Budget Beauty : Beauty and Fashion Tech

Budget Beauty! Tropez Eyeshadow Palettes

When I first wrote about the ultra cheap, but nice quality Tropez Cosmetics, my chief complaint was a lack of choices in eye shadow shades (read previous review). Well, that has now been improved!

Tropez now has a few very nice eye shadow palette available with six shades per palette. I picked one up at Walgreens and love the colors and the luminous quality of them. I also particularly love that the palettes come in at around $5 or less. Below are swatches from the palette that I choose from the Sunrise to Sunset line in Bali Blue:

The shadows have a nice shimmery luminance to them that isn’t overdone. They are well pigmented and lasted a full day for me. You can find them at Walgreens and K-Mart stores.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Jane Be Pure Cosmetics Liquid Mineral Foundation SPF 30

Jane Cosmetics has a new SPF 30 Jane be Pure Liquid Mineral Foundation at that I really love, although I think it is mislabeled a bit. Why mislabeled? Well, this one really seems like a tinted moisturizer to me. It is very sheer and high in moisture factor. So I wish they had just labeled it as such.

As far as tinted moisturizers go, this one is nice. It feels great and it provides just enough tint to even things out. It left me wishing that I didn’t have dark pigmented patches to cover, because then I would wear this all the time! As it is, I have been wearing it quite a bit with some concealer and touch of powder mineral makeup on the areas where I have melasma. The light shade is perfect for me and although it is a moisture product, it hasn’t left me looking greasy like some other tinted moisturizers do. Best of all, this item is only around $5!

The SPF 30 foundation is not yet on the Jane website and I can’t seem to find anyone selling it online yet. But you can find Jane Cosmetics at Walgreens stores.

Comparison Shop for Jane Cosmetics

Popularity: 14% [?]

Tropez, Ultra Cheap Cosmetics

I was at Walgreens the other day and came across a new line of cosmetics that I had not seen before. The Tropez line, which I don’t think is related to St. Tropez cosmetics (???), has everything priced from $.99 to $3.99. Most items were $1.99.

I purchased some items and didn’t really expect much from them. To my pleasent surprise, I found that these are pretty good cosmetics! I certainly liked them better than Wet n Wild, which is similar in price. NYC is another cheap drugstore line, and it also happens to be quite good in quality. I would generally place the Tropez products in the NYC range of quality.

The lip gloss is fairly well pigmented, feels nice, and lasts a decent amount of time. It also didn’t have any unpleasant scents or tastes. That seems to sometimes be a problem with other cheap glosses such a NYC, which looks absolutely gorgeous, but often has a bad taste to it.

The eyeshadow was also pretty good. I found it just as good as some more expensive drugstore brands and it had quite a bit of pigment, so at $1.99 for a duo, it was quite a bargain. However, NYC offers some excellent shadows with even more pigment at around the same price or perhaps only slightly more. There also were not a lot of shades to choose from.

What really stood out for me was the mascara. At $1.99, I thought I would hate it. When I opened it and saw that it had a big brush, which often doesn’t work well for me in mascara, I again thought I would hate it. I was wrong. It turned out to be quite good. It gave a nice amount of length and there was absolutely no clumping. I liked it just as much as some of the $10 and $25 mascaras that I have lying around. It didn’t really add much curl though, so if you want that, I suggest trying something else. Cover Girl Volume Exact is a fairly affordable mascara that can be good for that. Although frankly, I don’t think any mascara can replace a lash curler. If you want good length for cheap, check out the Tropez mascara!

This is an interesting line. I can’t find it anywhere except Walgreens and it must be quite new since I also can’t find much about it online. If you like cheap cosmetics, it is definitely worth taking a field trip to Walgreens to take a look at!

Popularity: 14% [?]

Jane Cosmetics Eye Shadows: One of the Better Drugstore Values!

Jane Cosmetics have been impressing the heck out me lately. Highly affordable and high in quality, I think this is hands down the most consistently good and best value drugstore line out there.

Jane cosmetics eye shadows are super cheap and yet have a pretty impressive quality to them. They blend well and have minimal creasing. I found that the lighter shades did not have the pigment payout as some other more expensive, yet excellent value shadows that I have covered such as those from Flirt! or Smart Skin. But they still seemed to be better pigmented than some more expensive drugstore brands and the darker shades seemed to be quite well pigmented. The only serious issue I have had with them is that they seem to wear off a bit quicker than some of the more expensive brands and I found that they are a bit too soft for use as a liner. However, at around $5 for a palette of several shades, it is hard to complain too much. I have Jane Eye Zing Carry Along Eye Shadow, Browns and love the shades. Dream Cream reminds me quite a bit of M.A.C vanilla, which I have always loved as a base shade.

One of the fun things about the Jane shadows is that you can get them in many different forms and all are very inexpensive. The stores have them in individual pots and then there are palettes of 4 and 6 easily found in the drugstores. Online, there is the Jane Eye Zing Eye Mixers Eye Shadow Compact (pictured) which comes in a variety of collections of 8 shades. In the one pictured, it’s A Girl, Hi Ho Silver, and White Lies are some of my favorite Jane Shades (it also has Dream Cream, referenced above). I have seen the 8 shade palettes in some, but not all, stores that carry Jane Cosmetics (Walgreen’s and Osco are where I see them the most).

Jane also has a fabulous blush that is directly comparable to NARS Orgasm Powder Blush, and an interesting mascara, Jane MaxLash 2 Mascara that I have in Deep Ocean. I will be posting about those soon. I also have reviewed Jane Be Pure Mineral Makeup.

Shop for other cosmetics at Shopzilla.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

Jane Shimmer Blush

Yesterday, I reviewed Jane Be Pure Mineral Makeup. When I made that purchase, I also picked up a Jane Shimmer Blush in Natural. As with the mineral makeup, this too is a good value product. Bascially it provides a very light, sheer, neutral to pinkish shimmer that I find works quite well over matte cream blush. Or use it alone for just a bit of tinted highlight. Jane makes the same product in darker shades as well.

For those looking for a cheap sheer shimmer, it is worth checking out. Just keep in mind that it is quite sheer. Although labled as a blush, I view it more as a sheer shimmer powder that is best used to compliment another product.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Review: Jane Be Pure Minerals, a Good Value Mineral Makeup

I have really been nuts over mineral makeup lately. I keep seeing more and more of it in the stores and I keep buying it! Recently I tried another drugstore brand with pretty good results. Jane Mineral Be Pure Makeup is very reasonably priced. I believe I paid around $6 for mine at Osco. Further, unlike some of the other drugstore brands, this one is talc free. It is also oil free, wax free, and fragrance free. I could not verify though whether it contains bismuth. An ingredient list does not seem to be available online. [update: Based on search results that were not available when I first published this, apparently it does contain bismuth]

I purchased the fair shade and was quite happy with its coverage. Tapping it on with a kabuki brush, I found that it covered a couple of my light melasma spots better than the other drugstore brands I have tried. As with most mineral powder makeup, tapping it on helps it cover better, while brushing it on makes it work more like a regular powder. As for staying power, it was OK. It isn’t going to cover or last the way Jane Iredale or Bare Essentuals do, but I am finding that when it comes to mineral makeup, you often get what you pay for. With that in mind, Jane seems to be a very good value for the price.

Jane Be Pure Minerals are packaged in a jar with a sponge type applicator. I wasn’t crazy about the sponge and highly recommend the purchase of a kabuki brush for putting on mineral makeup. If you want a quality cheap one and live near a CVS pharmacy, take a look at the essence of beauty brush. That is a great line of inexpensive, good value brushes and I have been happy with their kabuki brush. Also, the jar is a bit small for dipping a brush in. I would prefer to see a design where the jar is a bit larger and there is a plastic shaker screen for rubbing a brush on. But aside from nit picking a few packaging decisions, I really like this mineral powder as an inexpensive, good value product.

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Popularity: 15% [?]