Welcome to the July Empties. I have to say, it looks like a full basket this month. Admittedly, that may be because of the shampoo bottles and trial sizes. So let’s clear the large shampoo bottles out of the way first shall we?
First up, is my general standard for shampoo and conditioner. If you ever wonder what it is I compare products to, this is it.It is the Suave Professionals rosemary and mint. The scent is perfect for a post workout pick me up as it smells amazingly fresh and clean.
This is one of my standard drug store favorites. With my hair I generally find that I have to switch up shampoos periodically to keep my hair loving them. This is one that gets rotated in frequently. In fact it is the one that I actually compare other shampoos to. I don’t mind paying extra for good hair products, but they have to work. So whenever I pick up a pricy shampoo and conditioner to try out, I ask myself does this work as well as the Suave? So even though this is leaving, it will be repurchased again and again in the future.
Slightly pricier shampoo that I recently ran out of is the Love Beauty and Planet Coconut water and Mimosa Flower shampoo and conditioner. This set is designed for body and strength for fine hair, but I find it works really well on my hair as well. My hair is on the thicker side, but I still liked it.
It gave my hair great body and shine. I did find that I still had to use a leave in conditioner after wards. I think that might be because my hair is not fine. I also found that this worked best if I didn’t use it every wash. If I used it every wash, it tended to not do as well. I found that it worked best for me if I kept this as my once a week shampoo and conditioner, using Suave the rest of the week.
I don’t know if there was some sort of build up with the products that Suave cleared out. But for a once a week wash, I did really like this set. Plus, using them only once a week offset the higher cost by making them last longer. I would definitely consider buying these again, but next time I might look for something in their line designed for thicker hair and see if I had the same issues with it. I initially bought this because I saw volume on the label and that is generally my go to for product claims. Either way, I like the brand and will continue to purchase from them in the future.
Sticking with hair for the moment, I have two empty dry shampoos this month. One is the full sized COLAB dry shampoo that came in a Glossy Box and the other is a trial size of amika perk up. I liked both but for different reasons.
Glossy box:
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Let’s talk about the colab first. It claims to have oil absorbing without the white residue. It has white residue. I have dark hair, it showed white on my hair. Personally, I don’t mind as I generally find that the ones that show the white tend to work the best. With this dry shampoo I found that it worked best if I sprayed it on my hair just before bed and then brushed it out in the morning. Doing that, it worked really well. It absorbed any excess oil and left my hair looking clean. It is a very good, and very cost effective product. I think the full sized bottle was under $6.
With the amika perk up, it left a lot more white, but if I brushed it out right after application it left my hair amazingly soft and shiny (in a healthy non greasy way). If I tried to spray at night and leave it, the product got weirdly clumpy and my scalp itched. It is a dry shampoo to use when you need to run out somewhere, not an overnight product. To be honest, while I would consider buying this again it would probably be in the travel size that I could keep in my purse rather than the full sized to keep in the bathroom. The Klorane is still my go to dry shampoo, neither of these replaced it, but this really is good on the go, just remember there is a LOT of white added to dark hair with this product. So both dry shampoos were good, but in different ways.
This month my empties bin features several make up items. For primers I have the Benefit Pore Professional Pearl and the Kaja Blur Drop. Technically speaking the Kaja is not empty but it is leaving my world so I thought I would include it.
It was one of those products that I just didn’t like and never want to use again. It may work for someone else, but it did not do well with my skin at all. The one friend I generally trade products with as we tend to have almost opposite skin needs, said she tried it and hated it to, so alas it is going in the bin.
The Porefessional Pearl Primer from Benefit on the other hand, I loved and will be getting again. I have one more sample size of this in my collection and once I use it up, I will be purchasing the full sized tube.
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This month I also used up a sample size of the Purlisse Perfect Glow BB Cream. I tried it, loved it and luckily have a full sized version waiting in my drawer. I am trying to resist opening it until I have used up at least one product, but it is hard to resist. That is one of the best BB creams I have tried.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was the Pur 4-in-1 love your selfie longwear foundation and concealer. I did not like this product and will not be repurchasing it. Luckily it was only a sample size because it it were full sized I would feel bad about getting rid of it.
Makeup item this month was the Brow Contour Pro from Benefit. While I enjoyed the benefit brow priducts, I believe in the future I will purchase the Precisely my brow instead of this one. I just am not a fan of the multiple products in one pen. It felt like I didn’t get enough of the one product I wanted which was the brow pencil. I used up my shade rather quickly and then had to work to use up the other products before I felt comfortable letting it go. So it is is a good product, just not in a form I particularly care for.
This month I used the Speak Deodorant Cream that came in one of my Petit Vour Boxes. I liked the product and felt it worked well and considering how hot this summer has been it put any deodorant product to the test.
It worked well but I really didn’t like the cream aspect of it. I absolutely hated digging out the cream and rubbing it into my arm pits. Luckily, when I posted my review, a rep from the company actually messaged me letting me know that soon they were going to be coming out with a stick version. Sometime this year was the plan, I’m not certain how recent events have affected their time line, but I will be paying attention. I will keep my eyes peeled for that one to try out.
If it weren’t for the application, I would purchase this product. If they make this into a stick form and it performs the same way I will purchase it. I would not purchase the cream form again because as good as it is, I know I would not use it. If that doesn’t bother you and you are looking for a natural deodorant, then you might want to check this one out. Or wait for the stick version.
I had issues with the naked cosmetics lib scrub. I think that somehow it wasn’t mixed properly as the product looked separated. One section was dry sugar like granules and one was just oil. I tried stirring to blend, but it never quite worked for me. I don’t know if I just got a bad batch or what, but as much as I love lip scrubs, I have to give this one a pass.
As we continue with scrubs, the B Kind face scrub is one that I will be picking up. I received this in a Petit Vour box, tried it and loved it. I noticed a slightly waxy residue on my skin afterwards so I always used it as step one in my face wash routine rather than as a stand alone product, but it is very gentle and my skin felt amazing afterwards. If you are looking for vegan cruelty free skin care, this should be one you put on the list to try. As you can probably tell from the picture, I squeezed every drop of this product from the tube.
There is one toner in my empties bin this month and it is the Martian mattifying melting water gel toner from Sunday Riley. It was an interesting product to use and on the days where I felt super greasy it worked really well to reduce the oil on my face and reduce break outs. I couldn’t use it every day because it was too drying, but every once in a while it really did the trick on my breakouts. While I wouldn’t mind keeping it around, sadly I believe it has been discontinued.
Next I have two products from the brand Avette. Prior to this I tried a couple of their sheet masks and found them generally okay but nothing to really seek out. The first Avette product is the water Flash Coconut Water Cream and the other is the Fresh Clean Coconut Mild Foam Cleanser.
The Coconut water cream was okay, but not the best moisturizer I’ve used. I didn’t do a full review on it because the sample tube barely held enough product for three days of use. While that’s not a lot of time to see how skin care performs, I found that the overly faux coconut scent gave me a bit of a headache. Because of this I was not inclined to seek out a full sized version of the product. I’m not normally bothered by scents, but this one got to me.
It wasn’t as strong as the mild foam cleanser though. It was so faux coconut scented that it smelled super perfume-y. And it didn’t really wash away very cleanly. It left a residue on my skin that I didn’t care for. I know I said the B Kind scrub also left a residue but for me, the foaming cleanser is the last step of my face wash system. I start with either a cleansing balm or an oil to remove makeup, every couple of nights I’ll add an exfoliant and then I finish with a foaming cleanser before moisturizing. Having the foaming cleanser leave a residue was not good. Although really, it was the scent that got me. I didn’t care for the way the product worked but I absolutely hated the scent. To be honest I can’t recommend either of these products.
I will however recommend the two Volition Products in my empties bin this month. The Volition Celery Green Clean was an excellent day cream. I had to use a night cream a couple of times a week after days when I spent a long time outside, but it was a wonderfully light cream over all and I will definitely be picking up another jar.
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I have to say as an aside, it is super satisfying to see an empty skin care jar. It just makes me feel like I’ve taken care of my skin. And speaking of jars, this one is nice heavy glass with a screw top lid so I will be soaking off the label and reusing the jar. It is only in the empties bin so I wouldn’t forget to mention it now that it is empty. It won’t be thrown away though.
As for the Volition luminizing shield in SPF 50, I ordered a second one as soon as this tube started feeling a little light. The replacement is actually due in this afternoon according to shipping so I won’t have long to go without this. It is an excellent light weight sunscreen that sits beautifully under my makeup. I cannot recommend this highly enough. It is now a summer staple. It has also become the product I compare other sunscreens to. From here on out it will be, is this sunscreen as good as Volition?
And that my darlings are all of the empties from July.
I would like to give an additional mention of one sheet mask I tried this month that I really think is worth mentioning. While I do a Face Mask Friday posts, I often apply sheet masks throughout the week. Some are good, some are bad and some do nothing that is actually noticable.
This was one of the good ones. It is the beaut green Firming Collagen Essence mask. It came in one of my FaceTory subscriptions and it was a good enough sheet mask that not only does it bear mentioning, but I have put it on my list to reorder.
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My skin felt excellent after using it and I could actually feel a slight tightening in my skin. This is one of those masks I would definitely consider buying a large pack of and giving a full continued use test to see if there are any longer term results. With this mask it felt good enough on the skin that I actually think there might be some noticeable results. Perhaps that will be a future skin care test.
For now I will sign off and end this rather long post. I will take the Volition Celery Green cream jar out of the empties bin and set it aside to soak off the label so it can be put to another use. The I will divide the rest of the products into trash and recycling bins as appropriate. Then the empty bin will go back into the bathroom ready and waiting for August’s empties.
Ms. Mimsy Reviews 