LOOT!

Well, I didn't have the best day yesterday, but it was considerably brightened by a FedEx box that was waiting at my front door and contained this:


Excellent schwag from Max Factor! This teaches us that A) the power of the Interweb (that magical series of tubes) is pretty darned awesome and B) Karma extends to cosmetics!

The day after my (wholly unsolicited, I promise) rave review of Max Factor Lash Perfection mascara I received a nice e-mail from a young woman at the firm who handles their public relations thanking me for my kind words and offering to send me some other new products to try. Well, I'm no fool -- I said sure. So this post is less unsolicited, but don't worry, I'm not in the pocket of Big Mascara quite yet.

There's all kinds of fun stuff in here and a few things I'm really looking forward to trying, including two tubes of their Lash Perfection Volume Couture Mascara.




I'm not exactly sure yet how this differs from the straight-up Lash Perfection that I already have, but I'm looking forward to finding out. It has the same kind of brush that the original has, which is a big part of the appeal for me. Thing is, I just bought a brand new tube of the other stuff this weekend, and I don't want to open the new one just yet (mascara starts to degrade the moment you expose it to air). So I'm going to make the extra tube available here. Just leave me a comment (with your name -- ahem!!) saying you want to be eligible and I'll do a drawing Saturday morning. If I pick your name, I'll send you the mascara, but you have to promise to write & let me know what you think of it. (The color, by the way, is Soft Black.) I'm also thrilled to find out they have this in Auburn, which is a wonderful everyday color for redheads like myself.)

The thing I am trying out presently is the MAXWear Lipcolor. It's one of those double-ended tubey glosses with a sponge app -- one end is a long-wearing color and the other is a gloss. I'd given up on the long-wearing lip colors quite a while ago, because they made my mouth feel as though I'd painted it with the same latex-based stuff that's on my bathroom cabinets, but this actually feels okay. I'm testing it in a color called Cinnamon & Sugar, which is a lovely light brownie-pink (sort of a my-lips-but-better color) that has a sparkly clear gloss. So far, I'm through my second cup of coffee and the color is still there, although the gloss is long gone. Bonus -- the gloss tastes like marshmallows! The real test will be if it survives my lunch of leftover palak paneer. Stay tuned!


And now -- my next unsolicited (I swear) rave, for this stuff:


Bliss Sleeping Peel Serum. Oy, vey, I love this goo. A friend got a bottle in some schwag and handed it over to me to try and baby, I am hooked on the junk. I really wish it didn't cost 60 damn dollars an ounce, but I'm here to to tell you that I am going to pony up. It's one of those antioxidant exfoliator thingies and it really did make a difference in my skin. No one is mistaking me for a young Catherine Deneuve or anything, but to me it was noticeable.

(Unnecessarily beautiful. Unreasonably so, even.)

So is this a not-very-opaque attempt to get the folks at Bliss to send me more juice? Hell, yes! After squirting this stuff on me every day for a few weeks I'll happily put pretty much anything they squish into a bottle, tub, or tube on myself. So there! My crass commercialism knows no bounds, because unfortunately my bank account does.

Oooooh, so much to do before I leave on Monday. Posting may get spotty for a bit, friends, as I race around trying to line up my travel ducks. Bear with me.


Photos: Style Spy, MaxFactor.com, Blissworld.com, Geocities