Sometimes when I’m Christmas shopping I forget that I’m not shopping for myself. I’ll be wandering through whatever store with the recipient of my potential gift in mind and then BLAM! pretty shiny things! So having spent considerably more time in various retail establishments over the last few weeks, I’ve collected a pile of said shiny things and now I’m going to share pictures of new stuff with you because that’s just how I roll yo.

Almay recently joined the lip butter craze and came out with their version of the tinted lip balm called Smart Shade Butter Kiss. (Why must we have such long names for things? Butter Kiss would have sufficed. Ain’t nobody got time fo’ that!)  They’ve arranged the shades based on skin tone, so the color range includes a red, nude, berry and a pink for light skin tones, light/medium skin tones and medium skin tones. Odd that there is nothing marketed as being for deep skin tones…

I picked up the Berry Light and the Nude Light/Medium.

I didn’t notice a discernible scent to these and the consistency is similar to the Revlon Lip Butters. I haven’t really worn these often/long enough to give more info but they seem nice.

Covergirl has released another new gloss formula called Colorlicious Lip Lava. There are nine shades available ranging from a pale champagne, and a bright gold to a bold orange and deep reds. It’s definitely an interesting color selection.

I purchased two in the shades Lava-nder and Lava Luster. (Fun story: the label on these is super teeny tiny and I thought it was Lava-rider which seemed sort of badass like, the Silver Surfer. Sadly, much photo re-editing later ensued)

Now tell me; when on earth am I going to have an occasion to wear a lipgloss like Lava-nder? Seriously! But holy cow is that a gorgeous sparkly purple. I want everything to be that color.  I’m wearing Lava-nder right now (The Boy is super impressed, I can tell. The word “wow” was even used.) They have a vaguely chemical scent and taste although it doesn’t seem to be overwhelming. These have A LOT of shimmer to them but I can’t feel individual glitter particles which is a huge plus.

The last product in the lip category is a new gloss by L’Oreal called the Infallible Pro Matte Gloss. I would assume that this is supposed to be a matte liquid lipstick kind of situation but the swatch was taken after I let it set for more than five minutes and there was still a decent amount of shine to it. Obviously swatches aren’t infallible (see what I did there?) and this may be different when worn but let’s just say I’m skeptical and leave it that.

On to eye shadows!

Milani had new quads called Fierce Foil Eyeshine displayed at CVS. Oddly, these are not listed anywhere on their website but if you perform a web search, lots of ebay options pop up. This leads me to believe that this may have been a special holiday season product. Curiouser and curiouser.

This is a cream product and it comes with a rubber spatula rather than a sponge tip applicator. The swatches didn’t seem to set or dry so I’m really curious about how this will perform. My instincts say that this could be a recipe for major creasing but we shall see.

Along the same lines, Revlon released a cream/liquid eyeshadow (that I actually thought was nail polish since they have a line of nail polish that is packaged in the same way. Surprise! Not for your nails!).

How freaking awesome is that swatch?! I will say that on the one occasion that I wore this, it was a little difficult to blend without blending the product away completely and it did wear off a bit weird. I was outside for several hours that day in inclement weather so the patchy wear time may be no fault of the product itself. Once swatched, this did set completely and was impressively  difficult to remove from my hand. One side of the…tube? is a liquid shadow that is applied with a doe foot applicator and the other side is a glitter liner applied with a small fine tipped brush. I’ll have to experiment with this a bit more because the one time wear of this product completely contradicted the swatching of this product and that’s always strange.

Last one!

This isn’t so much drugstore but Kohl’s. I’m lumping it into the drugstore business because I can. Ha!

Lorac is now available at Kohl’s (but no longer available at Sephora) and there were several holiday sets available last week. I snagged the Royal Eyeshadow Set that includes three quads. Again…this isn’t listed on the company’s website! There are other sets in The Royal Collection but not this one. What the heck?!

These seem like good quality eyeshadows but they are not as soft and smooth as the Pro Palette and some of the swatches were fairly patchy or not so pigmented. The colors are lovely though and I like the small quad format.

Whew! My wallet has lost a little weight the last few weeks (it’s all good, I made up for that weight loss with the abundant consumption of awesome holiday goodies).

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! 🙂