Earthen Glow Haul

Earthen Glow Minerals had a recent BOGO sale, and I can't resist a good deal (c'mon: don't tell me you've never spent $40 at the cosmetic counter to get the $15 "Bonus Gift"?). And since I had never bought anything from this company before, I really was throwing my money to the wind, just so I can grab a deal.

I heard a lot of good things about this company, mainly reading up on posts from Aileen's blog, Shades of U. So when there was a Buy One Get One sale, I scrambled like mad, visiting forums like the Mineral Makeup Thread on FemaleNetwork, getting recommendations on shades before the sale expired.

With approval of EGM's customer service, I ordered Helena from the Olive family and Soon from the Yellow family, both in the Cover Me formula. I was recommended to get a "tweaker" in Lollie, to replace/add to Soon to take me into the summer months.



The free "tweaker" I asked for came jam-packed with powder, way more than any sample I've ever received before. It's not as yellow, as it is overall darker than Soon.

The two foundations I got are quite different from each other, Soon being drastically different than Helena. Because I have heavy yellow undertones but also evidence of olive present, I felt that they could together provide the shade I needed.

Here, I compare Soon and Helena to my current foundation, AWG's Hope 4.2 :


As you can see, Hope 4.2 is not as yellow as Soon, as it has some olive in it. I'm hoping that the right combination will yield something similar.

My FOTD, with 2/3 Soon + 1/3 Helena...


It's not a bad match, huh? The foundation is quite photogenic, with no apparent "white mask" found with many other mineral foundations. I applied a couple of layers, as I like full coverage, and it still doesn't appear cakey or give that ghost-like reflection.

I'm actually liking my EGM foundation more than my AWG foundation, despite the mixing involved. Adding the yellow Soon foundation gives my face an obvious pick-me-up not seen with Hope 4.2. But seeing I've got two very good foundations to choose from now, I'll just toggle back and forth between the two.

My Silk Naturals Haul

On Thursday, I received my super-fast shipment from Silk Naturals - 9 days (given it was only first-class not priority). My small order ballooned to over $30 again!

How pretty is all came:


Here's what I got:

• Perfect Harmony Foundation Sample Kit, contains Original Coverage Ivory plus 4 base shades in Buttery Gold, Warm Gold, Peach and Ebony, with scoop, empty 10g jar and sponge
• Medium Coverage Ivory Kit, with scoop, empty 10g jar
• Heavy Coverage Ivory Kit, with scoop, empty 10g jar
• extra Ivory samples in Original and Medium Coverage
• extra base samples in Buttery Gold and Warm Gold
• Tinted Oil Control Primer sample
  
• Oil Control Blur Finishing Powder sample
• Tinted Perfecting Powder in Love Lure and Tempt Tryst samples
  
• Sheer Bronzer in Tahiti Sweetie sample
• Sheer Blush in Lovelace
• Cream Eyeliner in Film Noir
  
• Flavoured Lip Gloss in Breathless and Skinny Dip
• and for free....a Cream Blush in Loverly and eyeshadow Terra, and a sample of Myst eyeshadow
  

I haven't tried formulating my custom foundation yet (waiting for a sunny day!) but I've tried out the lovely lip glosses. These two lippies are so nice...I like them more than Birthday Suit and Bliss.


Breathless is described on the SN website as a pink satin shimmer organic lip gloss. It's pink with a little brown in it, a neutral pink, made to look good whether you're cool or warm toned. Skinny Dip is described as a pinkie brown satin shimmer lip gloss, a medium tan colour with just a hint of pink.

SN says these two are hybrid colours: enough colour in them to almost call them a lipstick but glossy and shimmery enough to classify them more in the lip gloss category.

I love these lippies! I'm not a pink lipstick kind of girl (though, I must add, the very first lipstick I ever received was a Cover Girl frosted pink lipstick --- hey, it was the 80's!) but Breathless leaves me breathless! I like Skinny Dip over Bliss and Birthday Suit, maybe because it's got a little twist to the boring brown. I'll be buying more of these next time around.

I may hold off playing around with the foundation and the other powders I bought, until I pick up some samples of the foundation correctors Karen recently added to the website: a green colour booster for olive skin tones and a pure yellow if you need more yellow.

You see, SN's foundation is pretty ingenious, in that you mix your own foundation. There are 5 bases to choose from and you mix them with the appropriate scoops of Ivory. For instance, I might try mixing 1 scoop of Buttery Gold to about 4 scoops of Ivory and if it's too dark I can add another scoop of Ivory until I get it just right. And as I know I do have olive tones in my skin, I'll probably have to add a scoop of the olive too in there. I can't wait to start mixing...I feel like a mad scientist or something!

If I don't end up putting another order with SN soon, and I cave in to my urge to sample, I'll post my personal review on SN's Perfect Harmony foundation in a month or so.

Meanwhile....more shopping to do....Earthen Glow Minerals is having a BOGO sale that ends Tuesday night!

Hmmm, do I need more foundation?