Primers from Sephora

I had gotten a sample of Smashbox Primerizer somewhere - it's a moisturizing primer:

I went through this very fast - it's a very small bottle. I really liked it, but it's awfully expensive. When I looked on Sephora's website, it said it was $42 for a one-ounce bottle - but they also had a mini size (half an ounce) for $15. So that's very strange pricing, for the smaller bottle to be cheaper per ounce than the large one - but I bought the small one.

Then I was also poking around Sephora's Rewards Bazaar and I found a different moisturizing primer, called Quench - it's a part of Tarte's Rainforest of the Sea collection. I got a full-size tube of this for 500 Sephora points. (I usually mostly use my points as I go, but I had about 1000 points built up. I've bought a ton of stuff from Sephora the last couple of years.)

This is a one-ounce tube, and it retails for $32, so that's a good use of points. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm hoping it will be something similar to the Primerizer. I've started using primer over my moisturizer in the last six months or so, so combining the two would help. I'm always running late, anything that streamlines my workday routine is good.

Empties

I hardly ever use up full sizes of anything much except the most boring stuff like soap and wipes, etc. But I did run through a couple of Cover FX samples so I'll show you those first and then go on to the boring stuff.

This is the Custom Enhancer Drops in the color Moonlight:

Honestly, maybe I wasn't using enough or something, because I kept mixing this into my foundation here and there and I never could really even tell the difference. It's a really pretty color, though, for what it's worth!

And then the other one is primer:

Illuminating Primer, to be exact. I'm really finally starting to get interested in primer and I've been through a couple of samples and bought a couple of different things, but I'm not really to the point where I can tell you the difference between one and another, except for the blue-tinted Nyx ones which I do think does flattering things to my skin-tone. I may have more to say about this in the future, but for now, not so much.


As for the "boring stuff" - actually the topic of soaps and wipes and such is pretty interesting to me but it's not exactly glamourous! This is the only soap I've used up lately:

This is Brandless hand soap, in Cranberry Spice which was a seasonal thing, so you probably won't see this on their website for six months or so. It smelled very nice. I went kind of nuts with the seasonal soaps this year and bought a set of Mrs Meyers ones from Amazon, as well as this, but it was three of them so I haven't managed to finish any of them off, even though I'm pretty obsessive about hand-washing. (They were my old favorite Iowa Pine, and then Peppermint and a spicy one - orange & cloves or something like that, which I really loved.)

I bought these Yes To Cotton wipes at Walgreen's marked down sometime last year:

They were perfectly good wipes but somehow using cotton seems more wasteful to me. I don't know why they were marked down because they're apparently not discontinued. I'm sure I will never buy them again because I'm too cheap to buy most wipes except for baby wipes, which are my go-to for most purposes. (I add in some micellar water if my skin seems to need it.)

These Huggies wipes are my favorite baby wipes:

They say "Natural Care" on there somewhere, I believe. I've tried other brands but I always come back to Huggies!

Nyx sale haul

I am addicted to Nyx lip butter, so when I saw last week that they were still having a 40% off sale, I decided to stock up on lip butter and try out a couple more things.

The lip butter is my usual color, Thunderstorm (it doesn't go on as dark as it looks by the packaging). I also decided to try out a Butter Gloss in a similar berry-ish color. And then I got a color-correcting primer - the blue is supposed to reduce sallowness, which is an issue for me - and an ink-liner in brown.

I also got a little freebie:

...a makeup sponge. I don't use sponges that much - I've gotten very much into brushes lately, you may have noticed - but all the makeup sponges I had are rather old and I'm sure I will use this some.

September Boxycharm box

I was watching Kathleen Lights' Boxycharm video for September, a few weeks ago, and I really liked several of the items in this box. I know you're not guaranteed to get the same items, but I've gotten a couple of Boxycharm boxes before, and in my experience so far, they're always totally worth the money. (They're $20 but they're always worth several times that, at least. In fact I believe they say it's a minimum of $100 value.) I checked Alexandria Ryan's video about the same box, to compare, and she got all the ones I liked, too - that was especially the Pretty Vulgar palette with the cool colors, and the Laura Gellar blush, and the brushes. I'm on Boxycharm's mailing list, and they were sending me e-mails saying you could still get September, so I decided to go for it. And I didn't get all three of those, but I got the palette and the brushes (and meanwhile I'd forgotten about that and ordered a blush somewhere anyway - I'll come back to that another day).

