Urban Decay Box of Potions

Wow, I've really been falling back on posts the last couple of months...anyways, here's a quick little update. I bought box of potions what I think was a couple months back, but as I didn't have any imaging programs installed on my netbook, neglected to post my review here of the products in this kit. The Box of Potions retails for $65 and is available only at Sephora. Each item inside this set is full sized, making this a pretty good deal if you wanted to try out the products in this set. Unfortunately, most of the products in here were misses for me.


Pore Perfecting Primer: This one feels like a much thicker, less slick version of Smashbox's primer. It definitely does minimize the appearance of pores though..mine were pretty much invisible after using it. I don't think my foundation slid off at all when I tested this out, though I did find that my Shu brow pencil wouldn't really apply evenly on top of this..Additionally, I got the worst clogged pores from this product, which I still haven't fully resolved after a month and a half and my nightly cleansing ritual involves cleansing oil, washing my face again after, and toner (among other things). I'll stick to my Smashbox primer for now

Brightening: I should have retested this as far as lasting power goes since I wore a different foundation than I did with the Pore Perfecting primer since my powder foundation has never had super great lasting power, but I really didn't notice any brightening effects with this primer, so I left it alone. It's much less heavy feeling than the pore perfecting primer though, and also less thick. My powder foundation did go on smoothly over this, which was nice, but faded within a few hours, as usual.

UDPP: I accidently opened this when I was grabbing for the lash primer in a rush and got the primer instead, but it's got the newer angled wand. This product has been a staple in my makeup routine for 3 years now, and will probably stay one for a long long time.

Lip primer: I'm really impressed with this one. I tried this with one of MAC's Lustre formula lipsticks (Cute-ster) at around 5:20 AM and by 8:30 when I took my first break, there was still some lipstick left on me..although barely. Granted...I wasn't eating or drinking anything really, so I don't know how it really holds up against that, but MAC Lustres usually last like 20 minutes on me, so it's definitely working. It does seem to mattify the lipstick just a tad though. Once the color wears off, you have to wipe off your lips completely and reapply both the primer and the lip color, or the color won't apply evenly. I kind of felt like this left a slight film on my lips, as my lips felt weird after, but I am sensitive to sunscreens so that may have had something to do with it (this product has spf in it)

Lash Primer: I was not impressed with this at all, but I have stick straight asian lashes that point down slightly. This wilted my curl completely and made it ridiculously hard to recurl them after the mascara was on. It did lengthen a bit, but it gave no volume for me...actually I felt like my lashes looked more sparse after for some reason, possibly because it's not real good with separation on me. I have heard of other people liking this product though, so I guess it's one of those things you have to test yourself to decide whether or not you like it. Personally, I tend not to use lash primers anyways, though I have tried a couple, and I'd say there's definitely better primes out there.

All in all, I returned the set, though I did rebuy the lip primer for my MAC lustres. Price wise, it's a great set, but I personally didn't like the products in it. I'd recommend grabbing samples of the face primers in store if you wanted to test them out, but be warned that the pore perfecting primer can clog your pores.

Anyways, that concludes the review portion of today's updates. Here's a few things that will be coming up as updates in no particular order:
-Swatches of NARS Pleasures in Paris palette (Doucers de Paris)
-Swatches and Reviews of Global Goddess products
-Swatches and Reviews of a few Becca products (Demi-matte shadows, a couple of blushes, and bronzers)
-Swatches of theBalm blushes
-Review with some swatch involvement of Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy
-I also finally got around to ordering more Fyrinnae Inks, so I should end up with all of them except Ninja, since I really don't need another black liner

I also need to catch up on some topics I started but never finished, but we'll see how that goes. My free time's been cut into a lot recently, so I haven't really had the time to test and review products, but I'm working on it.