Thursday, June 16, 2011

Perfume Haul

First up is Vanilla Passion Nourishing Body Cream from Calgon's Take Me Away! collection.  This is THE BEST drugstore vanilla scent.  Well it's better than any other brand's gourmand type scent, expensive or not.  I was so surprised by the quality of this product.  The scent is not a cheap smell.  It's caramel-vanilla like Pink Sugar which I just reviewed.  It also moisturizes really well and goes on smooth and creamy.  I can't wait to get the spray which also smells just good.  I tested Vanilla Passion out and purchased the cream at Walmart where it's only 5 bucks for huge amount of product.

Next up is Philosophy's Falling In Love EDP and I honestly don't like it.  It smells pretty with the tester in store, but it seemed much more tart when brand new.  Who knows, maybe my nose was clouded with other scents.  And I know that certain perfumes need a bit of time to mature and this is probably one of them.  Don't get me wrong, it is a nice scent, just not for me.  So if anyone already loves this perfume, contact me (jjgirl1989@gmail.com) and we can trade or I'll give it to you for less than it's $50 worth since I already sprayed it.

Lastly for this post is Playboy's Play It Lovely EDT.  This comes in a cheap, but very cute round bottle with a black bunny head for the cap.  And it smells wonderfully fresh and kinda spicy, I don't know how to describe it exactly.  They also have Play It Spicy and Play It Sexy.  They are all kinda spicy, but this one has the least amount so when I say spicy, it's more of a light spice accent.  Although it smells so lovely, it doesn't last at all.  The only way I get it to last is if I spray it 6-7 times and kinda get it toward my hair.  Then it lasts for a few hours.  That just doesn't seem worth it.  I wouldn't buy this again unless it was on clearance.

Pink Sugar Gift Set Review

Sorry I've been a horrible blogger, I doubt anyone pays attention to my blog haha :( But I work and have summer class and am on a low spending budget because the iPhone costs so damn much.  Anyway, I do have lots of little things to review because I went on a little spree.

So here goes.  This might sound raunchy, but ever since I went to the strip club in L.A. back in April, I couldn't get that stripper scent out of my head (my boyfriend says I think like a guy), but really I just wanted to smell like that because it's so sweet and pretty.  So I end up looking online for what a lot of strippers wear as perfume and Pink Sugar by Aquolina came up a lot so I went and smelled it at Ulta and ever since then I have been crazed and I think about the perfume every day like a weirdo.  I bought the perfume originally from walgreens.com, but it didn't have the brand name on it.  Now I'm sure it was authentic because I trust Walgreens, but I think it's stupid that Aquolina wouldn't put their brand on the bottle or the packaging.  That bothered me and so I returned it.  And for some reason, it didn't smell as good as the one in Ulta.  Well I bought the gift set because it came with the 3.38oz hair perfume that I have been dying to purchase, a 1.7oz EDT, and a little lotion (I think it should have been bigger for the cost!!!).  But either way I "saved" some money by not buying these items separately.

1.7oz EDT: Yum. Yum. Yum.  I'm floating on clouds every time I wear this.  If you don't know what Pink Sugar smells like, it's a caramel cotton candy vanilla scent, but not like those Body Fanstasies sprays which are OK, but very synthetic smelling.  I'm not huge on perfume terminology, but all I can say is that this EDT last longer than most my EDPs.

3.38oz Hair Perfume:  This adds a light hint of Pink Sugar to the hair and it lingers.  You can definitely smell it.  I can't get enough of this scent.

1.75oz Lotion:  Smells great, but the texture is very slick and not creamy at all.  Actually it says cream on the tube.  Oh well, I bought the set for the other two items anyway.

Eitherway, I think this is a decent deal if you are in looooove with Pink Sugar like me :)


Extra tid bit:

Love's Sugar Kiss by Dana smells similar to Pink Sugar and is a cheaper alternative.  I read that it is a decent dupe, but I don't think it quite matches up in lasting power or sweetness.  Sugar Kiss is softer like it has more musk in it.  It's a cologne mist so that explains the lasting power.  I love it although I have to spray a lot of it.  Try to catch it on sale.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat in Ink Splatter Review

Love this stuff and I think it works great and thanks to my friend, Alex, for letting me try hers before I bought it :).  I admit I had my doubts about it, but it works.  I have not tried Black Shatter from the Katy Perry collection so I do not have that to compare it to.  I wanted to get that one originally but gave up a couple months ago because I couldn't find it anywhere, and now it's restocked but I'm too cheap to pay the ten bucks.  So I just forgot about it and Ink Splatter is almost the same price, but I got it on sale at CVS, plus used an in-store coupon and I ended up getting 2 bottles for $7.  I will have to review the blue one later.

So putting it on is a little difficult but it can be done.  You have to put it on thinly, but not too thin otherwise it'll dry up too fast and be transparent.  If you put it on too thick, it loses the crackle effect.  When it dries it looks like a soft black so a top coat is a MUST.  I always use a top coat no matter what when I paint my nails so it's not a task at all for me.

Try to catch it on sale right now!  You won't regret it.


I put Ink Splatter over my already chipping nails so I apologize for the tips of my nails looking like poop.


UPDATE:  I received a bottle of Black Shatter by O.P.I. and now I can compare the two.  I actually prefer the Sally Hansen version because you can get thicker blocks of black with good separation.  Black Shatter has a cleaner/smoother formula (less clumpy), but it doesn't crackle enough for me.  The cracks are very thin so it's hard to see the nail color that is underneath.  Even applying thick, I still got thin cracks everywhere.  I still like it though.