Weekly Beauty Edit 12.28.2014

Happy New Year!

The Weekly Beauty Edit is a snapshot of my week with beauty products. What's new in my collection, being returned, rising stars, edits and deletes, empties and whatever else comes to mind.

Edits and Deletes
Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua foundation, Shade 30 - A moment of silence. Let me begin by saying this is a lovely foundation for those who like light coverage and will only need to look fresh and natural for less than 3 or 4 hours. Grocery shopping? Volunteer work? Dinner out? If you apply a second layer, this foundation can be built to light medium coverage. The other option, which is what I would do, is to use a powder foundation as my setting powder.  This is also scented, like all Chanel makeup, but the scent does linger about an hour. If you like the scent, great. If not, like me, it is annoying. This is not the typical Chanel cosmetic scent. It is less floral or rose and more plastic, maybe.

Revlon Lip Butters in Raspberry Pie, Juicy Papaya and Strawberry Shortcake - Painful to deletes these. Baby steps, baby steps. I think I have every Revlon Lip Butter color. I never, ever wear them. Granted, based on the size of my lipstick collection, there's lots of lipstick choices. However, when shopping my stash for my weekly makeup basket, I never select any Lip Butters. That says a lot considering I own 20 of them, maybe more. The Lip Butter deletes are starting with the lightest colors and the darkest colors. I'm in the minority here as these did not hydrate my lips, they made them feel tight. Must be some ingredient that my lips disagree with.

Empties
Alterna Caviar Replenishing Moisture Shampoo and Conditioner. Loved both of these, especially the scent. They were herbal, very spa-like. My hair was left feeling healthy and was not weighed down at all. I'm not one to spend a lot on hair care, it's just not my thing, mostly a drug store hair product kind of girl. I snagged these deluxe sample sizes in a kit for $10 on Sephora's Black Friday deals. Also came with the Caviar CC leave-in hair styling cream which I really love and would spend the money on. The full size shampoo is $32 for 8.5 oz. Ouch. Over 300 reviews on the Sephora site with a 4.5 star rating. It's good stuff!

Haul-A-Lulu
Shiseido Benefiance WrinkleResist24 Intensive Eye Contour Cream. That's a long name. This has been my "go to" night time under eye cream for the last 4 or 5 years. They reformulated and renamed last year, or maybe year before. My under eye area is very, very dry. A five minute walk across the parking lot on a Chicago January morning and they are flaking and tight within an hour. I'm also super sensitive to many anti-aging ingredients as well as ingredients for dark circles or puffiness. I have neither but lots of eye creams have these ingredients. Thankfully, Benefiance has a relatively simple but very hydrating ingredient deck. It's too heavy for daytime, my concealer would slide off. I am loving the Kiehl's Rosa Arctica Eye Balm I bought last week for daytime.

Swoon
Chanel Rouge Allure Intense Pirate Lipstick - I think I've mentioned this in every post since I bought it which is only a couple of weeks ago. Wore this on Christmas Eve. I love red lipstick all year long. Pirate is now my Holy Grail red. I have very few Holy Grail anything in makeup, I love variety and change. But this is it. Pirate has my heart. It is the perfect shade and intensity of red for my coloring and skin tone.

Pondering
Obagi NuDerm skin care system. My skin care AM and PM routines are simple but effective. I try to stay on top of new products, technology, ingredients and make an informed decision on the ingredient deck, percentage of actives, and other products on the market. I like to experiment with brands but not the steps. For example, I use a 20% Vitamin C serum every morning but I have a few different brands. It seems to me there is nothing like Obaji NuDerm system on the market. It's been around for years and continually is praised for the actual, visible, seeing is believing results for reversing hyperpigmentation. I've been religious about daily SPF and staying out of the sun. But time is time and my number one issue that drives me crazy with my skin is age spots.  Why am I hesitating? The price and the first few weeks of peeling like a lizard. I work in a highly visible, corporate setting. Makeup and technique can cover a  lot but it can't cover sheets of peeling skin. I have used Retin A for years and use glycolic acid products twice a week. Perhaps my skin won't peel as badly as someone who is new to these ingredients. If you have an opinion about Obaji NuDerm, I'd love to hear it. Please comment!

Cheers,
Lulu

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