Entries for Thursday May 12

BareMinerals’ Renegade Chic kit

• Manufacturer: bareMinerals/Bare Escentuals
• Availability: beginning October 2007 through Sephora
• Contains: 2 eyeshadows, 1 face color, 1 lip color, and 2 brushes
• Cost/Amount: USD$62.00
• Would you purchase again: yes

This kit was available when I first started buying BE. I was a bit put off by the price tag, and by the fact that the colors…just weren’t all that thrilling. The set was nice enough, nothing was really of poor quality, but the dark colors weren’t dark enough to make a good smokey eye…which is about as renegade-y as this kit got. When it finally went on deep-discount sale, to get rid of excess inventory that had been sitting around the Sephora warehouse for close to two years without moving, I think this kit price only dropped to $40. Still not a fantastic price, IMHO - this kit was not an exciting combination of items; and every single item in the kit was also available for individual purchase - so if you had already bought one or more of these items, much of this kit’s value (savings on buying multiple items at a time) was nullified.

Morgana Cryptoria’s Shifty Eyed collection

• Manufacturer: Morgana Cryptoria
• Availability: beginning April 2011 from the webstore
• Contains: 7 eyeshadows
• Cost/Amount: USD$5.50 for 1.5 grams
• Would you purchase again: yes

When all the 2011 vegan lipstick colors came out, I knew that while there was no way I'd wear (for example) a blue or a green lipstick, the duochrome aspects and the base colors themselves made me want to see eyeshadow versions of these shades. And they showed up in eyeshadow form in April 2011! This is another kit that's going to be slowly increased over the years, with (presumably) more colors added that are eyeshadow-versions of Morgana's vegan lipsticks from 2011.

China Glaze’s We Adorn You collection

• Manufacturer: China Glaze
• Availability: beginning fall 2006 from etailers and retailers
• Contains: 7 nail colors
• Cost/Amount: USD$6 for one .15 oz / .5 gram bottle
• Would you purchase again: yes

Another collection that I had several polishes from, before I realized that they all came from one collection. (I was so very very ignorant when I started buying nail polish. Now I know: there’s a color? It’s part of someone’s collection of something. Then? I was just building my wishlist - and collection - based on swatches I found online…)