Sephora Haul! The Holidays are coming!

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to give you a sneak peak of some new holiday gift sets and products that I recently purchased from Sephora. I have a couple more in mind that I want to get but here's some of the items I've already purchased in case you're interested in buying them too. Reviews on these products to come soon!

Makeup Gift Sets


Benefit Cosmetics - Cheeky Sweet Spot Box O' Blushes
This palette retails for $36 at Sephora and contains six of the well-known Benefit blushes (Dandelion, Bella Bamba, Sugarbomb, Hoola, Coralista, Rockateur), Watt's Up! highlighter, and a blush brush. The palette comes in an adorable tin that looks identical to the box the product is in.

Tarte - Pin Up Girl Amazonian Clay 12-Hour Blush Palette
This palette retails for $42 at Sephora (exclusively, I believe) and contains five blushes in a beautiful clutch case and comes with two beautiful hair pins. This item is part of the Tarte Sweet Dreams Holiday Collection.

Sephora Collection - Bottled Dreams Fragrance Sampler For Her 
This is a perfume sampler set exclusively sold Sephora for $58 that contains 8 deluxe sample size perfume bottles and a voucher to redeem a full size of one of the eight perfumes. There are several different perfume sampler sets available at Sephora, but I picked this set because I liked that you got deluxe size samples in cute bottles, rather than the usually small plastic tubes.

Holiday Products
Philosophy - Sparkling White Ginger & Have a Cherry Christmas 3-In-1 Shampoo, Shower Gel & Bubble Bath (Also pictured below are the Philosophy Fresh Cream body lotions, but they aren't holiday products as they are available year-round)
I actually purchased these as gifts for friends because they're a product I never seem to buy for myself but I know I would appreciate getting. Who doesn't love a relaxing bubble bath and some nice body lotion, especially in the chilly winter?!? The Sparkling White Ginger and Have a Cherry Christmas 3-In-1 Shampoo, Shower Gel & Bubble Bath retail for $17 and the Fresh Cream body lotions retail for $17 at Sephora.

Which holiday gift sets and products are you most excited to buy? Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading!

Lorac: Mega PRO Palette!!

Hi everyone,

I'm so excited to share this post with you! I just received my Lorac Mega PRO Palette and had to do a blog post on it! This is a special eye shadow palette for the holiday season 2014 as part of the Lorac Royal Collection.

This palette retails for $59 from Lorac's website, but is now sold out unfortunately. It is part of the holiday collection so they may restock since it was so popular and it's not even November yet, but I don't really know. Lorac says that this is a $204 value and the total makeup in the palette is 0.62 oz. You can still purchase other items from the Lorac Holiday collection here as well as at Kohl's, Amazon, and Ulta. Each site has slightly different products so do take a look at all of them.

The packaging of the Lorac Mega PRO Palette is the same as the Lorac PRO Palettes except twice the size. It is a heavy cardboard material with that sort of NARS covering that shows fingerprints.

This palette contains 16 matte and 16 shimmer shades similar to the first and second Lorac Pro Palettes but twice the size. This palette contains 28 new shades and 4 repeat matte shades but they're essential colors - white, cream, espresso, black.

The 16 Matte Shades are: Cream, Fawn, Camel, Sepia, Dusty Plum, Orchid, Mulberry, Espresso, White, Khaki, Brown, Stone, Lilac, Wisteria, Gray, Black

The 16 Shimmer Shades are: Opal, Sand, Copper, Sienna, Apricot, Blush, Merlot, Indigo, Vanilla, Cashmere, Smokey Topaz, Dusty Rose, Granite, Maroon, Deep Teal, Caviar

Photo on the left is with a flash and the photo on the right is without a flash in natural light

The formula of these eye shadows can't be beat! They are truly the best eye shadows I have ever tried and that's not an exaggeration, they're just that good! They are so velvety smooth and the color pigmentation is incredible. I have heard some complaints that these shadows do have some fallout, but honestly that doesn't really bother me because they are so creamy and pigmented. Oftentimes, the softer and smoother the eye shadow, the more fallout that will occur just be the nature of the formula.

And now without further ado, here are some close up photos of this glorious palette and a comparison of it with the original Lorac PRO Palette that I own! All swatch photos are courtesy of Lorac since mine is so beautiful and I didn't want to start using it yet.

Matte Shades: First Two Rows

The shades on the left are taken with a flash and the shades on the right are taken without a flash in natural light

The top row of swatched shades is on darker skin and the bottom row is on lighter skin

Shimmer Shades: Second Two Rows

The shades on the left are taken with a flash and the shades on the right are taken without a flash in natural light

The top row of swatched shades is on darker skin and the bottom row is on lighter skin

Comparison with the Lorac PRO Palette

In terms of size, the Mega PRO Palette is pretty much double the size of the original PRO Palette. They are both made from heavy cardboard and are the same material on the exterior. On the inside, the Mega PRO is pretty much identical to the original PRO Palette except with four rows of eight shades instead of two.

Can you tell that I LOVE my original Lorac PRO Palette?!? I've used it a ton!

Bonus items included with the Mega PRO Palette

The only real bonus item included with the purchase of this palette was a sample of the POREfection Mattifying Face Primer. I would have loved for them to have included a small eye shadow primer like they do with the original Lorac PRO palette.

Final Verdict:

I think this is a phenomenal eye shadow palette! Although I can't give a full review of it yet since I have not swatched it myself, I think the color range of shades and offering of both matte and shimmer eye shadows makes this an amazing palette. I absolutely adore my original Lorac PRO Palette so I'm sure this will be similar and I will love it too!

Were you able to purchase the Mega PRO Palette before they sold out? What are your thoughts on it? Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading!