Holiday 2017: Hard Candy Sets + Giveaway!
Hard Candy is one of those brands that releases an incredible amount of products in a variety of sets for the holiday season. They’ve even gone so far as to a dive into some skincare products this year as well! If you need an inexpensive but fun gift, a stocking stuffer, or just a little addon to another gift you’re giving, you can bet that Hard Candy will have you covered!
One of the movie intriguing things launched by Hard Candy this year was the Bath Bomb Tree ($14.97 CAD). I’ve never seen Hard Candy do bath stuff like this before so I’m super into trying this out. With 16 bath bombs in the shape of a tree? You really can’t beat how cute this is!
Need a reasonably priced makeup starter kit for a newbie to makeup? The Hard Candy Glam Kit Supreme ($19.97) comes with a whopping 48 eyeshadows, 10 eyeliners and a sharpener. There’s a decent mix of neutrals with some brights in there (in both the eyeshadows and liners!) so you’ve giving them the option to play with colour which is something that always makes me happy!
If you’re looking for something a little less eyes-focused and a bit more well-rounded, then the Best of Kit ($19.97) is for you! There are minis of some of my favourite products in here: the Tiki “bronzer” (it’s actually a highlighter) and the blush/bronzer/highlighter trio. There’s a glamouflage concealer (which has quite the cult following on YouTube), an eyeshadow primer, face primer, setting spray, eyeshadow palette, pencil liner with sharpened, beauty sponge, gloss, mascara and a cream shadow. This definitely covers a LOT of bases in one shot!
Hard Candy also does a ton of smaller items, sometimes in sets, and sometimes just by themselves, which make great little addons to other presents.
- Tiki bronzer: THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. I’ve had a full size of Tiki forever in my makeup collection and it’s one of my absolute favourite highlighters. Get thing tiny little baby mini for only $1.47 CAD!
- Highlight & Contour Face Sticks: $3 CAD gives someone the opportunity to try out contouring without breaking the bank.
- Seize the Sparkle nail polish set: Also comes with a makeup bag for $4.97 CAD.
They also do cute little ornamental items such as this lip gloss duo for $3 CAD. I love me a good pattern or swirl in a product, so these candy cane-esque twirls in the gloss are too cute to resist.
Of course, it’s not just these sets that are reasonably priced by Hard Candy – they’ve got a massive collection of items that are all placed in a completely reasonable price point.
Hard Candy Giveaway
The team at Hard Candy reached out and wanted to do a holiday giveaway alongside this post! One person will win the following:
- Hard Candy 12 Days of Eye
- Hard Candy Glossing All The Way
- Hard Candy Fizz Smoothie
- Hard Candy Blush + Bronzer Kit
- Hard Candy Glam Kit Supreme
Giveaway Rules
- This giveaway is open to Canada only!
- This giveaway starts on December 18, 2017 and runs for one week.
- Please be aware that all entries will be double checked to ensure fairness.
- One winner will win the Prize Pack pictured and described above.
- The winners will have 48 hours to respond to my e-mail. If they fail to respond within that time frame, I will pick another prize winner. (And so on.)
Swatch Sunday: Too Faced Chocolate Gold
Yesssss!!!! Say hello to the Too Faced Chocolate Gold palette! Created, in my eyes, as the antithesis to the White Chocolate Bar palette, this one is chockfull of rich, vibrant jewel tones centered around a golden theme.
While I haven ‘t used the palette on my face yet (I was rushing to get swatches up and I’m about to film a try on with this palette – so watch out for that on my YouTube channel as it’ll be up this week), what I can tell you is that these shadows feel more like foiled shadows. They’re almost wet looking on the skin and there’s a density to them that was unexpected but so appreciated. The palette also comes with four absolutely vital matte shades (a brow bone highlight, a transition shade, a deeper brown and a black) amongst all the shimmers.
Too Faced Chocolate Gold Swatches
The Too Faced Chocolate Gold palette can be purchased on sephora.ca for $59 CAD or on sephora.com for $49 USD.
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
Skincare Saturday: The Body Shop Countdown to New Year!
I haven’t a clue who the product creation person is behind The Body Shop, but they ought to be DAMN PROUD of creating this beauty of a product! Behold… the Countdown to New Year! holiday set.
There’s a heck of a lot of people who go ga-ga for advent calendars even before December starts, but that fun all comes to an end come Christmas Day. What better way to keep the fun going than to have a Christmas Day to New Year countdown calendar??
I expressed my amazement over this idea in my recent Holiday 2017 Skincare Sets video, but I also wanted to go a bit more indepth and open up all the boxes so you could see what was inside. Fundamentally, I think this is a GENIUS gift to give someone on Christmas Day. They can open up the “Christmas Day” box, and then they’ve got something new to open straight through until New Year’s Day!
The next few posts are going to be picture spoilers. As I only received this box a week ago I can’t give you any kind of review on the products encased therein, but I did want you to see what was inside in case you wanted to buy it as a gift for someone (or yourself, of course)!
I personally feel like the could’ve started off Christmas Day with a bit of a larger product (more impact, you know?) but the first day you open this up you get a Vitamin E Moisture Cream (15 ml).
Day 26 is a Glitter Dust in Pink.
Day 27 is Hawaiian Kukui Rich Nurturing Body Cream (50 ml).
Day 28 is the Vitamin E Nourishing Night Cream (15 ml).
Day 29 is a matte lipstick in the shade Sienna Rose.
Day 30 is a headband with little bunny ears on it!
Oh so appropriate for New Year’s Eve – you get a Glitter Dust in Gold!
The last day, January 1st, is definitely the item I got the most excited about – there’s a full size Himalayan Charcoal Purifying Glow Mask in there!
All in all, I think The Body Shop Countdown to New Year! set is so frigging smart. Having a new item to open every day after Christmas is really something special!
The Body Shop Countdown to New Year! set retails for $69 CAD ($91 value) for Canadians and… okay I can’t find it on the USA web site! Maybe it sold out online already??
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.
Holiday 2017: QUO Illuminating Palette (Review, Swatches & Face Shots)
One of the items I was most excited to try from QUO‘s Holiday 2017 range (you can see a ton from that launch in this video where I do a PR haul) was the Illuminating Palette!
With three highlighters, a blush and two bronzers, this seemed like such a great deal for $22 CAD! The pans are huge, so there’s more than enough space to get your face brushes in there. The only thing that kind of threw me off was that this is said to be an illuminating palette, so I actually thought these were all highlighters till I flipped it over and read the instructions that indicated there was a blush, bronzer, etc.
Swatched out, I’d actually go ahead and say that aside from the coral-pink blush shade, the rest of the colours really are highlighters. The deeper shades – the bronzers – are fundamentally too shimmery and a touch too orange to be used as a bronzer.
Face Swatches
I’ve swatched these on my face in the order in which they appear in the palette – left to right, top row then bottom row. All swatches are on my cheek/cheekbone and done extremely heavily – about five layers for the highlighters and bronzers. The blush was done lightly.
More of a pearlescent-white sheen, Highlighter #1 was the most reflective in direct lighting.
Highlighter #2 leans more pink, but loses a lot of of sheen on the face.
The Blush is GORGEOUS! Super stunning colour with excellent payoff and easy to blend.
Highlighter #3 is a beige-cream highlighter that provide a faint hint of sheen.
Bronzer #1 delivers a muted orange-gold sheen.
Bronzer #2 is a touch deeper than Bronzer #1, but the colour tone is roughly the same.
Final Thoughts
Sadly, the QUO Illuminating Palette isn’t for me (or for very many others, I imagine). I found the powders just didn’t give me what I was looking for in a highlighter (not enough sheen) or bronzer (*definitely* not the right tone). The only shade I truly loved was the blush, but that’s not enough of a reason for me to want to buy this palette. The highlighters provide a very soft subtle sheen, but I found it was often gone by the end of the day. The “bronzers” are not bronzers – they’re basically warm-toned semi-shimmery highlighters. On me, the colouring of them wasn’t great, and they definitely would not work on deeper skintones as a bronzer – maybe as a highlighter?
Hard pass on this one I’m afraid. Womp womp.
The QUO Illuminating Palette can be found at Shoppers Drug Mart for $22 CAD.
The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration.