Two-Minute Reviews: CoverGirl Eyeshadow Palette, Physicians Formula Healthy Glow, Smashbox Heartbreaker
Two-Minute Reviews: CoverGirl Eyeshadow Palette, Physicians Formula Healthy Glow, Smashbox Heartbreaker
The concept behind two-minute reviews is mostly products that I photographed, swatched, but I never ended up reviewing. Rather than just bury the photos into the “Unlikely to Review” folder and never let them see the light of day, I decided that perhaps a quickie review was better than no review at all… Let me know if you’d rather a quickie review than no review 🙂
CoverGirl Vibrant Browns (#700) Eyeshadow Palette ($7.49) is a palette that features four shades of eyeshadow: a softened, matte black with glitter overlay, subdued blue-toned sheer gray with silver sheen, muted copper with orange-gold shimmer and frost finish, and an incredibly sheer white with sheen. The colors are all on the sheerer side, and the shadows themselves just don’t grab me. I think one or two more muted shades might work, but these altogether just don’t. I find the gold too warm to work with the coolness of the black and gray. Quick Rating: C-
Physicians Formula Healthy Glow Shimmer Strips ($11.95) reminded me of Bobbi Brown’s Shimmerbricks. Healthy Glow is a gradation of light, icy pink to a muted raspberry pink. The colors are better used together rather than alone, as individually, they’re not very pigmented. Together, they create a lightened raspberry with a frosty white sheen. This is great for those with closer-to-flawless skin, because it’s pretty and shimmery–but if you have larger pores, the high frost finish will accentuate them. For a drugstore blush, though, the price is a little steeper than I’d like to see. Quick Rating: B
Smashbox Heartbreaker Collection looked super cute in the promos, but I wasn’t loving it when I saw some of the pieces in person. In fact, I loved the actual box packaging infinitely more than the product packaging! The boxes are cute with doodles and polaroids on it–just sweet and fitting for the theme. The shiny white plastic makes it look and feel on the cheap side, and Smashbox really isn’t a cheap brand. I tend to think of Smashbox as more of a mid-to-high end brand. I tried three products: Starlight Fusion Soft Lights ($30), Rollerball Lip Gloss ($21), and Liquid Liner Pen ($24). I reviewed the eyeliner previously, but I never got around to the other two products. Despite looking rather vibrant in the pan, Starlight is a very soft, lightened raspberry sorbet with a soft champagne sheen. It didn’t show up very well on my medium skin tone, so I wasn’t never driven to wear it in a look (hence this quickie review!). Quick Rating: C+
The Rollerball Lip Gloss was very much the same — it’s clear gloss with icy white shimmer. It’s very slightly pink tinged, but on lips, it looks clear. I also felt like the Rollerball packaging made me feel like I was using Bonne Bell (which is fine… if I’m paying Bonne Bell prices!). Quick Rating: C-
See product photos & swatches!
I like quikie reviews better than now reviews at all! Keep doing them please!
This!
i agree 🙂 this is definately better than nothing Christine 🙂
Covergirl shadows seem to always disappoint me now. I bought a lot of the Blast quads, trios and singles (no testers were in the store) and half of them were way to sheer for looking like insane bright colours and some of them were flaky. I think I just got spoiled with how bright and wonderful mineral makeup is, that the drugstore stuff just doesn’t measure up anymore 🙂
Thanks for the quickie reviews! Definitely useful. =)
I tend to think of things from your side. You have so much and even though there’s no promise to review, it seems so useless to have all these products and not say at least something even if not a full review. I dont mind the mini reviews at all.
Thanks, Deedee 🙂
Quick reviews are great!
I really loved the Smashbox softlights, but I’m also really pale so it stands out more on me and wears pretty well. The drugstore blush looks kinda nice too…not so much on the eyeshadow though. I like the idea of a small review better than no review at all! Thanks for the review! =)
I personally feel that quickie reviews are better than no reviews at all! Your short reviews are still fabulous and really useful, especially with the swatch pictures.
I’m definitely choosing quickie reviews over no reviews 🙂 They’re short and snappy, but they really get to the point — I like ’em!
I would definitely rather have a quickie review than no review at all. I’ve been really curious about Smashbox’s Heartbreaker collection since I first read about it online a few months ago. The closest Sephora stores from my home are all an hour away, so I do most of my cosmetics shopping online. I rely very heavily on your photos, swatches and reviews for my make-up purchases, so I really appreciate this! You just saved me $30 with your Smashbox Soft Lights swatches (because now I don’t really want it), and your photos were very, very helpful when I was deciding whether to order UD’s Alice in Wonderland palette (I did, and I loooooove it). Thanks!
Thanks, Katie! I appreciate your input 😀
Definitely loving the quick reviews, especially if the items were not going to get reviewed at all 🙂
This is a really good idea! Don’t stop 🙂
A big fat YES to the quickie reviews!
Love the quickie reviews! Very to the point, which is nice because I’m not a big review reader and have a tendency to skip to photos or read the summary portions. So short and sweet reviews are my thing 😛
I love the idea of the quick reviews Christine! Please do more of them, it’s definitely better than no review at all.
love these quickie reviews, they are straight to the point. please continue to do these. (:
love this new “2-minute” review concept. i love reading any and all reviews of products. keep ’em coming and thanx for all your hard work in doing what u do for your readers all in the name of beauty 😉
Hmmm…the shimmer strips look exactly like The Body Shop’s Shimmer waves. Same color, design and packaging.
other shades of the shimmer bricks are much nicer. the more golds and browns are really great. I feel like prices at the drugstore are going up across the board. Maybe it’s the trend toward carrying mid and higher end brands in drugstores that are making your typical drugstore brands try to step up their game?
I like the idea of the quickie reviews! 🙂
I completely agree with you regarding Smashbox. I feel as if they are a way overpriced drugstore brand in their products and what they put out. In fact, they are exactly that. Max Factor sold in higher end markets.
I actually like a lot of their products, but this release felt like that to me!
love this two minute reviews thing…regular feature?
I love the quickie reviews!
Thanks for the review!
I appreciate the mini reviews, please do them as you see fit.
I love quickie reviews! You went through the hard work of taking pictures and trying the products, so a quick review is definitely better than nothing!
Maybe sad to say, but I actually like the looks of the Cover Girl quad. The third shade is gorgeous!
Love the quickies! Some days I can’t be bothered reading an entire post, and I just skip to the summary & look at a few swatches. I like the new changes (Quickies, Love It/Leave It, full face lip photos). Keep up the great work!
Definitely like the quickie reviews!
i like the concept of quick reviews, but for some products i appreciate extended reviews, as you did before.
Quick Reviews are great!!
I think I’d rather than a mini review than no review at all. It seems like you never did a formal review of these products because you didnt like them very much, judging by the reviews. and I know it’s more fun to talk about something you love rather than something you are meh about, but it makes your reviews look more balanced. Plus I check your site twice a day. I like lots of updates haha.
It’s more or less that they didn’t grab me so I never did a full testing of them, which is why I’m always a bit hesitant to review. Or I got distracted by the 129847124 other products that came out and these ended up getting “old.” Wish I had more time!
Quiclie review shud be fine..at leastw e get to see some quality pictures and if you have swatched them probably that too. Drugstore items don’t have testers, so if you have any of them for your reveiws, always welcome!!
Great job on the quickie reviews… you must really love what you’re doing – and I admire you for that! 🙂
Just a suggestion on these kinds of reviews, maybe you can keep an order for those? Like, “Quickie Review: New Drugstore Shadows” or “Quickie Review: Cheaper Brushes” or “Quickie Review: Maybelline Colorsensational Lipsticks” so that they will be organized (instead of random products put together on one post), so that the readers will know what to expect. But of course, if it’s going to make life so much harder for you, I’d rather have the original format than none at all 🙂
Again, great job Christine! I love how Temptalia’s developed over the past weeks 😉 (Spring/Summer lipsticks, Love/Leave It, now Quickie Reviews!)
Hey Iliana,
It’s kind of what I have on hand, so it’s not quite categorized even on my end! They tend to be products I photographed, swatched, and planned to review… but generally didn’t excite me or wowed me enough to get around to review. It’s like you see all the cute and fun products that are new and pretty and some other stuff starts paling in comparison – that’s kind of what these products often are! 🙁 If I loved it, I would have reviewed it straight away, lol!
This quickie review idea is pretty awesome 🙂 I really enjoyed this post
Love those quickies, Keeep them comming!
Love the quickie reviews! Of course I love the regular reviews too.
I have a Physicians Formula shimmer brick in a different color and wear it like I would my Bobbi Brown shimmer brick. A little goes a long long way. And this or the Wet N Wild shimmers are good starters before jumping into more costly shimmers.
Smashbox products.. I think my time playing with this line is done. I have noticed a decline in product consistancy and find their shadows to be powdery and with very little pay off lately. Bummed, because I used to love this line. But will continue to use Halo and shadow liners (in the pots not the duos).
I like their permanent line quite a bit, but their last release left me sad!
What about the Heartbreaker eye palettes? They are great! I tried Kiss N Tell during a Smashbox workshop here in Malaysia and I love the colors! Did an EOTD on it too. 🙂
I didn’t try those — sorry!
No worries! 🙂
I wish I’d seen the review of the Smashbox Rollerball gloss. I spent $20 on a gloss I thought would be easy to apply, but it’s not that much easier, and the quality of the gloss (never mind the color) was bad. Really worth $3.
Aww 🙁 It’s like I don’t do it right away, because I *do* want to review it in full, but then better/more exciting stuff comes along, so I work on that, and then I look at the date and it’s 2 months later! I’ll try to gauge some of the products I photograph/swatch and see if I can put out quickie reviews on those I don’t think I’ll get around to…
I can see why you didn’t do full reviews of these lol, but I’m glad to see the quickie reviews and pics 🙂
definitely a quickie review better than no review at all, i enjoyed this!
I definitely like the two minute review idea! A short review is great, especially on products that aren’t too interesting to write about in detail. Thanks!