GH Review: Redken All Soft Conditioner

Make-up Alley has been my go-to resource for product reviews for over five years now. I find the ratings are usually pretty dead-on and the search database for narrowing down age and skin or hair characteristics is great. But one mistake I've made a few times now is just to type in something like "Conditioner" and see what the product with the highest number of reviews and ratings is, expecting it to be my instant HG product.

Struggling with a Makeup-Buying Freeze

I'd like to be able to check in a couple of months later and report my great success with the makeup buying freeze that I announced in November, but unfortunately I've failed rather spectacularly. .

As I suspected, the many many caveats I put in place for myself turned into sneaky loopholes that got easier and easier to abuse.

The Lord is Testing Me -- Urban Decay "Oz the Great and Powerful" Pallettes

I saw this today on Musings of a Muse and felt instantly in lust.

I love when movies do tie-in makeup campaigns (as evinced by my Briar Rose blush purchase), but often it feels like colors in the brand's existing line are either re-labelled or just put together to "create" a look, rather than products being made specifically for the limited edition palette.

On first glance, it looks like Urban Decay's Oz palettes may be the ever-elusive latter.

According to Muse:

The palettes are centered around the two main characters of the movie, Glinda the Good Witch and Theodora. People’s Style Watch says that each palette will be $49 and comes with eight new, exclusive eye shadow shades (two of which are duos), a travel-size 24/7 Glide-On Pencil, an exclusive full-size Super-Saturated High Gloss Lip Color and a detailed get-the-look card.

 I like this a lot better than the NYX Dark Shadows Crimson Amulet palette from last year, which seemed like it would be a pain to lug around and looked like you'd be at risk for a lot of accidental mixing between the cream and powder products.

Either way, I'll try to stay strong.

Both palettes will come on the market this spring for $49.00 apiece.

GH Review: Batiste Original Dry Shampoo

I’ve put my hair through a lot of hell in the past few years. It’s been bleached, dyed and straightened past the point of reason. So in an effort to get my hair back to its old, full, curly health, I’ve tried using some slightly more natural products, particularly when it comes to shampoo, and I’ve tried to limit the number of times I wash it per week. But my hair is that particularly frustrating combination of dry on the bottom and oily on the top, which means that it’s hard to go several days without washing unless I want to have the worst kind of dingy triangle hair.