We haven’t done this for a long while. Here’s the beauty product reviews (brief) for stuff I’m loving right now.
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Giorgio Armani Maestro Fusion Foundation. Holy hell, Hannah! I’ve loved the Armani foundations in the past, but this one is a whole other level of fabulous. It’s not going to give you solid coverage, but if you are aiming for sheer coverage that makes your face look amazeballs, this is it. I layer in a little bit of concealer on the ruddy areas of my face to tone that down. It’s $62, which is really high! But I use like three drops, so a bottle of it should last you into the next decade. Anyone tried the concealor that comes with this? Worth it?
ROUGE PUR COUTURE
Vernis À Lèvres Glossy Stain
Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Pur Coutur glossy stain rocks. Best lip stain I’ve ever tried. $32, which is pretty pricy, and you don’t get much, but dammit, It’s really good!
I use the Becca lip pencil below, then this, then a gloss or my other product (quick review below) on top, and my lips last for like an hour or three! It’s a miracle, I swear. Nothing lasts on my lips for longer than 30 minutes.
Becca Nude Liner Plump & Define Lip Pencil
This Becca Nude Liner Plump & Define Lip Pencil is amazing. I used to love the MUFE double-ended, still use it for the inner bottom eye lining to get the red out, but this combo with a lighter color to highlight outside the lips and a great color pencil for inside as a base for that YSL Lip stain is a great combination! $23, which seems like a steal for getting two products in one and two great beauty products.
Yves Saint Laurent Volupt Sheer Candy – Mouthwatering Berry
This is what I put on top of the pencil and the lip stain – Yves Saint Laurent Volupt Sheer Candy. This is a great red, the fig one is also a great color for a darker mouth look. It’s also a lip balm and doesn’t dry out my lips. It’s Colorado and winter, the season for DESERT LIPS. My lips get so chapped and dry by March, it’s insane, so I need the protection of a good lip base and now I think I have it!
Last but NOT least! This Christmas Wreath. ZOMG ZOMG, the cuteness, the unbelievable cuteness!!! You can buy them at Petal Pushers Wreaths from like $149 up to $229 or so. They have so much more than Holiday wreaths. There’s Hannukah wreaths, Valentine’s wreaths, St. Patrick’s Day wreaths. I had NO idea I needed to change out my wreath for every season. Well, now I know!
So do you have some products you’ve found that are amazingly great or amazingly bad and not worth the money? Holiday things you think are adorable?
My mission for this Christmas, replace ass-shaking Santa. His butt is about like mine these days – slow, dragging and the shaking part of it isn’t that much fun to watch. I feel the need to get something much more largely tacky for the front lawn. What I’d really like to have is something like this:
But with the price tag of $250!!!!! it’s so not anywhere in my budget. What I can maybe afford is something like this to replace ass-shakin Santa with a new ass-shakin Santa with more lights for$70!
But I think I need to UP the tacky factor a bit more without completely blowing my budget. Ideas? On a Christmas Tacky Scale 1-10 with 10 being Honey Boo Boo, Pumpkin, June and a case of Go-Go Juice, I’m at a 12. Suggestions? I like blow-up Eyeore in the Santa hat, but he’s only 3 feet tall, which seems a little small for my visions of Tacky Grandeur. Is there a Used Tacky Lawn Decoration store where I can get something really cheerfully awful for next to nothing?
That YSL stain and I do *not* get along. Nothing lasts on my lips and it has joined the crewe.
That wreath is adorable, but $150 – + $200? Imma get me to mine craft store and get busy, guhls! Set up a booth somewhere. Then I can afford to try the Armani foundation!!
Oh, no, so sad!!! Listen, if you start making them and for less, I’ll buy! I did do the math in my head for all the decorations on them, and they’re probably doing about 3x-4 cost, which is really where you have to be in retail if you want to get paid anything at all for labor. I’m just no averse to saving a few dollars as long as I don’t have to make them. I’ve got too many knitting, sewing and other projects running around my house!
Oh no… The foundation sounds amazing, but first I have GOT to have one of those wreaths, or three or four.
those wreaths are amazing, no? I keep looking at them, then telling myself that they are way too much money, then looking again. I’ll break down and get one, i’m sure, but it’s taking a long time to decide which one. Which one you gonna get?
