Makeup Withdrawal

Showing posts with label Pigment Pressing. Show all posts

Generic Value Products Silk Treatment Review

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

What a great find! I was trying to find a good pressing medium for my self made eyeshadows and a quick google search led me to a few different sites and videos that all recommended that Biosilk was a great alternative to CoastalScents.com's EZ Prez Medium. Which if you remember, I disliked because the packaged leaked like crazy and I wasn't too thrilled about the oil layers that separated within 2 minutes of being initially shaken. The ingredients of GVP's Silk Treatment are exactly the same as Biosilk, but I guess in slightly different proportions because it is a bit thicker. Now, I like the Biosilk dupe just fine, a few drops is all I need for making the dry ends of my hair feel ridiculously smooth yet not oily. I like pressing pigments with it as well, the thicker formula makes for less mess! EZ Prez Medium has fewer ingredients, but the GVP dupe has the same ones and more- fragrance and preservatives. Preservatives, yuck- you say? Not so fast, those dreaded parabens allow the formula to suspend its ingredients evenly. I'm not too worried because I'm using such a small amount, a couple drops per eyeshadow pan and the pay off is fantastic. Not to mention the price! 6oz for about 6 bucks with my Sally Beauty Supply card, what a deal! The medium is about 10 bucks for 2 oz and Biosilk is 13 for about 2.5 oz. I feel like I'm paying for an actual product instead of a fancy sleek bottle. After all, isn't that what matters the most?

DIY Mineral Makeup

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Ok, so I haven't posted in a about a week, but with good reason. A week ago, I got my orders from CoastalScents.com and TKBTrading.com. It was better than Christmas. I had ordered an EZ Eyeshadow kit from TKB as well as some samples of mica to supplement it (various metallics and neutrals). I also bought some 12 slot empty magnetic 26mm eyeshadow palettes (and smaller slotted ones to fill up as presents!) from CS, empty 5g jars and shrink wrap (the professional in me demanded quality packaging even if the recipients are my friends and family) from TKB and other odds 'n' ends.

The point being is that in the past week, I've been so busy playing alchemist that I haven't even noticed the time fly. I even ordered some more stuff immediately, so that I would have plenty to play with.
I can't help but say great things about both TKB and CS. TKB amazed me with the eyeshadow kit, I'll be honest, for $19 I wasn't expecting much. But it came with a ton of mica, so much that even though I've made roughly 15 colors of about a tablespoon each of powder, I'm no where close to running out. $19 dollars for the ability to customize my eyeshadow colors? I'll take that, thank you very much. On top of the great price, the mineral eyeshadow I made was so so so good, I'll have to bust out the thesaurus to properly declare my love for it. The color payoff is unbelievable. I don't understand why most of the mineral eyeshadow colors I see play it safe with 'gentle' shades. The colors I formulated almost made my eyeballs pop out, that's how vivid they are. Great staying power but the consistency still needs a little work- I'll have to tweak the ingredients a bit. However, used wet the shades are simply beyond stunning.
I made a really good dupe of MAC Vanilla (which saves me a ton of money because I use it so often!) and made a few colors that were really similar to some MAC pigments that I had. Think about it: if you even match two MAC colors, you've already paid for your purchase. You can find a video on how to match colors on the TKB site.

I also bought a bottle of EZ Prez Pressing Medium from Coastal Scents to press all my creations. I liked the formulation, it left my homemade mineral shadows very smooth. It's important to use a medium with silicone to bind mineral makeup together, or else it ends up dull and flakes easily. However, with pigments such as those from MAC, you can just use rubbing alcohol. What I didn't like is that when I got the pressing medium, it had spilled quite a bit out of the bottle (about 1/4 of the product) and into the bag it was in and quite messy. The spilled medium even dissolved the lettering on the label of the bottle, pretty freaky. The bottle is also hard to use, you end up spilling and leaking more of the fluid than you actually end up using. Crappy. I'll buy some from a different company next time. Here's the colors I made (the photo with the named colors) and some of my old MAC and Chanel colors that I depotted/mixed/pressed.