Looks like the Milani website has updated for the new year with new products!!  I love Milani as it’s truly one of the better drugstore brands out there compared to the old heavyweights like Covergirl/Maybelline!  I had noticed that Walgreens was discontinuing some products from the Milani line like the mineral makeup, one of the lip glosses, the blushes and other things.

A light weight mineral based foundation with a built in primer that will not clog pores and allows the skin to breathe.

This silicone based formula delivers a silky smooth finish, evens out skin tone, minimizes pores and diminishes the appearance of fine lines for a more youthful looking skin. Enriched with Vitamins A & E and Jojoba Esters. Oil Free, Talc Free, Paraben Free & Free of FD&C dyes.

Available in 10 shades.

Funny, the site only shows 6 shades. Where are the other 4?

An expertly matched lipstick and lipgloss in one convenient compact with a slide out mirror. Three different looks can be achieved by wearing them alone or together to create a pretty pair of lips.

Formulated with Shea Butter, Avocado Oil, Jojoba Seed Oil and Vitamins A & E for conditioning and improving the lips elasticity.

Available in 8 perfectly paired shades.

Lips will gleam with this extraordinary high shine, deliciously fragranced lip gloss that delivers a smooth and precise application with its easy to use slanted tip applicator.

For moisturized and smooth lips this gloss was formulated with Honey Extracts, Cranberry Seed Oil & Jojoba Seed Oil and enriched with Vitamins A & E.

Available in 9 nourishing shades.

Three playful social shades of color, shine and shimmer are expertly matched to create one dynamic lip gloss color.

The ultimate multi-dimensional shine is achieved when all three layers are mixed together. Contains reflective pearls, high shine polymers & conditioning color.

Available in 6 reflecting shades.

I haven’t seen any of these products at Walgreens, Target or Kmart yet. I’m eager to see how the Mousse and Lip Mixer gloss will turn out! Have you seen these at your local stores yet?

I didn’t have to be all ninja and take the pics in the store this time, there was no one around and when an employee passed by me, they didn’t care I was taking pics!

Here’s what’s on the shelves at the beginning of the new year:

Ahhh, I really want to try these!

It was BOGOF (buy 1 get 1 free) at Rite Aid/Walgreens this week for Revlon but I opted to buy from Rite Aid instead. Revlon Colorstay foundation is $12.99 there while Walgreens sells for $12.49. I’d rather get from Rite Aid as they won’t hassle you when you return makeup where as Walgreens will since it’s all up to the store manager if they wanna refund you.

I decided to purchase this foundation after watching Fafinettex3’s review on Youtube.  She’s an NC40, which is the same shade I am in MAC.  I wanted to find a lower cost dupe to MAC Studio Fix foundation.  Her review says that Revlon Colorstay is a pretty good dupe.  It also helped that we are the same shade so I saved myself the trouble of trying to figure out which shade to buy.  I got Natural Tan.

I’m not going to do a full review right now on the foundation as I don’t think I’ve worn it enough to merit one yet.  I’ve only worn it twice so far.  Maybe after wearing 5 times, I’ll do a review.

Anyhow, the one thing I noticed when I was reading reviews prior to buying this foundation was the lack of a pump on the bottle.  It’s damn annoying there isn’t one.  I agree that pouring it out of the bottle is wasteful, especially when you are using a brush and not your fingers.  I tried pouring a little on the back of my hand to blend.  Yuck.  Awful mess.  So, I started using on of my paint palettes from my doll customizing stuff.  A little better but I ended up pouring a little too much and fuck, that was a waste.

I read on someone’s blog (can’t remember who) that they had purchased some Colorstay foundation at Big Lots right before Xmas.  OH YEAH!  I do recall seeing bottles at my local Big Lots so I went and checked it out.  Sure enough, they had $6 bottles of the current line of Colorstay!  Only problem was, they didn’t have my color.  The closest I came to my color was Early Tan.  Dammit!

Went to another Big Lots.  No dice.  They didn’t have any bottles of foundation.  Today, I drove to another Big Lots a little ways from my house.  Score!  Not only did they have Revlon Colorstay foundation, they had it with A PUMP and $2 cheaper!

When I looked at the packaging closely, I realized that this must have been an older formula that Revlon put out long time ago.  It didn’t have that SoftFlex stuff.  It’s also more liquidy than the current formula.  But it still works fine,…so far.  I only applied to half my face to make sure it was still a good match for my skin.

Now, the real reason why I bought this $4 discontinued bottle of foundation:  I wanted to see if the pump would work with the new formula version.  To be honest, I can’t tell right now because I have to remove all the foundation on the pump straw and clean it up before I can stick it in the other bottle.  Don’t want to mix the 2 foundations, ya know?

As soon as I do this, I will definitely blog about it.  If it does work, I am so going to buy another bottle, regardless of what color and just use it for the pump.  Then I won’t have to worry about pouring the foundation out of the bottle.

Edit: I went ahead and tried to see if the pump would work with the newer bottle.  Nope.  DAMMIT!

All the pics taken with my camera phone.  This was at Walgreens.  It’s the new Maybelline Dream Liquid Mousse.  They have a huge display of new Maybelline products.  What was neat was for this foundation, they had actual sample testers for you to try out!  I’ve never seen them do that at Walgreens before!  I have no idea how much this is as they had just put up the display.

I sampled the one I’m holding and the foundation is extremely light in texture.  Heh, really like mousse.  It blends in well into the skin.

All the Rite Aids in Memphis have pretty much cleared out the stash of Jesse’s Girl products they had over the summer.  This is the first new product I’ve seen them put up on the shelves.  They are eyeshadows.  No idea on price as there was none listed.

Also at Rite Aid, new Jane Sheer Tinted Moisturizer.  It comes in SPF 30.  Again, no idea on the price.  I tested a little on the back of my hand.  It seemed to blend well and also sink in pretty fast.

From PJ and me (JoAnn), we hope y’all are having a fun and safe Christmas today!

LOL!  I love the term that Judy came up with when taking pictures secretly in stores:  Ninja shooting!  I’d been encouraging her to take more pictures when she’s out and about shopping in Tokyo and beyond!

So, I recently did more ninja shooting of my own a few days ago.

At Walgreens, they are not going to carry the Prestige Cosmetics line anymore.  I was really surprised to see the entire makeup stand covered with the orange stickers.  I asked an employee and she confirmed that they wouldn’t be carrying it anymore.  Sad as I do use a couple of the products from this line.  I love the waterproof kohl eyeliners!

At Big Lots, they got more stuff from the Essential Tools line (same company that makes Ecotools).  This is a brow kit for $5!  Not bad!

Big Lots got a bunch of Sally Hansen lip glosses on closeout from Walgreens.  There were original price stickers from Walgreens on the back of the glosses.    They are quite a deal but if you look at them closely in person, they look rather…expired.  The glosses look like they are either drying up or separating in the tubes.

There are still more pics that I wanted to take but there were just too many people filling up the aisles for holiday shopping.  I have no qualms about taking pics in stores but it’s annoying as hell when you get bumped in the process of shooting.

I was reading the lastest copy of Allure magazine while I was at Walmart earlier and I came across an interesting product they mentioned as a “hot buy”.

This is the Casio Exlim EX-Z300. I honestly don’t like Casio cameras.   I think they are kinda flimsy and don’t produce truly sharp images as other brands do.  My brother had a Casio a couple of years ago and it was a complete POS!   Anyhow,  the article I read pointed out a very interesting feature on this model.

It has a “Make-up Feature”! Here’s a quote from the website explaining what this is:

“Now I always have a Makeup Artist on set!“

You had the perfect outfit on and smiled just right, but there’s just that one thing you wish you could polish. Well now you can. With the new Make-up Function, simply use the LCD monitor to quickly touch up your photos. It’s like having your own stylist, but without the arguments. The EX-Z300 is equipped with the “Make-up button” that allows effects to be applied with one touch.

From another site explaining it further:

The function recognizes faces in a scene to optimize focus and exposure. It makes the skin look smoother in the picture and softens shadows on the face cast by sunlight with the use of an image processing technology. Users can shoot pictures while checking the effect of the function on the LCD screen. The EX-Z300 is equipped with a button dedicated to this function.

The makeup function makes blotches and dullness less obtrusive by lightening the skin color of faces in the image. In addition, the function “makes the skin tone look softer and smoother, while covering annoying little wrinkles,” Casio said. With this function, “the skin looks clearer, younger and more natural in the pictures,” according to the company. The intensity of the image processing can be selected from 12 levels.

It’s both good and bad to have this feature. Why?  For people that just want to take pictures and not worry about post image editing, this is a great feature.  Taking pics of family, of your self (think of those FOTDs) and friends will undoubtedly gain some “Wow, your/their/her skin is so smooth and fabulous!” remarks.   That’s the good part.

The bad could possibly be the amount of sharpness you might lose in the picture.  But then again, that’s why you should always carefully research the camera you are interested in before buying.  Here is a link to an in-depth review on the camera.  Also, here are pictures taken using the Makeup feature, both on and off.   Just scroll down till you see the portrait pictures.

Overall, if you really care about making your skin smooth all the time in pictures, then maybe this is the camera for you.  Personally, I would leave the touch-ups to doing them on Photoshop where I can better control the enhancements than to the camera.