Sephora Skincare Favorites Set- Customizable!

Many of the beauty bloggers that I follow have been talking about this great deal from Sephora- their Soko to Tokyo Skincare Favorites Set. I personally really enjoy these sets that Sephora comes out with since it’s a good way to try out high end makeup, and it’s usually for a great deal. This is arguably one of the best sets they’ve come out with since it’s customizable! Nouveaucheap has a really great breakdown of all the choices, as well as a per unit cost breakdown so you can see which ones give you the most bang for your buck. I don’t believe this is commonly known, but you can add more than one of an item. For instance, if one of the options is your favorite skincare item, you can add multiples of it to add up to the same amount of product as a full size, but for a fraction of the price. You choose 5 of the options for $25 and it comes with a great travel bag. I just received mine in the mail a couple days ago and the bag is really great quality- I’m impressed! Overall this is an amazing deal since skincare is so expensive and the sizes they give you are enough for you to fully try out a product. It’s still in stock here though I think some of the items I ordered have gone out of stock and have been replaced with new ones- you can always wait a bit because it seems like they are constantly restocking (I’m surprised considering how quickly some other things are selling out online- I’m looking at you Wet n Wild -.-)

Here are my picks below, plus the travel bag that they come in: (links are to full size items)

Glossier Unboxing: New Favorites & 20% off!

After hearing Serein Wu (Dress Yourself Happy) & many other bloggers rave about Glossier’s Haloscope, as well as Kathleen Lights (& many others) rave about Glossier’s Balm Dot Com, I knew I had to try these out since I love lip balm (blog post on this coming soon!) and highlighters. So I placed an order with 20% off (which you can also take advantage of! click here and the discount will automatically apply at check out) and I’ve been trying these products out over the past few days.

I’m a sucker for nice packaging. So they get major points for that.

Mini Empties for June

I’m terrible at finishing up products since I usually don’t like them enough to use it all the way up or I get distracted by a new product that I decide to test out and never end up getting back to it. My goal has been to try to use up more products in order to get my money’s worth out of a product, even if it is not my favorite. I think the best time to write a review is when you’ve used up the whole product since by then you will have formed a solid opinion on it. My empties for last month are:

1. Soap & Glory Sugar Crush Body Buttercream
2. Neutrogena Oil-free Eye Makeup Remover
3. Soap & Glory Hand Food
4. Nugg Hydrating Face Mask
5. Aveeno Active Naturals Daily Moisturizing Lotion

Keep reading to find out what I think of them! 

Current Make up Wishlist

Amidst the flurry of summer sales, I recently made some (read: a lot) purchases which includes skin care (which I’m getting more into- never too early to prevent wrinkles!) and make up (of course). Many of these were on sale, some of them were not, which were often a result of trying to reach the minimum purchase in order to receive free shipping. As a result, I am currently on a no-buy until at least November hopefully (I’m holding out for Black Friday). Anyways, I thought it would be fun to share products that are currently on my wishlist since I will not be purchasing any more make up any time soon. These are products that I’ve done quite a bit of research on and would like to purchase eventually. I’m either saving up for it or waiting for a sale, so naturally most of these tend to be higher-end products. If you have any of these, let me know how you like them!

Current Top 10 Lip Products

Today I’m bringing you a post on my current top 10 favorite lip products at the moment. There’s a variety of high-end to drugstore, lip glosses, lip butters, and lip sticks. These are in no particular order.

1. bare Minerals Marvelous Moxie lip gloss in Hypnotist: fun duo chrome non-sticky lip gloss that is slightly hydrating and eventually wears down to look like a clear gloss (more info can be found in this post where I talk more about it)
2. butter London Bloody Brilliant lip crayon in Toff: really like this darker mauve color on me, the formula is slightly slick on application, lasts about 4 hours and wears well
3. Clinique pop lip colour + primer in Bare Pop: a MLBB color for me with some glitter, easy to wear and apply, glitter remains after color fades
4. bare Minerals Marvelous Moxie lipstick in Raise the Bar: one of the more unique shades in my collection, with a slightly metallic finish, making it interesting but wearable
5. Buxom full-bodied lipstick in Dolly: another MLBB shade, but more pigmented and pinker than Clinique Bare Pop
6. Urban Decay Matte Revolution lipstick in 1993: one of the most comfortable matte formulas I’ve tried, nice wearable brown color, lasts 5+ hours
7. Dior Lip Addict Lip Glow in Pink: no swatch shown since it doesn’t really show up in arm swatches, I love the scent of this (sweet mint, very faint), it turns a healthy shade of pink on my lips and perfects them to make them look smooth
8. NYX High Voltage Lipstick in Flutterkiss: extremely creamy formula, tends to fade within 3 hours on me but is easy to reapply, however I dislike the packaging since it’s easy to smear the product on the inside (bullet does not twist down all the way)
9. Revlon Lip Butter in Juicy Papaya: I love the formula of these (I have several and love all of them), this is a surprise favorite since I usually don’t like colors in the coral family but this color leaves a healthy glossy finish that complements my skin tone
10. Revlon Colorburst in Honey: another easy to apply MLBB color (can you sense a pattern here) with a mint scent, the crayon design makes it easy to apply and it is a good drugstore option

Keep reading for arm swatches!

Things I Went to Buy & Left Without: Disappointing Products

Today I will be talking about some products that I heard about on YouTube or social media that sparked my interest, which prompted a visit to either Ulta or Sephora. These are all what I consider mid-end to high-end makeup, or makeup that costs a decent amount of money to me (anything over about $10-12, I’m a student, I need the best bang for my buck). For items like these, if possible, I look up a lot of reviews on them (on YouTube, on blogs, on Instagram, etc). After reading all the reviews and I decide I still want the product, I usually try to test it out in stores for myself to make sure they haven’t been overhyped, since no blog or picture will reflect how the product will perform or look on my skin. Therefore, these are some products that I went in to buy, but left without for whatever reason.

The first of these are the butter london Blush Clutch Wardrobe singles. These weren’t a huge disappointment since I couldn’t really find anything on them online, save for a few blog posts which raved about them. I was just curious about them since they were on sale at Ulta. I had planned on purchasing either Violet or Tiger Lily, but after swatching Violet, I wasn’t all that impressed since it seemed rather chalky to me. In addition, it seemed useless without the Blush Clutch palette to slide into, since it is just a loose blush with no outer packaging to protect it. As a result, I did not end up picking any up.

Makeup Trend I Tried & Didn’t Like: Matte Lips

Matte lips have been all the rage lately and the trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. More and more brands have been coming out with their own versions of a matte lipstick or matte liquid lipstick. I can see the appeal in a matte lip, for instance they tend not to feather outside of your lip lines and they tend to be very long-lasting as well as budge proof. However, I hate the feeling of most matte lips and the way they look on me personally. I find that practically all of the matte lip products I’ve tried usually emphasize my lip lines. Granted, I haven’t tried a whole ton of matte lip products because I don’t really enjoy them. As someone who tends to always have lip balm nearby, I like the feel of moisturized and hydrated lips. Though some matte formulas are more comfortable than others, I find that none of the ones I’ve tried have been moisturizing, and of course I didn’t expect them to, but that is the type of texture I prefer. I will occasionally bust out a matte lip if I’m wearing a more intense color, such as a red. But for everyday, I think I’m going to stick with my trusty tinted lip balms, creamy lipsticks, and lip glosses.

Surprise Beauty Finds!

Today I ventured into my local T.J. Maxx because I had seen on Instagram that some people were finding the discontinued Kat Von D Shade & Light blushes there and I was hoping my T.J. Maxx would have some as well. I know they had some pretty mixed reviews, where some people found the formula extremely dry and unpigmented, whereas others liked that it was not so pigmented. Since they were on sale, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try them out for myself.

Of course, trying to find stuff at T.J. Maxx is hit and miss- sometimes you come away with nothing and other times you hit a gold mine. So naturally, I did not find any of the Kat Von D blushes, but I did find some other great products, both of which I believe are discontinued unfortunately, but that’s usually how they end up at a T.J. Maxx or Marshall’s. I was also surprised that the products I found had not been swatched already or broken, which is the state I usually find products at T.J. Maxx.

Sale alert! Mini Ulta Haul & more first impressions

I recently visited my local Ulta since I had been meaning to return a couple products, which were lip products I bought on their website after looking at many swatches online, but unfortunately I’m still terrible at judging whether a color will look good on me and the colors I chose looked terrible on me, which was sad since they were beautiful colors. Anyways, I digress. It was the perfect time to head in since that morning I had received an email from Ulta that had an ad for 50% off the bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie lip liners, lip sticks, and lip glosses (sale lasts until 6/15, in store and online)! For 50%, I’d be willing to try anything. So of course, I looked up some reviews and swatches before I went in so I had a good idea of what I wanted. It was somewhat of a success! I spent less than an hour in Ulta (lol), I returned two lip products, and walked out with three and only paid $4! (It was only a partial success because I went in for two products and ended up with three…)

BeautyKind Haul & First Impressions

One of my favorite bloggers I follow is Jen from Budget Beauty Blog. She posts lots of great reviews and deals on everything from drugstore to high-end makeup. I recently came across this post of hers about an online store called BeautyKind, where they give 5% of your purchase to a cause of your choice, which I think is great! The kicker was that she had a code that gave you $50 off a $75 purchase (nope, you didn’t read that wrong). She gave some great recommendations, as did the people in the comment section. Unfortunately, by the time I got to browsing the site, some of the hot ticket items (Laura Geller Gilded Honey) were already sold out. Nevertheless, I still found some great things and placed an order, which is why we’re here now. I have swatched all the products (couldn’t help myself) but I haven’t had a chance to test them out for qualities like wear time, which I can update later. If you’re looking to jump on the bandwagon and check out BeautyKind, hopefully this will inspire you.