I like those YSL lip stains, too! They’re not quite as long-lasting as Chanel double intensite lip stains, but I bought one because YSL offers a much greater variety of colors. Which shade did you get? I got #16, a nice clear plum which still manages not to overwhelm my thin lips and pale complexion, though I think could work for lots of different colorings. The only thing I’m not crazy about is the slanted tip which is harder to work with and requires me to use a liner. Do try the Chanel though if you are having issues with lip stain lasting. I had to have an impression made for some dental work last week and it even impressed the dental assistant when she pulled the hardened gummy plaster stuff out of my mouth the lipstain was still good. The “universal” your lips but better color in the Chanel is “rose quartz”.
Aren’t they great? I haven’t tried the Chanels, or have I? I sometimes forget. 🙂 That’s embarrassing.
I got the berries one, i think that’s it. The bright red one. I really like that. I thought about the fig – I may be getting these confused with the balms – but they are so pricy, I had a hard time pulling the trigger on just one. Oh, might need to check out the Chanels if I haven’t, and I don’t think I have. I love their colors, but I just have a hard time with the smell of their lipsticks and the taste, it’s just too makeupy.
I’m over 50ish these days and still trying to figure out the skin care. Had a stressful month for Oct. and now my jawline looks like a crater, pocked, pizza, moon face. And it’s accompanied by dry patches here and there. Not pretty. Can’t leave the house without Neutrogena lip balm w SPF 15. And I love lippies. My go tos are YLBB colors, but I love peaches, pinks, corals and reds, too. For dress up, I add Clinique mascara. I once had a make over at Le Metier de Beaute and went out to dinner with my husband afterwards. He did not notice a thing or did not say a thing about it. But if I put on a lovely perfume, he tells me how good I smell over and over and over again.
I never leave the house without 3 or 4 lip balms with SPF; I get cold sores if I don’t wear it outdoors. Have you seen the Twist and Pout charms for your key-chain? They have a 20 SPF. Not crazy about applying with my fingers, but they’re adorable, especially the Lip Presence Hatboxes. (Not affiliated in any way, just think they’re cute!)
Over 50ish here too. Do you ever try oils for your face? There’s a company I ran into that I bought some from, and I won’t wear them except during the winter. About October my face gets so dry. Colorado is brutal on skin – dry and cold.
what a nice husband that he notices your perfume! I love that, he’s a definite A++ hubby just for that.
While he sometimes comments that I own more perfume than I can use in a lifetime, he still gifts me with bottles during the holidays and for my birthday. So he must like something about my collection. He also realizes that my perfume collecting started when he gave me a bottle of Opium while we were dating over 25 yrs ago.
Never tried oils for my face. I just assumed that they would make my break outs worse.
I’m 48 and I haven’t worn makeup in decades. Maybe 5 times, for Serious Fancy Occasions. I was raised all Holy Roller and taught that it was a sin ( not that I believed that!) and I think I just never got in the habit. I wore a little in my 20s, and finally just said to hell with it. I look SO much better in it, but I really don’t give a shit. My husband was shocked that I wore a little when we got married. That is the level of event it takes, lol. I take that back, I wore some a time or two to his work parties so his coworkers didn’t think he was married to a hag, and he finally told me he prefers me without it. HAving said all that the lipstain looks lovely!
All the passion I didn’t pour into makeup got poured into Christmas decorations, though, You don’t even want to get me started. This is the first year I will be in our new home and put up outside decorations. I am gonna decorate our waterpump house up like Snoopy’s doghouse in the Charlie Brown Xmas special, with all the tacky Christmas decor. Can’t wait!
I love you guys that go without makeup. I sorta wish I had. My dad used to insist we couldn’t wear mascara on our bottom eyelashes. Which doesn’t sound that bad except my sister and I are as blonde as can be with the same color eyelashes, so we had Maybelline Great Lash black uppers and no lower eyes. It looked goofy. I think we started slipping it on once we got on the bus going to school. It is a huge pita, and I’m glad I work at home 80% of the time so i can just go without.
