Avene Mineral Ultra-Light Hydrating Sunscreen Lotion 50 SPF+

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Avene Ultra Light Sunscreen

Euch. Nothing I dislike more than a product that doesn’t live up to it’s claims.

I made a year long switch to physical sunscreens only, whilst navigating my insane hormonal acne, to see if the ingredients typically used in chemical sunscreens were making my break outs worse. This was the third? I tried, I believe. Not good. First of all, it just doesn’t smell good — no expectations of fragrance and florals here, I just wanted it to smell like nothing. I can’t explain it — it smelled like a slightly-damp basement, almost. I know I really need to work on my adjectives and descriptors, but that’s the only thing I can come up with. Either way, smelling that smell on your face all day is just… eugh.

No amount of rubbing this product in or hybrid “let it sit then rub” or “rub it then let it sit” will fully get the product to go in, without leaving some type of residual white cast. And if you have tiny baby hairs growing on your skin, FORGET IT! White cast all over the place, and it goes without saying, this pills like crazy, with or without makeup. Again, physical sunscreens =/= absorbent, but this one was tougher than the others I’ve tried. So throw the whole, “Sheer, non-whitening” advertisement in the can.

Then, 3pm comes. My makeup and/or moisturizer show signs of starting to break down. And so does my sunscreen. Hello, pilly, white-cast-y, oily mess! Get ready for whiteness to cling like crazy to your dry spots, while you’re at it.

I know that physical sunscreens are supposed to be more effective than chemical ones, in general and particularly with long periods of exposure to the sun, but MAN, I am so happy to make the return to chemical sunscreens. I was stoked to throw this little bottle of Avene in the trash. Physical sunscreens are tough, either way you slice it, but there’s definitely much better out there that beat the $28 price mark here. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 2/5 (I mean, it probably works as a sunscreen, but the sheer/non-whitening part? Pschtt..)

Longevity: 2.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 1/5

 

Physicians Formula Powder Palette Mineral Glow Pearls

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Powder Palette Mineral Glow

This is technically a powder, of which there are four different shades. As far as using this as a powder, this is not great since my experience is that it doesn’t have phenomenal staying power (I tried both translucent, and beige when summer rolled around), and I did notice some oil breakthrough.

But as a bronzer? If you pick up a shade darker than you’re supposed to be, this is actually great. The coloration on light bronze is awesome — not TOO dark, but dark enough to create a good contour. No orange skewing, either! I love the extra “shiny” boost it gives you. Now granted, the longevity issue still remains — if you don’t use a setting spray, the color will begin to slide off around hour four, and disappear completely or shift, uh, downwards onto your skin where it wasn’t before.

This is a $12 grab at Ulta, true to Physicians Formula higher-than-usual drugstore pricepoint, but it’s well worth it as the product lasts quite a long time in the compact (the one I’m using now is going on a year. Is that bad?) I’ve seen some Ulta reviews citing that people use it as a highlighter. I personally can’t see it. It is glittery, but not THAT glittery, so even with translucent or beige, I didn’t feel like it really stood out. As for people complaining that the glitter is only on the top, well, I personally disagree – I feel that it lasts through the whole container.

In the end, this is good looking as a bronzer, not a powder. In fact, it might be a holy grail bronzer for me. I do recommend that it gets used with a setting spray for sure, and don’t be too heavy-handed when applying since the color comes out relatively heavy. The colors also shifts over time, and sets into your skin a little peculiarly.  ~A

Perceived efficacy: 4/5 (As a bronzer)

Longevity: 3.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 4/5

Clinique Dramatically Different Gel

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Clinique Dramatically Different

What I originally thought was an underwhelming moisturizer, Clinique’s Dramatically Different Gel became a must-have staple for me. I’m a sucker for good packaging or good marketing tactics, so, as you could imagine, I didn’t exactly feel “dramatically different” after using this product as the package may have suggested right away. And besides hyaluronic acid and caffeine, this moisturizer doesn’t boast any skin improving quality that falls out of the norm.

But for long-term use, this gel really does work! It’s medium weight (despite advertising as light), so it doesn’t quite sink into your skin fully but it doesn’t feel like it’s weighing you down, either (nor will it leave behind a sticky feeling!), and you won’t need to go the extra mile to rub it in. It also seems like this is doing a better job of controlling my oiliness throughout the day than the Cerave PM does. This moisturizer has a extremely faint vanilla smell, but will become odorless after application.

