New beauty launches I’m excited about
I can barely keep up with the new launches lately! New products are coming out left and right and I’m in a constant state of testing products, but I’ve been wearing some really great products that are making my routine a breeze and make me feel so much more polished. Here are some of my recent bright spots:
Snif perfumes – Snif is doing some really cool stuff and I think I’m starting to become a little obsessed with them. I’ve been dying to try Crumb Couture, and I was starting to get worried that I had built up such an image of it in my head that the real thing wouldn’t live up to the real thing.
Ya’ll I am telling you this is as good as I had imagined it to be. It’s not just a sweet pastry scent, but it has a savory butteriness and complexity to it, just like a real fresh croissant. This is likely the closest I’ll get to eating a real croissant, no thanks to my gluten intolerances.
Their newest fragrance, Vanilla Vice, is another one that really surprised me. One of the main notes is ice cream, which had me a little worried I’d be smelling like a vanilla ice cream cone – which some people might look forward to, but I don’t generally enjoy fragrances that mimic any actual baked goods. They tend to feel artificial and just a little too sugary sweet for my tastes, but Vanilla Vice is so much more than vanilla. The additional notes of amberwood, jasmine, and musk make this more earthy and musky and very much more “grown” up than a straight vanilla ice cream. In fact, on my skin, it even smells more like a musky perfume with a vanilla ice cream sweetness to it, rather than a vanilla scent with a musky feel to it.
The best part of both Snif fragrances – well 2 best parts are that they are both super long-lasting on me – I can smell them on myself at the end of the day, which means the projection is strong enough through a whole day of wear, and Snif fragrances are at a relatively reasonable price point for a fragrance at $65 for 30ml/1oz. Each Snif fragrance also comes with a 2ml sample so you can test it out before you crack open a full bottle.
Tower 28 LipSoftie Hydrated Tinted Lip Treatment Balm – tinted lip balms, oils, and treatments have been launching left and right and I feel like I’m up to my ears in lip treatments at this point, so what makes this one stand out? These balms are a little thinner than the thick and sometimes gloopy lip oils on the market right now, and while that could potentially be a slippy greasy mess, these balms offer a thin lightweight formula that stay on the lips, feel ultra comfortable, and the best part? They actually moisturize AND heal my lips when they’re cracked and dry.
There are a lot of moisturizing lip balms out there, but few of them can heal my lips within a few hours of wearing them. The shades are also lovely and so deliciously scented as each shade name suggests. My favorites are Watermelon Kiwi, a soft light pink, and Ube Vanilla, a sheer burgundy shade. There’s also a very delicious Blood Orange Vanilla that I’ve already lost in one of my many tote bags. At $16 each (which is basically drugstore prices at this point?!), definitely add these Tinted Lip Balms to your Sephora sale list.
Basma Cream Blush – Basma makes one of the best stick foundations, with some of the best undertones for olive skin, and now they’ve come out with a cream blush. As this is only the second launch from the brand, I feel like I have some confidence that they fully think through their products to perfect the formula before launching it to the world, and man are these blushes just beautiful. I bought just one shade, Mauve, to start, but trust me I’ll be back for more because the formula is exceptional. They’re dewy, ultra light to the touch, buildable from a sheer wash to a saturated flush, and just melt effortlessly with skin.
I can’t explain to you how skin-like they look, I can only show you in this reel where I applied them. And although they have a dewy finish to start, the dew sets down into a much more natural, but still glowy in the way that your skin looks freshly moisturized. I already have my eye on Fuchsia because despite the super intimidating swatch online, the way that Mauve blended out to a natural subdued pink gives me hope that Fuchsia will also look like a natural, but slightly brighter and cooler pink flush.
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Ciele Beauty Blushes – I’ve loved the formula and Behati shade of the Ciele Beauty blushes for a few months now for being easy to blend with a natural finish, with Behati being a gorgeous muted pink that gives my cheeks just a bit of a subtle tint. Now, the brand has 2 more shades, and I picked up June, a warm burgundy brown shade. This shade is so up my alley as a deeper but still natural looking flush, or even as a blonzer-type shade. It looks super deep in the tube and immediately applied, but can be sheered out to a very approachable burgundy-brown so easily that I really think even super fair skin tones could pull this off. I find that these are slightly less long lasting and a little more transfer prone than the Basma blushes, but love the shades and easy to blend formula so much that I know I’ll still get a lot of wear out of these.
Mob Beauty – I’ve been so keen to try Mob Beauty after how many great things I’ve heard about them! The brand did spend some press samples when they first launched, but the shades they sent didn’t work for me so I didn’t give them a proper test. This time, they sent me shades that are right up my alley, aka the most boring neutral shades, and I’ve been happily testing them all in the past couple of weeks.
The Blurring Ceramide Cream Foundation not only has the perfect neutral to slightly warm olive shade (Olive 30), but the formula is something else. With a buffer brush (like this one), I like to apply it on the lighter side of medium coverage, and it has that really stretchable quality I love so a little goes a long way. It imparts an ultra skin-like finish that looks slightly blurred and a naturally radiant, but not glowy or ultra shiny finish. It wears pretty well on my combination skin, though I’ll definitely need a more mattifying primer in the summer in addition to my usual powder that I set all my foundations with year round (which is also currently on sale with code REFRESH)
The Hyaluronic Highlight Balm is well, a highlight of the group. In addition to a dreamy balm formula that gives a lovely translucent glow without being sticky or heavy, the glow also lasts all day. While there is some shimmer in the balm, there is no obvious shimmer or glitter on the skin, so it just looks like the most effortless natural glow. I have shade M98. Along with it, the Clay Cream Blush is an ultra natural cream blush with a natural matte finish, which my combination skin really appreciates. While it is balmy to the touch and just as blendable as any other cream blush (or even like the Basma), it doesn’t have any light slippiness to it, and the natural matte finish really makes it mesh well with my skin. I love shade M72 as a natural pink that has just a hint of warmth to it.
Finally, the Cream Clay Eyeshadows are incredibly pigmented cream eyeshadows that are also easy to blend. I find that a light tap into the eyeshadows – with my fingers, although I would also tap lightly with a brush – is enough to give me the sheer wash of color that I generally prefer. The shade M115 is especially the type of neutral mid-tone brown that I like to wear on its own or as a base for other eyeshadows I still wear an eyeshadow primer with these, like I do with literally every other eyeshadow because of my oily eyelids (and my favorite is <$10!), but they don’t crease at all over eye primer.
While this little edit is a very solid lineup all on its own, I’m still testing a whole arsenal of other very promising products, including the Merit Signature Lip Matte Lipsticks and the new Westman Atelier Lip Suede Matte Lipsticks. I like them both so far but want to put them through multiple wear tests alongside other matte lipsticks so I’ll save those thoughts for another post.
Until then, let me know what’s a bright spot for you right now (makeup or otherwise!) As always, thank you for reading.
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