Beauty and Fashion Tech

Callas Light Up Makeup Base

Callas Cosmetics is a French Company that has cosmetics designed in Japan and France, but made in Korea. I gave a bunch of their products a try and was quite impressed.

Callas Light Up Makeup Base is a rather interesting item because it can work both as a foundation or as a primer. The Callas base provides moisture and UV skin protection and is available in a couple of color correcting shades, plus in the shade Milk, which is a light natural tint. The base feels great and when used as a primer, works quite well as a base for further makeup.

But the milk shade of the base also gives decent light coverage–similar to a sheer tinted moisturizer. So while it can be worn as a primer, I found that it also was perfect alone for some moisturizing, sheer coverage. My favorite use has been as a foundation on my upper face, and as a base for mineral makeup on my lower face where I have some redness and pigmentation.

I linked to the order page from Amazon.com, but I actually ordered mine from Yesstyle, which is my favorite Japanese and Korean fashion, beauty, and accessories site. You can also view Callas items at Callas.com.

For more on Callas Cosmetics and YesStyle see my previous Callas eye shadow post.

By Carleenp Posted in Face Products, Makeup, Makeup Primer | 2 Comments

M.A.C. Cosmetics New View Collection

M.A.C. has a great new collection out that I find very useful. So I declare this a must have product!

M.A.C. New View is a collection of mineralized baked skin finish powders for finish, contour, and highlight. M.A.C. describes New View as follows:

Natural and Shimmer. The split personality of powder now, in NewView combinations with superfine seracite and talc base to sheerly and subtly perfect skin with dimensionality and mineralized starshine. The planes of the face, the contours of the body, made dazzling with a one-two sweep. Mineralize Skinfinish duos are state-of-the-art simplicity, high-resolution finish.

Each compact contains two forms of SkinFinish—one fairly matte and one shimmery. The beauty of this is that you can use the matte to contour or generally finish your makeup, and use the shimmer for highlight. Or you can mix them together for a luminizing effect.

I tried one in light and found that it was perfect on my pale skin. There was just a hint of color from the matte to add contour and the shimmer was light and not overwhelming.

Contouring and highlighting with my complexion has always been difficult. Most products have too much color and end up looking like bronzer of blush. But New View worked perfectly. So pale girls take note! This one works quite well! This will easily become a staple item in my makeup bag.

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By Carleenp Posted in Bronzers, Face Products, Makeup, Palettes and Collections | No Comments

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Foundation, Concealer, and Powder

A few weeks ago, I reviewed a number of products from the Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Makeup line. This new line of cosmetics inspired by Carmindy of the show What Not to Wear, and author of the book The Five Minute Face, impressed me so much that I went back for more! I am pleased to say that Sally Hansen Natural Beauty foundation, concealer, and translucent powder all were of excellent quality.

Sally Hansen Your Skin Makeup is a silky smooth foundation with medium coverage. This makeup simply looks great. From the packaging in a glass bottle, to the smooth and blendable texture, it seems much more expensive than it is. I did find that it takes a minute though to blend in and settle, and I like it best when used in conjunction with a primer (this is true of most foundations for me though). Apply it and let it rest for a minute, and then apply your powder. The effect is quite nice. For fair skinned women, the lightest shade is very light– something I also appreciated. I would like to see a few more shades come out in this though.

Fast Fix Concealer is a nice creamy concealer, packaged how I like it–in a pot. The pot allows for good access to apply it with either fingers or your own brush. It is light and blends well, yet provide surprisingly good coverage for its light texture.

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Fast Fix Concealer

Finally, the Natural Beauty Truly Translucent Loose Powder is a nice translucent powder for setting the makeup. The powder itself is lovely, and like just about everything in this line, it seems more expensive than it is, but I do have a gripe with the packaging. This one comes with a powder sponge in the cap that blocks most of the space for the powder to be shaken into the top of the container. The result is that it is harder to use your own brush with this one, not at least without risking a bit of a mess, and I don’t care for the sponge.

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Loose Powder

I also tried out the Sally Hansen Natural Shine Lipgloss , which is wonderful stuff. For more on that see my review at Girl Gloss!The Sally Hansen Natural Beauty line remains impressive. You can find it at various drugstores and at ULTA Beauty.

By Carleenp Posted in Concealer, Face Products, Magazines | 13 Comments

Review: New Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Cosmetics Inspired by Carmindy

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty has released a wonderful full line of cosmetics “inspired by” Carmindy from TLC’s show What Not to Wear. I am a big Carmindy fan and I liked her book, The Five Minute Face (Read Review). I also have been pretty impressed with Sally Hansen as of late. The new Sally Hansen Natural Beauty line focuses on natural ingredients and is paraben free.

When I saw the line at CVS, I bought a number of items to try. I was left highly impressed and am willing to bet that several items from this line will make my year end best of 2008 list (Read the 2007 list)!

The Sally Hansen Natural Beauty line includes foundation and powder, but I have so many unfinished items of those, I didn’t buy any. Instead, I got the primer, eye shadow base, an eye shadow trio, cream blush, lipstick, and a mascara. The look I created with the products and each item is covered below. All items are worn in the photo below. I am also wearing Laura Mercier Oil Free Foundation (Read Review), Laura Mercier translucent powder, and M.A.C. dual edged eye pencil in a blue/gray shade from the Heatherette collection.

The Natural Beauty Luminizing Face Primer is a really nice silicon based primer. It has a lighter feel than the cult classic Smashbox Photofinsh (Read Review), yet worked just as well. I found that it primed my skin quite well in preparation for foundation by leaving it smooth and silky. The luminizing properties are also a welcome addition. At around $10, this primer is an incredible value, and I am not aware of any other comparably priced primers of this quality. Revlon has a decent primer, but it does not provide the perfectly nice skin surface that the Sally Hansen product does.

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Fast Fix Eyeshadow Base is another great value product. There are not a lot of drugstore shadow bases out there and this one is quite lovely. It has a light, easy to spread cream texture, that feels like it must have a touch of silicon in it. I found that it made my shadow look smooth and crease free all evening. This will become a staple product for me.

The cream blush is another great item in Salley Hansen’s new line. It is silky smooth, and Bloom, the shade that I purchased, has a nice rosy color. It is pretty well pigmented and builds pretty well, so those with darker skin can likely wear it just fine. At the same time, it also blends well, so I could wear it well with my pale skin as long as I applied with with a light and well blended touch.

Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Cosmetics Carmindy

The Natural Beauty Instant Definition Eye Shadow Palette comes in basic and fairly neutral color sets. I decided to go for the Ocean Eye Palette, a gray/navy combo, because I seem to have acquired way too much brown shadow. The shadow is decently pigmented, blended fine, and lasted well. I did not have any creasing issues. It seemed like a standard decent quality shadow to me with nothing really outstanding, but nothing wrong with it either.

The Natural Beauty Lift & Define Mascara was nothing special for me. The brush is small (I tend to like that), but has rather wide spaces between the bristles, which I think can make things clump easier. It went on OK, and looked OK. I don’t think it would be my first choice in mascara, but it wasn’t bad either.

Finally, I loved the Color Comfort Lip Color! Perfect Pink, Rose Parfait, turned out to be perhaps one of the best pink shades I have found in some time. For a full review of it, head on over to my post at Girl Gloss!

The bottom line: The Sally Hansen Natural Beauty Cosmetics line is a welcome addition to the available drugstore makeup choices. I particularly recommend the primer and shadow base. These items are comparable to, or perhaps even better than, other much more expensive products. The rest of the line is quite nice as well. Well done Sally Hansen!

Look for the new Sally Hansen Natural Beauty at drugstore and at ULTA Beauty.

By Carleenp Posted in Blush, Celebrity Looks, Collection Looks, Concealer, Eyeshadow, Face Products, Lip Products, Makeup Primer, Mascara, Palettes and Collections | 21 Comments

Beauty Addicts Glimmer Sheers

Beauty Addicts Glimmer Sheers are fun new products. Each Duo contains a “glimmer,” which is a soft-focus highlighter, perfect for adding to the brow bone or cheek bone. The other side contains the “sheer,” clear gel luminizer. The gel contains jojoba oil, giving it a moisturizing and conditioning element. It can also be used on eyes or cheeks, but I like it best as a light gloss over lipstick.

The Duos come in four different shade, and I found the champagne shade to be a beautiful highlighter that works well with the current spring collections. Each Duo is $30.

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By Carleenp Posted in Eyeshadow, Face Products, Lip Products, Palettes and Collections | 2 Comments

M.A.C. Cosmetics Strobe Liquid Lotion and Cream

The M.A.C. Strobe Collection consists of a number of tinted lip conditioners (read Girl Gloss Review), a re-release of M.A.C.’s Strobe Cream, and a new Strobe Lotion Liquid.

I tried M.A.C. Strobe Cream years back and found that it broke me out something terrible. I heard similar reports from a good number of other women as well. I can’t speak for the new version because I did not try it, but looking at an ingredient list at Spektra.net, I see a number of suspect ingredients, such as Glyceryl Stearate SE, Steareth 10, C13-14 Isoparaffin, and Propylene. So I plan to just avoid trying that one again. I did, however, try the new lotion.

The ingredient list for the lotion is not overly scary, but I did notice that it contains Hexylene Glycol, which is on some lists as a moderate risk for causing acne. It also has Bismuth, which is an irritant for some people, although I have never had an negative reactions to it.

The Strobe lotion is very light. This is quite a contrast to the cream, which I remember as being particularly thick. It provides a nice luminizing effect, that can add radiance to your look as long as you don’t cover it up with a bunch of foundation. I like the liquid for just a bit of cheek highlighting when I am only wearing powder mineral makeup on my lower face. I have not broken out from it, but I also have not used it on my entire face and have been restricting it to areas where I don’t typically get acne.

If you like illuminating lotions, you might want to check this one out. I does have a very nice effect.

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