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My oh my, May is here! 🌱🌸 It's time to show off all the magical must haves you picked up this month.
Let's give our hauls a moment to sparkle and shine! ⭐
🎉And of course a huge shout out to all the May Birthday Beauties! 🎉
Wishing you all the most magical month. 🎈🎁
May also holds a special day for all the Mama's, Aunts, Grand Mama's, and all the ladies who play a special role to the kiddo's in thier lives. 💝 Happy Mother's Day to all of you! 💝
If you are pampering anyone this month, we'd love to see what you've picked out. 🫶
Happy Haulin! 🛍️
Nordstrom and Ulta:
Swatches & notes:
Spoiler
NARS Talc-Free Powder Blush
shades Obsession and Teased - picked up these 2 “more pigmented than Orgasm Edge” shades for $0 OOP with Nordy Notes, so I can give this blush reformulation a fairer chance. Haven’t used either on my cheeks yet since I just got ‘em, but will this weekend. As a big fan of NARS’s former powder blush formula, I’m worried about how this new version’s performance will compare.
I did do some comparison swatches tonight: these 2 new shades vs. 2 former-formula shades NARS didn’t carry over to the new line. I figured Tease might be close enough to Couer Battant to satisfy anyone who missed out on CB when it was still available. Obsession seemed closest to Liberté in the pan, but the swatch in person is definitely yellower than Liberté; still coral, just not as red toned as the old shade.
Lancôme Lash Idôle Tint Ultra Precise 3-in-1 Metallic Liquid Eyeshadow
shade 05 Sand Storm - curiosity demanded I try one of these. Thank goodness these liquid eyeshadows aren’t fragranced. 😅 This shade felt very lightweight on my hand and spread easily with the doe foot. My swatch photo includes a blurry closeup to show Sand Storm’s pink and gold pinpoint sparkles.
Olaplex No. 9 Bond Protector Frizz Reduction & Heat Protectant Hair Serum 3 oz / 90 mL
- the brand was on sale at Ulta, so I decided to try this product. I normally use No. 3 a couple times a month (I’ve tried other Olaplex products and No. 3’s the only one I’ve stuck with) but No. 9’s new to me. It’ll be interesting to try!
The Ordinary Retinal 0.2% Emulsion Serum 0.5 oz / 15 ml
- Ulta had a point multiplier for the brand, I needed to restock anyway, and the price is low enough that I don’t feel awful about breaking my “stop letting point multipliers trick you into paying out of pocket” goal for 2024. I don’t know yet if this retinal will replace my beloved Avène RetrinAL 0.1 Intensive Cream; I need to get through a full ounce of TO’s retinal before calling it, and these tubes are just a half ounce each. I do really like TO’s though. It’s a step-up in retinal strength for me (0.2% vs. 0.1%) but my skin’s handled the intro ramp-up so well, I’m already at nightly use.
@makeitup305 I wore Teased today and I have thoughts.
First, lemme cross-post my photo from the:
Summary: the new blush formula trades buildable color and very easy blending for full powered pigmentation. Still blendable, but not as easily as the old formula.
Longer feedback:
Spoiler
I used my favorite powder cheek brush (Chikuhodo Z-4, a grey squirrel small cheek brush) to apply Teased. With Coeur Battant (old-formula shade), I normally sweep my Z-4 a couple times across the pan and then do my usual stamp and buff application. But with Teased, I just lightly dipped the Z-4 once in the pan to get a very small bit of color on the brush—and I wound up having to buff more than usual on my cheek because holy pigmentation, Batman! If Rare Beauty’s liquid blush was a powder, it’d be this NARS reformulated powder blush.
Also, I don’t think Teased blended out with the Z-4 as easily as Coeur Battant does. I know Teased doesn’t look super bold in that photo up there. That’s because I buffed and buffed and BUFFED and buffed to blend it out. On my skin tone, the lighter shades like
NARS Talc-Free Powder Blush Orgasm Edge – 778
(I have the mini size) still need building up, unsurprisingly, so pigmentation power may vary across skin tones.
I won’t call Teased a bad performer. I’ve used far worse powder blushes that were barely (if at all) blendable and had other issues. And I didn’t need to use a powder foundation or anything else over Teased to tone it down or soften its edges. I mean, it does blend. Just not as easily as the old NARS formula. I’m no cosmetic chemist, but I’m 90% sure this is because the new formula’s missing talc.
Teased did last all day on my cheeks, so NARS’s blush is still long-wearing. 👍 And it doesn’t feel dry and chalky to me. I still don’t think it feels as silky as the old formula, but that could be personal bias; it’d be interesting to have someone help me do a blind swatch test where I can’t tell which pan/compact I’m feeling.
Oh, and I do appreciate that NARS has made these blush compacts refillable, so now I can just buy refill pans instead of full compacts.
The “clean” bandwagon: I’m sure folks are tired of hearing my usual rant about “clean beauty” and how it’s nothing but a fear mongering marketing scam (I’ve noticed Sephora’s trying to hook environmentalism and sustainability into their “clean” ranting; I wish they’d separate that out from “clean” since there’s actual scientific data for the environmental aspect). So I won’t repeat the whole thing. 😅 I don’t think NARS has marketed this blush reformulation as “clean” though… all marketing I’ve seen (or stopped to read) has focused on the formula being longer wearing and more pigmented than the old formula, plus vegan. (Vegan =/= “clean.”) I haven’t picked through all NARS’s marketing, but from what I’ve seen, I’m very happy they haven’t publicly slapped the “clean” label on this blush reformulation.
