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5 Beauty Products to Try This Summer

It is important to update your beauty arsenal as you make the transition from cool weather to warm weather. Just as you have to fight the cold winter air that dries out  hair and skin, you must adjust your beauty routine to stand up to heat and humidity. Ideally, beauty products should give way to lighter formulas that work well with feminine dresses and light summer outfits. Before the warm air of summer hits, consider five beauty products to try this summer that will keep you looking and feeling beautiful.

1. Body Bronzer or Illuminator

Body bronzer differs from sunless tanner because it only lasts until you wash it off. The newest body bronzers stay on well, even with heat and humidity, and there is less chance of streaking in comparison to sunless tanners. Body bronzer comes in liquid form and you simply smooth it on in the morning, wash your hands, and enjoy looking healthy and bronzed. Keep in mind that most don't contain sunscreen and thus you will have to apply that separately.

We love NARS Laguna Body Illuminator for a sexy sheen that won’t rub off on your clothes.

NARS Laguna Body

2. Lip Butters

While not a written rule, the standard thing thing to do is to swap out pigmented lipsticks for sheer varieties or lip gloss during the summer months. An excellent compromise is to try lip butters. They are relatively new and moisturize while adding a light wash of color. Lip butters come in all shades, from pink to mauve. They are an excellent alternative to lipstick for summertime.

Try MAC tinted Lip Conditioners for moisturizing shine with a punch of pigment.

MAC tinted lip conditioners

3. Dry Shampoo

Dry shampoo is a must-have item for summer. That is especially the case for those that live in a warmer climate. Dry shampoo is great year-round as it allows you to shampoo less often, and that keeps the hair from drying out. In the summer, it has the added benefit of keeping your locks from becoming limp and greasy due to humidity. Use dry shampoo to add volume to your hair and soak up grease, even if you shampoo daily. It's easy to use. Just spray on your roots, rub it in, and brush it through the hair.

Oscar Blandi Dry Shampoo is a perennial favorite.

Oscar Blandi Dry Shampoo

4. Highlighter

Powder or cream highlighter works well along side blush but can also replace it. As you probably want to lighten your makeup for summer, consider swapping out blush for a shimmery highlighter. It highlights areas of your face, such as the tops of your cheekbones and also your brow bone, in a natural way that does not impart much in the way of color. Adding shine helps your skin to look dewy and natural. Typically highlighters come in a shimmery white or cream color as they don't add much color. But, there are highlighters with more of a light pink tone or a light tan color.

Vincent Longo Water Canvas is a new highlighter that is perfect for summer.

Vincent Longo Water Canvas

5. Color Stick

An all over color stick can replace blush, eye shadow and lipstick. They are small and easy to throw in your bag. Color sticks are perfect for a day out in the sun. There are a variety of shades of all over color sticks, from pink to light bronze. Sweep it on your eyelids, dot it on your cheekbones, swipe it on like lipstick, and you are ready to go!

Our favorite is the cult classic NARS Multiple sticks.

NARS Multiple

With these staples, you will be ready for the rest of summer!

Disclosures: Beauty and Fashion Tech at times reviews products provided by a representative of the company. When we do so, we specifically state so. We also use affiliate links. For more, please see the disclosure page

MAC Heavenly Creature Swatches and Review

The MAC Heavenly Creature Collection features a number of mineralize products, along with skin care. If you have never used MAC Volcanic Ash Exfoliator before, or if you need a refill, grab it now! It is jet black and a bit messy, but boy does it rock as an exfoliator! I use it in the shower to take care of any mess.

The mineralize products I received are pretty nice, and I decided to do a video of them as well as swatching them for the blog. The video shows a bit about each product and then close ups of the swatches both inside and outside in sunlight.

Below are swatches of MAC Heavenly Creature Mineralize Skinfinish in Lightyear, Mineralize blush in Supernova, and Bright Moon and Earthly shadows. I like the Bright Moon shadow quite a bit.

MAC Heavenly Creature Eye Shadow Swatches

Here are swatches of the Heavenly Creature Venus and FireSign lipsticks. These both are nice utility shades that would work for many people. They also have matching cremesheen glass shades.

MAC Heavenly Creature Lipstick Swatches

Here is a lip swatch of the Fire Sign lipstick with Galaxy Rose cremesheen glass. I love this combination!

MAC Heavenly Creatures Look

Finally, here is my video of the MAC Heavenly Creature Collection filmed while I made swatches. There are closeups of the swatches at the end of the video.

This collection is on counter now!

Disclosure: This review is based on products provided to me by MAC Cosmetics.

Disclosures: Beauty and Fashion Tech at times reviews products provided by a representative of the company. When we do so, we specifically state so. We also use affiliate links. For more, please see the disclosure page

Makeup Wars: The $20 Makeup Challenge

The Makeup Wars group is at it again, this time with the $20 makeup challenge. The premise behind the challenge is that you have lost your makeup and have only $20 to replace it. What do you do? It started as a YouTube tag meme and we decided to blog it. I also did a video given that it started with the video bloggers.


