Favorite Makeup of 2010 !!!

Favorite Makeup of 2010

Mmmmm Makeup. I think I've bought more Makeup in the past year the the sum of my entire life... Korea has such a wealth of inexpensive, but amazing make up. It felt like every time I left the house I would run into something amazing that I just had to have.

But I had a hard time making this list. My favorite skin care list was Easy. Makeup, is harder. Even though I tried lots of things, and liked many of them, a lot of them weren't things that I would go back and buy again and again.....
But there are certainly a number of amazing things I've found :)

Foundation/ BB

Let me introduce you to the BEST BB cream ever!!! It's the 'Absolute total BB' by Skin79.

It's super expensive at 29900 won($30!!), but on g-market it can be  as cheap as $9 :).

It is light, but with great coverage, super natural, makes my skin feel better after using it, has an SPF of 37 PA +++. It's AMAZING. I am almost done my second tube!


Highlighter

I'm willing to bet most of you have heard amazing things about Benefit's liquid highlighter (high beam and moon beam). I myself thought it sounded so good, I bought it. It's true, It's lovely. But this, Lime secret shine base by skinfood is SO much better! For one thing, it's huge, 30g compared with High beam at 12g(.45oz)
For another, Skinfood lime shine base costs only $7 less than 1/2 the price of Benefit's($24)!
Plus it has a more liquid consistency (easier to blend), looks more natural, comes in 3 colors, and smells lovely.
I use it every day, I mix a little into my BB foundation, and I get SO many compliments on my skin. I have bought all 3 colors, and doubles of those.... It's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Awesome!


Eyeshadow

It's skin Color play trio

I had a lot of trouble picking out a favorite eyeshadow this year. I found lots of nice ones, ones I liked. But some how all of them were less than exceptional. But then I remembered this BEAUTIFUL eyeshadow that I bought at It's skin. This gorgeous baked trio that was so smooth, so fine and blended so beautifully. It broke after I had used it maybe twice, then I couldn't it in stores... :(


Mascara

Holika Holkia -Enamel Magicara

For a long time Majolica Majorica has produced my Favorite mascara's. Their Mascaras are always exceptional. But Majolica is Japanese, and I have been living in Korea.
So when I encountered this mascara by Holika Holika, that looked freakisly similar to my fav from Majolica, I was sold.
And while the brush style is different, the mascara is exceptional. Big full lashes, long lasting, and not quite as hard to take of as Mojolica's.
It's a winner.

Lip tint

Etude House's Fresh Cherry Tint

When I was young, and I first got into make up, I thought lip tints were amazing. But as I got older I began to notice how immature the results were, how patchy, the colors odd, few choices, and a funny taste. 
The Fresh Cherry tint is beautiful, creamy, goes on evenly, has a lovely color (there are 3 options) and generally looks nice!


Nails

Face shop nail polish

Finally, my favorite nail polish.  There isn't just one..... Korean nail polish is cheap, good quality and comes in a million colors. It is an addiction.
Shown is one of my favorites, a subtle gold glitter(who would have thought), that is subtle and work appropriate. It just always looks beautiful!


So, that's it for my favorites of 2010, but coming up next, my MOST HATED products of 2010. Disasters, wastes of money and break outs galore!

BB cream comparison I

BB Cream comparisons 1!


I Love BB creams. They are light, blend easily, moisturizing, and contain sunscreen! Plus a lot of them have whitening, or clarifying, or other benefits! I've given up all other forms of foundation.
With that said, here is a selection of swatches, and a quick comparison of a few Korean BB creams.

Prices:                                      
Frigga: $5                                                  40g
Skin79 Super Blemish Balm: $30           40g
Elisha Coy Shiny Pearl: $27                   50ml
Elisha Coy Always Triple: $27                50ml
Elisha Coy Always Nuddy:$27                50ml
Skinfood Aloe: $9.90                               50g
Etude House Precious Mineral: $8        60g

From the picture you can see pretty well that EC Shiny Pearl and Etude's precious Mineral are the darkest.  

Color wise, Skin79 is the best, followed by Skinfood's Aloe, and Elisha Coy's triple.


Frigga-

I don't like at all :( See my review


Skin79 

I absolutely adore the Skin79 Super Blemish Balm, it was my absolute favorite until I discovered the skin79 Absolute total BB(which is of course more expensive!)It's just super smooth, blends well, stays on all day, and makes my skin look good even without makeup! I use the skin79 stuff all the time. Even though it's really expensive for a BB cream. Here in Korea they generally range from 8 to 20 dollars.
That's reasonable to me. I actually use less, and get better results with a BB than traditional foundation.


Elisha Coy

My second favorite out of this bunch is the Elisha coy Shiny pearl. Even though it's not a great color match. It blends really well, it's beautifully smooth, it has a subtle pearly sheen, and lasts beautifully.

I like it better than the Elisha coy Always Triple, even though it's closer to my skin tone. The always triple is, I think, meant for heavier coverage. It's thicker and more opaque. A bit closer to foundation


The Elisha Coy Always Nuddy I only received in tiny samplers. It's smooth and nice. The color is a bit on the yellow side.


Skinfood Aloe BB

I Adore skinfood, or their skin care, as for their makeup.... But in this case, the Aloe BB is a solid competitor. It's a really good color for Caucasian skin. It's pink toned, but not too pink, and it's quite light. It does come in too shades though for anyone darker. The BB is also light, but tends a bit to the runny side. It's fine for me, I do like sheer coverage.


Etude House Precious Minerals 

Out of all the BB creams I've swatched here, this is the most yellow.  It lightens up considerably when applied. However it is my third most used BB cream. It's cheap, super cheap really at only $8! It lightens up quite well when applied, and as long as I blend a bit around my jaw and neck, the color difference isn't at all noticeable. It has a very neutral very matte finish. Which I find most BB creams do not have. They tend to have a bit of a sheen. Which is fine sometimes, but I like to use this BB on hotter days, when you really don't want a sheen, or when applying a highlighter, so it looks more natural.

Frigga BB balm (cream)

Frigga BB balm
Price: 5000won ($5)
-Whitening
-Wrinkle (prevention or improving?)

This is another BB cream I picked up in Seoul. I bought this at an unnamed (at least in English) beauty store, a lot like a Beautyplex.
It's super cheap. It has to be the cheapest BB cream I've ever seen.
In the swatch, the color looks pretty close to my skin tone. But unlike a lot of other BB creams, it doesn't blend as seamlessly into the skin. So the color difference doesn't dissipate when applied. It's fairly yellow toned, and it's even more noticeable when all over my face.  It's not a terrible match but not a good one either.

Beyond that, the quality is cheap (as you might guess from the Price!), and it's a little bit oily.
Compared with my other BB creams, my stack of BB creams, this one is just bad.
Even at only $5 it was a waste of money!

Elisha Coy - Diamond Shiny Pearl BB

Elisha Coy - Diamond Shiny Pearl BB
Price 27000won ($27)
Size: 50ml


SPF 27 PA++
"phyto treatment" 6 fruit flower extracts to make the skin soft


I picked up the Elisha Coy Shiny Pearl BB when I was in Seoul. It came with a small Elisha Coy triple BB and 5 tiny samples of Always Nuddy BB.
At $27 for only 50ml it's one of the more expensive BB creams I own. With my Skin79 ones being a bit more expensive(and smaller in size!)
I totally picked this BB up because the cap contains a white highlighter and little mirror and it's just TOO cute!

The actual BB looks seriously dark on my skin when first applied. But I find that all BB creams look like the wrong color initially. Once it's smoothed out, the color lightens and blends to a really natural tone.
The cream itself is more on the pink toned side. So for a Non-Asian, this works a lot better!

Since I don't need heavy coverage, I generally apply a BB cream mixed with a bit of moisturizer of sunscreen. When I apply it thusly, it looks completely natural. I don't have to worry about blending into my neck.
The BB is also super nice, it smooth, and light, it last's all day. Plus, even though it's called Shiny Pearl, it's not overtly shiny. Just a little sheen, to make me look a little extra glowing. I think even ladies with oilier complexions could get away with this.

