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Aug 6, 2012

Makeup Wars Most Expensive Face Challenge

August 6, 2012 By Carleenp 15 Comments

This time around, the Makeup Wars bloggers are putting on our most expensive faces! This one surprised me. I don’t necessarily collect a ton of luxury items, and many of the things I used are more mid-range, yet my total came up to a rather shocking amount that is revealed at the end of the post (I figure some suspense is good for you all). I also suspect that I will be in the bottom half of the group in terms of overall value of the products! It is a bit surprising to add this stuff up and see what it really costs for a full face! I didn't buy all of it, since some were products provided to me for review, but I bought a good amount of it over time. For an interesting comparison at the other end of the price range, see the previous $20 Face Challenge.

Here is my reaction when I added up my total:

The Most Expensive Face Challenge: Products and Look

For this challenge, Makeup Wars bloggers used the most expensive items in our existing collections. We also included skin care and tools that we typically would use. This was a fun challenge, in part because I got to go rediscover some old favorites that I hadn't used in awhile. Here are just few of the makeup items I used for this challenge. I didn’t try to cram everything into the picture!

For my look, I went for a neutral, slightly smoky eye since my Chanel palette worked well for that. My most expensive mascara was blue and that worked OK with the browns in the shadow. I stuck to my favorite daily lip look, which happens to include my priciest lip items anyway. I had to dig out my better brushes. I actually have several daily use favorite brushes that are very affordable from BH Cosmetics. Here is my full face of makeup. The list of products and totals follow.

Here are my products used, their prices, and my thoughts on them for this challenge and look:

Makeup/Foundation

Laura Mercier Oil Free Primer $32: This is often my go to primer, although I also use various silicone based primers fairly often. (See my Laura Mercier Review on Girl Gloss).

Laura Mercier Silk Cream Foundation $43: I got a bit lucky here. I used to have a more expensive Dior foundation that I didn’t like, but I couldn’t find it for the challenge! I also sometimes have Armani foundation, which I love, but I happen to be out of it at the moment, leaving Laura Mercier as the most expensive that I had on hand. The silk cream must have been matched for me in winter. It was a bit on the light side for me!

Laura Mercier Concealer $30: This is my daily use concealer.

Make Up For Ever Duo Matte Powder $34 (read the MUFE Duo Matte Review): I add MUFE powder foundation over areas where I have hyperpigmentation and often brush it lightly on as a finishing powder.

Eyes and Cheeks

Here is my eye look:

Urban Decay Primer Potion $20: I regularly use this as my eye primer.

Chanel Le Regards de Chanel Palette $80 (see the Chanel swatches): I bought this limited edition palette last year and love the neutral shades in it. It is great for a fairly neutral smoky eye.

Shiseido Cream Eye Liner $26 (read the previous Shiseido liner review). I love this pot liner. I forgot that I had it! I might have had more expensive liners around, but I didn’t try to add those up to figure it out.

Le Metier de Beaute Mascara $34 (read the Le Metier Mascara review): This was an item that was sent to me by a company representative and it happens to be in blue. I love this mascara and fortunately I like blue mascara. The couple of times that I was sent samples from Le Metier they were odd shades (such as black lip gloss), which made doing an objective review difficult. So this was one of the few items I reviewed since I do like blue lashes!

Estee Lauder Brow Kit $32 (see my previous Estee Lauder Brow Kit review) : This kit includes a taupe pencil, highlight pencil, and brow gel. All that you need!

Bobbi Brown Bridal Palette Blush $50: I love the blush in the Bobbi Brown Bridal Palette. In fact I love the palette as a whole. This is a rather pigmented blush, so I wear it light and then blend it well with the next item on the list.

Guerlain Meteorites $58: These little balls of illuminating powder are perfect for blending, highlighting, or for overall illumination. I like to blend my blush with it.

Lips

Make Up For Ever Aqua Lip Liner $18: I use a neutral brown/pink lip liner under a stain, followed by lipstick and gloss for a super long wear lip look. The lip look I did here made it through dinner and two glasses of beer before I touched it up!

MAC Pro Longwear Lip Stain Marker (see my review on Girl Goss) $16: I don’t think these are still available. I love this stain as a great under color for lipstick that will wear well.

Chanel Rouge Coco Lipstick in Rouge Orage (see my Girl Gloss Swatches) $33: I love this lipstick and wear it a lot. In fact, I am nearing time to buy another one! I also often wear a YSL lipstick that is about the same price.

Cargo Blu Ray Gloss $24: I think I might have more expensive glosses but I didn't want to try to price my whole collection. This was at least one of the sort of pricier ones and I didn’t have any Dior left, which would have cost more.

Skin Care

Outside of makeup, we have been adding up skin care and tools as well. These are the most expensive items that I typically use, and not including special weekly treatments.

Creme de la Mer $140 (here are 5 great uses for Creme de la Mer): I regularly use Creme de la Mer as an eye cream. I also use it all over when my skin is dry, although right now I have been on the oily side.

M Lab Cleanser $60: M lab makes great products. They are pricy, but I love them!

M Lab Anti-Aging Brightening Serum $65: One of my go to melasma treatment products. Also see my M Lab review of a number of their items). I also regularly use PCA products, but they are not quite to the M Lab price range.

Ole Henriksen Sheet Transformation $45: This is my go to night cream. It is light, which I like when my skin is oily.

Estee Lauder Day Wear $45: This is pretty much my standby product for light moisture with SPF.

Tools

I don’t have an expensive brush collection. The priciest I have are all MAC. I often use cheaper brushes too, such as EcoTools, Essence of Beauty, Crown, or BH Cosmetics. Here the MAC brushes I used for this look:

MAC Large Powder Brush $42

MAC Angled Contour Brush $35

MAC Regular Powder Brush $35

MAC Large Eye Shader Brush $31: I use this on a lot.

MAC Short Shader Brush $25

MAC Blending Brush $23: This is always my go to blending brush.

MAC Retractable Lip Brush $23

Revlon Eyelash Curler $5: I don’t have an expensive curler!

Beauty Blender Sponge $20: I love this for applying foundation!

Totals

Whew! So here are the totals!

Total Makeup: $530

Total Skin Care: $355

Total Tools: $ 259

Grand Total: $1144

You can buy the items listed here at Nordstrom and/or Sephora

Visit the rest of the Makeup Wars bloggers to see their most expensive looks!

Disclosure, some of the items in the post were provided to me by representatives of the company. These are: Several of the Laura Mercier products, M Lab, Shiseido, Le Metier de Beaute, MAC Pro Longwear, and some of the MAC Brushes.

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

Filed Under: Blush, Concealer, Eye Liner, Eyeshadow, Face Products, Foundation, Makeup, Makeup Primer, Makeup Wars, Mascara, Palettes and Collections, Powder, Skin Care Tagged With: Brushes, Cargo, Chanel, Guerlain, La Mer, Laura Mercier, Le Metier de Beaute, M Lab, M.A.C., Makeup, Makeup Forever, Makeup Wars, Revlon, Shiseido, Skin Care

Jul 11, 2012

MAC Heavenly Creature Swatches and Review

July 11, 2012 By Carleenp Leave a Comment

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.

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.

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

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.

Filed Under: Blush, Collections and Looks, Eyeshadow, Lip Products, Makeup, Powder, Video Tagged With: Blush, Collections, Eyeshadow, Lipgloss, Lipstick, M.A.C., Swatches, Video

Jul 9, 2012

Makeup Wars: The $20 Makeup Challenge

July 9, 2012 By Carleenp 23 Comments

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.

(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!

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.

(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.

(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!

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!

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: