A few weeks ago I won an auction on listia.com for foundations and I have to say I’m quite pleased with what I got (specially because I paid the equivalent of $3 for quite for a bunch of foundations and blushes). So far, the foundation I like most is Purity Mineral Science in color “buff”. It’s a powder foundation and it seems to blend well to my face and cover the redness quite well. It also is easy to apply over sunscreen.
The problem with this makeup, however, is twofold. For one, it’s extremely expensive. A 2 gram container, which is not very much at all, retails for $25 at their website (though I saw it for $6.50 at e-bay).
For another, the company that sells it seems less than honest. If you go to their website, you see an offer for a foundation starter kit for $1 plus shipping & handling (which is $8), but it’s not until after you put the item on your shopping bag that you see a link to the “terms & conditions”. And these are that you are actually signing up for a “membership” that will oblige you to pay $80 for their supposedly “free” product. If you don’t want the product (and you have 3 weeks to make up your mind) you have to both call the company AND return the products, plus pay an $8 restocking fee (in addition to the price of shipping back the product). So, that $1 kit is basically costing you $24 for a 3-week supply. In addition, once you order this starter kit, you will automatically receive a 2-month supply of product for $36. And it seems they make it *very difficult* for you to cancel your membership, by not answering e-mails nor the phone – plus they make you agree to not dispute payments with your credit card. How slimy can a company be? And given how nice their products are, why do you they have to be that slimy?
Needless to say I won’t be shopping from them, though I’ll be sad when I run out of this foundation.
Category: Cosmetics (Page 3 of 10)
The girls and I have been playing at putting on make up quite frequently lately, so I’ve been looking for a good (and cheap) makeup remover. I found the Blum Daily Cleansing Towelettes
The selling point of these towelettes is that they are made with natural and organic ingredients (though if you look at the ingredients the only organic ingredient is the tea tree oil). Some of the ingredients (salicylic acid, gluconolactone) don’t sound very natural, but who am I to know? The towelettes are pretty thin and they are a bit rough when you apply them. The ones I use are for combination/oily skin and they don’t contain any oil – which means that they leave you with a dry feeling. That’s probably a good thing.
The problem, however, is that they don’t work well. My kids applied a lot of makeup to my face today, and I tried to thoroughly clean it with the towelette. It removed quite a bit of the stuff, but by no means all of it. I followed up by cleaning my face with cotton balls and a combination of 2/3 aloe vera gel and 1/3 jojoba oil, and I was amazed at how much makeup there was left over. Of course, using oil to clean my oily face is probably not a good idea – but it does work.
A little while ago I came back from picking up Camila at daycare. Her daycare is about 2 miles from my house and I walk to pick her up and back – this means that every day, in the middle of the day, I spend almost two hours under the sun, not a trivial amount.
In my youth, that wouldn’t have been an issue. I always tanned beautifully and seldom burnt (though I remember one trip to Ecuador where I didn’t fare so well). But with age my skin has changed and now my face and upper chest acquires an ugly red tint if I spend almost any time under the sun (my arms, meanwhile, continue to tan just as well).
I usually hate wearing sunscreen, both for the oily feeling and the horrible coconut smell. I like spray sunscreens for this reason (and because they are easy to apply), but even those with a high SPF don’t seem to work that well for me. So Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock
This may very well qualify as the frilliest, most stupid post of my not very proud posting career. But hey, I can be as frilly as the best of them.
For some reason I decided last week that I wanted to get a lot of small lipsticks – I figured the girls might have fun using them to play make-up and they were less likely to cause much damage if they were the sample size rather than the full-size (plus the others would be cheaper). So I went looking for sample lipsticks at e-bay (where else? the things are not supposed to be sold), and quickly found out that there were two main kinds: Avon and Mary Kay, not surprisingly, given that these are products sold face-to-face by “consultants”.
I’m not much of a makeup wearer, and my only experience with Avon was when I was a child and my mother used to sell the line to her friends (though mostly I think she bought things for herself). I’ve never even met with a Mary Kay representative. I remembered the tiny lipsticks and that’s what I wanted – but I couldn’t tell from the blurry pictures on e-bay whether the Mary Kay packaged samples contained a small, skinny lipstick inside them. I could also not find any information about that online (imagine that – but that’s why I’m posting this, in case someone else is in the same dilemma ;-). But the Mary Kay samples were cheaper (about 17c each vs. about 25c for the Avon ones) so I decided to give them a try. Oh well, you win one you lose some.
As you can see by the picture above, the Mary Kay sample consists of a tiny applicator and a very small, thin layer of lipstick. They are not kidding when they say it’s for ONE application. There is probably enough to use on both my daughters, but they have small mouths.
The amount of lipstick in the Avon samples is much more generous, plus they are more like lipsticks, so I think the kids would like them more.
The real test, of course, will be what they find more fun.
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