Ulta Window Shopping!

Hi lovelies!!!

I went to Ulta the other day with a gift card that’s been burning a hole in my wallet for a few months now! As as per usual, I went a little crazypants with the swatches but for the first time that I can remember, I left with absolutely no new makeup purchases. Unheard of!

My head went spinning with all the new makeup possibilities….Should I buy a bunch drugstore products, or splurge on 1-2 higher end items?? Ooo I like this lipstick, no Alyssa you don’t need more lipstick. But I always need more lipstick. I think I have this shade already, wait do I? Ok I have this narrowed down to 15 different choices. Should I restock on my faves or try something new?? Would I ever wear turquoise eyeliner? You never know. Ok I have this narrowed down to 10 different choices…

In the end, my indecisiveness got the best of me and I left empty handed with my arm covered in a collage of swatches of different makeup that I liked, loved, or didn’t care for!

See the damage below 😉

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Here’s a list of the top 10 brands/products that caught my eye during my little trip to Ulta!
This a mix of new and old products/brands, makeup that was featured in the store, and anything else that caught my attention!

  1. Benefit Magically Transforming Brow Collection
    There were a couple of end caps and displays featuring these products. The packaging is very interesting….almost intimidating! Looked like a mix of badass weaponry and scary equipment you find at the dentists office. The product line includes brow gel, eyebrow conditioning powder, 2 types of eyebrow pencils, and eyebrow cream all ranging from $24-$28. This is said to make shaping and filling in your brows super easy and “goof proof”!
  2.  Lorac Pro Palette 3, $44
    I have the Lorac Pro Palette 1 and I love everything about it! The quality is fantastic, the shades are gorgeous, and the color payout is amazing. Hence, I’ve been anxiously wanting to try the new Lorac Pro Palettes, both the #2 and #3!
    The Lorac Pro Palette 3 comes with 16 different colors. A majority of them are neutral/nude shades. I was most intrigued about the shades in the bottom row of the palette, specifically Amethyst, Dark Mocha and Truffle.
    *Just an FYI that these palettes are also sold at Kohl’s!
  3. Urban Decay Vice
    This display is definitely an attention grabber. I dare you to walk by it without stopping and marveling at it’s beauty. It beckons you to want to try all of the different colors, even the ones that are out of your normal make up preferences! I’ve seen a lot of beauty bloggers swatch and rave about this product, and I can see why! The lipsticks are super pigmented and you can trust that the color you see in the tube, is exactly the shade you’re gonna get! Not to mention that there are sooo many shades to try:
    Vice Lipstick- 39 shades
    Comfort Matte- 21 shades
    Metallized- 13 shades
    Sheer- 16 shades
    Sheer Shimmer- 5 colors
    Mega Matte- 6 colors
  4. Too Faced Chocolate Collection
    This collection totally won me over because I’m a sucker for cute and creative packaging. So you can imagine how giddy I was over this collection. Look how adorable!! The eyeshadow palettes come with 16 shades (mix of matte and shimmer).
  5. Ulta Brand Eyehadow Palettes $19.99
    I’m not sure why I’ve never come across these palettes before! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I swatched these and let me tell you, I was definitely pleasantly surprised with the quality! When I swatched these shades on my arm, they were pigmented, shimmery, and easy to blend! There were 5 palettes available with different combinations of shades: Prismatic, Miss Fabulous, Metals, Rose Gold and Gilded Gold. 
  6. NYX Vivid Brights Electro Liner and Liquid Liner
    This line was featured on a main endcap display in the drug store section of the store. So many fun and bright colors! Makes me want to break out of my normal black eyeliner routine and try a look completely out of my comfort zone! The liquid liner comes in 9 different shades from green, to purple, to blue to brown! How fun!
  7. Soap and Glory Brand
    The last time I saw this brand, it was a lotion brand with adorable pink packaging and witty product names like Hand food and Orangeasm! I was incredibly intrigued and enticed to try this new makeup brand! The packaging is girly and adorable. I wasn’t able to find the cosmetics products on Ulta’s website but check out these products on Soap & Glory’s website! Their lipsticks, cheek sticks and powders are what caught my attention the most!
  8. Honest Beauty
    I was excited to try this makeup line because I previously associated the Honest Brand with their baby product line. Hats off to the beautiful Jessica Alba for expanding her brand! I did a quick swatch of some of the products and there were a couple hits and a couple misses! The lip crayons (comes in 12 different shades) were SUPER pigmented. The cream foundation was super hard to spread when I swatched it on my arm, which makes me think that spreading the foundation all over my face would be even more difficult. The eyeshadows were pigmented and the shades were pretty!
  9. Buxom Customizable Palettes
    I love the idea of being able to customize an eyeshadow palette. Especially when I typically only use a few different shades in the palettes I own now.  You can customize a palette with 6 different shades for $40! There are 40 different shades to choose from.
  10. Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance PaletteI’ve seen so many bloggers rave about this palette so this was one of the first products I sought out on my Ulta trip. I’ve been huge fan of deep burgundy eyeshadow shades lately and this palette is chalk full of so many that I want to try! The shades that I swatched and love the most were Venetian Red and Lover Letter. This palette will definitely be MINE on my next trip no ifs ands or buts about it. I need this in my collection!

