I’d call them “medium” pigmented, so just shy of full), so they aren’t as sheer as the shadows in some inexpensive palettes; easy to blend; silky soft; and they don’t have a problem with wear time.
This is a great palette for everyday shimmer. I have a palette from theBalm that’s very similar to it but about $20 more expensive.
The powder particles in the more shimmery of the shades are on the larger side, though…which does make those somewhat aging, methinks, but this is still a great all-around palette because of the potent pigments and the price. It’s easily comparable to some of the better drugstore palettes out there now (like the $10 Maybelline Eye Studios, which are bomb-@ss drugstore gems to me).
You know you grew up in earthquake country when you see some new nude lipsticks from Maybelline and, instead of thinking something normal like, “Ooh! I can’t wait to wear them with smoky eyes!” you think of your worst earthquake nightmare scenario, which involves being buck naked in the shower and completely covered in soap when the big one hits.
(Another one of my nightmare earthquake scenarios involves being in the middle of getting Lasik surgery when an earthquake hits. Sit on that one for a bit.)
Ah… Another day, another glorious excuse to wear nude lipstick. You know how I roll. 🙂 And these Color Sensational Inti-Matte Nudes Lipsticks by Maybelline are so much naked lip loveliness.
