Maša M blog
Neomejen svet lepote.

My First (AND PROBABLY LAST) Dasbox for November 2014

 

For all of you beauties out there who have never heard of it, Dashbox is a Slovenian beauty box that promises to “deliver 5 luxury cosmetic products at your doorstep each month” for the price of 10 € per box and additional 2 or 3 € for shipping. I believe that you get some discount if you order for several months in advance and you also gather some Dashbox points that you can use in the online store. Get more info here http://www.dashbox.si/ – or not, whatever.

Anyhow, the moment I opened it I was again like – what is this? And where are my 5 luxury cosmetics products? This is what I found inside.

So let’s do a little recap, shall we? On the far bottom left, we have two 2ml Delarom whitening serum samples. Now this product OK and it really made a difference on my face in the 2 days I used it, but the full size is 54 € and I’m not really sure that it’s worth the money after just two uses. Pass.

Above it, we have a little L’Erbolario sample pack. There is no price value on this, but of course it is sold on the Dashbox online store. I have not yet used these nor am I very interested. Pass.

Right, we have the Greenland Fruit emotions 30 ml hand cream of apparent value of 5 €. Sure, it’s an OK hand cream deluxe sample, but it’s nothing special. And I would never pay that much for a hand cream. Pass.

Then we have the Pièce de résistance of this box, a set of imPRESS nails which is a set of 24 clip-on nails. Now I like the idea since this is something that many of us would like to try and really would not go out and buy, but come on, what is with the color? The last time I wore this kind of pink was in high school and I don’t intend to ever wear it again. Since these nails also come in many other great colors, my wild guess would be that they just bought the color that was not selling in bulk for pennies. I am thinking of doing a first impression with these – is it something you’d be interested in?

Last, we have two little samples of Philip Martin’s organic face cream, again with no value written on them, so basically it’s zero value. It’s an OK cream, but again I would not purchase a premium product (full size is 38 €) based on two uses. Pass.

So let’s get it straight. When you promise me 5 products, I am expecting products. I got one product, one deluxe sample and 7 samplers (3x L’Erbolario, 2x Delarom, 2x Philip Martins) that I could get in any drugstore with my product. I have so many of such products I don’t know where to start using them and I always demand to get at least 7 mini samples for the deluxe products to even start considering spending my money on it. I got 3 mini hand creams last week in L’Occitane just with a purchase of a regular body wash. Amirite or amirite, ladies? What did you think about the Dasbox, if you got it?

This box was a bust. Dasbox thanks, but no thanks. Get better or go fool someone else. The fact that I forgot to even take the box home with me for more than 3 weeks speaks volumes about how excited I was about the products.

Until next time, stay beautiful, stay awesome.

I Heart Makeup – I Heart passion palette review

I received this I Heart Makeup – I Heart passion palette a while ago from Licila.si but I was sort of saving it for when I had more time and more opportunities to create a bolder look. Some photos were taken a while back, so I must say that the palette doesn’t look as nice anymore, but considering the pigmentation and the number of different shadows I could probably use this for years to come, if it doesn’t go bad on me.

The packaging is gorgeous – I have no other word for it despite the fact that I hate this particular description for just about anything. It’s a shiny black palette with a single pink heart on top. BTW, the photo is from the internet, since it’s impossible to shoot a good one without reflections.

From the inside, the palette is absolutely fabulous and offers so many different options. The shades are very different from one another, but I am sad to report that as much as this variation is true for the colors, it is also true for the pigmentation. There are a couple of shadows in here that could as well be missing and as far as I am concerned, I wouldn’t shed a single tear about it. On the other hand, we have quite a few colors that are crazy pigmented and quite unique: Dangerous Liaisons looks like something one could perhaps find a Naked 3 palette, and I also love the We are going home, Never Never and Catch your eye. By the way, I also like the names quite a lot, although many of them imply an unhappy romance.

Anyway, this palette consists of 2 highlight shadows, 5 matte shadows and a whole bunch of shimmers, 10 to be exact. Here are the swatches, first the upper row.

The first few colors are really nice and most are of reasonable pigmentation. Love is the drug is obviously a highlighter and I love the fact that it is bigger than the other shadows (as is also true for Easier Affair below) since we probably all use those highlighting shades up a bit faster than the others. The only shadow I am not too impressed about is the Rumba Down – it’s a must-have shadow for many of us, but it is not pigmented at all – this swatch took about 5 swipes up and down. I appreciate the matte black shadow though -this one is missing from many palettes I own. View Post

Products I regret buying – 2014 recap

 

Let’s start with face products.

