Eyes -NYX - Wonder Pencil
mooshrimp 6/18/2013 3:22:00 PM
I ADORE this pencil! I use it for three specific purposes. One is touched on in the other reviews, to brighten your inner rims. It does that in a great way. I am not a fan of white eyeliner on rims, but the nude is really beautiful. Subtle but still creates a lot of brightness. Because I use this on my inner rims I don't use it for blemishes. Maybe it's overly paranoid, but I don't take chances with my eyes. My favorite thing to use this for though, is to "shape" my undereye bags. I haven't found a concealer that does this nearly as well as this pencil. I have NC15 skin and the light color is bright even on me (in a good way, like a highlighting concealer). If I use this all over my undereye area they look way too bright. BUT if you take this pencil, look down, and find the line where the underside of your eye bags are, then trace that line with the pencil and gently blend, it erases the bags. It is an extremely effective optical illusion and allows you to use less concealer overall, which gives a much more natural appearance. I have fairly dark puffy undereye bags and using this trick I can put just a tiny dab of salmon corrector on the inner part, trace the bag with this pencil a few times, and look like I have a flawless bright undereye area. Because I don't have to use tons of concealer anymore, no creasing. It's brilliant at this. I also love to use it to brighten my inner corners and shape them. It's a great way to add a subtle cat eye shape during the daytime. Where you would normall take black liner and draw a defined downward V shape on your inner corners, take the bright nude liner and draw the same shape. I like to take my finger and gently pat it to diffuse the edges of the line. It's very dramatic, BUT not in a makeup way. It totally changes the shape of your eyes for the sexier, but is so subtle you could definitely wear it to work.
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Other -Unlisted Brand - Omega 3 supplement 
mooshrimp 6/16/2013 12:56:00 AM
I started taking this a few months ago for a variety of reasons, including better brain function and all the other goodies that this wonderpill does. I used it consistently and noticed a lot of improvements in my mood and energy levels. I have never had acne and don't really break out from things. My whole life I got a small zit or two before my period and that was it. I could sleep in my makeup, wear stuff that broke everyone out, and treat my skin like dirt and it would be fine. Then mysteriously a few months ago my skin went berserk. I woke up one morning with more than 10 huge zits all over my face. I had my first cysts ever on my chin and forehead. I changed up my entire skincare routine, I tried everything, I went to a dermatologist, I started tretinoin, I stopped wearing foundation, NOTHING worked. I was so depressed. After changing out every single product I used on my skin and continuing to get horrible scarring acne, I was about ready to give up. I even stopped eating dairy with no help. Finally after months of awful breakouts and acne, I tried cutting the fish oil. I finally stopped getting breakouts within a few days of stopping, and finally several weeks later I am mostly healed on my face. I have pitted scars on my forehead and dark purple scars on my chin, as well as stringy white scar tissue around my nose. I don't have sensitivities to much of anything. No special dietary needs, "weird food things," so this was really weird for me. I have been reading around and apparently fish oil has caused a lot of people to break out. I would go into these with caution.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Hair -Unlisted Brand - Apple Cider Vinegar
mooshrimp 5/23/2013 9:34:00 AM
I've had a MASSIVE cherry angioma in the middle of my face for over a decade. Even my own mom thought it was ugly. My boyfriend was constantly saying "oh hey you have a big zit." It was raised and concealer wasn't helping. I went to a derm who offered to laser it off for the hefty sum of $300, plus weeks of downtime with bruising. I declined. On the net some people had mentioned that if you scratch it with a CLEAN pin until it bleeds, then apply vinegar 3x a day until it scabs over, it can disappear. I was skeptical but had nothing to lose. You know if you are doing this process right because the vinegar does sting a bit. You can stop applying vinegar once the scab forms. It scabbed over and looked really gross. I now had a giant black scab in the middle of my face. Terrific. But I managed not to pick at it even once, which is a miracle on its own, and left it alone. 2 weeks later, the scab fell off the the angioma was GONE. It's like magic. It's just GONE. For free instead of $300. I am THRILLED!
13 out of 15 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Cleansers -Cerave - Hydrating Cleanser
mooshrimp 5/22/2013 6:21:00 PM
This was a total DISASTER for my face. I had been recovering from the worst breakout of my life and had started retin-a a month ago and my skin was pretty irritated and peeling. Even Cetaphil was bothering it. I had heard amazing things about this. At first I loved it. It was so soothing and left my skin feeling incredible, soft, moisturized, and very happy. Then the next day I had some bumps on my forehead. Not inflamed nasty zits, just some bumps. I thought, OK maybe it's something else. Then the next day I woke up with more clogged pores than I'd had in weeks and two MASSIVE zits in places I've never even had zits before. I gave it one week before giving up because I just had so much clogging and congestion. My skin was just going very downhill as a result of this cleanser. I did a tea tree and clay masque and switched to another cleanser and the congestion got way better. What a shame, I REALLY wanted to like this. It's taken me over 2 weeks to recover from this disaster.
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Fragrances -Jimmy Choo - Flash
mooshrimp 5/7/2013 11:54:00 AM
The smell of this perfume is so bad I nearly threw up. I got a sample of it and after spraying it had to take a shower before I was sick. I bought a magazine that had a sample of this in it and I had to tear it out before I could keep reading. Awful awful awful. I normally love sweet perfumes and get along well with them. Most of my perfumes are fruit and sweet florals, lots of Escada in there. This was just, ugh. No.
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Lip Liners -Chanel - Le Crayon Levres in 31 Tulip
mooshrimp 5/5/2013 6:31:00 PM
Love love love this. It is a nearly perfect match for my lip color and creates such a beautiful look either alone or as a base. It is long wearing and a lovely color. I adore that there is a lip brush on the other end and use it all the time. The pencil is really long and you get a ton of product.
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Lip Gloss -E.L.F. - Essential Jumbo Lip Gloss Stick
mooshrimp 5/5/2013 6:29:00 PM
When ELF started coming out with the big crayon products I bought them in most colors. Unfortunately the shadow sticks are a total fail, but I love love love these gloss sticks! They are creamy and lightly pigmented and remind me in texture and payoff of the Revlon lip butters. Except for $1. And in a super fun twist up crayon! I have them in: Sangria starters, which is a beautiful dark mauvey raspberry color that is great day or night, great color payoff. Tiki torches, which is a gorgeous gold sparkle orange color. It's a dead on dupe for Clinique's Ambrosia. Summer nights, which a sparkley your lips but better color. More sheer than the rest, but good for low key days. In the nude, which is a very pigmented true nude. I LOVE this shade. It is the most pigmented of the bunch, but still sheer. So you can layer it until it's exactly the color you want/need for your skintone. No glitter. Pink Umbrellas, a perfect spring pink without the glitter found in many of the rest. And Movie Star, which is kind of the color you hope you'd get after eating a bunch of cherries. A beautiful sheer wash of cool toned red. These are really fun and cheap. Highly recommend trying them on your next ELF order.
8 out of 8 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Eye Shadow -Lancome - Color Focus in Click
mooshrimp 5/5/2013 6:20:00 PM
I love to pair this eyeshadow with golds and peaches, with the peach or gold on the lid and this color on the crease and below my rim with a pencil brush. It is a gorgeous dark plum/brown but behaves like a neutral. I adore it. It's a nice texture, though it could be a bit more pigmented. It is more of a pearl finish than a shimmer, which is nice. It really brings out the golds and greens in my eyes and just plays nice with them. It is a very unique color and I don't have anything similar in my collection.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Makeup Brushes -Urban Decay - Good Karma Optical Blurring Brush
mooshrimp 5/4/2013 5:31:00 PM
I have an HG way to apply face products, my beauty blender (3 of them in fact). It is flawless, easy and yet, I just prefer using a brush. I don't know why, it just makes me happier to use a brush than a sponge. I was contemplating the Real Techniques expert face brush, but when I saw how pretty this silver one was, I bought it immediately. The handle is very heavy/sturdy and feels really solid. It looks just lovely. It's so shiny! It's metal! Yay! Appearance-wise I am thrilled. The first time I tried this brush, I was thoroughly underwhelmed. In fact I almost returned it. I used it with Lancome Renergie foundation and it was streaky, uneven and just plain terrible looking. I couldn't buff anything in, it all looked bad. On top of which, it made anything I applied underneath ball up even when it's never done that before. I was really upset. I tried it with every foundation I owned and none "buffed" in nicely. So I went back to the Beauty Blender, which while it provides a lovely finish isn't as fun to use. This morning I had an idea. I stippled the foundation in with the brush instead of buffing. PERFECTION! It created the same beautiful airbrushed look I can get with my sponge, but it's a brush so it's better. :) It's really quick to use this way and works with all the foundations I've tried with it, ranging from tinted moisturizers, to BB creams, to moisturizing foundations, to silicone based ones (like the Naked the brush is made for). I am so happy with this! I have a stippling brush and this is way better at stippling foundation than that is.
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Moisturizers -La Roche Posay - Rosaliac
mooshrimp 5/3/2013 10:35:00 AM
I bought this based on reviews from other sites and was disheartened to see a VERY low score on here. But I wanted to give it a shot before tossing such an expensive product. It comes in a small pump container with a nice looking frosted plastic cap. The pump is really nice and allows a lot of control over the amount of product dispensed. The product has a faint smell that isn't terribly pleasant, but it's faint and I can't smell it after applying. It is green tinted, but not terribly so. It won't give you hulk face even if you overapply it. When I first put it on I thought for sure this was going to be terrible. It kind of stung/burned right when I put it on and I kind of went "oh %^&*" expecting several days of puffy red face. However, the discomfort only lasted a second. Imagine my surprise when the redness in my face subsided considerably after a few hours! I had been using Skinceuticals redness neutralizer and it was good, not great. But coupled with this, it's fantastic! My skin is much less red and blotchy. I'm really happy with this! It's somewhat moisturizing but on my dry skin I need something else on top. Not a problem though.
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Misc Beauty Tools -Unlisted Brand - Creaclip
mooshrimp 4/26/2013 2:06:00 PM
I had always asked for the exact same thing every time I went in for a haircut. Long textured layers. I have 3a curls and no one ever seemed to get the cut quite right. I was tired of always getting the same cut and never having it done right and wasting so much money on it! I saw this on Youtube and it looked so easy. I thought it was probably too good to be true, but plunked down my $30 and it came in the mail 3 days later. I got a pair of Sally Hansen hair scissors for less than $10 and they work great. There are two clips in the set, a white curved on and a blue short straight one. The straight one is best for bangs and face layers, while the white one is the "star of the show." This could not be easier to use on yourself. To prep, you should straighten your hair and dry it. Tools, a brush and scissors (and a broom, can't forget to clean up!). To make a straight cut, it should be in a smiley face/U orientation, while to cut layers you should have it as a frowny face. The first time I did this in the layered way, I tried cutting off several inches and the layers were too extreme and the layers around my face were too short. So what I like to do to have more control is to grab the sections around my face and clip them off to the side, then cut a small amount in the frowny/layered way. THEN to cut off the extra length, I leave my face sections off to the side, re-clip my hair in the smiley orientation, and cut off the extra length. Then I go in with the blue clip and cut the layers around my face separately. It may take a bit of trial and error. It sounds complicated, but in reality it couldn't be easier. The whole process takes me about 3 minutes. I can't recommend this product enough. I HATE going to the hairdresser, and now I don't have to.
