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Alina Avery

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Play! By Sephora Unboxing – January 2016

January 22, 2016 by Alina Avery Leave a Comment

The theme for this month’s Play! box is: No Appointment Necessary. The idea is that with these products, you can achieve “salon” results at home. I actually love trips to the salon. A little time to myself to get pampered, relax, and leave looking and feeling my best is always welcome, but at the same time, my schedule and budget doesn’t always allow for frequent facials or blowouts, so an at-home, DIY option is a great alternative.

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Inside this box:

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Sephora eye mask in green tea – This is the “Relaxing & refreshing” scent. Sheet masks aren’t really my thing. I’ve tried a few and I find them uncomfortable to wear, hard to apply, and not all that effective, but I’m willing to give these eye patches a go. They’re smaller and it seems like they’d fit a wider variation of face shapes.

Living proof prime style extender spray – I’ve tried the extender gel/serum and didn’t really see that it made much of a difference, but I generally prefer sprays like this over creams or gels as they’re easier to distribute through hair evenly. Lately my hair washing and styling schedule has been a little off kilter since I’ve been exercising so much. I’m interested to see if this (combined with a generous amount of dry shampoo) can get me through a workout (or two, don’t judge) without needing to shampoo. I usually throw my hair up into a high workout ponytail, so hopefully this can help prevent that dreaded ridge hairties leave.

dr. brandt needles no more – There are dr. brandt products I love and some that I find just ok. My skin has been in tip top shape lately, due to a number of factors, but one of the products I’ve been LOVING is the ruby crystal retinol hydracrème. I’m hoping that I feel similarly about this product. I don’t really have many wrinkles, but I’ve noticed a few around my eyes. If this works, it’s definitely a game changer.

Clinique chubby stick sculpting highlight – “Strobing” is still a major trend. I like the idea of a stick highlighter, since it can just be thrown into a makeup bag for touchups on the go, and the formula here is great. It blends nicely and the finish is smooth and satiny, but the “illumination” is a little too subtle for my tastes. I like a bold highlight! This might work well to layer under a powder highlight for a dramatic effect. I’m also not 100% sold on the color. It pulls pretty cool on my skin, like a silvery pearl, where I tend to prefer more golden, warm highlight shades.

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Dr. Dennis Gross alpha beta peel – I already own, use, and LOVE this product. It’s price-y, but so worth it. It makes my skin super smooth and glowing and it’s a fast and easy treatment. I generally go for the extra strength version and this one is the original formula (there’s also a new gentle formula out!) so I’m wondering if this might be a little more gentle for every day. I typically use the extra strength ones less often since they’re pretty aggressive and I don’t want to over-exfoliate and they’re so expensive!

Finally – Tocca Isabel fragrance – I love the Tocca Stella scent so I’m open to trying other fragrances from the brand. This one is described as “classic floral” with Spanish rose, bergamot and Mediterranean orange. It smells mature and fresh to me. I wish it had a spray nozzle, but I’ll give this one a go as well.

This box was heavy on the skin care, but I don’t mind as I’m definitely trying to be good to my skin this year. I also like that there are newer and higher end products included which is fun to see.

All in all a pretty good box. I’ll use most of the products included, and they’re either new to me or products I already love, so thumbs up all around!

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Posted in: Beauty, Fragrance, Makeup, Skincare Tagged: beauty box, play!, sephora, Sephora Play!, unboxing

Sephora Play! November 2015

November 23, 2015 by Alina Avery Leave a Comment

It’s that time again! My Sephora Play! November box has arrived!

The Sephora Play! boxes have been steadily improving, at least in my opinion. Here’s a look at November’s box.

 

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This month’s theme is “The Exclusives”, meaning products that are exclusive to Sephora.

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At first glance, some really great things in here!