So here's what I got (there are more detail pictures under the list):

1. Violet Voss Liquid Lipstick in Charming - it's a sort of a rose-color, very wearable (valued at $12)
2. Luscious Angel Eyes Eyeshadow Primer/Base (valued at $14) - I don't have a good eye primer so I'm interested in trying this out, although it looks awfully yellowish (note: I have tried this out now and I really didn't notice the yellow-ness of it at all once it was actually on)
3. Alamar Ojitos brush set (valued at $18) - three small brushes. I'm sure I'll use these, I don't have a whole lot of eye brushes (plus, they're so cute!)
4. Girlactic Skin Glow Duo (valued at $26) - two colors of shimmery stuff
5. Pretty Vulgar Nightingale palette (valued at $35) - as I said, I was interested because these are mostly cool-toned colors, and that seems to be pretty rare in a palette

This is not hugely over $100 value but it is a little over that, if you add up those numbers above. Anyway, I try not to obsess about the total retail value, because I figure what really matters is what's useful to me. But here I think I'll use everything except maybe the highlighter, and even that I'll at least try out. Anyway, the palette alone is worth more than you pay for this, so the rest is bonus, right?

I didn't think to do a swatch for this, but I did dab it on my lips real quick and I feel like it's close to the color of the label, here. You can also see the color in the tube below.

Here is the Girlactik highlighter stuff, which I haven't tried out yet:

I really do not do highlighters, normally - this is, like, the second time I've ever tried one. But it's pretty, creamy colors and I'm going to give it a good try before I decide to give it away!

And here's the palette:

It has a lot of dark colors, but I think it'll be fun to play with, at least. And some of these colors are really beautiful. (And Pretty Vulgar's packaging is so cute it makes you want to buy all of it!)

Here are the two videos in question. For the record, Kathleen got two of the same items I got and Alexandria got three. Both got the palette and the brushes, and Alexandria also got the eye primer. They both got the Laura Geller blusher that I was eyeing, as well, but for $20, you can't have everything.

(I don't know if you'll see the same still picture I'm seeing for this video, but Kathleen's blissful face here cracks me up. But her eyes do look beautiful!) Also: I just went back and watched the part of this video again where she does her eyes with the Nightingale palette, that's actually very helpful now that I have it!

And then Alexandria always just cracks me up, period. I love people who can do useful reviews and be funny.

Boxycharm box, May

It's getting to be the end of June, so I guess it's kind of late to be showing the May Boxycharm box, but anyway, here it is. This one has some really nice items in it, although I will tell you now that I went ahead and unsubscribed. I might try it again later, though. It's $20 and the items are full-size and most of them retail for $20 or more, so if you get even one item you like you're getting your money's worth, really. And this is good stuff, so I think most people will find multiple winners per box!

I've been using these brushes, they're my favorite thing.

There's also this:

It's a sculpting palette but it also could be used as eyeshadow.

Here's the contents:

1. Pur Sculptor Palette (four-color sculpting palette)
2. CoverFX primer - 30ml (1 oz)
3. Pretty Vulgar The Ink gel eyeliner in Black List - 6g
4. Aesthetica - 3-piece eye trio + P12 face brush
5. Beauty Creations liquid lip gloss in Kiss Me

I'll put Kathleen Lights' video about this at the bottom because I watched it and it influenced my opinion on all this, as far as what I'm keeping and what I'm giving away. In particular, I decided not to keep the CoverFX primer, because she said it's more of a pore-minimizing primer and that's not what I like, really. I'll give it away to somebody younger :)

So far I've kept the Pretty Vulgar eyeliner just because the container is totally adorable. I'm tempted to buy it in another color, though (I'm assuming it comes in other colors!) and give the black one away, since I don't really love black eyeliner on me. I know they sell Pretty Vulgar at Sephora so I may at least look and see. Answer, because I just checked: it also comes in brown and gray. (btw, I have heard some negative stuff about PV nail polish - I think it was that it applied badly, although I don't remember where I saw that - and it's expensive so I'm just trying not to look at it. I notice the nail polish is not on Sephora's website right now, so I guess that's why.)

Here's the eyeliner from an angle where you can see the full adorableness - and also the label on the lip gloss.

I feel like this color is a bit dark for me, but I may still change my mind. Also "matte lip gloss" is a total contradiction in terms, right? - matte means not shiny, gloss means shiny - so which is it? But I checked and it's totally matte. Which I guess is why I put it aside.

And here's Kathleen talking about - and demonstrating some of the contents of - this box: