REVIEW of L'Oreal Nail Color in 138 The Statement Piece

Hello knockouts,

I know it's a big shocker whenever I leave the house but I had somewhere special to be recently so I decided to bust out a special polish. A statement polish. That's right. You clicked on this review. You know I'm talking about L'Oreal's The Statement Piece. And this polish does make a statement. Perhaps you're thinking, Cat, you already have so many gold and silver polishes and even textured gold and silver polishes. Well, I'm pretty sure The Statement Piece is unique in my collection, but if you'd like me to do a comparison post just leave a request in the comments.

Color: L'Oreal The Statement Piece is a pale, cool-toned gold textured polish containing pale gold glitter. It's not hex glitter and it's not microglitter. It's just regular small, round glitter. Sometimes I think it looks more like silver than gold but it's not silver enough to clash with the gold if that's what you're thinking. The polish itself can sometimes veer towards champagne but in bright direct sunlight and at night it's definitely a gold polish. Worn as a textured polish without top coat I find that it makes a statement without being too flashy. Because it's a pale gold and not super sparkly that tempers the textured effect and the glitter. If you're going to wear something like this it's a way of doing it that doesn't look cheap or juvenile. This polish was pinging my recognition centers so I checked my Pinterest board. It reminds me a little of OPI Honey Ryder and Zoya Tomoko but it's a dupe for neither. Even when it's first applied, The Statement Piece doesn't have the craggy roughness of OPI Liquid Sand textured polish. It's just slightly rough while still definitely being a textured polish. The other polish I thought of was Maybelline Gold's Night Out but The Statement Piece isn't nearly as flashy and arresting. I can always do a comparison of the polishes so you can get a better idea of what you'd prefer. Just leave a request in the comments.
Formula: The formula is a little bit thick.
Application: I used three coats of Elmer's glue as my base coat which is my standard practice with glitter polishes for easier removal. The first two coats of polish went on super smoothly. Even though the formula is on the thicker side, I think because the glitter is small and the polish base isn't too gritty, the polish applies smoothly instead of being gloopy and thick. At two coats the polish was still a little sheer so I added a third coat. I think you can definitely see the improvement in opacity between the second and third coat though the polish was still not opaque at three coats under a light test.
Wear: I applied this polish at night on November 7th and removed it a night on November 13th. Six days! With a glitter polish using glue as base coat? That's crazy for me. I don't know. I found this polish oddly wearable and I didn't want to take it off. When I did remove the polish I had a little bit of tip wear but no chipping. The signs of wear were major growth at the cuticle and gaps at the sides of my nails. I think that might be due to the glue as base coat as that kind of gap doesn't happen with cremes. This polish did not peel off cleanly. I don't know if that was because I had it on too long or if it was the polish itself. I tried to peel at the edges but I ended up mainly applying pressure with my nails and pushing the polish off my nails. It did come off cleanly if in pieces. Most of my nails were not damaged but the surface of a few nails seemed a little scraped.

CONCLUSION: I would recommend this polish. It is a little sheer but it looks beautiful on the nail and applies smoothly without any issues. This is a perfect polish for a night out when you want to make a statement without making a nuisance of yourself and calling too much attention to your nails.

If you're planning on shopping on amazon this Black Friday or anytime during the holiday season, please consider starting your shopping trip through one of my amazon links. It really helps me out. You don't have to purchase what's featured in the ad. As long as you start from one of the links on my page I will get a small percentage of the revenue at no extra cost to you. 

SWATCHES

L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse Stick in 176 Sunset Angora

Hi chickadees!

I've been hearing some rave reviews about the new L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse Sticks so I was excited to try them out as I'm kind of becoming a lip product junkie. I seem to be on an endless search to find the right lip products for my dry lips. As of now, my favorites are still the Covergirl natureluxe glossbalms and the Clinique Chubby Sticks. The L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse Sticks are not going to be toppling those two from their positions anytime soon but I did like the one I tried, 176 Sunset Angora. However, it wasn't love at first application and I still have a lot of problems with it.

Pros

• Color: I would call it a warm, guava kind of pink. It's still too pink to really be a coral but it has a lot of warmth to it. The color is very pretty. It suits my complexion really well. There's definitely some pigmentation and a subtle brightening effect but its not too much. I wouldn't call it my lips but better only because you can definitely tell it's not my natural lip color. 
• Application/Glide: It glides on the lips incredibly smoothly. It's almost like a lip balm. I would say it's not quite at the lip balm level of smoothness, but it's smoother than a Revlon lip butter or your standard drugstore lipstick.
• Finish: It is hard to describe the finish, but whatever it is, I like it. It's not matte or shiny or glossy or frosty. Really, it just looks as if my lips are naturally plump and moisturized. It looks very youthful. I'm not sure if this is due to the slight hint of shimmer (which you don't notice except extremely close up) or because of the similarity to a lip balm but my lips have a bit of a sheen to them. They don't look wet  but there's a slight greasy shininess to them that makes them look very smooth and soft. 
• Balance Between Lipstick and Lip Balm: You get some of the feel of a lip balm with some of the pigment of a lipstick.

Cons

This lipstick reminds me a lot of the high-end lipsticks I tried early in my makeup buying career. I think particularly the YSL lipsticks but maybe also the Givenchy. It's been a while so my memory is a little hazy.

• Application/Evenness: This lipstick just doesn't apply evenly for me. I've tried again and again, but like the YSL lipsticks I've tried, it settles into the lines of my lips. Now, I'm not old. I'm in my early 20s. The lines in my lips are just natural lines and all the pigment of a lip product is not supposed to gather in them. But with this lipstick, the pigment noticeably gathers in those lines in a very unattractive way. It's not that bad at a distance but I'd say if you were about 3 feet or closer to someone it might be noticeable. It's definitely noticeable at a distance of a foot or less. 
• Feel: Another way it reminds me of those high-end lipsticks is that it feels kind of greasy on the lips which keeps it from being completely lightweight. I think it has something to do with the ingredients but I'm not sure what it is. 
• Scent: I've never been good at describing scents. To me, this smells like makeup. It's a blend of that artificial makeup smell and something slightly floral...maybe rose-scented. I'm not in love with it but I could see how people might like it. It doesn't bother me too much as you don't smell it once it's on your lips.
• Taste: Again there's a blend of artificial and intentional flavor here. It tastes slightly sweet but also like makeup, kind of artificial and maybe a little like wax or plastic. It's not all that offputting but this is definitely not one of those lip products where you need to worry about licking the product off your lips because it tastes so good.
• Price: Obviously, it's a bit expensive for a drugstore product.
• Wear: The longer I wear it, the more I get the feeling that it's fading or drying out. The greasy feeling fades but so does any sense of moisture and there is the tiniest sense of tightening. When I wore it for the day one day without reapplying, it didn't dry out my lips or result in any flaking or cracking but when I got home they didn't look great. I can't describe it any other way. They looked a bit sad. On the drying/moisturizing spectrum it's probably closer to the drying side. 
• Neither a Lipstick Nor a Lip Balm: You may be disappointed because you're not going to get all the sheerness and the moisturizing of a lip balm and you're not going to get the full coverage and pigmentation of a lipstick. This is just about what you want from a lip product.
• Packaging: The product in the tube I purchased is not aligned properly. You can see it in the pictures below. (Skip to the end) I considered going back to exchange it but I don't think it's that big of a deal. It's just a little annoying considering this is more than what I usually pay at the drugstore for lipstick and yet it's poorly constructed.

CONCLUSION: I think I'll be keeping this because I do like the color and the color and formula are unique enough to keep in my collection. I think I would recommend it based on how smoothly it applies and the color but people may have issues with the lack of full coverage, taste, and smell. Also, I don't believe it's as moisturizing as other people have claimed.

Cat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you would like to help support this site, please consider making your next purchase at amazon.com through the links on my page.

  SWATCHES 

REVIEW of L'Oreal Nail Polish in 310 Versailles Romance

Hi chickadees!

I'm not sure how much L'Oreal's Versailles Romance nail polish reminds me of Versailles (Yes, I've been. And I didn't take 6 years of French without picking up something.) but it does have a feminine lightness I associate with my favorite French confections...macarons! I found this to be an improvement from the L'Oreal nail polishes I've tried in the past. I had to do 3-4 coats on each nail before I could get it nicely opaque but I didn't have major issues with streakiness and the formula wasn't nearly as thick as before. It still wasn't a dream to work with (I included a slightly messy shot of my other hand so you could see what painting with my non-dominant hand was like). That hand definitely didn't turn out as good and I needed the 4 coats. While I love the shimmery peach shade, I actually think this might look pretty as a sheer color in 1 or 2 layers.

 SWATCHES

Failed Lip Products: L'Oreal's Fairest Nude and Revlon's Peach Parfait

Hi chickadees!

Sorry I have posted anything in a few days. This past week has been so hectic. I had major essays and exams in most of my classses. I will probably be painting my nails in the next few days so I should have a new review up shortly. For now, I hope you like these short reviews on two lip products I recently tried. Sorry about the upper lip fuzz. I didn't have time to go to get the hair threaded before taking these lip swatches. Please forgive my mammalian flaws.

OK, onto the reviews!

L'Oreal Colour Riche Lipcolor in 800 Fairest Nude
I've heard good things about this product and I wanted to love it. I tried to love it. But it was simply atrocious. I find L'Oreal lipsticks to be nicely moisturizing and to apply opaque. Not the case here. Fairest Nude applied almost like a greasy lip gloss. It wasn't very pigmented and didn't provide great coverage, leaving a lot of pink peeking through the sheer nude lipstick. However, the lip color had no problem settling into the lines and cracks in my lips. I would definitely avoid wearing this if your lips aren't smooth but I don't know how much that would help. It was just so dry and aging. I can't imagine it would look good on anyone.

As bad as these swatches look, this lipstick looked even worse in person.

Revlon Lip Butter in Peach Parfait
If you follow this blog, you'll know I've been searching high and low at every drugstore I know of for this product. Well, I would have called off the hunt if I'd have known how this lip butter would look on my lips. There was something odd about the consistency of this lip butter. Maybe it was the glitter but it seemed harder and didn't apply as smoothly as some of the other lip butters I own (no glitter). I thought it looked nice and glossy over smooth lips but to me it looked cheap. It was too shiny. There was too much glitter. It would be difficult to pair this with anything but mascara and the tiniest bit of blush and I have a hard time imagining this looking age appropriate on anyone. It doesn't fit the professional look I need to achieve with a nude lip so it went back to the store.

Cat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you would like to help support this site, please consider making your next purchase at amazon.com through the links on my page.

L'Oreal Colour RIche Nail Polish in 560 Greycian Goddess

Dusty, smoky, lovely Greycian Goddess was kind of a bust for me. They hooked me with the name but this just isn't the right polish for me. I think it's going to be a while before I try out any more L'Oreal nail polishes. Even if I didn't have the terrible habit of collecting nail polishes before I've used everything in my stash, I'm just too irritated with the quality of L'Oreal's nail polishes to bother working with them for a while. So while I like some of the colors in the new collection and I adore the name of this polish, I'm taking a break.

1) I do not like the brush. It isn't soft and flexible. It is also naturally streaky. Combining these qualities, it becomes very difficult to avoid streaks unless you paint in thick coats, barely dragging the brush across the nail.
2) I do not like the formula of this polish. It is somehow simultaneously thick and watery. It is too watery for me to be able to control it easily and it is too thick to paint nice even coats. You basically plop down polish and try and avoid touching it as much as possible.
3) 3 coats to opacity. I don't mind painting 3 coats. I do it even with some of the best nail polishes in my collection just to get perfect results. But with L'Oreal nail polishes I can't get away from the feeling that I am just wasting nail polish.
4) Color. I don't hate this color. In direct sunlight, it works for me as a nice, interesting take on a neutral. However, in any other lighting it brings out all the red in my skin and just looks wrong. I find this odd since I consider this a blue-toned gray and blue/cool tones usually work for me. However, if you look good in grays or you think this color would work for you, I'd say go for it because it's a pretty gray nail polish. I think this is what I expected Essie's Power Clutch to be like. This polish never darkens to black. It always stays a nice medium shade of gray.

Cat is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. If you would like to help support this site, please consider making your next purchase at amazon.com through the links on my page.

   

  SWATCHES

L'Oreal Infallible 24 Hour Eyeshadow in 333 Golden Sage

This is going to be another one of those short reviews. I do not like this product. I don't know if it's horrible...but it doesn't work for me and I've given up trying to make it work. I expected a sort of smoky/dusty/dirty olive green color and instead, when you swatch the shadow you get a bright, shimmery green. Still, I was willing to work with that. However, the formula is a giant pain in the arse. Here are swatches. The shadow on my pointer finger is just from touching my finger to the product. The shadow on my middle finger is from pretty intense swatching so you can see how bright this shadow can get.

Now, imagine you want to get this powdery pigment from your finger to your eye. Well...this is the result.

REVIEW of L'Oreal Nail Polish in 580 Because You're Worth It with SWATCHES

Now, you would assume that the best selection in a nail polish line would be the one that's actually the slogan for the company. This was my thinking in picking out my first L'Oreal nail polish in a pretty shimmery gold shade in 580 "Because You're Worth It". Now, I'm wary in picking out anything with yellow tones for my Asian skin but I love almost every L'Oreal product I've tried and I was completely charmed by the sleek look of the packaging. If any gold was going to work, it should be this sexy, sophisticated shade, right?

Well...the formula was a big pain in the you-know-what. I don't know if it was the shimmer or the polish itself but I had a hell of a time getting a smooth, even coat. It was 3 coats for opacity but it's still not as opaque as my cream finishes. I don't know, there's just something about this polish that seems a bit off. The color is fine but really doesn't suit my skin tone. It also looks better in certain lighting that others. When it takes on a light gold, shimmery taupe shade it looks fine. In dimmer lighting it looks almost like tarnished gold and it makes my hands look very sallow and dry. Also, I feel like the smoothness of the final coat was more due to my skill than anything in the formula. I think if you have light Caucasian skin, this might look good on you and if you have very dark Indian or African skin this would look beautiful. It just doesn't work for me. Also, I can't recommend it based on the formula.

SWATCHES

Review of L'Oreal Paris HiP Studio Secrets Professional Metallic Shadow in 510 Electrified with SWATCHES

Dear, L'Oreal. Thank you for 510 Electrified. This is one of my favorite eyeshadows. EVER. If you haven't tried it, you need to. Even the swatches don't really do it justice. It is so buttery and smooth. It is a dream to apply. It goes right on, super pigmented but also blends easily. It is shimmery but not too intense for school or for work unless your job is super professional in which case I'd stay away from shimmer eyeshadow in general. The color is just stunning. I was recently swatching my eyeshadow collection trying to think of new combinations to get some use out of palettes I haven't touched in a while but all I did was marvel over how pretty this color was compared to everything else. This is not to insult or degrade my other eyeshadows. They are lovely. But this shadow is a stunner. It has magic to it. I could definitely see this in a holiday, prom, or wedding look. Well, maybe a fall or winter wedding.

Amount of Product: .08 oz or 2.4g

Color: shimmery light gold/taupe AND eggplant

SWATCHES

Why You Should Pick Up L'Oreal's Magic Perfecting Base at Duane Reade This Week

If you follow my blog, you will have already read about the $2 off coupon for L'Oreal's Magic Perfecting Base in the December issue of Allure. Duane Reade happens to be having a $2 off L'Oreal face makeup sale right now if you use your Flex Rewards card. The combined savings knocks my original price of $13.29 ($14.35 with tax) to $10.51 with tax. It's not a huge discount, but this is already a pretty cheap product as it is a drugstore makeup brand. Unless, you've been saving up your CVS extrabucks, I can't imagine when a better deal is going to come along. Also, since everything seems to be cheaper out of NYC, I imagine the deals will be even better elsewhere. So again, if you've been meaning to try this out, I think this would be a great time. I just picked up my own jar today and I'm already intrigued. I feel there isn't a huge amount of product so I'm going to try and use it conservatively and only on large pores and dry areas as my skin doesn't have too many blemishes and has no discoloration. I will report back soon.

In case you were wondering, the Physicians Formula nude palette went back to CVS today. I just could not deal with weak pigmentation from about 1/2 the palette. Now I just have to decide if it's worth it to spring for the Naked 2 palette.

I was out in the rain today with my Benefit "They're Real" mascara and didn't use an umbrella in the light rain. I ended up with slight smudges, not horrible mascara raccoon-eyes like in all of those romantic comedy crying scenes, but the same sort of slight smudges I would get from my L'Oreal mascaras and the Urban Decay eyeliner pencil that came with my Vegan palette. This is a very strange test run so far. My lashes did immediately lose their curl when mascara was applied though I kept the coat light. I think I'll give it a few more weeks and if things don't work out, I'll switch back to L'Oreal Carbon Black and L'Oreal Voluminous Million Lashes. I might get some smudges but at least my lashes look gorgeous. I don't know why I have these mascara struggles. If anyone has advice for my stubbornly straight, smudge-inducing Asian lashes, please leave it in the comments. :)