Saturday, April 16, 2011

Almay intense i-color in 401 smoky-i for browns



This week at CVS, there is a buy one get one 50% off special for all Almay products, and a $4 cashback for $10 purchase. I came across these Almay eyeshadow sets that come with a free mascara, I figured out it maybe worthwhile to give Almay a try and discover the world of American drugstore brand. 


Since I got a whole bunch of CVS coupons, they came out to be free after the discount (originally $7.49 each)


Since they don't make a palette for black eyes, I picked up the closest color, which is the smoky-i for brown eyes.





It contains 3 colors, a light beige for highlight, a shimmery purple, and a bronzy browns for smoky looks.

But it reminded me of a Dior holiday palette I own, which in 801 Warm Harmony. Don't the purple and bronze look really similar???




Now, moving to swatches. I notice this smoky-i isn't as pigmented as it looks. On the right it's a swatch on bare skin, and on the left it's applied with Urban Decay's portion primer. The colors show up much brighter with a primer.



As for the mascara itself, it has a HUGE brush head. I guess it's made for Americans with much bigger eyes. I find it hard to apply to my tiny Asian eyes with such a big brush head.



Comparing side by side with my Kiss Me Heroine Volume & Curl mascara brush head. It's almost twice the size!!!



Applying both mascara and eyeshadow on my own eyes.



The texture of the eyeshadow is ok. And the colors is extremely similar to the much expensive $40 Dior eyeshadow as well! Given this smoky-i only cost $5.62 with this week's pricing, it's a pretty darn good dupe of the Dior eyeshadow! However, I am not a big fan of their mascara, because not only it has a big brush head, my lashes doesn't look as long and separated (clean) as it should when I use Kiss Me Heroine or Majolica Majorca mascara. No wonder they are free, haha! I won't be buying Almay mascara in the future, now I know...

I don't think purples is that flattering for my skintones so I may have to toss it to the bottom of my shelves, aka the make up graveyard. I wish there is a place I can donate slightly used cosmetics!

6 comments:

Jie Jie said...

Thanks for sharing:) How does it compare with ELF and wet n wild?

Cutie Fishball said...

Is Almay available in Singapore?

I own wet and wild from sometime ago, and Almay texture is much better than wet and wild.

For ELF, I just bought their tools mainly, but there are bloggers that talk about them in their blogs. Lately I notice ELF have gift sets with tools and eyeshadows in a box hitting the shelves at Target.

Jie Jie said...

yup, I heard quite a few YT gurus raving about wet and wild and ELF, not so much on Almay. Nope, I don't think Almay is available here.

Cutie Fishball said...

ELF is rather inexpensive here. If you are interested, I can send you both Almay and ELF next time :) how's that?

What kind of eye shadow colors you like other than browns?

Jie Jie said...

pastel colours and wearable for work:)

Cutie Fishball said...

Pastel colors are always refreshing. Let me start to gather stuff around for you :) It's my pleasure to go shopping for you.

I used to like bright colors but I am more toned down now. I think both your taste and mine are similar so what I pick should work for you :)

actually some drugstore brands are not bad! Now that I start to look into some of them :)

If it works out, I am going to spend less on the make up part, and spend more on maintaining my skin, since I think at this point skincare is the way to go for my age!