Product Reviews

Product Spotlight: Wander Beauty Wanderess Chill Eyeshadow Palette

January 2nd, 2019 by Karen 9 Comments

Ya know, with a new eyeshadow palette coming out every five seconds, you’d think that finding an awesome cool-toned palette would be easy, but noooooooo. It’s not, and not just because warm-toned orange-y browns have basically ruled the school for the last few years. I’m a warm-toned gal who just so happens to love wearing cool shades, but the cool-toned palettes I come across usually look too gray and weird on me, like I just smeared mud all over my eyes with no rhyme or reason.

Enter the endlessly wearable six-pan Wander Beauty Wanderess Chill Palette ($25 at Sephora), which is just cool enough to work on warm or cool undertones (yay!), and it’s loaded with lovely pink, taupe, purple and brown shades.

So mo weird gray tones in sight.

wander beauty wanderess chill swatches — When cool-toned palette dreams come true…

From Sephora.com:

What it is: An eye palette with six intensely pigmented cool-toned shadows in complementary shades and finishes.

Highlighted Ingredients:
– Mango Seed Butter: Rich in vitamins C and A to revitalize skin and reduce the appearance of fine lines.
– Rose Extract: Helps minimize redness.
– Vitamin E: Supports skin healing, protects skin against free radicals, and supports skin’s natural moisture barrier.

Ingredient Callouts: Free of sulfates SLS and SLES, parabens, phthalates, mineral oil, and contains less than one percent synthetic fragrances. This product is also cruelty-free.

What Else You Need to Know: Get gorgeous on the go while keeping it chill. Wander Beauty’s intensely-saturated shadows are enriched with nourishing ingredients to give a buttery swipe of color that lasts all day. This cool mix of luxe metallic, silky satin, and velvety matte eyeshadows puts infinite looks in the palm of your hand. Each luxurious shade is enriched with mango seed butter and rose extract to hydrate and protect the delicate eye area. These shades are crease-proof, fade-proof, and deliver intense payoff.

This Palette Contains:
– 6 x 0.07 oz/ 2.2 g Eyeshadows in Snowbird (satin light pink), Flushed (foil pinky purple), Free Style (matte cool nude), Gondola (satin cool taupe), Après Ski (metallic deep plum), Cocoa (satin cool brown)

I wore it pretty much every time I wore makeup through the month of December because it’s one of those “just a few swipes of color” situations. I usually do the matte in the crease, then one of the mid-toned shimmers on my lids, and then a sheer smidgen of the lightest shade on my brow bone and in the inner corners.

The formula feels a lot like Urban Decay’s, so it’s soft and easy to blend, but the colors are generally a little less pigmented and/or shimmery.

Put another way, if UD is a punk rock princess who goes hawd, Wander Beauty just wants to chill.

FYI, like with Urban Decay shadows, wayward bits of powder will travel into adjacent pans, since the powder is on the fluffier side, but I don’t really mind because there’s almost zero fallout on my face. #priorities

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Product Spotlight: Honest Beauty Lip Crayon Lush Sheers

December 28th, 2018 by Karen 8 Comments

honest beauty lip crayon lush sheer swatches — Wear ’em, carry ’em, love ’em.

Like everything I’ve tried from the recently revamped Honest Beauty line, these twist-up sheer lip crayons bring it. There are eight shades in the Lip Crayon Lush Sheers line, each an affordable $12.99. They don’t have any funky flavors or scents, and they feel smooth, slick and moisturizing on my kisser. Best of all, they pack a preternatural amount of pigment — so much pigment that I can actually see the difference between the colors when I wear them (who’da thunk it?). They’re like the Neutrogena Color Sticks or the Clinique Chubby Sticks, but much more pigmented. Recommended!

I’m smitten with Sheer Raspberry and Sheer Chestnut…

honest beauty sheer raspberry — Sheer Raspberry

honest beauty sheer chestnut — Sheer Chestnut

Buuuuuut, as good as they are, if we look at them solely from an apocalyptic perspective (Why? ‘Cause I just watched Bird Box on Netflix.), they’d be lower on the “important things” totem pole than, say, antibiotics, peanut butter, tampons or weapons.

For instance, would I bother to grab one if I were on a scouting supply run in an abandoned Target? No. But if we were five years into the apocalypse, and I were miraculously still around and happened to stumble upon a stash of Lush Sheers on a cobweb-covered shelf, I’d indubitably contemplate the following:

“Geez, I hope one of these is Raspberry or Chestnut!”
“Remember how sheer lipsticks not showing up on pigmented lips was a big problem? DAMN, THOSE WERE GOOD TIMES.”
“Big surprise, my lips are hella dry right now.”

Then, I’d throw every last Lip Sheer into my cart, because I’d have to share them with the other survivors at base camp (OBVI). Hopefully I wouldn’t get eaten on the way back by the zombies/plague/evil whispering spirits that will have taken over.

YEAH. In Bird Box, the bad guys are evil whispering spirits, which, if you look directly at them, cause you to hallucinate and immediately kill yourself.

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Product Spotlight: Honest Beauty Luminizing Glow Powder

December 26th, 2018 by Karen 16 Comments

Three words: Hourglass. Ambient. Dupe.

Yeah, I went there. I totally did.

These Luminizing Glow Powders by Honest Beauty… I would bet my tabby’s stripes that the team behind them had the Hourglass Ambients firmly in mind, because they look and feel just like ’em. They have that same lovely low-key luminosity — same effect that you can kindasorta tell is there if you look really, really closely — and the powder grains are just fine, fine, fine.

Like Michael B. Jordan fine.

FOINE.

Even better, the pans are pretty big (0.35 ounces), and they’re only $19.99 each, but the bad news is that they aren’t available in as many colors as the Hourglass Ambients. These only come in two shades… The lighter one is Midnight Reflection, a pale peachy beige reminiscent of Hourglass Incandescent Light (you could say that it’s a touch less pigmented, but they’re still very similar). I use it as an inner corner highlight, a brow bone highlight, and, on the rare occasions when I wear powder under my eyes, as a setting powder for under-eye concealer. It’s b-o-m-b on all those fronts.

Oh, sure, you can also wear it as a cheekbone highlight, of course, and I’ve tried it, but I think it’s just a tad too light on my skin to do it often. But if you’re lighter than I am, you could totally rock it that way, no problem.

honest beauty luminizing glow powder 2 — Dusk Reflection and Midnight Reflection in action.

The darker shade, a.k.a “my jammy-jam-jam,” is Dusk Reflection. It’s a warm, peachy golden tan — like a slightly deeper version of Hourglass Radiant Light — and I like to work it by sweeping it onto my cheeks as a combo blush/bronzer, and then using it in my crease as a shadow.

honest beauty luminizing glow powder swatches — I use Dusk Reflection as a blush/bronzer on my cheeks and as a shadow in the crease, and Midnight Reflection as an inner corner and brow bone highlight.

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Fresh Friday: A Teen Runs This New Beauty Brand That Takes a Stand Against Bullying

December 21st, 2018 by Karen 8 Comments

MBB’s “Fresh Friday” series takes a look at new beauty brands (and venerable O.G. brands that are new to me). Let’s discover new makeup!

Guys, do you remember what you were doing at 15…? I’ll tell ya, I certainly wasn’t running my own makeup line, LOL! Say hi to Raazika Cosmetics, a new cruelty-free indie line founded by high school student Khadija Ikram, who started the brand fueled by her passion for makeup and her desire to help her community. The brand donates a portion of all proceeds to anti-bullying campaigns.

Yeah, at 15 years old, I was marching around a football field with a flute in a band uniform while simultaneously plotting ways to up my GPA… I wasn’t starting my own business (although I wish I had!).

In Arabic, Raazika means “one who provides for others,” and the line is cruelty-free, fragrance-free and Halal-certified, meaning that the ingredients are permitted within Islamic or sharia law (you can read more about it here if you’re curious), and they’re available now online. The brand is still quite small and very new.

Within the line, there are full-coverage foundations ($36 each), a couple of contour kits ($49 each), vegan brushes ($16-$30 each), a sprinkling of eye makeup (there’s a mascara and a liner), liquid lipsticks ($27 each) and lip pencils ($17 each), so it’s not Fenty big, but it’s not a teeny, tiny product range either.

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Product Spotlight: The $6 Maybelline Lasting Drama Matte Eyeliner in Jade Olive

December 20th, 2018 by Karen 17 Comments

maybelline jade olive — Your lashlines will thank ya (and so will your wallet)

You know what they say: “Woman cannot live off Chanel Mat Taupe alone!” (Someone must say that, right?)

OK, well…technically, I could, but where’s the fun in that? 🙂 Who wants to wear the same taupe liner day in, day out? Bluh. I’m always open to new alternatives to black eyeliner for tightlining because I like the softer, less aggressive look, and the older I get, the more I prefer lining with colors other than basic black.

That, my friend, brings me to the topic of a treasure I recently discovered from Maybelline called Jade Olive, which is only (drumroll, please) six bucks! (officially, $5.99) It’s a twist-up, long-wearing waterproof matte khaki pencil.

I don’t know if it’s a gel liner, because it’s soft enough to be one… It almost feels like a gel because of the way it melts and glides across the skin, but it doesn’t look as harsh and flat as some matte gel liners do.

It also doesn’t make my skin feel dry or tight like some gels have in the past, so the jury’s still out on that… Either way, it’s a creamy, smudgy, long-wearing kohl that sets like *that*.

The rich, true khaki green color is brighter and more intense than something like Chanel Mat Taupe, but it’s not as dark as MAC Coffee. It’s a nice in-between tightlining shade, and I think my brown eyes look more chocolaty when I wear it.

maybelline jade olive 2 — Could I look any more like a judge-y piano teacher? Wearing Wander Beauty Nude Illusion Foundation in Tan and Honest Beauty Raspberry Lip Crayon, BTW.

I wore Jade Olive the other day when I took pics for the Wander Beauty foundation review, and MBB reader Roma (what’s up, Roma?) said in the comments that she immediately noticed the wide-eyed effect, which made me so, so happy because, well…that’s exactly what I was going for when I lined my lash and water lines with this bad gal.

Just goes to show how transformative a little liner can be!

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