Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup
A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict
I find it both hilarious and totally fitting that Burt’s Bees Cranberry & Pomegranate Sugar Scrub ($13 for an 8-oz. jar) has a warning on the label that reads, “do not consume.” Seriously, they have to tell you not to eat the product because it looks and smells THAT good — like a jar of berry-licious preserves or a sugary frozen treat. 
Criminy, and I thought my awkward tween years were rough, but Zia’s Skin Basics Bamboo Exfoliant with Rice Bran ($25) = even rougher.
Zia designed their creamy, non-foaming face exfoliator to slough off dead skin, stimulate cell turnover and remove surface toxins, and although the product’s not new, it contains an interesting list of ingredients, among them plant extracts like grape seed, soybean, rice brain, lemon peel, yucca and ylang ylang flower (no paraben as far as the eye can see!).
New to Zia? The botanical-based skin care and makeup line can be found at natural food stores like Whole Foods. Their products are free of harsh chemicals and artificial colors. Tabs loves that they’re also cruelty free.
Bamboo Exfoliant is part of Zia’s Skin Basics family of cleansers, treatments and moisturizers created for skin beginning to show the first signs of aging.
Using it for the first time, one word kept coming to mind: invigorating!
“Uh, do you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“It smells like…stinky cheese.”
Tired of embarrassing belly button odor? Try The Navel Fresh Spray (LOL!).
Designed for the buttons of both men and women, the $19.99 spray promises to clean belly buttons, making them smell like “heaven on a summer night.”
What makes it work?
One word: Chlorhexafresh — yes, Chlorhexafresh — the only personal deodorant “formulated specifically to cleanse the belly button.” Makers Medali & Gold combine it with essential oils to nuke nasty odors trapped inside navels.
Okay, even though I’m sure my belly button is just as stinky as the next one, I don’t know if I’m bothered enough by it to spend $20 on targeted help. It’s not like I’m sticking noses in my tummy, you know? 🙂 I’ve got other more pressing things to worry about, like the scraggly hairs on my big toe.
Loading ...Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
As much as I love Pacifica’s Body Butters, there are some days when I just don’t want to wear a scented moisturizer, like when I’m loving on a new fragrance.
I’ve been wearing a couple of new scents lately and haven’t wanted my body lotions to clash, so when I spotted this bottle of fragrance-free Olay Quench Advanced Healing Body Lotion ($6), I had to snap it up.
Talk about happy drugstore lotion accidents. 🙂
Olay recently revamped the bottle and the name, so I must have found one of the leftovers from the older packaging. The new version looks a little different (same formula though) and goes by a new name, Quench Advanced Healing Intensive Lotion.
I hadn’t been crazy about the other lotions I’ve tried from Olay’s Quench line because all of them had strong scents and contained mica (hello, shiny finish!), both of which Olay kept out of Advanced Healing. Good call, methinks, because not only will sensitive schnozzes appreciate Olay’s thoughtful little omission, but most dudes will too (I’m pretty sure El Hub’s been using my bottle on the ‘low).
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My combination skin’s been acting up lately (annoying little pimples on my chin, clogged pores on my cheeks, dry patches around my nose… the usual crapalicious bullsh*t 🙂 ), so last night I took it as a blogger’s blessing and decided to test oil-free Boots Botanics Conditioning Clay Mask ($9) for the first time.
Just shake (it sounds like canned soup!), slather and let dry for between 10-20 minutes before rinsing with warm water. The mineral-rich clay, which is harvested from the sea and combined with burdock root extract, contains a negative electrical charge that, according to Boots, draws the crud from pores without over-drying the skin.
Pacifica’s California Star Jasmine Body Butter ($18), the newest addition to the company’s line of fragrant moisturizers, makes me want to drop everything right now and drive down to Santa Cruz for dinner.
A warm mix of jasmine and orange set to a base of musky driftwood, the scent reminds me of leisurely walks along the Beach Boardwalk at night, and it feels cozier than the other Pacifica Body Butters I’ve been wearing lately (Brazilian Mango Grapefruit, Hawaiian Ruby Guava and Malibu Lemon Blossom).
If I leave the house now, I could be cycling through the seaside town in my knit sweater, shorts and flip flops before dusk, a cool summer breeze blowing through my hair…
Calling Reno dry is like calling Chanel expensive: kinda obvious. Heck, it’s not just dry; the air literally repels moisture! — as if it hates the stuff.
One of the things I did to stay cool and keep my skin from cracking was turn to Clinique’s Moisture Surge Face Spray ($20), which I must have spritzed on myself at least a hundred times (every time I took a break from Kitty Glitter).
It’s an oil-free moisturizing face spray with a faint, almost undetectable licorice scent, and it’s part of Clinique’s famed Moisture Surge line. Designed to soothe and satisfy parched skin, it can be used in conjunction with other facial moisturizers, too, either beneath or atop makeup (spray from about a foot away to keep from disturbing your handiwork), as often as needed.
I’m prone to dry skin (normally combination dry/oily) and can suffer from taught, tight, uncomfortable skin even in humid conditions, but things would have been A LOT worse in the Reno desert if it hadn’t been for Clinique Moisture Surge Face Spray. Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: A
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. Scream it at the top of your lungs:
TGIF!
Like a peacock’s feathers, some beauty product packaging isn’t meant to be practical. Sometimes it’s meant to grab eyeballs — KAPOW! — which is exactly what the colorfully quirky Love & Toast line did to mine when I stumbled upon it at Pure Beauty.
I love the way products in the small indie line of perfumes, lip balms and hand creams ($9-32 each) are decorated, with their bright tubes and fun, interesting scents — sugared grapefruit, anyone?
Love & Toast Lip Balms ($9 each), available in Gin & Lime, Lemon Mint, Prickly Pear, Star Anise, Cherry Lemonade and Vanilla Chai
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