Review: Chanel Kaska Beige Eyeshadow Quad

I adore Chanel but I've never had the guts to actually splurge on their quads before. However, this spring's amazing quad has drawn me in! Help!

I mean, just look at the abuse I've put that compact through already! Oh, it's beautiful. I wear it daily. The shades are lovely--there's a matte beige /cream, and a matte medium brown. There are two beautiful shimmery/satiny (more satiny than shimmery) shades in a dark lovely plum and a light golden brown. Ahhh, my heart is faint for it!

Jump the link for my full review, including a swatch and a look!

Review: Benefit Sugarbomb

This is my first foray into Benefit powders. I've heard both good things and bad things about them, and I have been wanting to try the luminizing ones (such as Dandelion or Georgia) out for a while. However, when Sugarbomb came out, I thought I'd try it for review purposes so that people could read a review about a new product. Everyone's written about Dandelion and Georgia, so I'll save these two for another time.

First of all, the packaging. It's sleek, it's small. I like it well enough, but it's not outstanding. It seems durable and it's very portable AND it packs tons of products in. In fact, you may have to work with it a bit with a brush before it'll show up. Speaking of brushes, I am not a huge fan of this one. It's streaky and kind of rough.

The product itself is filed into the bronzer category on Sephora, which I think is inaccurate. On my NC35 skin, it does more like what Dior's Diamond powders do (such as Rose Diamond). It's an even more finely milled powder than the Dior, and shows up as this amazing pink/peach highlighter. On my skin it shows up as the barest peach-pink, but it lends such a soft and pretty glow. I think it's really good for people with my skin tone or lighter as a natural my-face-but-better day make up as a bare hint of blush. Otherwise it's good as a lightly shimmering all over powder/highlighter, or as a way to diffuse your blush and blend out your blush and give your skin a healthy glow.

Comparing this to Dior's Diamond powders or Bobbi Brown's Shimmer Bricks... I think this is the best of them all. Seriously. I'm not a die hard fan of shimmering powders, since I have pretty big pores and they really accentuate pores, but this is the most finely milled shimmer I've seen in a while, beating even Dior's powders for a subtle and soft glow rather than a disco-ball face. I love it!

I would use this with a kabuki brush or with a fluffy but dense bronzer or blush brush (ie. MAC 169 or Bobbi Brown's bronzer brush). Review of all of the above brushes here.

To sum it up...

The Pros:
- Amazing glow. I've gotten compliments!
- Is buildable to being a light blush on light-to-medium skintones.
- Portable packaging, lots of product packed in for the price.
- Very finely milled.
- This is a pretty universal shade, I think.

The Cons:
- The brush is useless to me.
- Can be considered too sheer for many people, including me for a blush.

The final verdict: A-
Great product, but I would probably like Benefit's actual blush powders instead of just these sheer powders better. I have several highlighting powders. Good value for price. Get it if you are looking for a great highligher or all over powder that's subtle and pink.

Review: Christian Dior Harmonie Blush in Rose Brazilia and Coral Riviera

I've always heard good things about the Christian Dior blushes, and when their summer collections came out this year, I thought I'd give it a try. I had read rave reviews of these new Bronze de Harmonie blushes, especially the shade in Coral Riviera, and after swatching both at my local Sephora, I purchased this peachy, corally shade.

Normally I am not the biggest fan of coral/peach shades. They turn out kind of orange on me, and I am definitely a pink blush kind of girl due to my cooler Asian coloring.

According to Dior, the product is...

A palette of multi-effect shades to sculpt and illuminate the face, featuring new gold Cannage-style detailing and a blendable formula for an easy and flawless application. In two universal and easy-to-wear shade harmonies: Rose Brazilia and Coral Riviera.

At $42.00 each, this is not a blush for the faint-of-heart.

Yes, the gold glitter goes away after one or two applications. This is a plus, because I wear these blushes daily and I like to keep it natural. Both shades are lovely, applying flawlessly (I like to use M.A.C. 187 or a fluffy blush brush, depending on the intensity I want). It's super fine-milled, easy to blend out, and doesn't create any harsh lines or streaks like some of the M.A.C. blushes do. You really do get what you pay for. Truly it is an amazing buttery formula that takes the work out of blush application.

