Labels: beauty notes, clean and clear, skin

• Sonia Kashuk "Starlight" eyeshadow single. A high-end-quality d/s shadow, wearable ivory shimmered with a little gold.
  
  Sonia Kashuk "Whisper" eyeshadow single, if they still make it. Not quite as sublime as Starlight imo, but a perfectly respectable, off white matte, base shade.



• Revlon Super Lustrous lipstick. Now that Revlon has...finally...made these unscented/unflavored...they're well worth looking into. Frankly I wore them back when they were still stinky :) Some of the colors are good.
  
  I have owned Dune Rose...it's a rose-red, a bit muted, a bit shimmery. Somehow reminiscent of an actual rose. It's a lot of color as the Super Lustrous tend to be.
  
  Blackberry...this is red actually, a respectable cool-toned red.
  
  Some I haven't tried but have seen good reviews for...Slate, Rose Velvet, Fleshtone.



• Revlon Super Lustrous lip glosses. I don't do gloss generally and I haven't tried them, but they have gotten consistently good board reviews.



• Neutrogena MoistureShine lip glosses. Likewise, never tried, have seen overall good reviews.



• Wet 'n' Wild #666 lip pencil. I remember when there was a great hue and cry over this, because Wet 'n' Wild changed the formula of it, years ago. Apparently the old #666 was softer in texture than the new. Still it remains a beauty board classic.



• Bonne Bell Dr. Pepper LipSmacker. Thought these were just for kids? This classic muted deep red 'Smacker still appears on the most sophisticated Face of The Day posts.



• Cover Girl Fresh Look pressed powder. I've never tried this, having discovered another beauty board classic, MAC Blot pressed powder, first...and I have the impression that Blot is still worth the (much) higher price tag if you have oily skin.
  
  That said, if you don't, you might well give this a try.



• Milani Luminous blush. Luminous is the shade name; it's a powder blush single. The famous look-alike to Nars Orgasm blush. (I haven't tried either ftr.)



• Coty Vanilla Fields perfume. I swatched this...it's not "me" (few perfumes are, drugstore or high end). It smelled pretty darn good. One of the few inexpensive scents with a good reputation.



• Clean 'n' Clear blotting tissues. If you have skin that tends toward the oily or shiny, do try these. These funny little pieces of blue "rubber" blot oil extremely well, without adding another layer of makeup.

• Sonia Kashuk makeup brushes. They don't have a brush for every need, however it's hard to beat their $5 blush brush. I also use their large and medium eyeshadow brushes (no idea anymore of the price, it's comparable to the blush brush though).
  
  No shedding or splaying, and I've had them for years and washed them many times.



• Milani Golden Bronze and Moonlight eyeshadow singles. Of course there are many Milani shadows to choose from, and their low price makes it almost necessary to try a few and see what sticks.
  
  Golden Bronze is not really golden nor bronze. It's a sort of cool goldish neutral shimmer. Moonlight fades within the hour if I apply it on bare lids, so I anchor it down with a longer-lasting neutral eyeshadow (MAC Brule). It's white with an interesting blue sheen.



• Prestige Waterproof Automatic eyeliner pencil in Expresso. I can confess I found the regular eyepencils, the kind you sharpen, disappointing...for me, the pencil must glide on without effort. But the automatic ones...I've owned Expresso for a year and a half. It's still smooth and creamy and wears slightly better than MAC Powerpoint pencils.



• Neutrogena MoistureShine tinted lip balm in Sunny. I own this in Warm, too, but somehow Warm does not translate as well into an all-around lipstick; Warm seems better in summer, on the beach.
  
  Sunny is similar in color to MAC Jubilee Lustre lipstick...a "your lips but better" color, slightly warm in tone. The staying power isn't as good as MAC but then it's half the price.



• Pantene Sheer Volume shampoo. Costco sells this in ginormous Costco-sized bottles; it's a pretty good shampoo imo. It doesn't volumize in my experience, but it is a surprisingly mild shampoo (I have a naturally oily scalp and dry bleached ends).



• Pantene Smooth and Sleek daily conditioner. I'm super picky as far as daily conditioners, if only because so few of them seem to work. The majority tend to either build up/freak my scalp out, or else fail utterly to detangle.
  
  Smooth and Sleek is as good as the uber-obscure Smash the Finisher daily conditioner I used to use (and dumped; too hard to find b & m wise).



• L'Oreal Feria hair color components and Feria deep conditioner, sold at Sallys Beauty Supply. This is not quite "drugstore" yet it's cheaper than buying the kits at a drugstore, hence the mention.
  
  Sallys sells a separate large-sized Feria creme developer, plus individual color liquids. Takes a bit of practice to decide what you want to throw into the mix...but for veterans of mixing two or more kit colors together, that shouldn't be a biggie.
  
  The Feria deep conditioner comes in a separate large tube. I tend to use it right after I color, and it's as if I never just colored the heck out of my hair.



• Johnson & Johnson Head to Toe Baby Wash. This was a board lemming way back when. I still use it though. Why not? It works.
  
  Costco likewise sells Costo-sized double packs of this.

Labels: lips, mac cosmetics

Labels: lips

Labels: celebrity, mac cosmetics