This product is oil and alcohol free, which makes it a great choice for anyone with acne-prone skin. I have never broken out from using this product.

I don’t have any issues with this product pilling with my makeup, particularly since this dries down quickly. I also didn’t feel that my skin dried out, or became tighter after a full day of wear.

For the price point of $25-28, it was difficult, at first, to justify the cost of such an initially underwhelming moisturizer. But as time passed, I learned that perhaps less is more. My skin quality has been phenomenal after using this prodycg long-term! ~A

Perceived efficacy: 4.5/5

Longevity: 4.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 5/5

Recommended for sensitive skin: Yes

Wet n Wild Megaglo Highlighting Powder

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Wet N Wild Highlighting

When the highlighting game really started to pick up steam, I grabbed both this product in Precious Petals and the MegaGlo Makeup Stick. This won out against the MegaGlo stick as far as my personal preferences go, and really changed my perception of Wet n Wild as a brand. The 10+ hour longevity of shine on this product, and the simplicity of application to get a full look, are both a 5/5 for me. This is now a permanent fixture in my makeup bag. I haven’t seen any signs of powder fall from my face.

I use a smaller angled contour brush and swipe it a little bit under my eyes and occasionally under my eyebrows. Considering I use this almost daily, I still have about half of the powder left, and it’s been close to a year. For $5… not too bad! I’ll be sad if they ever discontinue it (although, the highlighting trend is bound to die off at some point… right?)

There are several shades of this product. My favorite is Precious Petals, I think that has the best glow. I’ve also used Blossom Glow, but I didn’t think the coloration looked as good on my skin. Finally, I’ve tried White Raven, which I think was a limited edition. I’m not sure what I had in my head when I bought it in terms of what I was going to do with it, because it was really… white. Duh! It still did the job as well as Precious Petals in terms of holding up, just wasn’t a color I ever should have bought in the first place.

Without being too “loud”, this powder highlighter makes a long-lasting statement, and I recommend every makeup fan to pick up this $5 buy. ~A

Perceived efficacy: 5/5

Longevity: 5/5

How much I actually like this product: 5/5

Cerave Sunscreen, Broad Spectrum 30 SPF

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Cerave Sunscreen 30 SPF

I cut out chemical sunscreens during my cystic acne phase, and only used physical sunscreens, spending many days with white-cast nightmare skin. Now that that part of my life is over, I decided to tip-toe back into the world of chemical sunscreens. My holy grail sunscreen is Its Skin 2pm Sunblock 50spf+, but it ships from Korea, and at present, I can’t find it for cheaper than $25, which is more than I’m willing to spend. So I picked this up in the meantime. I know 30 spf isn’t terribly high by any means, but I don’t intend on using it for scenarios with intense sun.

I’ve been using this for two days straight, and layered it over different moisturizers each day. Goes on fine, no pilling at all, no white cast, felt pretty smooth to the touch. Doesn’t smell like anything, which is fine by me. So from the onset, I liked it! I checked out my face in the office mirror at noon, it looked okay at that point still.

I got out of a big meeting at 3pm and… there it was, the pilling disaster. The sunscreen was clinging to my dry areas, and those parts of my face became a nice, white-ish, peeling goop mess. I’m sure that was a sight to behold for everyone else in that meeting. I’ve always heard that you need to re-apply sunscreens halfway through the day anyway, but I suspect that reapplying would have made the pilling situation 10x worse!

So.. I don’t know what to think. I love the application, but the longevity doesn’t seem to stretch as long as I’d like. I’ll probably keep using it until I can get my hands on something else (and avoid those known dry spots like the plague). I’ve seen the price points range between $8-$14, but it likely won’t be something I’ll repurchase. ~A

(Update, a few weeks later: acne sufferers, SKIP THIS ONE!)

Perceived efficacy: 4.5/5

Longevity: 2/5

How much I actually like this product: 3/5

 

Essence Make Me Brow Gel Mascara

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Essence Make Me

This will be a quickie review, since there’s not a whole lot to say about brow gel. I grabbed this at Ulta awhile ago when I saw it priced for $3. Considering that price, it’s been great — it was a staple in my makeup bag when the tube was new, and I think it would be ideal for travelling, due to the size.

The initial color on this is great — brown is actually brown, not black. Unfortunately once you get halfway down the tube, that color seems to fade and it’s much less intense than when the package was first opened. The staying power on this gel is pretty impressive throughout the day — it doesn’t flake off, and the color only starts to disappear around the 7-8 hour mark (which is usually when I stop caring, anyway).

I’ve NEVER had an issue with this product smearing, even immediately after application — this is a big one for me because my hair gets in my face a lot and I rub my eyes way more than I should. The wand is perfect size for my not-so-big natural eyebrows, which makes the application much simpler.

Make Me Brow Brow Gel is cheaper in Ulta than on Amazon, but if you need to take the Amazon route, click here: https://amzn.to/2VxQrdP

Perceived efficacy: 4/5

Longevity: 3.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 4/5

 

Stratia Liquid Gold

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Stratia Liquid Gold

I really, REALLY wanted to like this. The gold color, promise of crazy hydration and the fact that it reminded me of a fabric paint tube really lured me into dropping $24 on this thing directly from Stratia’s website. It was not a $24 well spent.

It didn’t do anything.

This products gets a lot of hype on reddit for repairing destroyed moisture barriers, and having an optimal combination of ingredients to do so (ceramides and cholesterol).  I live in a city with harsh winters, and I also have combo skin with dry areas in the lower quadrant of my face, so moisture is definitely an issue for me — so I was excited to try this out.

And this just… this just didn’t do anything.

It’s cool that it’s yellow, but the runny-ness of the formula just isn’t effective at all. You may have well have just dripped some water onto the my face and called it a day. My skin felt neither protected by an additional layer, nor did it feel/look any softer. This, of course, infers that I couldn’t really “feel” that I had applied it after even 10 minutes or so. And even despite the thinness of it, the yellow would still show up if you’re not careful to rub it in hard enough. I really do think that, not only did it look and act like paint, but it also smelled like paint as well.

I speculated that this product aggravated my acne a little bit. I had a couple new spots after usage — I mean, this could have been from anything, but the timing was a little suspect.

It looks like they’ve changed the packaging recently, so I’m curious if the formulation was changed in that time, as well. But for now, my review will remain based on the product you see pictured above — totally not worth the purchase. I know there’s a huge cult following for Liquid Gold — if you love this stuff and want to let me know why, feel free to leave a comment! ~A

Perceived efficacy: 1/5

Longevity: 1/5 (I mean, how can there be longevity if you didn’t feel it working in the first place…?)

How much I actually like this product: 1/5

 

L’Oreal Lumi Glotion

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Loreal Lumi Glotion

I had oddly unrealistic expectations of this product. Like, the moment I put it on my face, I would sparkle and have flawless skin, Edward Cullen-style. And while that didn’t exactly happen, much to my dismay, I’m still oddly satisfied with this product.

I picked up the lightest shade, and noticed there is exactly zero tint (or, if there is, it is invisible to the human eye), thus firmly putting it into the category of a primer. The glow is subtle in my opinion, but it’s perfect to slap on for work just to brighten my natural skin a little bit. It seems to hold up pretty well for eight hours as well, and doesn’t slowly devolve into “looks slimy”. I’ve seen a lot of other reviewers mention that they use this as their under-eye highlighter, but I honestly don’t think it’s bright enough to replace powder or stick highlighters. One of the tags for this on another review was #minimalistic and I thought, yea, that’s exactly how to describe this! If you’re a glow-y minimalist, anyway.

As for working with foundations… well, it didn’t show up when I put it under my foundation (which is how most primers are supposed to work, right?), and it didn’t seem to play well with foundation when I put it on top. I feel like this is going to make or break a lot of people’s opinion on the product — but I’ll personally keep my high review because it works really well for me, using it as a standalone primer, without the addition of foundation.

Despite being termed as a lotion, this isn’t quite a moisturizer, but slapping some actual moisturizer under this product will do just fine without pilling. Price point is $10-$14 which seems a little steep for something that doesn’t do much except prime, but honestly this is fine if you want to make an Aldi run with a bit of glow to your face.

Also wanted to note — if your skin is acne-prone, you might want to skip this one. I’ve caught a small outbreak or two when I wear this that I don’t normally get, sadly. Still like it though, ugh! ~A

Perceived efficacy: 3.5/5

Longevity: 4/5

How much I actually like this product: 4/5

Orly Breathable vs. Orly (Standard Formulation)

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Orly BreathableOrly

Full disclosure, I didn’t really get into the nail polish game until recently. I thought buying a $2 of Sinful Colors from Big Lots was a Big Deal (ok, some of their colors ARE good, if you don’t mind reapplying every single day). I’ve been trying to step up the price point a little to see if it increased longevity: the results have, surprisingly, been mixed. What I should have called this article was “why would anyone buy the standard formulation and not the Breathable formulation?” I have three colors in each of the two formulations and they’re all variants of white/nude/pink. Here’s what Breathable gets right:

  • the color is easy to spread on application — I even had a few instances of “perfect on the first stroke”, a rare feat for someone who doesn’t consider themselves proficient at coloring in the lines;
  • the color itself is GREAT — it’s very vibrant, or very true to the actual color that you see in the bottle;
  • Lasts close to a week without chipping

The standard formulation does none of this. The color is blah, and it’s not even right. It’s impossible to spread. And, after all that work you’ve done to put it on, it lasts for… a day, if I’m being generous.

I usually only buy Orly colors when they go on sale or they’re on clearance, so I should have realized sooner than checking it five seconds ago on Google that Breathable has a higher price point ($10) than the standard ($8). But the standard is BAD, so if you’re going to pay full price, shill out the two extra bucks and go for the Breathable. ~A

 

Standard

Perceived efficacy: 2/5

Longevity: 1/5

How much I actually like this product: 1/5

 

Breathable

Perceived efficacy: 5/5

Longevity: 4.5/5

How much I actually like this product: 4.5/5

About Me

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Whenever I look for beauty product reviews, points of reference are always huge for me. When I first started really getting into makeup and skincare, I suffered from acne — initially, it was the standard run-of-the-mill acne, and then once I hit my mid-late 20s, BAM, it blew up into insane cystic acne. Devastating! You’re supposed to be done with that stuff after your early 20s, but apparently not for me (and thousands of other women and men). So, until I got it treated, this little issue of mine forced me to read between the lines of all the reviews. For example, just because someone on Reddit posted a ~*flawless*~ “after” photo when reviewing a product, I had to ascertain a) whether or not they had any pre-existing skin conditions, or b) if they photoshopped the life out of their face.

It is unlikely that I will ever post a picture of myself, but, for all of those who are wondering what kind of person I am, and if my personal situation is relevant to your life, here it is:

  • I am in my late 20s.
  • Dark brown hair and light-colored eyes
  • To reference the MAC scale of skin shades, I’m going to say NC20 as a generality. But I’ve also scooped up NW-20-like shades. My personal description would be “pale-ish, with yellow undertones, and super red cheeks.” That’s as scientific as I can get.
  • As I mentioned before, I had absolutely terrible, insane, crazy hormonal cystic acne that was ultimately cured by spironolactone and Epiduo (more on that later) so I ALWAYS take that into consideration for product reviews since it was ingrained into me to look for oil-free products at that time
  • Now that I’m “cured”, I still have a lot of pretty deep scars, and I still get small breakouts from time to time.

Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, I am going to do a little explanation of how I’m going to run things on this website (at least until I change my mind, which happens… a lot).

  • All products are bought with my own money, and I am not what you would call a rich person, so unfortunately swatching multiple products will be out of the question — I’ve likely only bought the one product for myself, so there wouldn’t be anything to compare it against.
  • I won’t be taking any pictures of myself with the product on, or during application. I’ll likely find the most recent stock photo of the product itself, or take a picture with my six-year-old Android phone of the product sitting on my bathroom sink. High quality, here we come!

Onto the rating system! Everything is rated out of five. There’s no scientific system in which things are rated, nor do the ratings for one category impact another (except maybe the last one), they’re just my own opinion.

Perceived efficacy: Do I think, or see the product actually working, based on the claims the outward label made?

Longevity: How long does it last?

How much I actually like this product: All things considered, how much did I like this? This includes things like physical characteristics of the products and the price point.

Now that I’ve set the stage, all I can hope for is that someone else who is searching for an honest and non-sponsored review will stumble across this page, and find the review that will make or break their purchasing decision. The beauty industry is really tough to navigate, and it’s hard to determine what’s best for you versus what’s being shilled to you strictly for a profit (I still struggle with figuring that out). Worst case scenario? I’ll keep this blog around to remind me the reasons of why I should not to go into Ulta and say “Oh, but the packaging is so pretty, I should give them another shot!”

~ A