The L’Oreal Mat Magique foundation I already talked about here. It is supposed to be a really mattifying foundation but it only lasted a couple of hours on my face before it started melting away and my face got oily again. I’ve tried it since with several different primers and fixing fluids, to no success.

All-around concealer by Catrice seemed like a good, inexpensive option for the days when I actually take the time to color correct my face before I apply foundation. I chose this particular palette because I thought that it would be a good learning tool, but I find that the product is really difficult to blend (with fingers, beauty blender or with brush) and cakes on my face where I apply it.

Bahama Mama was a big, big disappointment because I’ve heard so many bloggers go on and on about how it’s a great contouring bronzer. I somehow managed to make it work when I had some tan from summer (read about thathere) but now I just look like I’ve been rolling in the mud every time I attempt to use it. I am afraid that it is not meant for us fair-skinned folk, unless you are going for the Kardashian look on an everyday basis.

As far as eye shadows go, I made two rather unsuccessful purchases this year, but the one that really left me down was the Maybelline Nudes palette.

You can find the entire review over here, but if you don’t feel like reading it, let me just say that half of the shadows in the palette are so bland and have such low pigmentation that they are useless and the other half are nothing special, really. You can find better palettes at Essence, Barry M or BH Cosmetics for half the price. View Post

Best of 2014 – #1 Make-up

The end of the year is always the best time to look back at all the good and the bad that happened and the same goes for our beauty world. It’s taken me ages to go through everything and really gather my thoughts, but I’ve picked out the best of the best and I’m ready to share them with you. To stay organized, I’ve picked only one product from each general category (well, I cheated in a couple of them, but I really TRIED, so don’t hate me). Let’s start with make-up. And let me just say in advance that I’ve tried to keep it short, so the reviews are really minor. If you want to read more about these products, check out my monthly favorites and the reviews by categories I’ve done in the past months.

First up are the basic tools. I’ve accumulated a bunch of new brushes and applicators this year (obviously, since I did not own any before) and I must say that considering my inexperience in the field, I’ve done quite well.


A couple of my favorites are to be found on the picture above. We have the Real Techniques blush brush – an amazingly soft brush which is just large enough to hit the apples of my cheeks perfectly. I included two of my Ecotools blushes – the powder brush which I actually use for bronzing but is a great all-around brush, and the Ecotools large eye brush which I use for simple application all over the lid and is just big enough to make my job a lot quicker in the morning. I was considering including my Sigma e40 as a blending brush, but to be honest, this Essence blender does the job just as well – I just can’t seem to find them anywhere anymore. Let me know if you know where I could get my hands on some more of these!

For face products, I’ve picked some I’ve loved recently as well as those I could not live without during the summer months. I won’t go into a long rant about the face primer – I’ve talked about the Maybelline Baby Skin instant pore eraser so much already that if you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I absolutely adore it. For foundation, I’m going to go with the Rimmel Match Perfection which is not a heavy duty foundation but not exactly lightweight, either. It covers up most of the blemishes but does not look unnatural. View Post

Holiday nails

I had a great weekend which ended with a little manicure. I just received the nail art pen from Licila.si a couple of days ago and let’s just say that I just had to try it out right away 🙂

Anyway, I started with a base coat of Barry M 3-1 (basecoat, topcoat and nail hardener all in one) which has been my recent favorite. I do have a feeling that it makes my nails a bit stronger. I followed up with Zoya Noel, which is a real wintery color, as the name alone suggests.

I did two accent nails with the Beauty UK nail polish in 09 – Frozen kingdom. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with the formula, but after 2 quite massive coats (and after chipping it right away on the first try) it finally did the job. The color is just right, though.

Next, I really got a lot of use from the nail art pen, doing different patterns on both hands. I even managed a relatively nice snowflake on one of the nails while this little chocolate dude was controlling my work.

Regarding the Konad nail art pen, I must say that I am quite a fan. It comes with a dotter (which needs to be squeezed to produce more or less nail polish) and a thin pointed brush, which are both placed on each side. The brush is really, really fine and you’ll be able to do really nice patterns with this. My only complaint would be that the base (so the tube holding the actual nail polish) does not stand on its own when the brush is removed, so you either have to lean it against something or find another way to set it upright. It’s currently on sale on Licila.si.

So to recap, I only really used 5 different product counting the base coat and my long time favorite Essie Good to go top coat to finish the look.

Have a great pre-christmas week and, as always – until next time, stay beautiful, stay awesome!