Beauty from Aldi

You have got to be joking! Aldi – the warehouse grocery store often situated in lower middle class neighborhoods where you bag your own? Believe it.

Aldi has exported Lacura Beauty from Germany to its U.S. stores (Aldi itself is headquartered in Germany). Lacura features a wide range of products, including foundation, compact powder, blush, lipstick, lip gloss, nail polish, and eye shadow duos: all at less than four dollars apiece. The products are contained in unpacked crates, so it can be difficult to find the shades you want.

I sampled Lacura lipsticks. These are emollient lipsticks: the principal ingredients are castor oil, candelila wax, and jojoba.

I love nude lips, but Cool Sand, a beige with shimmer, drained color from my lips and face. If you’ve dreaded red lipstick, then try Lacura lipstick in Red Velvet as your initial foray into red. A pricier option is Besame Cosmetics Enchanting lipstick in Merlot. Lacura also carries a lipstick in Deep Red, which I didn’t try.

Altogether, you can’t beat the price of Lacura, and there are some worthwhile options to look into.

Enter to win a Beautyblender gift set #in

Over time, I’ve raved about Beautyblender.  I use the rounded bottom to blend liquid foundation and the pointed end for detail work like blending concealer around the eye. Koren Zander of EnKore makeup even demonstrated how to apply loose powder mineral makeup with Beautyblender.  I’ve tried cheaper knockoffs from Sonia Kashuk and Sephora, but they can’t compare to Beautyblender, especially for detail work.

I balked at buying Beautyblender for the longest time: $20.00 for a makeup sponge??? Curiosity, however, got the better of me, and I plunked down $20.00 to buy Beautyblender.  It’s since become one of my favorite tools in my makeup closet.

The prize: One Beautyblender gift set

Have you also balked at buying Beautyblender?   Here’s your opportunity to win a set containing not one, but two, Beautyblenders and 10 sachets containing its plant-based cleanser:

http://contestmachine.com/embed/survey_js/YL14A6H5TU

Asian Beauty

From Sandra Oh to Lucy Liu, these celebrities know how to play up their Asian beauty

One thing all Asian women do have in common? The ability to look absolutely stunning. These stars show off their radiant skin, pouty lips, flirty lashes and smoldering eyes, and here we’ll give you the scoop on the makeup techniques they use.

The Most God-Awful product that I’ve tried

Bye Bye Pores HD Silk Micro-Powder by It Cosmetics has got to be the most god-awful product I’ve tried. This powder is so opaque that I felt that I was wearing a mask. Although it contains ingredients beneficial for the skin, I found it drying.

Bye Bye Pores HD Silk Micro-Powder

Talc gets a bad rap, but talc-based finishing powders work better than Bye Bye Pores and don’t obscure my complexion.  If you want to use a talc-free HD powder, I recommend Make Up For Ever HD Microfinish Powder. Make Up For Ever HD Microfinish Powder is a favorite of beauty editors and makeup enthusiasts and justifiably merits its hype.

Best drugstore mascaras

We had the best mascaras at all price points, now we have the best drugstore mascaras. It makes sense when mascara needs to be replaced frequently.

These products feel like splurging — minus the high price tag

11 Best Drugstore Mascaras
Are you a mascara fanatic? We are too. However, that doesn’t mean we’ll drop lots of cash on high-end mascaras (well, OK, it does, but we don’t JUST do that). Especially when there are these cheap-but-awesome ones out there. Check them out, and say good-bye to your $20-a-tube days.

Sam Fine recommends L’Oreal Voluminous Mascaraicon as an inexpensive option.

P&G is ceasing to distribute Max Factor in the U.S., but you can find its top-rated Stretch & Separate Waterproof Mascaraicon and Volume Couture Mascaraicon at drugstore.com.

More winter skin care advice – face

This article is a follow-on to recent articles on caring for the lips and overall skin care in winter.

Experts often recommend a richer moisturizer in winter time, but you might want to use it on dry patches only. Hydrocortisone cream can minimize redness and relieve dry patches, but be sparing: repeated use over time will thin the skin.

I use The Solution by Envision Beauty as an overnight moisturizer. I reviewed this light weight lotion back in April 2009, and my appreciation of this product has only grown since I posted my review. This is one of the few product samples I’ve received that I have used to the bottom of the bottle and went out to purchase afterwards!

I appreciate that Kimberly Snyder revealed that many cosmetics companies spread skin care ingredients among several products, such as moisturizers and serums. The Solution is designed to be a 4-in-1 product: still, the $75 price tag per bottle is too steep for my budget. I took advantage of a recent BOGO promotion to replenish my supply.

While the bottle recommends 2-3 pumps, I find that a single pump works well, even for my dry skin. This also helps to conserve precious product.

Aside from product, I also run a vaporizer in my room, particularly during the night. You might also hang damp clothes taken from the washing machine or lay damp sweaters on a sweater dryer to humidify the air.

In a subsequent post, I’ll provide tips about body care and hand care during winter.

More winter skin care advice – lips

The article Expert advice on winter skin care provided a lot of excellent tips about protecting your skin during cold winter weather.  In this article, I provide my time-proven tips about keeping lips soft in winter.

Instead of removing dry flakes from my lips with a soft toothbrush, I use Paula Begoun’s lip treatment, a wax that removes flaking skin, but it’s no longer available through her website. It was modeled after Beauticontrol’s Lip Apeel.

May I say something about Aquaphor? Allure touted it as a lip protectant, but it does little for me. A lip product with Vitamin E works better than Aquaphor. The Agatha Ruiz de la Prada fruit-flavored lip balms that you find at duty-free shops at airports in Europe (I have also seen them at anthropologie) are very emollient. Sally Hansen Healing Butter for Lips and the Reviva Labs Vitamin E Stick are satisfactory, but not as good as the Agatha Ruiz de la Prada lip balms. Skin care expert Liz Earle recommends ingesting Vitamin E capsules, but Vitamin E is also great as a topical treatment.

Best #Beauty Tools

Missing are favorites such as Beautyblender and the sensuously soft Make Up For Ever HD Kabuki Brush, which I use to apply MUFE HD Microfinish Powder.

See which brushes, tweezers and eyelash curlers Total Beauty Readers love

The 13 Best Makeup Tools
Even if you use your fingers to apply most things, all of us have a few tools in our makeup arsenal that we wouldn’t want to live without. TotalBeauty.com readers shared their favorite makeup tools, maybe it’s time to add a few to your stash?
TotalBeauty.com average reader rating: 9.1

No. 13: Shiseido Eyelash Curler, $19
Readers call this “the most perfectly designed eyelash curler …”
TotalBeauty.com average reader rating: 9.3

No. 12: Too Faced Kabuki Brush, $30
It “provides fuller coverage than the usual brushes that eat up your powder …”
TotalBeauty.com average reader rating: 9.3

No. 11: Bare Escentuals Maximum Coverage Concealer Brush, $20
It is best when you want “skin tone perfection,” as it allows …

Expert advice on winter skin care

Need help with dry, chapped skin and lips? We’ve got the answers

Solutions for All Your Winter Skin Issues
Cold weather outside and dry heat inside can really do a number on your skin. If you’ve tried slathering on every lotion you can get your hands on to no avail, then you need these expert tips to fight dry skin. We talked to Arielle N.B. Kauvar, M.D., director of New York Laser & Skin Care, and Liz Earle, a natural skin care expert, to find out what ingredients, methods and products work best to get you soft, silky skin all season long.

Ultimate Holiday #Beauty Gifts UPDATED

Ultimate Holiday Beauty gifts

Thirteen shopping days before Christmas, and here are my picks for the ultimate holiday beauty gifts. From left to right:

Clarisonic Plus Skin Care Sonic Cleansing System – I was skeptical about Clarisonic until I had a chance to try it. You don’t have to apply pressure to clean your face, and you can switch out the face brush head with the body brush head to exfoliate your skin in the shower.

Maison Francis Kurkdjian Tour Atour perfumed bracelet – If Ellis Faas is the cosmetics story of 2009, then Maison Francis Kurkdjian is THE fragrance story of 2009. Parfumeur Francis Kurkdjian has made fragrance conceptual art, through staging a light, sound, and scent show and other spectacles at Versailles. His new fragrance line Maison Francis Kurkdjian is as innovative as his conceptual art. Among its unique products is the Tour Atour perfumed bracelet.

Edward Bess Lip Wardrobe
– Each winter holiday brings a slew of gift sets and limited edition palettes, the cheesiest being the mammoth palettes from Markwins International’s The Color Workshop. This set of 10 lipsticks and 5 lip glosses is elegantly presented in a black lacquer box. It’s exclusive to Bergdorf Goodman.

Don’t expect value gifts here. The Clarisonic system costs around $200, while the Edward Bess Lip Wardrobe costs a whopping $400!

UPDATE Want to see more ultimate beauty gifts and salivate? Visit Best beauty gifts, as told by beauty bloggers from Queen of the Quarter Life Crisis. My input was the Bond No. 9 New York Bon Bon Box.