Below Freezing Beauty

Got a Costco membership? Got dry lips? Get these

2012-02-10T18:19:00.000-09:00

I always read e-mails from Costco. You never know what great deal is lurking at the bottom of that crowded e-blast. Like today, for example:

Six eos lip balms for $14.99? Yes, please.

If you live in Regular America, shipping is free. If you live in a Freak State, there's a shipping charge, but because it's Costco, it's super minimal. I dropped these in my cart and signed in just to see what they would charge, and the answer turned out to be $1.79. So even with the shipping charge, these work out to be significantly under their usual retail price of about $3.50 each.

These eos lip balms, if you haven't tried them, are pretty great. I have Summer Fruit and Sweet Mint (both included in the Costco deal), and the flavor is really nice. They're also phthalate-, paraben- and petrolatum-free and packed with nice natural moisturizing ingredients. Plus the cute little round shape is fun. They're almost egg-shaped, so you could hold on to them until Easter and dress them up for gifts. Or you could do what I would do and just hog them all for yourself.

It's a good thing I didn't go looking for these on Costco.com, because I never would have thought to check in "non-prescription remedies," which is where they're categorized (rather than under "cosmetics," which is where I would have gone). I did find something else interesting under "cosmetics," though: a Dior palette for $49.99.

Oh, Costco. You never fail to surprise me.

Reader Q&A: DIY home skincare

2012-02-05T16:54:00.002-09:00

Dear Below Freezing Beauty,
My skin is *so* bad. I've been terrible about taking off my makeup before sleep lately. My diet has been not at all nutritious and stress abounds. I used my tried and true Yes to Tomatoes mud mask last night with none of the usual results. The market for beauty products is limited where I live. Is there something I can whip up the kitchen to repair this mess?
Sincerely, Desperately Researching A Breakthrough

Hey, DRAB, you just described my skincare routine for large chunks of last year. Despite the fact that one of my 2011 beauty resolutions was to get my skin under control, I was also stressed out and planning a wedding and... well, this isn't about me. (I also didn't yet master false lashes. That's a 2012 task.)

YES, there are ingredients in your kitchen right now that can help out your skin. The hard thing is figuring out which ones work for you. The Internet is packed with recipes and video tutorials for DIY facials and masks. Some of them seem like pure nonsense. And even the ones that are based on actual science will also be more or less effective depending on your skin type. But here are a few I've tried and can recommend.

Aspirin

Here's something you maybe didn't know (I know I didn't): Salicylic acid, which is used in many acne treatments, is the chemical basis for aspirin. I'm not a scientist, so this is by no means a precise description, but basically, aspirin is synthesized from salicylic acid. Anyway, regardless of what the science is exactly, lots of people swear by aspirin masks for acne-prone skin. You can mix it with tea tree oil, honey or aloe, depending on your specific needs, or you can just use water, which is what I tried. There's a great long thread about aspirin treatments on Makeupalley. (You may have to register to read it. Go for it. It's free, it's a great resource, and they never bug you with spam.) Some people also use Excedrin because it contains caffeine (good for under the eyes) in addition to aspirin.

I picked up a bottle of uncoated generic aspirin at my local drugstore for a couple of bucks, and then finely ground a small handful of pills with the chopper attachment of my hand blender. You could also just whack them with a rolling pin or mortar and pestle, I suppose, but I'm lazy and happened to have the perfect appliance on hand, so I used it. (I also didn't want a lot of big chunks left over.) I mixed the powder with a little bit of water to make a paste, rubbed it all over my face, and let it sit for about 20 minutes. Then I rinsed it off with some warm water, rubbing gently as I went to exfoliate.

I wouldn't say I saw immediate results with my aspirin mask, but my face felt clean, and it didn't irritate my skin. Since it's cheap and easy, I'll definitely try it again, although I think I'll wait a few days, since I could see it being overly drying if used too often.

Baking soda

I've seen some videos on YouTube about using baking soda for skincare, but I've always held off because baking soda has just seemed too harsh to put on my face. It's cheap and readily available, though, so I figured I'd give it a go as a spot treatment. I mixed a few drops of water into about a half teaspoon of baking soda, dabbed it on a couple of zits and let it sit for about 30 minutes.

This? Actually worked really nicely for me. They didn't disappear or anything, but I could tell it definitely sucked some moisture out of them, and the next day the spots were smaller and less red. I still don't think I'll be rubbing baking soda all over my face, but I could see using it to stand in for my usual overnight spot treatment, Mario Badescu Drying Lotion. There's a great Makeupalley thread on baking soda as well.

Apple cider vinegar mask and toner

I've shared this video before, but this mask did really work nicely for me. Plus the girl in the video has such a cute Belfast accent. This tutorial also uses green tea, sugar and honey.

Review: Maybelline Color Tattoo 24hr Eyeshadow

2012-01-23T19:27:00.002-09:00

I've been delaying getting some posts up lately because I haven't had the time to take good photos, but I finally decided having no photos is better than having no posts. I can always go back and add them later, right? Meanwhile the stack of products I want to post about just keeps growing, so I think I've made the right decision.

For this post, I do have some photos (as you'll see), and if you do a Google image search for today's product you'll turn up, oh, about 1.5 million results (seriously). So they're out there if you're dying for them.

Let me just begin by saying that when I first saw the Maybelline Color Tattoo 24hr eye shadows at Target, I didn't intend to try them. If there is any scenario in which I am going to be wearing eye shadow for 24 hours, it would almost certainly have to involve me drinking a magnum of champagne and passing out for a long, long time. But then I started seeing people on Twitter comparing them to MAC Paint Pots, so I figured for six bucks (as opposed to $18 for a Paint Pot), I should give them a try.

I'd only planned to get one, but Fred Meyer had a buy-one-get-one-free deal, so I took home two. Tough as Taupe is a creamy neutral with the very barest hint of shimmer (you really have to look for it).

Too Cool is a frosty white with noticeably more shimmer.

My first reaction: These are a lot like Paint Pots. They're smooth and creamy and very pigmented. So when I was back at Fred Meyer later that week, and since the sale was still going on, I picked up two more: Edgy Emerald and Painted Purple, both shimmery.

I've been wearing one or more of these shadows almost every day for the past two weeks, either on their own or as a base under powder eye shadow. I have to say, I actually like the consistency and the wear better than MAC Paint Pots. I wouldn't use a Paint Pot without a primer underneath, but I've been wearing the Color Tattoo shadows with nothing underneath, and I haven't had any problems with creasing. I do recommend applying them in thin layers and building up to the amount of color you want. I think they would crease if applied thickly.

There also seems to be an inverse relationship between the amount of shimmer and the ease of application of each shade. Tough as Taupe has the least shimmer (really, practically none), and it has the smoothest, most perfect consistency. I've been wearing it almost every day. Too Cool is the most shimmery, and it's the shade I've had the biggest challenge getting to apply evenly. (I've been using my fingers.) Again, thin layers work best.

If I had to pick only one of these to own, I'd absolutely pick Tough as Taupe. It's a really pretty neutral that I think is probably versatile enough to work with a lot of different complexions.

I did sleep in Tough as Taupe (with L'Oréal's new Infallible long-wearing powder shadow over the top), just to be able to say I'd worn it for 24 hours. The result was not pretty. I don't imagine (or hope) I'll ever be able to effectively judge whether any 24-hour makeup lasts through 24 waking hours on my face.

Regardless, at around $6 (note to Anchorage readers: Color Tattoo shadows are regularly $6.99 at Fred Meyer but only $5.99 at Target), these creme shadows are a good deal and a great alternative to MAC Paint Pots and other high-end creme shadows. It would be nice to see the color selection expand, too; currently, there are 10 shades in the line, but I'd love to see more.

Maybelline Color Tattoo by Eye Studio 24hr Eyeshadow

Bottom line: 24 hours of wear? Probably not. But still a great deal for a good quality cream shadow.

Price: $

Tip: Build the color in thin layers, using your fingers and letting each layer set before you add more.

Matte glitter ombre

2012-01-15T15:28:00.001-09:00

I liked my gold fleck ombre manicure so much, I had to try it the other way around (inspired by a couple of examples I saw on Pinterest). This is one coat of Orly Snowcone embellished with L.A. Girl Celebrate — again, very thin coats — and topped with Essie Matte About You.

I haven't been a huge fan of matte finish nails before now, but I really like it with the glitter. It still shines, but you get a little less sparkle and a little more confetti effect.

Gold flake ombre

2012-01-12T19:53:00.000-09:00

I mentioned in my flakies comparison post that I wanted to try an ombre nail with Essie As Gold as it Gets. At first I tried it over silver, but there wasn't enough contrast, so my nails just sort of looked yellow at the tips. So I started over with two base coats of China Glaze Shower Together. The results didn't disappoint.

This is beyond easy to do yourself. Imagine your nail is divided into four quarters from base to tip. Working with very thin coats of As Gold as it Gets, paint just the tip, then put a second (again, very thin) coat over the top half of the nail. For your final coat, paint the top three quarters of the nail, leaving about the last quarter unembellished.

I finished it off with a coat of Essie Matte About You topcoat.

I love the gold over the blue, and the flakes really stand out under the matte topcoat.

Anyone else doing anything fun with some of the new "special effects" polishes?

Post-holiday LUSH sale haul

2012-01-11T06:30:00.000-09:00

Look what came in the mail last week!

I didn't manage to score any wrapped gifts in the Lush post-holiday sale (although I was right; they did add a few more items later, including some Snow Fairy gift sets), but I did pick out some buy-one-get-one-free bubble bars, soaps and bath bombs.

I don't order from Lush very often, so I really savor the box opening process.

Here on the top layer you can see some Ruby Red Slippers bubble bars, Candy Mountain bubble bars, Superstars bubble bars and Candy Cane soap. I hadn't tried any of these before I ordered them, but Ruby Red Slippers has a cult following, and I love anything peppermint-scented, so with the added bonus of the BOGO promotion, I felt OK taking a risk.

Once I dug past that first layer, I got to the real mother lode: Golden Wonder bath bombs. Eight of them. If they bring this bath bomb back next year, I can't recommend it enough. It smells like citrus, it changes colors, and it spews tiny little golden stars that drift all over the bathtub and melt away on your skin. Love it.

The final tally: Three Ruby Red Slippers, three Candy Mountains, three Superstars, eight Golden Wonders, two bars of Candy Cane soap, and a Cinders bath bomb just for good measure. (And another sample of Aromaco deodorant, which I think I've received in every Lush order I've ever placed. Guys, it's just not going to take. I would have loved to smell like patchouli when I was 19, but it simply isn't my thing anymore.) Total, including shipping: $77.50. That works out to about $3.88 per product, when most of these retail for $6.95 each. Not too shabby.

Speaking of saving money, it's worth mentioning that Lush's shipping charges are phenomenally reasonable — almost Sephora good. This order cost $8 to ship. I just went back through my old e-mails, and the most I've ever paid for shipping on a Lush order is $12. I wish other major retailers could figure out how to ship things to Alaska without charging an arm and a leg. (I'm looking at you, Bath and Body Works, with your automatic non-negotiable $20 minimum shipping to Alaska.)

The only thing that's too bad about ordering Lush by mail is that everything comes wrapped in cellophane bags, and of course if you buy in the store you put them in paper bags, which is a bit more earth-friendly. On the other hand, the cellophane bags make storage a little easier; I keep cello-wrapped bath bombs and bubble bars in a wire basket that hangs under a shelf in the bathroom closet. Unwrapped bath bombs (from the store or from a gift set) take a little bit more work, since they tend to shed a little bit and you don't want bath bomb grit all over your bathroom (and you want to keep them dry until you're ready to use them). I wrap mine in scraps of Lush Times and line them up neatly inside this cardboard box, which sits in a plastic storage box that also holds some other bath products. That way they stay dry, tidy and protected.

And yes, I am kind of a Lush hoarder. But mostly because I stock up after Christmas and try to parcel them out over the year. I'm saving that Mrs. Whippy for a day when I really need it.

If not Naked, consider Nude

2012-01-10T06:45:00.000-09:00

Maybe this is beauty blogger sacrilege, but I just can't bring myself to care about the Urban Decay Naked palette. I guess I don't feel the need to own that many high-end neutrals. At the height of Naked fever, when they were sold out all over the country, I twice found myself at Ulta locations (one in Oregon, one in New England) where they had the original Naked palette in stock, and both times I felt that limited-edition-need-to-own urge rise inside me, and both times I stepped back, took a long, hard look at reality, and realized I had no real interest in spending $48 on a palette that held almost no interest for me. Obviously the Naked palette has been massively popular, so I'm in the minority here, but I'm just not into it. And I'm really not into the Naked2 palette, which I realize has major differences to fans, but to me just looks like more of the same.

I think the price has a lot to do with it. I own other expensive palettes, including other Urban Decay palettes, but I'm trying to be a lot more responsible with my money in my 30s than I was in my 20s, and if I'm going to shell out 50 bucks for a palette, I really want to love it. Especially since now I have a husband who says things like "You spent what on eye shadow?"

If you're like me and you're not feeling the price tag on Naked and Naked2, here's an alternative: The Physicians Formula Nude Shimmer Strip.

Same concept as the Naked palettes (well, let's be honest — concept pretty much lifted directly from the Naked palettes) at less than a quarter of the price. I spotted this at my local Fred Meyer the other day and I have to say, I very nearly took it home with me despite the fact that I really don't feel the need to own any more neutral shadows. The packaging is super adorable, and the price is right: nine shades, 11 bucks.

I wouldn't necessarily call this an even exchange, of course. I have a few of the Physicians Formula Shimmer Strips, and while they're decent quality, they're not as velvety or pigmented as the Urban Decay shadows I own. I also find the Shimmer Strips a little bit difficult to use with larger brushes; since there's no divider between the colors, it can be a challenge to keep your all-over eye shadow brush from picking up a little bit of the wrong shade. If you're really passionate about high-quality neutrals, the Naked palettes are almost certainly a better bet.

Still, at about $11, if I wake up one morning and decide I can't live without a neutral palette, I'll go for the Nude over the Nakeds. With a gap of nearly $40, the difference between Nude and Naked is a pretty good bottle of wine.

Flake-off: Hidden Treasure vs. Shine of the Times vs. The Old Vic vs. As Gold as it Gets

2012-01-09T06:30:00.001-09:00

It appears 2012 is going to be the year of the flakie polish. Finger Paints and Zoya have "special effects" collections out, packed with flakes, and it looks like there are more on the way, including in the China Glaze Hunger Games collection, "Colours From the Capitol," about which I'm trying really hard not to be too excited (trying and faaaailing).

Meanwhile, Essie's Luxeffects collection has been out since November, and I've been pretty much walking right by the display at Fred Meyer — all I saw were silver and pink glitters, and I'm all set for glitter. But over the weekend I happened to go to a different Fred Meyer (the one by my parents' house, where I also happened to stumble upon Anchorage's last bottle of Hidden Treasure in 2010, so... fate?), and they had a full display of shimmering, flake-filled bottles of Shine of the Times. I hadn't seen Shine of the Times in person, and I didn't realize it was a legit flakie. I grabbed a bottle (and As Gold as it Gets for good measure, now that I knew there were actual flakes involved in this collection) and ran to the nearest checkstand as fast as my extra-squeaky shopping cart would allow.

Actually, that's a lie. I finished my shopping. But I was really excited.

I got home and had to swatch Shine of the Times next to Hidden Treasure to see just how similar they really are, and I threw in As Gold as it Gets for good measure, along with a Nails Inc. flakie, The Old Vic, which I picked up at Sephora when we were in Vegas. (The Old Vic comes in a set with Black Taxi, a shiny black "patent" creme.)

One coat. Top to bottom: Essie As Gold as it Gets, Essie Shine of the Times, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Nails Inc. The Old Vic

Of course, this is winter in Alaska and I didn't get home until 4 p.m., so the sun was already down. No beautiful natural light swatches for me.

One coat. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

In these photos, I'm wearing one coat of each flakie layered over two coats of Orly Liquid Vinyl. As you can see, in terms of color, Shine of the Times is virtually identical to Hidden Treasure.

One coat. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

I hadn't found The Old Vic terribly exciting on its own, but compared to the other topcoats, it is even less compelling. Nothing wrong with it; it does turn black polish into a subtly shimmery deep blue, which is nice. But not worth $20, even paired with Black Taxi. And it practically disappeared layered over white.

One coat. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

These shots are one coat of each flakie layered over three coats of Sinful Colors Snow Me White (which, as you can tell from my polish job, is less than easy to work with. I'm open to recommendations for a great white creme).

One coat. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

Unsurprisingly, monochromatic As Gold as it Gets stands out more over the white, but it was hard to capture the other topcoats on camera.

Two coats. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

Two coats over black and you really start to get the full flakie impact. Shine of the Times is very much like Hidden Treasure except that the flakes are more densely packed, so you get more flake in each coat.

Two coats. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

In terms of color, though, Shine of the Times and Hidden Treasure have the same multichromatic range, flashing reds, golds and green over black.

Two coats. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

Over white, they look more iridescent.

Two coats. Top to bottom: As Gold as it Gets, Shine of the Times, Hidden Treasure, The Old Vic

I didn't expect to like As Gold as it Gets as much as I do. After I got done swatching, I redid my nails with two coats over Zoya Codie. I was most of the way done before I realized what a great combination that would be to try a gradient effect with the flakie, but I was too far in to want to go back and start all over again at that point. Next time.

Two coats. Left to right: The Old Vic, Hidden Treasure, Shine of the Times, As Gold as it Gets

Bottom line: If you missed out on Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, pick up Shine of the Times and you'll be just as happy. It's essentially a Hidden Treasure dupe. As Gold as it Gets is way cooler in person than it looks dripping off a cherry in those print ads. And if you're looking for a subtle flakie shimmer without much going on in the way of color variety, The Old Vic is perfectly serviceable, although I don't find it all that exciting.

Two coats. Left to right: The Old Vic, Hidden Treasure, Shine of the Times, As Gold as it Gets

Also, beware the false Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure that's hit store shelves in recent weeks. It's a flake-free lavender frost that the company claims is a new shade that's "on-trend." As opposed to the original Hidden Treasure, which was such a huge flop you can now expect to pay $30 for it on eBay. For some reason, I guess that response sounded better to their social media department than "we screwed up." Maybe The New York Times runs Sally Hansen's Twitter account.

The best of 2011 beauty

2012-01-07T13:38:00.000-09:00

It's taken me a week into the new year, but I'm finally ready to talk about my favorite products of the last year. 2011 was a big year for me in terms of branching out and trying new things. I joined Birchbox and Julep Maven and started taking more chances on drugstore makeup instead of sticking to high-end brands. I got over my fear of red lipstick (more on that another time) and rediscovered glitter. I tried a ton of new products, some with better results than others. This list includes most of my favorite new products from 2011. I should qualify the "new" — for the most part, I tried to limit the list to products that were actually new in 2011, but a few strays may have snuck on. It's possible some of these pre-date 2011 somewhat. But they were at least new to me in 2011. I'm looking forward to what 2012 will bring!

Bath & body

The Body Shop Candied Ginger scrub and body butter

I included Candied Ginger in my November favorites, but it wasn't until I packed the scrub and body butter on a trip to the North Slope oilfields that I really began to appreciate the awesomeness of this moisturizing duo. Holiday scents are 50% off at The Body Shop while supplies last, so if you're on the fence about this one, I encourage you to go for it. Unless you hate having soft, smooth, gingery-smelling skin, in which case you should definitely skip it.

LUSH Lust soap

We spent a weekend in Las Vegas in December, and when I made my customary pilgrimage to the LUSH in Mandalay Bay, they sent me off with a good-sized sample of this sparkling, jasmine-scented soap. One use and I was sorry I hadn't bought the entire brick. It smells spectacular, sweet and floral, and I really like the shimmer, although I know that could be a turnoff for some. I never thought I'd love another LUSH soap as much as I love Sexy Peel (which is a very different soap), but Lust might have taken the top spot.

Nails

Julep Facial for Hands Glycolic Hand Scrub

I started using Julep's hand scrub after it arrived in my very first Julep Maven shipment, and it didn't take me long to get hooked. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that after I'd been using this hand scrub for a week or so, people started commenting — unprovoked — about how soft and smooth my hands felt, and it was an easy pick for my October favorites. The price tag ($32) hurts, but the results are amazing.

OPI Mermaid's Tears

I liked the entire OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection, but Mermaid's Tears was the only one that I really felt the need to own. I love blues and greens, and there's something about this particular shade — this might sound weird, but I find it calming. (On the other hand, maybe it doesn't sound so weird.) Mermaid's Tears has earned a place in my all-time favorite nail polish colors.

Wet N Wild Behind Closed Doors

I gushed about Behind Closed Doors, a limited-edition Halloween polish, back in September, and my love for this squishy red-on-black glitter hasn't decreased. This is one of those polishes that never fails to attract compliments.

Zoya Gemma

I just started getting into Zoya polishes in 2011; as far as I know, there's nowhere to buy them in Anchorage, so I get mine online. A couple have also come in Birchbox shipments. Gemma, from the Intimate collection, isn't usually the kind of color I'd go for; generally I stick to the extremes (plain creme or total glitterbomb), but Gemma has an unusual sort of violet duochrome shimmer over olive green. It's super unique and I love it.

If you like Zoya products (or if even if you haven't tried the brand but think you might like to), I recommend you set up an account on the Zoya/Art of Beauty website, and follow Zoya on Twitter and Facebook. They occasionally do member promotions, including some great buy-two-get-two-free events, and they don't gouge you on shipping (even to Alaska). Now through Jan. 9, you can try two bottles of Zoya free (you pay shipping) with the code ZOYA2012.

Makeup

L'Oréal MagicSmooth Soufflé makeup

One of my beauty resolutions for 2011 was to find a foundation I actually like. This is That Foundation. MagicSmooth Soufflé has been my new best friend since September and we are still going strong. It's smooth and even and — better yet — affordable. While I'm sure I'll keep shopping around a bit on the side (I like to have a backup since I have a track record of falling in love with foundations just before they get discontinued), I know I'll keep coming back to this one for the foreseeable future.

Maybelline Master Drama by Eye Studio eyeliner

This is one of those products that lives up to its Internet buzz. I've used a lot of eyeliners and spent a lot of money along the way, with mixed results. This is absolutely the best value eyeliner pencil I've ever bought. The quality is just as good as a Stila SmudgeStick but at about half the price. The Eye Studio Master Drama cream pencil has quickly become a staple of my routine. I run this along my upper waterline every morning and it stays all day. Love it.

Urban Decay Supercurl Curling Mascara

I've been using (and consistently loving) Maybelline's Volum' Express The Falsies mascara since 2010 and had no plans to supplement my mascara routine with anything else, but then I bought the new Urban Decay Book of Shadows palette at Alaska's new Sephora, and it came with a small tube of Supercurl. I've never felt the need to curl my lashes (I had an eyelash curler once because it came with a brush set, and I ended up throwing it out), but I have to say this mascara is a winner, and it really does have an immediate, visible curling effect. (Tip: Apply the brush to the outside/top of your lashes, not the side closest to your eye, and twirl it like you would roll a round brush through your hair.) The formula is great, too — not at all clumpy or flaky. I had mixed feelings about the new Book of Shadows palette on the whole — the whole iPod speaker thing was kind of gimmicky, and the QR codes leading to the tutorial videos were too small for my old phone to read, although I haven't tried them again since I got the 4s, and the construction of the drawer holding the actual shadows was flawed, but the actual products were great.

Milani Lip Flash pencil in Photo Flash and Kat Von D Foiled Love lipstick in Adora

As I mentioned at the top, I really got into red lipstick this year, and while I stick to creme shades for everyday, when we go out I like to add a little something extra. These two lip products are reds that work with my coloring and add a little something extra. Milani Lip Flash looks more obviously glittery, although the effect is elegant and not at all teenybopper when it's actually on the lips. Kat Von D Foiled Love really does have a smooth, foiled look that's unique among the lip products I've used. I like both for evening with a dark neutral smokey eye.

Left: Milani Lip Flash in Photo Flash
Right: Kat Von D Foiled Love in Adora

Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

What can be said about Revlon's Lip Butters that hasn't been said by me and every other beauty blogger in America? They're awesome. And as I mentioned in my full review, they're a great gateway drug if you're interested in experimenting with red lipstick but don't know where to start. I'm sure these are on just about every 2011 favorites list, but I'm jumping on the bandwagon anyway. They've earned their buzz and their place at the top for 2011.

Happy New Year!... and a look back at 2011

2012-01-02T16:19:00.000-09:00

2011 was an awesome year for me. I made a scary but satisfying career change. I got married. And I started to have some fun with the beauty blog that I started on a whim more than a year ago. I'm looking forward to another great year of reviews, tips and DIYs. In the meantime, here's a look back at the 10 posts that drew the most page views on Below Freezing Beauty in 2011:

1. Review: Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

Last year's top draw by a landslide. These moisturizing lip colors live up to the Internet buzz.

2. Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers Hauntingly Hip eye kits

I test drove the full lineup of bargain drugstore Halloween makeup kits. Results were mixed, but I had a lot of fun.

3. Love's gift set: The baby soft scent of nostalgia

Sometimes it's worth $10 to smell like you wanted to smell when you were 11.

4. I'm about to save you $8.95

I love LUSH lip scrub as much as the next girl. But when you don't want to spend nine bucks, here's how to make your own. (This post is actually from 2010, but it still managed to be 2011's fourth most popular post. So hopefully lots of you have saved that $8.95 many times over.)

5. Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner: Don't bother

Some beauty bloggers won't post negative reviews. I say if I can save you from wasting $10 on an eyeliner that is only going to disappoint you, why wouldn't I?

6. Spotted: Magnetic nail polish at Anchorage Fred Meyer stores

I still say if someone introduced a magnetic nail polish that came with a bigger assortment of magnets, I'd be more likely to be into it.

7. Arctic-tested: The Body Shop Candied Ginger scrub and body butter

When I hauled my dry, sensitive skin up to the North Slope of Alaska, The Body Shop's holiday products didn't let me down.

8. The Body Shop 'Buy the Bag' haul

Nothing like saving more than $120 on quality product to put a smile on your face.

9. October Birchbox: Korres, Stila, Blinc, Caudalie and clean undies

Confession: The only thing I've used from this box is the Korres body butter. Which I love.

10. LUSH holiday haul and review

The Jilted Elf shower jelly from this review is still sitting in our shower. I will never use the rest of it. If anyone wants a partially-used shower jelly from a stranger, let me know. (The Australian Igloo scrub, on the other hand, I have since repurchased.)

LUSH sale: Good news, bad news

2011-12-26T09:41:00.001-09:00

The good news is that LUSH’s annual post-Christmas buy-one-get-one-free sale started at midnight Pacific time today. The bad news? As it stands at the time of this post, it’s not really that exciting.

Last year I cleaned up on BOGO holiday gift sets, even before you factor in the two free Christmas Stars they sent me because they were out of non-French packaging. This morning, 10 hours into the sale, there are no gift sets listed on the sale page — just a handful of bubble bars, a couple of bath bombs, two lip tints, two soaps and a few (empty) wraps. Eleven products in all. The holiday gift sets are either missing from the site or listed as sold out. I even checked the Canadian site — same selection.

There may have been some gift sets on sale to begin with, but I didn’t hop on the computer at exactly 11 p.m. my time to check it out. Last year things didn’t sell out right away, so I didn’t think it would be necessary. I may have been proven wrong. (Even in the 15 minutes since I placed my order and started this blog post, the Cinders bath bomb has sold out, which I totally don’t get. Golden Wonder is so much better.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean I didn’t pick anything up. At checkout, for every sale item you’ve selected, you get to pick out another item free. (The item selection is the same as the sale item list except that the lip tints aren’t included.) Let’s just say there are a whole lot of Golden Wonder bath bombs and Ruby Red Slippers bubble bars headed for the AK.

Lesson: If you want to shop the LUSH post-Christmas sale, don’t dilly-dally. I don’t know if they’ll be adding more items (I feel like they did last year, but I could just be imagining that out of disappointment), but if you’re in the market for a Snow Fairy lip tint or a bar of Snowcake, now’s the time to grab them and get a little something extra at the same time.

Reader Q&A: Exfoliation

2011-12-21T06:15:00.000-09:00

Dear Below Freezing Beauty,
When going gets tough, I get exfoliating. I would exfoliate every day if I was sure it was good for me. I've read differing opinions on the topic. Most concerning are exfoliating face cleansers; I've read that they do more damage than good. Is this true? Is it because too much exfoliation can be a bad thing? Or are exfoliating beads the culprit?
Sincerely, Smooth As Silky Silk

(Seriously, I’m not making these up. That’s how she signed it.)

I loooooove to exfoliate. Let me say it again: I loooooooove to exfoliate. Is there anything in the world that feels better than freshly scrubbed skin? I’ll answer that for you: No. No, there is not. Exfoliating removes dead skin from the surface of your epidermis, which stimulates blood flow and cell turnover, leaves your skin brighter, softer and smoother, and makes it better able to absorb product. It’s one of the most satisfying parts of my beauty routine.

That being said, SASS, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Pretty much everything I’ve read recommends exfoliating no more than twice a week (once if you have sensitive skin). You don’t want to strip your skin and dry it out. And the general understanding right now is that you don’t want to scrub your face with anything too coarse. One of the more polarizing products out there is St. Ives Apricot Scrub. (Check out the reviews on MakeUpAlley.) Some people swear by it, but there’s a lot of concern that the ground nut hulls in the product are too sharp and rough to use on facial skin. If you’re exfoliating with something that’s too rough, it can tear or damage the skin on your face, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of exfoliating in the first place. I’m not a big fan of microbeads personally, but there’s something to be said for using a product in which the physical exfoliant doesn’t have any hard edges.

There’s always the DIY/natural route, although you still run into that same rough-edges issue. I used to make this scrub/mask with sugar, apple cider vinegar and green tea:

I loved the way it made my face feel, but I stopped using it after a while because I was concerned that rubbing sugar crystals all over my face was going to end up doing more harm than good. If you’re going to use a sugar scrub on your face, I recommend using superfine baker’s sugar. (I am a big fan of sugar scrubs for the body, particularly the Australian Igloo from this year’s LUSH holiday collection. And I swear by this DIY sugar scrub for lips.)

Personally, I’ve turned to technology for my exfoliating help. I wash my face twice a day with the Clarisonic, which I love. It isn’t an exfoliating device per se, but it does have a sort of exfoliating effect because it cleans so deeply and effectively. It was absolutely worth the investment. My face has never been cleaner.

I’ve mentioned before that I have adult acne (despite having basically perfect skin when I was a teenager. LIFE IS NOT FAIR). I’ve found that effective facial exfoliation helps keep my skin under control. I’m hoping for the Personal Microderm system for Christmas (hint, hint, Santa). In the meantime, for the past few months I’ve been using the i-Skin Intelligent Microdermabrasion System, which I picked up at my local Sally Beauty. It’s usually about $36, but I got mine on sale for something like $25 with the Beauty Club discount. I was nervous about trying it out because I was concerned it would be too harsh for my face, but that turned out to not be a problem. (I do recommend starting out slowly at first, though.) The i-Skin is a handheld device with a replaceable sponge head. The device vibrates as you use it to gently rub a corundum crystal cream on your face. It’s an imperfect system (it doesn’t exfoliate quite as intensely as I think I’d like, and I can’t seem to get through a session without corundum grit somehow getting into my mouth), but it has been effective.

I used the i-Skin about once a week for several months, followed each time by Philosophy Hope in a Jar moisturizer, and it made a huge difference in my skin. My husband actually commented on it. My breakouts decreased, my skin tone evened out, and my whole face was just sort of... well, glowy.

The downside to using technology, of course, is that it only works when you use it. Used morning and night, the Clarisonic adds about six minutes total to my face-washing routines, and lately I’ve been running late almost every morning and going to bed too late almost every night, so I’ve been skipping it in favor of “daily facial” wipes, which are convenient in a pinch but just don’t actually get my face clean. And I need replacement heads for my i-Skin, and Sally Beauty is way out in East Anchorage. So my skin’s not looking or feeling as good as it could right now. In fact, I’m about to jump up and go do something to rectify this situation right now, so thanks for the reminder, SASS. I’ll leave you with a few suggestions for further reading:

Holiday gifts for him 2.0

2011-12-20T05:30:00.000-09:00

I got my holiday shopping done early(ish) this year, but usually this is about the time I’m casting about frantically for last-minute presents... particularly for the men I know, some of whom can be difficult to shop for.

Last year, I posted about the holiday “beauty” gifts I bought for my husband (then my fiancé). I felt completely safe posting spoilers because ha ha, back then he didn’t know I had a beauty blog. This year he knows about the blog, though, and he checks in from time to time (I’m pretty sure it’s just to see how much money I’m spending on nail polish), so I can’t spill the beans on what he’ll find under our Christmas tree (or Hanukkah bush. We’re a multicultural family). I can share some favorites, suggestions and possibilities for manly holiday beauty gifts, though. So without getting too specific... if I were to be thinking about possibly picking up some personal care products for the men in my life, I might consider these selections.

Sephora Favorites Deluxe Fragrance Sampler For Him

Last summer (on our way home from our honeymoon, as a matter of fact), I ~~dragged~~ took my husband on his first trip to Ulta, where we picked up one or two things for me... and ended up spending a long time in the men’s fragrance section picking out something we both liked for him. (We settled on Pure Nautica Discovery, in case you were wondering.) If you’d like to get a fragrance for your man without wearing out your noses testing scent after scent in the store, Sephora has a men’s version of their fragrance sampler. For $50, you get 14 samples of men’s fragrances from lines like Prada, Gucci and Versace, along with a coupon good for a full-size version of his favorite, plus a couple of 1 oz. Jack Black products. (Jack Black Beard Lube is a favorite at our house.) The downside: The voucher can only be redeemed at a Sephora store — not online and not at Sephora inside JC Penney. So if you don’t live near a real live stand-alone Sephora (like, say, you live in Alaska...), he’ll have to hold on to the coupon until he can visit the store in person. (Why they can’t make the coupons redeemable online is beyond me. If Lush can manage to get unique discount codes into every single cost-inflated holiday gift set, why can’t Sephora manage to get unique fragrance vouchers into every fragrance sampler?)

The Body Shop Brazil Nut Body Butter

Dry winter air is hard on everyone’s skin — men too. And my husband wasn’t thrilled the other night when he asked me if I had any lotion and I handed him a tub of Pink Grapefruit Body Butter. Apparently he’s not into smelling sweet and fruity. I ran the Brazil Nut version past him the next day, though, and he conceded that it smelled sufficiently manly for his comfort. $18 at The Body Shop. (Bonus: If it's as effective as the Candied Ginger body butter, it will also protect against dry skin under actual Arctic conditions.)

Three- or four-way nail buffer

Yes, one of these nail buffers. (You may have to teach him how to use it.) In observing the men in my life over the years, I’ve noticed that they may turn up their noses at proper nail care at first, but once they’re exposed to a life with nice nails, they can become converts. No one can accuse my brother of being anything but masculine, but he was one of the first guys I knew to embrace the three-way buffer. Manicures can be manly, too; consider a gift certificate if you think he needs a professional to convince him. When my parents came to visit me while I was living in New York in my 20s, even my macho firefighter dad came out with us to the nail salon and had his nails trimmed and buffed.

For more last-minute manly gift ideas, check out last year’s Holiday gifts for him post. And if you’re worried about time, you can breathe easy, at least for another day or two — Sephora is offering a free upgrade to 2-day shipping with the code UPS2DAY.

Arctic-tested: The Body Shop Candied Ginger scrub and body butter

2011-12-19T20:21:00.001-09:00

I used to have a job for which I traveled to Moscow (Russia, not Idaho) for a few days every February. I thought those were the coldest, most wintry business trips I'd ever take. Until last weekend, when work required me to spend two days on Alaska's North Slope.

If you're unfamiliar with the Prudhoe Bay area, here's a quick primer: It's home to the largest oilfield in North America. It sits in the middle of a vast expanse of tundra. And it sits 250 miles above the Arctic Circle.

The average high temperature for Prudhoe Bay this time of year is 3 degrees below zero.

That's right, I said the average high.

My skin is pretty sensitive to cold, dry weather. I don't have too much trouble with that here in Anchorage, which sits right on the coast and is relatively temperate by northern standards. We get the occasional bitter cold spell, but for the most part it's not dry enough to bother me too much. I knew that the weather on the Slope, though, was likely to dry out my skin, particularly on my legs, which get painfully dry in extreme cold. (Then they chafe against my clothes, and that's even more awful and painful. You know the feeling, I think.) So I packed a couple of holiday products I've been using and liking here at home: The Body Shop body butter and body scrub in Candied Ginger. I mentioned Candied Ginger in my November favorites. The smell is spectacular, and I was confident they'd stand up to the Arctic weather.

This is what it looked like in Prudhoe while I was there:

That's snow whipping across the road in 30 mph winds. I took this photo around noon on Sunday. That's as light as it gets there this time of year. They get a couple of hours of what you might call twilight, and the rest of the time it's completely dark. They won't see the sun peek above the horizon until late January.

I used the body scrub in the shower both days I was there, following up afterward with a generous application of the body butter. I also used the body butter before bed.

Let me tell you: The Body Shop did not disappoint. If I didn't stay well moisturized, I'd still be feeling the effects of the cold weather today. But I didn't have a moment's discomfort (aside from the wind whipping in my face, and I don't think there's a bath and body product that can fix that). My skin stayed comfortable and moisturized all weekend. Not to mention that I smelled amazing underneath my many layers of Arctic gear. I wished I'd packed a similarly effective lip product; my lip balm kept wearing away too quickly, and I think I spent half the weekend digging for the tube in my parka pockets so I could reapply.

Bottom line: If this product can keep my sensitive skin soft and comfortable on the cold, dry tundra weather of the North Slope, it can stand up to just about any weather anywhere. I'm stocking up before my next work-related trip — if I keep following the precedent I've set, I'd imagine my next round of business travel will route me through Antarctica.

Holiday Mani-Fest: China Glaze Twinkle Lights

2011-12-16T09:34:00.002-09:00

I'm not sure how China Glaze Twinkle Lights, from the Let It Snow collection, got left out when I posted my other holiday swatches and reviews, since this is one of my new favorites.

Twinkle Lights has a similar color scheme to my favorite China Glaze glitter from 2010, Party Hearty, which is my favorite Christmas polish of all time (so far). Unlike Party Hearty, Twinkle Lights' glitter is all the same size (small), and although the colors are similar (red, green and gold), the effect is very different — more of your standard festive sparkle.

Is it as interesting as Party Hearty? Absolutely not. Is it a fun holiday polish? Definitely.

I've worn it layered over Glittering Garland, but haven't tried it over anything else. I think it would look great over a gold, though (maybe Champagne Bubbles?).

If glitter polishes make you nervous because they're so difficult to remove, be sure to read my Q&A for the world's easiest glitter polish removal tutorial.

Q&A: Reader nail polish questions answered

2011-12-08T20:40:00.001-09:00

A friend e-mailed me the other day to ask how to remove glitter nail polish. Then she suggested I add a Q&A feature to Below Freezing Beauty. So we rounded up a few questions I've received recently from friends (seriously! I swear I didn't make these up myself) and I took a whack at answering them. If you've got a beauty question, e-mail it to me and I'll answer it if I can — and if I can't, I'll scour the Internet to find you someone who can. Now, on to the questions...

Removing glitter nail polish

Dear Below Freezing Beauty,

How the hell do I get glittery nail polish off? My standard acetone remover isn't doing the job.

Sincerely, Glittering in Glory

There are a ton of great glitters out right now, and I've actually been asked about this by a few people. I used to struggle with removing glitter polish, too, and then I learned this trick from some clever blogger somewhere (I don't remember where, unfortunately... maybe from a commenter on All Lacquered Up?), and I have never feared a glitter polish again. And now neither will you.

I started with (left to right) two coats each of China Glaze Lorelai's Tiara (from the Eye Candy collection) and Nicole by OPI Step 2 the Beat of My Heart (yes, yes, from the Justin Bieber line. Don't hate), and three coats of OPI Rainbow Connection from the Muppets collection. These three polishes run the gamut from superfine to super chunky, and you'll see that this process works with all of them. I let them dry and then wore them overnight so they'd be good and cured.

To get your glitter polish off you'll need three things: Nail polish remover, small squares of aluminum foil, and cotton rounds cut into fourths.

Soak a cotton pad quarter in nail polish remover and put it on a fingernail/toenail.

Wrap a little square of aluminum foil around the tip of the finger/toe so it holds the cotton against the nail. Make it nice and tight like a little hat. (Maybe pretend your finger is afraid of radiation or alien mind probes.) Repeat for each glittered nail.

Wait about five minutes. Then press down against the surface of the nail and pull the aluminum foil and cotton pad off, wiping as you remove. (If I were a yoga instructor I'd say something about "one fluid motion.")

Et voila! One swipe should get most of it, although you will probably have to go back and clean up a little. In the case of the Bieber polish, I had to flick off a couple of the hearts (which came off easily), and there's a little bit of Lorelai's Tiara left along the edge of my nail, but otherwise the bare nails above are the product of one clean swipe each.

You can achieve more or less the same effect with a couple of squares of toilet paper, soaked in remover and then wrapped around your fingertip so they stick to themselves. It's slightly less effective than the cotton pad/aluminum foil method, but it feels less wasteful.

Preventing (or fixing) stained cuticles

Dear BFB,

Certain nail polishes stain my cuticles when I try to remove them. How do I avoid this? It so damn annoying. Sub-question: Are all nail polish removers created equal?

Sincerely, Cranky About Stains on my Hands

I don't have a foolproof method for this one, but I'm imagining (based on my own skin-staining experience) that they're darker polishes that are just leaving behind more pigment. After you've removed all your nail polish, try going back over your cuticles with a clean cotton pad and nail polish remover, followed by a hand scrub or a good soap and nail brush and then hand cream. It might help to apply some hand cream or cuticle oil before you remove your nail polish, too, to keep the pigment from sticking.

And no, all removers are definitely not created equal. I use acetone when necessary for expedience/intensity, but usually I prefer the Sally Hansen moisturizing nail polish remover (pictured above). It's not acetone-free, but it's gentler than other acetone removers I've used (and even gentler than some non-acetone formulas). It requires a little more elbow grease, but it smells better and isn't as hard on your hands.

Delivery mechanism matters, too. I don't buy just any cotton pad. They have to be ones that are sealed around the edges (see photo below). The cheap ones leave cotton fuzz sticking to your nails. (Read more about my opinions on cotton rounds.)

Reusing and replacing nail polish brushes

Dear BFB,

I love the brush that comes with the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polishes. Seriously, love. Can brushes from one bottle be reused in a different bottle of polish? (I can imagine what the obvious answer to this question is but interesting all the same)

Sincerely, Brushed Off

First: The Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure brush is the absolute best brush in any nail polish anywhere, ever, and I wish all the other nail polish manufacturers would catch on. I know some people who have smaller nails say they don't like it, but I've never had a problem painting my toenails with the Sally Hansen brush, and some of them are pretty small.

And the answer is: Yes, no, and if yes, it might be more trouble than it's worth. Yes, you can use the brush with another nail polish if (a) it fits through the mouth of the bottle (a real concern with that wide SH brush) and (b) you are prepared to do a lot of cleaning. You're going to have to clean all the original color out of/off your brush before you use it in the other polish, and then you're going to have to clean it really well before you put it back in its own bottle (not to mention you've left an open bottle of nail polish sitting around while you use its brush, and I can guarantee you that I personally would find a way to knock that extra open bottle of nail polish over). I'd also recommend maybe pouring the nail polish you're working with into another container (a little square of aluminum foil would work) so you don't accidentally contaminate it in case you didn't quite get all the original color off your brush. And I don't know how great repeated cleansings with nail polish remover will be for the life of your brush (although it is designed to sit inside wet chemicals all the time, so who knows?).

Here's an alternative: Go to the craft store. I stopped by my local Michaels yesterday and found these two Taklon-bristle brushes for $3.99 each.

Each bore a strong resemblance to that lovely flat, round-cornered Sally Hansen brush. These are just two examples from a selection of hundreds of different kinds of brushes starting at just a dollar or two. If you can't find a flat brush with rounded corners, buy one with square corners and trim to your desired shape.

After you've used the brush, clean it thoroughly with nail polish remover to remove the polish, and then with soap or shampoo to remove the nail polish remover, and you should be able to reuse it until it falls apart. (The craft store is also a good source for inexpensive lip brushes.)

Holiday Mani-Fest: China Glaze Glittering Garland

2011-12-06T06:30:00.000-09:00

I have talked before about my love of green nail polishes. Green polishes are well represented in my collection. And now they have a new friend: China Glaze Glittering Garland.

I don’t always like shimmer, but for the holidays it’s absolutely appropriate. And the gold glass fleck in Glittering Garland is so subtle and so pretty.

This is a cooler green, which is nice for my frigidly pale Irish/Alaskan skin. But the glass fleck gives it some additional dimension. I think it would look nice with warmer skin tones, too.

And just for fun, here it is layered under (left to right) China Glaze Twinkle Lights, Color Club Covered in Diamonds, and that random snowman drugstore glitter.

Festive much?

I promise I didn’t actually leave the house wearing three different glitters on my fingernails. Although if I were 16 years younger, I’d probably go for it.

I was at my new favorite local China Glaze supplier (Marie’s Beauty Salon & Supply, if you’re an Anchorage local) the other day, lingering over the Let It Snow collection, and I was sorely tempted by the creme green and reds. I hadn’t bought them before because I feel like I’ve already got plenty of green and red cremes... but maybe it isn’t too much to hope there will be some left over and marked down after Christmas? I’m pretty sure I could justify them if they were on sale... of course, if Santa is reading this...

Holiday Mani-Fest: Color Club Covered in Diamonds

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-09:00

Color Club Covered in Diamonds is not, strictly speaking, a holiday polish. OK, so it’s not from any holiday collection at all, and it’s not particularly new. But look how festive!

Covered in Diamonds is from last year’s Untamed Luxury collection. You can find it online at TransDesign, or if you’re an Anchorage resident, you can pick it up for eight bucks at L.A. Style. (But again, don’t buy the new China Glaze or OPI polishes there. There’s no reason to pay $13 for a nail polish. There is still lots of OPI Muppets and China Glaze Let It Snow and Metro in stock at Marie’s.)

I love flakies. And I don’t see many of them here in Anchorage. I almost died of shock when I found the last (and possibly only) bottle of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure at Fred Meyer last year. The flakes in Covered in Diamonds are much bigger than the flakes in Hidden Treasure, and they require some careful placement with the brush. But they look amazing on.

Ooo, pretty:

Of course, this polish packs much more punch when layered over a dark base coat. I like it with Essie Bobbing For Baubles.

Holiday Mani-Fest: Cheeky little snowman polishes

2011-12-04T06:30:00.000-09:00

Sometimes you’re just minding your business, strolling down the beauty aisles at your local Fred Meyer, and something springs out at you that’s so affordable and adorable and seasonal you just can’t say no.

Meet my snowman polishes.

At $2.99 each, I couldn’t say no to these little chunky glitters. Plus, look at their adowable wittle faces. They were just begging to come home with me.

Of course, I need another red glitter like I need a hole in the head. So I deserved what I got.

This is four coats. FOUR COATS. And it’s still patchy and uneven.

The camera is even being kind here to the red snowman. The funky, wonky, cheap little brush just wouldn’t get that mixed small and medium red glitter spread evenly over my nail. And the formula was no dream to work with, either. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

The green-and-red glitter was another story. And it saved its little friend.

That’s two coats of red and green medium glitter (clear base) over the four disastrous coats of red.

As always, chunky glitter means you need to apply deliberately. You’re going to have to spread it around your nail.

So festive! And look at that sweet little face. Too bad about his deceptive little round-headed friend.

Bottom line: If you see these at your local drugstore and you’re into Christmas polishes, definitely snag the red and green and know you’ll want to wear it over a base coat of something else. But if you’re in the market for a bargain red glitter, skip the snowman and pick up one of those China Glaze Ruby Pumps minis I spotted the other day at Sally Beauty. Now that’s a red glitter that won’t let you down.

Holiday Mani-Fest: China Glaze Champagne Bubbles

2011-12-03T07:00:00.000-09:00

You want to talk about a nail polish that’s hard to photograph? Ladies and gentlemen, let me present: China Glaze Champagne Bubbles.

Another selection from the Let It Snow collection, Champagne Bubbles is a gold frost with small silver glitter. The application is a little brush stroke-y, but the color is vibrant and the glitter adds a little something special.

I wish the photos did Champagne Bubbles justice, but no matter how I photographed it, the light seemed to pick up on every surface imperfection, so you lose the lovely satiny gold effect. So I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you: This polish is terrific in person.

This polish makes me wish I lived someplace where I could wear open-toed shoes during the holidays, because it really is lovely and festive, but I think I’d like this color better on my toes (say, peeping out from beneath some dark jeans) than I like it on my fingers. Although I like it plenty on my fingers.

As of Wednesday, there was one bottle of Champagne Bubbles left at my local Sally Beauty, part of a gift set. If you’re fortunate enough to live near an Ulta, you should be able to find it there (and tell them to open a location in Alaska!); China Glaze is also available online at TransDesign and 8ty8beauty.com. Anchorageites, check out Marie’s Beauty Salon and Supply, which had a great selection of China Glaze holiday polishes last time I was in.

Holiday Mani-Fest: China Glaze Snow Globe

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-09:00

Lately I’ve been loving chunky glitter polish, which is kind of out of character for me. It must be a phase.

If it’s a phase, though, it’s a phase with perfect timing, because the market is positively glutted with chunky glitter polishes right now, including Snow Globe, part of China Glaze’s Let It Snow holiday collection.

Snow Globe is a mixture of small and large iridescent glitter in a clear base. The formula isn’t too thick, but as with all chunky glitters, you’re going to have to do some manual glitter distribution with the tip of your brush.

I super love this polish. Super love. I’m wearing three coats in these photos. (And my nails are a little uneven. I didn’t trim very carefully.) You’ll definitely have visible nail line unless you use an opaque base coat.

I also love this over a dark blue polish. It looks like... well, like a snow globe.

Huh. Go figure.

My local Sally Beauty was sold out of most of the China Glaze holiday polishes, but if you can’t find it in person, the entire Let It Snow collection is in stock at 8ty8beauty.com. Anchorage residents, check locally-owned Marie’s Beauty Salon and Supply; that’s where I picked up my bottle. DO NOT buy it at L.A. Style & Retail Center in the Fifth Avenue Mall. They’re charging $13 a bottle, and that’s a criminal amount to pay for China Glaze.

November favorites

2011-12-01T06:30:00.000-09:00

It’s December, which in my family is Birthday Month. We celebrate four different family birthdays in December, including mine. But before I move on to holidays and birthdays, here’s what I loved last month:

Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

I waxed enthusiastic about these in detail yesterday, so I’ll just say one more time that these are awesome and you should buy them and leave it at that.

The pointed foundation brush from the new Kirkland Signature Cosmetic Brush Set

I bought the Kirkland brush set that came out a couple of years ago and while a couple of those brushes have been duds, a few of them were really great and still get regular use. So when I spotted the new brush set at Costco, I snapped it up. For just over $30, I figured I could take a chance on Kirkland again. I haven’t been disappointed. The selection in this set is somewhat different from the last Kirkland brush set, and the bag is much better than the old one.

My favorite brush in the set, hands down, is the pointed foundation brush. It’s a round, dense, fingertip-shaped brush that’s perfect for concealer. I’ve been using it with Benefit Boi-ing in 01, which has been my go-to concealer for a couple of years. The Kirkland brush is a lot more effective than my finger. I also like the finishing brush for applying my setting powder, and I’ve been using that one pretty much every day as well, but if I had to pick a favorite (like if, say, I were writing a post about my monthly favorites), I’d have to say the pointed foundation brush. Of course, if you want one you have to buy the set, so I suppose I might as well have just named the entire set a favorite, but I really think the pointed foundation brush deserves special mention.

Maybelline Eye Studio MasterDrama Cream Pencil

Perhaps you’ve read that these Maybelline pencils are just as good as Stila Smudge Sticks at half the price. I can’t tell you that these pencils are just as good as Smudge Sticks across the board. I can, however, tell you unequivocally that the Maybelline MasterDrama pencil in Midnight Master is every bit as good as the Stila Smudge Stick in Stingray. I’ve been using the Maybelline pencil to line my upper waterline every day for a few weeks. It’s creamy and pigmented, and it stays put all day. I’m a convert. I won’t pay $20 for a cream pencil again.

Candied Ginger by The Body Shop

During The Body Shop’s Buy the Bag promotion, I picked up a few holiday products, including body scrub and body butter in Candied Ginger, a new holiday scent for 2011.

Oh. my. goodness. Let me tell you something: I SMELL AMAZING. I’ve been using the scrub in the shower and then following up afterward with the body butter, and I’ve honestly found myself distracted throughout the day by how spectacular I smell. I love that they picked ginger instead of gingerbread; I avoid holiday gingerbread scents because they tend to be so overpoweringly cinnamon/vanilla sweet. But these smell fresh and clean and warm and gingery, and I’m crazy about it. I want the whole line. Plus my skin is nice and moisturized.

Tonight the hubs and I are off to Las Vegas for the weekend, and I’m looking forward to a 40-minute milk and sugar scrub at the Bellagio spa on Saturday. If you’ve never experienced a Vichy shower, make it a priority. You won’t be sorry. Don’t stay away just because I’ll be gone, though; thanks to the magic of scheduled posts, I’ve got those promised holiday nail swatches coming up while I’m out of town. And you can follow me on Twitter for beauty updates from Sin City.

Review: Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

2011-11-29T20:22:00.001-09:00

I had big plans for Thanksgiving weekend — big, big plans! Like swatching lots and lots of products while I had all those long lovely days of bright, full-spectrum Alaska winter daylight in which to take good pictures. Short winter days mean I go to work in the dark, come home in the dark, and don’t have many opportunities to take photos during daylight hours. And for some reason our house is sort of perpetually lowlit. So I knew I would make the most of the weekend and take lots and lots of photos!

Or, alternatively, I would loll on the sofa, streaming very old episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 on Netflix and eating raw cranberries by the fistful. Oops.

I did get some nail polish swatches (coming soon!) done over the holiday, but I didn’t get to another product I’m actually really excited about: Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter. I was going to wait until this weekend, but then I remembered we’ll be traveling (Vegas, here we come!), so when a reader e-mailed me asking where to find Lip Butter in Anchorage I decided I’d have to bite the bullet and try to take good photos in lousy light.

That’s an unnecessarily long preface to a pretty straightforward thesis: Revlon’s new Lip Butters are fantastic.

I used to turn my nose up at drugstore lipstick, but I got over that recently, and I’m really glad, because otherwise I might have missed out on this product. Revlon describes it as “buttery balm with beautiful shiny color,” and that’s pretty much spot-on. They look like lipsticks, but they apply more like a lip balm (I always use a brush to apply lipstick, but I’ve been slapping these on straight out of the tube), and they’re very moisturizing, which makes them perfect for winter in Alaska. According to Revlon, they’re formulated with mango, shea and coconut butter, although considering how affordable they are ($7.49 at Fred Meyer in Anchorage), I’d imagine the formula probably contains greater amounts of glycerin and mineral oil.

Candy Apple, Sugar Plum, Red Velvet

Since the shades are all named after sweets, and since other lip butters I’ve used (like Korres and The Body Shop) have been flavored, I assumed these would smell like their names, but they’re free of fragrance or flavor. I wasn’t too disappointed by that. I’d love a candy apple-scented lip balm, but I don’t like chocolate-scented lip products, so I wouldn’t have wanted Red Velvet to smell like its name.

Several coats each of Candy Apple, Sugar Plum and Red Velvet

The colors go on more sheer than lipstick but are very buildable, and there’s a good selection of shades. I used to stick almost entirely to mauve/dusty rose lip color, but lately I’ve been wearing a lot of red, so I picked out Red Velvet, which is a deep wine color, and Sugar Plum, a safe but pretty mauve. After trying those two out I went back and took a chance on Candy Apple, which is an intimidating bright red in the tube but goes on more toned down. (I know it looks orangey in the swatch above, but if you look at it on my lips below, the orangey-ness is gone.) I haven’t tried all the shades in the collection, but there appear to be some peachy, warmer colors, some bright and pale pinks, and some neutrals. For me, these three shades are plenty; my coloring is not friendly to warm lip colors and as I mentioned in my Lush holiday review, I can’t get into pink lips. Candy Apple, Sugar Plum and Red Velvet cover all my lip bases.

Sugar Plum, Candy Apple, Red Velvet

(I don’t know why my lips look so much fuller in that first photo, but I should figure out how to hold my mouth like that all the time.) Unfortunately my camera didn’t really do Red Velvet justice; it’s a really beautiful shade if you like dark reds, and if you’re dark red-curious but intimidated by bolder lip colors, it’s a nice safe first step since it does go on a bit sheer at first. Sugar Plum sort of looks like my lips but better (or maybe what I wish my lips looked like bare).

Of course, the downside to drugstore lip color is you can’t try before you buy, and the ColorBurst Lip Butters are sealed with a sticker so you can’t even pop the cap and take a peek (oh, come on, we all do it), but the lids are clear on top, so you can at least get a glimpse of what you’re buying.

That’s our bread machine in the background, in case you were wondering. I finally had to give up on getting good light elsewhere in the house and had to resort to turning on the overhead fluorescent lights I hate in the kitchen.

If you’re in Anchorage, look for these in a special display at Fred Meyer or in the regular Revlon section at Target. I have not seen them for sale online yet, but it’s my understanding that they are not limited edition and will be added to the regular Revlon line, so don’t panic if you can’t find them right away. It sounds like they’ll be around for a while.

Revlon ColorBurst Lip Butter

Bottom line: Great price, great product, great range of colors. Buy this.
Price: $
Tip: If you want to experiment with bold red lips but are scared to make the leap, try wading in with this buildable color.

LUSH holiday haul & review

2011-11-19T23:23:00.002-09:00

I put in my first Lush holiday order of the season early. Pretty much the instant the holiday section went live, as a matter of fact. After my discovery last year that Lush’s holiday gift sets are deliberately overpriced, I’ll be avoiding the temptation of the gift sets (at least until the post-holiday sale starts), but I couldn’t resist trying out some of this year’s holiday products...

Abominaball

Abominaball, $6.95

Last holiday’s big hit for me was Mrs. Whippy. I loved the fragrance, I loved how long the bomb lasted, and I especially loved the way the bomb surprised me the first time I used one with a sudden gush of dense, fragrant pink bubbles from inside the white outer layer. Well, Abominaball is the Mrs. Whippy of 2011.

Abominaball’s scent is a sweet, fruity mint, which I love — refreshing and relaxing at the same time, if that makes any sense. Like Mrs. Whippy, the outer layer eventually melts away to reveal a rush of dense foam inside. Mrs. Whippy’s is pink and berry-scented, but Abominaball’s is, naturally, blue and minty, and it turned my bath water a bright turquoise. Also like Mrs. Whippy, it lasted a long time and left my skin soft, moisturized and smelling amazing. I will be stocking up on this one before the season is over.

Rocketeer

Rocketeer, $6.95

The marketing copy sold me on this one. From lushusa.com:

Watch the water change from blue to yellow to green as the yellow “flames” push the rocket around the tub.

Yes please!

I know what you’re wondering, and the answer is yes — it does look that cute in real life. Even better: It smells like candy. (Not any candy in particular; I spent a long time trying to pin down a specific scent, and finally realized it just had a sort of general candy smell.) I didn’t notice that its “flames” propel it around the tub as the copy promises, but it was a typically long-lasting and moisturizing Lush bath bomb. I didn’t like it quite as much as Abominaball, but I did like it quite a bit. And yes, the water did change colors. Maybe I’m easily entertained, but that makes me happy. I’d buy this again.

The Jilted Elf

The Jilted Elf Jelly, $10.95

This shower jelly was “inspired by a brilliant fig, honey and vodka cocktail,” and it’s packed with glitter. GLITTER. So I really, really wanted to love it. But so far, I don’t. I mean, I love the jelly texture and I love the glitter, and I love the way it lathers and cleans. But I can’t really get on board with the scent. At moments I think it might be growing on me, and at other times I almost hate it.

The smell is hard to describe. I wouldn’t say I smell fig, honey or vodka — it’s more sort of nondescriptly herbal. I’m not sure what it is about it that turns me off, but it’s definitely not festive or jolly. I hoped it would grow on me because I really wanted to like it. And because it was expensive. But I have to say this is a big disappointment for me. Definitely not festive, and definitely not worth eleven bucks.

Celebrate Lip Tint

Celebrate Lip Tint, $8.95

Another cocktail-inspired product, this lip tint was based on a Champagne cocktail at a perfumer’s wedding. It comes with shimmery gold popping candy on top, which is cute but impractical. (Who wants Pop Rocks on their lips?) I ended up just sweeping all the candy off with my finger and eating it. That’s right, I ate it, lip gloss residue and all. And you know what? It was delicious.

On to the actual product, which smells just wonderful — not so much like Champagne, I wouldn’t say, but sweet and fruity in a fresh, citrusy, wintry kind of way. I love the scent and the slightly sweet, slightly fizzy flavor. (Yes, fizzy flavor. Don’t ask me to explain it; you’ll know it when you taste it.) The texture is a little strange; it’s the tiniest bit gritty, to be perfectly honest, but not in a terribly unpleasant way.

My only problem with this lip tint is the tint itself. It’s just a little too pink and shimmery. Frosty pink isn’t my best look, unless I’m trying to rock a Mad Men look for a theme cocktail party. I’m going to try it over some darker lipsticks and see if I can get it to work for me, since I really do like the scent and the moisturizing feel. And if frosty and pink works for you, go for this.

Australian Igloo Sugar Scrub

Australian Igloo Sugar Scrub, $5.95

I love a good sugar scrub, despite the fact that empirically I understand how easy it would probably be to make my own. I mean, really: Sugar and oil. How hard is that? This is a cute little product, though, and while it isn’t perfect, I like it. The sugar is Fair Trade, which is great. And the scrub is both exfoliating and moisturizing, which is perfect for dry winter weather. My skin feels fantastic after I’ve used this in the shower. Lush describes the scent as pine, eucalyptus and sandalwood, but there‘s a sweet floral note to it, too, that I like a lot.

The only flaw with Australian Igloo Sugar Scrub is in deployment: It crumbles. I noticed as I used it the first time that the igloo was falling apart, so I grabbed an empty Big Shampoo container and deposited the quickly-disintegrating scrub into the tub for later use. I’ve ended up getting nearly a half-dozen uses out of one little igloo, but now it has a touch of Big scent to it. (Fortunately, I love the smell of Big, too.) Be prepared with a receptacle for this scrub; it will not keep its shape. It would be nice if it did, since the igloo shape fits quite naturally into the palm of your hand, but such is probably the nature of sugar scrubs.

And because this is Alaska, I feel the need to mention it: No, we do not live in igloos.

Love’s gift set: The baby soft scent of nostalgia

2011-11-17T21:27:00.001-09:00

I probably saw Love’s Baby Soft for the first time in an ad in Barbie Magazine circa 1986. I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that for a long time I thought the apostrophe-S was a contraction for “is,” not a possessive (as in “Love is Baby Soft”), and I thought it was weird that the name of the perfume was a sentence. (Give me a break. I was seven.) I was fascinated by the bottle (which sort of reminded me of a roll-on deodorant, once I knew there was such a thing as roll-on deodorant), and when I got a little older and used to ditch my mom during errands to Fred Meyer and hang out in the beauty section, where I would shop for Tinkerbell brush-on, peel-off nail polishes and sniff Designer Imposters perfumes, Malibu Musk (oh yeah, I went through more than one bottle of that) and that round, pink Love’s Baby Soft. I don’t think I actually owned a bottle of it until high school or maybe even college, when I should probably have been wearing real perfume. And even though I usually wear age-appropriate fragrances, I still have a soft spot (ha!) for Love’s.

So when I ran into Walgreen’s the other day and saw the price tag on this Love’s holiday gift set, I didn’t think twice. I just grabbed.

It contains:

0.69 fl. oz. Love’s Baby Soft Cologne Mist
0.69 fl. oz. Love’s Fresh Lemon Body Mist
0.69 fl. oz. Love’s Soft Jasmin Body Mist
2 fl. oz. Love’s Baby Soft Shimmery Body Lotion
2 fl. oz. Love’s Rain Forest Body Lotion

Five products for under $10? Yes please. I already knew I loved Love’s Baby Soft, which, in case you didn’t spend your childhood in the beauty aisle, smells like baby powder. I don’t imagine I’ll wear it out much, but it will be nice to spray it on after a bath when I’m staying in for the night. I like the smell of Rain Forest, too, although not as much. I already have the body mist, picked up at a remote CVS in rural Connecticut last summer. I’m not quite sure how to describe the scent... sort of soft and green? My husband complimented me the last time I wore it, so that’s a point in its favor. The company claims that “a portion of the proceeds” of Rain Forest sales is “donated to rainforest preservation,” which is great, although they don’t specify what portion or what organization, so I’m a little leery of that claim.

The packaging inaccurately describes both lotions as “shimmery,” when in fact only the Baby Soft tube is actually marked as shimmery, and I honestly haven’t noticed much shimmer — maybe a fleck of sparkle here and there. That’s fine with me, though; shimmer lotion isn’t really my thing.

I’d heard of Fresh Lemon before but never smelled it in person. The name is pretty straightforward. It smells like sweet lemon, or like a yellow Mr. Sketch marker or a lemon drop. I like it. Soft Jasmin is completely new to me, and I love it. It smells less like jasmine than like lilac, but that’s OK since I love lilac.

Of the four different scents, Soft Jasmin is the one I like most, and the one I’m most likely to wear outside the house. Let’s be honest; I’m 32 years old and these scents are a little young for me. (Love’s is currently running a contest: See your cheerleading squad in a Baby Soft commercial!) But I really like the way they smell, and I’m more than happy to spend $9.99 on scents I’m mostly going to wear to hang out at home. I mean, I spend way more than that on candles to make my house smell good. And I never take the house anywhere.

Love’s Baby Soft holiday gift set

Bottom Line: For 10 bucks, it’s an affordable sensory trip down Memory Lane.
Price: $
Tip: Don’t let the “shimmery” scare you off — it’s pretty much just plain old lotion.

The Body Shop ‘Buy the Bag’ haul

2011-11-10T19:26:00.000-09:00

I was secretly distracted at work all day. Why? Because I woke up to this e-mail:

I had completely forgotten about the buy-the-bag event at The Body Shop. Through Sunday, if you buy that canvas bag ($5) at your local Body Shop, you get 30% off everything you can fit inside it (except gift sets, candles, 750 ml shower gels and gift cards). And then if you’re a Love Your Body member (like I am), you get another 20% off on top of that 30% (instead of your regular 10%). I may have gone a little crazy.

I think there might be one or two things left after my trip. If you hurry.

I won’t provide a complete rundown of everything in the bag since there are some holiday gifts in there for some people who may be reading... but I will say that I spent $167 and came home with more than $290 worth of product. And yes, a few things for myself may have snuck in there. Like possibly some of the holiday Candied Ginger and Cranberry Joy scrubs and body butters. I’m only human, people.

Shimmer Cubes. Normally $22. Mine for $12.32. Winning!

The Body Shop’s buy-the-bag promotion, as far as I can tell, continues as long as supplies last. The bonus 20% Love Your Body members event runs through Sunday. And if you shop online, you can skip the bag and just take 30% off your order through Sunday (plus the 20% Love Your Body discount). You also get free shipping if you spend more than $50... unless you live in Alaska (and probably Hawaii), in which case you can expect to pay $15 for shipping. Typical. I wish more companies would follow Sephora’s lead and use USPS Priority Mail. You know that oil revenue check we get every year? I promise we make up for it in shipping costs.

November Julep Maven shipment

2011-11-05T12:49:00.001-08:00

I was all set to stick with my Classic With a Twist category for my second shipment from Julep’s Maven program this month (which included a polish, a lip gloss and a cosmetic bag), but when the alternate shelf pull e-mail arrived, I found myself lingering longingly over the polishes in the other categories. Fortunately, Julep has added a new category for junkies like me, so I opted to switch to the Polish Lover shipment and received three bottles of nail color.

Yes, this made me very happy.

My shipment arrived earlier this week, packaged with three 2-ml product samples: Age Defying Hand Brightener, SPF 30 Hand Cream, and the Glycolic Hand Scrub I featured in my October favorites. These will be tucked into my carry-on when we go to Las Vegas next month.

And then there were the polishes...

Michelle is a “midnight, inky blue.” In the bottle it looks a bit like China Glaze First Mate or a dustier version of Sephora by OPI Blue Grotto. On the nail, it’s very dark but obviously blue. A great addition to my ever-growing collection of blue polishes. (Funny, I don’t have much blue in my wardrobe other than jeans, but I love blue nail polish and wear it all the time.)

Trina is a “deep aubergine” named for Trina Turk. What the website doesn’t mention about Trina is the very beautiful shimmer that is pronounced in the bottle but, once it’s on the nail, doesn’t shimmer so much as provide a very pretty depth. It reads creme.

If I love blue nail polishes, I looove green nail polishes, so I was very excited about Diane, which is easily my favorite of the three. Julep describes Diane as an “elegant, forest grey-green,” although I might say it’s more of an olive-y forest, a bit reminiscent of OPI Here Today, Aragon Tomorrow. Like Nars Zulu, Diane looks almost black in low light; however, it’s obviously green under bright natural light. It also looks great layered under glitters and flakies, as I learned when I couldn’t resist trying out new bottles of Color Club Covered in Diamonds and China Glaze Snow Globe.

I like the Julep formula, which is 3-free and applies and wears nicely. I wore Diane for three days this week and did get some tip wear, but I blame that on the fact that I used Seche Vite Dry Quick Top Coat, which is awesome for a one-day manicure but doesn’t lend itself well to long wear.

After two shipments, I’m still really enjoying the Julep Maven program and looking forward to seeing what comes next. You can sign up at Julep.com.

(Note: The Julep Maven links in the first and last paragraphs are affiliate links. If you click through and sign up, I receive a credit at Julep.com. I don’t receive any compensation from Julep for these posts and I don’t have any affiliation with the company.)

Spotted: Magnetic nail polish at Anchorage Fred Meyer stores

2011-11-02T22:15:00.001-08:00

Yet again, my local Fred Meyer is full of surprises. I turned the corner down a beauty aisle yesterday and what should I find tucked into a corner near the final clearance items but the hottest trend in nail polish?

That’s right, a whole rack of brand spanking new magnetic nail polishes practically hidden away next to the last-ditch buckets of sampled lipsticks and cracked eye shadows. I never expected to stumble across magnetic polish at Fred Meyer, but then again, I never expected to find LED gel polishes there either, and there they are indeed. Fred, you are just full of surprises.

For the uninitiated: Magnetic nail polish contains metallic particles that react to a magnet held just above the surface of the wet polish. A handful of brands produce magnetic polishes, including Nails Inc. (now available at Sephora) and LCN. Some companies (like LCN) make you buy the magnets separately, but on the Layla Magneffect polishes I spotted at Freddy’s, the magnet is built into the cap. Here, allow this charming Italian woman explain to you how you use the magnet-uh in the cap-uh:

Personally, I’m on the fence about magnetic polish. I think my problem is the price-to-variety ratio. Magnetic nail polish is not cheap. Even this brand carried at Fred Meyer is priced at $14.99. Per bottle. And then you’re limited to what you can do with one magnet. I mean yeah, it looks cool. But I don’t see how I can justify spending $15 just to put stripes on my fingernails. I might feel differently if they came with an assortment of magnets to create a variety of effects. Or are there some secret magnetic nail polish hacks out there? Anyone know any tricks?

For now, I’m going to hold off on investing in magnetic nail polish, although I am drawn to some of the LCN polishes after seeing swatches. If you decide to hit up your neighborhood Fred Meyer, though, check out the Layla display and let me know what you think.

And if the display is empty, remember to check beneath the bottom shelves. My Freddy’s already has extra boxes of magnetic polish tucked away under marked-down Jovan Musk gift sets:

October favorites

2011-11-01T20:55:00.001-08:00

November is here, bringing snow and wind to Southcentral Alaska. (Seriously, it’s bitterly windy outside. I’m happy to be curled up with a glass of wine and the Internet.) Time for a quick rundown of the products I found myself turning to frequently during October:

1. Julep Facial for Hands Glycolic Hand Scrub

I got this gem in my first Julep Maven shipment last month and I am crazy about it. I don’t use it every time I wash my hands, but I do use it about once a day. What I love about it: Hours after I’ve scrubbed, I can still tell I’ve used it. Especially now that winter is officially here in Anchorage, I’m really impressed that I can scrub once with this in the morning and slap on a coat of moisturizer (my favorite is Bliss High Intensity Hand Cream, and I hoard the holiday scents), and hours later, my hands still feel noticeably smooth. Lately I’ve been feeling insecure about my hands (mostly when I’ve gone to photograph them for this blog), thinking they’ve been looking kind of dull and wrinkly. Maybe it’s just that they feel so great, but I’m kind of convinced this scrub has left my hands looking better, too — brighter and smoother. At $32, the price is a bit steep, but I think it’s worth every penny.

Sign up for Julep Maven (Affiliate link — if you sign up, I receive a credit at Julep.com.)

2. Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Eye Enhancing Gel Liner

I mentioned the Physician’s Formula gel liners in my post about a disappointing Ulta brand gel liner experience. I have two sets of these liners now, for brown eyes (brown, violet and black with violet shimmer) and for green eyes (green, violet and black with green shimmer). Don’t let the word “shimmer” scare you off. These are not glitter eyeliners. The shimmer in the black liners is barely noticeable — not noticeable at all if, like me, you use them to line your upper waterline. Like any good gel liner, they last a long time and are very easy to work with, just as striking as a liquid liner but much more forgiving. And the brush that comes with each set is actually very functional, which isn’t something that can be said about too many drugstore eye products. Plus, at just under $11 for three shades, you’re not going to find a better deal around, particularly for this quality.

3. L’Occitane en Provence Limited Edition Desert Rose Ultra Rich Body Cream

My husband brought this back for me from a trip to Chicago and I love it. It’s 25 percent shea butter, so it’s super creamy and moisturizing, and it smells amazing. I feel like rose-scented products are tricky because they can so easily go a bit old lady, but this one smells fresh and bright. It’s moisturizing but not at all greasy, and as the weather has been getting colder I’ve been turning to it quite a bit. The limited-edition cream ($21) also comes in Hibiscus Flower and Cocoa Flower. I have a Hibiscus Flower sample I’ve been saving for a couple of weeks — I’m torn between wanting to hold on to it for when we fly to Las Vegas next month (I always like to save lotion samples to tuck into my carry-on liquids bag) and really wanting to rip into it and see how it smells.

Do you have any favorite products you turn to as the weather gets colder?

Swatches in the snow

2011-10-30T15:36:00.003-08:00

We’ve had a nice long fall here in Anchorage, but we finally got our first real snowfall today, which finally prompted me to get my act together and photograph the nail polish swatches I spent all last week working on. The fresh snow ended up being the perfect backdrop for all those swatch wheels. Visit Swatches in the Snow to browse the Below Freezing Beauty nail polish library — and find it easily anytime you visit the site by clicking the “Swatches in the Snow” tab at the top of the page. I’ll update it periodically as I accumulate new colors (and track down a couple I know I’m missing... like where is my China Glaze Classic Camel?), although I suppose I’ll have to wait for fresh snow to take new photos!

Photographing nail polish is tricky... not all of the colors show up true to life, and some are a little overwhelming with or without the flash. (Like those China Glaze Poolside neons. Yeow.) If you have questions about any of the swatches, feel free to e-mail me.

Glitterbomb!

2011-10-25T20:11:00.000-08:00

I went through a long, long anti-shimmer phase. I didn’t want it in my eye shadow, I didn’t want it in my bronzer, and I definitely didn’t want it in my nail polish. I was all creme, all the time. One fleck of microglitter and I was out.

What brought me back? Maybe it was Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. Maybe flakies are a gateway drug... flakes lead to shimmer, shimmer leads to glitter... whatever happened, it happened, and now I’m a sucker for a great glitter polish — the chunkier, the better. I still wear primarily creme polishes (as you’ll see later this week when I post the results of my epic swatching project), but I have a great big soft spot for chunky glitter polishes.

Which is why I came home from the grocery store tonight with NINE new nail polishes. Fred Meyer is a mega-glitterfest right now, and I was suckered right in. Click on the photos to get a closer look.

Hello, darlings. (Three coats of each, because I really like to pack it on.)

They are...

1. Wet n Wild Tipsy on Bubbly, 99¢
Iridescent micro-glitter in a clear base. Thick, as polishes like this one usually are, but with a surprisingly smooth finish.

2. Wet n Wild I’m Seeing Double, 99¢
Small and micro silver holo glitter in a clear base. Another surprisingly smooth finish, and a very satisfyingly glittery surface. Even at three coats, there’s a lot of clear showing, so put it over a color you’d like to show through.

3. L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Celebrate, $3.49
I love this polish. Seriously. I gasped as it came out of the bottle. It’s large and micro magenta, silver and blue glitter. Almost opaque at three coats and seriously breathtaking. I love it.

4. Milani Jewel FX Gems, $4.49
I have almost bought this polish a hundred times, and then by the time I decided I really, really wanted it, it was nearly impossible to find. It was back today, though, in a freshly-restocked Milani glitters display, and I snapped it up. It’s everything I wanted Wet n Wild Party of Five Glitters to be — mixed large and small multi glitter that give a confetti effect on the nail. Wonderful.

5. Wet n Wild Pop the Cork, 99¢
This is maybe the least exciting polish I picked up. Pink and silver small glitter. Nothing wrong with it; it’s just that it’s not as exciting as the rest of the group. I think it would look great over China Glaze Good Witch?.

6. Milani One Coat Glitter Red Sparkle, $4.49
They say “one coat,” but I wasn’t satisfied until I’d gotten to three coats, at which point I had a solid field of thick, blemish-free ruby glitter. Definitely calls for a thick topcoat (I favor Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat), but very pretty and strictly glittery — no filler.

7. L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Purge, $3.49
I really like this mix of small and large glitter in Kelly green, although it is very similar to Orly Here Comes Trouble, which I already own. I think it will look great over China Glaze China Rouge for Christmas.

8. Revlon Blue Mosaic, $4.99
It was the big green glitter mixed into the background of large and micro blue and silver glitters that got me — it gives Blue Mosaic a nice ocean-y feel. I think I’d like to try it over OPI Jade is the New Black or Essie Pretty Edgy to bring out the green.

9. Revlon Starry Pink, $4.99
I spotted this on a nail polish blog last week and figured I’d never actually see it in person, so when I did, I snapped it up. This is one of the most unusual polishes I’ve seen lately — a sheer lavender base with silver micro and large glitter. I don’t know that it’s a fall polish, and I might not give it much play until after the holidays, but I find it really intriguing.

Here they are with the flash, just for good measure:

Sparkly!

An observation from my glitter binge: I have not bought a Revlon nail polish in probably 15 or 20 years — seriously. Something about the Revlon bottle really turns me off, and I haven’t seen any colors compelling enough to get me over that. But I found Blue Mosaic and Starry Pink intriguing enough to get me past my general disinterest in the brand. Well played, Revlon. I’m looking forward to seeing how they wear.

October Birchbox: Korres, Stila, Blinc, Caudalie, and clean undies

2011-10-12T06:00:00.001-08:00

Exciting day yesterday — very exciting day! I mean, of course, that there were new episodes of “Extreme Couponing” on TLC.

OK, I kid. Although I do kind of love “Extreme Couponing.” I wish I were as dedicated as the couponers they feature, but I’m not. (Alaska grocery stores don’t really do double coupons and all the deals you get other places, so I’ll write it off to circumstance and not to my own laziness. I do use coupons... when I remember...) I love a great deal, though, and I love trying new things, and that’s really why yesterday was exciting. It was Birchbox day!

Birchbox is a subscription service that delivers a box of deluxe beauty samples to your door once a month. I’ve been subscribed to Birchbox since May. I canceled my BeautyFix subscription last winter because I just wasn’t impressed by the selection anymore, but I missed the quarterly shipments of beauty treats. For $10 a box, I figured Birchbox was worth a try.

Each month, Birchbox sends four to five beauty samples in a cute little box. I say “samples,” but some of the products are actually travel sized or larger.

As with Julep Maven, you get a nice little rundown of the products you’ve received, along with pricing information for the full-sized versions. (You can order the full-size versions from Birchbox, naturally.)

Each month has a theme, and this month’s was “prep and finish,” featuring “products designed to prep and polish skin, body and hair.” My box contained:

1.69 fl. oz. tube Korres Body Butter in Guava (full size retails for $29):

I have this body butter on my hands right now and I can’t stop smelling them. They smell like Hawaii.

0.141 oz. Blinc mascara (the kind that coats your lashes in little tubes). I actually used to use Blinc a few years ago but stopped because I felt like it was kind of hard on my eyelashes. I also don’t love that the tube comes packed in a totally unnecessary outside tube (that’s the purple thing):

We get it. It’s tubes. Where can I recycle this wasteful packaging?

A full-size Blinc mascara is $24. I might actually give this another try, since it’s here. And it is the most waterproof mascara I’ve ever used. And the little tubes are kind of cool when you rub them off your eyes at the end of the day.

The box also contained a 0.13 fl. oz. Caudalie Vinoperfect Cell Renewal Night Cream (full size, 30 ml, is $68):

A full-size Stila eye shadow in Poppy (retail value $18):

And a sample packet of The Laundress Delicate Wash in Lady:

(Of course... because I just washed every single delicate item I own last weekend. Oh, well... something to save for later.)

Not a bad little haul for $10:

Like Julep Maven, Birchbox includes shipping in the monthly fee. You can also review the products in your box each month to earn Birchbox Points. Each review earns you 10 points; 100 points is worth $10 off your next purchase of a full-size product. You can also earn 110 bonus points by signing up for a yearlong subscription rather than paying month by month.

Overall, I’ve been thrilled with my Birchbox shipments so far. I’ve gotten to try some things I never would have sought out on my own, and I’ve gotten extras of some items I already know and love. This was my sixth shipment, and for the first time I saw some repeats. This was my second Stila eye shadow (although a different color) and my second Blinc product (August’s box contained the companion liquid liner). Since repetition was one of the reasons I left BeautyFix, I hope Birchbox maintains a variety of items. For me, the excitement of opening my Birchbox is getting to sample new products, so if I start to see repeats, a lot of the appeal will be gone.

Birchbox
Bottom line: A monthly visitor you’ll actually look forward to!
Price: $$
Tip: Review products and refer friends to earn Birchbox Points that can save you money on full-size product orders.

Julep Maven: First impressions

2011-10-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

I had the loveliest surprise waiting for me when I got home yesterday:

My first Julep Maven shipment!

What’s Julep? Well, according to their website:

We are a hand, nail and foot care brand with four boutique nail parlors in the Seattle area. Founded on the belief that beauty is a connection, not a competition, Julep was created to celebrate the bond between girlfriends and the beauty of the human spirit. We have created a line of the most effective, toxin-free “Mani & Pedi Care” products and the latest runway-inspired nail colors.

The Julep Maven program is sort of like Birchbox, but strictly for Julep products:

We launched our new Julep Maven program to give all of our girlfriends access to the beauty editor Sneak Peek Box we create every month. As a Julep Maven, you will have access to the hottest trends in nail color and the latest Mani Care and Pedi Care products - delivered right to your doorstep, just like the beauty editors do. And you'll have access to these trends and products before anyone else.

Essentially, for $19.99 a month, you get a package with a selection of Julep products based on the results of your personal style quiz. I signed up a couple of weeks ago (my personal style is “classic with a twist”), and my first shipment arrived last night. Inside the black shipping box was this cute gift bag:

I’m a sucker for packaging. And Julep started off strong on that front. Along with a welcome letter (with my name filled in by hand! I did a smear test!) and an explanation of my Maven benefits, I found a card listing the contents of my box:

Inside the bag I found more cute packaging. Like Birchbox, Julep appears to favor pink tissue paper and custom seals:

My first Maven shipment included a 3 oz. tube of “Facial for Hands” Glycolic Hand Scrub, two polishes, a base coat, and samples of the hand scrub and Julep’s SPF 30 hand cream.

The hand scrub contains extracts of grapeseed, sage leaf and lavender, orange oil, and apricot seed powder. It’s nice and scrubby-feeling, but not at all harsh. The tube claims it’s “gentle enough to be used every time you wash your hands,” and while I don’t know that I’d want to use a scrub every single time I wash my hands (I wash my hands a lot, which is probably how I ended up with the nasty case of wedding ring rash I’m still treating), I can definitely see using this once a day. My hands still felt spectacular two hours after I scrubbed.