The Coral Riviera is surprisingly good on me and looks quite natural. It's good for the lazy days. It's an amazing peach-coral shade with the bronze sheen built into it so wonderfully. I'm not very good with bronzers and this is one of the first I've tried that's worked on me.

The "bronzing" aspect is not so apparent in the Rose Brazilia shade. It's a lovely and slightly warm pink on me, and is incredibly wearable. It's replaced M.A.C.'s Dollymix as my favorite baby-pink blush. This one has less of the bronzing sheen, like I said, and it's more matte than the other color. While Coral Riviera departs a lovely sheen that is more obvious, the sheen in Rose Brazilia is slight, subtle, and brings out the sparkle in my eyes.

Rose Brazilia on.

My favorite shade is Rose Brazilia, because of the texture and quality of the sheen, as well as the lovely subtle warm pink (with the slight touch of peach!), but I know many people who prefer Coral Riviera.

Whichever you choose, this is an excellent product. Both shade are perfect for everyday use in the summer.

Bobbi Brown Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner

My first eyeliner was one of those automatic pencil liners by Maybelline. You know, the ones you can twist up and down. The Maybelline Unstoppable.

Thankfully, I have learned better since then. With the Maybelline I had to drag it back and forth across my lid, tugging and tugging before the color would go on! And boy, did it skip. It was impossible to create a thin, even line.. Finally, I discovered the beauty that is a gel liner.

I have used gel liners far and wide, starting with MAC Fluidline in Blitz and Glitz my first happy year in college. Gel liners were an amazing discovery for me---no tug, easy application, and super easy winged eyes with an angle liner. Everything I wanted the drugstore pencils to be.

I used Fluidline for many years with no qualms, until I one day heard the good ladies over at Specktra.net say that the Bobbi Brown gel liner is such and such, so much better, etc etc. Of course, being the Specktraette I am, I immediately sprung for it.

According to Bobbi Brown, this product is:

Awarded: "Elle" ‘Genius Award’ (April 2008), "In Style" 'Best Beauty Buy' (2008), and "Allure" ‘Reader's Choice Award’ (2008).

Our popular long-wearing eyeliner offers the precision of liquid liner and the ease of a gel-based formula.

It's awesome, as it turns out. Everyone was right. Here are some comparisons with other brand eyeliners:

- It stays put with some UDPP until the end of the day. Yesterday, for intance, I wore it for something like 17 hours and it didn't budge. At all. I have problems with MAC Fluidline in this area.
- It's really easy to remove at night, despote the way it doesn't move on your eyes normally. I like the similar look of the Urban Decay pencils but those are not as easy to remove as the Bobbi Brown.
- It doesn't skip or clump up on my brush like the L'Oreal gel liner does (though I have that one in the midnight blue color and it's gawwww-geous).
- It applies really easily, and smooth. I only have to go over the line once or twice, whereas with Fluidline I often feel like I have to scratch at my eyes forever to get the color to impart from my brush. (Same brush.)

For me, the long wear on this alone is worth the increased price tag. At $21, it's $5 dollars more than MAC Fluidline, but it comes in a variety of colors. I've only tried the matte varieties, and not the shimmer ink ones, but I have lots of faith. Bobbi Brown never fails to produce high quality (if a little boring, sometimes) items, and I highly recommend this product!

I think everyone knows what gel eyeliner looks like but I might as well post an example. Please excuse the badly applied falsies in this picture!
As much as I highly recommend this product, there's one thing I don't really use this for, and that's the waterline. For some reason it just doesn't stick to the waterline upon application as well as the Urban Decay liner pencils, but at the same time, the UD 24/7 pencils also smudge on me if I use them to line normally (not water line), but the Bobbi Brown stay put. So I keep one of each in black (or Zero, in UD language) for those purposes.

Run, not walk, to get one of these! I recommend applying them with Smashbox's bent eyeliner brush, or a small angled brush from any brand you like for a thicker line.

Another note---MAC's Blacktrack dried out on me after a few months, but my Bobbi Brown gel liner has stuck with me for over a year without a sign of drying out. Hmm.