I love the Shiseido Sheer and Perfect Foundation SPF 18 – $39 for 30ml (department stores) – it is my ideal everyday foundation. I alternate between this and BB creams for a typical weekday when I don’t need high coverage or a super long wearing foundation.
This is a popular Youtube topic and I can understand why. MAC is a very accessible line that is a bit of a “gateway” makeup brand for many people, myself included. MAC offers high quality cosmetics in a wide variety of colours and finishes, at a reasonable price point (compared to department store or Sephora brands). My makeup collection began with essentials from MAC, including lots of their eye shadows. I now own 89 MAC eye shadow shades, which is roughly 15% of my total eye shadow collection.
These are my top 10 MAC eye shadows – unfortunately I can’t guarantee that all of these are in the permanent collection (in fact, one shade was in their permanent collection but now discontinued!) Note that these are only MAC’s powder eye shadows, I will do a separate post on Paints / Paint Pots and Pigments.
They’re roughly in the order of my preference and usage – the ones with the asterisk mean I own a back-up of them.
I purchase most of my MAC eye shadows in the refill pans – the ones in the individual packaging are usually from limited edition collections (I debate back and forth whether I should depot them or not). Below are swatches of each and more detailed descriptions.
Along a similar vein as how I photograph products, I thought I would do quick post about how I swatch products for this blog. I’m not sure if people enjoy these “how I do things” entries, but I personally enjoy taking a peek behind the scenes on other blogs / youtube channels.
This isn’t meant to be a how-to guide, it’s just to show you what I use to achieve the swatches you see on this blog.
There’s curiosity about my cosmetics inventory spreadsheet so I thought I would devote an entry on how it came to be. I created my cosmetics spreadsheet on Sunday July 26, 2009 (as revealed by the Excel file properties). At the time, it was primarily a way to track my growing nail polish collection so that I didn’t duplicate any of my Essie shades (at present count, I own 73 bottles of Essies – it is my favourite nail polish formula).
Eventually I expanded the spreadsheet to include the following tabs:
The initial set up of the spreadsheet was a daunting task. If I had created the spreadsheet from the inception of my first beauty product purchase, it would have been a breeze. But I had to essentially do a full inventory of my stash to build the spreadsheet – item by item, line by line.
This entry is part Untrieds and part review – featuring the Make Up For Ever (MUFE) Artist Shadows. I purchased a 3-pan customizable palette in early December last year to redeem my Sephora VIB $20 off coupon (minimum purchase of $50). I really wanted to maximize the coupon’s value – I had to spend just $50 so that effectively, I was getting 40% off. Lo and behold, a filled 3-pan MUFE palette is exactly $50. Take THAT, Sephora – you only got $30 out of me!
Then, during Boxing week, the MUFE Studio Case Eye Shadow Palette went on clearance sale for $45 – the regular price was $69 (the product value is actually $107). I had been wanting this set since it launched but was talked out of it… at 35% off the regular retail price (and 58% off the value of the product!), I couldn’t resist! This palette was a great way to add to my collection without too much commitment. It sat in my Untrieds pile until this month. I wore both the full sized and palette eye shadows interchangeably for 2 full weeks to see how they performed.
In honour of Chinese New Year today, I thought it would be fun to feature some awesome red makeup in my stash (I momentarily considered posting this red-themed makeup entry in time for Valentine’s Day, but ugh, Valentine’s Day…)
I recently stayed overnight at a hotel and wanted to pack the most minimal amount of cosmetics with me. I really didn’t even want to fuss with makeup brushes so I decided to pack only makeup that I can apply without the use of makeup brushes.
Since restarting on January 19th with my No-Buy 2015, today is my real 28 days of no shopping. It has been good for the most part. It was initially difficult to resist all the typical clearance sales in January. I used to spend my lunch hour browsing through shops, so I had to change how I spend my free time (mostly a lot of window shopping now). Weekends were the most difficult. I typically check the drugstore flyers on Saturday mornings and then hit up a few stores for deals. And I would go to Winners (Canadian version of TJMaxx) or Marshalls at least once a week to see what new things they got in. I still go to Winners to check out what they have about once a week (it’s on my way home from work) but luckily for me, January and February have been a dry spell there in terms of cosmetics stock. I’m pretty shocked that I’ve bought absolutely nothing from Winners in 2015.
I did purchase a few items of significance during this time:
1) This Quo Mineral eye shadow palette in Downtown Brown, but for my sister!
As a result of frequenting numerous cosmetics counters (and befriending many of the sales associates) over the years, I have amassed a hoard of gift with purchases (gwp), cosmetics samples, and Sephora VIB points redemption items; everything from face creams, to makeup removers, to mini lipsticks and mini mascaras.
I’ve been gathering some funny beauty-related comics / images online and I thought I would share:
stash matters 