September Beauty Boxes

Since I've been really really lagging in the subscription box review department, I decided to do a larger basic post including Boxycharm, Ipsy and Wantable. After starting several medications for a string of health problems, developing a sinus infection and having to deal with some work issues..last month was pretty stressful.

I'm also just lazy and didn't want to take some images off of my phone and write up a review. I don't think anyone even reads them lol.


Wantable Makeup September 2014

I usually only purchase a wantable box every other month. At $36 (shipping included) they tend to be pricey but a really good value. The items are always full size and the value of the total box is always worth double or more than what I pay. If you have some money saved up and are looking to start to start or try new things than this might be a good service to try.

And I have somehow lost the paper that listed the prices.

- Vincent Longo stain in 'Liquid Kiss' $24
- Vincent Longo velvet riche lipstick in 'Indie Rose' $23
- MUD eyeshadow in 'Bronzed' $14.50
- Face Stockholm nail color in '#25?' $12
- MICA Beauty Cosmetics Kabuki $35

Total Box Value = $108.50 (Wow!)

Both the stain and lipstick are pretty colors, the stain looking the best with my skin tone and pigmented lips. The stain is very blendable while wet and once it dries it does tend to stay put all day with very little fading.

The shadow color is gorgeous and the product is very pigmented. It just looks terrible on me. My entire personalized quiz shows I am very pale, cool undertoned with blond hair so I have no idea why they sent orange gold to me. Is it because I have earthy tones chosen? I wish I could exchange the color for literally any other MUD shade.

The polish is a basic cream blue lavender color. It chipped after 2 days with a top coat.

I was very excited for the MICA kabuki brush! It has little to no bristle fall out. The brush is very soft but firm enough to blend face products well.

Aside from the odd shadow color I loved Septembers makeup box! I plan on giving my shadow away to one of my younger sisters since both have our mothers olive skin, which unfortunately skipped me.


Boxycharm September 2014

Boxycharm is my absolute favorite beauty sub box! At only $21 (shipping included) I always receive 4-5 full sized products from all kinds of brands and price ranges. The box is always an amazing value.

I apologize for the bad photos from this one. I was moving my room around again and couldn't use my regular photo location.

- tarte LipSurgence lip gloss in 'tipsy' $19

- Coastal Scents Go Palette in 'Moscow' $12.95

- NCLA Nail Lacquer in 'Model Behavior' $16

- Tarina Tarantino limited edition fleur de lash mascara in 'Black Opal' $19

- Hello by Harvey Prince fragrance 10mL $29

Total Box Value = $95.95 (Nice!)

I love love love everything in this box! They can continue to put Tarantino products in every box if they like, I absolutely love the products and packaging.

I'm also really happy with the Hello fragrance. I was actually thinking about purchasing the full size. But that price tag for a fragrance the size of a lip gloss was hard to justify. The fragrance notes are Meyer Lemon, White Grapefruit and Satsuma Mandarin. It's a delicate sweet scent.

The mascara is amazing. The bristles are evenly dispersed and thick so you can 'wiggle' the brush slightly while applying to get thick, but natural looking, lashes.

The tarte lipgloss is in clear packaging so the color applies exactly the way it looks in the tube. The formula is pretty thick and sticky but long lasting.

The NCLA polish is a black plum color and applies smoothly. But it will chip in under 24 hours without a top coat.

The product that everyone was really excited about would be the travel coastal scents palette! There were several color collections we might receive and I happened to get the 'Moscow' palette.

I have each color show in order from left to right and top to bottom. Shadows swatched dry and without a primer base.

I love many of the browns and reds, they look great with my skin tone and green eyes!






IPSY September 2014

Ipsy is extremely affordable at only $10 (shipping included) a month! You usually receive 4-5 full size or luxury sample size products ranging from skin care to makeup. The products range from name brand to drugstore.

- Hikari Matte Lipstick in 'Cabernet' $13
- Deluxe Infinity Shadow/Crease Brush $7
- Pacifica Water-Proof Liner in 'Fringe' (sample)
- Nourish Organic Moisturizing Cream Face Cleanser (1 oz sample)
- CAVIAR CC Hair Cream (0.85 oz sample)

Total Value = around $30 (samples estimated)

Hikari 'Cabernet' and Pacifica 'Fringe' swatched.

The lipstick is a really pretty dark pink. While it's matte it doesn't dry out my lips too much and is long lasting. I really like it!

And finally, a BROWN eye liner! Even brown liners show up dark on me. But it's much better than the tons of black liner samples IPSY and Birchbox have been tossing in boxes all year. It's fairly long lasting, blendable and does work fine on the waterline (although it fades after a few hours). I may purchase the full size since I really like how it can blend right into my shadows.

The duet brush works great! The bristles are soft but firm and I love that it has a crease and lid brush all in one. Great for traveling.

The face cleanser works just fine but it smells terrible. It's a nice enough organic cleanser if you can get past the Cucumber and Watercress scent.

The CC Hair product smells very nice and leaves my hair feeling very soft. It's supposed to be a 10-in-1 treatment that "provides moisture, shine, smoothness, softness, UV protection, manageability, strength, anti-breakage, heat protection and light hold." The full size is 2.5 oz at $25, so the 1 oz sample provided is very generous and worth somewhere around $10! However...I am losing my hair due to illness and it's becoming increasingly frustrating receiving hair creams in my bag (more than 3 hair creams in total). I change the quiz, I review the items..nothing has changed. After being a member for a year I highly suspect there is no real purpose to the quiz (or they rarely ever reference it) and the only reason for the reviews are to earn points.


Final Thoughts:

September was a great month for beauty subscription services! I usually only purchase Boxycharm and IPSY each month, Wantable had such a nice line up for September that I decided to un-skip and Ii'm glad that I did. Lots of products for myself, but most importantly almost half of these are being put away to go into Christmas and Birthday goody bags for some of my female family members. Ii can't wait to gift them. (:


And if you actually read all of that then you deserve some kind of reward. Like a cookie!

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

A really good supernatural murder mystery game just released this week on Steam for $20!

It's a story driven first person exploration game. You're character is trying to find a young kidnapped child before it's too late. You have a few 'gifts' that allow you to see what others cannot. You use these abilities to piece together the dark happenings in Red Creek Valley.

There was also a tentacle at the end of that trailer. I'm going to go ahead and say it...Cthulhu.


It's available right now for the PC and will be available for the PS4 in 2015. The graphics, elements and ports are extremely impressive for an Indie title. My hats off to 'The Astronauts' and 'Nordic Games' for a really interesting dark mystery.



I will update my post with a small review once I've completed the game and w-Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Update (spoiler warning): Kind of a depressing plot twist ending. It's a great game, don't get me wrong. It's just one of those 'it was all a dream' kind of games that leave you feeling sad at the end. But that's just an opinion. Check it out for yourself, It may be something you like.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition

One of my all time favorite game series and titles is finally getting a well deserved update for it's 20th Anniversary this October!

All game information can be found here.

Or if you're a member of Steam you can purchase it here. 

-Trailer from Phoenix Online Studios youtube channel.

Steam currently has the game 15% off and a free official soundtrack (the music is fantastic!) when you pre-order. (: 

em Cosmetics Day Life Palette

em Cosmetics is a makeup line by L'oreal and a youtube beauty guru named Michelle Phan.

The Day Life Palette was on sale for $49 so I decided to finally give it a try.


Knobs and Bobs:

The palette comes with 24 eye shadows, 8 lip products, 2 blushes, 2 bronzers, a double ended shadow/liner brush and pick removal tool.

The packaging is very sturdy with magnetic lid closures on both the large palette and travel palette.

Each product can be removed and placed into the small palette for on-the-go color application.


(All colors applied dry to skin without a primer.)

First in the palette is (look #1) 'girls'day out' at the top left.

This is a more everyday look for me. Since I have green eyes the red tones really make them pop and look great with my pale skin.

All of the color have a good consistency except for 'Busy Lady' found in the lower left corner. The color is lovely, but the formula comes off very chalky and I have to really press down hard or keep layering it to get it fully pigmented.

In contrast, 'grab your purse is very rich, creamy and pigmented.

The lip products are very pretty sheer berry colors.

a pink moment

first priority

busy lady

things to do

rush hour

grab your purse

sweet raisin 

berry busy

(look #2) 'coffee break' at top right.

These are very nice brown neutrals.

These are mostly warm yellow based neutrals so  I tend to not look very good in them.

All of the colors are ok and fairly pigmented. 'lottsa latte' is a very creamy and pigmented color and would look great on someone with darker skin than my own. 'beige frappe' seemed to come off chalky and I had to keep trying to build up the color to make it show up, which is odd considering it's a shimmer.

The lip colors look nice in the pan but apply very sheer. 'what's nude' is a lovely coral pink but 'morning peach' doesn't show up at all.

creamy

beige frappe

lottsa latte

biscotti

cocoa

espresso

what's nude?

morning peach

(look #3) 'weekend brunch' is a nice mix of yellow and pink toned neutrals.