On to the polishes. As a “classic with a twist,” I received the “darling pink” Reese, a bright rosepetal creme. I found Reese a surprising selection for fall, especially after applying it to my toes. (I apologize for no toe shots, but I read something once about foot fetishists stalking beauty blogs, and that just really weirds me out for some reason.) It’s a pretty color, but feels like much more appropriate for summer than autumn. I was surprised by the application; in the bottle, Reese looked like it might go on sheer, but it was even and opaque in two coats. I think it might have some potential for Konad stamping.

And then there is Alfre.

Oh, Alfre.

Alfre is a brand-new Julep shade for fall 2011. And it is spectacular. The Julep website describes Alfre as “royal metropolitan purple with a hint of shimmer.” In person, it looks purple in some lights and pewter in others.

I love it.

Here’s the beauty of the Maven program: I never would have picked this polish for myself. I don’t tend to gravitate toward metallic or shimmery polishes, and I absolutely would not have gambled $14 on Alfre. But I love the way this polish looks on my nails. It’s sort of a grown-up version of China Glaze Grape Juice meets Sephora by OPI Metro Chic. But better.

In terms of formula, both Alfre and Reese applied nicely. They’re liquidy but not thin, and once I got a feel for the consistency, they went on smoothly. I did get a couple of bubbles with Alfre, but I’m fairly certain that’s because I was painting in semi-darkness (we really need another light in the living room) and slapping it on a bit too thick. There are a few visible brush strokes if you look closely, but as you can see from the photos, they’re not obvious from more than a few inches away. Julep polishes are 3-free, and $1 of every sale goes to organizations that empower women.

When it comes to value, I’m very pleased with Maven based on this first shipment. Each of the two polishes I received retail for $14 on Julep.com, so right away I received $28 worth of polish for my $19.99. That doesn’t include the base coat, the scrub ($32), and shipping (included in the cost of membership). Plus, as a Maven subscriber, I get 20% off my Julep.com purchases (which will come in handy when I decide I can’t live without the “Catherine and Pippa” set). And Alaskans (and probably Hawaiians, too): Julep lives in the real world, with no ridiculous freak-state shipping penalties. Their standard shipping is U.S.P.S. Parcel Post. (Yes, I’m serious.) You’ll pay the same $19.99 everyone else pays.

Bottom line? I’m impressed, and I’m looking forward to more. I’ve loved the surprises of Birchbox every month, and based on this first month, I am very excited to see what the future brings with Julep Maven.

***

Note: The links in this post to sign up for Julep are personalized referral links. If you click through and sign up for Julep Maven, I get a credit to spend at Julep.com. If you sign up for Julep Maven, you can get your own referral code to share with friends and family.

Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner: Don’t bother

2011-10-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

I hit up Ulta like a fiend whenever I’m outside Alaska. I’ve planned entire driving routes around Ulta locations. I love Ulta.

I also love gel eyeliner. What I do not love is Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner.

I was at Ulta in Oregon earlier this year and I spent a long time lingering over the Ulta brand gel eyeliners. I’d been longing for a green gel liner for a while, but I was hesitant to spend $20 on a Stila Smudge Pot in Jade because, while I love my Cobalt Smudge Pot, I don’t actually use it very much. What can I say? I mostly stick to black liner. For $10, I figured I could take a chance on Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner in Dublin.

Here is why I love shopping in person more than online shopping: You can see things in real life. So you can, for example, look through all the testers of Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner and notice that each one is dried out and cracked. You can also go through and open each container of Dublin until you find one that isn’t dried out and cracked. And then you can ignore all those big red flags waving at you from all those pots of dried-out, cracked gel liner and buy the un-dried one anyway.

And then, after only a few months and a handful of uses, you can open up your gel liner and find this:

Dry as dry can be, and crackly as a packet of Pop Rocks. No kidding, it’s straight-up Sahara in there. I tried wetting my brush to try to wring some effectiveness out of the dried-up cake of liner, but I ended up with only a faint wash of dark, gritty color.

I have to say, based on my in-store observations and the few times I did use the product, I’m not surprised. The color appeared green when I swatched it in the store, but it never looked anything but gritty and grey on my eyes. I should have gone for Mac Fluidline in Dark Envy... or just shelled out for the Smudge Pot. I’ve never had a Smudge Pot dry out on me, and I’ve forgotten to recap them on a couple of occasions.

I’m not sure if all Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Liners are similarly formulated, or if that store just got a bad batch, but after what I saw in the store and what I experienced at home, this will be my last Ulta brand gel liner. I’ll probably chip out the rest of the Dublin cake and reuse the jar — for something that doesn’t need an airtight environment, obviously.

Ulta Extreme Wear Gel Eyeliner
Bottom Line: Until Ulta rolls out a reformulation, avoid.
Price: $$
Tip: When it comes to affordable gel liner, I’ve had much better luck with Physician’s Formula Shimmer Strips Custom Eye Enhancing Gel Liner. For about a dollar more than the Ulta gel liner, you get three different colors, and the consistency is pretty nice.

September favorites

2011-10-01T06:30:00.001-08:00

As we head into October (and it’s officially fall), here’s a quick look at the products I found myself falling in love with — for the first time, or all over again — during the month of September:

1. L’Oréal Paris MagicSmooth Soufflé Makeup

I have been on a long, long search for the perfect foundation. I used to swear by Clinique Superfit, which is now discontinued. I’d started using Superfit after Clinique discontinued another foundation I adored. (Lesson: Don’t fall in love with a Clinique foundation.) Since I’ve stopped being able to get my hands on my beloved Superfit, I’ve bounced around from makeup to makeup, trying just about anything and everything. There was an unfortunate Korres experiment (apparently now also discontinued; in this case, it was for the best), a massive waste of money on Laura Mercier Oil Free Foundation (for $42 yes that’s right I said forty-two dollars I expect a foundation to actually cover my skin evenly), and of course, my dalliance with the Collier Strong-recommended L’Oréal paint roller, which I knew on some level was doomed from the start. I was in like with L’Oréal True Match for a while, but I my skin fell exactly between two shades and I got tired of mixing all the time, and then it started to make my face too greasy. I was hesitant to try any more high-end brands after being burned by Korres and Laura Mercier, but after seeing MagicSmooth Soufflé demoed in a YouTube video I figured I could risk 14 bucks.

You guys, this is The Foundation. I’m serious. Perfect coverage — no, really, perfect — perfect color, perfect finish. I love, love, love my skin in this makeup. It’s blendable to a fault and looks so incredibly natural I could swear my skin became even and perfect overnight. Except that I know I just applied the perfection with a foundation brush. (Yeah, that’s the only downside — this is definitely a makeup that demands brush application. There have been a couple of mornings when, crunched for time, I’ve had to resort to my slap-it-on-with-fingers-and-go Sephora Collection backup foundation, and while it’s not a terrible option, it’s just not the same.) This is my new bestie. Which, with my track record, means it will probably be discontinued in a month or two... so if it does, I’m going to have to stock up.

2. Garnier Skin Renew Anti-Dark-Circle Roller

I mentioned this product in my workplace essentials post, but at that point it was a pretty new item for me and the jury was still out. The jury has returned a verdict, though, and the Garnier Skin Renew Anti-Dark-Circle Roller is guilty of being totally effective and satisfying to use. Consequently, it has been handed a lifetime sentence of hard labor in my daily makeup routine. I have very pale Northern European skin, so if I don’t get enough sleep (and adjusting to a new earlier schedule has meant my sleep patterns have been all messed up lately) I have very dark, very pronounced purple bags under my eyes. Not sexy. This roller conceals underneath my eyes beautifully — seriously, more smoothly than any undereye concealer I’ve ever used, including my beloved standby Benefit LemonAid — and feels nice and cool as I roll it on. More than that, though, I’m honestly convinced that my undereye area has looked smoother and younger in the month since I started using this product daily. I’m sold.

3. Monistat Soothing Care Chafing Relief Powder-Gel

I know, I know, every beauty blogger in the whole world has written about what a wonder product this is, how it’s the same formula as Smashbox Photo Finish, etc. I used to swear by this as a face primer — went through several tubes of it — and then I started using some samples I’d accumulated from Sephora orders, and then I started foregoing primer at all, and then I pretty much forgot about Monistat. I picked up a new tube in September, though, and I’ve been using it every day. I’d forgotten how nice and smooth it makes my face and how satisfying it is to apply foundation over the top of that silky layer of primed skin. Bonus use: I developed a bad case of wedding ring rash recently (due, I’m fairly certain, to Boston humidity and then a long flight home, both of which caused my fingers to swell), and since my skin has started to heal and I’ve been wearing my rings again I’ve been putting this on my finger first to discourage irritation. (It turns out the only way to really cure wedding ring rash when it’s not caused by a metal allergy is to leave your rings off for a while and let the skin heal... which has been a real drag. I hate not wearing my rings.)

Downside: It’s not really a beauty product I want to leave lying around. Even if he knew I’m putting it on my face (or maybe especially because?), I think my husband would be a little weirded out by this one.

4. Jurlique Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer

I know anti-bacterial stuff is controversial (don’t ever get my mother started about how we humans are wearing down our resistance to microorganisms through our newfound cultural germophobia), but I like to keep some in my handbag because... well, sometimes you just want to kill some germs, you know? There was a little bottle of Jurlique Moisturizing Hand Sanitizer in this month’s Birchbox, and I’m loving it. It smells like an Aveda product, and it doesn’t leave my hands feeling dry or raw. Love.

What favorite products did you discover — or rediscover — in September?

Nails of the '80s

2011-09-30T06:30:00.001-08:00

The other day I got sucked into a vortex of 1980s commercials on YouTube. It all started with this:

I have had this commercial stuck in my head for 23 years. No joke.

Whatever happened to Lee Press-On Nails? I suppose they went the way of these:

I have no memory of Krazy Nails, although I don’t think, at age 7, that I was really the target demographic. The Miss Lee ad clearly worked, though, because I’ve been walking around for years with the line “Smaller sizes, what she means!” flitting across my memory from time to time...

Now let’s enjoy this grown-up Lee Press-On Nails commercial, in which we are treated to a “rainbow array” of plastic nails in pink, purple and red, and in which we watch the hand model type on what looks like the keyboard to an Apple IIE:

Finally, a product about which I had completely forgotten:

Those eye shadow sticks! The lighted compact mirror! For me, however, it was not to be. No way would my mother (despite being a theatrical makeup artist) ever have allowed Sweet 16 Makeup into our house. She struggled enough with how Barbie might warp my self-image. (It’s OK, Mom, I turned out fine. Except that I paint my nails every day and spend a lot of time on the Internet talking about foundation.)

Chanel Shade Parade

2011-09-29T16:00:00.001-08:00

Do yourself a favor: Watch this video right now.

Love.

h/t Lipstick & Luxury

Wet N Wild Behind Closed Doors & Tangled In My Web

2011-09-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

While I was busily snapping up Halloween kits at Fred Meyer, I also picked up a couple of Wet N Wild polishes from the On The Prowl collection: Tangled In My Web, a black “glitter” topcoat (more on that below) and Behind Closed Doors, a mix of fine and chunky red glitter in a sheer black base. (Vampy Varnish has a detailed post with great photos of the polishes. I’d love to find a bottle of Correction Tape, but I haven’t seen one on any of the displays around Anchorage.)

I was really excited when I saw Tangled In My Web. I even dug around in boxes stashed below the display shelves to find a bottle when there was none on the display. It’s a clear topcoat peppered with medium-sized hexagonal black glitter.

About that. “Glitter” might not actually be the correct word, since there’s not much sparkle to these speckles; it is more accurate to say something like “sprinkles.” At any rate, it’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before. But I’m not really sure how I feel about it. As with many glitter topcoats, the application is tricky (be prepared to do a lot of dabbing), but in this case, the end result isn’t necessarily all that exciting.

I tried Tangled In My Web on its own and over two coats of Finger Paints Outta Sight Orange:

Yeah. Basically tiny polka dots. I don’t dislike it; I’m just not that excited about it. I’m sure there’s some exciting possibility for it that I just haven’t yet thought of. Considering I got it for half off with a coupon (and since it’s Wet N Wild, it wasn’t pricy to begin with), I feel OK about having bought it. If I need a quick and dirty Halloween manicure, it’ll do just fine. And maybe I’ll rediscover it months from now and realize all its untapped possibilities.

Behind Closed Doors, on the other hand, I love. Love love love love love. With the red glitter in the black base, it’s the funky version of China Glaze Lubu Heels I’ve been waiting for. (I like Lubu Heels, but the red has never stood out enough for me. Behind Closed Doors, layered over a coat of black polish, is exactly what I wanted Lubu Heels to be.) One or two coats looks great over a red polish; I wore it for a couple of days over Essie Red Nouveau and got a million compliments. I put on another coat before photographing it, so these show three coats over Red Nouveau:

In the photos above, the base color definitely looks black, but in sunlight it has more of a dark red jelly look:

The red jelly is even more pronounced with only two coats.

Like so many of their glittery relatives, these polishes are a b***h to remove. Lots of people swear by the aluminum foil method, and that has always worked for me, but I hate to waste aluminum foil. So instead I waste toilet paper! I use one square for each nail, fold it up into a strip about as wide as the nail is long, and soak the center of the strip in nail polish remover. I place the soaked center over the nail and wrap the ends of the strip around my fingertip. The TP sticks to itself, so no aluminum foil is necessary. I let them sit for a few minutes, then pull the TP wraps off one at a time while applying pressure to my fingernail. This gets off much of the glitter, although I find it’s usually necessary to go back and clean up the stragglers. I like the Graham Professional Hands Down pads from Sally Beauty for this; they're super durable and they don’t leave fuzz all over your fingers. Plus they have a little tab on the back to hold on to so you can take polish off your toenails without melting your mani.

Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers Hauntingly Hip Halloween Eye Kits

2011-09-25T21:30:00.000-08:00

Polarbelle posted last week about the impressive variety of drugstore offerings carried at Anchorage Fred Meyer stores, and I won’t repeat what she said except to reiterate how much fun it is to shop the makeup aisles at my friendly neighborhood Freddy’s. I mostly love drugstore brands for fun color cosmetics (although lately I’ve been loving a L’Oréal foundation, and Maybelline The Falsies is my new favorite mascara), so I took advantage of a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale to snap up the Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers Hauntingly Hip kits for Halloween. With the coupon, I got all four kits (usually $5.99 each) for just under $18.

Each kit comes with a nine-color palette (a mix of glitters and metallics), a black eye pencil, and three stencils. There are some duplicates among the palettes, but not among the stencils. There’s an angel kit, a devil, a witch, and a butterfly, which was the one I broke into first (with no battery in my camera; hence the iffy cell phone photo):

The kit is easy enough to use: You stick the stencil to your face and smooth the makeup over the exposed areas. The butterfly only took me a couple of minutes to do, although once I peeled the stencil off I realized I should have started by putting down a base of cream shadow to fill in the wing. As it was, it looked fine, but kind of empty. (Note: The shape of the butterfly is all done using colors from the Madame Butterfly palette; the glitter is from a NYX glitter palette.)

Over the weekend, I did a few more quick tests with the other stencils. I tried the mask from Bewitching Beauty, using the blacks and purples from that palette:

Each of the kits comes with a mask stencil and two additional stencils. I tried putting the cauldron from Bewitching Beauty on my arm, but was really dissatisfied with the results; there was just too much cauldron to fill in once the stencil came off.

For these wings from Gilded Angel, I did an outline using the black pencil and then filled in with white and gold, with some blue from the Madame Butterfly kit on the tips. The effect was really pretty:

One thing to note about the makeup in the Hauntingly Hip palettes is that they are not glitter all the way down. The colors are actually all metallic, but some of them have a layer of glitter on top. It’s a little bit deceptive, although the metallic is actually much better for stenciling than, say, the glitters from my NYX glitter palette (which, as you can see in the Madame Butterfly photo, are just glitter with no real pigmentation). If you’re looking for thick, glittery colors, you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re a fan of metallics, though, you’ll be in heaven. Another caveat: The consistency on these isn’t great for non-Halloween purposes; even with primer underneath, my eyelids creased like crazy, and I only had these looks on for a few minutes each. The sponge applicators are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not really great for applying these colors, even with the stencils. I had the best luck using either my fingers (which the package recommends) or a brush with short, stiff bristles. Some of the colors apply more evenly than others. The package also recommends leaving the stencil on until the makeup dries, but I don’t think that’s necessary. (I also don’t know how dry the makeup will actually get; some of the colors seemed awfully greasy.)

My most successful trial was the flame mask from Devilish Diva. For this look, I put down a base of NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Cherry and then did the stencil in Illamasqua Liquid Metal. I used the Wet N Wild palette for highlight colors and then patted a little bit of matte red eye shadow from the Coastal Scents Creative Me #1 palette around my eye:

These were all quick looks — I spent the longest on the Devilish Diva eye, but even that only took about five minutes. If you were willing to take some time and experiment, there’s a ton of possibility in these kits.

Some other thoughts:

The mask stencils were too wide for my face — and I have a great big melon head, so if they’re too big for me, they’re going to be too big for a lot of people. The Bewitching Beauty mask went about a centimeter past my hairline on each side, so I didn’t fill in the whole thing. I cut the Devilish Diva mask in half and only did one eye.
Some of the stencils will require scissors for other reasons. The butterfly mask actually comes in one piece as a butterfly. You’ll have to cut it in half if you want to recreate the look on the package. And the Devilish Diva mask, weirdly, had a solid center that would have covered my entire eye (everything you see that’s red above) if I hadn’t snipped it out. I then had to figure out how to fudge the straight line above my eye.
The stencils are vinyl and theoretically reusable, but if you’ve ever stuck a sticker to your skin and then peeled it off, I don’t have to tell you that these stencils lose much of their adhesive capability after one use. They might be durable enough that you could rinse them off and use a little bit of eyelash glue or something to stick them on again.
The black eye pencil is awesome. Soft and dark and very smooth. I’m glad I’ve got four of them, because these might very well enter my daily routine.

Ultimately, I won’t turn to these palettes for reliable, durable colors, but the kits are great for experimenting with some fun fantasy makeup, and totally ideal for an easy Halloween look. These were just some quick trials I tossed together in a few minutes each, so if you’re willing to invest some time and creativity, a Hauntingly Hip kit could be the foundation of a pretty spectacular Halloween look.

Wet N Wild Fantasy Makers Hauntingly Hip Eye Kits

Bottom Line: Lots of fun for playtime; not terribly practical for everyday.

Price: $

Tip: Use a good primer and combine with more substantial color cosmetics for a bit more staying power.

Target giveth, and Target taketh away

2011-09-19T22:56:00.001-08:00

Never again

I almost never buy Q-Tip brand cotton swabs, since store brand tend to be more affordable (and it’s not like I need surgical-grade precision; I mostly use them to apply spot treatment and remove waterproof eye makeup), but on a trip to Target a few weeks ago I picked up a package of Q-Tips because (a) they were on sale and (b) they came with a bonus pack of cotton rounds, which I use every day to apply toner and remove makeup, and of which I was running out.

I actually really like the cotton swabs more than my usual Target brand, but that’s a post for another time. My real problem is this: These Q-Tips brand cotton rounds are honest to God the best cotton pads I have ever used in my entire life. No joke. I love them. I loooooove them. They feel great and they hold up under saturation and they don’t leave a single scrap of cotton fuzz on my face. They are absolutely the most effective cotton product I’ve ever used, of any shape or style.

And now here’s my problem: I’m about halfway through my bonus pack, and I can’t seem to find any more of these Q-Tips brand cotton rounds for sale anywhere. Target doesn’t have them on display with the rest of the cotton products. They don’t even have any more of the bonus packs attached to packages of Q-Tips. And yes, I love these cotton rounds enough to buy an extra 500 Q-Tips just to get my hands on some more. I haven’t seen them at any of the other places around town where one can find Q-Tips products. A search of the Target website yields nothing, and, surprisingly, so does a search of the Q-Tips website. (I did, however, learn that Q-Tips has an entire section of its website devoted to the many uses of cotton swabs in holiday crafts. No joke.) In fact, the entire Internet seems to be ignoring the existence of any such product as a Q-Tip brand cotton round.

Q-Tip’s clever plan to get me hooked on their name brand cotton rounds has worked. But there seems to be a second, key component of the plan missing: Namely, in order to keep feeding my addiction to these wonderful pads, somebody’s going to have to give me an opportunity to buy more of them. I’ve only got about a week’s supply left. I suppose maybe I could go back to using regular old cotton rounds and pretend it was all just a wonderful dream... but I’d much rather find a way to replenish my supply...

Alaska's first Sephora

2011-09-16T20:31:00.002-08:00

I wasn’t that excited in the spring when word got out that Anchorage’s JC Penney would be getting a Sephora outpost. As much as I loved the idea of Sephora establishing a presence in the AK (the short-lived mystery vending machine doesn’t count), I’ve never been impressed by any of the JC Penney in-store Sephora locations I’ve encountered. So I didn’t go running downtown to check it out when it opened in August.

A week or so ago, though, my husband suggested we take a pass through Penney’s on the way to the new Apple store (also coming soon: Aeropostale and Teavana). And I was pleasantly surprised to find this:

OK, you probably can’t tell from my lame cell phone photo (taken from the Olsenboye section), but we didn’t get the dinky little Sephora counter I’ve seen at Outside JC Penney stores; we got, basically, a small Sephora store inside our JC Penney. We stayed long enough for me to get excited, and then we left (to go have an argument about why I can’t have an iPad). I went back after work tonight, though, and took a closer look. I liked what I saw.

