Product Reviews

NYX Studio Effect Liquid Liner and a Tuesday Hello

August 24th, 2010 by Karen 70 Comments

Hey, boo. 🙂 Howzit? Sorry if I’ve seemed a little distracted lately, but I’ve been trying to squeeze in as much time as possible with my in-laws before they head back to Hawaii on Friday. Yup, it’s been an interesting beauty balancing act — trying to be a considerate host while also being biologically incapable of resisting makeup for more than a few hours at a time, ha!

But like any self-respecting member of the Borg collective knows, “resistance IS futile.” Keeping this beauty fiend away from her makeup is like trying to keep Tabs away from gravy (read: hard). Today I even locked myself away in the bathroom for an hour just to be alone with the new NYX Studio Liquid Liners ($4.50 each).

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Back to School Beauty: From Class to Off-Campus Party with LORAC Close Up Real Life to Red Carpet Eye Tutorial Kit

August 23rd, 2010 by Karen 34 Comments

If happy hours, ramen noodles, party crashing, mac and cheese, Taco Bell bean burritos and Totino’s frozen pizzas are fixtures of your college life (like they were mine!), take a little look at LORAC. Their $36 Close Up Real Life to Red Carpet Eye Tutorial Kit has “I’m a [hawt] broke college student” written all over it.

I’ll never forget the first time I went to buy books in college… YIKES! I guess I didn’t get the memo about every thick, hella boring science textbook costing an arm and a leg, and maybe it was out of a desire to prevent that same kind of eye-bulging sticker shock that LORAC came up with the idea.

The kit makes it easy to go from lunch in the campus cafeteria to a look ready for dinner and a movie. For $36 you get four full-size LORAC all-star products — a primer, a mascara, an eyeshadow trio and a liner — along with a small dual-tipped eye brush and a tutorial booklet with step-by-step directions for three different looks. Bought separately, the liner, primer and shadow trio by themselves (not including any of the other cool stuff) would cost almost twice as much as the entire kit.
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Pacifica California Star Jasmine Body Butter Makes Me Want to Drive Down the Coast

August 21st, 2010 by Karen 14 Comments

Pacifica’s California Star Jasmine Body Butter ($18), the newest addition to the company’s line of fragrant moisturizers, makes me want to drop everything right now and drive down to Santa Cruz for dinner.

A warm mix of jasmine and orange set to a base of musky driftwood, the scent reminds me of leisurely walks along the Beach Boardwalk at night, and it feels cozier than the other Pacifica Body Butters I’ve been wearing lately (Brazilian Mango Grapefruit, Hawaiian Ruby Guava and Malibu Lemon Blossom).

If I leave the house now, I could be cycling through the seaside town in my knit sweater, shorts and flip flops before dusk, a cool summer breeze blowing through my hair…

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Essie’s Fall 2010 Nail Polishes Keep In Step with the Season

August 20th, 2010 by Karen 56 Comments

essie fall 2010 swatches

I’m all for nail polishes that push the boundaries of beauty (I’m looking at you, Butter London!), but I also like traditional products in colors that feel familiar, like the six shades that make up Essie fall 2010.

Colors like these, all of them medium to dark and $8 apiece, remind me of autumns in the city. The red, pink, purple, green, amethyst and blackish brown feel urban and sophisticated, and I see these colors being worn by a stylish girl (for the purposes of this paragraph, let’s call her Karen). 🙂 I can see her walking the sidewalks of downtown San Francisco in a chic tweed jacket, wearing dark skinny jeans and kickin’ knee-high boots, LOL! And I can almost hear the autumn leaves crunching beneath my feet as my painted nails catch the late afternoon light.

“This fall, designers are mixing it up, combining sheer fabric with leather along with lingerie as outer wear in deep muted tones and bold color palettes which is very alluring. I drew inspiration from the range of elegant, sanguine hues and camouflage tones.”

— Essie Weingarten, founder and president of Essie

Every color in the collection walks in step with the season, unlike last year’s fall release (remember the neon hot pink and highway worker vest orange?), which l still liked, but those colors seemed a little disjointed and random to me.

I like everything this time around, and it all just makes sense. I’m totally thrilled by shimmery sage Sew Psyched and creamy taupe Merino Cool.

Have a look at these swatches, and let me know what you think.

essie fall 2010 swatches sew psyched
Sew Psyched
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Have a Drink on Clinique with Soothing Moisture Surge Face Spray

August 20th, 2010 by Karen 18 Comments

clinique moisture surge face spray review

Calling Reno dry is like calling Chanel expensive: kinda obvious. Heck, it’s not just dry; the air literally repels moisture! — as if it hates the stuff.

One of the things I did to stay cool and keep my skin from cracking was turn to Clinique’s Moisture Surge Face Spray ($20), which I must have spritzed on myself at least a hundred times (every time I took a break from Kitty Glitter).

It’s an oil-free moisturizing face spray with a faint, almost undetectable licorice scent, and it’s part of Clinique’s famed Moisture Surge line. Designed to soothe and satisfy parched skin, it can be used in conjunction with other facial moisturizers, too, either beneath or atop makeup (spray from about a foot away to keep from disturbing your handiwork), as often as needed.

I’m prone to dry skin (normally combination dry/oily) and can suffer from taught, tight, uncomfortable skin even in humid conditions, but things would have been A LOT worse in the Reno desert if it hadn’t been for Clinique Moisture Surge Face Spray. Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: A

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Scream it at the top of your lungs:
TGIF!

These Chanel Ombres Contraste Duo Eyeshadows Are Smooth Operators

August 19th, 2010 by Karen 44 Comments

chanel ombres contraste eyeshadow duo review swatches top

Chanel should have issued a warning with their new $42 Ombres Contraste Duos: “Caution: The contents of this compact may be hard to resist!” 🙂

Seriously, you might want to steel yourself against potential temptation and simply stop reading now.

The part of me that loves elegantly effortless makeup just can’t get enough of these eyeshadow duos. The six of them make me feel like screaming, “Gimme, gimme more!”

This fall luxurious textures and intense pigments have been all the rage among the high-end makeup lines (hello, Givenchy Le Prisme Quartets!), and while these duos may not look the part at first, they’re no exception.

Each one comes with a light cream shadow designed to be used as a base and a darker powder matte shadow for contouring and creating the illusion of depth.

Conveniently, skin is where these products really POP! — both in terms of color and texture — and being as smooth as they are makes them remarkably easy to blend.

In the look below I’m wearing Khaki (a matte dark green) from the Khaki-Clair duo. In it I’m barely wearing any, yet the ample pigmentation makes the color pretty hard to miss. BONUS: These leave behind absolutely no shadow fallout whatsoever — zip, zero, zilch.

chanel ombres contraste eyeshadow duo review swatches k2
Wearing Khaki-Clair
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Viva La MAC Viva Glam! Swatches and Pics of the New Cyndi and Gaga Lipglasses

August 19th, 2010 by Karen 66 Comments

mac viva glam cyndi lipglass mac viva glam gaga lipglass swatches review

Back in college I volunteered as a peer health counselor, and one of my responsibilities was to visit the different dorms on campus and give presentations on HIV/AIDS awareness. Even though it took a lot of time, it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done (I felt like I was really helping people).

In a small way, MAC’s Viva Glam program allows me to still feel like I’m helping people, and maybe that’s one of the reasons why I like the limited edition MAC Viva Glam Cyndi and Viva Glam Gaga Lipglasses ($14.50 each) so much.

Well, it doesn’t hurt that they’re gorgeous, too. 🙂

mac viva glam cyndi lipglass mac viva glam gaga lipglass wands

If I had to pick between the two, I think I’d probably go with Cyndi’s shiny coral. Don’t get me wrong — I love Gaga’s creamy light bluish pink, but I tend to find warmer colors a little easier to wear.
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Pacifica Is on a Roll: Pacifica Perfumes New Portable, Affordable Fragrances

August 18th, 2010 by Karen 36 Comments

pacifica perfume reviews

Heya, ladies. 🙂 How was your hump day afternoon? We got home from Reno a few hours ago, and since then I’ve done a load of laundry, watered the plants, given Tabs his overdue lurvies and took some pictures (with a little help from Tabs) of Pacifica’s cute line of Roll-On Perfumes ($12 for a 10-ml bottle).

Available in eight classic Pacifica scents — Hawaiian Ruby Guava, Brazilian Mango Grapefruit, Malibu Lemon Blossom, Tahitian Gardenia, Mediterranean Fig, French Lilac, Lotus Garden and Tuscan Blood Orange — and one new fragrance called California Star Jasmine (shown at the top), they should easily slip into most makeup bags or purses; size-wise, they’re TSA-approved, so you can pop ’em into a carry-on bag for air travel.

I brought the California Star Jasmine Roll On with me to Reno, and whenever I needed a break from the casino air — a mix of recycled cigarette smoke, desperation and perspiration — I’d bust out the little tube, roll it on my wrists, and take a deep breath (it smells like oranges, jasmine flowers and white musk on my skin). Just like that, I’d feel instantly better — transported from the dusty Nevada desert to a sandy Southern California beach.

pacifica perfume reviews

pacifica perfume reviews
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