 

I went shopping at Target for the challenge and came out with $19.74 in products. I had a few nice surprises in these, and a good number of duds. Here are the products used and my thoughts on them.

(1) Rimmel Match Perfection Foundation, in 120 Ivory, $4.99: This is an SPF 15 foundation with “smart-tone technology” whatever that might be. When I first applied it, it seemed a bit cakey and oily and coverage was just so-so. I liked it much better when I put powder over it later. I spent extra on foundation and skimped in other areas hoping for a better product and I don’t know that I got it. I also could not find any verification that it was oil free and, based on its feel, I don’t know that it is. I wouldn’t buy it again.

Rimmel Perfect Match Foundation Review

(2) e.lf. Clarifying Pressed Powder: , $1.00: This product surprised me. It was a perfectly good pressed powder that I will happily use up. For a dollar, it is a good buy and it is just as good as more expensive drugstore level pressed powders.

(3) NYC Eye Shadow Quad, in Chelsea Chic, $3.59: This had very pretty colors, and I have seen some positive reviews of this quad, but for me it was a big dud in regard to application and wear!

NYc Chelsea Chic Eyeshadow Review

The NYC Chesea Chic quad looked very pretty on the shelf and I was excited to try it, but the shades were so lacking in pigment, that I had to pack it on for it to show up. For example, it does show OK in the video when I watch it, in fact surprisingly better than I thought it would, but up close when I was filming, and outside in natural light, it didn't look as good. It was rather splotchy in spots, and the shadow wore off rather quickly afterward. An hour later and it was basically gone.  The shades also look OK in the swatches, but they are packed on for that as well. I would not buy this again simply because of the lack of pigment and low wear time. Below are swatches from the quad. They are indeed very pretty shades. Too bad that they don’t wear too well.

NYC Chelsea Chic Eyeshadow Swatches

(4) e.l.f Eye Shadow Brush, $1.00: This was a perfectly useable brush for ultra cheap. I prefer higher end brushes, but as far as cheap ones go, I recommend it!

(5) NYC Eyelash Curler and free eyeliner, $2.74: This was a good find for the curler, which was a decent enough eyelash curler, complete with an extra pad for super cheap. If you need a budget curler, get this one.  The free eyeliner, however, was a dud. It was a kohl liner with a super hard and sharp point. I refused to use it!

(6) Rimmel Extra Super Lash Mascara, $2.99: This was a perfectly good mascara. Not great, but not bad either. Definitely give the brush a good wipe before using or it might clump. It gave a lot of length, but the look was a bit on the spiky side, which isn’t my taste, although it looked just fine.

(7) e.l.f. Color Stick, in Pink Lemonade, $1.00: This was the best item in the lot and I love it! This double duty cheek and lip stick had good pigment and a pretty color that would work for many different skin tones. It blended well, and I loved the shade. For $1.00 it is amazing! I have some expensive color sticks and I would use this one just as much as my pricier NARS and Estee Lauder items.

e.l.f. color stick review

(8) NYC Liquid Lip Shine, in Rivington Rose, $2.29: This is another good find. It is a standard gloss with rather good pigment and shine. Not at all sticky, and it wore well. The only downside was that it had a light mint fragrance to it that I could do without, but it wasn't overbearing or anything. I would still buy it again.

Below are swatches of the NYC gloss and the e.l.f. color stick. I'm very happy with both of these!

Rimnel and elf lip swatches

Extra items: I also picked up a few Wet N Wild items at the grocery store with the thought of trading out my eyelash curler for one or two of the them. I ended up not doing so. One was a concealer that was too light for me, another was a twist up eyeliner that looked like it might not be hard, but it actually was. Finally, there was the Wet N Wild Passion Plum and Prune Passion Perfect pair lip wand, which has a lip liner on one end and a lip crayon on the other. It has great pigment and I do like this item. However, getting the plastic wrap packaging off of it was next to impossible, as was the packaging on the eyeliner, and that left me rather annoyed.

Here is one of those goofy self portraits, taken in direct sunlight about half an hour after the video was made. As you can see, the eye shadow doesn’t really show up at all and I had it caked on! The shadow shows up much better in the video, but that doesn’t show just how splotchy it was in places.  The foundation and powder combo turned out to have better coverage than I initially thought but it also made my wrinkles stand out. I do like the lip products though, and the color stick is a keeper!

20 dollar challenge makeup look

Here is the video version as I put the products on. I plan to try to start doing more video, so hopefully this will kick start me on that!

 

Want to see more of the $20 Challenge. Click the last and next buttons at the top of the post or visit other blogs in the group through the links below:

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Disclosures: Beauty and Fashion Tech at times reviews products provided by a representative of the company. When we do so, we specifically state so. We also use affiliate links. For more, please see the disclosure page