Get up, sleepy head! It’s Caturday morning! 🙂
There’s a time to be nuanced, and there’s a time to…talk about Nuance, as in Salma Hayek’s CVS-exclusive Nuance makeup line.
If you’ve been kickin’ it at CVS lately, you may have noticed that Salma Hayek’s Nuance makeup products have a new look to them.
Nuance debuted in 2011 (remember the alien egg eyeshadow packaging?), but the color products sort of drifted away for a while… But they’re back now with new products, formulas and packaging.
The brand is all about ingredients, and some of them are exotic, especially for a drugstore brand. Salma says that the women in her family have used some of them for generations, like monoi butter (in the lipstick); cotton blossom (in the mascara and brow gel); soothing tepezchuite extract (in the night cream, anti-aging cream and skin cleanser); blue agave, a naturally moisturizing humectant (the Blue Agave hair line); mamey fruit sapote to condition hair; jojoba oil and raw honey.
The entire color line has been reformulated (but they kept the original foundation) and includes eye shadows, a cream concealer, moisturizing lipstick, brow pencil, cream illuminators and shadow sticks.
A mighty mascara
It’s a full makeup range. There are face, eye, brow, lip and cheek products, and every single item is less than $20 and exclusive to CVS.
I just took a few of them out for a spin (an eyeshadow palette, a blush/bronzer duo, a brow pencil, a mascara, a matte face primer, a couple lipsticks and a gloss) and the $9.99 mascara stole the show.
You already know about all my lash curl woes, so I won’t go into it again for like the billionth time… But I’ll just say that this mascara holds a lovely curl, and there isn’t a clump in sight. I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.??
The eye/lip/cheek/brow sitch
As for the other makeup products, in terms of how well they work for me, I think they’re all pretty good for a drugstore brand — definitely comparable to Cover Girl, Almay and Maybelline, but I don’t feel like they’re quite as performance-driven as L’Oreal or Revlon, which I think of as the “higher end” of drugstore makeup.
These are just my first impressions, and I know I’m going to keep using the products more because of their price, but I think the eyeshadow could be more pigmented and easier to blend (the grains are rather larger side, so they tend to scoot around). Same goes for the blush/bronzer combo.
The brow pencil is also super duper sheer, and it takes what seems like an unusual amount of it to send Raul back into his corner (that cheeky bugger).
The primer has a nice glide to it…but I can feel it on my skin. And the lipsticks and glosses, while moisturizing, like to migrate beyond my lip lines.
Considering the prices, though, I think they’re all worth a try — maybe next time you’re at CVS looking for a notebook to replace the one your cat barfed on.
If you happen to wander over to the Nuance display, seriously, look at that mascara, too. It’s good.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
The Neutral Expressions palette looks lovely. I didn’t know Salma did make-up.
I loved Salma in 30 Rock! I wonder if she wore her makeup on set. I like the hot pink lipstick.
Glad to hear the mascara is nice! I had bad luck with their skincare back in the day (my skin is very reactive and sensitive to a lot of active ingredients), but their eye makeup remover is really good.
I remember that a lot of the old line didn’t get great reviews. I’m glad they listened to people and revamped it. I hope the new line is better. What you show her looks pretty promising.
That mascara will be in my basket the next time I go to CVS. I wouldn’t mind checking out Terracotta either.
Drug store mascara is almost always a winner for me.
I never knew that Salma Hayek did makeup, somehow it didn’t get noticed over here in Germany.