Eyebrows

As I am home for the holidays and am short on time, today I am reposting an oldie but a goodie. This entry was originally posted 6/7/06. Over six months later, I am still using both products and loving them every bit as much.

I've been battling my eyebrows for years. I began plucking at 18. My brows had always been... big. However, strange as it may be although they covered a large amount of space, there was actually little hair doing so. This has made shaping a buit tricky, and has made it necessary to use brow pencils or powder of some kind. I've been using a Revlon eyebrow powder kit for longer than I care to confess (it's only been recently that I started paying attention to those so-called make-up expiration dates), but have been wanting to find something new.

I recently got a gift card to Sephora and as I was browsing around in the store yesterday one of the lovely ladies who works there pointed me towards Stila's Brow Set. She recommended it highly, and helped me pick out the best color for me. I also picked up a Sephora Eyebrow Brush to go along with it.

I used my new brow powder and brush this morning for the first time, and immediately fell in love. It went on nicer and smoother and looked more natural than my old powder ever had! I don't know if it was the powder, the brush, a combination of both, or simply using something that was nice and new and fresh, but I'm loving it. I'm not in the habit of splurging on make-up like this (the brow powder was $16 and the brush was $9) but the brush will last me for quite some time and the powder for a good 2 years or so, so I'm satisfied. I have to say, the appeal of knowledgeable staff to help you out and being able to test the products before buying are starting to convert me to slightly pricier products over the drug store brands. Plus (such a frivolous thing) the packaging tends to be so much cuter.... =P

Perfume Sets at Target!

Target has got some GREAT deals on perfume gift sets right now! For example, you can get a fabulojs deal on a Live by Jennifer Lopez 3-piece gift set that's much less than the price of the perfume bottle alone at Sephora. You can read more in my post at Target Culture.

Cirque de Beaute' at Sephora!

Beauty gift sets galore! Whether you're shopping for yourself, or getting an early start on your holiday gift list, you're bound to find beauty sets to please! So head on over to Sephora.com to check out The Greastest Gift Show on Earth! Let's see, I can already think of one friend who'd greatly enjoy the LipFusion Perfect Pout set ($39), and Philosophy's The Holiday House ($35) has already made it onto my Amazon.com Wishlist. Or how aboput Nars Multiple Orgasm ($49)? ; ) Oooh! And how about Stila The Gift of Glaze($28)! I've been wanting to get my hands on one of their Lip Glazes for a while now!



My goodness.... It's too much! Anyway, get your booties over there now to check out all these goodies!

Sephora Lip Gloss Pencil

I love lip gloss. Adore it. It is seriously one of my favorite makeup inventions EVER. So when I heard that there were these new contraptions of lip gloss made in a pencil form, you bet I was interested!

So I went out and tried Sephora's Lip Gloss pencil ($10)... and it's pretty sweet. Goes on nice and smoothly, gives very nice color with a good bit of shine. It's not *quite* the same as wearing gloss, but it's also a heck of a lot less sticky or messy, and you can carry this pencil around in your bag all day long and never have to worry about it spilling onto anything else.

My only complaint? The color selection leaves a bit to be desired. I have mine in 05 (plum shimmer) which is nice, but it's a fairly bright pink-- great for going out, but definitely not much of a day color (unless you like being bold). It was really the only color that appealed much to me. But that may just be my personal preference... and my difficulty in buying new makeup formulas in colors that I already have in something else (which really can make it hard to shop, since there's only so many colors! lol).

Best of Sephora 2006, PLUS Sephora Blog!

I recently went over to the Sephora website to discover their new homepage listing all their Best Products (voted on by 150,000 Sephora shoppers)! Check out results such as Best Cleanser (Philosophy Purity Made Simple), or Best Lipstick (Nars Lipstick in Dolce Vita). And there's much, MUCH more where that came from!

AND get this... Last week Sephora launched its own Beauty BLOG! You bet your booty I'm adding them to my bookmarks list!

Is it silly how excited these 2 findings have made me? I'm positively giddy... lol! I guess that's what a growing addiction to beauty products will do to ya... ; )

Sephora Lip Pencils

I've been needing to buy new lip pencils for a while, since I finally got rid of the ones I'd had for years. So I went to Sephora today and looked at their line of makeup, and was once again pleasantly surprised at how affordable it is-- their lip pencils are only $4-$5 each! Sure, they're shorter than most other lip pencils, but that still seems like a great deal to mr, especially since the color from these pencils goes on so much smoother than many other cheaper pencils.

So I got 2 of the slim pencils (in 132/dark red and 110/natural), and one jumpo pencil (406/purple). I was first looking at Bare Escentuals lip liner in "wearable rose" when I realized that the Sephora jumbo pencil in 406 was almost the exact same color (for less than half the price) so I went with the latter. I love the color, it's basically like nice rosy lips, but more flushed (not sure why Sephora calls it "purple", it's not really the color that comes to mind for me).

Pencil 110 is a nice nude/toast color, it will be a nice base for the browner toned lipsticks and glosses I'll start wearing here as it gets to be fall. Pencil 132 is more of a burgundy color, it will also be really nice for fall. I'm tempted to go back and get a whole slew of these lip pencils, the color selection is really nice and you really just can't beat the price!

I got a few other goodies today on my shopping trip, including Benefit's Dallas bronzer/blush powder (that everybody's been raving about), and MAC lipglass. I'll have reviews of these products up in the following days. ; )