As mentioned in a previous post, the CBB brand of the month is essence. essence products are readily available at Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada, but it’s a brand I’ve never delved into before (despite encouragement from my cousin over the years).
When I got the opportunity this past month to be sent a few of their products for the CBB “The essence of Fall Beauty FotD + Giveaway” I was extremely excited. I was generously sent a package containing plenty of exciting products to play around with. I thought I’d show you what I received in my loot bag and give you my thoughts on what I liked or didn’t like.
The most exciting product for me is always going to be eyeshadows. So when I saw how vibrant these looked, not to mention how bloody cute the packaging is, I knew that I just had to start playing around with them asap.
My favourite out of the four palettes I received is Paradise. I do tend to use a sticky white base while using the Paradise palette just to bring out the colours even more, but I do feel this one has the best pigmentation out of the whole bunch. The colours are right up my alley too. This was the palette I used in my previous essence FotD post.
Their Sunrise palette, appropriately, focuses on beautiful golds and oranges with some easy to blend browns. The lightest shade in the palette makes a beautiful highlighter for cheekbones. Some of these shades can be a bit on the chunkier side which can mean problems blending.
A nude palette focused more on the pinker side of nudes. Personally, this isn’t something I’d reach for very often.
This one was the most disappointing out of the four palettes. The soft, pastel shades are beautiful in the pan, but they have little to no payoff. When you blend them out, they’re basically a sheer wash of nothing with a very faint hint of colour. You wouldn’t be able to use this palette on its own because it just doesn’t have any dimension or depth to the colours.
These really surprised me, and I’m not entirely sure why. I didn’t expect much out of essence‘s lipsticks, because I suppose I thought the quality would not be top notch given that it was a relatively inexpensive product. I was really, really wrong – these are wonderful. They’re full coverage and glide on the lips easily. No tugging and definitely no lack of pigmentation. There’s a scent to them, but I can’t quite place my finger on what it is. Out of the three that I received, On The Catwalk! is my definite favourite. It’s a luminous red that is very easy to wear.
The only gloss I received was Frosted Pink in their XXXL shine formula. The formula itself is really nice, but the colour is not for me. It’s a super frosted light pink that makes me look like I stepped back into the 80s (just add blue eyeshadow really). The smell on this one is reminiscent of strawberry wafers which may be a bonus for some people!
I’m not much of a lipliner person (nor a super pink one at that) so I’ve not really worn this outside of the apartment yet. The colour looks pretty good for those more typical girl-ish pink colours (the ones I tend to avoid) so I’m sure there are plenty of people out there that would make good use out of a shade like this. I can’t testify as to the wear time though!
This is what I’d call the perfect blush to bequite honest. Autumn Peach is a beautiful peach colour with incredible pigmentation. This does wonders on my cheeks, even going so far as to add a glow along with the colour. If nothing else from essence‘s line of cosmetics, try something from their blush line!
Chocolate Brownie is a shade stick with excellent pigmentation. This goes on opaque and smooths out better than any other cream I’ve tried. I did wear this with primer so I have no idea if this creases on its own. Highly recommended.
I’ve never used a gel liner in pencil format so I was excited to try this one out. This one has a twizzle up mechanism, so you don’t actually waste any product with sharpening. Despite the product being quite creamy and opaque, I can’t use this liner as I would a normal gel liner. It’s great for lining the lids, but I can’t get a sharply pointed winged out liner with this product. That being said, I’ll take this product over any other normal pencil liner because the creaminess is just wonderful. It also stays on the waterline incredibly well.
Another excellent product! Despite being called “volume and curl” I never really notice much curling action, but for me that’s irrelevant. What I look for in a mascara is something that can make my lashes incredibly black and as thick as possible. Thankfully, this seems to do the trick. The slight curve of the brush also makes it easy to apply to my lashes.
I’m not a huge concealer user as I don’t feel the need to cover every blemish on my face so I only used this briefly on my undereyes. Since I have a bit of a tan, I used the darker shade since the pale one was just way too stark on me. I didn’t notice any creasing and very minimal “crepe-y-ness” (which is a particular problem of mine when I use products under my eyes). I think this is their only shade however, which makes this very unusable for a lot of people.
Laser Show has been covering my toenails since it showed up with Party Crasher sitting ready and waiting to be used as soon as I bore of Laser Show.
I’ve not tried this yet, but I can’t tell you my level of excitement for using this product as we get closer and closer to Halloween. Glow in the dark ANYTHING? Sign me up!
That’s all my goodies! Is there anything from essence that you especially like? Or anything that you think I really need to try? I’m definitely going to be taking a gander at their blushes when I’m next in Shoppers to see what other colours speak to me.
The products featured in this post were send to me for consideration.