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Bite Beauty products are some of my favorites. This is their High Pigment Lip Pencil in Rhubarb, which is an intense dark pink, described as “plum rose”. I’ve tried the High Pigment Lip Pencils before (I think the shade Pomegranate was a the Sephora Birthday perk one year?) and find them to be easy to apply and creamy, but prone to feathering and a bit drying over time. This is a pretty shade though and the finish is inbetween matte and glossy.

I recently purchased a full size of the Make Up Forever Step 1 Primers in mattifying (and LOVE it) so I’m happy to see the hydrating version in the box. “Multi-masking”, or using different masks on different areas of the face to treat different concerns, has been popular lately, so maybe I’ll take a stab at “multi-priming” and use this sample under my eyes and on my cheeks where skin tends to be dry and the matte version on my nose and chin where I get oily.

I don’t think I’ll ever use this next sample, but who knows. It’s the Sephora Collection Contour Eye Pencil  in My Boyfriend’s Jeans. Bright blue pencil eyeliner isn’t really my thing, but maybe I’ll branch out and try it. Maybe I won’t. Regardless, this pencil was smooth and pigmented in a metallic royal blue color.

The Josie Maran Argan Oil is reaching cult status among beauty mavens. It’s a really hydrating oil that can be used on skin, face, nails, feet or hair (so basically anywhere). I haven’t tried it before, but it’s supposed to be balancing and hydrating, and I’ve been looking for a cuticule oil that I can use at work without leaving my keyboard a slippery wreck, so maybe this is it. The dropper bottle is pretty convenient as well.

I love these Buxom Full-On Lip Products, and like I said, they tend to pop up in gifts with purchase, point perks, and sample boxes, so I’ve grown a pretty solid collection of this size. Not that I’m complaining. This shade is Dolly, which is a medium pink, like my lips but better. The same semigloss finish and the same cool minty plumping action. Love this.

And finally, a fragrance sample. Stella by Stella McCartney doesn’t smell very unique to me. I couldn’t pick it out of a lineup and I tend to like fragrances that are unique and distinct. It smells nice though, so I’ll probably give it a wear or two to see if it grows on me.

 

Everything out of the packaging:

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And swatches of the color products:

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These boxes hav been steadily improving. I’ll definitely use at least four of these products, and only one that’s a definite dud. I’m excited to see what they bring out for holiday in December!

 

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Posted in: Beauty, Fragrance, Lips, Makeup, Skincare Tagged: sample box, samples, sephora, Sephora Play!, unboxing

Friday Five

November 13, 2015 by Alina Avery Leave a Comment

For today’s Friday Five: Five products I keep in my purse (well, today).

I’m known for hoarding makeup in my purse and carrying it around with me everywhere. Which is crazy because 1. I never really use it, and 2. it makes my bag super heavy.

The other day I had a handbag clear out and stripped down to just the on-the-go essentials. Here’s what I kept:

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  1. First: a rollerball of Balenciaga’s Rosabotanica. I love this scent. It’s so unique and complex and sexy. I keep the rollerball for fragrance emergencies (it’s a real thing I promise) or just when I need a pick me up.
  2. Next up, the concealer I have been loving lately, bareMinerals BareSkin Complete Coverage Serum Concealer in Medium. This is really lightweight, like a blend between the Urban Decay Naked concealer and the NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer. The shade is a perfect match for my skin, meaning I can use it on blemishes or dark circles and redness, so it’s a no-brainer to carry with me for touch ups. I’ve also been wearing the BareSkin serum foundation and loving it, so more on that later!
  3. I LOVE the Buxom Full-On Lip products, both the Lip Polishes and the Lip Creams. This one is a Lip Polish in Erin in a deluxe sample size that I recently claimed in a 500 point perk from Sephora. I pick up samples of these whenever I see them and have yet to find a shade I don’t like. They feel a bit cool and tingly but don’t burn at all, and plump gently leaving lips hydrated and radiant but not glossy or sticky. I’m a big fan. This one is also easy to put on over lipstick but looks great on its own, which is why it made the cut.
  4. (and 5.) Finally, two products from my October Birchbox. The leaky hair serum: Number 4’s Fluoro5 Elixer Restore & Repair Oil and the Too Cool For School Dinoplatz Highlighter. The serum is perfect for working into the ends of hair to tame them, especially during the dry staticky winter weather. And the liquid highlighter is super easy to apply on the go since you don’t need a brush (or even a mirror, really). They’re the perfect size for carrying around and exactly what you need to brighten up and polish your hair and makeup on the go.

What products do you keep in your purse?

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Posted in: Beauty, Fragrance, Fun, Hair, Lifestyle, Lips, Makeup Tagged: makeup, Purse, travel

Travel Beauty Essentials

October 1, 2015 by Alina Avery 5 Comments

As I mentioned on Monday, I’m in San Diego this week. Which means a few long flights and a week in a hotel. Of course, I brought my usual makeup, most of which will be in my September Favorites soon, but there are other specific bits I make sure I have to make traveling a little easier.

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Ok, let’s get this out of the way. The R+Co Dry Shampoo Paste. Seriously, Alina, enough. We get it. But honestly, this is the only hair styling product I brought. It’s great for wet hair, dry hair, clean hair, dirty hair… AND it’s not a liquid, gel, or aerosol so perfect for taking in your carry-on luggage.

A similarly TSA friendly product: Lush Solid Shampoo. This one is scented like Rose Jam, which is one of my favorite scents from Lush. If you’re not familiar with solid shampoos, they’re the most convenient little discs. You just rub the bar against wet hair and scalp to produce a lather. Work with it a bit and rinse as usual. So much more lovely than the usual hotel shampoos and doesn’t require any space in your quart sized clear plastic bag.

Staying in the hair realm, my Harry Josh blowdryer. Yes it’s a splurge, but I picked it up for 50% off during a Black Friday sale (which is still way more than one person should ever pay for a blow dryer) and I’m obsessed with it. It’s almost identical to my previous dryer, the Sedu Revolution 4000i, but it’s in an adorable mint green color. No, the color doesn’t justify the higher price tag, but both dryers are high-powered, lightweight, and compact. The Harry Josh is also a celebrity cult favorite. Have you ever tried to dry your hair with a hotel bathroom blow dryer? Are you still trying? It takes about a decade and the results are… well your hair gets dry. Bring your own.

Tangentially related to hair, if your trip is any longer than 3 days, pack some tweezers and a razor. I think you should have tweezers at all times: you never know when they’ll come in handy, and stray eyebrow hairs tend to pop up overnight. I’ve had these for years and they’re still sharp (and I haven’t managed to lose them!) I also try to remember to pack a disposable razor so I can throw it away at the end of the trip and not worry about bringing it home.

A rollerball perfume is a much more compact and travel-friendly way to carry your favorite scent. You can bring one for daytime and one for evening, but I just took Balenciaga Rosabotanica for both. This is one of my favorite scents, since it’s unique and sophisticated, and not sugary sweet, which I used to love but now gives me a headache.

Traveling, especially on airplanes, makes my skin really dull and dry. I always want to give it a good exfoliating when I get to the hotel, but carrying a big ol’ tub of face scrub isn’t ideal. So I reach for these Dr. Dennis Gross Alpha Beta Peels. They are my favorite exfoliant day-to-day and are even better for travel. You can bring exactly how many you need and they take up very little space and aren’t at all likely to leak all over your clothes.

Finally, now is the time to break out the packettes. Single use foils of both your favorite products and new ones to try are ideal for traveling. Sometimes a single use sample isn’t enough to get a good idea about whether or not the product will work for you, but it’s perfect to throw in your carry-on if you know you’re going to want to do a face mask, moisturize your legs, or deep condition your hair, and you don’t want to bring a whole tube/jar/whatever.  Just be careful if you have sensitive skin since a new product can cause a bad reaction and ruin your trip. Always do a test patch!

 

What are your travel beauty essentials?

 

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Posted in: Beauty, Fragrance, Hair, Skincare Tagged: beauty, travel

Sephora Play! Unboxing – September 2015

September 26, 2015 by Alina Avery 1 Comment

As you’d expect from a beauty sample hoarder and Sephora fangirl, I signed up for the Play! box as soon as it was available.

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Let’s take a look at what’s inside:

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My overall impression: This is a bigger box than you’d expect from Birchbox or Ipsy, with deluxe samples, good variety of color, skin, and hair care, and well-known brands. It’s also a great value for $10. So the first impact is a good one, but looking closer….

Ok so here’s a big Sephora secret: Kendo Brands. Have you heard of this? From their website:

KENDO IS AN INNOVATIVE BRAND INCUBATOR. Launched in 2008, KENDO began as a division of the SEPHORA merchandising department to create products and brands that SEPHORA knew their clients wanted, but which didn’t yet exist in the market.

So basically, Kendo was created to add more brands and products to Sephora’s catalog that Sephora had control over but weren’t Sephora Collection. It includes Bite Beauty, Elizabeth and James, Ole Henrikson, Marc Jacobs Beauty, FormulaX, and Kat Von D. All of these brands, like Sephora itself, are owned by LVMH. Meaning that Sephora, or it’s owners and controllers, have direct access to their manufacturing pipelines and control over what’s produced. And they also make a better margin off of the sale of full-size products since they manufacture them in-house and aren’t paying a wholesale price. Of the 6 products in this box, 4 of them are from Sephora owned brands. (The other two, Glam Glow and Bumble and bumble, are owned by Estée Lauder Companies.) Let’s be clear, there are products from Kendo Brands that I DO really like and purchase and use, I just think that in the effort of full disclosure, it should be known that they are basically Sephora subsidiaries.

It makes sense that Sephora would include products in their box where they’d be able to ensure the proper supply of samples, but it’s kind of disheartening to know that 2/3 of the products in the Sephora box are essentially Sephora products. That said though, the products were created specifically to fill a gap in the market (even if it is so that Sephora could sell more), so they’re typically unique and interesting.

Ok so on to the products:

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Elizabeth and James Nirvana White. It’s okay. A lot of people complain about getting fragrance samples in Birchboxes (source: used to work at Birchbox, also uses the internet) but I actually like it when it’s an interesting, new, unique scent that I wouldn’t pick up on my own. This one is none of those. It’s kind of basic and boring and I feel like Sephora promotes it a lot, but I don’t know anyone who actually wears it. Meh.

Marc Jacobs Highliner in Blacquer. Snore. If you have shopped at Sephora for any length of time, you probably already have this exact sample three or four times over in various shades. I know I have black and brown and I think also blue. People who bought this box probably already have tried this, already know if they like it or not, and if so, have already purchased the full size.

Sephora Rouge Infusion in Peony. Ok this one I’m actually kind of excited about. The color looks like a great neutral pink that would suit a lot of skin tones, and I hear a lot of good things about Sephora Collection lip products but never actually try them because they aren’t that good of a value and I always manage to find something more exciting to buy. I’ll let you know how I feel about this when I try it.

Ole Henriksen Sheer Transformation Face Cream. I feel like there are more interesting products from this line I’d want to try, but since they’re sending the same box to everyone (I assume) and everyone has such different skin, they had to pick something that would work universally. The same goes for:

GlamGlow Supercleanse. GlamGlow is REALLY well known for their pricey but effective mud masks. This is not one of those. It seems like an interesting cleanser, but it has fragrance and alcohol in it so it could be irritating for some people. I also prefer cleansers that will remove makeup and it doesn’t look like this mud-to-foam formula will take care of that very well. It also looks messy.

