A few years back now (I wanted to say months, but it has DEFINITELY been longer than that), Wet n Wild switches up their six pan palettes to this current five pan configuration. I’ve got the Art in the Streets quint for swatching!
(Sidenote, this swatched decently – except for the purple – but this REALLY benefits from a solid white base on your eyes. Keep that in mind if you’re picking this one up.)
Summer is already hitting Toronto in full force (seriously guys… it’s 28C right now with a humidex of “feels like” 36C – it’s pretty freaking hot out there) and it’s time to dive into more summer fun loving products!
The Sun Bum Beach Formula 3 in 1 Leave In “protects, detangles and conditions your hair while enhancing and restoring its natural body”. It is “enriched with Coconut Oil, Banana Pulp and Peel, Banana Leaf, Quinoa Protein and Sunflower Seed Oil”.
I use the 3 in 1 Leave In primarily as a detangler and “hair softener”. I say hair softener because I recently fried a large section of my hair in Iceland (thank you defective flat iron…) and it’s been crispy as all get out. I spray the Sun Bum 3 in 1 Leave In on my wet hair after I’ve towel dried it and it helps to soften up that chunk of dead, dried out hair as well as help ease any of the tangles I have. Although my hair is much shorter right now than it usually is, I still notice a difference when I run my brush through it. The formula is lightweight, smells amazing (like coconut and tanning lotion, but not overpowering!) and does the job – what more could you want?
But the real winner out of these two products is Sun Bum‘s Sea Spray. Sea Spray “protects your hair from the elements while giving it extra body, waves and texture for that beachy windswept look”.
The Sea Spray comes enriched with Hawaiian Black Lava Sea Salt, Sea Kelp and Seaweed (thankfully doesn’t smell like any of those!). The smell is just like the leave in conditioner – coconut, tanning oil goodness.
The spray nozzle dispenses just the RIGHT amount of product per section of hair in one squirt and covers the area evenly. (Worth mentioning because if you’ve ever had a bad spray nozzle, you know how hellish they can be.) It also has a very handy locking mechanism that’s essentially a tab that you push in and out of the lock position. It’s quite sturdy, so I wouldn’t worry about having it break in your beach bag and leaking everywhere!
So I told you I loved this product, and here’s why:
BAM! Look at that HAIR! That is air dried hair! I gave my hair a good dousing of the Sea Spray (about 10-15 squirts, I’d say) and then randomly twisted sections of my hair while it was air drying.
Generally, my hair dries pretty straight and slightly poofy. The Sea Spray helped to hold the poofy sections in place and gave them a nice curl or wave, depending on the section. It’s so gorgeously beachy, summery and just flat out gorgeous. My own hair is making me swoon!
I am so ridiculously impressed with the Sea Spray – it’s my newest number one hair care product. And it’s not like this is even a hard hairstyle to do! Literally air dry and twist your hair every now and then while it’s drying. It REALLY doesn’t get any more simple than that! Love, love, LOVE!
In Canada, Sun Bum Beach Formula Hair Care can be purchased at select specialty stores across Canada as of March 2016 and is sold at Shoppers Drug Mart this summer (2016).
For those in the USA, the Sun Bum Sea Spray can be purchased for $14.99 USD on ulta.com and the 3 in 1 Leave In Treatment can be purchased for $14.99 (also on ulta.com).
The products featured in this post were sent to me for review.
As a rabid lover of all things Too Faced, I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to trying the Born This Way foundation. But hey, I’m trying it now! This review is going to cover the existing Born This Way foundation, as well as the brand new Born This Way concealer which I picked up at Gen Beauty!
The Born This Way foundation has an “undetectable medium-to-full coverage foundation” and contains your standard 30 ml/1 fluid ounce of product. There are 18 shades in the range: from Snow to Mahogany.
As per the packaging, Born This Way is infused with:
It blissfully comes with a pump that dispenses an appropriate amount of product. I use roughly two pumps to cover my entire face, but I could probably get away with only a pump and a half. The shade I have (which I think matches me PERFECTLY) is Porcelain and it’s intended to be for “fair with neutral-to-pink undertones”. (Sidenote: Natalie of Ivory Avenue passed on this shade to me because it didn’t suit her. Thank you!!) I would argue and say I’m more warm than cool toned, and I do feel like this foundation shade veers more towards the yellow side of things. I’m definitely not complaining though because it’s a perfect match for me, but it is something to be aware of if you’re trying to match your undertone. The foundation has a luminous finish that works well on my dry to normal skin.
Like the foundation, the Born This Way Naturally Radiant Concealer also contains coconut water, alpine rose and hyaluronic acid. It comes in 10 shades ranging from Very Fair to Deep.
The tube is slick and emulates the foundation packaging. It comes with your standard doefoot applicator to evenly distribute product onto your face. I would say it’s neither too thin, nor too thick in consistency. It’s somewhere right in the middle.
As you can see from the swatches above, the Light shade of the concealer matches quite well with the Porcelain foundation. I feel the concealer is a hint more pink, but once it’s all blended out onto the skin the two shades meld perfectly together.
On the left is my non-foundation face and on the right I’m wearing the Porcelain foundation with some of the Light concealer underneath my eyes.
There is ZERO editing done to this shot. You can see a hint of my freckles coming through the foundation, but if you compare it to the shot above without any foundation on, you’ll see that it covered up a heck of a lot of them. (By the way, I do love my freckles, I’m just trying to indicate how well this foundation can cover up “discolourations”.)
Because of the luminous finish of the foundation, I really do feel like this ACTUALLY looks like my skin in person. It doesn’t look cakey, or makeupy – it just looks like my face. And that’s not something I can usually say about foundation because generally there is SOME aspect of visibility of the product in your skin. This product seems to melt into my skin while not settling into fine lines. I have no idea how they’ve done it, but it’s wonderful!
Here’s a closer look at my eye where I’ve applied the concealer. You can see I’ve got some fine lines, but the product hasn’t sunk into them. I am exceptionally prone to “crepey” looking undereyes if I apply anything under them. I see a faint hint of that towards my inner tearduct, but nowhere near as much as I usually see. The concealer has also covered my broken blood vessel (the slightly darker spot in the center) which is incredible since that thing is RED (to the point where people actually tell me I somehow got lipstick under my eye!).
Born This Way foundation: Guys… I mean… I’d heard the hype.. but until you EXPERIENCE this foundation… you just don’t know. YOU DON’T KNOW. The Born This Way foundation is INCREDIBLE. It gives my skin a gorgeous luminous finish and it covered ever aspect of my face evenly and effectively. This foundation is actually starting to rival my Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum foundation for most loved and I truly didn’t think that was ever going to be possible. This was one of those products that I put on my face and I was just KNEW it was a match made in heaven. There is no aspect of this product that I don’t love: the bottle is beautiful to look at and solid to hold. The pump is perfection. It even applies spectacularly to my face – especially on my nose which has always been a problem area for me! I am in *love* with this foundation!
Born This Way concealer: Much like the foundation, the concealer is also a winner which is something I didn’t expect to say either since I’ve had a LOT of problems with concealers over the years. Although concealer is not a product I use daily, it’s good to know that this sucker can cover up things if need be. I used it primarily on my undereye area and I experienced very, very minimal creasing after 6+ hours (without setting it so I could fully test it out). Please note that the Born This Way concealer is launching on June 15, 2016 – I just got an early sample via Gen Beauty.
The Too Faced Born This Way foundation can be purchased on sephora.ca for $49 CAD or on sephora.com for $39 USD.
The Too Faced Born This Way concealer can be purchased on sephora.ca for $32 CAD or on sephora.com for $28 USD.
It’s becoming VERY obvious to me that blush is my latest product to become obsessed with. So, when I saw the previews of the BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector Luminous Blushes, I knew I was going to be taking some home with me.
“Shimmering Skin Perfector Luminous Blush” – good HEAVENS is that ever a mouthful. The premise for these blushes, and the reason for the insanely long name, is that these were developed with BECCA’s Shimmering Skin Perfectors in mind (see my previous reviews on Champagne Pop and Pearl). They wanted to create a blush which emulated the highlighting properties of their shimmering skin perfectors.
As I’ve mentioned before, I want to own every single shade of coral out there, so I opted for Snapdragon. Snapdragon is a warm pink-orange with a hint of golden sheen. I don’t find the gold translates too much in a swatch however, which is a bonus for me since I don’t like a ton of reflective qualities in my blush. And like all BECCA products… this is second to none in terms of pigmentation.
My Snapdragon swatch, for whatever reason, ends up fairly pink in my arm swatch. In practice, I see more coral on my cheeks, so I’m not sure why the swatch was so pink.
Gahhhh I love this blush so much! In these shots I’m wearing the blush without any added highlighter. While the blush is quite luminous, it’s not as in your face as their shimmering skin perfectors, which is a very good thing because I did not want super reflective cheeks!
There’s a soft quality to the blush which is enhanced by the highlighting properties contained in the formula. And it’s just… guys… I can’t say this enough… it’s just gorgeous. Snapdragon is the kind of colour that just makes me HAPPY and it’s a shade I’m going to be wearing all summer long.
Although I’ve only tried the one shade, I do feel like the BECCA Luminous Blushes are a win. While they’re quite pigmented, they can also be sheered out to give more of a flush than a full on blush look. I love that the sheen enhances the luminosity of the blush – it’s just really, really freaking stunning. And yes, I do add my Champagne Pop highlighter on the tops of my cheekbones even while wearing this blush! If you want to see this blush “live”, I wore this whole makeup look in my recent YouTube video.
These blushes are on the pricier side of things, but if there’s a shade you’re really lusting after, I don’t think you can go wrong. Of course… once you fall in love with them (like me)… suddenly you want to own a lot more than just one!
The BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector Luminous Blushes can be purchased on sephora.ca for $41 CAD or on sephora.com for $34 USD.