Review: e.l.f. Studio Cream Eyeliner

Out of the hundred or so e.l.f. items I own, these are by far my favorite product! One day I was browsing the site during a sale and decided to buy two or so, never having tried a cream eyeliner. You can buy them on eyeslipsface.com or here for $3.00 each. When I got them I struggled for a bit trying to apply them with the provided brush, until I finally bought a Sonia Kashuk Bent Eyeliner Brush. Applying these eyeliners with this brush is such an ease. They are all super creamy and pigmented, and you don't even need to set them with a powder!

Coffe, Black, Midnight

Coffee- A matte brown. This is my holy grail eyeliner. Black can be very harsh, so for everyday looks I use coffee. If you want it slightly darker apply a dark brown shadow over it.
Black- A matte black. This eyeliner is a very true black. It is just as easy to apply as all the others. It does not stain your eyelid, nor will it run down your face during the day.
Midnight- A matte navy. This color is also great when black is too harsh. It's a great color to use when doing a purple eye look because brown would sometimes clash. I also use this when I get tired of using brown every day.

Ivory- A shimmery white. This color is a perfect base for eyeshadows to make them pop. Using white as an eyeliner may be good for Halloween, but to use this eyeliner more than once a year you can put it over a primer as a shimmery base. I find it to be a little streaky, but with a little extra time it will blend out. These eyeliners are great to use as bases because they don't crease that readily!
Plum Purple- A shimmery dark purple. I wish that this color was matte, becuase it would be a perfect alternative to black like Coffee and Midnight pictured above. The shimmer is not vert noticable when applied, especially is you put a matte purple shadow over it.
Punk Purple- A shimmery purple. This is one of their newest colors so I haven't had very much play time with it. Swatched, it is a gorgeous purple, slightly lighter an Plum Purple. This color would also be great as a base!
Teal Tease- A shimmery teal with a hint of glitter. The glitter in this is super fine, and barely noticeable. I use this over the black and it is beautiful! Its a very unusual color, and perfect for summer.

Metallic Olive- A shimmery deep green. This color is also a great alternative to black. I love using this when I do a matte neutral eye. Its unexpected but at the same time very beautiful.
Golden- A true gold. This is also one of their newest shades so I haven't had time to experiment, but swatches it is a beautiful gold. This is going to be great as a base under a gold eyeshadow- gold is one of my favorite looks right now. I would also love this on the lower lashline for an extra pop.
Copper- A metallic copper. This is a very unusual color. It would bring out blue eyes, but still look great on anyone's neutral eye. One day I didn't put the cap back on tight, and a few weeks later I realized it had dried out a bit. But thankfully it is still usable even after a few weeks of being open!
Gunmetal- A shimmery dark silver. This one almost looks like steel on your eye. It's super pretty with a shimmery black shadow over it, a perfect night-time look.

These are all the colors e.l.f. currently offers. I really hope they come out with more because the quality of these products is so great and for $3, how can you not love them? Have you tried these? What is your favorite color?

Another Eyes Lips Face Haul and First Impressions!

How can anyone pass up a 60% off sale? Well I gave in and purchased plenty of items from e.l.f. that I have wanted for a long time! The shipping said it wasn't supposed to come until tomorrow, so when I saw it in the mail today I was more than excited! Here is what I got and some first impressions:

Studio blushes in "Pink Passion" and "Peachy Keen". Pink Passion is the brightest hot pink I have ever seen. It is completely matte (my only matte studio blush and I own 5). I have yet to wear this yet, but when swatched it seemed a bit chalky. It blended out to light pink though, so hopefully it's blendable and buildable. As for Peachy Keen, a gorgeous golden bronze peach with shimmer. This color appears to compliment any skin tone, and on top of that you can use it as a bronzer or a subtle highlight. I cannot wait to try this color!

I got the "Eyebrow Lifter and Filler" in "Ivory/Medium". I got this because it looked very similar to the NYX Eyebrow Push-Up Bra and Benefit High Brow but much cheaper. I don't own any eyebrow filling toold simply because I have very bushy eyebrows naturally and enhancing them even more makes me feel like I'm doing very avant garde makeup. The highlight pencil is very promising though. It has a creamy texture and easily blends out. The eyebrow pencil also has a creamy texture which may be too creamy for filling in brows. When I was swatching these I thought "these are going to be a pain to sharpen" until I reckoned that one of the caps has a built in sharpener! Great job e.l.f.!

If you saw my last Eyes Lips Face Haul and First Impressions you know that I tried a Matte Lip Color for the first time. That was in Coral and it was truly matte. This one is in Tea Rose and it's not quite as matte. Perhaps I still had a little lip balm on my lips, but regardless I love this color! My swatch is a little lighter than what it actually is, it's more of the color on the end of the product's packaging. A gorgeous berry mauve. The color is a little too dark for me in summer, but come fall and winter I can see myself wearing this a lot more.

Sine last summer when the trend was really hot I have wanted to wear a fully nude lip. I've had my eye on this Mineral Lipstick in Natural Nymph for an even longer time but never chose to get it. This time I just had to go for it, and unfortunately I am not that impressed. I know that a fully nude lip is hard to pull off without looking like "jizz lips", but this one made my whole face look pale and my lips look super chapped. I even put a gloss over it, but it just looked like a streaky mess. I'll keep trying different things and see if I can make it work!

The only brush I got was the Mineral Blending Eye Brush. I have needed a blending brush like this one. All others I've seen are a little too short, fluffy, dense, or any combination thereof which did not suit what I've needed. This one seems to be just perfect to blend out my crease and apply crease color! Plus I love that these brushes are eco-friendly!



The e.l.f. professional Nail Buffer and Cuticle Pushers are both repurchases. I use the nail buffer to smooth out my nails before I polish them and also to file them down. The cuticle pushers are great not only to push down and clean up your cuticles, but I use them to clean up extra polish as I paint my nails. The rubber side will swipe up any polish that drips to the skin.

I've read numerous great reviews for the Mineral Face Primer but when shopping on the e.l.f. website and you see a $6 product it registers in your mind as way expensive. You can get 6 eyeshadows for that! But when the 60% off sale came around I decided it was time to try this primer out. It is a clear primer that blends into your skin to create the smoothest feel. I can't stop feeling how smooth my hand is! I can't wait to try this on my face. The product claims to combat oily skin all day. We will see if it stands up to my skin!

I don't even know where to begin with these. The cream eyeliners are by far my favorite product from e.l.f. so when I saw that they added three new shades I just HAD to get them. The three new colors are "Teal Tease", "Punk Purple" and "Golden". When I opened Punk Purple I was so upset because it appeared to be dried out, but luckily it was only a little melted from shipping and still super creamy. All shades are super pigmented and all have slight shimmer, Teal Tease has a tad bit of glitter. I love how creamy and easy to apply all the cream eyeliners are and these appear to be no different. Soon I will be doing a full review of all the cream eyeliners so stay tuned!

Hope you guys liked my haul! What did you get during the 60% off sale?

The Product Less Used - Benetint

Last summer I picked this up because of all the wonderful reviews I heard. For a month or so I wore it every day on my cheeks and lips for that healthy rosy glow. Once I got to school in the fall I stopped using it as much. Whats interesting is that I didn't stop using it because I forgot about it, because as always this product has a spot in my makeup area right in front of everything else in perfect sight every day. I stopped using this because every morning before class I would apply my face lotion and a face powder with slight coverage. After I applied the powder I didn't want to put a liquid product back on my face and deal with streaky-ness, so instead I would reach for powder blushes.  Well recently I've disregarded that whole thought process and I put this on as blush over or under my foundation, primer, powder, you name it! This product has been formulated to work no matter what is on your face (I haven't read that statement anywhere, just a personal assumption). The best part about this is that it will stay on all day, including when the rest of your makeup slowly dissolves in the heat of the summer.
Here are some swatches and how I apply it:

right out of the bottle, no blending

blended into my arm

The product is as liquidy as plain water. it has a tiny applicator like a nail polish brush, so once you unscrew the top you "paint" some on your cheeks and then quickly blend it in.

tribal markings to rosy tint

You can also use this product as a lipstain. Simply apply it to your bare lips and blend it in.

left-bare lip, right-benetint

Would I repurchase this product? Yes. Although it is a bit pricey at $28 it will also last you a lifetime (personally I don't think I will ever have the need to repurchase it!)

Overall I would rate this product a 5 out of 5. If you are looking for a product that gives you a little more color payoff than my swatches show, then this is not for you. But if you are looking for a product that will give you the right amount of rosy glow, then this easy to apply product will be the perfect match!

"The Product Less Used" is a series of blog posts which I review some of the products in my collection which have gone unnoticed for quite some time and I have recently rediscovered. I have a lot of products I purchased and use nonstop and then found a similar product (and sometimes better) which took it's spot. Or sometimes I purchase a product with the best intentions, and then it doesn't quite work out. Sometimes I find another way to use it, and sometimes I just forget about a it! This series will go in dept on certain products and why I recently started using them again, and why I stopped using them in the first place!

The Product Less Used - CoverGirl Smoky Shadow Blast

"The Product Less Used" is going to be a series of blog posts which I review some of my products in my collection which have gone unnoticed for quite some time and I have recently rediscovered. I have a lot of products I purchased and use nonstop and then found a similar product (and sometimes better) which took it's spot. Or sometimes I purchase a product with the best intentions, and then it doesn't quite work out. Sometimes I find another way to use it, and sometimes I just forget about a it! This series will go in dept on certain products and why I recently started using them again, and why I stopped using them in the first place!

I'm starting this series with the CoverGirl Smoky Shadow Blast. I bought this item in "Citrus Flair" a year ago- before I saw all the reviews on how bad it creased. At that time I did not know about setting all creamy liquid products with a powder. I was so confused as to why it would crease even when I applied an eye shadow primer. I stopped using it for quite some time because I was fed up with it's staying power. It was very disappointing because the colors were gorgeous! Here are some swatches:

With flash.

Without flash.

So what do I use this product for now? I use it as a base. After applying a primer I will apply a small amount of the green or copper and blend it out. Over that I use shadow and I find that there is very little creasing after an eight hour work day (although other cream products I use provide zero creasing). Whats unfortunate is that this product is advertised to be used alone. Drew Barrymore is shown applying this and having the perfect smoky eye all night...I would never recommend that. Not only with this product but with any cream shadows. I'm sure that I am not alone being someone who picked this up thinking it would be a one-step product with amazing results. It's quite shocking that they have been advertising it the same way for over a year now considering all the bad reviews this product gets.
Would I repurchase this product? Yes, if I found it on clearance because for around $6 it is not worth it. Because of the false advertising and disappointment with this product I have also shied away from all other products in the ShadowBlast line.
Overall I would give this product 2.5 out of 5 stars. It's not a totally unusable product, but in no way can you use it for what it's intended for.

Review: Almay Smart Shade Concealer

A few months ago I found myself poking around Ulta because was in need of a new concealer. After quite a few minutes contemplating which would be the best, and reading tons of labels, I decided on this one. It was $10, but like always, I used the spend $10 get $3.50 off. What drew me to it was the price, considering most other concealers were around $15, and the fact that it blended perfectly to my shade (although I was quite skeptical). On their website they state "take the guesswork out of finding the right shade of concealer. concealer instantly adjusts to your perfect shade. breakthrough shade-sensing technology starts out white and adjusts to right. conceal minor imperfections on face and dark circles under eyes. antioxidant blend of grape seed, ginseng and ginkgo biloba nurtures your skin. for a beautiful, natural finish every time." Yeah, not quite..   The next day when I used it I realized that it does blend into a differnt color than what first comes out of the tube, but not to your EXACT shade as Almay claims. When I blended it into my under eye area I noticed that right around the edges I would get a very apparent orange ring. My friends would tell me that they could see it even when I blended it to the best of my abilities. I found using a makeup wipe was the only way to remove the orange ring. I'll show you what I mean:

This is what it looks like straight out of the tube. You can see the tiny flecks of what looks almost like cinnamon. Those are the capsules that release pigment with friction.

When you first blend it out you can see a dark liquid which does not mix with the white creamy product. It looks almost like self tanning lotion splattered on regular lotion. You can also see the edges of the product which are very orange.

This is the product completely blended. It is a solid color because it is still very thick. The edges have not been blended out, which you must do when blending in the under eye area.

What do I think of this product? Well as a under eye concealer, I dislike it very much. But! When I want medium coverage I put a little bit in with my lotion and mix it all up on my fingers before I blend it on my face. It creates a very nice tinted moisturizer with no orange bits! I love using it this way, so I do not completely dislike the product.

Have you tried this concealer? Did you like it, or did you have the same results as me? Thanks for reading!

Review: OPI Ridge Filler

OPI's Ridge Filler! Where should I begin with this amazing product? Well first I should describe my nails. Before I got this product I would always notice tiny lines and dents when I painted my nails. I have very weak nails so if I layer on the coats of nail polish there is more of a chance of the paint chipping within a day or less. So when I first heard about a Ridge Filler abut two years ago I just HAD to put it on my birthday list. And that loved bottle I got for my 19th birthday has been the same one I use with EVERY SINGLE manicure for over a year and a half. I had to thin it out once a few months ago, but other than that I don't have any downsides. I apply this after OPI's Natural Nail Base Coat and before any nail lacquer. I used to apply it as a base coat, and I haven't seen any difference between using a real base coat first or using the ridge filler as a base coat. It smooths out all my lines and ridges and I really notice when I don't use it. It doesn't have any strong smell, and if you ask me, it has less of a scent than all my other polishes. Although I haven't tried any other ridge fillers, I would highly recommend this one. Unless of course you were born with perfectly smooth nails! Haha, don't we wish?
Overall: 5 out of 5 stars and two thumbs up!

The middle nail on the two above pictures has ridge filler and one coat of OPI's Miami Beet. The two side nails have just one coat of polish

Left nail: one coat of polish, right nail: ridge filler and one coat of polish.

Pinky and middle finger: Ridge filler and one coat of polish. Index and right finer: one coat of polish.

Bare nail

One coat of Ridge filler. You can really see the difference!