Incredible April Hauls 2024

[SportyGirly125]

Please post your incredible hauls for this month. I can’t wait to see what everyone gets during the Sephora Savings Event which starts first for Rouge members on 4/5.

Sephora Savings Event 2024 FAQs (Updated 3/4) 

Happy Birthday month April babies!!!

 

[WinglessOne]

Sephora spring sale: 

BOPIS and some in-store purchases.

Swatches & notes (I feel okay about swatching pretty much anything but lipstick at this point): 

Spoiler

VOLUSPA Cordless Fragrance Oil Diffuser - 20% off + gift card = let’s finally buy it already. @eshoe  was right about how sturdy this diffuser feels compared to others, and I love the matte textured finish. It’s charging right now. I know I can use it while it’s charging, but I’d rather wait for a full charge and try it cordless since that’s the way I’ll most often use it. So, I’ll test it later today. It came with a sample of Tahitian Coconut Vanilla, but I might use one of the diffuser oils from an unused Voluspa reed diffuser instead.  UPDATE: Don’t use reed diffuser oil in the ultrasonic diffuser. I asked the interwebs how different those 2 Voluspa oil formulas are from each other, because I wanted to make sure it’d be safe to interchange them without wrecking the electric diffuser. Voluspa says they can’t be interchanged but doesn’t explain why. I think the reed oil contains alcohol in addition to water and essential oils (and possibly other things), while the ultrasonic oil contains just water and EOs. Any other ingredients would mess up the way the ultrasonic diffuser works. So, I won’t try that after all. 

LYS Beauty Higher Standard Cream Glow Blush Sticks Curvy - my 2nd shade of LYS’s new cream blush sticks. I originally wanted Bubbly but decided I have enough blushes in that pink tone. Curvy packs a punch! Not that I’d expect less from a LYS cream blush, but dang. I’ll probably wear Curvy this week while masking (to protect other folks from my potential covid cooties) and see how easy or hard it is to blend out that mask line that sometimes happens with cream blush. 

The other 2 shades, especially the NARS, are ~foreshadowing~ 😄

Those 2 items were a BOPIS order. I needed to see the next item in person before buying, so I swatched it in store and wound up buying a few more items: 

INNBEAUTY PROJECT Mineral Sun Glow Broad Spectrum Sunscreen SPF 43 PA +++ with Peptides and Vitamin ... - many “medium/deep” tinted sunscreens are too obviously warm/yellow toned for my skin tone. This one looks slightly gold/olive toned on my hand, but it might still work on my face so I’ll give it a go. I was more impressed by its total lack of white/grey/lavender cast on my hand. 



Supergoop! Unseen Sunscreen SPF 40 2.5 oz / 73.9 mL - a restock. Did I ever mention this is one of my all-time favorite sunscreens, and it’s the one I always travel with because it’s so dependable? I hope Supergoop never reformulates this for worse. Speaking of that… 

NARS Mini Talc-Free Powder Blush Orgasm Edge – 778 - okay so, I shouldn’t cast harsh judgement yet about this reformulation. I bought this mini so I can test the new talc-free formula. The fact that NARS caved to the “clean beauty” movement’s talc demonization annoys me tremendously. Won’t be long before “clean beauty” gets water removed from products because omg it’s minutely possible for water to be contaminated—as if brands with a good R&D track record would let that happen during formulation instead of, you know, testing for it. 

But ANYway: so, this reformulated blush. I wish NARS had a mini of a better-for-me shade for test purposes. This one’s Orgasm without the gold shimmer. The pink in the original Orgasm blush shade has never ever shown up on my skin tone, buuut I thought maybe this new matte version would since NARS claims their blushes are generally more pigmented now. So I swatched it on my hand and I dunno y’all, this doesn’t feel like the easily blendable NARS powder blush I know and love. Something about it is off. Still, I asked my precious baby (Chikuhodo Z-4, my favorite powder cheek brush) to try applying this blush to one cheek. It didn’t seem to blend as effortlessly as the old formula. To be fair, this shade needed building up on my skin tone and was still quite subtle. To truly assess this reformulation, I need a different shade—but that’ll mean getting a full size single. Maybe I’ll pick one up for $0 OOP from Ulta or Nordstrom soon. 

NARS Orgasm Edge on just one cheek. (Yes, I know my nose is red. Hooray surface redness + nose-blowing irritation!) Any yellow/gold you see is from a nearby warm light I forgot to turn off before taking this photo.
Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez Mini Soft Pinch Liquid Blush Encourage - now this is a mini blush I was very happy to pick up. I figured Encourage would be a subtle mauve on me, but still visible. I used my trusty SEPHORA COLLECTION PRO Blush Brush #99 to test this on my other cheek and intentionally built it up to see how much color I could get out of it. The swatch photo below is really meant to show a friend how my coils respond to amika Reset Cleansing Oil 6.7 oz / 200 mL and PATTERN by Tracee Ellis Ross Curl Gel Crème 25 oz/ 740 mL (with my usual Redken All Soft Mega Shampoo and Conditioner used in between), but you can also see the RB blush here. 

Rare Beauty Soft Pinch Liquid Blush shade Encourage on one cheek. This + sunscreen = no need for highlighter. 😄

I have a small online order coming soon, and that’ll probably be the last of my spring sale adventuring—though I might go pick up another bottle of the Amika Reset Cleansing Oil, now that I’ve finally gotten around to testing the one I already have. It’s weird but good! 

[Mellmars1185]

@WinglessOne Awesome haul! The Lys blush sticks are so nice. I think the shade will look beautiful on you! The Innbeauty tinted sunscreen looks really pretty too!

[WinglessOne]

Thank you @Mellmars1185 ! I might need to order a 3rd LYS blush stick, in a shade exclusive to their site. (Sephora carries just 5 of the 7 shades.)

[Mellmars1185]

@WinglessOne I did not realize that. I will need to check them all out!

[curlychiquita]

I’m glad you like so many of your new products, @WinglessOne! The Lys blush definitely packs a punch!

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @curlychiquita ! 

[Loretta55]

Nice haul @WinglessOne.

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @Loretta55 !

[lmaster]

Ohhh so pretty!!! Great haul @WinglessOne 

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @lmaster !

[itsfi]

@WinglessOne, that Rare Beauty blush swatches beautifully on you. I'm so happy they released more shades in the mini version - a little goes a looooooong way with that formula and even with the mini, that tube is going to last a while!

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @itsfi ! I was just telling someone else I still haven’t finished the Rare Beauty mini blush that came in a set I got a year or 2 (or more?) ago, because it’s so potent. RB should release all shades as minis. 😅

[faeriegirl]

Nice haul @WinglessOne!

[WinglessOne]

Thanks @faeriegirl !

[CorgiMommy]

@WinglessOne the Nars blush is very flattering on you.

[WinglessOne]

Aw, thanks @CorgiMommy ! I just wish I didn’t have to build up that blush so much to make it appear at all on my cheek. 

[eshoe]

Brilliant idea to use the reed diffuser oil, @WinglessOne! Their reed diffusers do not emit much fragrance from my experience...I wonder how effective it will be in this 🤔 

[WinglessOne]

@eshoe  I usually have good luck with Voluspa’s reed diffusers, though I tend to use them in smaller spaces (bedroom, bathrooms) rather than rely on them to scent my entire apartment. The cordless ultrasonic diffuser, though… man, that thing makes my entire home smell good. Whatever oil I put in there, I’d better like it because my whole place will smell like it. 😂 

Don’t use reed diffuser oil in the ultrasonic diffuser. I asked the interwebs how different those 2 Voluspa oil formulas are from each other, because I wanted to make sure it’d be safe to interchange them without wrecking the electric diffuser. Voluspa says they can’t be interchanged but doesn’t explain why. I think the reed oil contains alcohol in addition to water and essential oils (and possibly other things), while the ultrasonic oil contains just water and EOs. Any other ingredients would mess up the way the ultrasonic diffuser works. So, I won’t try that after all. I need to update my original post to specify all this. 🙂 

[eshoe]

So grateful you contacted them, @WinglessOne. Would have been nice, but I am fine with the diffuser oil. The Voluspa ones seem to last forever, I am very pleased with mine. The Tahitian Coconut Vanilla is my favorite (not a huge fan of coconut, it comes off more vanilla but a rich, warm vanilla). I do not find it beachy at all!

[WinglessOne]

@eshoe  That’s what I used yesterday in the diffuser (the included sample of TCV). I’m not a big fan of the TCV candle, but the diffuser oil smells very good! I don’t find it beachy either. Instead, it kinda reminds me of the pipe my grandfather sometimes smoked: deep warm vanilla and a hint of almost tobacco oaky scent from the coconut. It made my apartment feel like a nostalgic hug. 

[eshoe]

Oooooh, what a lovely surprise, @WinglessOne! That tobacco-y scent you describe is so comforting, doubly so since it reminds you of your grandfather ❣️ I have not tried the candle, but I did wonder how it compares to the oil; I won't bother picking it up, thank you for the description. I did recently buy a candle warmer as one of the candles I recently bought is so smoky I did not want to burn it. But I did not want to waste it, either! The warmer is a good compromise.