Elizabeth Arden AND Vincent Longo GIVEAWAY!

I think we all know that I'm not the biggest lipgloss fan. I got rid of a good 90% of my glosses, I rarely wear the ones I've kept, and I only clung to the ones I kept because I felt like they would go well with certain lipsticks. While I do feel that, say, a nude lipstick is far more attractive on my skintone if I can soften it with a pinky gloss, I'm otherwise rarely compelled to put the goopy, sloppy stuff on. But oh, that has changed a little! And I'm actually considering purging even more of my glosses because this little baby is so multi-purpose.

The Elizabeth Arden Crystal Clear Lip Gloss. Oh, but this stuff is lovely! Sticky enough to stay in place for several hours, but not at all rubbery or thick. Shiny and glossy without looking like oil or plastic on my lips. I've dabbed it over a dozen different lipstick formulas, and it never seems to "break down" or smear the lipstick. And as an added bonus, it performs a strange optical illusion that sort of "smooths out" the fine lines in my lips, so it almost looks like my natural pigmentation is some kind of particularly lovely lipgloss. In a nutshell: I LOVE it!

This product first came to my attention via Sex and the City, when I started doing beauty sightings for the series. I immediately assumed that the lipgloss Carrie toted around for 6 seasons was the MAC clear gloss, but Makeup411.com and interviews with Sarah Jessica Parker revealed that it is actually one of SJP's personal favorite products: the Elizabeth Arden Crystal Clear Lip Gloss. I did a Google search and found next to nothing on this product...or any other Elizabeth Arden product besides the infamous 8 Hour Cream (which we all know I love). I realized that I've used one of the Color Intrigue lipsticks, Poppy Cream, for almost a year now, and while I love it, I rarely mention it. Why? I dunno, I guess I figured nobody would care about Elizabeth Arden makeup. Finally, I began watching Charlotte Tilbury's YouTube tutorials, and I noticed several Elizabeth Arden makeup products popping up in her videos. With that in mind, I decided to give more Elizabeth Arden cosmetics a try. This gloss is definitely a stand-out.

So I'm doing a giveaway! I'm going to giveaway a brand new tube of the Crystal Clear Lip Gloss. The out-of-the-box tube you see here is actually my own personal tube, which is the smaller GWP size; your tube will be almost twice as big and, of course, brand spankin' new. :)

I'm also throwing in two brand new Prevage skin care samples, which came with my most recent Elizabeth Arden order. There's nothing wrong with them--I've actually heard great things about the sunscreen--but my skin is somewhat sensitive, so I tend to stick with a strict skincare routine that doesn't leave much room for new products.

And because I've been diggin' the Vincent Longo Water Canvas blushes, I decided to add two to this prize: Morning Tender and Aqua Crimson! Again, the products photographed are from my personal collection; yours will be brand new and still in their boxes.

If you want to enter for a chance to win these products, just comment on this entry and tell me about your all-time favorite lip product. It can be a lipstick, a gloss, a pencil, a balm, a stain...anything you use on your lips and love! We all know I'm always on the lookout for new lippies to try. ;)

Please be aware that there are some rules for this contest. You must be at least 18 years old and located in the US to enter. You must be prepared to provide me with your full name and address if you win. You may only enter once. Entries will be finalized on March 15, 2013 at 11:59pm EST. I will use Random.com to pick a winner. You do NOT have to be subscribed to this blog to enter, but I will announce the winner in a blog post, so it might help to bookmark BOGL for the next month if you've entered. If you do not respond to that blog post within a week, I will draw a new winner.

That's about it! Now start tellin' me about them lip products!!!

Swap-and-Sale Haul

Just figured I'd show off some new stuff I've received via swaps, awesome sales, and good friends!

My incredibly sweet boyfriend got me a Sephora gift card from Christmas, so I decided to try one new product and one faithful favorite. Ye Olde Faithful in this instance was the Makeup Forever Uplight in #11, which is super-duper gorgeous and surprisingly natural. The gel formula is light weight, and it gives my skin a soft, dewy glow. The newbie is the Eyeko duo, which includes their skinny brush mascara and liquid eyeliner. The eyeliner is pretty good, but the mascara hasn't wowed me yet--I find it a bit difficult to deal with. Regardless, I'll keep using it.

