Favorite Skincare of 2013

Skincare is a little baby of mine, and I've discovered so many incredible products this past year. This was incredibly hard list to make. However, I filtered through all my posts, and out of everything I've tried this year, these are the products that I would choose if someone told me I could only use one product from every category mentioned below ever again. So here goes.

Cleanser: Tata Harper Regenerating Cleanser

Cleanser was a very tough one for me this year.  I've tried so many good ones, (like the Eve Lom cleansing balm and the Fresh Soy Cleanser, which I absolutely love) but I feel that the Tata Harper Regenerating Cleanser is just the one that does it all in the end. I'll massage a couple pumps of this onto my dry face lightly to remove makeup (even more gently around the eyes) at night, rinse, then massage another couple pumps onto my wet skin as my second cleanse.  I'll just do another couple pumps in the morning on wet skin, but instead of rinsing, I'll leave this on for five minutes to dry as a mask while I brush my teeth. I'll then rinse off and have perfectly soft supple skin before applying makeup. This cleanser is such a multitasker since it's a makeup remover, exfoliator, and a mask. It also smells incredible, is good for the environment, and is gentle (I usually don't like physical exfoliants as I find that they scratch the skin, but this one has round particles that won't create microtears and spread bacteria). The salicylic acid also keeps blemishes at bay. Everyone I recommend this to absolutely loves it, and it's a cleanser I really miss when I don't have it. 

Toner: Mario Badescu Glycolic Toner diluted with La Roche Posay Serozinc and the Mario Badescu Rose Facial Spray with Aloe and Herbs

The Mario Badescu Glycolic Toner was actually something I was a bit on the fence on at first. When I first used it, I kind of found it drying and irritating. However, once mixed with my hydrating toners to dilute it (you can use anyone you like), it became the perfect exfoliating toner, gentle enough for me to use twice a day. It does keep the skin clear and it gets rid of all the dead stuff. 

Eye Cream: Natura Bisse Skin Ceuticals Eye Balm

This is hands down the best eye treatment I have ever used. It's more of gel, but it still keeps the eyes hydrated, never greasy, and I actually saw results with this, as it dimished all my fine lines, puffiness, and under eye circles. It's expensive, but a little goes a very long way. It's incredible, and I'll leave it at that. 

Serum: Mario Badescu Vitamin C serum

I used the Mario Bacesdcu Vitamin C serum all year, and I absolutely loved every drop of it. I found that it made the skin nice and clear, and it really helped with dark spots and hydration. It just works for all of my skin problems. 

Moisturizer: Tata Harper Rebuilding Moisturizer (day and night, but at night the Tata Harper Replenishing Nutrient Complex pressed over the top)

I think Tata Harper has just won my favorite skincare brand in general prize this year, as I love every single one of her products, but her moisturizers really come out on top. The Rebuilding Moisturizer is the best moisturizer I have ever used in my life. It has a matte finish, which as an oily skinned gal I greatly appreciate, but it still is so incredibly hydrating. I used it in the morning under sunscreen, and I used it at night with the Replenishing Nutrient Complex pressed over the top for an extra hydrating boost and, if I even had any with the Tata skincare regime, to sooth any blemishes or rough patches. This combo just leaves your skin absolutely glowing, and I can't recommend it more highly. 

Mask: Tata Harper Resurfacing Mask

Best mask ever, hands down. If there's one thing you need from this whole post, it's this mask. I've used the REN Glycolactic Radiance Renewal Mask, and I can tell you for sure that this mask is one hundred times better. You need the tiniest bit to cover your face, and by the time it takes you to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother, you will have a glowing complexion with diminished dark spots and reduced blemishes. It. Is. Amazing. Instead of AHAs, this mask uses enzymes and BHA to get rid of any dead skin and clean out blocked pores (AHA only gets the surface layer, not into the pore). It's not irritating at all (I know this because I have accidentally fallen asleep with it on and woken up with no problems, just amazing skin), it has a light plant-y smell from all the natural goodness in it, so the smell was never a problem for me, it's not drying because of its super powered hyaluronic acid that Tata gets specially from Egypt, and it's another one of those multitaskers. Not only do I use this as a mask, but I use it as a spot treatment to get rid of any blemish over 1-2 days and as a cleanser booster if I need to make a regular cleanser into an exfoliating one. My mom and dad are also obsessed with this (we have Tata Harper mask sessions as a family), and I got the lovely Jessica Beautician hooked on this, too. Try it and thank me later. 

Treatment: Mario Badescu Buffering Lotion

This is another hero product I discovered this year. The Mario Badescu Buffering Lotion is the only thing I've tried (aside from the Darphin Skin Mat Masque) that gets rid of those under the skin cystic blemishes. If you put this on a hard zit as soon as you notice it coming up, it will completely block it. If that blemish is already there, this will bring it to a pop-able whitehead. It can be a little drying, but after you've battled your blemish, you can stick the Replenishing Nutrient Complex from Tata Harper over the top, and all will be well again. 

Sunscreen: Shiseido Urban Environment SPF 43 tinted 

I love me a good and high SPF, but without a greasy white cast, that can be hard to find. However, I found that my favorite sunscreen this year was the Shiseido Urban Environment. This acted as a tinted moisturizer for me, as it does have that slight amount of coverage and hydration, but it wasn't at all greasy or streaky like other sunscreens with a similar SPF. 

So here you go, some of my top favorites not only of 2013, but of all time. Hope that was helpful!

I linked to posts where I go more into depth about the products. A lot of those have links to the products or info where to get them.  ;)

My Favorite Makeup of 2013

I'm quite minimalist when it comes to makeup. I truly believe that the better you take care of your skin, the less makeup you'll have to wear. I also will usually completely use a product before going out to buy another one, so that's why I don't have too many makeup bits to share with you guys. However, there have been things that I've tried this year that have truly stood out to me and became absolute staples in my everyday routine. If there's something in a certain category that I haven't mentioned, most likely it's not something I use on a regular basis or I haven't found anything particularly amazing. If I've done a full review, I'll try to link those throughout the post. 

Concealer: theBalm Time Balm Concealer

I usually go straight from my sunscreen to concealer (unless I have some kind of primer under it). I don't use a liquid foundation because I don't think I really need it, and I use a powder foundation on top anyway. This little pot of concealer (I shouldn't say little because it's a fair amount of product and a little of it goes a very long way) covers absolutely everything flawlessly. I think it works best blended and patted in with the fingers. It covers anything from blemishes to under-eye circles, lasts all day, and doesn't look cakey. You should, however, make sure the skin is properly moisturized first before putting it under the eyes and over any dry patches. This is incredible. I'm on my second one now, even though my first one wasn't completely used up due to an unfortunate accident involving a toilet seat that was left up. I think you can guess what happened next.

Powder: Trish McEvoy Even Skin Mineral SPF 15

This is easily the best powder I have ever used. It has really amazing coverage for a powder foundation, and it just completely evens out the skin without making it look cakey. It also absorbs oil like a dream and just looks like skin, and it doesn't settle into fine lines. Love love love.

Blush: Trish McEvoy Natural and Easy Going and Sonia Kashuk Melon
These are the only blushes I wore all year. Trish Natural has become my everyday go-to, and it really does just look like a natural glow from within. Easy Going is my truly easy going blush. I can pair it with absolutely everything from red to berry to pink to coral lips. It's perfection. Melon is an incredibly pigmented peachy pink blush. A little truly goes a long way. I also just love these kind of shades because I find that they look the most natural on me.

Eyeshadow: Maybelline Color Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze and the Wet 'n' Wild Comfort Zone palette

I bought these in the fall of 2012 and have been using mostly these shadows ever since. The Maybelline Color Tattoos are actually kind of hit and miss for me in consistency, but the shade Bad to the Bronze is a huge, huge hit. I'll slap this baby on at 6am and it will still look perfect when I remove my makeup at 11 pm. It's also just super fast to use, because once you have this on you don't need anything else in the crease, and you don't even need liner because it's just that multidimensional. I've used up most of my little pot, and it's still not even dried out. The Comfort Zone palette from Wet n Wild is another thing I've used constantly is year. I just find it has everything I could need for an eye look, and I absolutely love every single color, even the greens. The pigmentation and blendability of these shadows are also spot on, and they last a good while on the lids, even without primer. It's also under 5 bucks. Bam.

Liner: Trish McEvoy Finish Line

I've done a full review on this, so I'll spare you a long rant about how much I love this magical potion that will turn anything into eyeliner.

Mascara: Trish McEvoy High Volume and Lash Curling

Again, I've raved about these mascaras so much I don't know if I need to go in depth, but I just love the look these give me, all with the most incredible formula.

Brushes: Trish McEvoy

I've just been completely wowed by Trish McEvoy as a whole this year, but her brushes are particularly amazing. Trish actually got her makeup line started with her brushes. She would cut her brushes herself, and then all of her other makeup artist friends started asking for them, and voila! You have the whole shebang. I've been using her brushes constantly this past year, and after touching my face with these babies, nothing else compares. The powder brush is a favorite of mine, as I find it packs on powder in two seconds with full coverage. It's super soft, too. The bronzer brush is also amazing. The shape is perfect for contouring around the cheekbones, jaw, and forehead, and it just blends everything to perfection. My only gripe with the two brushes mentioned above is that they are expensive and have a slight tendency to shed hairs and glue, but really the fact that they just do all the work for you is worth it. The rest of the brushes I use from Trish don't have a shedding problem! however. One of my favorite brushes to use ever is the 48 blending. It's the best brush I have ever used for blush. It picks up the perfect amount of product, and since it's small it puts it in all the right places and just blends your blush out for you perfectly. I love it so much I could write a poem about it. I also love the Trish medium lay down for my shadow, because again, it just picks up the right amount of product. The crease brush is also a loved one because it fits perfectly into my little crease and blends everything out into perfection. The precision smudge is also perfect for under the eye or to smoke out any dark liner on the upper lash line, and the angled liner brush is the best one I have ever used to get that perfect cat flick, as the bristles are stiff, but still flexible. Another star brush is the eyebrow brush. It is the most amazing brush ever for putting powder shadow into the brows and blending it to natural perfection. Perfect brows? Yes, please.

Bags: Trish McEvoy Makeup Planner

I know this is a makeup post, but I can't do a yearly favorites without mentioning this perfect bag that I've been using all year. Another star product from Trish McEvoy that has made her line so unique from the rest is the Trish planner. This is Franklin Covey for your makeup right here. I've depotted basically all my eyeshadows to fit into the magnetic pages (like mirrored z-palettes that you can put in a binder), and all my Trish products fit cozily in there, since her makeup is made for the pages. This saves a ton of packaging, by the way, for those of you who love to be environmentally friendly or just chic and sleek. The binder also has slots for brushes and tubed products and a handy pull-out mesh makeup bag that I use all the time for flights. I freaking love this makeup bag and don't know how I lived without it for so long. You need this!!!

If you want to see a lot of this stuff in action, you can watch these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-fQULFfoBI

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed raving about the products I've been using all year, and I'll see you soon for skincare, body, hair, and fragrance! Because better late than never.... :)

Top 5 Favorite Winter Polishes

I should've probably gotten this up around holiday season, because these are some pretty festive looking nail paints, but I didn't because family, study abroad, dogs, Netflix, etc. But they're here now and still wintery!

One of the only nail polishes from Essie that I actually like, if not the only one (because it applies somewhat nicely and doesn't chip after two seconds), Wicked is a very very dark red wine color that I think is perfect for this time of year when it starts to get dark at five o'clock. It fits into many seasons, mostly fall and winter, although I do use it as my night out polish pretty much any time. It also looks great layered under gold glitter.

Chanel's Peridot is one of my all time favorite polishes for anytime, but I do especially love it around this time of year. It's a gold to green duochrome, and every time I wear it I get bunches of comments and compliments, even from guys. Yes, I know you can't get it now, but there are tons of dupes. One I like even better actually is Deborah Lippmann's Swagga Like Us. I like Swagga Like Us better than Peridot for three reasons: 1) It applies way better and lasts way longer, 2) the duochrome in Swagga is more drastic and has more dimension, and the gold is more deep and coppery 3) It's cheaper and available. Can't forget available.

I like this gold polish from Urban Outfitters. I don't know if you can find it there anymore, but the idea is there. I just like gold polish for winter. This one is opaque in one coat and has a silvery undertone. It chips kind of fast though.

Butter London's Jack the Lad is one of my all time favorite polishes. It just has so much dimension, and like all the Butter polishes, the formula is to die for. I've raved about this enough though, so I'll stop that here.

Another favorite polish of mine, Butter London's Scuppered is just perfect for winter (and Fall for that matter). It's the most beautiful copper with different color glitters that give it its multi-dimensional look. Love.

What are you winter polish recommendations?

Review: Bourjois Volume Clubbing Ultra Black Mascara

What's cool about high end makeup is that for the most part, there is always a dupe. Certain luxury brands are owned by larger companies, and they share factories and everything. This means that lots of products end up being the same between brands. For example, YSL, Armani, Maybelline, etc are owned by L'Oréal. This is great, because say you love a lip gloss from YSL but it's really expensive. You'll probably be able to find that same lip gloss at the drugstore but under the L'Oréal Paris brand. 

This is also true for Boujois and Chanel. Bourjois owns Chanel, so some times the products are the same, just cheaper if you get them from Bourjois.

Knowing this, when I was in Spain and in need of a mascara, I looked for one from Bourjois, because chances were that their mascaras were Chanel quality without the price (although ALL mascara is expensive in Europe, don't know why). Bourjois Volume Clubbing Ultra Black Mascara was 15 euro, but still cheaper than a high end mascara in Europe. 

What attracted me to the mascara were the claims about how long lasting it is. It was supposedly tested by clubbers to make sure it could last a whole night of sweat and steam. It's also supposed to be very volumizing and black. 

First thing I noticed when I applied it was that it was wet, although on the drier end of the wet mascara spectrum, if that makes sense. I'm not the biggest wet mascara person, because I just find them quite hard to work with, and with the exception of the Trish McEvoy mascaras, they don't build up as well as drier formula mascaras. This formula actually really reminded me of the Lancôme Hypnose Drama mascara.

The brush is also super big and kind of difficult to work with. I prefer normal to smaller brushes so that I can get into every lash and get my lower lashes fuss-free. Also like the Lancôme Hypnose Drama, the brush isn't uniform all the way around (although this isn't squiggly like the Lancôme). Two sides of the brush have a reservoir on it to get a bunch of product on the brush (a lot of volumizing mascaras have this), and the other two have the fiber bristles (not enough of them in my opinion). This resulted in a pretty unseparated, borderline clumpy, first application due to all the product on the brush. That did get better once the mascara started to dry out though, and after a while it wasn't clumpy anymore. Another thing that bothered me about the mascara was that when you pulled it out of the tube, there was a ton of product left on the tip of the brush. This got messy at times. In general, I don't feel like the mascara brush really gripped my lashes, either.

Ignore my brows, please. This photo doesn't look all that bad, but keep in mind that this was taken after I used the mascara for the last time before throwing away the tube. It did get some good volume, but I've used better, cheaper mascaras that do the same thing (Covergirl Lashblast Fusion, Maybelline Full n Soft, etc). The tube of mascara itself really didn't last me a long time at all. I can use the Trish McEvoy mascara, or other drugstore mascaras for that matter, for three or four months before they're dried out/used up and ready to toss. This lasted me only about two months, if not less. 

The real problems, however, lie in the wearing power, which is unfortunate for something that claims to be so long lasting that all the club-goers choose it. I found that at the end of the day it would smudge under the eyes, no matter how much I powdered there, and it would also flake off. Not cool. It also isn't the blackest mascara I've ever used (the Trish McEvoy ones are). It was also a real pain in the ass to remove, resulting in lost lashes. Thanks. 

All in all, if this could possibly reflect Chanel mascara quality, you're better off giving those a pass, too. This stuff just wasn't for me, and it was way too expensive for a drugstore brand.

If you're going to splash out on a mascara, try the Trish McEvoy tubular ones.

Donating to Locks of Love

If there's one thing I really never get around to doing it's getting a haircut. I probably can go more than a year without cutting my hair (yes, I know you shouldn't do that). My hair tends to get really long at times (down to my butt) before I just chop it all off at once, and towards the end, I end up not cutting it on purpose so I can give it to Locks of Love:

"Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. We meet a unique need for children by using donated hair to create the highest quality hair prosthetics. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love have lost their hair due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. The prostheses we provide help to restore their self-esteem and their confidence, enabling them to face the world and their peers.

Mission Statement

Our mission is to return a sense of self, confidence and normalcy to children suffering from hair loss by utilizing donated ponytails to provide the highest quality hair prosthetics to financially disadvantaged children. The children receive hair prostheses free of charge or on a sliding scale, based on financial need."

This is my second donation to Locks of Love, my first time being when I was in eighth grade. I just think it's a great organization.

It's really easy to donate. I just walked into Great Clips ($10 hair cut, holla!) had the hair dresser braid my hair, measure the braid with a ruler (I donated 11.5 inches this time, but the minimum is 10), and chop. Then I put it in a ziplock bag and mailed it in. Now, if you've gone a really long time between cuts like I did, you'll have to get a little trim to get the dead ends off first. Locks of Love can't use hair that's too damaged (including colored/bleached hair, etc).

Here are their specific instructions for donation and their address:

• 10 inches measured tip to tip is the minimum length needed for a hairpiece.
• Hair must be in a ponytail or braid before it is cut.
• Hair must be clean and completely dry before it is mailed in.
• Place the ponytail or braid inside of a plastic bag, and then inside of a padded envelope.
• If you wish to receive an acknowledgment for your hair donation, please fill out the hair donation form, or write your name and e-mail address or mailing address on a full size separate sheet of paper and include inside the envelope. We cannot acknowledge donors who do not send their name and address according to these instructions.
• All hair donations must be mailed to Locks of Love at: 
  
  
  234 Southern Blvd.
  West Palm Beach, FL 33405-2701
• **IMPORTANT** When mailing your donation, please make sure that you are sending it with adequate postage. The U.S. Postal Service has notified Locks of Love that many donations are being sent without enough postage, and these packages will be returned to sender! To ensure adequate postage, please take your donation to your local post office.
• For more info: http://www.locksoflove.org/donate.html

If your hair is at your butt like mine was and you haven't heard of Locks of Love, I really hope you think about them next time you get a haircut!