So even though I really like this BB cream, and wear it often, my absolute FAVORITE part of the product is the little highlighter!!! It's the best white highlighter EVER!
I always wear a little white in the inner corner of my eyes, and this is the longest lasting thing I've ever encountered. Even after a long day of work, chasing around kids, I still have bright looking eyes!
I seriously use this highlighter every single day. I'm even tempted to buy the BB cream, just for the highlighter!

Skin 79 BB creams sampler

Size 4x 5g tubes

Price: $11.60 US

Skin79 is a Korean brand with both skin care and make-up. I haven’t used very many Korean skin care products, them being not commonly available in Japan. But since I got a job in Ulsan, I’m going to have to start...

So since I added the skin79 miniature set to a mini order I was doing on Adambeauty.

It comes with 4 mini BB creams.

BB stands for blemish balm. But what BB creams really are a super tinted moisturizers. They are the rage over here in North America...

Anything that eliminates a step from the make-up routine.

So the skin 79 BB creams are basically the same idea. They are tinted moisturizers, most of them with SPF with one or more additional features.

It’s really the additional features that sell me!

I got

Super+ BB

Its UV protection SPF25 Pa++ (considering most tinted moisturizers here are Spf15, or 20 at most, 25 is pretty awesome)

It also claims to be whitening and wrinkle free (whether that means wrinkle minimizing, wrinkle preventing or wrinkle hiding I’m not sure..._

Super + BB – the gold collection

Uv 25++, whitening and Wrinkle improvement

It sounds about the same as the previous one, but the Skin79 website shows a ton of added ingredients, like arbutin and adenosine (both are good for whitening), Q10, phyto complex, Gold and Caviar...

But the full sizes are both the same price... So...

BB diamond collection

It doesn’t say it on the sample tube but it too has Uv 25++, whitening and Wrinkle improvement

according to the Skin79 website.

But apparently this is the newest... It contains many similar components to the other two but it now contains EGF! Which is epidermal growth factor. It’s supposed to help increase cell turnover. (By increasing the growth rate not by removal of dead skin cells.)

BB diamonds collection – Pearl

it’s the same as above, but with added “pearl”

I’ve wanted a BB cream for ages. They seem like the perfect solution to minimize my skin care routine. Now I currently apply a light moisturizer, sunscreen and foundation separately.

I don’t use a tinted moisturizer with all 3 because of the really low SPF (15 is so not enough for me).

I use SPF 50 on a daily basis.

Plus all the ones i’ve tried either have a weird color (too dark or too orange, since tinted moisturizers rarely have more options than light medium and dark) and they tend to irritate my skin. So component in sunscreen actually makes me break out in a rash. For some reason this happens more often with North American brands... It’s horrible. Though I was using the Clinique super city block for a while, but the tint was a little too dark for me, so I had to carefully blend it in.

Anyway... I predicted that the SPF in many BB creams would be better, since BB creams are super light (and it seems to be the heavier the sunscreen the more it irritates me), plus Japanese sunscreen works for me...

The result; I am madly in love with All of the skin 79 BB creams.

Seriously LOVE!

They are all super light, they spread easily and the give light coverage.

As you can see the Super BB and the diamond BB are slightly different in color.

With the Super(s) being slightly darker, and the Diamond(s) slightly more orange,

But once they are spread out they are light enough to blend in perfectly even though they appear to be slightly darker than my skin tone. Honestly once they are on I couldn’t tell you the difference between them (except for the pearl of course.)

It’s the same coverage as the Cover girl trublend I’m currently using as my foundation!

Plus, as you can see from the swatches, there isn’t much color variation between the samples (I expected at least a couple to be totally wrong/ too dark/ too orange.)

But they all are pretty close to my skin tone, and blend like a dream!

They also last well, as good as or a bit better than my CG foundation.

As you can see though, applied they are all basically identical, except for the Pearl.

Sadly it’s not a subtle glow like my Anessa pearly sunscreen. It’s more of a small sparkle.

It’s not quite subtle enough for me for day.

A little too much sparkle when applied all over the face.

But 3 out of being Perfect *Smiles*

Now I just have to decide which one I want in the full size...