Sydney Shop Girl

Confession Time: A Makeup Win and Several (Spendy) Losses.

There is such a thing as being too good a customer of Mecca Cosmetica.
Fortunately, the MeccaLand catalogue was heavy on unicorns and other things that did nothing for my ‘future shopping cart / wishlist’.
On the one hand, I love my Beauty Loop boxes hard because the samples are so generous.  
Look no sachets!!!!

But the problem is that there’s always something in my box that I feel obliged to buy.

I have an ominous in a good way feeling about this Urban Decay Hi-Fi shine lipgloss…

In addition to the boxes, Mecca make up artists are also spectacularly generous with their foundation sample pots.  All of which is preamble to explain why this post is about spendy foundation and how I managed to purchase two since the beginning of the year.  And I’m a person who has been Team Tinted Moisturizer since the year dot.  


After trying a sample of Too Faced ‘Born This Way’ liquid foundation ($57AUD for 30ml) from a recent Beauty Loop edit, I went in store to get colour matched and after several days of use from my sample decided to commit and purchase the full size.


Initial impressions
  • I just love the name! It’s a nod to Lady GaGa, it’s fun but you also can’t help but wink cheekily at yourself in the mirror as you uncap the bottle as part of your morning beauty prep.
  • Too Faced describe Born This Way as providing a luminous, natural finish.  It has no SPF but is oil free. I couldn’t detect any fragrance.
  • The pump dispenser is sturdy and the packaging in general looks a bit glamorous.  It’s also very sturdy and I love the combination of frosted glass, gold and black.
  • I’ve been wearing it over primer (Dr Barbra Sturm’s see below) and some Mecca SPF.  It needs the barest dusting of powder over the top to set.

Final thoughts
  • that column of impressive percentages do not lie and reflect my own experience of Born This Way. It does give my skin a lovely ‘blurred’ finish while also making it look natural in a perfect kind of way.  It wears well on my skin and there was no transfer throughout the day.
  • I’m very happy with Born This Way.  It is expensive but a relatively fair price for a product that performs as well as it does.  Definite repurchase.  A great product to enter the foundation world with.  
  • this is going to be a great foundation to wear through autumn and winter.  Firstly because of it’s wear time and secondly because of the subtle glow and sheen it gives my skin.  Winter is notorious to depleting me of both around the time I get my first cold of the season.

And now we move on to my less successful recent spendy beauty buys…  They’re doozies and I take on board your reflected outrage from down the ASDL cable.
I’m a bit embarrassed by how far off the mark (for me) the following spendy make up buys have been for me.  Sometimes it pays to not rock the boat too much or sail too far off course when you’ve found things that work for you (Hourglass basically).  But where would this blog be without the occasional makeup hall of shame reviews?
I’m still trying to reconstruct the chain of events that saw me spend around $200 on foundation and primer.  I went shopping for a concealer to replace my discontinued Eve Lom one. The Ellis Faas version was about the same price and it looked so sleek so I thought why not.  Then caution got thrown to the wind when I saw the foundation and the Sturm primer together on my skin under those infamous flattering make up mirrors at Mecca. I’ve given this foundation and primer combo a good go, about two months by my reckoning so my thoughts are final at this point.

Dr Barbara Strum Anti-Ageing Primer ($124AUD for 30ml) is very hydrating and a little goes a long way.  The problem is that it has no SPF and didn’t seem to do much for the appearance of my skin or the longevity of my makeup.  For $124 I was expecting a bit of shimmer at least but no dice.  The good thing, I suppose, is that I can continue using this as a stand alone moisturiser.  Silver linings.

Ellis Faas’ Skin Veil foundation ($106AUD!!! for 30ml) is beloved by the beauty blogging world. The problem being that the majority of the reviews I found were by young women in their twenties at the most. This is a beautiful product that promises a luminous all over glow but I actually need a bit of coverage and a whole lot of camouflage.  Neither or which I got.

In more detail:


Initial impressions

  • beautifully packaged in a slim frosted glass bottle with a pump dispenser
  • no fragrance and no SPF
  • thin liquid consistency that I found worked best with a makeup sponge
  • did look dewy when first applied and didn’t need powder to set
  • didn’t cover under eye circles to a significant degree
  • found it best applied with a makeup sponge.

Final thoughts

  • I found this foundation too sheer and the wear time very disappointing for the price.  I only got around 5 hours of wear from Skin Veil at best. And this was on days when I was in the climate controlled environment of work.
  • A bottle disappears fast when you’re working with fortysomething skin.  You need a good 2- 3 pumps of the dispenser to get decent coverage.
  • It would be too much of a waste to bin what I have left so I’m going to use it as a tinted moisturizer over my Hourglass Dim Light primer.

Moral of the story?  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

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