Yeah, A christmas deco fan! OMG, I Love decorating! I wish I had the budget I’d like to have to do it the way I’d like. I’d love to see snaps of your waterpump house when you get it done. I think the little comment thingie lets upload pictures, or you can e-mail them to me! We have this old cart in the garage, and every year I threaten that we are pulling it down and putting it in the front yard and decorating it so it looks like a sleigh. But the thing is HUGE and we have to pull it down from the rafters. I know we’lll never manage to put it back up once we get it down!
Well, I have to say, I spend more on skin care than make-up, probably because I am 47, 48 is right around the corner, and I am SCARED! NO make-up, expensive or cheap, makes crappy skin look good. So I love most neutrogena products, especially the stuff for “mature” skin. They sell a really great retinol based serum on QV* that I have been using for a couple of years now and it has made a noticable improvement in my skin. (Wasnt sure if I was allowed to name a shopping channel on your blog, so if I boo-boo’d, sorry! I am not affliated with them except as a cutomer.)
Oh, that’s fine! i mean, we don’t like Spam, but that’s not it. Love product recommendations. I saw the neutrogena thingie on QVC. so it is that good? I keep thinking to try it. My skin care expenditures are worse than makeup. I don’t buy that much makeup anymore. The occasional iipstick or new eyeshadow quad or a foundation that’s supposed to be great, but that’s about it!
Yes, it’s THAT good- I really recommend some type of retinol serum for nightime use, but it has to be “stabilzed” in order to efficacious,and this one is. Another great EFFECTIVE (the operative word!) line is Paula’s Choice- they have a whole line of anti-aging, which I haven’t really explored yet, but I do love the BHA and AHA exfoliants for face and body. And, as an added plus, this line is very inexpensive compared to other skin care lines.
Thanks, Ramona, tha’s just what I needed to hear!
I am one of those odd people who used to wear make up. All through high school and part of college, I wore it. Then about half way through college, I didn’t even have money to get the cheapest make up, so I haven’t really gotten back into the habit of wearing makeup except for wearing clear mascara at work and black Chanel mascara on days off.
Eldarwen22
http://realmofeldarwen22.blogspot.com
wow, how long has that been? As much as people know I love products, most days I wear nothing but moisturizer on my face and lip balm maybe. When I decide to put on makeup, I get picky, and I have a LOT. I don’t even want to think about how many foundations I have. I love them all for different reasons. And I don’t even need much foundation except for how ruddy my skin is. 🙂 I think that’s amazing you can do just that. I have blonde eyelashes, and they have to have mascara on them to go out or they just disappear!
That was about 7-8 years ago when I pretty much stopped wearing make up. Now it seems like there are so many girls that are wearing so much of it. A little tinted moisturizer, marcara and a more natural looking (color wise) lip stick can go a long way.
Eldarwen22
http://realmofeldarwen22.blogspot.com
You are batshit crazy. But I love you. I’m on the OPPOSITE end of the scale when it comes to lippies, though I am still a devotee of Laura Mercier foundation and tinted moisturizer. After spending the cost of a semester at Harvard on expensive lippies, etc…I have found my Holy Freakalicious Grail. For $3. Rimmel lipliner in Coffee Bean. The perfect liner for me (I need a bit of definition, otherwise my lips just look…odd)…and because I have the curly hair and the glasses and freckles, etc…I go with YLBB – at this point a red lip just makes me look like Krusty the Klown. I have 50 lippies but my favorite is, again, a Rimmel. Go figure. That costs, I think, $5.96 (weird price).
xoxoA
I know! I can’t manage much lip stuff, and I’ve gone through cheap, expensive, natural, everything. It’s still just, well, tricky! I’m glad you found the thing that you love! 🙂 But honestly? I love products. It’s just that easy. I know, it’s so wrong.
..but soooo much fun! xoox Portia, I don’t know that Ben Nye….?
Ladies the best lip liner of all time is the Ben Nye, Vino LP-140 with a tiny over lip swish of white Le crayon, CR-204. They will change your lives. Promise.
Portia xx
Okay, I’ll go try it. I actually have a shop here in town that sells Ben Nye! Shocked me because we have zero anything fabulous in Denver for some weird reason. Everyone’s too busy hiking, biking and smoking pot, I guess. 🙂