New Beauty Savvy · 2017. 12. 6. · er, lather, rinse and repeat. I am trying to tran-sition to cruelty-free products in all aspects of my life, like make-up, skincare, and my haircare.

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Drugstore Makeup Brushes

By: Sydney Walker

When thinking about makeup, you think about foun-dation, concealer, highlighter, blush, everything, but the brushes.

To apply most makeup items, brush-es or at least some form of tool, like a sponge as well, are pretty critical. Hands and fingers can be used, but makeup tools offer more pre-cision.

Personally, I spend a lot of money on makeup. More than I probably should! When contemplating buying tools, I cannot justify spending my own money on a for-ty-dollar foundation brush. I would rather use that money to buy new makeup, more or less.

So where do I typ-ically go for makeup tools? The drugstore!

My favourite drugstores to shop at are London Drugs and Walmart, partly because there is no Target in Canada

anymore.I was first exposed

to drugstore makeup tools through a past Christmas present, in which I received a set of makeup brushes with a few eyeshad-ow ones and a larger face brush.

Since I was only really doing eye makeup during this time period, I soon figured out that these brushes were so much easier to use and made the blending of eyeshadows so effort-less that they became staple pieces in my collection of makeup, and, they were from the drugstore!

I watch all these “beauty bloggers” on Youtube who use tools from Sephora, or they order online from Morphe, which, granted, is cheap as well but a pain to get in Canada. And these brushes and tools are priced anywhere from about ten dollars to say about fifty dollars in Sephora.

And then there’s the hassle of shipping costs and paying duty

just to get your brush-es into the country. Whereas in Walmart I can purchase my favourite eyeshadow brushes for two to five dollars a piece with the convenience of buying and having them on the same day.

Speaking of favou-rites, my favourite brand in Walmart is Still Spa Essentials; that was the brand of brushes I received as a Christmas present, and that is pretty much all I use for eyeshadow now. The price points per brush are super good and I find that they are greatly worth it.

The eyeshadow blending brush is my favourite to blend out shadows, as is the smudger brush, which I like to contour my nose with.

Within that set I previously men-tioned, came a large powder brush for the face, which I use to powder certain areas of my face, typically my chin, as well I like to brush away the

excess powder from under eyes away with this brush.

Aside from Walmart, London Drugs is a great way to find makeup tools as well.

Recently I’ve been delving into the brand Ecotools; they have an array of brushes for the face and eyes, as well as sponges for around the face. I really enjoy the defining brush that they have, which is a tapered natural haired brush that I LOVE to contour with. It’s not too small as to create a line, but not too wide as to disperse and excess amount of product.

I also really enjoy their sheer blush brush for my blush, and the full powder brush to also set cer-

tain parts of my face.Also from London

Drugs, I really like some of the brushes from Real Tech-niques. I have the blush brush, which I used to bronze my face, as well as the setting brush and sculpting brush.

I specifically use the setting brush to highlight my face because it’s just small enough to fit right on my cheekbones and not too dense for it to hold too much product.

And I use the sculpting brush as it is supposed to be used, to sculpt the face and contour!

These are just my favourite affordable options for makeup brushes and places to buy them from!

A selection of Real Techniques brushes.

A collection of drugstore brushes.

Glitter Galore‘Tis the season for glitter!

As the Christmas season approach-es, so too does the twinkling lights and snow-covered scenes of the city, from which we get a lot of inspiration for our makeup looks during this season.

Especially, the glitter.

Dramatic smoky eyes with glitter on the lids and metallic lipsticks are all the rage during the holi-day season.

Today I have compiled a couple of glitter-based eyeshad-ow formulas that are absolutely to die-for this season, and for any time of the year. Let’s start with the cult-favourite as of right now, the Stila Magnificent Metals: Glitter & Glow Liq-uid Eyeshadow.

Now these liquid eyeshadows have recently started to hit peak popularity within the last year, and it’s been about a

year since I discov-ered them.

They are being retailed through Sephora and some Shoppers Drug Marts in Canada, and I first purchased mine through Shoppers.

Sephora has begun transitioning the Stila line to the online website exclusively, so naturally I found somewhere else to grab them, and more importantly, swatch them before purchas-ing.

I can really see what all the hype is about with these liquid eyeshadows.

They’re a perfect blend of glitter and cream base and actu-ally come in a decent variety of colours. There’s the tiniest bits of glitter within the formula to give it the shiny and obviously glittery finish that the holidays call for.

The shades I cur-rently have are Kitten Karma, Diamond Dust, Gold Goddess, & Sea Siren.

The applicator for these is similar to a doe-foot lipstick applicator, but not meant to fit the lips.

Next, I have the Urban Decay Heavy Metal: Glitter eyelin-ers.

Now these ones are different than the Stila ones, but still wonderful for glitter eye looks and the holidays.

The heavy metal eyeliners are pretty underrated; I don’t really see them in so-cial media quite like I do with the Stila ones.

As far as formula

goes, it’s very differ-ent.

They are more like a liquid infused with glitter, so they swatch almost clear with glitter speckled throughout.

The Heavy Metal liners are what they say they are, eyelin-ers. Of course like any eyeliner you can layer up and cover the lid, but the applicator is very tiny and meant for precise linework.

You kind of have to build them up, de-pending on what look you’re going for, and if you are using them

on top of foundation, you have to be care-ful because I have seen them semi-break down the foundation on my face, especial-ly if I use them in my inner corners.

I already had the shade Midnight Cow-boy, and I recently picked up the shades Pyro and Grind at my local Sephora. The last5 two shades are new releases from Urban Decay for the holiday season I believe.

By: Sydney Walker

A mix of Stila liquid eyeshadows and Urban Decay liquid eyeliners.

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Let’s start this week off with a little Sephora haul, shall we?

For starters, Rihanna launched her new makeup line just recently. Thus far, she only released face products, such as your basic primer, foundation, conceal-er, blush, and high-lighter. But, these things, as basic as they would be any other time, threw so-cial media into hyste-ria! I should mention that with this launch, she put out FORTY foundation shades.

Now, if you’re not a huge makeup junkie like I am, you’re probably wondering why in the world is forty different foundation shades so big? WELL, right off the bat, forty founda-tion shades in a first launch is unheard of in pretty much any other brand. Within the makeup community, there is controversy in terms of shades and the lack of shades for people of colour; with this in mind, Rihanna want-

ed to turn that around and focus more so on darker skin tones in a sense. She also concentrated on highlights and con-cealers that are more universal and geared towards everyone in a way.

One of these highlighters is called “Trophy Wife”. It’s a GORGEOUS true gold highlighter with glitter that truly truly sparkles in the sun! I find “Trophy Wife” to be more universal than what you would think, as it is very gold, the way it looks on a darker skin tone is absolutely beauti-ful. People with fairer skin often stay away from straight gold highlights, as they tend to look too dark on the skin, but I am decently fair myself, and I wore this high-light and totally fell in love. It can also be used to highlight the body, as well as on the eyes as eyeshad-ow, so if you love the look of this highlight, there is more than one way to wear it!

I also picked up

the shade “Metal Moon”. It looks plain white in the pan, but swatched on the arm and the face, it is a great alternative to “Trophy Wife” for those with a fair-er skin tone. It’s a beautiful white gold highlight with just a hint of glitter to catch the sparkles when your face hits the sun.

Next I grabbed the Smashbox “Primer Oil” and the Estee Edit “Pore Vanishing Stick”. I have very dry skin, especially during the winter time, so a traditional

hydrating prim-er won’t cut it for me usually. I have tried other priming oils, and while they worked just fine, I still felt dry. So, I’m super excited to this primer from Smash-box as I have heard RAVE reviews from those with similarly dry skin. As for the primer stick, I pur-chased a sample size and loved it, so this was just a beloved repurchase.

The brand Too Faced recently re-leased a whole new line of makeup that is peaches and cream infused, literally meaning that they smell just like peach-es and cream, even to the extent of some items tasting like peaches (or so I’ve heard). I am running low on setting pow-der and had heard so many good things about this new setting powder from Too Faced, so I figured I might as well pick

one up now as op-posed to running out and not having any.

The last two items were point perks that you can redeem for, for free, from Sephora. As long as you have accumu-lated enough points through making purchases, you can redeem for smaller “try it out” sizes of products. I had gotten the Ole Henriksen “Pore-Balance Facial Sauna Scrub” before and fell head-over-heels in love with it, so I figured I could spend a few points to get another one. The Estee Edit “Pink Peony Overnight Water Pack” is what it says it is, an over-night mask to renew hydration in the skin. I have only tried it once, so I have to try it out a few more times before I can really say if I like it or not.

By: Sydney WalkerAn array of Sephora products.

How I Spend My Money at Sephora

Fenty Beauty highlighters.

Cruelty-Free Haircare Routine

We all wash our hair; every day, every other day, every other week.

At some point, we get in the show-er, lather, rinse and repeat.

I am trying to tran-sition to cruelty-free products in all aspects of my life, like make-up, skincare, and my haircare.

A few months ago I purchased a set from Sephora, it had a couple hand creams and skincare items, but it also had a set of travel size shampoo and conditioner from the same brand, Verb.

Now, Verb has a few different types of shampoo/conditioner for different things, like a hydrating duo (which is the one I received), a volume duo, and a couple other odds and ends.

Then they also

have hair oils and masks and dry sham-poos.

And they’re cruel-ty-free, so bonus!

The set that I got, which was the “hydrating” version of their shampoo and conditioner is colour safe, as well as has a really nice cleansing aspect and it’s mild, so not too intense or harsh on the hair.

I have absolutely adored it since trying it out, and I do dye my hair with henna, so the colour safe thing is a really good additive for me.

Eventually you run out of a travel size, so rather recently I had to buy some more. I checked around on-line before commit-ting in store, to see if I could find a good deal with another set, and I actually did.

This set came with

the travel size sham-poo/conditioner duo, a full size hair oil, a full size leave-in mist, and a full size hydrating hair mask.

My hair used to re-ally fluctuate between so dry I had pretty bad dandruff, and exponentially oily.

Since using this shampoo/conditioner duo, I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in the way my hair is. By also incorporating some of the other products from the set, I’ve been able to keep my hair at a nice balance.

Let’s start my routine!

So it’s pretty basic to start; I will sham-poo then rinse and condition unless I am using a hair mask, and the one I’ve been using recently has been the Charcoal Detoxifying one from

hair.goo. If I use a mask, I’ll rinse it out, then start with sham-poo and so on.

The Verb condi-tioner specifically says to leave in for three to five minutes, so, since I have my phone playing songs while I shower, I let a song go by while the conditioner sits in my hair.

While waiting I’ll shave my legs and do some skin care till the song is over.

After that, I’m pretty much done being in the shower, so I’ll hop out and wrap my hair in a towel for about ten minutes to soak up most of the water, then for another ten minutes I will just let my hair air-dry not in the towel.

After most of my scalp is dry, I will spritz my hair with

Verb’s Leave-In mist to help detangle and condition and work it in with my fingers.

When that’s all worked in I will warm up a couple pumps of Verb’s Ghost Oil in my palms and massage that into the ends of my hair pretty spar-ingly.

The Ghost Oil is good for smoothing my hair and keeping it nice and shiny! Plus, I feel that it helps the sad ends of my hair in some type of way.

After doing all this, I notice that my hair doesn’t get oily for at least three to four days!

Anyways, hope you enjoyed this read and your eyes were opened to some cru-elty-free haircare! Stay tuned for the next one!!

By: Sydney Walker

Verb hair products and a hair mask from hair.goo.

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