And finally, Bumble and bumble Hairdresser’s Invisible Oil Primer. Another meh. There are a lot of really fantastic Bumble and bumble products but this one doesn’t really impress me. I just don’t think that a hair primer is a necessary step and don’t really see the benefit here. Again, it’s got to work generically for any type of hair, so there’s a constraint on what they can include, but I’m not super jazzed about it.

The whole unboxing experience is pretty good, though. The Play! book has full pages dedicated to each product with augmented reality cues, meaning you can scan the image of the product with your phone using the Sephora app and get direct links to shop and read reviews (if you, a seasoned Sephora shopper, didn’t know all about these – super boring and over-marketed – products already). It takes just slightly longer than typing in the name of the product but it’s a cool idea. The box also comes with a Play! card which lets you get 50 bonus points with an in-store visit. (50 bonus points can be redeemed for 1/2 a deluxe sample at Sephora…)

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So all in all, I’m kind of disappointed. Hopefully, the next box will have more variety, more exciting products, maybe they’ll let me tailor it to my preferences. I guess we’ll see!

Did you sign up for the Sephora Play! box? What did you think?

Also do you want to know more about beauty brands, how they are all related and who owns what? I could do a pretty interesting post on how the entire beauty industry is really just a handful of players.

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Posted in: Beauty, Cleanser, Fragrance, Hair, Lips, Makeup, Skincare Tagged: play!, sephora, unboxing

September Birchbox 2015

September 11, 2015 by Alina Avery Leave a Comment

I used to work at Birchbox. Which was really cool but also it kind of ruined the experience of getting a Birchbox. I knew way ahead of time what the product assortment was for the month and even what was going to be in my box. The delight was still there, but the surprise was lacking.

Since I left back in May it’s been a lot more exciting to get a monthly box. If you don’t know, Birchbox is a beauty ecommerce website that also has a subscription sample service where you can get 5 deluxe samples sent to you in a pretty box every month. You can review those samples for points and redeem those points towards full size products. I recently did a fairly large order with my points, so a Birchbox haul coming soon!

Want to see what was in this month’s box?

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The box theme is “Better Together” and celebrates Birchbox’s 5 year anniversary and of course the subscribers that made that possible. This isn’t my favorite of the themed boxes from this year, but I do love that all of the boxes have been designed instead of the old kraft brown (are those collectors editions now?)

On to the samples!

 

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POP Beauty POP Portfolio Eyeshadow – Sugar Plum. Full size $26.

I’m happy about this. The shades aren’t too outrageous and I’ve actually gotten a POP eyeshadow trio in my Birchbox before but it was shattered when it arrived, so I’m looking forward to actually getting to try out the formulas. The full size has 36 shades, so it’s a great value.

amika Bombsell Blowout Spray. Full size $24.

I’m all about the round brush blowout right now. I’m finally getting into teaching myself how to do it and the results aren’t half bad! Looking forward to trying out this spray. I’ve received the amika Dry Shampoo in a previous box and love the way it smells and it works amazingly well, so high hopes for this!

dr. brandt pores no more cleaner. Full size $35.

Meh. I’ve tried this cleanser before, but not through Birchbox. I find it a bit too harsh for my skin. It’s a good size and value though so I can’t say I’m unhappy.

100% Pure Organic Coffee Bean Caffeine Eye Cream. Full size $25.

Caffeine is supposed to have some benefits for your skin. I’m not sure how effective it is when applied topically, though. I’m interested in this being natural and the sample is a good size too.

Harvey Prince Eau So Divine. Full size $26-55.

As far as fragrance samples go, this one is a larger size and has a spray nozzle so that’s a plus. The scent is very feminine and a bit summery, so not sure how much I’ll wear it now that the weather is cooling down. I don’t think I’d shell out for the full size but the sample is nice!

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What do you think of my box?

 

 

 

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Posted in: Beauty, Cleanser, Eye cream, Eyeshadow, Fragrance, Hair, Makeup, Skincare Tagged: Birchbox, cleanser, makeup, perfume
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