Catrice Defining Blush 040 Think Pink Review and Swatches

I have two more products that I bought when I was in Germany last summer (which, yes, if you're keeping track, was nearly 10 months ago) and have gotten tired of having them in the back of my mind as "need to be reviewed". So I'm gonna do something about it! Write this review, namely. First up: Catrice Think Pink.

Think pink! Pink! PINK! *ahem*

Here, Let Me Show You My Mascaras

There are so many things that can make a mascara go wrong. It can smudge. It can flake. It can itch, or smell, or clump, or loosen curl, or fade, or fill-in-the-blank-here. My lashes are naturally long, dark (slightly lighter at the tips), and plentiful, and they grow straight, so if I don't curl them, they bump against my glasses (even more of a problem when wearing mascara!). I therefore look for mascara that doesn't clump them together (an effect of many volumizing formulas) and does hold a curl.

Terminology clarification: when I say "mascara clumping", I mean that the mascara builds up on the lashes in little balls. When I say "lash clumping", I mean the mascara clumps individual lashes together, making them look like a single mondo lash.

Since mascara needs to be replaced at least every three months, I try to stick to drugstore options, but there are a couple of higher-end ones here. My absolute favorite HG love forever is Armani Eyes to Kill, but it's $30 a tube and in the 2 years since I first purchased it, I haven't been able to bring myself to fork over the cash again. Fortunately, Maybelline Full N Soft is almost as good and 1/5 the price! And several of these that I've tried lately are good, too. (Most of the pictures in this post are stolen from other posts on the blog, so if they look familiar, don't worry, you're not crazy. Or, well, you might be, and at the very least you certainly have an uncannily excellent visual memory, but it's probably not reason to get yourself checked out.) For all mascaras here, I have chosen the blackest option, since anything else just seems pointless.

For reference, bare, curled lashes:

you're gonna be seeing a lot of my right eye in this post.

Maybelline Full N Soft, one coat:

Fragrance Friday

What's this, you say? A real, honest-to-God Fragrance Friday? 'Tis true! I'm making a concerted effort to get through my massive pile of samples, so this may be the start of a trend (maybe. Don't hold me to it).

I ordered several Dawn Spencer Horowitz (DSH) perfumes during a sale, before I realized just how many perfume samples I already had lying around, but I don't regret it! Every single one I've tried has been awesome. The 0.5 ml edp samples (which, from my order, seem to really range from 0.5-0.7) are $5 each; I transfer pretty much everything into spray vials from Lotioncrafter, as dabbers annoy me, but the DSH scents have excellent throw and dabbing is actually perfectly sufficient to be able to smell them, so these don't strictly need to be decanted. The catalogue is enormous, and I had a devil of a time getting it down to 8 choices (6 paid, 2 free samples for spending $25). Being me, I chose lots of woodsy/incensey/mossy scents, with a couple of florals for good measure, but there's certainly many more types to choose from. Here are the first two!

DSH Passport à Paris (Oriental Fougere: lemon, bergamot, lavender, rosewood, mandarin orange, jasmine, bulgarian rose, orris root, clover, Australian sandalwood, amber, vanilla, coumarin, ambergris, Indian patchouli, civet): This reminds me of Guerlain Jicky, one of my favorites (though it's been nearly a year since my sample ran out, sob). It opens citrusy, then shifts into an herbal vanilla. The coumarin is quite dominant on my skin, but it's not what I'd call a gourmand or even sweet perfume, thanks to the civet, ambergris, patchouli, and abundance of woods. I can't really smell the jasmine and rose, but I do get a slight floral/planty haze that softens and lightens the perfume. It's a wonderful spring perfume, actually; the blend of woods, flowers, green herbs, citrus, and musk is a nice reflection of the unpredictable weather and vibrant fertility of the season.

Le Métier de Beauté Radiance Powder Rouge in Echo Review and Swatches

Larie gifted this to me, queen of generosity that she is! I was thrilled, since I love LMdB and had no peachy-pink-gold blush, having given away the palette containing theBalm Hot Mama.

I want to eat it.

Skincare Saturday: Rainshadow Labs ABT Blemish Clearing Mask

I went off birth control a few months ago (and am now using the LadyComp Pearly, which I'll probably devote a post to someday), and while I'm overall pleased with the decision, it has had the unfortunate side effect of fucking up my skin. I need more data to know for sure, but it seems that there's a couple of weeks of every cycle, around ovulation, where my skin decides it's had it with anything resembling good behavior. I break out in small spots, big spots, cystic acne, the whole works. It's terrible. Seriously, skin, fuck you.

Benzoyl peroxide (I use Clean & Clear PersaGel 10) helps speed up the healing process, but it's also quite drying, so I can't use it all the time. I augment it with nightly application of Rainshadow Lab's ABT Blemish Clearing Mask. It's advertised as either a spot treatment or full-face mask, but I find it absorbs nicely and I can wear it as a sort of serum at night (it also works underneath makeup, but I tend to restrict my acne treatments to nighttime only so as not to overstress my skin). I'm not sure it has a big effect on preventing acne, but I do notice it helps speed up the healing process on blemishes that already exist, and works beautifully on bigger cystic acne as well––nightly application on spots makes them less noticeable, less painful, and heal faster.

similar thickness to honey, but without the stickiness.

Lancôme Lip Lover in 333 Rose des Nymphes Review and Swatches

This is Lancôme's take on the all-in-one lip color trend. After reading numerous favorable reviews of the formula, I decided to pick one up during the Sephora sale. I chose Rose des Nymphes, a pink, as I have no glosses of that shade (lots of lipsticks, though, ha), and doesn't warm weather warrant pink?