Tarte "make your own kit" deal

I don't remember if Tarte officially calls this "make your own kit" or not, but I've seen somebody call it that, at least. If you get e-mails from Tarte or anything you probably know about this already, but I first heard about this thing a couple of years ago, I think - it's a deal that pops up on Tarte's website once in a while - like two or three times a year, maybe, and only for a couple of days at a time. And I've been meaning to try it when I saw it again. I kept missing it for a long time, but this time I did finally see it in time, so I have this little haul of goodies:

It's seven items for $63, but you can't just pick out any seven items from their website. Instead, there are seven categories and you pick one item from each - the foundation is $39 by itself, so they're not about to sell you seven bottles of that for $63, right? You only get one foundation, one lip, one eyeshadow, etc. I wanted to try their foundation and I've had sample sizes of their blush, but I've never had it in a color I like - so those two things are what I really wanted to try, and the blush is $29 so those two things are worth the price of this alone (and shipping was free, too). All this other stuff was just a bonus, for me. But I like the bag and I like the lipliner and the eyeshadow is a pretty silver, and I also like this little "Blot Party" thing which is a translucent powder and a brush and also has a pack of blotting tissues in it that fit underneath the brush. (I've been keeping that in the tote bag that I keep in the car and haul with me into work every day.) Oh, and the white thing in the picture above is a mascara primer, which I wanted to try, even though I don't normally wear mascara.

The foundation is the Shape Tape Hydrating formula one. There were other choices - that was just the one I was most interested in. Now that I've tried it, the only thing I don't like about it is that it has one of those doe-foot applicators and I don't like those, for foundation. I tried one Physician's Formula foundation that had that and I didn't like it then either. But I guess I can work around that, right? (I'm fine with doe-foots - doe-feet? - for lips and eyeshadows and concealer, but for foundation it makes it tedious to apply, to me. It doesn't give you enough of it, I guess!)

Blot Party:

I don't have the color information in front of me for the lip and cheek products - looking at the website I think the blush color was Blushing Bride and the lip liner (they call it "lip crayon") is On Fleek. I was going to get a lipstick instead of a lip liner, but they ran out of the color I wanted. But then Sephora had some of the Tarte lipsticks on their "Weekly Wow" sale for half price so I bought the lipstick there, and I ended up with both.

Anyway, I do think this Tarte special is a good buy if you like Tarte products - which most people seem to! They are not cheap, even marked down, but the quality seems to be very good.

Sephora - birthday plus NailsInc

April is my birthday month, and if you're a Beauty Insider at Sephora (which you should be if you shop at Sephora at all), you always get a little birthday gift. I'm still at the VIB level, at least for this year, so I got some extra options. There were one or two little sets, or there was the option to just get Sephora points instead of picking from their designated birthday sets. I'm never in love with their picks, really, so I looked at the options and went in the end for the 250 extra points, as I figured I would. Then I looked at what was available in the Rewards Bazaar and promptly spent the whole 250 points on samples - two 100-point skincare samples and one 50-point one. I also bought this Nails Inc base-coat and treatment, which I really like. It makes your nails feel really good.

So we have a Sephora moisturizer (which was the 50-point one), The Ren Evercalm mini which is my very favorite moisturizer to carry in my purse, and the Lancome Genifique which is basically a serum (they call it a "youth activating concentrate"):

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.

Sephora Luxe box #2

This is something I bought at least a couple of months ago and never got around to posting - a Sephora Luxe box. This is the second one they've done - I had bought the first Luxe box and wasn't all that impressed. It had better brands but they were still sample-sizes and I just didn't think it was worth $20.

But guess what, I bought another one. It does have a cute bag again:

I justified this in my head because it had one item I knew I really wanted, and that's the one on the left, the Christophe Robin mask:

So it's the hair mask, an Hourglass mascara, Tatcha Water Cream, Tata Harper serum, Givenchy Rouge Interdit Vinyl, which is a "color-changing" lipstick, and the Tom Ford perfume.

I barely paid attention to the perfume at first:

I went, "Meh, another perfume sample," because I've got dozens of those, and I've given away dozens more. But I eventually took a better look at it and realized it's bigger than those standard tiny-sprayer size that everybody uses now. So I finally opened it up and it's actually considerably bigger, and instead of a spray it's a very small rollerball.

It's 3ml - I've gotten where I'm pretty comfortable with ml measurements - for an American - especially since I now have it in my head that the standard nail polish bottle is 15ml (which is half an ounce). So 3ml is 20% of that standard nail polish bottle, or a tenth of an ounce. That's a small amount but like I said, considerably more than the little spray bottles, which are mostly not more than half this size. Actually the full-size of this sells for $45, and it's only twice this size.

Overall, I think all of this is worth what I paid for it. I gave away the mascara but I'll use the rest of it.

