Beauty, Skincare, and a bit of Lifestyle
I don’t know about you, but cleaning my makeup brushes is always the chore I dread the most. Even when I try to stay on top of things, the dirty brushes typically pile up high before I finally break down and wash them. There are so many different types of ways to clean your makeup brushes, so I thought I would share the 5 ways I use on a regular basis.
It’s the middle of the week already. Wow! My week has just flown by, in a very good way. I hope your week is going well, also!
Today I have a review of a newly released product — at least, I just started seeing it pop up at my local Ulta. Since I had mixed feelings about mascara, I thought it best to post my review of it sooner rather than later, to give y’all a heads up on it. 🙂
While I love a variety of brands and I’m one of those girls who uses about 50 different brands when doing my makeup (anyone else do that? Anyone? I can’t be the only one!), It Cosmetics is one of those brands that stands out, in my mind, as having a lot of great products that I’ve loved over the years.
Yes, I’ve experienced a few duds (a review on one is coming soon, btw) — every brand does, more or less, but their outstanding products far outweigh the bad. And I love that, while they are high-end, they’re always featuring new products on QVC and offering it for an amazingly low price.
And that’s the news I’m excited to share with you today! They’re currently on QVC’s website as their featured Today’s Special Value —- and the best part is that all the products in this collection are brand new, never before seen!! 😀
Need to find a last-minute gift for a girlfriend, best friend, or wife? This palette would make a great present! You get three products in one, it works on all skintones, and it has super-cute packaging. How can you go wrong?! 😉
Retail Price: $38It Cosmetics’ Dual Airbrush #7
My Review
First Impression & Packaging:
Let me first say that the brush I own is a limited edition brush from the It’s All About You collection they featured on QVC back in June. It has a silver handle as opposed to the black handle that you can purchase now. But besides that, they look identical.
It Cosmetics is well known for the quality and luxuriousness of their brushes. With the Dual Airbrush, the bristles were extremely soft and very dense. The middle of the brush, the handle, doesn’t feel as luxurious as It Cosmetics black handle brushes, but it’s still nice.
Product & Application:
I love using this brush to apply my foundation — it lives up to it’s name of giving you an “airbrush” look. It feels amazing brushing it on your skin and doesn’t take long before my foundation is blended into my skin and looking fabulous. 🙂
I personally only use this brush when applying my lighter, more liquidy foundations. I felt like with my full coverage foundations this brush would give me a cakey, fake look. But that’s just my personal preference.
Major Likes & Dislikes:
The bigger end of the brush — the foundation side — is my favorite to use. The concealer side works well, but I just personal love to use the larger end. It feels so amazing and I like that I don’t have to work very hard to blend the foundation into my skin. It just takes a few seconds and — bam — my skin looks flawless!
As for dislikes, I would have to say that I don’t personally like dual-ended brushes. They’re hard to store, since you can’t put it in a jar (which is how where I keep my brushes) without potentially damaging one side of the brush. So it just lays out on my counter. Not a bad thing….just annoying to me.
Final Thoughts:
This brush is a great addition to any makeup collection. If you are on a tight budget and want to get some good face brushes (which make all the difference when doing your makeup), this dual-ended brush would be worth the purchase. It IS expensive, but you get two brushes for the price of one. And they’re telling the truth when they call it an airbrush foundation and concealer brush — you do get a beautiful, natural airbrush look to your face. Love it!
Question for My Readers: What’s your favorite brush brand? I love It Cosmetics for high end, and Real Techniques for drugstore. 🙂
I received one or more of the products mentioned above from It Cosmetics in the hopes that I would mention them on my blog. Regardless, this does not guarantee a review or feature on my blog. I only share information that I think will be useful for my readers and I only recommend products I have personally used. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.
I’ve shared a few QVC‘s Today’s Special Value with you in the past — once featuring It Cosmetic‘s CC Your Way to Beautiful Skin and then another time featuring their IT’s All About You collection. Today I have yet another wonderful collection by It Cosmetic’s that will be featured on QVC’s Today’s Special Value TOMORROW, October 14th, starting at midnight!
If you’re not familiar with how QVC works, each day they decided on one item to feature as a “Today’s Special Value”. These items are offered at an exceptionally low price beginning midnight (ET) until 11:59 PM (PT) that day.
Developed with leading plastic surgeons and dermatologists, IT Cosmetics® creates clinically-proven, innovative problem-solving makeup and skin care products that harness cutting-edge, anti-aging technologies and high-performance skin-loving ingredients to provide you with serious beauty solutions that help you look and feel your most beautiful!Co-founder and CEO Jamie Kern Lima, who suffers from rosacea, sparse brows, hyperpigmentation and problematic skin, works hand-in-hand with plastic surgeons and dermatologists to create innovative, high-performance products with a laser focus on solving women’s beauty problems. Prior to launching IT Cosmetics, Jamie Kern Lima was an award-winning TV news anchor. She also graduated Valedictorian from Washington State University and received her MBA from Columbia Business School. IT Cosmetics is sold in ULTA Beauty Stores nationwide, and is a top color cosmetics brand on both QVC and The Shopping Channel Canada.
For more information, please visit www.itcosmetics.com – IT’S truly your beauty, but better™!
The five-piece collection includes Celebration Foundation Illumination and the brand new CC+ Radiance Ombré Blush to help you achieve your most luminous skin. Be one of the first to experience the worldwide launch ofHello Lashes Extensions that will give your lashes a reason to wink! It comes paired with the No-Tug Gel Eyeliner to give your eyes the attention they deserve.
Help transform your complexion and eyes with makeup that looks and feels like your skin but better for your most radiant you!
This was the first time I was able to receive the collection before the collection went live on QVC, so I’m really excited to share with you my own pictures and initial first impressions of the products! Let’s take a look!
The collection comes safely packaged in this box, complete with an informational booklet on each product and a few samples of other It Cosmetic products.
This foundation provides full coverage and illumination to your skin. Infused with peptides, hydrolyzed collagen, antioxidants and skin-loving ingredients to nourish your skin and to help skin appear younger-looking, Celebration Foundation Illumination will never crease or crack and is also infused with Drops of Light Technology®.
My First Impressions: I own another It Cosmetics powder foundation that I really love, so I am pretty confident that I will love this one as well. It’s so buttery soft and swatched very pigmented and creamy on my finger. The brush that it comes with seems a little useless, but I am sure I’ll find some other use for it in my makeup routine. 🙂
This brand new mascara helps you achieve the look of false lashes. This five-in-one, clinically proven 24-hour wear mascara features the blackest black melted nylon fibers infused into our volumizing and lash-loving Hello Lashes Mascara to help you achieve long, thick and dramatic lashes in one quick coat application! Infused with lash-enhancing and conditioning ingredients, including vitamin B5, peptides, collagen, proteins and green tea.
My First Impressions: I haven’t tried this on my lashes yet, so it’s really hard to give you a first impression. But I can tell you that the wand looks very promising — I like that the end of the wand is feathered out, instead of just cut blunt. This means I’ll be able to get the inside corner of my lashes really well, which is something I like to do. The formula appears to be very black and very wet, so definitely promising.
It Cosmetic’s brand new blush is the perfect balance of color and luminosity, blending from matte to pearlized radiance – it’s a blush and highlighter in one compact. Formulated to minimize the appearance of pores and fine lines, this anti-aging, color correcting formula in the perfect pink shade of Je Ne Sais Quoi® is beautiful on all skin tones.
My First Impressions: I love the idea of a pearly highlighter and matte blush in one compact. I admit I’m a little skeptical of how this will work over a longer period of time — not sure if the two will become mixed together. But I plan to be careful and take advantage of this matte blush. I love matte blushes!
This gel liner is clinically proven to remain waterproof for up to 12 hours without tugging the delicate eyelids. Highly pigmented and anti-aging in both
its application and its ingredients, this eyeliner is formulated with skin-loving hydrolyzed collagen, silk, rose and antioxidants.
My First Impressions: I like the color that they give you in this collection — it’s a brown/black. So I can use it for those days that I don’t want a deep, dark black, but I do want something with more pigmentation then a brown. I swatched it on my arm, and it hasn’t budget a bit. I’ve rubbed it multiple times, to see if it will smear or fad, and it’s held up really well.
This brush features dual fiber brush hairs that flawlessly work to blend foundation onto your skin and help blur away imperfections. You don’t need to be an expert – IT does the work for you!
This brush is super soft and, because it has different length bristles, it almost feels feather-light when you brush it over your skin. I can totally see how this would give you an ‘airbrushed’ appearance. Not sure if you would be able to get a full-coverage application, but I think it will be perfect for those every-day makeup looks. 🙂
Your Most Radiant You! Five-Piece Collection goes beyond beauty. This Today’s Special Value® is scheduled to debut on QVC®
I received one or more of the products mentioned above from It Cosmetics in the hopes that I would mention them on my blog. Regardless, this does not guarantee a review or feature on my blog. I only share information that I think will be useful for my readers and I only recommend products I have personally used.
The weeks just fly by sometimes — especially when you are having fun. I hope your week has been going as well as mine has. To close out this week, I have a review for a product that was instrumental in giving me awesome lashes on my wedding day!
Which, by the way, I have begun working on my wedding day post. It will be up soon, and with LOTS of pictures! If you want to see/hear about a certain aspect of my wedding day, leave your requests below!
About It Cosmetics’ Tightline Waterproof Mascara
My Review:
First Impression & Packaging:
I wasn’t sure what to make of this mascara when it first arrived from It Cosmetics. The packaging is so sleek and small, and when you open it the wand is even smaller! My first thought was, “Oh, how cute!”
Product & Application:
While the mascara is tiny and the wand borders on being micro, I found applying this to my lashes was easy and effortless. In fact, because it has such a tiny wand, it’s easy to apply this without accidentally smudging it onto eyelid (a problem I constantly have with regular mascara).
In fact, I’ve never messed up while using this mascara. Ever. Which is such a relief for me not to have to worry about ‘fixing’ anything. As for how it looks once applied, this mascara really does get right down to the roots of your lashes and coats the entire length of them! I also like that the wand is small enough that I can easily coat the back of my lashes.
This mascara definitely gives you wonderful definition and length. The color of the mascara is a really beautiful, intense black. I find that after I apply this mascara and wait a few seconds, I like to follow it up with a volumizing mascara to top it off. This mascara does give you volume — don’t get me wrong — just not as much as I like on a typical day.
Major Likes & Dislikes:
I love that the wand is so tiny, and therefore really easy to use to get into the inner corner without accidentally getting it on my lids. I also like the fact I can easily apply it to the back of my lashes. While that step isn’t necessary, it does give you a more seamless and intense black look to your lashes — on both top and bottom. (sometimes we forget people can see that area when we blink…)
The price of this mascara is rather high — but not as steep as some high-end mascara’s I’ve seen — so it depends on the individual consumer if this product is too expensive or not. That’s really the only con that I can think of. It’s always been a dream to take off at the end of the night. No problem’s there. And I’ve never noticed any flaking or fall out on my cheeks throughout the day. (definitely a plus there!)
Final Thoughts:
I’ve liked being able to add this product to my makeup routine. While I rarely wear it just by itself, I like using it as the base to my mascara. It just makes the end results look SO much better than if I just used my regular mascara.
I used this mascara on my wedding day: because of all the days I wanted my eyelashes to look seamless, black, and beautiful, it was on that day! And it preformed like a dream. I’ve already recommended this product to my other bride-to-be friends. It’s especially handy if you have light-colored lashes and you want to make sure mascara coats each lash and makes them as black as they can be. 🙂
Is the Tightline Waterproof Mascara a must in your makeup collection or routine? I would say that if you can budget it in, then yes! Definitely worth the purchase! But if your heart stalls when you think of buying a $24 mascara every three months, I would recommend purchasing it only when you know you’re going to be having a special event (such as a wedding 😉. The price isn’t cheap, but it’s a unique mascara that will change the way your lashes look.
Question for My Readers: What do you look for most in a mascara? Volume? Length? The most intense black?
I received one or more of the products mentioned above from It Cosmetics in the
hopes that I would mention them on my blog. Regardless,
this does not guarantee a review or feature on my blog. I only share
information that I think will be useful for my
readers and I only recommend
products I have personally used.