Hello Coralistas! It's been a while. I was on vacation and then I got lazy. Sorry about that.
But one thing I decided in my time off was that the 5 products thing wasn't working quite as well as I'd hoped. For one thing, there were times when I'd fall in love with a particular blush or mascara, and then found myself disappointed that I'd have to scrap it to move on to the next product. For another, it still made it quite easy to keep buying products while I was supposedly cleaning out my collection.
Instead, I'm going to do this: when I finish a product, I'll write a post. It lets me run through the things I love and you get a much more thoughtful review than you would with just a couple of weeks' worth of use. It also (hopefully) encourages me to stick to products I already own. Otherwise it'll be about 2 years before I can tell you about a new blush I bought.
Which brings me to my first empty product: a few days ago, I ran through the last of my Almay Smart Shade Primer. I bought this after using up all of my Stila One Step Correct Primer (which looks almost identical) because the $38 price tag was pretty steep for a product that I'd have to re-purchase every month or so.
The Almay is certainly cheaper but still not necessarily affordable as it ranges for between $16-18 in Canada, depending on where you shop.
Let's get something out of the way quickly: the two products aren't really comparable. Despite looking the same, Stila's primer is much thicker and, sadly, much more effective. But at more than half the price, it's a bit of an unfair battle for Almay.
So just reviewing Almay on its own, here were my thoughts: