Favorite New Products of 2018

It's the end of another year! I've sort of slacked on posting, time got away from me after I came back from my honeymoon. I wanted to recap my favorite new things of 2018 though, as I really enjoyed a lot of new releases! I'm only including new releases and not items that are new to me in the interest of keeping the list relatively short. (Though I did get into some older products like the Stila Glitter & Glow eyeshadows and Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Serum.)

Function of Beauty - Thoughts On My First Order

I've always been "meh" on haircare, and I've decided to start trying a little harder when it comes to my hair. I recently switched to sulfate free shampoo and conditioner, mostly because I got a lot of rose gold highlights put in my hair earlier this year and I wanted to keep them looking nice. (Meanwhile, I still blast the hell out of it with my heavy duty hair dryer. Baby steps.)

On Instagram, one of the people I love to follow, Lena, started posting about Function of Beauty - a personalized shampoo and conditioner service. I watched as she got her order, started using it, and then read her rave reviews, so I decided to try it as well! 

In-Flight Skincare - Combating 12 Hours of Airplane Air

I'm traveling to Hawaii for my honeymoon! It's a 12 hour flight, so that calls for some heavy duty inflight skincare. I've been amassing minis and foils specifically for this trip, and I wanted to share my routine.

September 2018 Favorites!

Trying not to fall too behind by getting out my September favorites, too! September is still hot mostly, but the weather slowly changes at the end of the month to still be warm but less humid (finally!) Since my No Buy July ended, I've gotten some new things - and there's a few of them featured this month.

August 2018 Favorites!

Better late than never, right? Life has been busy, and I took photos for my August favorites but never wrote the post!

Sephora Staples - What I Love & Recommend

Sephora is revamping their Beauty Insider program, and they're having a sale to celebrate! I've been planning my cart for a few weeks now, and am excited to pick up a few new things. I wanted to share some of my favorite products that I've purchased at Sephora. These are all staple items in my collection, and I have nothing but glowing recommendations to give. If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen these items all over my feed.

I took this on my phone, sorry!

July 2018 Favorites!

Picking fresh, new favorites is tough after a month on a no buy! I do, however, love seeing repeat products on other peoples' favorite lists, so I don't feel bad doing that with mine. It's been hot and gross here all month, so my favorites include some products that compliment summer weather.

June 2018 Favorites!

It's beginning to feel a lot like summer...hot and sticky! I'm not the biggest fan of summer, but I have learned to adapt to get through it. Like many others, I switch to lighter products that don't feel heavy on the skin, and break out brighter, more fun colors. My favorites for June include a few of these summer essentials!

Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Tencel & Midnight Blue Calming Sheet Masks - Review

Klairs recently released some sheet masks! I'm new to Klairs products - I got the famous Supple Preparation Toner for Christmas but haven't opened it yet, and recently got the Rich Moist Soothing Serum which I really like. I was placing an order over at Beautytap and tossed these into my cart to try! (...and to help reach the free shipping threshold.) I shared some mini reviews on Instagram, but I wanted to talk more about these two masks.

April Empties & Reverse Rouge Check In

Why yes, I have been slacking on my empties...it's June and I'm just now getting April's together. To be fair, tallying empties is my least favorite thing (mostly because I'm awful at math!) April had a lot of sales, so my shopping was a bit excessive in comparison to other months. This was also a light month for empties, so the shopping may have had more of an impact on my overall Reverse Rouge numbers.

May 2018 Favorites!

I can't believe we're already five months through the year! I feel like time is moving quickly every year, though. I have another month of favorites, with some returning items and some new purchases!

Cupidrop x Lovue New York Blogger Event

Last month, I received an invitation to check out a new K-Beauty shop opening up in Manhattan from the lovely people over at Cupidrop. Since I love skincare and shopping, and a good trip to New York, I accepted the invite. I took a half day from work, drove to Jersey City and took the Path into Manhattan, and entered KTown for an afternoon of mingling and swatching.

The new shop, Lovue (pronounced love you, so cute!) is right on 5th avenue in Koreatown. It's a block away from the 33rd St. Path station, making it super convenient for those coming from Jersey like me! I was a little early, so I went and got Starbucks (mostly so I could use the bathroom...) and happened upon an Amazon Books store. It was actually pretty neat, there were no listed prices - you just scanned the barcode and see what the price is on Amazon, and that's what you pay! Did some browsing and headed back over to Lovue for the start of the event.

I apologize in advance for the photos, I only had my phone with me!

The storefront! It is so, so cute.

The front of the store is super cute and super inviting! After walking in, I was greeted by a ton of staff and one of the ladies from Beauteers (the genius team behind Cupidrop), Jenny, gave me a name tag. After greeting people, I had time to take in what I had walked into.

The store from the second floor!

My first thought? OVERWHELMING! So many products, K-Pop blasting, giant screens where they played K-Pop videos, it was intense! I must have done 4-5 laps around the store just picking things up and putting them down. The store stretches pretty far back, I was shocked at how large it was! The best part about being able to check out the store the day before opening is that everything is so neat on the shelves, and testers aren't destroyed. The layout of the store is aesthetically pleasing - most of it is done by brand, but then there are walls of sheet masks and areas specific to a certain skincare step. Everything was arranged nicely - I saw a lot of color grouping. They had a large sink in the back for hand washing, and they even had some of the hand soap available for sale to try out at the sink. The store has several large, lighted mirrors as well.

The Great Wall of Cosrx

Sheet and Modeling masks!

Various Cleansers

Sheet mask overload!

Lovue has a ton of brands in stock, I saw the following:

• Cosrx
• Klairs
• Graymelin
• Papa Recipe
• Mizon
• Innisfree
• Thank You Farmer
• Missha
• belif
• Huxley
• Scinic
• JOne
• Benton
• Neogen
• Mediheal
• Elizavecca

...and a bunch more. Some brands only had sheet masks, while other brands had most of the entire line available. Some lines only had certain products - Cosrx had most everything aside from the super new releases, and their sheet masks. I didn't, however see any of the luxury K-Beauty brands like Sulwhasoo in stock. Prices were relatively fair, I think the only super outrageous markup I saw was belif creams going for $56, which outstrip Sephora's prices by a bit. The prices aren't as good as ordering from Korea, but they were definitely doable. Most sheet masks were between $2-$7, and boxes of masks were between $20-$30, all depending on brand. I think it's an okay tradeoff to not have to wait for shipping.

There was a second floor where snacks and drinks were being served. (The bulgogi was soooo good!) The Lovue team and the Beauteers team both thanked everyone for coming. They also whipped out an impressive gift box! The store team also let everyone know that there was 20% off store wide for the length of the event, which got a lot of people (myself included) very excited.

Being on a diet sucks, but I had a few bites!

I must say, the store did get very warm during the event, with 30someodd bloggers and staff hanging out on the second floor. Of course, the first floor was cooler, so I spent a decent amount of time browsing and putting things into my basket. The store staff was super helpful, and they were all very excited to help pick out and suggest products. I definitely did a little bit of damage, but it was 20% off, so it wasn't toooo bad.

A bit sweaty, but enjoying myself!

Now for the best part...the goodie bag and my purchases! I was super stoked about the gift bag, I love trying new products, and the bag was very, very generous!

• Elizavecca hydrogel mask
• Scinic modeling mask
• A. True Spring Green Tea Watery Calming Cream
• Bizoo Daily Sheet Masks
• $50 to Dons Bogam Black

I'm very excited to try both the Bizoo sheet masks and the A. True cream! A. True had some other products that looked good, so I'll have to check them out another time. Clearly the best gift was the $50 IN FREE FOOD!!! I can't wait to check the restaurant out.

It was really, really hard not to go wild in the store, they had SO MUCH STUFF! I have a lot of unopened skincare, so I kept myself in check. Here's what I wound up with:

• Peripera Airy Ink Velvet in Elf Light Rose - Everyone raves about these, and three ladies in the shop recommended them. I was glad for the chance to swatch them!
• Klairs Rich Moist Soothing Serum - I wanted a serum or an essence, and this felt the best on my skin from the ten (at least!) I tried.
• Every Helloskin Jumiso mask they had.
• A'pieu falsies - I love East Asian brands of lashes, since I have small eyes and they usually run smaller/more natural.
• Ultru I'm Sorry For My Skin Relaxing and Pore Care jelly masks
• Package foot peel - this was cheaper than my usual TonyMoly so I'm excited to see if it's as good!
• Holika Holika After Working Overtime sheet mask - I actually have a lot of OT scheduled (including this weekend) so this just happened to work out for me.
• SNP Bird's Nest Aqua Ampoule sheet mask - Faceonomics raves about it so I wanted to try it.

I could go back and buy a million more sheet masks. My wishlist grew five miles today! I'm really excited to try all these new masks - some of the ladies at the store suggested a few, and they all had great skin soooo...why not?

Lovue is located at 324 5th Ave in Manhattan. Thank you again to everyone in the store and the crew at Beauteers for inviting me! It was a wonderful time - I will definitely drop in next time I'm in the city!

April 2018 Favorites!

As much as I like having reliable products that I always reach for, it's also nice to have new things to play with! This month's favorites has a bunch of "new" stuff - some isn't truly new because I got it for Christmas. But between spring sales and some generous PR, I have some new products to talk about!

Recent Purchases & Acquisitions!

April means lots of spring sales (because it's also tax season! Gotta spend that refund!) (I did not spend my refund on this stuff.) so I was able to get some new goodies. I had posted earlier about what I was planning to buy with my various coupon codes, and here are all the shiny new things! I also included some new items purchased not from Sephora/Ulta, and some PR goodies.

Recent Repurchases

I've been doing well on my low buy this year! I haven't gone overboard at all, even this month with the sales and coupons going on. Earlier this year I didn't have enough new stuff for separate repurchases and purchases, but this month I do! I love talking about items I repurchase, and what makes them good enough to be bought again and again.

Spring Sales - Planned Purchases From Sephora & Ulta

It's that time again - Sephora spring sale time! Sephora offers 15% off for VIB and VIB Rouge members in April, along with 10% off for all Beauty Insider members. It's not as good as the holiday 20% off, but ti's something! Sephora is pricey, so I know a lot of people, myself included, plan larger purchases around these coupons. I've been adding and removing items from my cart since last month in anticipation!

Along with the Sephora sale, Ulta usually issues a 20% off Prestige coupon in early April. The coupon usually coincides with the end of their 21 Days of Beauty event. The coupon was mailed out today (4/12) and  I've been (not so) patiently waiting with a full cart for about a week now. However, I seem to get every Ulta email BUT these emails, so I am waiting to hear back from them about my code.

Sine I've been focusing on low buying and using what I have, I've been pretty particular about what's going into my carts. A lot of the items are repurchases, or trying something new in place of a product I'm almost out of. I also love seeing what other people are planning on getting, so I wanted to share what I'm looking forward to pulling the trigger on!

Fenty Beauty Mattemoiselle Plush Matte Lipstick in Spanked - Review

I am a super huge fan of Fenty Beauty's Gloss Bomb, so when Rihanna decided to drop a line of matte lipsticks, I was intrigued. I'm a little over matte lipstick, but this wasn't a liquid matte, so I was willing to give it a chance. I was really good though, I didn't immediately purchase one and waited a few months. Other reviews looked good, so I went for it! 

March Empties & Reverse Rouge Check In

I used up so much stuff in March! I had set a goal of twenty empties for myself, and was able to meet that with no problem. I've even been sheet masking more, which is great for my skin AND my mask stash! A few more months and I'll be able to buy some new masks without adding to an already large backlog.

I did requailify for Platinum status at Ulta during the month of March, but not due to my purchases! I got my hair colored last month, and my husband gets his hair cut at Ulta every two weeks, which adds up quickly. I don't see myself hitting the new Diamond level ($1200 spent!) this year, though.

March 2018 Favorites!

Being on a low buy has really had me looking at my collection lately, and becoming more familiar with the products I already have. I chose some staple products for this month's favorites, partially because I don't have a lot of "new new" to pick from, and partially because I feel favorites should be repeat, staple products. I have a couple kinda new products in this month's picks though, so that's a little exciting! (I won't deny that I love the rush of getting a package full of new goodies in the mail.)

Spring 2018 Product Picks

Spring hasn't quite sprung here yet - we've had four big snowstorms in the last three weeks. However, it'll be here soon, and that means springy colors and finishes! I wear colors year round, but I do have my favorite spring shades and looks that I like to dust off a bit this time of year. I don't think I'm going to be setting any new seasonal trends, but if you're interested in seeing what I'm into for spring, keep reading!