     

Now I want to hear from you!

Have you tried any of these products/brands? What do you think??

What were your last purchases at Ulta? Share your hauls! 🙂

Do you want me to swatch/review any of the products above?

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Contour Kit Swatch Comparison! Drugstore vs Highend

Hello everyone! Happy 4th of July weekend!! 🙂

I am EXTREMELY excited about the swatch comparison that I’ll be sharing with you all today! Not only do I get to share with you an AMAZING drugstore product that I recently discovered, but I’m also doing a swatch comparison of this drug store product vs a high end luxury product!

Let me present to you these amazing Wet n Wild MegaGlo Contour Palettes that I found at Target for $4.99 each!!

Dulce de Leche (left) and Caramel Toffee (right)

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My overall thoughts on this product!

  • The formula feels super creamy and velvety to the touch which makes it easy to apply and blend
  • Impressive pigmentation and color pay out
  • The bigger sized pans make it easy to pick up the product with a brush
  • Buildable color
  • Overall an impressingly high quality product for $4.99!

Swatch breakdown of the 2 contour kits!

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Caramel Toffee (top picture), Dulce De Leche (bottom picture)

The color payout and pigmentation of both kits are very impressive! I recommend Caramel Toffee for tan/darker skintones like myself (I’m shade NC42 in Mac foundation) and Dulce De Leche will work beautifully for lighter skintones and complextions! 🙂

The highlight shade in Caramel Toffee is a yellow banana color and works great for setting my under eye concealer and blends well with the golden undertones of my complextion. The highlighting shade in Dulce de Leche is a light off-white shade which would work great as a setting powder for lighter skintones!

I was pleasantly surprised and impresssed with both of the contour shades in Caramel Toffee and Dulce de Leche. The shade in Caramel Toffee was pigmented enough to use as a contour shade on my tan skin! A lot of contour shades or bronzers are so similar to my natural skin tone that I can’t use them for contouring but this shade is absolutely perfect.

The contour shade in Dulce de Leche is nice lighter cool-toned tan shade. I could use this as a light bronzer on my skintone but this would work best as a contour on lighter skintones. These colors are buildable and easy to blend. I apply as many layers as I want depending on how intense I want to contour that day.

Overall, Caramel Toffee worked the best with my skintone! I LOVE the shades that come in this palette! I’ve been using this duo for the past few weeks ever since I bought it and it has easily become a staple in my makeup collection. I’ll definitely replenish this kit when I run out!

Now it’s time to compare these shades with my first contour kit that I ever bought!! 

Anastasia Beverly Hills Contour Kit ($40.00) vs. Wet n Wild MegaGlo Contour kit ($4.99 each)

Here are swatches of the bronze contouring shades from the Anastasia Palette vs the contouring shades of the Wet n Wild palettes!

The swatches of both kits were very similar in both color and pigmentation! Look at that! They’re like color twinsies. The top shades in these pictures are my favorites in both kits. This is a tie for me! All the shades in both palettes work really well with my skintone and the quality is excellent in both.

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Swatches of the highlighting shades in the Anastasia Contour Kit and the Wet N Wild MegaGlo Contour kits!

As you can see from the swatches below, the bottom 2 shades of the highlighting kit in the Anastasia palette show up extremely lightly on my skin. The bottom one is nearly invisible!  I have to blend both colors in order to make these shades work with my skintone to set my under eye concealer.  I personally feel that the hightlighting shades in the MegaGlo palettes have a significantly better color pay out on my skintone than the Anastasia shades.

I bought my Anastasia palette when there was only 1 kit available. Now there are 2 new kits for medium-dark skintones! I’m looking forward to trying these in the future!

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Now I want to hear from you!

Have you tried these contour kits before?? Send me your thoughts and swatches to be featured in my upcoming blog posts!

Til next time!

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Check out the products that I featured in this post here!

http://www.anastasiabeverlyhills.com/

Anastasia Beverly Hills Contour Kits

http://www.wetnwildbeauty.com/

WetnWild MegaGlo Contour Kits

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