Meow Cosmetics Blush in Racy (from the Taboo Collection) Review and Swatches

 The first Meow blush up for review: Racy!  It's also one of three blushes I ordered from the Taboo collection, characterized by intense pigment and a duochrome finish (I'm a sucker for duochrome, what can I say!).

Wet N Wild Color Icon Eyeliners Review and Swatches

I really shouldn't allow myself to spend any time in Rite-Aid, because every time I get distracted by cheap products.  Most recently, I got sucked in by the WNW Color Icon Eyeliners.  Full price: $0.99.  How could I resist?!  Especially since Walgreens was having a 50% off WNW products sale, so the turquoise one was only $0.49.  Was it worth the $1.48?  Well...

Pseudo-hiatus

The boyfriend is visiting until next Sunday (the 3rd), and I doubt I'll have much time to work on new posts (lots of sightseeing and eating planned).  There will, however, be 3 posts I've already finished appearing over the course of the next week, with pictures and everything!  I hope you enjoy them, and I'll read and respond to comments (hint, hint!) when I have the chance.  I've also enabled AdSense, which I hope doesn't annoy anyone too terribly badly--let me know if it does and I'll see what I can do about minimizing or getting rid of it.  I hope you have a great weekend and get to enjoy some sunshine and good food :-)!

Meow Cosmetics Blush in Bel Air (from the Caribbean Collection) Review and Swatches

I'm waiting on another Meow order, and once I get that I can finally take pictures and finish and post my review of their foundations.  It's been 2 weeks since I ordered, though, and it still hasn't shipped...I understand holiday sales slow down turnover, but seriously!  This is getting ridiculous.  In the meantime, however, I still have some lovely blushes to review!

UPDATED with new photos: Alima Pure Blush Review and Swatches

Over the past few months, I've accumulated quite the collection of Alima blushes.  There are, however, still a ton of colors I want to try, because their blush selection is really, really big.  The online color swatches are not always the most accurate (Freja, for example, looks nothing like its swatch), but the color descriptions are pretty accurate, so I would suggest relying on those rather than the images.

E.L.F. Review and Swatches

E.L.F., short for Eyes Lips Face, is a super-cheap makeup brand available at some Targets and online.  My biggest gripe with them is that shipping is $7, which is completely absurd, so I've only ordered from them a couple of times, when they happened to have 50% off coupons (which is quite often; you can check at Retail Me Not for current discounts) which saved me an amount equivalent to shipping (so I ended up just paying retail).  I haven't tried very much from them, but some of the things I've tried I do really like.

Meow Cosmetics Haul

A week ago, Meow Cosmetics was having a free shipping plus 10% off sale, so I caved and bought an order of blush and foundation samples to try.  I'll be doing full reviews for everything in the next week or so (have to test it all for wear and color, etc.), but here are some pictures of the pretties!

Wet N Wild Natural Blend Lip Shimmers Review and Swatches

I've mentioned before my obsession with never having bare lips (as I write this, I'm not wearing anything and it's actually annoying the crap out of me), but I don't know if I've talked about how I like having color on them, too.  When I was younger, my lips were a vibrant red, but then I became anemic, and my lips turned...pale.  The horror!  So since then, I've pretty much been on an endless search for cheap, moisturizing, flattering "neutral" lip product.  Neutral for me, however, is not the same as for most people.  If I buy a so-called "neutral" shade, it makes me look like a corpse, or at least, like someone who has no business being out of bed.  I want something pink, red, plum, or berry, with minimal-to-no shimmer, that lasts awhile, is easy to apply on the fly (nothing that requires a mirror, for example), and approximates my former, glorious lip color.  Oh, and it must be cheap.  Unfortunately, most affordable products I try are lacking in one or more aspect, and I have yet to find one that can be considered my "holy grail" (HG).  I have, however, amassed quite a collection of near-HGs, which I plan to go through and review in the next few days/weeks.  First up, the most recent acquisition in my ongoing search: Wet N Wild Lip Shimmers in Cinnamon and Spice.

Sea Salt Toner Update

A week and a half ago, I wrote about using sea salt as a toner (original post here), and have changed a few things since then so figured I should share.  For one thing, I decided I needed to get some more sea salt, preferably something that's not years old and of questionable origin.

Peter Thomas Roth Max Sheer All Day Defense Moisture Lotion SPF 30 (what the heck, guys) Review

Another moisturizer review!  I promise, I have lots of color products to review soon, I just haven't quite gotten my act together enough to swatch and take photos yet.  I'll try to have it done this week, though!

Philosophy Hope Oil-Free SPF Review

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this moisturizer.

Scherer Chameleon Blue Sky Review and Swatches

So, remember how I said I would be cutting back on makeup purchases a week ago?  I've apparently decided that sales/cheap stuff at Rite-Aid are exempt...whoops.  I was browsing a few days ago and saw a gorgeous duochrome nail polish by Scherer Chameleon called Blue Sky (the name is a little baffling, since it's not actually blue...) that was crying my name, and even though I generally steer clear of polish, I couldn't resist for $3.

Boscia Oil-Free Daily Hydration SPF 15

It's been surprisingly sunny and beautiful here recently, a trend that is supposed to continue for at least the next week, which means I've gotten to enjoy some time out in the sunshine (with sunscreen, of course!).  I've been wearing the Boscia sample I got with the Sephora Sun Safety kit as my daily moisturizer for the past several days, and feel comfortable giving my opinion of it.

Sea Salt Toner

I'd read about using a sea salt toner to help with oily skin on MUA, but didn't have any sea salt at school, and didn't want to buy a big bag that I'd have to leave behind when I came home.  I kept it in mind, though, and a few days ago mixed up a batch using some sea salt I'd gotten many moons ago when I got my cartilage pierced.  I think any kind of generic sea salt should do the trick, and table salt would probably work too, though it's lacking many of the minerals that sea salt has.

Eyeliner

I often wear eyeshadow as eyeliner, applying with either my smudge brush or, for more precision, my bent eyeliner brush.  Recently, though, I purchased a few eyeliner pencils (therapeutic shopping, and yes, it helped!), which I'm going to talk about today.

Oil Cleansers

I'd read that MMU can clog pores if not properly removed, and being the super-paranoid acne-prone person I am, I decided to get an oil cleanser stat.  Cleansing oils are great because of the whole like-dissolves-like thing; you just rub a pump-ful on your dry, made-up face (including eyes, if you're wearing eye-makeup), rubbing it in, and then it rinses off like magic with warm water.  Follow with your normal cleanser, safe in the knowledge that no makeup, sunscreen, or oil is clogging your skin!

Alima Pure Foundation

I research obsessively.  If there were a 12-step program for it, I would be a prime candidate.  I tend to feel that if I'm going to be spending my money on something, I want it to be the very best it can be.  I do the same for restaurants, as my friends can attest, and hotels, and beer, and I would do it for wine as well, except that all the wine rating sites cost money, which I am of course morally opposed to.  Therefore, when I started looking into mineral makeup, I went a leetle overboard with my investigatory efforts.  I read that Bare Escentuals irritated a lot of people's skin, because of the bismuth oxychloride in it, and that plus the fact that it's $25 for a jar of foundation with no sample options decided my mind against them.  Everyday Minerals was another popular choice, but many people said the variety in foundation formulas was confusing, and that their revamped formulas didn't work as well.  I eventually decided to try Alima Pure because of the generally positive reviews, the extremely wide color selection, and the fact that it's from my home state.

Revlon ColorStay

For a long time, I used Revlon ColorStay for Oily/Combination skin in Ivory 110.

Irony

I started this blog after finishing undergrad classes.  This, unfortunately, coincided with having to reevaluate my long-term financial situation.  I've come to realize that I can't actually afford to buy all of the pretties I want, or even some of them.  I tell you this because it is going to impact the direction of this blog; I'll continue reviewing the products I currently have and use and love (or have used and disliked), but the number of new products will be minimal.  I'll be focusing more on natural skincare routines and stuff, which I hope will still prove helpful!  I wish I could do full swatches of all the colors of the products I want to share, but I'll just have to live with incomplete paradigms.  The blogs on my blogroll are great for that if you want to explore them; those lovely bloggers are much more suited than me to evaluate the latest and greatest products, and spend much more time and energy on their blogs than I could ever hope to spend on mine.

I spent the plane trip back home writing a few blog posts which I'll finish up and post the next few days.  It was actually sunny here today, and is supposed to be 80 and sunny tomorrow--which is extremely weird weather for Eugene!--but I'll hopefully be able to take some nice swatch photos with the good lighting and finish up the posts when it gets cloudy again.

How about you?  Any exciting plans for the weekend?