I also got another tube of the Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Intensive Moisturizing Body Treatment. This has quickly become my absolute FAVORITE body moisturizer, but it doesn't last as long as a tub of Haus of Gloi Pumpkin Butter, so I'm replacing my empty tube (see below) for now and hoping I can hold off til spring!

SpaceNK.com has been having some fantastic sales on Vincent Longo products, which they are apparently liquidating from their warehouses. I tried--and loved--the Liquid Canvas Dew Finish foundation, which unfortunately doesn't come in a shade light enough for me. I also fell instantly in love with the Water Canvas blush in Swan Lake...

...so I went a little crazy and ordered a bunch more. Hey, don't give me that look; I got a few for you guys, too!

The blushes are Morning Tender, Aqua Crimson, and Forever Flush, and the highlighter is Lucky Light. I can't wait to try these! I truly love the texture. For $3, I also got a "micro" brow pencil in Blonde, and it is indeed micro! SO THIN! I can draw each individual brow hair in with this baby, no doubt. Luckily, it comes with a sharpener that fits the teeny tiny thing

I've also done some swapping and couponing. I added the Jack Black lip balm to my Sephora cart because I got some extra savings via a coupon; this is definitely one of my all-time favorite balms! The Maybelline One by One mascara is also a coupon purchase. (By the way: are you guys interested in mascara reviews? They're tricky to do, but I HAVE been trying a 4 or 5 new formulas...) I had some great swap partners, which resulted in a 1oz tube of L'occitane hand cream (which I'm learning to love!), the NARS cream blush in Cactus Flower, and a tube of MAC Lustre Drops in Pink Rebel. The Smoky Eyes eyeliner pencil was ordered directly from Elizabeth Arden.

And some freebies and swap extras! I gotta tell you, I'm starting to dig the travel-size/deluxe sample size items. They're fantastic for plane rides.

And of course, some empties. :) I've actually got ONE MORE night's use in that Elizabeth Arden body cream tube, but after that, it's on to the next bottle. And I've gone through about 3 packs of those facial wipes over the past 2 months; they're super-cheap wipes from the dollar store that I just use to clean up eyeshadow fallout and to wipe swatches off the back of my hand.

Review: Vincent Longo Liquid Canvas Dew Finish foundation

I've danced around this foundation for quite some time, and I only took the plunge this month because I heard that the Porcelain shade is lighter than MAC NW15 foundations. Turns out, it's not. And it's a damn shame, because this foundation is truly spectacular.

Swatches of Vincent Longo Dew Finish in Porcelain, Kevyn Aucoin Liquid Airbrush in 02, Kevyn Aucoin Sensual Skin Enhancer in Sx02, and MAC Face & Body in N1 and White (50/50 mix)

As you can see from the swatches, Porcelain is darker than the MAC Face & Body mixture I use (which is an almost perfect match for my N10 skin). It's also very, very pink. While it's not a match for me, it is a great match for NW15 ladies with rosy undertones.

The foundation comes in a glass bottle with a pump. The formula is very thin and liquidy, only a bit more viscous than MAC Face & Body, and it spreads and blends in to the skin very well. A single pump was enough to cover my enter face and jaw. While the box recommends using a foundation brush for light coverage and a dry sponge for fuller coverage, I found that the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush gave me medium coverage, blending the foundation in with my fingers sheered it out more, and tapping it on with a sponge made it look extra-cakey and way too thick. This is a foundation that's best worn in a thin layer.

Be forewarned: the scent of this product is very chemical and very strong, so much so that when I first applied it, I compared the stench to paint thinner. You can't smell it when it's on your face, but when you're lifting your brush past your nose...well, let's just say that it almost makes my eyes roll back in to my head, it's so potent.

Here's how the foundation looks immediately after it's been applied with the Real Techniques brush. Again, it obviously matches my face and not my body, so it's a shade too dark, and you can get an idea of how pink it is. But perhaps the oddest thing is that, despite being a luminous foundation, and despite the fact that I moisturized earlier in the morning, this foundation applies mostly-matte and tends to accentuate any dry patches on my face.

This photo demonstrates the color difference between my face and neck, and you can see how matte this foundation initially looks on the skin.

Thankfully, Liquid Canvas Dew Finish does what most foundations do: it softens up after a few minutes. I find that most foundations look better about 15 minutes after they're applied, when they interact with the natural heat of my skin.

And this why the lack of a shade match really breaks my heart: this is a gorgeous foundation with a beautiful, radiant satin finish that provides medium coverage while still looking like skin. It doesn't transfer on to my clothes, the nosepads of my glasses, or my fingers when I press hard on my face. Despite being transfer-resistant, it's an incredibly comfortable foundation; I don't feel like my skin is suffocating when I wear it.

That being said, I will note two minor issues. First of all, this foundation has SPF15, which is normally not a high enough SPF to cause flashback in photographs. This foundation does flash back sometimes in flash photography. Also, despite being a "dewy" finish foundation, it's not particularly suited to very dry skin unless you moisturize before applying. Vincent Longo Liquid Canvas Dew Finish is probably best suited to normal, slightly oily, or slightly dry skin, not very oily or very dry folks. I didn't use powder or setting spray for these photos, just so I could capture how the foundation wears on its own, but it looks flawless on me all day if I powder my nose and use a smidge of Skindinavia setting spray.

As you can hopefully see, Dew Finish stayed radiant and beautiful on my skin without getting oily or smearing off. The only part of my face that got oily was my nose, which is incidentally the only part of my face that gets oily besides my eyelids. It only got a bit shiny after 5 hours, and it's easily fixed with a blotting paper or some powder.

Overall, this is a truly fantastic foundation if you're looking for something natural and glowy that still provides decent coverage. At $49 an ounce, it's not a cheap product, but I would invest in it regularly if I had a shade match. As an added bonus, SpaceNK.com is clearing out their Vincent Longo stock, so you can score a bottle for under $8.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

New Shtuff

Swapping with lovely people and raiding drag queens' stashes, these have been my salvation during Operation-Use-It-All! ...ok, so I did buy a FEW things, but 2 of them were disturbingly cheap and the rest is for my sister's beach wedding (which is some time in 2014 now).

I popped in to Sally's for some Ardell 301 lashes and came up empty for the squillionth time (more on that later), and the cashier informed me that the clearance items were an extra 50% off. Never one to pass up a bargain, I raided the bins and found these 2 polishes, both hideously ugly and therefore very likely to please me: Orly Buried Alive and China Glaze Mahogany Magic. I paid $2 total for these lovelies. Still, I was sad that I couldn't find any lashes beyond the uber-full clowny ones...

...but the this happened! A lovely MUAer informed me that she had a ton of lashes she was never going to use, so she sent me all of these lovely beauties. She also offered to give me anything I wanted out of her swap list, and I saw one of the Shiseido lip lacquers I've been lusting after, but insisted that she let me pay her at least a bit of money for it. She acquiesced, then sent a whole bunch of goodies.

HOLY SAMPLES, BATMAN! I've been wanting to try a few of these, namely the MUFE primer and the Kiehl's cleanser, so I'm very excited. I don't know how she knew about my love of dark chocolate and pomegranates, but I'm not going to complain! The only thing that doesn't look like it'll work for me is the Perfekt skin gel, which is clearly too dark for me, but I'm going to abuse my sister's face as soon as I get the chance.

More items from the lovely MUAers package, plus wedding purchases and spoils from recent drag queen stash raids! I don't think the Neutrogena Healthy Skin cream foundation is quite my shade--Classic Ivory 10 is generally more yellow than Natural Ivory 20--but it DEFINITELY wasn't Scarlet Fairweather's shade! I've been curious about high-end face cotton/tissue for a while, especially since the drugstore cotton rounds I tried had a really loathsome texture, and now I think I might be addicted to the infamous Shiseido tissues.

Speaking of Shiseido: THE LACQUER ROUGE IN NOCTURNE!!! Gorgeous berry-red color, and I can already tell it wears like a beast, because the swatch was nigh-on impossible to get off. Plus the Kevy Aucoin face primer (which, yes, is that tiny) and 2 nude-ish lipsticks: Vincent Longo Gel-X lipstick in Neu and Lancome ColorDesign lipstick in Natural Beauty. The Vincent Longo lipstick looks like it's dried up a bit, but I'll try to make it work.

 The beautiful Urban Decay eyeshadows are Free Love and X, which my sister wanted for her wedding.

 Swatches, from left to right: Nocturne, Neu, Natural Beauty, Free Love, X