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BB Cream -Unlisted Brand - Holika Holika - Petit BB Cream - Moisture SPF30
mooshrimp 4/26/2013 1:05:00 PM
DAAAAAAAMN this is good bb cream. I am swearing because why the heck did I waste all that money on foundation and primer for all these years??? I am genuinely very displeased at my previous purchases because they are such a waste compared to this. I have very dry skin with some fine lines on my forehead and large pores around my nose. I am NC15 but am really a true neutral (no colors make me look sick or weird). Color match is the best color match I've ever gotten in a makeup. It's perfect, completely dead on. It's also the only good match for my pale skin that warms my skin up without making me look like my liver is failing. The finish is flawless, like second skin. Even where I put on too much, it still looked natural. You'd really have to be staring with a magnifying glass to tell I had on makeup. This brings me to another point, you do not need to use much of this! WAY less than I had thought I needed. Don't treat it like foundation and you will get a better finish. Less is more for sure. This bb cream has spectacular coverage. It's up there with my Mac Fix + powder in terms of coverage. It's amazing. I barely had to use concealer. Did not make lines worse. I wanted to give this a shot without primer first, to see how it performed. I found that this didn't make my lines look worse (which foundations all do without primer). However, it did settle a bit into pores. With primer it makes my lines look more invisible than without makeup and doesn't settle into pores. Moisturizing power is great. It gives a gorgeous dewy finish and erases flakes rather than highlighting them. Lasting power seems OK, I have dry skin so nothing really wears off on me. It has that feeling to it like it would not last well. I set it with powder and it was fine on me. If you have oilier skin, I imagine this wouldn't last long and I'd try the tea tree or essential instead. Fragrance IS quite strong. It smells really nice, kind of floral. I have very sensitive skin and the fragrance didn't irritate me at all. No redness and no breakouts. Cannot rave about this enough. Where have you been all my life when I wasted so much money on other foundations? :(
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Treatments -Unlisted Brand - Retacnyl Tretinoin Cream 0.025%
mooshrimp 4/25/2013 11:59:00 AM
I randomly had an incredibly severe breakout. Not sure what caused it, no new products, my face just went nuts. I've never suffered from acne before, but suddenly had cystic acne everywhere. It was painful and I was embarrassed to go out without tons of makeup on. I got a tube of the tretinoin cream to try to clear it up and from the day I started using it onwards, no more zits. My partner suffers from severe scarring acne and he uses the same cream in the same concentration and it has completely eliminated the problem. It hasn't helped the pitted scars much on him, but has made any red scars completely invisible. I noticed that my skin where I was applying the cream was much nicer than the rest of my face. The pores were smaller, the fine lines were getting less visible, and the oil production was more balanced. I expanded the area I was applying it to anywhere with large pores or lines, skipping dry areas and areas without those issues. It's only 2 weeks in but I think this is the best thing I've done for my skin in a long time. My pores are nearly invisible, which gives my skin an incredible looking texture and glow. The small fine lines are gone on my forehead and around my mouth. And of course, NO zits whatsoever. I apply this by washing with my clarisonic and moisturizing well, then waiting about an hour and applying this immediately before going to bed. I have a little mirror and the tube on my bedside table and just put it on while I'm reading or watching Hulu. I am diligent about my SPF, which I think also helps. My day cream has SPF, my primer has SPF, my foundation has SPF, my powder has SPF, and in addition to it I put on an SPF 50 before applying makeup. This stuff is great! I highly recommend trying it.
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Treatments -Unlisted Brand - Organic Root Stimulator Hair Mayonnaise
mooshrimp 4/22/2013 8:21:00 AM
I made a stupid decision to go from dark brown to dark blonde. My hair felt like straw, plus the color made me even ruddier looking so I needed to dye it again. It looked like what I really needed was a protein treatment so I bought this along with some dark semi-permanent dye. I chopped off the ends, put on the mayo, left it in for 20 minutes, then without washing it out applied the dye. Then I rinsed, shampooed, and deep conditioned. The result? Glossy thick hair that barely feels damaged anymore. AND the color took evenly to my whole head, rather than dying the damaged parts differently. Brilliant! My hair stopped feeling like straw (brittle, lacking in shine, frizzy) and started looking like actual hair again. Ah-mazing. This is my first protein treatment product, but I am sure it won't be my last. It's also a great price and it smells nice. A+
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No
Powder -Physicians Formula - Healthy Wear SPF 50 Powder Foundation
mooshrimp 4/7/2013 4:38:00 PM
I've become really "sun phobic" lately and anything I can get SPF in, I do. I accidentally bought this in translucent medium even though I'm an NC15. It made me look muddy and dirty and I was really disappointed. However, I then decided to put on my very pale foundation and apply this ALL OVER the top and it was the most realistic "tan" I've done yet. Not a hint of orange or red or shimmer, I just look tan. Beautiful. It's become an indispensable part of my foundation routine and it doesn't cake or settle into lines. I apply it like a pressed powder (roll with a velour puff, then dust off excess) rather than buffing it like a foundation.
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No