Recent Disappointing Products

My beauty life tends to go in phases: either I'm trying a bunch of new products and I really like almost every one of them, or I'm trying a bunch of products and they're all utter crap. August was unfortunately another month full of not-so-good stuff, and to be honest, most of it was so "meh" to me that I didn't even have the patience to write full, exhaustive reviews for every one of them. Instead, I thought I'd do another disappointing products post! These are all products that would rank at 2 out of 5 or less in a full review.

Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo -- I normally use drugstore dry shampoos, but I heard so many good things about the Living Proof option that I decided to give it a shot. Although the travel size is almost double what I usually pay for dry shampoo ($12 for 1.8oz), I got at least 10 good uses out of this bottle. And this dry shampoo does something pretty impressive: instead of just making your hair less oily and more textured, it actually makes your hair feel cleaner to the touch. My praise stops there, though, because it certainly doesn't make my hair look cleaner. I've used a lot of dry shampoos, but none of them has left this much white residue in my hair. And it's resilient residue, too: I've restyled my hair two or three times in a row after using the PhD Dry Shampoo, brushing it all the way through every time, and I'll still find massive white flakes all through my hair. I'm glad to be done with this junk.

Lit Cosmetics Clearly Liquid Glitter Base -- As a glitter primer, this stuff is hard to beat. Unlike other options on the market, it's completely weightless and not sticky in the slightest--it feels like water going on your lids. Yet it holds your glitter on all  night and is easy to remove when you get home. My beef with this product is that it seems to go bad so damn quickly. I'm on my second bottle in two years, and it's already taken on a weird, jaundiced yellow color and a rank smell. I thought I was having some bad luck, but a few of my friends who wear glitter far more often have mentioned that their bottles also start to go off after 6 months or so. It's still the best glitter primer on the market, in my opinion, but I wish it lasted longer.

Caudalie Resveratrol Lift Eye Lifting Cream -- I'm rarely impressed by eye creams, but I still think they're fun to try, so I was excited to see this pop up in my Sephora Play! box. After using it for about 2 weeks, however, I had to give this Caudalie cream the axe. I began noticing clogged pores around the outer portion of my eye, where I pretty much never break out; as soon as I stopped using this eye cream, they began to fade. It's not like this did much for my eyes when I was using it, honestly--it has a lightweight texture and is soothing and moisturizing, but so are a lot of other eye creams. Save your $62.

Namaste freshly applied (top) and after 4 hours (bottom). The lipliner is NYX Nude Pink.

Tarte Tarteist Cream Matte Lip Paint in Namaste -- I got this deluxe sample with a Sephora coupon code much earlier this summer, but because I'm always trying to space out my new products, I didn't try it until the fall semester rolled around. I understand why these are so popular, to be honest: they contain massive amounts of silicone, which makes the formula weightless and very smooth. It almost feels weird to spread this on my lips because it reminds me so much of a face primer. The color is gorgeous, too, especially with a bit of lipliner around the edges to add depth and warmth. Unfortunately, this formula emphasized dry patches and, to a lesser extent, fine lines. It dried out my mouth within an hour and began to smear and fade after three or four hours. There are much, much better matte liquid lipsticks available at this price point.

MAC Satin Lipstick in Twig -- This lipstick shade is apparently all the rage right now, probably because it's the sort of mauve shade one of the Kardashians is wearing. (Kylie? Kendall? I'm having trouble "keeping up" with them.) I love MAC lipsticks and usually have zero problems with the Satins, but this one was really dry on me and totally parched my lips. I also found that the shade was completely unflattering on me. It turned damn near gray on my mouth and made me look dull and washed out. The shade issue is certainly dependent on skintone, but again, the formula left something to be desired as well.