Beauty Product Reviews
Bad for skin!
I don't say this lightly: wake-up and smell the hairspray, people! Because that, in essence, is what this product is--hairspray for your face. If you're wondering how on earth I could possibly make that claim, look no further than the first two ingredients in this product, namely: water and alcohol. That's right. Alcohol is the second ingredient. For those of you who know a little bit about skin care, this alone should be a major red flag. Alcohol is a well-known skin irritant. Its quick drying time--which this product takes advantage of to help its filming agent set quickly--is also very drying to skin. Basically, misting this onto your skin has the same overall effect--and sticky, tacky feel--as spraying your face with hairspray. Once the water and alcohol evaporate, you're left with a thin film of "gunk" on your face that forms a slight barrier between your makeup and the environment, at the risk of leaving your skin dry and inflamed. Furthermore, the marketing hype about this product having any kind of "temperature control technology" to adjust to various weather situations does not appear to be supported at all by its ingredient list. All of the ingredients in this product are incredibly common and obscenely cheap to produce. None of them have any self-adjusting properties at all. In short, the only thing remarkable about this product is that it costs so much.
Works. No, Really.
I have a major problem with my lips chapping. In fact, if I don't apply balm to my lips regularly, they start cracking by about lunch time. Fun. Enter this product. I can say, with all honesty, that this is The Best lip balm I have ever used. A lot of other balms feel good initially, but actually seem to start re-chapping your lips just a few minutes after you put them on. Not so with this one! I can apply it before I fall asleep at night and wake-up with comfy, moisturized lips eight hours later. I kid you not. The best part? This stuff is also great as a moisturizer for dry cuticles, knees, and elbows. And, in a pinch, adds a lovely little shine to brows and eyelids. Basically, you can use this balm any way that you would use Vaseline, only this stuff will last longer and be less "goopy," to boot!
Nice colors, average formula.
For the sake of full disclosure, I ought to tell you that I have combination oily skin. As part of this, I've found that the skin on my eyelids actually gets fairly oily as the day wears on, so I don't even try to wear shadow or liner without putting a good eyelid primer on. For those like me, I'm afraid the bad news is that these cute, highly pigmented pencils turn out to have very average staying power. Honestly, I have to work just as hard to keep the color from these UD pencils in place as I do when I'm using good ol' Maybelline or Revlon eyeliners. But, the drugstore brands are significantly less expensive. Of course, they don't come in all the same eye-catching colors as the UD pencils, so there is still good reason to give these a try. Just realize that what you'll really end-up paying for is the color selection, not superior formulation.
Very low sun protection for a BB.
Okay, here's the thing: All any BB is, at the end of the day, is a tinted moisturizer. That's great, don't get me wrong. I love using multitasking products--who doesn't? But, for a BB to actually be worth it's packaging to me, it needs to be able to both give my skin a little sheer color and an adequate amount of sun protection. Otherwise, I'll still be putting on a separate SPF lotion before I put on the BB, which sort of ruins the entire point of using a BB for me. This product is supposed to save me time and reduce the amount of steps in my beauty routine, not add to them. Back to this product. Look on the list of active ingredients and you will find only 1.15% titanium dioxide listed. That's it. End of show. So, here's my question: How the heck do they justify the 30 SPF rating? The lowest amount of titanium dioxide in any of my mineral sunscreen products at home is no less than 2.35% when used in combination with other mineral UV blockers, like zinc oxide. From what I've been able to dig-up on the subject, it looks like 1.15% titanium oxide would usually only be enough to give you an effective SPF 10. Sorry, that's just not enough to be giving you effective anti-aging protection. It's possible the good people at Maybelline really have given this product a true SPF 30 through some other trick of the formulation, but if so, it would be one heck of a trick. Personally, I would never trust my face to this product alone on a sunny day. Premature wrinkling? No, thank you!
Another great drugstore buy.
This is a great, fragrance free formula with very adequate amounts of both mineral and synthetic sunscreen agents in it. The texture is very smooth and blendable and meshes well with skin without the use of primer underneath. It does impart a dewy finish so, as mentioned in other reviews, you may want to top with powder or skip this one altogether if you have oily skin. As with other BB creams, all three shades of this product are very lightly tinted. You will want to follow with concealer to hide flaws. But, if what you're after is a little glow and good sun protection, this product might be right for you. Certainly a good buy for the price.
Smells good, looks cute, chaps my lips like heck.
This is poor little product lies at the center of an issue that breaks my beauty-obsessed heart: Products with fragrance in them can actually be really crappy for your skin. I got a first-hand lesson in this skincare principle this last fall. A very painful, extremely annoying lesson. Rewind to September of 2013. I was using Eos lip balm exclusively at this point. When first applied, it does feel quite moisturizing and, yes, they also smell amazing. My lips have always been prone to chapping, so I wind-up reapplying balm probably six or seven times a day and I always slather it on before bed. Everything seemed to be going well with the Eos product until the beginning of October when my lips suddenly took a turn for the absolute worst. They weren't just chapping, they were cracking and bleeding and, ew, peeling. On top of that, my lips began to alternate between feeling incredibly sore to the touch and disturbingly numb. After I realized that putting more Eos balm on my lips was not helping at all, I tossed it out an tried to find a solution to what was now a pretty incredible problem. It hurt to eat or talk or drink anything. Heck, it hurt to do nothing at all. A little research quickly brought me to the a for mentioned skincare principle: If your skin stuff, including lip balm, smells really good, it's probably actually pretty bad for your skin. Fragrance and the substances used by the beauty industry to carry fragrance are actually recognized by dermatologists as major skin irritants. If you've ever had a nasty reaction to a product, chances are good that the fragrance content played a part. What a bummer, right? I know that I like it when the products I use smell good. But, after this incident, I'm steering clear of any skincare items that smell strongly. It took a whole week of using an unscented Aquaphor lip balm before my lips stopped being in a constant state of agony. Consider my lesson learned.
Must-have for those with oily skin.
I completely agree that primers, including eyelid primers, are not always necessary additions to your makeup bag. For many people, simply choosing to use a good, high-quality eye shadow and layering over top of foundation applied to the eyelid maybe enough to ensure that your eye design stays in place all day and does not fade. However, for those with oily skin, like myself, eyelid primer can be an absolute godsend. If I don't use it, my shadow starts to move hand crease after just two hours. Every. Single. Time. So, imagine my incredible joy when I found Urban Decay's eyelid primer. This stuff works and works well. When I put it on, it keeps my shadow in top condition for up to ten hours, which is amazing! It comes in a formulation that is essentially colorless as well as nude, gold shimmer, and pink champagne colors. So far as I can tell, all four work equally well, but the nude formula, Eden, is too pale for those with darker skin tones. I have tried other eyelid primers, but always return to this one. Thus far, none of the others last half as long.
Excellent drugstore buy.
These gel liners have good, strong pigmentation. In fact, the Blackest Black liner is a truer carbon black color than some of the more expensive gel liners I have owned. Formula glides on smoothly and lasts the whole day when I apply it. I have personally gone up to 16 hours in this product without the liner fading or moving. The only drawback, as has been mentioned, is the little brushes that come with the product for application. Don't waste your time struggling with them. Use your favorite eyeliner brush instead and you'll have excellent results at a bargain price!