LIPS

Some of my favorite lip products

Urryday eye makeup.

                                          Makeup of the day (yesterday) 

Urban Decay 24/7 shadow pencil in Juju. Buck from UD Naked palette in crease and Sin in the inner corners. My usual Revlon Photo Ready 3d mascara. No liner, I wedged mascara into the lash line from beneath using my MAC eyeliner brush. (lash comb really comes in handy for gobs of mascara) 

instagram.com/mixiestar

Urban Decay Naked Palettes.

I wore a different Naked palette every day for 3 days and this is how I normally wear them, pretty subdued.

Naked 3

Naked 2

Naked

This are mostly lighter colors in the palettes, also I used a shadow from the Too-Faced Natural Eye palette (Heaven) on the brow bone in each picture. (It's perfect, I'm addicted) 

Naked 3 is a rose-colored palette, needs another highlight color in it but it's a wonderful collection.

Naked 2 is a "greige" palette, lots of taupe and greyish colors, my favorite of the three. 

Naked *the original* is a bronze-y palette with Smog, my favorite UD color ever. This is my favorite palette to use on brides. 

MAC now offering teeny versions of pigments, lipglass, etc.

ruh roh.

I just got a promotional email from MAC announcing their "Sized to Go" collection. 30ml or less containers of select PIGMENTS (whaaaaaaaaat? yes!) mascaras, lipglass, and skincare. So pumped. Wish the teeny pigments came in more colors (namely, tan) but they do have Old Gold which is one of my favorite things to put underneath bottom lashes. It's kind of a green/gold but it looks so, so, so good on. Melon (gorgeous rose-gold) is also one of the colors in the small size and it is great on cheeks (highlighter/blush) and lips, it's a particularly good color for blue eyes because it is a bit orange-y. The pigments are $10, full-size they are $21.

Revlon Photoready 3D Volume Mascara vs Benefit They're Real!

I have been using They're Real for several years now, trying other things in between but never really finding anything I liked as much. Poring over mascara reviews online I found several positive ones for the Revlon mascara. Having worked in a prestige/mass-market cosmetic store when the Revlon one was released, I had seen the brush (you know how they package them with the brush out and a disposable lid on the tube?) and noticed how much it looked like the Benefit mascara brush. Not wanting to drop $23 on mascara, the next time I was at CVS I picked up the Photoready 3D.

It is amazing.
It might have been about $8, so I saved at least $15. (more money for other makeups!!) ha.
It's a little tiny bit softer/more liquid than They're Real so it might be easier to smudge when it is wet but it works pretty much the same. It dried a bit softer than the Benefit mascara also, which is a plus for me. I had been using Maybelline Full n' Soft for a few weeks because I HATE crunchy lashes, but it does little to nothing as far as volume for me.

Winner: Revlon Photoready 3D Volume

pictured: no mascara on my left eye, Benefit They're Real on my right eye. 

(HUGE difference, this stuff is great.)

pictured: same as above, Benefit on my right, nothing on the left

pictured: Revlon Photoready 3D Volume Mascara on both eyes. 

The Benefit might be glossier and a tiny bit blacker, but for me I think they are similar enough for me to get the cheaper one. 

*apologies,  the pics are only iphone-camera quality

GlossyBox June 2013

I liked my first GlossyBox (herein referred to by GB) so much I got it again! You *do* have to cancel this service or it auto-bills you, FYI. 

This was a special version of the GB and featured an illustration on the box of some sort of leggy fashion girl. 

First impression: Tarte lipstick! Which leads us to: product breakdown. 

• Tarte complexion-enhancing lip gloss. This is awesome and I have already put this in my purse makeup-bag. (very few make the cut) It's sort of a nude lipstick with a bullet of corally-magenta color in the middle. Since this is a complexion-enhancing lipstick the shade is listed as "fair-to-light". (GB has a short survey for you to list skin color etc.) This is awesome. 
• A C.Booth dry oil, this is almond and I am really excited to try it. 
• A Sparitual nail polish in a questionable shade, it's a shimmery orange. 
• A Philip B. hair mask, I have used his products before and I really liked them so I am excited about this. The instructions say you should let it harden so I am kind of wary but also intrigued, haven't used a hardening hair mask ever in my life. 
• A satin bag of 5 Oscar de la Renta fragrance samples. The enclosed GB mag has descriptions of all the fragrances and a matching photoshoot. The bag is cute and has charms on the ties, it reminds me of the bags Sephora used to send their products in when you ordered from them. 

This was a great box, there were 3 things that made me feel like my purchase was justified. The lipstick, dry oil, and hair mask are the standouts. I only wish GB had better taste in nailcolor. This is the 2nd polish from them that I have wished were different colors. They emailed subscribers earlier in the month saying shipping might be delayed because the original polish meant to be included in the box (a Bondi color) was unavaiable and they were making substitutions. Sadly the GB mag included in the box featured a layout of the new made-for-GB Bondi polish colors and I really liked all of those, womp womp. 

UPDATE!- The philip B hair mask is pretty great, it does dry to a semi hard gel like finish.
also the C. Booth sweet almond dry oil is incredible and I will definitely be purchasing it again by itself. 

My First GlossyBox! (May 2013)

First of all, the presentation is delightful!
For $21 I expected it to be better than my first box-subscription experience ($10) but I was blown away by how MUCH better.

The inner box is smooth and very well made and if you like boxes (like me) you will really like it.
The products I got were well worth the cost, here is what I got:

• A ModelCo lipstick/lipgloss dual-ended thing which also manages to have a mirror on it also. I actually saw a preview of the limited-edition 2013 Wedding version of the GlossyBox ($40) and it seemed to feature this exact thing, I'm afraid it would be the same color or I would buy that one. The gloss looked and smelled great! The lipstick was a bit dark on me (I'm porcelain, NC25 so most things are). I thought briefly of trying to separate the two but hard plastic is so....shatter-y. In the end it would up being given to my (much tanner) mom. 

• A solid perfume that was really nice and smelled like oranges, not like house cleaner fake-smelling orange, but nice. I don't know the brand (I got my 2nd glossybox today and remembered I hadn't posted about the first one yet, but it's on the GB website. 

• A lime green shimmer Zoya polish. I like MOST of Zoya's colors, but this is not one of them. 

• Some Sebastian root-lift spray gel. I haven't tried this yet but it is a pretty good size and I like their products. 

• A fabric collagen mask, I haven't tried this yet. The instructions are mostly in other languages so I wanted to look into it a bit more before slapping it on my face but it looks really cool. 

• A small tube of anti-aging serum, the full-size version of which I saw was $100. I haven't tried this yet but it's not a brand I have heard of before and I don't know that much about it. 

• Two packet-sized samples of a body wash and exfoliator from a waxing salon brand. 

There was also a small magazine which was basically just pics of products. They Included a coupon for a free waxing but, as an Aesthetician, I don't really need that at all.

All in all, I was really happy with this, I felt like it was worth the money and I loved the presentation. This would be wonderful to give/get as a present.