beauty haul (warning: girly post)

i have succumbed to a premature disregard of my ban on "frivolous" things. being that i am a product junkie and have drawers full of barely touched lotions, makeup, and hair stuff, i told myself i wouldn't buy anything beauty-related for awhile. however, this week i broke that promise and bought the following items:



1. skinceuticals retinol 0.5 refining night cream ($40). after reading numerous positive reviews on this product, i decided to order it off amazon.com. it promises glowing, even skin and smaller pores, as well as being able to act as a blemish spot treatment. we'll see how well this product counteracts the effects of grad school stress after the recommended 6-week treatment plan.


2. jason vitamin k creme plus ($18). ok, so after all the late nights doing group projects and studying for retarded classes like partnership taxation, the dark circles under my eyes are pretty much permanent. thus, the natural, organic solution to broken capillaries, bruising, and hyperpigmentation: vitamin k is known to diminish the aforementioned problems, with jason being a leading brand in natural skincare products. man, the trouble i went through looking for this product - whole foods, central market, CVS, walgreens - only to find it at the vitamin shoppe.


3. milani wet/dry eyeshadow in "blackout" ($6). i saw this at CVS while searching for the above mentioned vitamin k creme. i'm still looking for my HG black eyeshadow, after my beloved lake moss bit the dust (the only place i've seen it is online, and i'm too cheap to pay $6 shipping for an $8 product). i remember reading about how milani eyeshadows are super pigmented (and cheap, to boot!) so i decided to give it a try. ehh... it's aight. i don't think it's MAC quality, but it'll do for those sporadic nights out when it's too dark for anybody to tell, anyway.


4. l'oreal voluminous naturale ($5). this is actually not the picture of the product, but close enough. apparently it's so new that the internet community has not yet had a chance to upload pictures of it. i saw this on my way to the cookie aisle at wal-mart. i took one look at the brush and went "Ooooh"... and that's how it ended up in my basket. it's got a brush similar to cover girl's lash exact, a perennial favorite of mine with the spikey plastic bristles. mascara is probably the one beauty item that i refuse to pay $20+ for. good hygiene dictates that mascaras be replaced every 2 months, and i follow this guideline closely... quite costly if i were to buy diorshow 6X / year.


5. you must be thinking, "what the hell is this?" well, it's an epistick ($4 + s/h). judging from the prefix, you probably figured out that it's some kind of skin torture device (thanks, japan!). you bend it into a U, twist the handles in and out, and it's supposed to remove hair from the root. it follows the same concept as threading, but without the thread. yeah, i dunno what i was thinking when i bought this - PURE impulse buy - but i suppose it shouldn't be that surprising considering i have a history of inflicting mass amounts of pain on myself through the process of hair removal.



6. and lastly, brush off makeup brush cleanser ($13.50). because my ULTA dupe that the SA recommended on a previous trip is a piece of shit.