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Megapost: Custom Palette Systems

~ stashy ~ 143 Comments

I’ve had this post brewing for months and finally dusted it off in light of the recent controversy with Z Palette. If you don’t know about it, read about it here, here, and here. Um yeah… total gong show. 😮  Z Palette is probably the most well-known of any major custom palette systems, so their social media misstep has certainly opened the door for other players to secure a larger share of the market. People are now looking for Z Palette alternatives – let’s have a look at what the options are:

I’ll be showing what I own and also list some that I know about but do not own.  All prices are shown in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted.  Warning: long post and lots of photos! 😎

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Favourites Lately: Early 2016

~ stashy ~ 84 Comments

I’m baaaack. 🙂  Thanks for all the well wishes last week!  I’m about 50% better simply because it’s unavoidable for me to not be on the computer at work. I’m looking into an ergonomic assessment for my desk, and possibly doing some physio. I’ll be scaling back on my posting slightly but it’s challenging because I have so many backlogged posts! Here’s a post that I meant to post last week:

I waffle back and forth about doing monthly favourites but I think a quarterly list works for me. Here are the items that have been standouts for me lately:
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All of these items would be rated 8 out of 10 or above in my Stash Worthiness! 🙂

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Black Friday 2015: No-Buy edition

~ stashy ~ 30 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends! I hope you get stuffed full of turkey and pumpkin pie! 😀  Then rest up for Black Friday tomorrow! 😉

So it seems like everyone but me will be going out Black Friday shopping this year. *pout*  Alas, Black Friday in Canada is less of an event compared to the US anyway.  Our Thanksgiving was 6 weeks ago, but we participate in this American Thanksgiving tradition, whereby we have a random day of special sales on a Friday at the end of November.  It’s a regular work day for us; our stores don’t open as early, and our sales aren’t as insane as in the US.
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But, I have seen a bigger push from retailers to promote Black Friday here in the past few years. The last 3 years I made an effort and went looking for deals on Black Friday.   In 2013, I actually took the day off and went shopping!  Since I’m not participating in Black Friday (cosmetics-wise) this year, it got me thinking, did I even like the stuff I bought on Black Fridays past?  It’s not a good deal if I don’t even use the stuff.  Let’s have a look.

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Where was it made?

~ stashy ~ 79 Comments

On this Labour Day holiday, I thought I would examine where in the world our cosmetics are made.  It’s something that I always take note whenever I buy a product – I like to turn over the compact or box to find that fine print: made in xx / fabriqué au xx. For me personally, of the typical cosmetics producing countries, here’s how I rank them in terms of quality, from high to low: Disclaimer: this post in no way is a reflection of all qualities of products made in each country. I understand that there are high and low quality products made in every country. This is a generalized overview, and as such, there will be exceptions.

France – most notable for perfumes and skincare.  Certain brands exclusively produce in France, staying true to their origin, such as Guerlain, Chanel, and Bourjois.  I feel that these brands focus on controlling both the heritage and integrity of their products.  There are also excellent pharmacy skincare brands like Nuxe, Avene and Bioderma – luckily in Canada we have easy access to these brands!

made in France
Bourjois Little Round Pot Blush, Guerlain Meteorites Perles, Yves Rocher eyeshadow, Sisley makeup remover

Interestingly, I noticed that my Benefit Boxed Powder Blush changed from “Made in USA” (in the shade Dallas) to “Made in France” (Hervana) and 4g less product!
Benefit Boxed Powder Blush

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Eye shadow stash

~ stashy ~ 69 Comments

Here’s the motherlode.  I’ve mentioned many times that I have a lot of eye shadows – over 600 – it is the most abundant makeup category that I own.  I just love eye shadows and it’s the area of my face that I spend the most time applying makeup.  I’ll keep this introduction brief and just let the pictures do the talking.

It took me over 2 hours just to sort and photograph the whole eye shadow collection and probably another 4 to edit everything.  Usual disclaimer: this isn’t meant to show off.  It was actually quite a beneficial exercise for me to display all my eye shadows visually.   Warning: photo heavy post! (50 images)

Brace yourself, eye shadows galore this way