Sephora train case

I bought a makeup bag some time ago that Kathleen Lights had recommended. I'm sure I don't travel with nearly as much makeup as Kathleen (I'm not sure I own as much makeup as Kathleen travels with, quite honestly), but still, I looked at that and I could see how I could use it. I'll link to her video below, but meanwhile, here's is Sephora's picture of how it looks inside:

It comes with those smaller bags that fit inside it, that's what I like about it. I could see putting nail polish in one of those smaller bags, for one thing. And it has holders for brushes in the lid and then the flat pouch could hold stuff like eyeliners and lipsticks.

I don't really travel that much these days - I've been refusing to fly because I can't stand how crowded planes are - but anyway, I was obsessed with this bag and I didn't know if it would still be around later, and so I went ahead and bought it. (It's been in & out of stock since I bought it but right now it's back in.) But I'll finally get a chance to test it out at the holidays.

Mine is already not so pristine-looking as the pictures above. It's been sitting around for a couple of months, after all. But I'm really happy to have this - one thing that spurred this purchase was because last Christmas I went traveling with an assortment of makeup bags inside bigger bags, and I kept losing track of what was where. I'm hoping this will take care of this problem. (It's still bags inside a case, but everything has an appointed place, which I assume will make all the difference!)

Kathleen's video that started me off on this tear:

(I know this is the second post in a row that has to do with Kathleen-related things. But I'm not actually obsessed with Kathleen, I swear. I just like a lot of the things she likes!)

More November purchases

(Oops, this was supposed to go up this morning, and I screwed that up somehow. Oh well.)

Sometimes I'm embarrassed to show all the stuff I bought, when I feel like I got totally carried away. But I'm trying to get myself to wear a little more makeup - for a long time I was like, foundation and blush and out the door - so a lot of this was things I just didn't own a lot of.

This is one last item from the Ulta sale, which wasn't in the picture with the rest of it, so I forgot about it. Ulta had Body Shop products for 40% off, so this was, what, $11 and change?

I wanted to try out Body Shop Body Butter, but I doubt that I'll keep all of these - probably I'll break up the set, keep one and give the other two as gifts. They're all different and I don't have any particular opinion on which one I'm keeping. I did crack them open and sniff, but they don't have really overwhelming scents so that may not be the deciding factor. I may decide which formula I like the most for me instead.

And then I have some things I bought earlier in the month and haven't shown. Colourpop was having a sale back before Thanksgiving, and well, this all started because I wanted a pencil sharpener. Colourpop's lip pencils are kind of weird and don't seem to fit the sharpeners I already had. And then I decided to buy another lip pencil while I was at it. I bought Lumiere, which is a Kathleen Lights color that I already have a nail polish to match. It's very neutral, on me, which is a good thing in a lip pencil, I think.

And then I decided that out of the few Colourpop shadows I have, I like the pressed powder shadows more than the Super Shock shadows. I poked around and decided the Yin to my Yang set had a lot of stuff I liked, so I got that. The first two colors (on the left above, that is) are ones I already had.

And then see the black and "white" ones on the row above, here? The black is really just soot-black - always useful - but the one that looks white is actually very pale gold. It's really beautiful.

One more - I think I had mentioned this at some point but I got this set of brushes - I wanted it because it had some shapes I don't have already, but also the packaging is lovely.

It comes in this nice silver clutch with a magnetic closure. (As you can see, this was from Sephora.)

Here's what all the brushes are. I especially liked that flat one, the second one down, and the very small flat one, the second from the bottom. The quality on these seems very nice.

Sephora VIB goodies

This is the first installment of what I bought from the Sephora VIB sale. Here I was trying to buy things I actually need. (Later on I kind of went nuts in the NailsInc section but we'll discuss that another day.)

I had had a sample of the Skin Laundry face wash that came in a Sephora Play box - which makes it six months ago or longer, because I cancelled that a while ago - and I really liked it so I decided to spring for the large bottle while the sale was on. Hopefully it will last quite a while.

And then I had decided to try out this Cinema secrets brush cleaner a while back - I had seen somebody recommend it highly. (It's said to be what makeup artists use.) I bought two different travel size bottles (one a spray bottle and another that came with a small tin) and I have been using this stuff like crazy. I'm still not really near to having used all of the two small bottles up, but I have made a significant dent in them and I decided it was time I bought the refill bottle.

I really do love this stuff. It's pretty much effortless to use. Spray it on your brush and just wipe it off, or if you have a brush that's really crusty, pour some into the tin and just dip it in and take it out immediately. The beauty of it is that it really works and it dries practically instantly. Even with a big brush it's dry very quickly. The small tin works fine for smaller brushes, but anything bigger than my mini-multitasker won't fit, so that's why I ordered the larger tin as well.

(I'm going to try to restrain myself on the Black Friday sales. We'll see how that goes.)

A Naked Palette

I meant to have this done to post on Sunday, but I guess I'll go ahead & put this up on Monday morning now since I didn't. Direct from Sephora at half-price:

This is the original one, and I know seemingly everybody bought this ages ago, but I'm one of the ones that didn't, and I looked at some videos and blog posts with people using this and decided that it seemed like something I might actually use. Now that it's half-price, the bronzy colors appeal to me. (The more recent Naked Palettes don't appeal to me as much as this one - except for the new one, the cherry one. But I'm still not paying $50 for that one, either.)

This was everything that came from Sephora with the palette, but it's all samples otherwise. The Youth for the People lotion (in the little cardboard box) is a 100-point bonus item.

Aside: apparently Sephora is trying to improve their VIB loyalty program, so I've heard. I've been a VIB for the last couple of years, and I'll probably still be one next year, too, because I'm already pretty close, but I have really slowed down on purchases from them lately. (Partly that's because I decided to face up to the fact that I've got enough moisturizer and serums to last at least a year or so, and I need to slow down on buying any more until I use some of that up!)

I decided I would try swatching these on paper - I actually did several different palettes this way, and this one was the one that went onto paper the least well; however, except for the first couple of very light colors, I do think you can get an idea about the colors, just the same.

box back

Fancy brushes from Sephora

I didn't buy anything from the recent Sephora sale, but here's something I already had and forgot to take a picture of. I have one brush like this already (the mini-multitasker - I believe it's #45.5):

I saw all that glitter in the tube and was worried it was going to go flying everywhere when I opened the container, but it doesn't - it's sealed inside the double-walls.

Since I wanted this duplicate of a brush I already had, I'm glad they are different colors (the other is the regular old Sephora black). I use the one I already had for blusher, and I'm thinking I might use this one for powder. I've been using an e.l.f. brush for that, but it's been losing bristles lately so I think it may be on its last legs.

I could also use either one of the bigger brushes from this set for powder, though. (I know I mentioned having bought this but I don't think I ever posted a picture of my own.) The middle-sized one is great for concealer, and I've been using the smaller ones for eye shadow, when I get around to wearing it.

Empties

Things I've used up:

Biossance Squalane + Peptide Eye Gel

I liked this, but it's too expensive ($54, exclusive to Sephora). I'm not buying it again. It didn't work any miracles that I could tell.

This was a sample but I really, really like this - Perricone MD Face Finishing Moisturizer

I don't see that exact product, or perhaps they've just changed the name - here is the similar one at Sephora. (But huh, here it is on Amazon, for way cheaper, too. Wonder if this actually is the older product, and that's why it's cheaper. I may try it for that big of a discount.)

Then we get to the stuff you can buy at the grocery store:

I think I bought this Centrum from Amazon, too - the Women 50+ version. (I hate thinking of myself as a senior citizen, but hey, I should be accustomed to the fact by now that I am over 50.) And the 3-Minute Miracle I could have bought anywhere - I've had this for a while. I am this way with both shampoos and conditioners - I like to have more than one brand and alternate. So it takes me a while to use things up. (3-Minute Miracle is a great deal for the price, for sure. I don't think there's a good deep conditioner that's cheaper than this one.)

A restaurant near me gives out chocolate mints; I really love them and apparently they are not something you can buy just anywhere:

I finally bought this giant bag from candy.com, another one of those obvious websites that I never thought to look for. They are yummy. I bought these before the holidays last year and we put some in with gifts and stuff and it's still taken me all this time to use up what was left. (In fact, there's probably some still left around somewhere.)

Does anybody else shop at Aldi? They have all these weird brands, but most stuff seems to be really good quality and relatively cheap. They don't always keep exactly the same items in stock from one trip to the next, which makes it interesting to go there, kind of like a treasure hunt, some of the time! Anyway, these are the tortilla chips that I liked enough that I wanted to remember them:

They're thick, like the ones that restaurants use for nachos.

(I've been reminded lately how people who live in the Southwest tend to be really obsessive about Mexican food - all the way across from Texas to California. I got in a rather heated debate with somebody on Twitter the other day about whether burritos should come wrapped in foil. Where I live you can't really find them any other way!)

Brushes & brush cleaners

This was a Sephora order that I did maybe a month or two ago - and the main item that I actually paid cash for is brush cleaner.

I bought two different bottles of Cinema Secrets brush cleaner, one with a sprayer and one with a little tin to keep the liquid cleaner in (which apparently is how the professionals use it). I wanted the one with the sprayer and I wanted the tin, too, and it wasn't expensive so what the heck, I got both. Nouveau Cheap talked about this brush cleaner ages ago - here - and it's supposed to be amazing and dry almost instantly. But then when it came, I put it in my "stuff to photograph" pile and forgot to ever try it. I'll try to report back when I finally do. (Here's the set. You can also buy a separate tin but the one in the set is smaller and I wanted the small one first to see if I'll actually use it.)

And then the little Bumble and Bumble tube was a 100-point bonus, 'cause I love that stuff (by which I mean Don't Blow it specifically, not just Bb in general) and I wanted a purse-size one, and the rest of it is just regular foil-pack samples and a perfume sample (which is Stella although it's hard to see here).

It occurs to me that I never have taken a picture of the brushes that I bought around the same time that I bought the above (although I have used those, at least). I think I mentioned them, but that was it. Here is the picture from Sephora's website, though. I found this set because I was looking at the Tarte mermaid brush set, and this doesn't have fish-tails but it does have the ocean-theme and it's brushes that I actually wanted - fan brushes in an assortment of sizes. I really like them.

I wish I hadn't looked because the set is marked down, now. $25 (I think it was $39 to start with!), that's a deal.

Added: I did try cleaning my mini multitasker - which I only have been using for my MAC powder blush for probably a year or so. I never have cleaned it because it's just not a messy thing that I use it for, but I figured it had to be built up down in the brush, and it was. I followed the directions and I put 1/4' of cleaner in the tin and dipped the brush in it. It said to take the brush out right away and I wasn't quite fast enough - the year of built-up blush from up inside the brush came pouring out the instant the liquid cleaner touched it. It was very interesting. But it does dry pretty fast. Even that larger, dense brush was dry within an hour or so. It's amazing stuff, really.

Sephora Memorial Day sale

I see something in the Memorial Day Sale at Sephora that I'm tempted by, so I thought I'd share:

This is the Gel Lab Pro top-coat and base-coat set. You can get 2 mini-size bottles for $16.80 or two full-size bottles for 31.50. Many of the polishes are marked down to $14, as well. (Actually it looks like everything Deborah Lippmann is marked down.)

Among non-polish items, the adorable Tarte mermaid-handle brushes are marked down to $29 for the set:

I had really been coveting these, but then I read the reviews, and it looks like these are very soft brushes, which usually are not my thing. Instead I bought a different but sort-of-on-theme set from Sephora Collection (which is not marked down):

These are all fan brushes, which is something I don't already have and would like to. The Tarte ones are a better deal right now, though, if they suit your needs and/or wants.

There are a lot of other good deals in there, but these are what caught my eye! I already ordered the brush set above; I'm trying to talk myself out of ordering one of the Lippmann sets just to try it out, too.


Added: one more thing that's not on sale, because it's cute polish and the duo name is Flock You, which makes me laugh:

However, it's currently out of stock. Maybe it will get restocked before long. These not my colors, particularly, but I still think they're cute. And these duos are $15, which is normally the price of a single NailsInc polish - and they are full-size. (I do have a couple of different duos from them - this one which I showed just yesterday, and this unicorn-themed one.)

The Ordinary

I bought a couple of products from The Ordinary: I bought hyaluronic acid from Sephora, and then, because Sephora apparently doesn't carry it, I bought squalane directly from Deciem (which I guess is The Ordinary's parent company).

If you don't know about The Ordinary already, the idea is that they sell the things that are ingredients in all the expensive beauty products, and they sell them quite cheaply. The 100% Plant-Derived Squalane was $7.90 (US) from Deciem, and the one from Sephora was less than $7.

As far as I can tell, both products work well, but I stumbled on a Canadian website that has reservations about the Hyaluronic Acid - something about the size of the molecules that I don't entirely understand, but it sounds rather ominous. I decided because of that I am sort of going to hedge my bets - I'm not going to throw it away or anything but I'm going to maybe use it less often than I would have otherwise. Once a week, say, unless I see any issues.

I bought this from Sephora after I decided I wanted to use some of my Sephora points on some cologne for Rob's birthday, back in January. He liked this D&G stuff that I got but boy, it's a really tiny bottle for 250 points - or to think of it another way, it's a freebie for having spent $250. It's considerably bigger than one of those little spray vials, but still awfully small - 4.5ml. (Here's the smallest retail bottle, 50ml for $68.)

Sparkle Like a Unicorn

I have a weakness for unicorn stuff, so this NailsInc set just reeled me right in:

It was only $15 for two full-size bottles, which is half-price from NailsInc's normal prices. (See here - and I hadn't seen the Dirty Unicorn polishes on that page, which is dangerous.)

I don't know how well you can read this but it is from the back of the box and it amuses me. Although nothing here except the unicorns on the box is actually holographic. (Is there like a law that you have to say anything with the word unicorn is also holographic?)

The colors are Dream Dust and Rainbow Wishes:

Dream Dust reads as pink on its own, but below that it's over black and it looks completely different.

Rainbow Wishes is also pinkish on its own, but it's more shifty, and over black it looks sort of purple-blue like it does in the bottle.

I think these will be fun to play around with, and by NailsInc's standards they're very reasonably priced.