Update on Project UIOLI

I'm halfway through Project Use It Or Lose It (the two week mark), so I thought I'd do a bit of an update. I have to admit, this past week I haven't been wearing much makeup as I've been sleeping badly and getting up late, so for a few days it was just tinted moisturiser and a swipe of mascara. However, on the days I have worn makeup I have stuck faithfully to only using the items from Project UIOLI.

Project 'Use It or Lose It'

I've done a bang up job of reducing my stash in the past few months by either selling, giving away or throwing out a ton of stuff. I don't own near as much as I did this time last year - in fact probably less than a quarter. Way less. However, I still have a tendency to just head to the same products over and over each day and there is quite a bit that is hovering around being ignored.

Therefore, I've decided to undertake what I call Project Use It or Lose It. For the next four weeks I am going to use only these products (as colour, still using my same foundations and concealers as always as I don't have any of those being particularly neglected). If after the four weeks is up I don't love the products, or I'm likely to shove them back in a drawer and forget them again, I'll get rid of them. If I do love them, they can go in the regular rotation and I'll make sure I use them. So here are my products for use for the next month (the links are to swatches and/or reviews if I have them)...

Tag: My 11 Most Reached For Products

 
This was a tag I stole from Jade's video, but she tagged anyone who wanted to do it, so I'm doing it!

It wasn't too hard to pick 11 items, as I've been pretty much using the same stuff over and over lately. I have moved right away from my usual greens, purples and pinks and embraced neutral/nude eyeshadows. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that I'm getting on a bit and my eyelids are more hooded than they used to be (boo-urns), but mainly because it's still dark when I'm getting ready in the mornings and the lighting in my house is shite - everywhere. I just don't have the light I need to be able to apply coloured eyeshadows carefully enough. If I'm a bit half-arsed with neutrals (as I often am), it's not really noticeable.

Anyway, blah blah blah - on to my list. I haven't included any skincare or perfumes as I chop and change those a lot and don't have any real go to favourites at the moment.

ELF Brightening Eye Color Quad in Luxe

I've been sick since last weekend and today is the first day I've felt vaguely human again. Needless to say I haven't been wearing any makeup - in fact I'm lucky if I've managed to wash my face. It's - uh - probably been a couple of days...

The ELF Quad in Luxe is one of the ones I tested early last week and hadn't gotten around to posting yet. I found these eyeshadows to be very powdery - they go everywhere when you try to pick them up with a brush. They don't blend all that well - everything seems to moosh into one shade rather than keeping the disparate colours. The creamy yellow colour is useless - chalky and virtually invisible.

My ELF collection - part two (pic heavy)

The blushes and lip products are what I mostly like when it comes to ELF - the majority of their eye products are a bit meh.

Luscious Liquid Lipsticks

Bark, Cherry Tart, Pink Lemonade, Baby Lips.

 
I love these - for $1US, you can't go wrong. The colours are sheer and don't last a hugely long time, but I find that with any lip gloss. They have a twist up doodad that releases product via the sponge, like Stila Lip Glaze does with the brush. I've reviewed them before - you can read that here if you're interested.

My ELF collection - part one (pic heavy)

ELF, or e.l.f. or elf, or however you like to write it, has not been easily available in Australia in the past - the US site doesn't ship here. I discovered yesterday that we now have an Australian ELF website, though it's kind of rubbish. Actually, there's no "kind of" about it - it's rubbish. The range is very limited, and the prices - while they may seem super cheap at $3.99 for most products - are almost four times the price of the same item in the US, so it's still the same old gouging going on. You can also buy ELF from Crush Cosmetics, but again the prices are jacked way up and the range is fairly limited. I usually buy mine from Nonpareil Boutique, whose range is getting bigger and bigger all the time.

The thing about ELF is that it's extremely hit and miss. Some products are great (for the price they are, at least), and others are just crap. It's trial and error finding which is which. Anyway, blah blah blah - let's look at some pictures. I was going to do this in one mega post, but it's a bit too much so I'm breaking it up into two.

e.l.f. Mineral Lipsticks

 

 I bought two of the e.l.f Mineral Lipsticks a while back from Nonpareil Boutique, and after oohing and aahing over them for a minute or so, they were chucked in the fridge with all of my other lipsticks and pretty much forgotten about. I happened across them last week while looking for something else, so I thought it was time to bring them out and give them a run through. 

For some reason I've really been into nudes lately, which are not normally my thing. Just like the neutral eyeshadows I've been using almost exclusively for the last month or so, nude lipsticks are a great "lazy" makeup. You can just swipe it on and look like someone owns you. The e.l.f Mineral Lipsticks are pretty cheap - $5.25 from Nonpareil (which is the only place that ships e.l.f. internationally, as far as I know).

The two colours I bought are called Pouty Petal and Nicely Nude, and though they look different in the tubes, they look very similar on the lips, and you probably don't need to own both of them. But hey, there's no such thing as too many lipsticks, right? 

 

This is Noodles holding them up outside in natural light (the picture at the beginning of this post was taken with a flash in my bedroom, which tends to be quite dark). Check out the nail polish - reminds me of that little mushroom thing in Mario Kart! Nicely Nude is on the left, and Pouty Petal is on the right. It was a really overcast day when I took these pictures, and my house - which is one of those single front terrace houses that doesn't have a lot of windows is dark at the best of times, so I couldn't get any really good swatch pics. This was the best I could do: 

This was taken indoors with a flash. That's Pouty Petal on the left, and Nicely Nude on the right. I think... man, these colours are similar! Noodles also modelled both for me. She's such a  little trooper!

Pouty Petal in natural outside light:

Nicely Nude in natural outside light: 

The lipsticks feel nice and smooth, and apply easily, though as you can see they tend to show up the lines in your mouth, especially Nicely Nude, so if your lips are not perfect, you need a lip balm underneath. They don't last a huge amount of time, but that's never a factor for me - I've yet to find a lipstick that doesn't wear off my lips within an hour or so. 

There isn't really anything outstanding about these lipsticks, but there's nothing terrible about them either. They're certainly not a must have, but they're nice enough to add to one's collection. 

Lol, that was a bit of a nothing review, wasn't it? Has anyone tried these lipsticks? What did you think of them?

Review: ELF Liquid Lipstick

A few weeks ago when I got my tax return, I decided to have a teeny splurge at Nonpareil (who currently have 20% off everything, by the way), even though there was absolutely nothing I needed, and not even anything I was really craving. But I haven't bought any makeup products since May, and I just wanted to buy something. Enter ELF Liquid Lipsticks.  At $1.10US each, it satisfied my need to spend some money without making much of a dent in my bank account. I also bought a couple of Milani eyeliners, but I'll talk about those in another post.

They're not really a lipstick at all - they're a lip gloss. The packaging is similar to the Stila Lip Glazes, except it has a sponge-tip applicator rather than a brush. The formula is nice as lip glosses go - not too sticky, not too wet. They don't last long, but what gloss does? Noodles has kindly agreed to be my lip model for swatch purposes, but as she has quite pigmented lips (as do I), it's hard to tell much difference between the colours, so I've included an arm swatch as well for a better look. I think I did the font too small on the pictures too. D'oh!

The surprising appearance of ELF!

Back in November, I went in on a group ELF order with my friends Steggers and Makeup BFF J. They don't deliver outside the US, so Steggers had it sent to her friend in Los Angeles, to then be forwarded to us.

Well. What a drama! It took ages to get to Steggers' friend, and then it turned out that if she just slapped a different address on it and posted it on, it would cost us a squabillion dollars in postage (it was very heavy - Steggers went a bit crazy buying things), so the poor girl had to then mess about at the post office trying to get an international flat pack box that would fit everything, and by that time it was heading to Christmas, so you can imagine the queues in the PO. Ugh. But she got it sorted and sent it on, and then... nothing.

We waited and waited, and eventually decided that it had been lost somehow by either Australia Post or customs. Then a couple of weeks ago Steggers' friend contacted her and told her that the parcel had been sent back to her! And it looked as though it had never left the States. Where on earth had it been floating around all that time? She re-sent everything and we received it late last week, with only a set of brushes missing. We were pretty chuffed by that, because we thought we'd lost the whole lot.

And the lesson for today is: never ask someone from another country to send you something you can't get shipped directly to you because it turns out that is way too much to ask of anyone. That's what parcel services are for.

On the bright side, I now have shiny new things to play with, and I was surprised by how happy I was with it all - I wasn't expecting much for $1-$3US each per item!