Thursday, September 8, 2016

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.

11 comments:

  1. I liked the eye cream for one reason, it really made my concealer go on nicely so I'm saving it for days that I know I will need to use a lot of NARS RCC.

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    1. It does have a great texture, but I'm not happy about the bumps it gives me. :(

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  2. Oh man, so those Tarteist lip paints have cringeworthy names AND a terrible formula? Bummer.

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    1. RIGHT?! They're trying too hard to be hip, I think.

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    2. Apparently that's part of Tarte's reputation. Bummer though, like AB said, since it looked so pretty when first applied!

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  3. I got the Maskcara IIID foundation palette because some pale YouTubers liked her new colors. I haven't played with it much so far, but offhand the highlight shade ("moonlit") doesn't seem quite light enough for me.
    My other big purchase recently is a full set of Imaginary Authors samples. I watched your video review at some point but forget most of your opinions (whoops) but was surprised to really, truly loathe Memoirs of a Trespasser--to me it's a suffocating bandaids-and-mildew smell, less "nice old book" and more "actually rotting old book." I think I gave it ten minutes before it went into the "to give to my mother" pile, which might be a personal record for a fragrance sample. It reminded me a lot of Demeter's "Paperback," which is my least-favorite fragrance of all time .
    City on Fire smells like bacon and creosote, and the plum note in Violet Disguise smells like black currant/cat pee (but I like the dry down, which makes things complicated.) I like Cape Heartache (it reminds me a lot of Long Winter Farm "Forest Wife," but with strawberry swapped in place of blueberry) and really love Slow Explosions, their newest (fruity/juicy rose petals, dry saffron, dry suede, and tart/fresh green apple.) With others I'm still working on formulating a good opinion; Falling Into The Sea is lovely but maybe better as a potential spring purchase, Cobra and the Canary is so far mostly confusing to me (but maybe not in a bad way,) Mosaic is interesting but I'm concerned about it being LE. I need to chew on Soft Lawn for a while as it's another that's very harsh and unpleasant for the first half hour but softens into something I really like. Yesterday Haze is interesting but not for me, I don't think (it has some of that dusty resinous vanilla smell, maybe the tonka, that seems to steal the air from the room.) Bull's Blood smells lipsticky (secret iris root?) and good to me but I think needs a special occasion to wear (not sure whether people at work would appreciate it too much.)

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    1. HOW DARE YOU! I joke, I kid. Scents are personal, slash, very much affected by things like skin chemistry and personal preference. Since Paperback smelt bad to you, too, I'm going to guess that large amounts of ambrette might be causing the problem. It tends to be an earthy note that can smell moldy to some.

      I haven't smelt Slow Explosions yet, but I am SO interested!

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  4. Ugh I used some Caudalie product a couple years ago that made the skin under my eyes red and the skin started flaking. It was so painful and terrible to look at. I will never use another one of their products!
    Now the Tarteist - I have the color Rave and it is amazing! Maybe give another color a shot?

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    1. Honestly, I dislike how this formula feels when I apply it (too silicone heavy and powdery), so even if other shades wear better, I'd take a pass if they felt similar.

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  5. Thanks for this post, I find these almost more helpful than rave reviews. Haven't tried the eye cream yet but I'm tempted to just throw it in the trash- I have plenty of others (not to mention a gazillion samples) to get through!

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    1. The eye cream may not give everybody the same reaction!

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