The Life of A Ladybug

100% Pure Peach Pigmented Healthy Glow Powder

As I unwrapped the last product I'd bought to try from the 100% Pure Cosmetics line, I was filled with trepidation.  I'd not loved the lip glosses, mascara, or cheek gels, what made me think I would like this?  Well ... I do like it.  I guess.  I mean, I'm wearing it today and it doesn't look quite as artificial as the Darac Beauty Sifted Blur, but it, too, doesn't have as natural a look as I'm used to.  It goes on looking ... powdery ... as powders are wont to do.  Still, once my skin's natural oils mix with the product a bit, I find that the Peach Pigmented Healthy Glow Powder looks fairly nice.  It's an okay lightweight powder, which feels very nice going on, thanks to the included extra-cute kabuki brush.  I do like that this powder comes in three different shades - I bought Golden Peach, which is for darker skintones.  It doesn't have the same grayige effect as the Darac Beauty Powder.  I do really like the ever-so-faint whiff of peach scent that you get from the powder.  I like the darling compact.  And I really love the SPF 20.

So, while I'm not shouting my love from the rooftops on this one, it isn't bad.  So, I guess I can give it a pleasant recommendation, if not a ringing endorsement.

You can find this on QVC.com.

CARGO blu ray highlighter/blush

Another product in CARGO's blu ray collection is the blu ray highlighter/blush.  Like the lip glosses quad, I find the highlighter/blush to be a very standard product.  The pale pink shade is probably too light to be used as a blush on anything but the fairest skintones, but as a highlighter, it works nicely to accentuate the tops of the cheekbones or under brows.  Still, you could achieve the same effect with any number of other products, so, while I like it, I don't love it.  Sorry, CARGO - you're still one of my favorite brands!

You can buy the CARGO blu ray collection in Sephora stores or on Sephora online.

The Body Shop Super Volume Mascara

When I bought a couple items from the ever so stylish, Allie, she included a sample of The Body Shop Super Volume Mascara.  I have fallen in love with it!

TBS Super Volume Mascara is very similar to my beloved Maybelline Full 'n Soft.  The bristles are spaced kind of far apart on the brush, so be sure that you manage to coat every lash, but there is no clumpage.  The formula is a little wet, but it is really black and, while you won't wind up with hella long lashes, your lashes will be dark and thick and this mascara gives them luscious girl.  In short: The Body Shop Super Volume Mascara is a great everyday mascara.

You can get it for $14 at www.thebodyshop.com or in stores.

Darac Beauty Sifted Blur Perfecting Powder and TourQuam Brush

Once again, I have been victimized by QVC's Saturday Night Beauty - LOL!  So, I've already told y'all how I get sucked in by the lovelies they show every Saturday night, right?  Well, it happened again.

This dude, Darac, was on there, showing his product, Sifted Blur Perfecting Powder and the accompanying TourQuam Brush.  Well, I want to look perfect!  I want blemishes to be blurred!  Off I went to order these.

I'm wearing the powder today and um ... I'm not so sure.  I mean, it does leave my skin looking pretty smooth, so that's a plus.  But it only comes in one shade and, while it's kind of appeared brown on TV, it's really more of a grayish-beige.  A grayige, if you will.  Not so good for brown-skinned girls.  I don't exactly look ashy or anything, but I don't know.  It's not as "realistic" and natural-looking as I usually go with my foundation powders.  It doesn't look as much like my skin as MAC's Mineralize Skinfinish Natural does, for example.  But, I do look polished and finished, so that's nice. 

Another thing to look out for - any dry areas on your face will be seriously emphasized by this powder.  Be sure to moisturize well - maybe even more than you think you need to.  Get every little crevice, particularly where your nose and upper lip meet.  It tends to cake up right around there.

As for the brush, there's a magnet inside it and you can't use it if you have a pacemaker.  Yikes.  I'm not even sure what the magnet is for - anyone???  To me, it seems no different or better than the skunk brushes that MAC and others sell.

Anyhow, not the worst product ever, but definitely not worth the $60 I shelled out.  Save your money.

L'oreal Voluminous Naturale

As L'Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black is one of my favorite mascaras ever, I thought I would try its sister L'Oreal Voluminous Naturale to see if I could tell any difference.  Well, I can!  And that's not a good thing.  While the Carbon Black version of Voluminous offers thick, long, sooty black lashes, Naturale doesn't do this at all!  I did notice a bit of length and maybe even a touch of thickness, but it was hard to see past all the extreme clumpage!!!  Argh!!  Shock and horror, y'all!  This is not at all what I look for in a mascara.  I want long, lush, inky black lashes, not spider legs!

I will try again, just to see if maybe I got a bad tube, but I am majorly disappointed.  The brush is rubbery, like Cover Girl Lash Blast, but skinny and flexible and ugh!  Not a fan.  Not a fan.

Berwick Beauty Coming Up Roses

I love the rose in all its forms.  And I love rose-scented things.  So Berwick Beauty's line Coming Up Roses appeals to my senses.

The jar packaging is heavy silver metal, which looks elegant and swanky sitting on your vanity or sink.  The jars are beautiful, but if you have a thing about sanitation, you aren't going to love these, as you'll have to dip your fingers in to apply the product, unless you use a spatula.  Also, the jar packaging means that any antioxidant properties may be lessened, since the product will be exposed to light, etc.

Berwick Beauty's site contains a lot of information about the supposed benefits of the main ingredient of these products - Damask Rose Oil.  I have no idea if those reports are true, but I do know that the information contains a lot of gobbledy-gook that sounds "scholarly".  Then again, so does every other company's reports - every product on the market will have all sorts of research backing it.  That amounts to marketing and nothing else.  The true test of a product is what it does for your skin.  So, what did it do for mine?

Keep in mind that I have oily skin, prone to breakouts and that I have lots of melanin, as I am a Black woman - LOL!

The Balancing Day Cream is nice - I haven't found it to add any oiliness to my already oily skin, but it does have a smoothing effect on the skin so that my powders/foundations go on nicely without pulling.  I've also noticed that the skin on my nose doesn't flake when I use this product.  The Restoring Night Cream is good for added moisturization at night.  The company's blurb that the two creams "tone complexion providing an overall healthier appearance" doesn't really mean much - any moisturizer worth its salt does that.  The Eye Contour Gel is a bit weird.  It has a nice consistency that is light enough that you can apply concealer over it, though I don't think it's quite thick enough to be used at night.  However, what's weird about it for me is that it contains these tiny little red granules (rose particles, perhaps?).  The company's information says that these capsules (?) contain ceramides designed to "stimulate protein synthesis beneath the skin."  I don't know what that even means or why it would be beneficial, but I'll tell you this - it seems strange.  When I think of a product containing granules, I expect it to be a scrub and the last thing I want to do is exfoliate on the gentle under eye skin.

So, anyway, thumbs up on the look of the products - the packaging is beautiful - and the luscious rose scent.  A "meh" on the creams - they're nice, but not spectacular.  Thumbs down on the granules in the eye cream.  I'll keep using these products until I run out because I love the scent, but I probably won't repurchase.

You can check the products out on www.berwickbeauty.com.

CARGO blu-ray lip gloss compact

One of my favorite brands, CARGO has put out a new collection designed specifically to look great on high-definition TV.  It's a fun and interesting concept, but how many of us really spend our lives needing to look good on HDTV?  Anyway, sucker that I am, I picked up the blu-ray lip gloss palette and blush/highlighter.

The lip gloss palette comes in four nice colors: sheer versions of peach, plum, rose and beige.  The lip gloss has a great consistency - soft and smooth, with no stickiness.  It has a faint mint flavor/scent that is pleasant.  What I don't see is any difference between these glosses and the ones that CARGO already offered.  I didn't notice a plumping effect or that the gloss is any shinier than another.  If you have reason to be on HDTV, maybe this is something you need to look into.  Otherwise, I find these to be pretty standard glosses.

You can buy the blu-ray lip gloss palette at Sephora or on Sephora.com for $29.

Fresh Here Comes the Sun palette

Thanks to the lovely Suzanna, I decided to buy Fresh's Here Comes the Sun palette.  Blushes and bronzers are starting to become as much of a problem for me as lip glosses are, LOL! 

I like this palette, but I don't love it.  The highlighting and bronzing powders work nicely - they are actually light and dark enough, respectively, to function as they should.  Unfortunately, the soft pink of the blush isn't enough to show up on my skin without my having to layer it several times.  Even then, it only achieves a very natural blush - it doesn't offer any drag queen blush levels at all.  Which is fine, if you want to look polished and professional.  Also, the powders are very, very dry and powdery, meaning that, as soon as you touch your brush to it, it'll start flaking and blowing all over everywhere, so watch out for that.

You can get the Fresh Here Comes the Sun palette from Sephora.com.

Avon/mark. review

I am so incredibly fortunate that my lovely friend, Yalonda, is an Avon/mark. representative!  As a younger girl, I became enamored with Avon because my grandmother would order from their catalogs - all the products seemed so glamorous to me back then.  Now, I'm falling in love with this company all over again - they're coming up with such fun, innovative products, at such fabulous price points.

The mark caribbean shine lip gloss is really cute and fun!  Look at it - it's like fabulous little tubes of sand art!  I got the peach shade "Soak in the Sun" and the bronzy shade "Walk in the Sand."  I expected that these would go on sheer, but it's not so.  They aren't slap in the face with the color by any means, but the gloss is very creamy on the lips.  I love them both, but particularly "Soak in the Sun."  At $6 a pop, you can afford to get all three, if you want!

It's rare that I'm disappointed by Avon or mark, but in this case, I'm a bit disappointed.  The mark kiss therapy lip balm looks like it would be a good alternative to Rosebud Salve and its cohorts, but frankly, this balm pales by comparison.  It comes in great colors which actually add tint to the lips.  Unfortunately, it's sticky as all get out, which I can't stand and it really doesn't feel like balm on the lips at all.  I found that it doesn't relieve dryness much - it's like applying a thick, sticky gloss without moisturizing your lips first.  Not awesome.

I love the look of the Avon Smoldering Pastels Blush Duo.  It's quite a fab little blush.  The idea is that you use the darker outer circle as your blush color and use the light inner shade as a highlight.  That would be a good idea except that the bullseye formation of the blush makes it almost impossible to separate the two colors, at least if you're using the right size blush brush.  I tried to use them separately, but wound up mixing the colors inadvertently.  That wasn't too bad, though, since the resultant color was quite nice - bright enough to be seen on my brown skin, with a touch of glowiness from the highlight color.  Good job, Avon!  This blush is just $6.99 and it comes in the Coral Dream shade (which I got) and a more mauvey color.

You can purchase Avon/mark products on the Avon website or from your local Avon/mark representative.

ECO Tools Makeup Brushes

I finally got around to trying ECO Tools' Makeup Brushes.  I am so pleased that I did! 

The brushes feature bamboo handles (since bamboo has a low impact on the earth’s resources), animal-free taklon bristles and metallic ferrule made from recycled aluminum cans. They come in reusable pouches and printed with plant-based ink.

My favorite is the Blush Brush.  I'm telling you right now - I have never felt a more luxurious brush.  (Shhh!  Don't tell MAC!)  It feels whisper soft on the skin.

If you're a beauty maven who cares about the environment, you have to try these brushes!  You can find them at some Walgreen's, Kmart and Ulta stores or you can buy them online at www.eco-tools.com.