Our mini-Sephora carries a lot of favorite brands, including Urban Decay, Stila, Korres, Murad, Tarte, Cargo and a decent selection of fragrances. And of course, my husband’s favorite:

Seriously, though, he does really love Philosophy. We have a half-dozen or more different three-in-ones in the shower at any given time. He likes the fruity scents.

There’s also a big selection of Sephora brand products, including the full line of OPI for Sephora (be still my nail-painting little heart), and a nice range of skincare and hair products. I wish they hadn’t wasted space on Body Shop products (there’s a Body Shop store right down the hall at the Fifth Avenue Mall), maybe filling those shelves instead with some high-end brands we can’t find elsewhere in town (like Guerlain, maybe? Illamasqua? I’d really like to see Koh Gen Do in person), but overall, I’m thrilled with the store. The staff is helpful, the selection is good, and now I don’t have to wait for days to replace my moisturizer when I run out.

Of course, the downside is that I’m much more likely to spend money I didn’t plan on spending when I’m shopping in person rather than shopping online. Which is how I ended up with this:

Yes, that’s original formula Nars Zulu on my fingernails. When you see something special on the cover of the Sephora holiday catalog, you don’t hesitate; you buy, buy, buy!

I didn’t intend to walk out with anything, and I certainly didn’t plan on spending $64 on a palette, but it was there, and I was there, and one thing led to another... But! The great thing about having a Sephora is that now, apparently, we will have Sephora special events. I didn’t realize until I was checking out that I’d stumbled into the middle of an Urban Decay promotion. I walked out with this:

...which was packed with my new palette, plus a free (really cute) UD T-shirt and a deluxe sample of Stardust in Retrograde. If you’re in Anchorage, the promotion continues Saturday and Sunday, so if you had any inclination toward buying the new Book of Shadows palette, go get it in person and score your own free UD swag.

Well played, then, Sephora. You made a JC Penney believer out of this doubting V.I.B. Welcome to the Last Frontier. I hope this is just the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between Sephora and Alaska...

Workplace beauty essentials

2011-09-06T07:15:00.003-08:00

I’m making a career change this week, from professional communicator (journalist) to professional communicator (PR firm associate), and today is my first official day on my new job. New job equals new office, new desk, new clothes (the dress code in a newsroom is quite different from the dress code at an agency) — and in this case, since I’ve been doing contract work for a few months and haven’t been full-time in an office, it means reassembling my workplace beauty kit.

In a perfect world, makeup would last all day and plans would always be made in advance, and the phrase “touch up” wouldn’t be in any of our vocabularies. Since the world isn’t perfect, though, I like to keep some basics on hand so I can adjust/correct/troubleshoot as necessary. (I learned this the hard way at my last job, when it seemed as though the days someone would call and ask me to film an interview were always the days I’d overslept and shown up to work in a hoodie with my hair in a two-day-old ponytail.) I gathered up my office beauty basics for work over the weekend and thought I’d share them here.

I wasn’t going to buy a new makeup bag, but I did need some new brushes, and I ended up buying this EcoTools by Alicia Silverstone brush/bag set at Target:

The bag is the perfect size to hold my workplace essentials, and I like that the separate compartment keeps brushes tidy. I also really like EcoTools’ products and philosophy. The kit includes a blush brush, mini foundation brush, mini powder brush, detailed eye shading brush and spoolie. It was $18.99 at Target in Anchorage, which means it’s probably $1-$2 cheaper at Lower 48 Target stores. Check inside the large zippered compartment before you buy; mine had a $1 off coupon inside.

What I put inside:

Hardware

1. Some essential tools: A mirror (rediscovered in my garage cleanup haul); hair ties; nail clippers. These have the little file that flips out so I don’t also have to keep a nail file in the bag.

Basics

2. Foundation. This is Korres Ginger & Vitamins Foundation, which I actually don’t like very much at all (it smells like old milk), but it was too expensive to justify throwing out, so it’ll do in a pinch.

3. Concealer. This Redpoint concealer palette came in a BeautyFix shipment a while back (before I got tired of BeautyFix’s technical glitches, ineffective customer service and mind-numbing repetition and switched to the vastly superior Birchbox). It’s not my top choice concealer and I won’t repurchase when it’s gone, but like the Korres foundation, it’ll do in a pinch, and it works well for this touch-up kit because it has several colors of concealer together in one compact.

4. Palladio Rice Paper Blotting Tissues. I use one of these in the afternoon to eliminate oil and shine.

5. Garnier Skin Renew Anti-Dark Circle Eye Roller. This is a new one for me; I picked one up a few weeks ago to see if I would like it in place of my more expensive old standby, Benefit Ooh La Lift. I have very pale skin and I always seem to have dark circles, even if I’m getting enough sleep. I haven’t been using this long enough to know if it actually makes a long-term difference, but I like the way it looks and feels, and I think it will be a good mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

6. Fragrance. Because you never know when you’re going to realize you smell. I included a coffret of Prada Infusion d’Iris and a couple of L’Occitane samples.

7. Clear nail polish — a must for triaging stocking runs and chipping nails. This is a teeny tiny bottle of OPI RapiDry Top Coat that came with a mini sampler set.

Touch-Up Color

8. Mascara. This is a sample-size Laura Mercier mascara that came in the Sephora V.I.B. sample hatbox. I always hold on to my samples to use for travel and touch-up kits.

9. Lip product. I like products that provide moisture and color so I don’t have to pack a lip balm and a lipstick. My current favorite is Maybelline Shine Sensational Pop Sticks (this is Raspberry Ice; I also have one in Fruit Punch) because they’re moisturizing, provide a nice wash of color, and smell great.

10. Benefit High Beam. Best highlighter in the whole world. I have a few of these tiny-sized ones that have come in various kits and samplers; perfect for a little bag like this one.

11. Eyeliner. This double-ended one from Ulta has black on one side and brown on the other. When I’m doing my makeup for real at home, I generally use gel or powder eyeliner, but for this bag I like the portability of a pencil.

12. Eye shadow. I bought this little baked palette at Sally Beauty a couple of Christmases ago, but I see it everywhere. (In fact, you can have it printed with your own brand and shipped from China!) This will come in handy if I end up going straight from work to an evening event and want to add some color to my look.

If I add anything else to this bag, it will probably be a Benetint Pocket Pal, a blush, and a powder compact. I use Benefit Dandelion, and the box is just too square to fit in this bag, so I’m on the lookout for a more compact compact (so to speak) to tuck in here. I might also pick up another set of Goody Spin Pins, which I love for putting my hair into an easy, polished-looking chignon. I’ll also bring a couple of moisturizers to keep in my desk to get me through the dry Alaska winter; my favorites are the Body Shop’s body butters (I have a couple of travel sized containers sitting around that will fit nicely in a desk drawer) and my beloved Bliss High Intensity Hand Cream.

Now all I need is a kit to keep me from spilling coffee on myself and I’ll be all set...

Tossed and found

2011-08-07T21:12:00.002-08:00

It was a big organizing weekend around my house. My husband bought our condo when he was 200% single with no plans to get into a serious relationship, so while there are some really great things about it, it happens to be small and short on existing storage solutions. A lot of my stuff was still in boxes in the garage until Saturday, when I spent five hours going through and resorting things into non-mouse-chewed boxes to store neatly in all the new utility shelves lining the walls. Post-garage, I followed through on my plan to reorganize my bedroom vanity. And Sunday I whiled away the afternoon culling the bins, baskets and drawers in our bathroom, tossing out expired medications and unused beauty products (last summer's leftover self-tanners, the dregs of the skincare line I fell out of love with, an eye cream that made me weep hot, stinging tears every night).

Along the way I came across a few beloved beauty products I'd completely forgotten I owned (yay!) and decided to throw out a few things that weren't working for me. Here are the tossed and the found:

Tossed

1. Nars Velvet Matte Lip Pencil in Roman Holiday. Came in a Sephora lip sampler a couple of years ago. Turns out matte pale pink with blue undertones is totally not my look.

2. Cargo Plant Love lipstick in Muir Woods. From the same Sephora sampler. Sort of a frosty mauve, and I just can't get on board with frosted lipstick. Does that look good on anyone in this decade?

3. Palladio Herbal Lip Slix in PLC03, Go Naked. Another pale pink. It just looks unnatural on me. I have a couple of these pencils in other colors, though, and I like them a lot. Lip gloss in a pencil. Weird but kind of great.

4. Ulta Extreme Wear All Day Lip Color in 210. I actually love the color of this one, but I hate the way it wears. It's one of those where you apply the color and then seal it in with a clear gloss, but the color layer kind of balls up and peels away from the inner lip. Looks great at first and then gets gross.

Found

1. Sally Hansen Insta-Dri nail color in Lightening. I love the brush Sally Hansen uses for Insta-Dri and Complete Salon Manicure polishes. It makes it so easy to get around the base of my nail.

2. A good-sized Sephora pocket mirror big enough to see my whole face. I believe this came with a gift card.

3. A Clinique bag that I LOVE from a gift with purchase like five or six years ago. It's long enough to hold any brush. Seriously. ANY brush.

4. Bliss Snow Wonder High Intensity Hand Cream. Still sealed! I bought a ton of these the year they came out, and then they sold out and I've never seen them since. I thought I was down to my last tube a couple of years ago, and I literally cut the end off and resealed it with Scotch tape until I had squeezed out every last drop. Best smelling, most moisturizing hand cream ever. I like other High Intensity Hand Creams, too, but nothing tops the scent of Snow Wonder.

5. A pair of Tweezerman tweezers that I didn't even know I had.

6. Missoni eau de parfum. I was obsessed with this scent a few years ago but I was still in grad school and didn't have a lot of money to burn. I ended up buying this tiny bottle (I think it's a quarter of an ounce) on eBay. I smelled it when I found it and at first I couldn't recall what I liked so much about it, but since then I've been catching whiffs of it around the house, and now I remember: It's intoxicating.

7. Orly nail lacquer in Dazzle. I'm actually not super excited about this one — I've got plenty of other silver polishes — but surprise nail polish is surprise nail polish. Even if the cap has been chewed on by mice. (Seriously. We had sort of an infestation last winter. It was gross.)

8. Apparently I skipped 8. I guess I can't count on the weekends. So I'll just mention that I also found a very old tube of Benefit Ooh La Lift and a frosty Clinique lip color (Colour Surge Bare Brilliance lipstick in 02, Bronze Star) that had to be thrown out; the Ooh La Lift was old and grainy, and the lipstick was frosty and bronze. Meh.

9. Clinique High Impact Eye Shadow in Sugar Sugar. Best shimmering white shadow EVER.

10. OPI nail color in I Get A Kick Out Of Gold! The bad news: This is the old formula, with toluene and god knows what other horrible toxic chemicals. The good news: This is my holy grail gold shadow, and it was from a holiday Rockettes collection several years ago, and I hadn't seen it in two years and was resigned to having left it somewhere or accidentally thrown it out and never seeing it again. I couldn't wait to see if I still love it as much as I used to:

And I totally do. Love! No brush strokes, no visible nail line, two easy coats. I love it. Although I couldn't resist slapping on a coat of OPI Turquoise Shatter over the top:

Yeah, that's good, too.

11. Benefit Eye Bright. I like this brightening pencil, but wasn't convinced I needed a replacement badly enough to shell out 20 bucks for it. Problem solved!

12. Minted Rosebud Salve. Also still sealed! Single greatest lip balm ever. I actually have quite a few of these, but you can never have too many.

Lesson: It pays to clean house. That's well over $100 worth of beauty favorites I unearthed in the course of cleaning out my garage and bathroom. Wonder what I'll dig up when I organize the bedroom closet...

In a rut

2011-08-05T09:56:00.003-08:00

It's rainy August pre-fall here in Southcentral Alaska -- that's right, our summer starts to melt into autumn while the rest of the world is still lounging by the pool. Oh, we'll probably get some warm, sunny weather again, but right now it feels like we've begun the slow descent into winter.

It dawned on me as I drove to work this morning in the gray drizzle that my makeup lately has been as bleak as the sky outside. I've been going back to the same reliable natural smokey eye day after day, and I didn't realize it until today. I came up with some hypotheses about why I've been in such a rut:

The weather, obviously. Blah.
Convenience. The Too Faced Romantic Eye palette was a lifesaver during my wedding week and on the honeymoon, but it's way too easy to reach for it every morning now and slap on that same easy eye look, especially since...
...I never really finished unpacking from the honeymoon, and stuff is sort of spread out all over the house. Sometime before the wedding I moved the chair from my vanity to the living room and let stuff pile up on my makeup table. And that one palette is just so handy, right there on the bathroom sink! "Use me!" it says. "You know what you're getting! I'm so easy!"
I left my journalism job in late spring and have been spending the last few months doing some legal writing projects, which means I work in an upscale law office and actually have to put some thought into my entire outfit. When I was just going to the newsroom every day, I could throw on jeans and whatever sweater and then put a lot of energy and creativity into my makeup. Now it takes me three times as long to figure out an outfit in the morning, which leaves less time and energy to put into my face.

Apparently my environment affects my appearance more than I knew! This weekend I'm going to have to rectify some of these circumstances, beginning with getting unpacked and reorganized. I'm glad I made this realization on a Friday -- when I have to turn over a new leaf, I always like to do it starting fresh in a new week. It just seems tidier that way.

UPDATE:

This might help...

I placed the order and the second the confirmation e-mail dropped into my inbox, the sun came out. I KID YOU NOT. It's a pre-fall beauty miracle!

Bridal eye buy

2011-08-02T11:44:00.001-08:00

I got married last month, which is the primary reason there hasn't been a post to Below Freezing Beauty in... oh... six months? It turns out that when you're planning a wedding, you don't have as much time for your fun makeup blog as you might like. Mostly because you have to spend a lot of time making invitations and planning decorations and tracking down RSVPs.

You also get a lot of presents! Whee! A lot of them are china and blenders, but some people get you things just because, and one of the "just because" gifts I received about a week before the wedding was the Too Faced Romantic Eye palette. And let me tell you: This baby saved my life. Or at least made my life significantly easier in the hectic days before my wedding. We're talking about a week during which all of my relatives, and all of my husband's relatives, descended into our parents' lives, which made our parents strung out, which made us a little stressed out; we discovered things like, oh, our coordinators had let us seat our guests 10 to a table at five-foot rounds, which is way too crowded, and we had to re-seat everyone (all 175 of them) three days before the wedding; and we still had a half-dozen DIY projects to finish. Oh, and we were supposed to be relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Too Faced Romantic Eye palette

In the middle of all the craziness, the fact that I could get up in the morning and not have to think about my eye makeup because this palette laid it all out for me was worth more than the price tag on the Romantic Eye palette ($36, in case you're wondering) would have been even if I'd had to pay for it myself. And I mean I literally did not have to think about it at all. Usually I wouldn't pay too much attention to the little instructional cards that came with this palette, but believe me when I tell you that during the week before my wedding, I could not accomplish basic tasks like spelling my own name. (Seriously. I spelled my name wrong on our marriage commissioner application.) So every morning I'd get out this palette and one Stila eye shadow brush (this one) and follow my little instructional card. Perfect shadow every day, and I didn't even have to worry about spelling my name. After the wedding, I tossed this in my bag with a couple of other palettes to take on the honeymoon... and this was still the only one I used. For two weeks. (Although I will say I haven't done much with the bottom row... I have cool, pink-toned skin, so I stuck to the top six. Kiss the Bride and I Do might be my two new favorite neutrals.)

Too Faced Romantic Eye Palette
Bottom Line: The single most useful bridal shower gift I received. Hands down.
Price: $$$
Tip: Throw it in your suitcase with a couple of good shadow brushes and a bottle of Liquif-Eye, and you've got all the eye color you need for your honeymoon.

Lush redeems itself

2011-02-02T20:46:00.000-09:00

Oh, Lush. All is forgiven.

I placed an order during Lush’s final post-holiday sale. The gift sets might be overpriced before the holidays, but at half off, they’re totally worth it to me. I ordered two Christmas Star boxes and two Christmas Crackers. They arrived today. I opened the box and pulled out a typed note, at the sight of which my heart sank. I assumed my Christmas Stars (and with them the wonderful Mrs. Whippy bath bomb) had been sold out and replaced with something else. But instead, I read this:

Hi lovely LUSHie,
Thank you for your recent order and for choosing LUSH! Due to a small inventory issue, we do not have any stock of the Christmas Star with English labels and inserts. We do however have the exact same product (Christmas Star) with French labels and inserts. To be certain that you still receive the product you purchased, we have replaced the English Christmas Star in your order with a French version. To apologize for this oversight, we have included a complementary Christmas Star (with French labels and inserts) in your package. We hope this resolution seems reasonable to you!

Um, I should say so. Two Christmas Stars plus two sorry-bout-the-French bonus gifts equals...

Yeah. FOUR Christmas Stars. And they’re red.

Lush, you have won me back.

Next steps in hair removal

2011-01-15T08:00:00.000-09:00

I stopped by Sally Beauty last night to see if there were any great post-holiday markdowns. (Eh. One China Glaze gift set, but I already had one of the colors and didn’t care about the other.) No luck there, but then I stumbled onto my next big project:

I’ve been trying home waxing workarounds but hadn’t made the leap to actual waxing, partly because I didn’t want to spend the money just to learn I’m a big hair removal sissy, and partly because I just didn’t want to spend the money. But 30 bucks for the whole deal was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I went for it. Of course, I’ve just done my eyebrows and shaved my legs, so I can’t try it out just yet. But I’m looking forward to navigating past entry-level hair removal.

(Of course the cashier at Sally messed up and charged me for everything individually PLUS the kit, which I worked out on my way back to the car, and then I had to go back and get it all sorted out. Is it just my Sally at which ringing up takes FOREVER if you have any sale items because the employees are never familiar with the sales and always get confused by the sale flyer, or does that happen at all of them?)

Review: Ardell Brow Shapers Cold Wax Strips

2011-01-14T20:35:00.001-09:00

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I just last year graduated from plucking my eyebrows to sugaring. I used SecretLifeofaBioNerd’s DIY hair removal tutorial to work through my sissy baby terror, and that served me well for a while: It was cheap, it was low-risk, and I could do it in the privacy of my own home. (There are some really inappropriate remarks I could make here, but I won’t.) But there are some drawbacks to that method, too, primarily that it’s hard to get the mixture to exactly the right consistency and temperature. If you cook it too long, it hardens up beyond usability; if you don’t cook it long enough, it doesn’t stick to your hair. And even if you get it to the right consistency, the timing issues continue; you have to let it cool long enough that it doesn’t burn the bejezus out of your eye but use it before it’s too cold to be effective. I suppose I could bring a candy thermometer into the mix, but at that point we’re crossing the line into complicated.

Ardell Brow Shapers Cold Wax Strips

Still, a home waxing setup seemed like an unnecessary expense. So when I spotted Ardell Brow Shapers Cold Wax Strips at Fred Meyer, I figured they were worth a try. The plastic strips come pre-coated with adhesive and pre-cut into a curve, and the package was super cheap. Seriously -- like, three dollars cheap.

The package comes with 21 “shaping strips,” which are essentially clear stickers, each of which has a vaguely eyebrow-shaped curve cut through the middle so you have a sticker for the top of your brow and a sticker for the bottom. The process is pretty intuitive: Peel. Stick. Pull. The adhesive stops shortly before the edge of each strip so it’s easy to lift away from your skin. Pretty idiot-proof (which is good for me.)

The adhesive was effective and the right amount of hair came out, so in that regard, the Ardell Brow Shapers worked really well. The problem, though, is that the cuts are symmetrical and identical -- so if they’re not the right shape for your brow (which was the case for me), you’re going to have to do some cutting. I ended up cutting some strips in half, but then I had a new problem, which was that the halves had to be positioned in such a way that in order to pull the strips off in the direction of hair growth, I had to pull from the new edge I’d cut, which meant no little uncoated tab -- I had to peel up a little corner of the adhesive surface and then rip. Which is how I ended up ripping off a little bit of skin, which was both gross and painful. (Incidentally, the package shows the model pulling the strip off in the wrong direction. You’re supposed to pull in the direction the hair grows to prevent breakage and ingrown hairs.)

Ultimately, I’m glad to have these on hand in case I need to do an emergency touch-up. Occasionally -- very occasionally -- my job calls for me to make TV appearances, and usually when that happens I’ll be lucky to get a couple of hours’ warning. That’s not enough time to heat up wax or cook sugar -- and of course, usually it also happens on days when my personal grooming has been uncharacteristically neglected. I can see myself using these again for last-minute brow touchups, although probably not for routine brow maintenance.

Ardell Brow Shapers Cold Wax Strips
Bottom Line: Too generically shaped for routine use, but handy for emergency brow touchups.
Price: $

Tip: You’re probably going to have to customize these a bit; make sure you cut in a way that leaves you a non-adhesive edge to pull from.

New year’s resolutions

2011-01-06T20:06:00.000-09:00

I haven’t made new year’s resolutions in a long time (why bother? They never get kept, and then I just feel like a failure), but I thought since I’m doing this blog thing and I’m about to get married and be a real live grown-up, this might be a good year to set some beauty goals. So here they are:

Learn to use false lashes. I’ve tried over and over again and I can’t quite seem to get it right, but it’s time to get it together. If I can wax my own eyebrows, I can glue hair on my eyes.
Find a foundation I actually like. I’ve tried a half-dozen over the past year or so and I haven’t really liked any of them. I’d really like to just pick a horse already.
Learn to cut the crease. I mean, let’s be honest. I’m 32 years old and I don’t do much clubbing. Or socializing that doesn’t involve wine bars or board games. So there aren’t a lot of places I can wear extreme eye makeup. So this one’s really just for fun.
Get my skin under control. It’s an ongoing battle -- my karmic reward for having great skin in high school, I guess. I think I’ve got the product and routine components down; now it’s just about nutrition and hydration.
Speaking of eyebrows -- keep ’em groomed. Seriously, I’m like Sasquatch right now.

Five is enough, right? I mean, let’s not go crazy here.

How the Sephora Skincare Challenge saved Christmas

2010-12-29T16:21:00.000-09:00

We went to a party the night before Christmas Eve and I had one of those nights when you forget you're old and drink like you're still 22. Needless to say, I was sorry the next day. Actually, I got off lucky, because if I'd had any more to drink I probably would have gotten a migraine, and then my whole day would have been shot; instead, I was just headachy and hung over enough on Christmas Eve morning to worry that I'd spend the day on the couch. And I had things to do. Lesson: When you've started with champagne and moved on to good red wine, there is absolutely no reason to reach for an Alaskan Amber at the end of the evening. You'll just end up crossing a line you didn't even need to approach.

Another event I hadn't anticipated: I didn't plan to participate in the Sephora Skincare Challenge, but my fancy complicated (high maintenance) skin demands fancy complicated products, so I was halfway to my Skincare Challenge reward before I'd even realized what the program was. In short: Buy four qualifying skincare products at Sephora before the end of the year and receive a special gift (some small selection of items I hadn't really looked at because, again, I was participating completely by accident). I actually bought my fourth product on my trip to Las Vegas, but I wasn't interested in the only gift they had available in the store (some kind of mini eye kit? I don't remember. It wasn't exciting) so I took the certificate to redeem online later. Which I did, when I placed a mid-December birthday order for my sister-in-law. There were a couple of choices, but they looked kind of sample-sized and uninteresting -- until I read the fine print and realized the Philosophy shower gel option was actually a full-sized 16 oz. bottle. I hadn't smelled the scent, but free Philosophy is free Philosophy, you know? So this arrived:

and I gave it the sniff test (which it passed), tossed it in the shower and forgot about it.

Until the morning of Christmas Eve, when I stumbled into the shower in the hope that hot water would snap me out of my post-drink funk and reached for the closest bottle, which turned out to be that free Philosophy Bubbly.

And I kid you not: It turned my whole day around. I don't even know what it's supposed to smell like (Sephora describes it as "champagne inspired"), but it's got kind of a light, fruity scent (not girly pink fruity, but clean fresh fruity) that cut through my gunky feeling and cleared my head. Seriously, it was like rays of sunshine beamed down into my shower and cleared away the hangover fog. Forget that skincare line; they should have called this product the Miracle Worker.

In short: Endorse, endorse, endorse. I am a Bubbly convert. And will be as long as I keep drinking the thing they named it after.

Philosophy Bubbly Shampoo, Shower Gel & Bubble Bath
Bottom Line: Cures the common (mild) hangover and smells like sunshine.
Price: $$
Tip: Also good for clearing the head on those early mornings after you've been up too late watching old episodes of "Project Runway" and playing Angry Birds.

Come along as I cancel a BeautyFix order

2010-12-15T06:15:00.006-09:00

I joined BeautyFix a little over a year ago when Daily Candy offered a half-off special. For $25, I was willing to give it a try. If you're not familiar with BeautyFix, here's the short version: Four times a year, you pay $50 to receive a makeup bag containing eight sample-to-full-size products to try. I thought the first kit was great, so I decided to stick with it.

It has not always been easy.

But more on that later. First, this: When my new time-to-pick-your-products e-mail arrived this week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to walk through it so the BeautyFix-curious could get a look inside the process before committing to the kit. Four times a year, BeautyFix members get an e-mail like this:

This is a change from the original BeautyFix -- it used to be you just paid them and got what you got. Now you go to the BeautyFix website and log in to your account, where you are asked to update your "beauty profile":

If you ask me, this is one of the program's flaws. It's great that it's easy to update your profile when you choose, but is there really any need to ask users to go through this process every single time they order? The profile is several pages long, and having to go through it four times a year seems unnecessary.

Next you get to pick your products. Here's the complete list of choices for the most recent kit:

So that's it -- you pick your products, click "Ship My Kit," and wait for your goodies to arrive. At least, that should be it -- but in the almost year-and-a-half I've been buying BeautyFix, I've encountered some hiccups and developed some concerns:

1. Technical issues. I've had an entire BeautyFix account just disappear. I joined last September. I got a kit right away, and then another one soon after... and then nothing. I didn't get e-mails. I couldn't log in to the website. I called customer service four or five times, and each time the people I spoke with were relatively pleasant and utterly ineffective. They kept telling me I needed to reset my password (doesn't work when the website doesn't recognize your account), and then it was that the website was under construction, and then they finally admitted that they just couldn't figure out why I couldn't access the website and wasn't receiving kits or correspondence, and they told me the only solution was to start a new account with a new e-mail address. It had to be a new e-mail address? I asked. Yes. So I set one up with my work address. Not impressed, but willing to give it another try.

2. Customer service is useless. Polite, yes, but not really effective at all. They don't understand how the website works. I have never gotten a useful answer to a question by calling customer service.

3. There tends to be a lot of repetition in the product selection. Looking over the selection of products above, I've already received more than two dozen of them in previous kits -- some of them three times. If you Google BeautyFix, Google offers you "BeautyFix scam" as a related search. I don't think it's a scam (although I do think it's incredibly poorly run), but it's clear there are companies with which BeautyFix has partnerships, along with its sister outlet, DermStore.com. The first two kits I received were exciting because I was trying products I'd never heard of, but the excitement wore off when I started to receive product after product from the same brands. The point is to try new things, not get sold on the same stuff over and over.

Ttoday, a collision of all three of these issues led me to cancel a BeautyFix order for the first time. I logged in and glanced over the list. I was disappointed, although not surprised, to see lots and lots of familiar selections. I'd been less than thrilled with my last kit, but I thought I'd give it one more chance. So I spent about 15 minutes deciding what I wanted (yes, at work...), looked at my selections all lined up on the top of the page, and clicked "Ship My Kit."

And then I saw a message confirming that my order for one product and one product only -- the makeup bag that's included in every order -- had been submitted.

I quickly clicked around the website trying to see my order, but there was no way to go back and review what I'd selected. I logged out and then back in. No luck. Finally I called customer service and gave the polite woman on the other end of the line my order number. She confirmed that I had, in fact, just placed a $49.99 order for a made-in-China makeup bag and no products at all. There was no way to modify the order, but she could cancel it and then I could resubmit it -- but there is no way to do this on the website. I would have to place my order over the phone. Did I remember the products I'd selected? No, of course I did not -- the website was supposed to do that for me. The only solution she could offer (bless her -- the website isn't her fault) was to read me the complete list of products over the phone and have me select them with her.

At this point I decided to cut my losses. I didn't have a half hour to spend on the phone dealing with this (again, at work -- my own fault), and I'd already been less than enthusiastic about placing the order at all, so I told her to just cancel it. (On a positive note, BeautyFix does allow you to to skip or cancel a shipment without penalty.) The website's shortcomings were probably just the universe telling me to hold on to that $50 for now.

I don't want to leave you thinking my experience has been all negative, because it certainly hasn't. I've discovered some products that I love and might not have tried otherwise -- like 3Lab's Perfect Cleansing Foam, which is wonderful, and Skindinavia finishing spray, which I use every single day. To me, though, the website glitches and ineffective customer service would only be worth putting up with if I were getting to discover exciting new things every time I get a package -- and that just isn't happening anymore. When my next BeautyFix order reminder comes along, I'll take a look at the selection -- but unless I see a whole bunch of new additions, it may be time for us to part ways.

BeautyFix
Bottom Line: Great concept, but glitchy and not always satisfying.
Price: $$$
Tip: Worth a try if you can get a discount code -- and I've seen a lot of them bouncing around out there. Do some Googling before you buy.

Lush responds: Yes, we charge extra for gift sets

2010-12-14T13:25:00.001-09:00

The other day I broke down the actual costs of a few Lush holiday gift sets. I mentioned I'd written to Lush to see how they explain the added expense. Here's the response I received today:

Thank you for writing to us. I apologize for your disappointment with the pricing of our wrapped gifts. We put a lot of work into designing and sourcing our gift wrapping materials- for example, we use some handmade, embossed papers for some of our gift sets that we source from a cooperative in Nepal which are more costly, as well as other special boxes and hand processed ribbons that are sourced ethically, and sustainable. Also, our packing materials (the packing peanuts) are 100% biodegradable, and are made of vegetable starches so that they will dissolve in water, but is a more costly choice than Styrofoam for example. We also must account of the labour that goes into the hand wrapping of each gift set by the staff in our facilities who assemble and wrap each gift set.

We do not advertise that our gift sets are more economical than purchasing the products individually, and we feel that giving a beautiful hand-wrapped gift made with hand embossed paper, and ethical ribbons, etc, is something that many of our customers are happy to pay a bit extra for.

We also make sure to offer an option for customers who’d prefer not to purchase a gift like this, and that is that products can be selected, and then our knot-wrap furoshiki scarves can be purchased to wrap the gift in for $6.95. The scarves are made of recycled materials, and can be reused again and again, making them a great value.

I hope this information is helpful for you. Please let me know if you have any further questions and I’d be happy to help.

Kind regards,

Megan

Customer Care Representative

So there you have it. Yes, Lush is charging you extra for that gift set, and no, they don't see any reason to apprise you of that fact when you buy it. (Although they're sure that, if you realized you were being charged extra for "hand embossed paper, and ethical ribbons, etc." you'd be "happy" about it.) If you have questions for Lush, you can e-mail products@lush.com or call toll-free: (800) 733-5874.

Time to stock up on Shadow Insurance

2010-12-14T08:42:00.000-09:00

I’ve never really fallen in love with anything from Too Faced except Shadow Insurance (which I use every single day), and this sale gets it under $15, so if you haven’t tried it, now might be a good time. There don’t appear to be any exclusions on this, so if I were going to use it I might think about ordering a custom palette for my sister-in-law.

Spendy little wonder crayon

2010-12-13T08:43:00.002-09:00

Moody

Let me start by saying: $24 is an absofrackinglutely ridiculous amount of money to spend on a lip gloss. Criminal, almost. As I sit here and think about it, I actually feel horrifically guilty considering how many tubes of Blistex I could have bought and donated to the kids at Covenant House with the money I’d saved by not buying this lip tint.

That being said... I love this product. I love it. I loooooove it. I love the color (mine is Moody, a “deep berry” that looks scarily dark in the tube but goes on sheer and just pink enough to complement my pale Irish-Alaskan skin), I love the minty freshness, I love the gloss, I love that it lasts a long time and makes my lips feel all fresh and smooth and moisturized. Love love love.

I’m less wild about the delivery mechanism. I’m not quite sure why it needs to be packaged in a big fake plastic crayon. I’m all for less packaging (which is why I’ll never buy another Stila Lip Glaze even though I love the product; holy wasted plastic, Batman). I see no reason this couldn’t have come in a chic little tube like, say, Clinique’s Black Honey Almost Lipstick, which I also love love love, which also looks intimidatingly dark in the tube but goes on beautifully sheer and perfect, and which has the added benefit of being $10 less expensive than the Tarte lip tint. (Black Honey does lack Tarte’s added bonus of minty freshness, however, and it only comes in the one color, although Clinique claims Black Honey looks good on absolutely everyone.) Tarte has a respectable green initiative (including a customer recycling incentive program), so maybe they’ll at least consider facilitating recycling of the LipSurgence packaging. I e-mailed customer service to see if it’s in the works — if they respond, I’ll post an update.

UPDATE, 12/17/10: I got an e-mail from Jessica at Tarte this afternoon. She says "The LipSurgence components are plastic and can be recycled as well," although she didn't answer my question about whether they will be added to the recycling incentive program... so it sounds like they're recyclable, but Tarte isn't recycling them for you. Oh well.

Tarte LipSurgence natural lip tint
Bottom line: Pricey and overpackaged, but minty, glossy and beautiful.
Price: $$
Tip: If you want to save 10 bucks and don’t mind sacrificing mintiness and color selection, try Clinique’s Black Honey Almost Lipstick.

Buyer beware: Lush gift sets will cost you extra

2010-12-12T10:01:00.001-09:00

’Tis the season for fun holiday gift sets that let you try a little bit of everything for a great price, right? Wrong — if you’re talking about Lush gift sets, that is.

It pains me to say this, because I really do adore Lush — great products, great philosophy — but at least some of their packaged gifts are not worth the price you pay. Literally. Let’s do the math:

The Chillin’ With My Gnomies gift set includes a 3.3 oz. Whoosh Shower Jelly and a 3.5 oz. Snow Globe Soap and costs $14.95. But if you bought the items separately, you’d only pay $11.90, and you’d actually get 0.2 oz. more shower jelly.

You could pay $28.95 for the Gingerbread House Tin, which comes with a 3.5 oz. Gingerbread House Bubble Bar, a 3.5 oz. Candy Cane Bubble Bar, a 3.1 oz. Cinders Bath Bomb, and a 3.1 oz. L’il Lush Pud Bath Bomb — or you could pay $6.25 and $5.95 for the bubble bar and $3.95 each for the bath bombs, for a total of $20.10, and use the $8.85 you saved to buy a cuter container. Or two more bath bombs.

What got me started adding up the Lush gift sets? My own folly. On my swing through Lush in Las Vegas last week, I picked up a couple of the cute boxed gifts thinking they would be a good way to try some new scents. I did the math in my head quickly and figured out I was paying about $5 per product in one set and a little less than $6 per product in the other, which seemed more or less right — until I got home, started poking around the website, and found out most of the products I’d bought in those gift sets actually retail for $3.95. I’d paid $1.60 per ounce for products that would have averaged $1.22 per ounce if I’d bought them individually. I was particularly offended when I realized that, in buying the Christmas Star gift set, I’d overpaid for my products by about $10, in return for which I got a cute but cheap star-shaped cardboard box and a frustrated headache.

There is a 25% off coupon inside each of the boxes I purchased, and I imagine some people would say that makes them worth the extra money. But I have a couple of responses to that:

The discount coupons are extremely limited. This isn’t a blanket 25% off your next purchase. You only get to use them on three products, and they must be skincare products (“cleansers, hand and body lotions, toners, shaving cream, serums, color supplements, fresh face masks and moisturizers”). Having overpaid by $10 for the Christmas Star gift set, my total for those three skincare products would have to be $40 before my 25% discount would start to pay for itself. I shop at Lush for hair care and bath products, so these two coupons likely won’t get used.
Is it really a discount if you have to pay for it? If the discount is part of what you’re paying for, isn’t Lush just charging you now to give them more money later? That’s not a discount — it’s a down payment.

I sent an e-mail off to Lush asking for an explanation of the gift set overpricing. I don’t need to save gazillions of dollars on gift sets, and they’re certainly not billing them as value sets or special bargains — but I’m offended that I paid so much extra for no apparent reason. If I get an answer, I’ll post it. In the meantime, my recommendation is to do your homework before you buy a Lush gift set — you could save yourself some real money by buying individual products and wrapping them up yourself.

Holiday gifts for him

2010-12-11T09:45:00.000-09:00

Oh, the men and the beauty products. They won’t admit they want or need them, but if only they realized how much better their lives could be with them. Why, why, why is it manly to wash one’s face with, say, Irish Spring, but not with an actual face wash? Is it because they don’t care about getting wrinkles since wrinkles just make them look “worldly” and “seasoned” while ours make us look old?

The good news is the holidays are a great chance to sneak in some make-me-pretty presents (or, since we’re trying to operate with some finesse here, make-me-manly presents) among the snow tires and chainsaws and other burly gifts. I did some manly beauty shopping while we were in Las Vegas last weekend. Here are my picks for the menfolk in my life:

Anthony Logistics for Men A Clean Start Kit ($40 at Sephora)

Sephora calls this kit “Everything a man needs to start the day fresh and well groomed.” I’m flying blind here, as my fiancé hasn’t tried anything from Anthony, but considering this is a gift for a man who chooses to purchase $1 Suave shampoo and the Costco superpack of stinky green soap, I don’t think we can go too wrong. I wavered back and forth between this and the $35 Grab + Go Portables, but settled on A Clean Start mostly because the products came in larger sizes. This kit includes a 4 oz. Glycolic Facial Cleanser, 2 oz facial scrub, 2 oz. shave cream, 2.5 oz. aftershave balm and a lip balm. (The Grab + Go kit also didn’t come with a lip balm.) I’ll be interested to see what he thinks of the kit. Last year I got him a Jack Black gift set (facial scrub, Beard Lube, Hand Healer and moisturizer) that I don’t think he’s gotten much use out of, but I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t love the products, because he’s too lazy to wash his face before he goes to bed, or because he just throws all his bathroom stuff in a basket on the counter and forgets about it. This year I’m going to insist he try everything for at least a week. I think that’s all it will take to get him on board.

Glögg shower gel ($8.95-$24.95 at Lush)

This was a total impulse buy made possible by a post-dinner, beef-and-beer-induced haze and some good saleswomanship. We’d just finished dinner at Burger Bar, which is right across the way from a Lush, which, for me, was almost as big a draw as all-natural beef and jalapeño bacon (although those were good too). I’d gotten attached to one of those super-eager Lush girls who just wants you to try everything and smell this and feel that and check out this other thing and isn’t this a great deal? The sneaky friendly bitch sold me on everything she touched (but, to her credit, threw in a lot of free samples at the end). This was something I would have walked right by if she hadn’t thrust the tester under my nose. I knew the fiancé would love the spicy smell — he’s way into cinnamon — and he’s already copped to sneaking my fruity Philosophy shower gels, so he can’t feign total disinterest. I think this will be the surprise hit of the stocking.

L’Occitane Shea Embrace Set ($65 at L’Occitane)

We went into L’Occitane to buy something for my future mother-in-law but also ended up walking out with this boxed gift for my dad. Dad’s a retired firefighter/paramedic in his early 60s. He just had hip replacement surgery and I’m pretty sure I inherited my skin from him: pale, Irish and dry, dry, dry (except on the face. Hello, combination). Having dry skin in Alaska in the winter means moisturization is a must, and Dad is man enough to admit he’s happier when his skin is taken care of. (He’s also been known to enjoy a manicure.) This set includes a 2.5 oz. shea butter hand cream, a 2.5 oz. shea butter foot cream, a 7 oz. shea butter Ultra Rich Body Cream, a 3.5 oz. shea butter milk soap, and a 0.8 oz. Pure Shea Butter Mini Tin. Shea butter is crazy moisturizing and doesn’t have a strong or girly smell (it just kind of smells creamy), so it’s a good choice for a guy who doesn’t want to smell like a florist’s shop. Plus it does not need to be wrapped. Which is always a plus.

Prada Infusion d’Homme and Infusion d’Iris Duo ($10 at Sephora)

OK, fine, I’ll admit this one is really a gift for me. I was waiting on line at Sephora and you know how they put all those little bins of cute little gifts and travel size items along the checkout line? They get me every single time. Every single time! This is why it’s almost better there’s no Sephora store in Alaska. The website never lures me into walking out with something ridiculous I never intended to purchase but grabbed because it was cute! and little! and there! And this time it was this Prada duo, which includes a cute little bottle each of the Infusion d’Iris eau de parfum (for me) and the Infusion d’Homme eau de toilette (for him). According to Sephora, “Infusion d’Homme works closely with the body to create a subtle yet distinctive scent. This sensuously crafted essence blends intoxicating citrus and woody notes for an understated, but lasting, impression.” My take: It smells clean, not cologne-y. Will he wear it? I have no idea. I will, however, insist that he try. While living in New York in my 20s I once got a lesson from a cologne salesman at Bloomingdale’s in how to get my boyfriend to wear fragrance. The store was dead (why was I at Bloomingdale’s in the middle of the afternoon on a workday? I have no idea) and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t have a boyfriend, so I stood there and listened to his spiel. It’s been six or seven years, but I intend to put his advice to the test after Christmas. We’ll see how it goes. I figured this one was a win-win for me, though; it was only ten bucks, and either way, I end up with perfume.

Holiday deals and discounts for Dec. 10-13, 2010

2010-12-11T08:42:00.001-09:00

Here’s what’s cooking (and discounting) today:

ULTA: Free shipping on orders over $25 through Dec. 17. Use coupon code 502213.
PHILOSOPHY: Friends and family sale — 30% off all orders through Dec. 13. Use promo code holidaysparkle.
TARTE: Friends and family sale — 40% off sitewide through Dec. 13. Use code FFDEC.
NYX: Free ground shipping for all purchases over $60 through Dec. 31. (Doesn’t specify whether that includes Alaska, but since they specified ground shipping, my guess is no.)
COASTAL SCENTS: 20% off sitewide through Dec. 13.
LUSH: Through Dec. 13, spend $100, get free 2-day shipping (U.S. and Canada) and a $10 e-gift card good between Feb. 1 and May 30, 2011. Use code FREESHIPR3.

And if you’re looking for gifts for the men in your life, check out my finds for my fiancé and my dad.

Holiday deals and discounts for Dec. 9, 2010

2010-12-09T10:58:00.001-09:00

I'm back from Vegas with some finds to share, but first: It's sale season! Here are a few of the offers that dropped into my inbox this morning:

ULTA: $10 off any $50 purchase (today, Dec. 9, only!). Use coupon code 50710 OR Free shipping on orders over $25 through Dec. 17. Use coupon code 502213.
STILA: Free Lip Enamel Luxe gloss trio when you spend $20 or more (Dec. 9 only). Use code 9ENAMEL.
PHILOSOPHY: Friends and family sale! 30% off all orders through Dec. 13. Use promo code holidaysparkle.
TARTE: Friends and family sale! 40% off sitewide through Dec. 13. Use code FFDEC.

Sephoric Serendipity

2010-12-03T12:58:00.002-09:00

Well, well, well. Look what arrived in the mail today:

And we just happen to be headed to Las Vegas tonight. Isn't that terribly convenient? Sephora at the Venetian, here I come...

Review: Maybelline Volum' Express The Falsies mascara

2010-11-17T07:00:00.028-09:00

Maybelline Volum' Express The Falsies

I haven’t loved a Maybelline product since I was nine years old and I got a frosty pink lipstick as a party favor at the birthday party of a friend whose mother was out of town and whose father didn’t realize lipstick doesn’t come out in the wash.

Then I made a desperate stop at Target the day of my brother’s wedding. (The same fateful trip to Target during which I let the spectre of Collier Strong sucker me into buying that silly L’Oréal roller foundation.) I’d been given a heads up by the officiant that I’d want waterproof mascara for the ceremony, so in my mad rush I grabbed the closest product on which I could make out the words “black” and “waterproof.”

And then I fell in love. I have never been able to manage false lashes. (I think that’s going to be one of my beauty new year’s resolutions.) This product doesn’t go all the way to making me look like I’m rocking actual falsies, but it comes just about as close as I think I’m going to get before I can learn to master that tube of Duo lash glue that mocks me from my vanity drawer. It lengthens, thickens, blackens, and stays on all day. (All day and into the next if I forget to take it off.)

They’re not kidding about the waterproof part, either. This mascara made it through my little brother’s wedding 100 percent intact. It stayed put through the weeping and the laughing and the dancing. Plus it’s handled the Alaska winter well -- my eyes seem to water nonstop, all day long, when it’s cold and dry (like it was all throughout December), and this stuff doesn’t go anywhere, no matter how leaky I happen to be. The downside is it’s a little hard to get off when I actually want it off, and I occasionally find myself getting a little overzealous with the eye makeup remover, which doesn’t help my eye watering problem.

Best of all: Since I started wearing this mascara, I have been accused of secretly using Latisse. If that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is.

Maybelline Volum’ Express The Falsies mascara
Bottom Line: As close as you’re going to get to false lashes without learning to use lash glue.
Price: $
Tip: Invest in a good makeup remover that doesn’t irritate your eyes. The waterproof claim is legit.

Holiday wish lust

2010-11-14T08:30:00.056-09:00

Oops. I’m sure I meant to type “wish list.” Close enough. Here are a few things I can’t quite justify buying for myself just now, but I would love to see turn up under my Christmas tree. Are you listening, Santa?

Illamasqua 4-Colour Liquid Metal Palette 02
I wanted it when I saw it on Sephora.com. I wanted it more when I saw Belle Du Jour’s swatches. I have a feeling that when I get to Las Vegas in a few weeks and hit up the Sephora in the Venetian that seeing it in person may dazzle me enough to push me past the $42.50 price tag.

Bare Escentuals bareMinerals Kaleidoscope
I’m not a big mineral makeup fan, but I do love the bareMinerals eye shadows, particularly for foiling. And I just want to eat these 20 candy-colored shadows. At $89 for the set, that works out to $4.45 per “petite” eye shadow, which isn’t bad at all.

NARS single eye shadow in Étrusque
I’m constantly on the search for the Perfect Gold Eye Shadow, and I think this one is probably it. I choke on the idea of paying $23 for a single eye shadow, but I have yet to regret a NARS purchase. Hundreds of bottles later, I have yet to find a nail polish I love quite as much as the original Zulu.

Philosophy Have a Cherry Christmas products

I’m in love with Philosophy’s new holiday scent. In fact, I may even love it more than I love Candy Cane, which is saying something, because I really love Candy Cane. It’s not the price that puts me off with Have a Cherry Christmas... it’s the fact that I can’t really justify it. I’ve already got a massive stash of Philosophy three-in-ones... including at least one nearly-full bottle of Candy Cane from last year. If my fiancé sees one more show up... well, let’s just say I’d have to find a way to sneak it in. And maybe transfer it to an old empty bottle. And that’s a little more bath and body subterfuge than I’m really comfortable with.

E.L.F. holiday gift sets, part 2: Pretty glitter, delicious parabens

2010-11-13T10:55:00.001-09:00

We’ve established that I was not terribly impressed with the first E.L.F. eye set I tried out -- the shadows seemed to be imbued with an instinct driving them to find their way to my cheeks like elephants seeking out their traditional graveyard. But I’d told myself if I could find three products I liked among my E.L.F. purchases, the experience would have been worthwhile.

E.L.F. Glitz N’ Glam Limited Edition set

The E.L.F. Get the Look: Glitz N’ Glam set seemed promising: A sparkly pink lip gloss, a duo of shimmery pink blush and steel gray eye shadow, a mascara and an iridescent glitter liquid liner. Definitely not products you’d want to wear all together (unless you’re in middle school, in which case go for it now while you’re still young enough to get away with it), but some fun little items to use here and there.

First, the duo. I couldn’t get a great photo of the blush -- no matter the lighting, I couldn’t manage to get a photo (in focus) that accurately captured the way it looks. So let me just say this: It’s pretty and pink and sparkly, and no one over the age of 12 should be wearing it on her cheeks unless the circumstances involve some sort of dance recital or cheer competition. HOWEVER. A couple of days after I’d written off the blush, just for kicks, I tried it on as an eye shadow by itself with black gel liner. So pretty! It wore well and looked really nice with my skin (which, as you’ve seen, is Alaska wintertime pale). I’ll wear it again as an eye shadow, maybe over a NYX jumbo eye pencil.

The gray shadow is unremarkable, as is the mascara.

I love, love, love the glitter liner. I’m 31, so glitter isn’t something that has a place in my everyday makeup routine, but for parties, the holidays, nights out I do like a little sparkle now and then. And I liked the way the glitter (iridescent in a clear base) added some interest to the otherwise unremarkable eye that was the result of my first E.L.F. test:

The lip gloss was actually the first item I tried out of any of the kits. I ripped into it in the Target parking lot and tried it on right there in the car. My initial reaction: It tastes like strawberry Kool-Aid powder. I was surprised by the taste (most of the lip products I use don’t taste like soft drinks), but didn’t find it unpleasant. I liked the shimmer and the color, although I did notice the pigment sort of moving around my lips as I pressed them together. I’ve since learned not to apply this gloss generously.

I tossed the gloss in my purse and I’ve been carrying it around for a week now and using it throughout the day. I was just starting to really like it when I made the mistake of reading the ingredients and learned something I wasn’t too excited about: It’s chock full of parabens. While the FDA has said it feels parabens are safe for cosmetic use “at the present time,” I’m not really comfortable putting a chemical directly on my mouth that has been identified as a possible contributor to breast cancer. When there are lots of paraben-free lip products out there, why take the risk? So the lip gloss, sadly, is getting tossed.

So far, glitter liner and blush-as-eye-shadow are the only winners, but there are two more kits to get through. Liquid liners and eye shadow quads await review.

E.L.F. holiday gift sets, part 1: Twinkles in (and under) my eyes

2010-11-10T07:00:00.003-09:00

I don’t like cheap makeup.

Let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with inexpensive makeup. I prefer higher-end products, although if I find a drugstore item that works for me, I don’t have attitude about buying and using it. But I don’t like makeup that acts cheap, regardless of how little it costs. I don’t have room in my life for product that doesn’t perform. So I’d held off on trying E.L.F. for a long, long time. The rock-bottom prices seemed like a big red flag.

E.L.F. figured out how to get at me, though: I am a sucker for holiday gift sets. Take normal product, rearrange the colors and repackage it with some foil snowflakes, toss in some kind of sparkling exclusive item, slap the “limited edition” label on it, and I’m sold.

So when I wandered into Target and stumbled upon the E.L.F. holiday display, I suddenly found myself dropping $21 on a sackful of “gift” sets. In the car on the way home I managed to convince myself that since I hadn’t spent almost that much on a replacement Clinique Black Honey Almost Lipstick the day before, I could justify the purchase if I could find three worthwhile products among the E.L.F. haul.

I started out with a trial run of the E.L.F. Essentials Eyes Get the Look: Day to Night Limited Edition kit. In this kit: Two eye shadow trios, black eyeliner pencil, black liquid eyeliner, black mascara. Oh, and two sponge applicators to stick in a drawer somewhere.

On initial examination, the eye shadows were disappointing. I swatched them quickly on my hand and very little pigment seemed to stick to my skin -- most of it blew away in a cloud of shimmering powder. So I tried again, this time starting with a layer of Too Faced Shadow Insurance, which seemed to help:

I still wasn’t terribly impressed, but I figured I’d give them a shot. I tried one look with each trio, one on each eye. First reaction: No way would either of these eyes have been possible without a generous application of Shadow Insurance.

As for color payoff and blendability, the teal/gray/white trio applied and blended in a fashion that I’d say was just OK. The gold and purple trio, though... well, you may have noticed in the photo above that, although the shadows are packed with glitter, there doesn’t appear to be very much glitter on my eye. That’s because it all ended up here:

The purple shadows, in fact, sort of separated themselves into glitter and pigment as they touched the brush (not that much pigment seems to have made it onto the eye). I tried applying them wet, too, but that just meant more glitter shedding onto my cheek. The glitter also left my eyelid feeling irritated after I removed it. The mascara performed exactly as you’d expect considering the price, as did the liquid eyeliner. I’ll admit I’m not brilliantly adept with liquid liner, but I’m fairly competent when I’m working with good product. This eyeliner was totally unforgiving, and bled like the dickens.

Still, I thought I’d give one of the sets a trial outing. So I did a look using the teal trio before going out on Saturday night. I kept it very, very simple, as I didn’t particularly trust these shadows to stay in place. The eye started out more or less satisfactory and stayed that way through dinner (forgive my badly-in-need-of-grooming eyebrows:

Maybelline The Falsies mascara; Stila Smudge Pot in Black

When we went out for drinks afterward, though, I excused myself to the ladies’ room and looked in the mirror to find two trails of gray-green sludge running down the inner corners of my eyes. Fortunately, I was wearing my glasses, so perhaps it wasn’t as noticeable to my dinner companions as it was to me. PERHAPS. By the time we got home, the teal was creasing, leaving white streaks across my eyelid.

One kit down and nothing to recommend it. Next time: Will E.L.F. redeem itself?

Conquer your brow hair removal fears

2010-11-09T07:00:00.002-09:00

I didn’t start plucking my eyebrows until my mid-20s. I love having well-groomed eyebrows, but plucking could take over my whole life (how fast do those things grow, anyway? Why don’t the hairs on top of my head grow like that?), and quite honestly, I was too much of a baby to go into a salon and get my brows waxed by a professional. Then this tutorial popped up on YouTube:

I’m a big fan of YouTube guru SecretLifeofaBioNerd. She’s adorable, she’s fun to watch, she offers a wide variety of beauty and style videos... and she taught me how to sugar my eyebrows, which has totally changed my life.

The trick to this is making sure you get the consistency of the sugar mixture just right. It takes some trial and error to figure out exactly when to take the mixture out of the microwave. Err on the side of too soon -- you can always put it back in to boil a little bit more, but if you boil it too long you end up with hard candy. Make sure you let it sit for about 10 minutes, and test it on your hand to make sure it’s cooled enough before you spread it around your eyebrow. It’s all-natural (and edible!) and there’s a good chance you’ve already got everything you need right there in your kitchen. The only thing I had to buy the first time I tried it was Popsicle sticks.

As for the pain... well, I find it’s significantly less uncomfortable than plucking, mostly because everything comes out at once. And there’s something really satisfying about seeing all those little hairs come out in one quick pull. (Maybe that’s just me.)

Don’t let ‘Project Runway’ make you buy this

2010-11-08T11:40:00.001-09:00

Like lots of people, I looked at the L’Oréal True Match Roller foundation and laughed. Really? They want us to apply makeup with a tiny little paint roller? Ridiculous. I rolled my eyes (not my foundation) and moved on.

L’Oréal Paris True Match Roller

Then that sneaky Collier Strong got to me.

Fans of “Project Runway” are familiar with Strong, consulting makeup artist for L’Oréal, due to his many appearances on the show to consult with designers on sponsored challenges and runway looks. In the course of working with a designer on this season’s Studio Secrets eye shadow challenge, Strong busted out the True Match Roller and talked about what a great way it is to apply foundation. He may have used the word “ingenious”; I don’t exactly recall. At any rate, the bug was planted. Honestly, I should have known better. As far as I can tell, all the foundation used on “Project Runway” models is applied with an airbrush, not a funky little sponge roller. I don’t for a moment think L’Oréal would have been rollering makeup onto those models’ faces if they didn’t happen to have the True Match Roller to promote.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later. It was the day of my brother’s wedding and I was out of foundation, having run out of my usual makeup and thrown away a bottle of the Revlon Photo Finish, which everyone but me seems to be in love with. I didn’t have time to get downtown after helping set up for the reception to get to Nordstrom for some expensive-but-reliable Lancôme, so I swung by Target to see what I could come up with. On the L’Oréal aisle, I paused in front of the True Match Roller. Collier Strong seemed so excited about it... it couldn’t be too terrible, could it?

The silly little roller was red flag #1. Red flag #2 should have been the fact that the True Match Roller doesn’t come in my color. In L’Oréal’s terms, I’m smack between a C2 (Natural Ivory) and a C3 (Creamy Natural). The True Match Roller comes in either C1-C2 (Alabaster/Natural Ivory) or C3. I decided to default to the lighter shade, thinking I could make up the difference with bronzer if I had to.

When it came time to roller the foundation on to my face, I was horrified to find I was painting pale, streaky stripes all over my face. C1-C2 is not the right shade, it turns out, if you’re somewhere between a C2 and a C3.

Try.Believe.Love. kit

That was the first problem, and if the shade had been a better match for my skin, it wouldn’t have been a problem. The second problem, though, was this: A roller, which is a great device to use to paint a wall, is not the perfect way to paint a face. A wall is flat and has straight edges. A face -- well, a face is anything but. In order to get good, even coverage, I found I had to press much harder than I was comfortable with, especially around the eyes and nose. And then the product still required lots and lots of blending. On the day of the wedding, I warmed my entire face with my hands to melt the makeup a little bit, then blended with my fingertips. After all that, I still ended up going over it with some mineral makeup powder I had in a drawer (the remnants of the Bare Escentuals bareMinerals Try.Believe.Love. kit I picked up at Sephora last summer; I tried, but neither believed nor loved), which defeated the whole point of buying foundation in the first place. I knew I had the mineral makeup, but I specifically didn’t want to use it -- it’s not great for photos (too reflective).

Ultimately, if the shade had been a better match, I might have been happier with the product, although if I hadn’t been using the Clarisonic I probably would have been much less happy with the application (I wouldn’t recommend it for skin with any kind of uneven texture). The fact remains that a paint roller is not a great way to apply paint to a surface that isn’t relatively flat and rigid. I think it may be possible for some people to find happiness with the True Match Roller, but if you take it for a test drive, be prepared to spend a lot of time blending.

L’Oréal True Match Roller Foundation
Bottom Line: The makeup is decent, but the applicator leaves much to be desired.
Price: $$
Tip: If there isn’t a tone that’s a near-perfect match for your skin tone, this probably isn’t the product for you.

I’m about to save you $8.95

2010-11-07T13:00:00.001-09:00

Oh, Lush, you are so wonderful. Your delicious-smelling soaps... your all-natural facials... your super-helpful retail associates... your solid conditioner with the long-lasting aroma that makes me want to make out with my own hair. You’re worth the premium price.

Most of the time.

Here’s one Lush product you don’t need to buy: Mint Julips Lip Scrub. I’m sure it’s delicious and wonderful and does all the things it’s supposed to do. It also costs $8.95 for a 0.9 oz. container and contains essentially two ingredients: sugar and oil.

Guess what you probably have in your kitchen? That’s right. Get ready to soften your lips and save some money.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own peppermint sugar lip scrub and free yourself of the desire to spend $9.94 per ounce on Lush’s version:

-- A little bit of sugar (I use Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Sugar, which we buy in a 10-pound bag at Costco. It’s vegan, halal, kosher, karmically balanced, etc., and it costs a little more than regular sugar, but you can use any old granulated sugar).
-- A few drops of peppermint oil (I buy the organic kind at my local grocery store. Look on the baking aisle; depending on the quality available, you’ll spend between $7 and $15 for a 2 oz. bottle).

That’s it.

Now, pour that little bit of sugar into the hollow of your hand. Oh, you want a measurement? Fine... use about an eighth of a teaspoon. Then add a few drops of peppermint oil. Your ratio should be roughly two parts sugar to one part oil. Now use your finger to mix it up, and then rub it all over your lips.

In Lush stores the associate will tell you to lick the scrub off your lips, and you can do that with this scrub, too. If you’re like me, though, and you’ve colored outside the lines a bit and don’t like the idea of saliva all over your face, you can rinse it off with water. I like to finish up by applying lip balm, or just another dab of plain peppermint oil.

If you like the idea of having a little jar of lip scrub, just mix up a batch using that two-to-one sugar-to-oil ratio and store it in one of those little clean empty jars you’ve been saving (or a little plastic container). You can also substitute different edible oils (olive, almond, etc.) for the peppermint oil.

For a rough cost comparison, let’s say you’re using sugar that costs $1.25 a pound (which is more than most sugar actually costs), or about eight cents per ounce, and peppermint oil that costs $6 per ounce. At a two-to-one sugar-to-oil ratio, three ounces of lip scrub (which is approximately one gazillion applications) will cost you about $6.16, or a little over $2 per ounce. Or, if you’re like me and you already have sugar and peppermint oil in your baking cupboard... free.

There you go. I just saved you nine bucks. If I were you, I’d spend it on nail polish.

Clarisonic: My new best friend

2010-11-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

How much did buying a Clarisonic change my life? Oh, where to start...

Clarisonic Plus Sonic Skin Cleansing System

I had perfect skin when I was a teenager. PERFECT. One pimple every now and then, easily zapped with a few days’ application of Campho-Phenique (thanks for that tip, Mom), but for the most part I just splashed off a little Noxzema most nights and was good to go. That’s right, most nights. Sometimes I just rinsed with water. Sometimes I didn’t wash my face at all.

I should have known karma would even things out someday.

My mid-20s hit, and all of the sudden my skin was unmanageable. Blackheads. Pimples. The kind of red, bumpy acne other people struggled with 10 years earlier -- mostly on my chin. I naïvely thought my problems could be solved with Noxzema. They couldn’t. I tried a bunch of other drugstore products. Fail. I moved on to more expensive stuff. I wiped the handset of my office phone with Oxy pads. I tried washing my face more. I tried Proactiv. I tried Murad. I tried Philosophy. I tried washing my face less. I went back to Proactiv. I went back to Murad. Sometimes it got better. It never got great. Most recently, I’d settled on a routine made up mostly of products from Sally Beauty Supply’s Beyond Belief line and was getting the most satisfactory results I’d seen in a long time, though I still wasn’t trouble-free.

I’d been looking at the Clarisonic brush since it first rolled out, but I couldn’t get over the price. That’s the real drawback: This thing is not cheap. I thought about settling for the more bare-bones Clarisonic Mia, but if I was going to lay down triple digit dollars for a gadget just to wash my face, I wanted to do it right and have all the bells and whistles.

What finally pushed me over the edge? A sunburn. I kid you not. I burned my décolleté pretty badly on the East Coast in August, and when the burned layer of skin started to peel away I was amazed at how smooth and baby-soft the skin was underneath. I wanted my face to feel like that. So I cashed in some Amazon credit to ease the sting somewhat and ordered the Clarisonic Plus. In pink.

The Clarisonic was developed by a team that included one of the lead inventors of the Sonicare toothbrush. If you’ve made the switch from a regular toothbrush (or even another vibrating brush) to Sonicare, you probably have some idea of what it’s like to wash your face with the Clarisonic brush in comparison with a standard face washing routine, and you’ll be able to understand why I could not stop touching my face after using the Clarisonic for the first time. Or the second time. Or any time since. I’ve been using it daily for two months now, and I still can’t stop touching my soft, soft, beautiful, soft face.

Now, the real question: Did it resolve my -- ahem -- blemish issues? Well, yes and no. I still have some blemishes (which is particularly annoying because I’m 31 and I feel like I’m also starting to see signs of wrinkles, and it is JUST NOT FAIR to have both at the same time), but their numbers have been greatly reduced. They also tend to have shorter life spans -- individual zits go away much more quickly than they used to. I’ve also been under a lot of stress at work, and my nutrition, sleep and hydration all got screwed up over the past couple of months, so I know those are all part of the problem.

Beyond reduced pimples, my skin is glowing. GLOWING. It looks better than it has since I was a kid. It’s so soft (did I mention it’s soft? It’s so soft), and it feels cleaner than it ever has. (And it’s supposed to reduce the appearance of fine lines, too.) My products absorb better, my skin is better moisturized, and I feel great about my face.

Clarisonic Plus Skin Cleansing System
Bottom Line: Spendy, but worth it
Price: $$$$$
Tip: The Mia is temptingly less expensive, but spring for the Plus with its wider variety of settings and options for personalization.