We need to discuss something.
Look, I'll put bees and snails on my face. We've gone over this. I drew the line at placenta, right? Remember this? Well, I found another product sample I won't put on my face.
For some reason, this freaks me out even more than the placenta, which doesn't make any sense, considering I couldn't even determine where the placenta came from. At least I know this is horse derived. I mean, I don't know which horse, but that's still more information than some nebulous placenta. According to some very official internet source, the horse isn't harmed in the making of horse oil products, but it still really skeeves me. I mean, did they have to put horses on the actual package?
Speaking of, at some point it occurred to me that I didn't know how the snail or bee products are made either. Granted, snails and bees are not exactly companion animals, but I still started to stress that bees were dying by the bushel in order for me to be ideally moisturized, so I wrote to one of the vendors. She reassured me that neither bees nor snails were harmed: "The snail secretion is collected via mechanical agitation, filtered, and then purified. Experts collect bee venom by placing a pane of glass alongside a hive and running a weak electrical current through it, which encourages the insects to sting the surface." So while it sounds like these little guys might be slightly annoyed by the process, at least they're not injured! Which leads to my next question: How does one become an expert bee venom collector?
Another sample that I did try was a bubble mask. I don't remember the brand, but these things are pretty ubiquitous. Basically you rub it on like a normal mask and then over the next ten minutes it starts bubbling into a foam. It was horrible! Yeah, speaking of snails and bees, this stuff actually felt like there were snails and bees futzing around on my face.
I lasted about three minutes before I washed it all off, and felt itchy all day. Can't you tell how thrilled I am? I feel itchy now just thinking about it! Plus the next few days my face was so angry with me. Thumbs down! On the plus side I'd just gotten my eyebrows threaded and DON'T THEY LOOK AMAZING?
What else?
Oh, total bummer. I got super excited about a "gel-like" (don't know who I'm quoting) nail polish and it was just as bad if not worse than Sally Hansen. I refuse to believe that there is no product out there similar to gel manicures. I have come to terms with the fact that there won't be anything AS GOOD AS a salon gel manicure, but I still have hope there is something decent out there! The one I tried this time is called Nails, Inc., which in hindsight seems like a really good clue that it wasn't going to be any good. "Let's make a nail polish!" "We totally should! What should we call it?" *long silence* "Nails ... Inc...?" "BRILLIANT!" I will say that the color was pure perfection. It's this grayish, nudish, pinkish:
STOP MAKING FUN OF MY NAIL-PAINTING SKILLZ! You can see, though, it's a great color, I'd say a smidge shinier than regular polish, but it lasted unchipped exactly one day.
Lighting was hard to replicate of course, but you can see several chips. Boo. But I'll keep looking! Sheryl sent me this article, and I also found this one on Buzzfeed, so chip away at the list (hahaha omg I didn't, I totally did).
Lipstick! Is anyone else all over this liquid lipstick trend? That makes zero sense because none of them are liquid? They're all more like mushy lipstick. Like when it melts and you have to mush it back into the tube. Or drop it behind the toilet and squash the whole thing, not that I know anyone who has done that. But anyway, I bought this one in Copenhagen because I'm sure I saw someone wear something like it on TV and wanted to pretend I had somewhere fancy to wear it.
It's really matte, really dark, and really highly pigmented. I just love it! NYX products have totally proven themselves to me. They are notoriously cheap but I've been really pleasantly surprised by most of their stuff. The only things I really didn't like where a lavender tinted concealer and a little gel liner pot. The concealer made my skin look even more sallow, but then I think it was less that it was a bad product and more that I just wasn't using it for the right purpose. The gel liner, however, just smudged way too easily. But anyway, I even tested the lip cream (their term, not might) by having a snack, to see if it wore off. I was psyched to find it hadn't worn off at all, but then I realized I'd snacked on a big bowl of cherries, so ... data compromised.
Ok last one. New face stuff. I swear, I am using up old face stuff before I buy new face stuff (80% true). I read this review about these two Sunday Riley products you can use in tandem, and waited a few days, read a little more, and bit the bullet. Why do I always try to justify myself? Is it for you guys or for me? This time is probably more for me, because it is pricey. AND I LOVE IT. Worth it. Luna is a nighttime oil with retinol, and potent enough that you are not supposed to wear it in the sun (thus, nighttime), and there is actually a warning not to use it if you're pregnant. Yeah I'm not an expert but that sounds pretty potent. The Good Genes is essentially lactic acid. Not sure what any of this means but I like them a lot.
HOWEVER!
They smell SO BAD. OMG so bad. Like the Good Genes is bad, like a bathroom cleaner they tried to mask with citrus. But the Night Oil. I don't even have words. Wait, no, I don't even have the smell capabilities. Taste buds for the nose. Nose buds? What I mean is it smells so bad, and yet I can't think of anything to compare it to. It's not like your every day, run of the mill, rotten egg smell or something. It's not even like it's this horrible smell that I just can't place. It's a brand new horrible smell. There's nothing else like it. My entire world has changed. I thought about it for a couple weeks and the best analogy I could come up with is if you took play dough, mixed it with strong black tea, packed it away in a damp cellar for three years, then opened it back up and swirled it in cough syrup. That's the best I can do. Of course once you use that you're dying for some of the citrus bathroom cleaner smell to cover it up. Oh, also it's blue. Blue oil that smells like musty mushroom trolls and can harm a fetus? ABSOLUTELY. But no horse oil.
AAAAND end scene.
