bareMinerals Goodies: a blush, shadow, liner, and lipgloss, oh my!

My mom gave me a little kit full of bareMinerals goodies and I was so excited to try some stuff out from this brand! I love their pressed eyeshadows so was eager to try out some different products. This kit came with a blush, an eyeshadow, an eyeliner, and a lipgloss.

The eyeliner is called the 'Round the Clock 7PM Intense Cream-Glide Eyeliner waterproof.' This liner is a warm chocolate brown and has a very creamy consistency. I find it does have some nice staying power and is easy to apply, though I still find myself reaching for my brown Smashbox always sharp liner when I'm in the mood for brown...more on that later!  The lipgloss is called the 'Marvelous Moxie' lipgloss in 'Smarty Pants.' It is a nude peach color with gold shimmer through out. I LOVE this lipgloss. It smells minty and gives a plumping, tingling sensation to the lips. I feel like it makes your lips look luscious and supple! 

Here are the eyeliner and lipgloss swatched next to other popular brands. The eyeliner is much warmer and redder compared to the Smashbox always sharp brown eyeliner and Urban Decay's 'Demolition.' It has a similar consistency but I definitely prefer the deeper toned browns.  The lipgloss is actually really unique compared to other lipglosses I thought would be similar. It is peachier and more nude than NARS Orgasm and MAC Nymphette and more peachy and less sparkly than Stila's Apricot. 

The two loose products included were a blush and an eyeshadow and are the first loose powder products I have ever tried!

The products come housed in little plastic pots with screw on caps. 

The eyeshadow is in the color 'Sex Kitten' and the blush is in the color 'Sunkissed.' The instructions for the eyeshadow are to just pick up some product that has come through the sifter and tap off excess then begin applying to the eye. The blush instructions are to open the sifter, pour some product into the cap and swirl your blush brush into the product until it is all deposited into the brush. Then buff it onto your cheeks. 

Kitten is a medium brown color with golden sparkle. Sunkissed is a nude, warm peach shade.  Here's how I wore 'Sex Kitten' eyeshadow on my eyes:

I have Urban Decay's 'Combust' eyeshadow in my crease and then 'Sex Kitten' blended all over my lid and into the crease. I thought this shadow created a warm, toned-down, brown smokey eye.

You can see how nice the blush looks in the photo above! I found it easy to blend and very natural looking. It reminded me a lot of MAC Melba blush.

Overall I really enjoy these bareMinerals products! The blush was definitely my favorite from the bunch.

What are your favorite bareMinerals products?
My review of bareMinerals quad in 'The Truth' HERE!
My review of bareMinerals quad in 'The Happy Place'

xxSJ

What a Steal! The Sephora Lash Stash To Go

Mascara lovers out there, this is the deal for you! Sephora came out with their yearly lash stash and it is quite the steal. For $25 you get 5 deluxe sample sizes of some of the best selling mascaras Sephora has to offer in addition to a coupon to get a full-size of your favorite one! That's pretty cool considering the Lancome Hypnose Drama (a deluxe sample included in this stash!) retails for $27.

Inside the little pink package you will find a short description of each mascara you get to try. The mint colored square on the left is the coupon, redeemable for a full-size mascara. There doesn't seem to be an expiration date on it so you can take your time trying out the mascaras.  I wouldn't wait tooooo long though, as you run the risk of the mascara you want to get full-sized being no longer being available.

Slide open the drawer and here are the little mascaras tucked away inside!
You get a deluxe sample of Tarte Lights Camera Lashes, Too-Faced Better than Sex, Lancome Hypnose-Drama, Blinc Mascara, and BareMinerals Lash Domination.

These minis may seem pretty small but you can definitely get at least a month's worth of wear out of each of these samples. Since I'm hoarding makeup knowing I'm about to be heading off to grad school and, thus, poorer than dirt, I thought the lash stash would be a great way for me to stock up on mascaras and to keep me excited trying all the different ones! And of course I'll be able to get my favorite one in the full-size in the future :)

This little lash stash is a great deal and a great way to try out some new stuff! This can be purchased online at Sephora.com or in stores. The coupon has to be redeemed in a free-standing Sephora store.

xxSJ

bareMinerals Ready 4.0 Eyeshadow in 'The Truth'

Today's review is of an eyeshadow quad by bareMinerals, a brand I have had very little exposure to and was excited to check out.  I mainly purchased this eyeshadow quad because one of my favorite beauty girls on youtube, MakeupbyTiffanyD, recommended it and she is always spot on with her eyeshadow recommendations.

The envelope style packaging is super unique! It has NOTHING to do with the shadow but I like it, along with the 'Ready' written when you open it up. So definitive!

The compact is pretty sizable and is made of matte, black, rubberized packaging similar to NARS. Pro: It looks super sleek and expensive. Con: It gets dirty so fast! It was already kind of dirty when I took it out of the sleeve for the first time. 

Oh, hello! Open up the compact and there's a nice big mirror inside! Love it! The eyeshadows aren't huge (about the size of a nickel), and honestly this compact could have been a lot smaller given their size. This compact also comes with the dreaded sponge tip applicator which is just wasted space in my opinion. 

Here are the shadows. This palette is very gray and cool-toned which is why I purchased it. I've recently come to find that I love gray toned neutrals as opposed to brown and tan neutrals for my skintone. They are really easy to transition from day to night.

Serendipitous is a champagne highlight color with a satin finish. Magnetism is a perfect taupe with a buttery satin finish. Fate is a cool toned brown with the least sheen of all the colors. Apropos is a purplish gray that has silver flecks in it. These silver pieces do not transfer to the lid, however.

These shadows are all so buttery soft and they blend like a dream. So far, I'm in love. The one interesting thing I would say is that the colors swatch far warmer than they look in the pan. This concerned me at first because the mix of warm and cool tones I thought may look a bit muddy on the lid. However, the shadows manage to still look beautiful.

The bareMinerals 4.0 eyeshadow quads are $30 for 5g of product. That breaks down to 1.25g per shadow which is really close to a standard eyeshadow size (MAC Eyeshadows are 1.5g of product) so I think the $30 price tag is fair and actually a bit inexpensive considering the quality of the shadows! 

I don't know if I'll be purchasing other quads from bareMinerals as none of the other colors jumped out at me, but I definitely think this quad will be a staple in my collection!

What do you think of bareMinerals?

xxSJ

Review: bareMinerals Ready Illuminating Touch Up Veil in 'Translucent'

Ehhhhhhhhhh....I'm conflicted. Today's review is of a bareMinerals product and I honestly am feeling wishy washy about it right now. Lemme tell you why! The product is the Ready Illuminating Touch Up Veil in the color Translucent:

This little compact comes in a mirrored case. Its pretty, but not my favorite since the packaging gets streaked and dirty so quickly.

Well hello to you too! The compact comes with a little powder puff (at the right side of this picture). Since this is a touch up powder, it is assumed this is meant to bring with you and touch up on the go, so the powder puff would be important for application purposes. I'm all for no fuss, so I don't want to bring a little brush with me on the go! Unfortunately the little puff is not soft and kind of a throwaway for me...

Here's the powder. This is supposed to be a translucent veil, meaning it should be basically see through on the skin. I thought I could use this to touch up my t-zone (where I tend to sweat the most and get oily through the day/evening).

The powder is soft and finely milled, however I find it to be rather blotchy when swatched and applied  to the skin. In fact, when I applied this to the skin, it is also not translucent but rather shows up white. After vigorous blending, I realized that this powder blended nicely and kind of matted out my skin in a lovely way, but it left behind sparkles! Looking at the powder more carefully I noticed that when you break through the top layer of powder there are big sparkles throughout this product.

Alright...I get it. It's an illuminator so this isn't an all over touch up powder. Trying to be flexible, I used this to touch up my cheekbones, chin, and my nose. It did nicely to mattify those areas, BUT it completely took the color out of my face as the powder is kind of difficult to apply with a light hand. This product also has quite a strong scent to it, kind of like a perfume and I could smell it for a while after application.

All in all, I'm frustrated and a little confused. I feel like this could be a nice product but maybe I haven't figured out the best way to use it for me.  For now, it didn't really serve a purpose for me so I don't think I'll be getting much, if any, use out of it.