I love the darkest color 'nibble'. The photo doesn't do it justice, it's more of a deep plum brown rather than black. The formula for it is very creamy and pigmented. 

I was able to swatch all colors without having to layer them.

The lip colors are sheer. 'parisian nude' was another gloss that doesn't really shop up once applied.

creme

girlie

peach gelato

ballet flats

french toast

nibble

roses

parisian nude

(look #3 'day dreaming' is a gorgeous mix of muted pinks and purples. 

I love all of the colors here and all of them apply smoothly. The only one that's really chalky is 'fantasy', a really pretty duo tone mauve with gold sheen. The black 'onyx dreams' isn't as pigmented or smooth as the other darks.

The lip color 'misty mauve' is my favorite of the bunch and the one I keep in my travel palette.

french kiss

light violet

silver lining

fantasy

storm kiss

onyx dreams

misty mauve

one more

(with primer)

Colors used in travel palette:

perfect rose (blush)

beige frappe

espresso

rush hour

things to do

grab your purse

light violet

fantasy

Blushes/Bronzers

(look #1) 'perfect rose    -blush

(look #2) 'cappuccino'    -bronzer

(look #3) 'pinched'          -bronzer/blush

(look #4) 'day dreaming'  -blush

Final Thoughts:

Is it worth the money? I personally think it was a good purchase for $49. I received a very large amount of product as well as a travel palette to transfer my favorites for easy on-the-go access. 

em cosmetic products are expensive and I don't think I would have been very happy with the original $75 price tag that came along with it. These are slightly better than drugstore brands but nowhere near as nice as MAC, Urban Decay or Lancome (another l'oreal brand). I'm very excited to see that the permanent price for the Life Palette series has been lowered to $59!

Is it a good product? Some of the eye shadows are pigmented and creamy. Very few need to be built up for their color to fully show. Most are chalky with a lot of fall out, but very pretty colors. All of them last for hours with a primed base. It's a nice collection of mostly dependable products but nothing to get overly excited about.

The packaging is sturdy/solid with a very clean design. I love the magnetic closure on both palettes! The only negativity I have experienced is fall out from shadows getting into the lip products. The only way to avoid this is to either remove the lip products and place them in another palette or be very very careful with using any of the surrounding shadows. I found it best to remove what I want to use for the day into the travel palette to avoid any mess. It's also good to have them around if you need to touch up during the day.

I will be trying a few more em products and will be sure to write up my experiences with them once they arrive in the mail.

*Is it just me or is there a significant lack of sentence capitalization anywhere on the em cosmetics site? It's driving me crazy. Maybe it has to do with the brands name theme? Even this palette's product names were all lower case. I would be interested in learning what others think or know about this. ^^ 

Coastal Scents 28 Neutral Palette

I've done some cleaning up and throwing away the last bits of expired eye shadows. I didn't know eye shadows expire but it makes perfect sense. It's made using ingredients and those ingredients will go bad over time.

So it was time to say goodbye to a few shadows as well as some lipsticks, gloss and misc. face stuffs.

I kept thinking about things that could give me the best bang for my buck and provide good quality. Coastal Scents immediately came to mind and I decided to finally give their products a try. They're also cruelty free, which is always a good thing with cosmetic companies.


The Knobs and Bobs:

Since I prefer a more neutral or natural look I decided that the 28 Neutral Palette would suite me best.

They even threw in four dime sized samples! I don't really wear color but the blues would look gorgeous during summer vacation or a beach/trip to the coast.


I waited until a sale came up and purchased all of this for only $9.95!

Look at all those lovely neutrals!

The only oddball color looks like that one bright pink to the left of the palette.

For the price many of these are very nice quality. The pans are slightly larger than a quarter.

I love how everything is together in one palette. I would strongly recommend a base or primer before applying though.



Swatches:

I swatched every two columns from right to left. The shadows have no names (other than the samples)...so I'll improvise! Colors are shown swatched dry with no primer or base.

Clockwise from the brown~

Thunderous- Dark olive brown
Reef Blue- Light aqua
Cloud White- Creamy off white
Paris Green- Dark aqua green

Aside from the white, the shadows are a little chalky. But the colors are very nice and different from what I usually get.







Swatches shown from top to bottom and right to left:

Dark Chaco- Dark chocolate brown (shimmer)
Fawn- Light yellow based brown (matte)
Willow- Dark brown (shimmer)
Noir- Gray/Black with red glitter specs (shimmer)
Dusty- Very light brown cream (matte)
Sahara- Yellow khaki (matte)
Brisket- Light brick brown (matte)
Oak- Milk chocolate brown (matte)

My favorite color range!

Rosemary- Dark rose pink (shimmer)
Lantern- Light orange gold (matte)
Postcard- Bright box brown (shimmer)
Antique- Sable cream (matte)
Blushing- dusty mauve pink (matte)
Caramel- Muted gold cream (matte)
Cobbler- Rich gold brown (shimmer)
Pebble- Muted dark lilac (matte)

Most of the light colors don't show up against my skin. The formula for the light colors is hard to see, most appear to have a sheen to them.

Corduroy- Soft pink brown (matte)
Oh My!- Bright cool pink (matte)
Teddy- Light yellow brown (matte)
Fossil- Earthy brown (matte)
Twine- Eggshell white
Newsprint- gray off white
Bikini- Sandy white
Oatmeal- brown off white

Peachy Keen- Light peach (shimmer)
Marble- Muted stone white
Barely- Light skin toned (shimmer)
Marsh Mellow- Chalk white

Final Thoughts:

I'm very pleased with this palette! Some very nice colors that are a step up from drugstore brands for a fraction of the cost. Some of them aren't as pigmented and require a few extra swipes, but they show up just fine with a primer or shadow base underneath. 

I don't see the need to purhcase anymore eye shadows so my original goal has been met. hopefully these will last me a good while.

If anyone is interested in their cosmetics line they also carry many other products and shadow/blush palettes. If you are interested in more information on the palettes there are many reviews online and youtube that may be helpful.

Drugstore Gems

Due to my pale and sensitive skin I usually steer clear of drugstore cosmetics or face products. They either never have my shade or the product irritates my face. But I've been noticing a rise in natural, organic or sensitive conscious brands appearing in local CVS and Walgreens around town. So I thought I would try a few things out.

Also lipstick. Because I love me some good lipstick...especially when it's on sale.


The Knobs and Bobs

I've had my eye on the 'Simple' brand for a few months. I have their facial cleansing wipes and absolutely love them! So I gave their makeup remover and moisturizer a try.

Both products work great!

Simple Protecting Light Moisturizer with SPF 15 is a wonderful facial product that I will be purchasing again. It goes on smooth and light, not oil build up or strong scent. The only thing I could faintly smell was light sunscreen and since I burn easily I didn't mind that at all. After a month of use I have not experienced any breakouts or irritation.

Simple Eye Make-Up Remover is effective and gentle. It removes all makeup without irritating my eyes! It's advertised right on the bottle that it can remove waterproof mascara and it actually does a really decent job at it. I will be purchasing again once this bottle is empty.

If you love those little egg shaped eos (evolution of smooth) lip balms then you might like their shaving cream.

eos is a fun brand with really neat packaging and decent products. I hate shaving my legs in the shower, it's a hassle. So I've been looking for a good dry shaving cream. This product claims on the bottle that it can be used wet or dry and I've heard some good things about it, so decided to give it a try.

It actually can be used dry but I found that having a damp rag and using a little water helps. All shaving creams tend to leave my legs dry irritated but not problems with this one. It smells very fresh and left my legs feeling smooth , soft and moisturized.


And last, but certainly not least, the lipstick.

Rimmel London has a fairly new line of 'moisture renew' lipstick. Since there was a buy 1 get 2nd 50% off I decided to try a few. It's getting close to fall so I chose a few neutral or slightly darker colors.

The formula is very soft and creamy. They're not as moisturizing as a lip balm and don't really stay on longer than an hour, but for less than $6 they were a pretty good buy.

My natural lips are already pretty pigmented so I've been very fortunate when it comes to using dark or neutral colors. The only colors I can't seem to pull off are very light pinks and nudes. So I was very happy that Rimmel had two darker/pinkish nudes that I could actually pull off without washing my lips out.

From top to bottom:

Dusty Rose - Brown pink with slight shimmer (slight shimmer)
To Nude or Not to Nude? - Neutral pink (frost)
Latino - bright berry pink (shimmer)
Let's Get Naked - Peachy nude cream (no shimmer)

All colors are gorgeous and would compliment any skin tone. All colors listed are moisturizing. I experienced very little dryness or peeling after wearing them.



I love the colors and formula of this line! Can't wait to grab a few more while they're on sale.

Eldemore September Sneak Peek!

A new Bazaar species is coming to eldemore.com this September!

This new pet will be exclusively available every other month and/or on special occasions. (: