Beauty Product Reviews

I have been doing my makeup with just this set for a month now...

I'm not sure what I have to add to these excellent reviews but I think it is useful that as a test of these as a capsule brush set for your whole routine, I have used almost nothing BUT this brush set for a month. The only other brushes I've tapped have been liner brushes and a fan brush for wiping away fallout. Having said that, I purchased this set as a way to double my collection of fude brushes without spending a huge amount of money. Here is how I use the various brushes and why I love them: The Jumbo blender: this was the brush I was most skeptical about. I have small hooded eyes with mature skin, so I was wary of the large size of this brush. Not only is it an excellent blender for cleaning up the edges of an eyelook, but it also is great for laying down matte shadows all over the lid for a soft smokey eye. I was previously using my WG 18 for this, but this brush is so much bigger that it does the job faster. Great for a simple, every day look. Flat definer: this is very similar in shape as the Sonia G smudger brush that I can't live without for dealing with difficult shimmers and placing shadow in the inner corner. It is slightly less dense than that brush. It works to smoke out a lash line as well as fixing little blending imperfections. Mini Booster: I don't have the original mini booster, but I love this brush and can't believe I've managed without it before. It is so great for deepening a look especially with my small hooded eyes. I would have said it was identical to the WG 20 just from the picture but it is more precise than that brush, while still being a great blender in the crease. It also makes short work of a lower lash line, just like WG20... The Classic Face is the best powder blush brush in my collection. It's also great for bronzer (again small face) if you like a more precise placement and an all over finishing buffer. The mini base: this is probably my favorite brush in the whole thing. It is an excellent foundation brush. I've used it with cream, powder, liquid. It works for difficult cream blush formulas. I was recently gifted a cream to powder face compact and this small brush gets into all the pans and I can do my whole face with it. I especially love this brush for cream contour and cream concealer. It fits in a cream concealer pot and is still big enough to do foundation. AMAZING. I also don't mind the short handles. I have a smaller brush container for my short-handled fude brushes and these are honestly the same length as the smallest of the WG eye brushes (8, 20). One of the things that was off putting about the original launch of Sonia's brushes was that they were just so chunky and long. I have bifocals and need to get up close to a magnifying mirror to do detail work and long handles just don't work in that situation. I've washed the set once and it bloomed nicely. There was a bit of shedding, but nothing unusual for hand-made brushes. I love how these brushes wipe clean on a microfiber cloth or paper towel. They pick up just the right amount of product and are as soft, yet efficient as the price point demands. Well-done Sonia!

This is the one I've been searchin for

My palette came today in a perfectly shiny silver box, inside which was a perfectly matte black box which slides out. For some reason I find this extra box so boogie. The palette itself is gorgeous mirrored black plastic, which feels weighty but not clunky. The palette fits quite neatly in my smallish little paws. The mirror is excellent and has just a slight stiffness to it so that it will stay up so you can set on your desk to do your makeup, if you don’t want to hold it, making it an excellent travel palette. The color story is nothing earth shattering, but the various shades are well thought out, with a nice balance between satin and matte, with one special shade that is a slightly foiled topper. I haven’t swatched the shades, but I did try them all out on my eyes (with Wayne’s beautiful brushes of course) and they are all really nice. I used the topper with a brush (dry) and my finger (not over glitter glue) and I was impressed at the payoff. It’s very shiny with tiny chunks of glitter, and even without glue, the glitter stays put and doesn’t fall out. (Some of the glitter transferred to my crease, but that is just life with hooded lids). The matte brown was plenty pigmented to do a quick crease in one step for me (MAC NC 20) and the black performed really well to darken the crease. I used a very light hand but there is no kick up or fall out so I gradually got a little more bold with the black. I’m going to do a full on smokey eye with this palette soon. The black also worked great over eye liner to smoke out a wing. (I didn’t buy the kohl pencils but I used a gel pot liner and went over it with black shadow). It’s not the blackest black in the universe but it really performs so well. I think the satin shades are nice, they give a bit of a sheen to the skin but can definitely be used anywhere on the eye without looking weird. I am 50 years old and not at all afraid of glitter and rainbow looks but you know sometimes you have to go to weddings or funerals or to work and you just want to look pretty and put together. This is a great palette for that, also as a base for wilder more colorful looks..Also the pan sizes are enormous. I used my blush and highlighter brushes and used one of the satin shades as a blush and another as a highlight. (Attached photo full face of Wayne Goss, including lipstick). Also did I mention that topper shade? I don’t actually have anything quite like it in my collection, even though I own three Pat McGrath mini palettes, they don’t have the topper. It is really shiny but it also sheers out so you can add a little glitz or a lot...I didn't NEED any of these colors, but having this all together in one BEAUTIFUL package that is sturdy and compact is a dream. This is the eye shadow palette I've tried and failed to build for myself a dozen times at great expense. The closest thing in my collection is the Charlotte Tilbury Original Instant Eye Palette which is discontinued, cost more and has a fraction of the product of Wayne’s palette. So yeah, this palette is great and honestly I think it’s the perfect palette that I’ve been searching for since I started collecting makeup.

Small but mighty

This brush was advertised as being good for tough to work shadows. I was sold on that claim. As soon as this came I pulled out three or four of my most difficult shadows and was blown away. I did a side by side test with my Sigma smudgers which are my usual workhorses for tricky shimmers. The Sonia G is half the size so it gets into tiny spaces that the sigmas don't. It is also the softest brush in my collection (including the Wayne Goss eye set). It is small but mighty. It picks up so much product just with a single tap into the pan. It's so dense that it lays down faster than the bigger brushes. I did the test on unprimed, textured lids and the Sonia G performed so much better. This is my first Sonia G brush, but it won't be my last.

Nothing luxury about this except the packaging

Luxury shadows are supposed to be highly pigmented, easy to use, blend well and last a long time on the eye. That's what I expect from high end brands. So many affordable brands have been bringing that to the table, that luxury brands have had to up their game. Now I also expect more interesting combinations, innovative formulas and super cool packaging. This one certainly nails the last one. I love this thing. It looks like a gorgeous art deco artifact from the 30s. I love the concept. Instead of a twelve pan collection where they are arranged light to dark, CT has [ut these together in four eye looks with detailed instructions on how to get them. This is a really great idea. I loved this and couldn't wait to try to do these. Learning new makeup and having the best possible tools, what could be more fun?

When I first swatched these I was underwhelmed but I kept going. I tried all of the looks on a daily basis for a couple weeks. I took the palette with me on a beachy week-end which was the perfect place to wear these warm toned shimmery shadows. Except that you know it was always so much work to get the shimmers out of the pan and onto my eye. I tried my fingers, I tried wet brushes. I tried every brush I could think of from Wayne Goss down to the cheapest, densest synthetic. Nothing worked. Then there were the mattes. The mattes were super timid. Like they look gorgeous in the pan but you have to go in 3-4 times to get much on your eye. My favorite shadow in this collection is the second to last one. It's a grey/green with gold reflect. Gorgeous. I've used it quite a bit. But you know I have a couple of similar shadows in other brands that actually perform better. The other thing is that even with primer, these shadows tend to fade fast. I get 5-6 hours of wear with primer. How is that I have cheaper shadows that last hours and hours longer? I'm sorry this was a fail. Thanks to Beautylish's super forgiving return policy I can send this back.

Purple Shimmers are underwhelming

I am so disappointed in the amethyst palette. I hemmed and hawed about it for months because of the price. But I wanted a rock solid purple palette and purple mattes are notoriously tough to formulate, and if I figured anyone could crack this nut it would be viseart. And the good news is they did! Sort of. The matte shades are excellent smooth, reasonably well pigmented when used with a brush on the eye and buildable. They blend together like a dream and using the three matte shades together makes for a ton of really easy doable eye looks.

The problem is the shimmers. I KNOW. How could they screw up the shimmers? But they did. These are all ridiculously tough to get out of the pan, layers and layers and layers with no pay off. I've tried using my finger and a wet brush. I've tried laying down a sticky base. Nothing works. I shouldn't have to resort to glitter glue for shadows this expensive. And don't get me started on the fall out. After working and working to get an inner corner highlight one morning, I looked in the mirror on my drive in to work twenty minutes later and there was nothing left on my eye it was all on my cheek. Nice but I didn't want a purple sparkle highlight for my workday. THANK YOU. And the weird part is, temptalia rates the shimmers well and the mattes as being average. I don't get it. Anyway, I've tried really hard to justify $45 for essentially three pans of eye shadow (and small ones at that) but it's just really tough. I wish viseart made individual shadows because I'd yank these three shimmers out and replace them with something better.

I love the packaging. I love the concept. I love everything about this except the dang shimmers. I see that veiseart has these three matte shades in the new artist pro palette and I'm tempted to just send this back and get that one but honestly if I bulked at $45 I'm not going to do $175 am I?

Not quite as white as new

When I got the Wayne Goss eye set with the beautiful white bristles, I asked Beautylish if I could use Parian Spirit on them. "No, too harsh. Use this instead." So I ordered some. And wow. After a month of using my brushes daily and only dry cleaning (by wiping off on a tissue) this really got em clean. There is is still some pigment there, but they look much better. I was impressed that this is gentle enough to use on animal hair, yet it took the lipstick right out of my lip brush. I also appreciate that it smells a lot better than Parian and the scent is very mild, you can really only smell if you stick your nose in the jar. There is no scent left on the brushes, as with Parian. You get a ton of product as well. I washed all of my brushes, not just the eyeset and didn't make a dent in the jar. I even washed some brushes that were stained from theatrical makeup and the Clean Apothecary cleaned more pigment out of them. (They had already had a couple of goes in the Parian jar).

The only reason I can see to use Parian over this is that Parian cleans instantly and dries quickly. Since you have to get the brushes wet and soapy with Clean Apothecary, the length of time to dry will be the same as with shampooing. Which could be days, knowing how long it takes some of my favorite thick brushes to dry.

WOW! Amazing color and performance

This is hands down the best lipstick I've ever worn in terms of performance. My beautylish order just arrived and I raced to try on this lipstick. Then I remembered I'd put bread in the toaster. Time to ruin my lips, I thought, pouring myself a nice, big glass of milk. I ate the peanut butter toast and drank my whole glass of milk. There is no lipstick on the glass. It's all still on my lips. It fades a bit in the middle where the lips are wettest, but you don't get that gross line that you do with liquid lipsticks sometimes. I love this color. It's a super glamourous deep purple/red with a gold sheen. It's wearable for day I think. Well...maybe not, but I'm going to wear it for day because I LOVE it. I love the packaging too. It's really fun and whimsical without feeling cheap. It's a nice heavy, thick plastic and the lid locks securely in place when you screw it on. It doesn't feel terribly drying on. About the same as my favorite Rimmel matte formula liquid lippie. Much better performance though, and AMAZING color.

First impressions: WOW

Within a week of using this a patch of sun damage that I've had for five years started to fade. Within two weeks a stubborn patch of rosacea over my eyebrows is shrinking. These are flaws I've had so long, they almost like part of my face. Except that I was constantly trying to cover them and the sun damage especially was tough to cover. I'm so impressed with this. It's the first product I've used from the Ordinary, but I'm definitely going to try more. The packaging is great. The consistency is perfect. It has no odor and it doesn't irritate my skin. I only use in the evening because this particular product can cause sensitivity to the sun.

Taking the scratchiness out of blending my eyeshadow.

I've never seen or felt anything quite like the Wayne Goss Eye set. As other reviewers have said, there is a focus on crease brushes. But I think what Wayne is doing, if I might be so bold, is reinventing the two most popular eye brushes, the Mac 217, a flat paddle shaped blending brush that fuller, almost round in the middle and the Mac 224. 4/5 brushes in this kit are variations on those two brushes, and it's fine because if you are in a pinch you can do you whole eye with both of those brushes, or even just one. I have two dupes of the 217 and 224 from bdellium and sonia kashuk. The sonia are softer and fluffier and easier on my eyes and the bdellium are stiffer, more precise, but scratchy AF. I use all four of those brushes every day and I'm so thrilled to replace them with Wayne's high end versions. These are soft. SO SOFT. SOFT. OMG the softest thing ever. And yet they are also stiff. You can work these into your eye, get precise application. They don't splay out like my kashuk bruses to when pushed. The 19 brush is amazing. I have hooded eyes, with crepey skin and a small eye ball. It's like Wayne sat down and said, lets make a brush for Jenny today shall we. It's so great. It just locks into the socket and moves so easily without pulling or dragging my skin. The final brush in the set, the 20 is a detail-oriented workhorse, for moking eyeliner, dotting concealer on a blemish, getting a spot of color right on the tear duct and probably a dozen other uses I haven't thought of yet.

As others have noted the brushes are short and light. I appreciate this as I almost also near sighted and need to get close to my mirror. I also tend to hold all my brushes in my hand that I'm using at the time, so I appreciate that they are small and light. These babies will get their own little caddy and pride of place on my makeup table and thanks to Beautylish for sending them in a handsome tube that can be used for this purpose.

Have I really had this two years???

When I opened this the first time I never dreamed I would still be using it two years later. It's so small. A little goes a long way. The light side is about half gone and the dark side is about 70% gone. I don't use it much in the summer as I tend to use powder contours and foundations in the summer. But I live in Minnesota and this is my jam for the cold months. Blends beautifully with liquid, gel or cream foundations. I use the Bdellium HP concealer brush and it works great (It's a big brush for a concealer and I have a small face).