MAKEUP | MAKE UP FOR EVER REBOOT Active Care Revitalizing Foundation

I was trying to figure out the last time I talked about MAKE UP FOR EVER  and it was last freakin' year! For a brand I use so consistently and have a plethora of product reviews for on the blog, I feel a little guilty for letting them slide this last year. Quite honestly, I have let a lot of things slide over the last two years mainly because of work so I have been looking at this time at home as a way to get back to what makes me happy and it seems that I need to find a way to not let my day job zap all of my energy. If I don't get back to work next month, you can bet that you will see more of MUFE, but even if I do go back, I have been organizing and making a list of things that I would like to share as this is a brand with A LOT of products! The last thing I discussed were the Artist Nude Creme Lipsticks and after buying two more since that post, they are still one of my most used longwearing liquid lipsticks. Now, we get into one of MUFE's specialities and that is FOUNDATION. I want to say there is a new formulation every year and just when I think MUFE has covered it all, they come out with REBOOT which, after close to 3 weeks of testing, has been a bit of tempestuous journey for both of us.

MAKE UP FOR EVER Reboot Foundation
PR gifted

MAKEUP | Natasha Denona Bloom Blush & Glow Palette

It's #PinkWednesday again and yes, I have yet another Natasha Denona blush palette, but it was just a coincidence that the scheduling of last week's post was also one of her palettes and boy was it a beauty! I have been waiting to photograph the Bloom Blush & Glow Palette ever since I purchased it last Fall, but time seemed to always be a factor and there was no way I could bring myself to put my hands on the creams and powders before immortalizing its perfection in a flatlay. Now, that I have done so, I feel like I must have ALL of the other Blush & Glow Palettes, but then the rational part of my brain keeps asking "How many highlighters do you REALLY need?!"

Natasha Denona Bloom Palette
Purchased by me

SKINCARE | Masking with My Tata Harper Trifecta

If you have been with me awhile, you will know that about five years ago, I used to work for Tata Harper. In fact, I was the first Canadian-based employee when the brand first launched in Sephora Canada! I took a year off to explore the world of beauty and skincare and even though it didn't quite work out, I look back on my days with the Tata team fondly and still buy her products because they are among what I call my "ground zero" products. These are the products that reset my skin when I can't quite figure out what's going on with it. I have reviewed a number of Tata Harper products over the years both through gratis (given to me while I was an employee) and purchased on my own and though there are certain products that do not agree with my skin or just don't do enough for the luxurious price tag, there are a few heroes that I have consistently repurchased and these masks are some my all-time favourites!

Tata Harper Face Masks
Purifying Mask was PR gifted

NAILS | Inspired by a Lipstick #CBBxManiMonday

While I was working on my "Lipsticks that Look Like Crap on Me" post, I noticed that one of the lipstick tubes from the Sephora x Pantone Collection had a really pretty gradient on it. Actually, there are SO MANY makeup products with inspiration for nail art that I was even thinking of doing a series #InspiredByPackaging! I have been trying to get up to two nail posts a week, but even in this time of quarantine, I don't really want to do my nails more than once a week! I don't even paint both hands anymore because why bother? The packaging on the lipstick also gave me a chance to try the brand new Sally Hansen Pure collection which are their new 100% vegan, plant-based, 16-free polishes!

Pastel Glitter Gradient Nail Art
Nail polishes were PR gifted by London Drugs

SHEET MASKS | Fruits & Passion Olive, Avocado, Aloe and Rice

I know most of you are familiar with the brand Fruits & Passion for their bath, body and Cucina house products, but did you know they also made sheet masks? This is largely in part to the rebranding and ownership by South Korean conglomerate LG Corp, parent company of Nature Collection, and I'm not complaining! Sheet masks are currently the only skincare product sold by Fruits & Passion and come in 10 different "flavours". I say flavours because every sheet mask is inspired by food! Except for the Aloe mask I guess, but could you eat aloe if you wanted to? At any rate, I have mentioned before that Avon has partnered up with a few brands under the Nature Collection umbrella and Fruits & Passion is one of them so here is a breakdown of four, very affordable, sheet masks that are all available now through Avon! 

Fruits and Passion Sheet Mask Review
PR gifted

SKINCARE | The Charlotte Tilbury Goddess Cleansing Ritual

I seem to be exhibiting a bit of a pattern this last week when it comes to what I have been talking about in that a lot of my posts have been personal purchases over the last year or so. I go through these phases where I see something cool and new, envision a beautiful flatlay and post idea, tell myself I'm going to try the product "as soon as I finish what I'm working on now", then time starts to fly and now I'm quarantined and forced to come to terms with the fact that it has been 15 months since I purchased the Charlotte Tilbury Goddess Cleansing Ritual and am finally sharing my thoughts with you! 

 The Charlotte Tilbury Goddess Cleansing Ritual
 Purchased by me

MAKEUP | Natasha Denona Diamond & Blush Palette in Citrus

It's #PinkWednesday and although I promised to write about something pink every Wednesday this month, I didn't last week, BUT it's not like I forgot. It's because I was a bit anal and had already written down in very permanent ink in my bullet journal that I was going to talk about a sheet mask, but couldn't find one that was pink and ready to review. Today is a different story though and I DO have something beautiful, stunning AND pink to share! Since December of last year, I had made a point about being more discerning when it came to my beauty purchases. I receive a healthy amount of press samples and still continue to make my way to VIB Rouge (which my husband often says is ridiculous). When I see things go bad or expire before I have even used or opened the package, it makes me so sad that no one got to enjoy it. Keeping that in mind, I "kept it in my pants" until February when a friend alerted me to the Natasha Denona Diamond & Blush Palette in Citrus that was on sale on the Sephora website. While I had a relatively solid collection of ND mini eyeshadow palettes, I did not have any face products yet so this became my first Sephora purchase of 2020 and it is a beauty!

Natasha Denona Diamond & Blush Palette in Citrus Review
 Purchased by me

SHEET MASK | Garnier SkinActive Fresh-Mix Sheet Masks

Garnier has been doing insanely well with their SkinActive line and though I have some reviews pending for their "bottled skincare", my eyes always jump to their sheet masks first as they were probably one of the earlier drugstore brands to have a solid selection of sheet masks that addressed specific skin concerns. There hasn't been anything new on the sheet mask front for awhile until I spotted these SkinActive Fresh Mix Sheet Masks on the shelf while waiting for a prescription at London Drugs and I grabbed them right away because the trend of "popping"the essence and infusing a dry sheet mask is one of my favourite Asian skincare innovations! It feels like I'm being all #girlboss with my skincare and just taking charge! 

Garnier SkinActive Fresh Mix Sheet Mask
 Purchased by me

NAILS | Obligatory Spring Flowers #CBBxManiMonday

I actually did this manicure EARLY for once. Friday night to be exact which has not happened in forever! I'm always doing them Sunday night at 11:30pm so having an actual scheduled post is really something! I've never been that organized when it comes to hunkering down and getting posts done in advance because if I don't feel like writing about something at that exact moment I find I get writer's block or I have a hard time stringing together actual words. What I tend to do is write a week's worth of post ideas in my Bujo and complete whatever I feel like writing about first. It's very haphazard and is probably why I could never commit to blogging/freelance writing full-time. My writing is very emotionally motivated and right now I am very happy to be chatting about this manicure and new polish from Essie I've just tried!

Expressie Mic Drop It Low Spring Flowers Nail Art
Essie polish purchased by me

HAIR | Hot Tools One Step Blowout Volumizer with Before and After Pics!

I talked a little bit on Instagram about this revolutionary hairstyling tool last Fall after receiving one through the London Drugs Beauty event as we were all quite enamoured with it! It became one of those things like a hairdryer where I was just using it all the time and it felt like I didn't NEED to talk about it as it was such a big part of my life as is, but the One Step Blowout Volumizer really isn't like any hairstyling tool I have used before. I have already reviewed a blow dryer and a straightener in the past and after you review one of those, it's hard to to add much more to the conversation unless it makes your meals too! 

Hot Tools One Step Blowout Volumizer
PR gifted

BEAUTY | 5 Ridiculously Expensive Things I've Spent Money On

Ever since I made the decision to stay home for the sake of my asthmatic husband and take on the financial uncertainty of not having a paycheck and going on EI, more than ever have I stared at my beautiful and encompassing beauty hobby in the face numerous times over the last month and realized over and over again how much I have and how little I need. With the Sephora Spring Sale starting today and my single purchase of $40 (made with an unused Christmas gift card), I have to say I am pretty proud of myself, but then again the fear of not being able to pay for food or rent tends to outweigh wanting an eyeshadow palette. This new and pragmatic, bordering on pessimistic, view of money has made me go through some of my own personal beauty purchases that have been more luxurious and would never fall into the "need" category.

5 Ridiculously Expensive Things I Spent Money On
All items purchased by me and my husband doesn't know about some of them. He also doesn't read my blog so he still won't know.

SHEET MASKS | 7th Heaven Renew You 24K Gold and Charcoal Hydrogel Masks

I don't really know what happened to today, but it seemed to be both super chill and a bit tiring. I am also pretty sure I lost 3 hours to watching Jenny Can Cook because I was looking for an easy bread recipe and then realized I was watching Jenny Jones! I don't know if any of you watched trashy TV in the 90s, but she hosted one of those daytime shows with paternity tests and secret crushes etc. in the days of Ricki Lake and Maury Povich. She's actually got some super simple recipes and she's fun to watch so I totally recommend her channel! Now, I know in the photo below I have three masks, but ummm I seem to have misplaced the eye masks so this will be just a review of the 7th Heaven hydrogel and gold masks. I'm actually surprised I don't lose track of more sheet masks considering they are in six locations all over the apartment! 


PR gifted

MAKEUP | Mary Kay Spring 2020 Collection

I unboxed the Mary Kay Spring collection back in February on Instagram and quite honestly, was not sure if I would ever get to play with it let alone feature it here because of my work schedule as we were wrapping up the end of the fiscal, but things have changed and here I am on what is one of the longest blog post runs I have had since last year! I have NO IDEA how many people are reading, whether they are even on their computers or phones, or better yet reading blogs, but I have found that I often go back to past entries and feel so nostalgic because I am immediately transported back to that time in my life and often times feel relieved to have moved past a certain point! Hopefully, that will be the case with now and the next few months when I look back at Cosmetic Proof later on. I will also have a whackload of content for reference so that sort of satisfies the "gotta get this out there" side of me, but I hope you know that I only talk about things on here that are of interest to me and if anything, the last year has been very much focused on products I enjoy as opposed to what the masses do. Obviously that might mean lower viewership, but it's hard enough to get noticed now even if you do all the right things so I've pretty much just focused on being a little selfish and just talking about what excites me. Now, that I've done my daily monologue we can move on to the real matter at hand - the makeup!

Mary Kay Spring 2020 Collection
 PR gifted

NAILS | Drunk Elephant Tribal Art #CBBxManiMonday

I am often inspired by packaging of beauty products, but I often forget to make a note of doing them because I feel like when it comes to remembering beauty things, my brain has slowly gotten overloaded and my short-memory worse and worse. Luckily, I remembered to write down the idea in my bujo and do these Drunk Elephant -inspired nails! A lot of their packaging has pastel elements and I never realized this, but each their skincare products has its own symbol on the front of the bottle which is what comprises their black and white tribal design of their unicartons!

Drunk Elephant Nail Art
 PR gifted polishes used

SHEET MASK | Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair PowerFoil Mask

I was watching someone IG video this morning about how she was getting nasty DMs from people about her content saying that she wasn't being sensitive to the current situation by "telling people to buy beauty products". Listen, we can't keep talking about COVID-19 24/7 because right now and for the foreseeable future, this is our new normal - quiet streets, staying local and using a ton of Internet. When the lockdown in Canada first started, I would spend hours each night getting lost in Twitter, Facebook and the news of COVID-19 saying it was how I would stay informed of what was happening. Yes, being informed is good, but 3-4 hours of "information" and walking away feeling scared shitless that things aren't going to get better wasn't exactly a great way to spend my time and it impacted how I felt in the future. When I compare how I am writing now to 3 weeks ago, it is evident I have adjusted by mental frame of my mind because right now, my husband and I are still healthy. My family is still healthy. The kitties are healthy. I'm basically living in the moment because I can't really think too far off into the future. My job may or may not be there next month when I am supposed to be able to go back and the situation changes daily so with no guarantees for anything, I seem to have automatically decided to live for today (and perhaps tomorrow), meal plan for two weeks and talk about beauty NOW. 

Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair PowerFoil Mask
PR gifted

SKINCARE | LASPA Intensive Anti-Aging Glycolic Peel from Day 1 to Day 7

A couple of weeks ago, I embarked on a journey that when it comes to skincare, required great discipline. I like having a fairly intensive routine at night and for seven days last month, my routine went from eight steps to just two. TWO! It was all for a good reason though and that was to try the brand new LASPA Anti-Aging Glycolic Peel! We've all seen and tried a lot of AHAs, peels and treatments emerge, but what caught my attention with this particular product was the very brief and succinct list of just eight ingredients, the 10% glycolic acid strength and most importantly that the source of the glycolic acid comes from a patent pending two-step fermentation process using sugarcane. I've read a lot of information where people just say "use sugarcane juice for similar effects", but there is a difference in acid strength if you extract the acid which is what has been done here! This post is probably going to be pretty intense and wordy, but I found this peel quite unique so I feel like it needs its own narrative for anyone who would like to know why this particular peel is so special!

LASPA Intensive Anti-Aging Glycolic Peel
PR gifted

MAKEUP | 5 Lipsticks That Look Like Crap On Me (With Ugly Lip Swatches of Course!)

This was a post idea that had been brewing in my head since last year when I was doing my beauty clean out and seeing so many strange shades of lipstick emerge from my collection. There was the time of the unicorn hair and crazy lip shades that I really wanted to be able to pull off, but in reality were just something fun to experiment with and bring out for Halloween. When NYX came out with their Cosmic Metals Collection, it was one of the more adventurous posts I worked on (crazy lips here) as I was also enjoying my purple/blue hair, but I think I've mellowed out a bit now as my hair was starting to die from all of the bleaching and now I am left with lip colours that I feel some could pull off, but not this gal. Keep on reading to see what I mean...


 Some PR gifted and are marked with a "*"

SHEET MASK | Rodial Pink Diamond Lifting Face Mask

On Wednesdays, we wear PINK! I've realized now that I have a fair amount of pink cosmetics so maybe I should make it a thing to feature something pink on the blog every Wednesday? It seems fun enough to do on Instagram so why not here too? I like pink and I definitely like diamonds so although the Rodial Pink Diamond collection isn't new, it wasn't until I tried Rodial's Vit C sheet mask that I saw there was also one in the Pink Diamond collection and was curious to see if it would be a better experience than the Vit C sheet mask (review).

Rodial Pink Diamond Lifting Face Mask
Purchased by me

HAIR | pH Balanced Haircare with the RAINCRY Smooth Collection

I don't remember haircare (and skincare for that matter) focusing on product pH but it kind of makes sense seeing as how our bodies and certain processes operate best at a certain pH and that messing with it causes are bodies to retaliate. Created by Feisel Qureshi, RAINCRY hair products are pH balanced (4.5 - 5.5) to ensure that the cuticle is closed after each use as a closed cuticle means a decrease in moisture loss, split ends and breakage. In addition to being cruelty-free, the brand focuses on a blend of plant and science-based formulas (amen!) and are sulphate, phthalate and paraben-free. All of the formulas are also safe for colour-treated and keratin-treated hair and can be used as often or as little as you would like. These gentle, but effective formulas won't strip your hair or scalp and also smell like a delicious Persian bakery!

RAINCRY pH Balanced Haircare Smooth Collection
 PR gifted

NAILS | Happy Easter Bunny #CBBxManiMonday

This month's theme is "Flowers and Pastels" and though I have a couple of flower manicures floating around in my brain, I also realized that this Sunday is Easter and I have yet to do an Easter manicure! I feel like I have exhausted most of the ideas floating around and have done most of the standard Easter things like chicks, bunnies, bunny bums, bunnies eating carrots, Cadbury Eggs and regular eggs so after these bunnies, I am going to head into flowers as the possibilities are endless. I don't know what you all have going on today, but the first thing I will be doing after this is a bit of meal planning as we have now amassed a fair amount of food and need to pair some meals with them! 


 PR gifted

SHEET MASK | Mediheal Capsule 100 Bio Seconderm Clear Alpha Hyaluronic Acid Mask

For those of you who have been at home for 2-3 weeks, I have to give you props because it has only been one week for me and I am already semi-ready to get back to work. I think because I can't really do much from home, I end up wanting to do a blend of blog and house things, but because my husband is actually working from home, I can't make noise like vacuum. I also can't organize my beauty things because that involves being in the beauty room which is now my husband's office 24/7 where they do their video conference calls and happy hours. This leaves me to the kitchen where I have been spending a large chunk of my time (like everyone else it seems!) which if you knew me, is very odd as I am not that domestic. I don't have good cooking instincts, BUT I know how to follow instructions and memorize things so really for me, practice makes perfect and having this time to do so is nice. Time has also forced me to revisit some sheet masks that I purchased back in Montreal from my last visit in 2018 where I made it my mission to seek out hidden kbeauty stores around the city starting with this 2-step biocellulose mask from Mediheal!

Mediheal Capsule 100 Bio Seconderm Clear Alpha Hyaluronic Acid Mask
 Purchased by me

BATH | Lush Easter Collection

I will preface this by saying that it feels strange to be celebratory of anything lately and while I would normally start this post by saying "OMG it's the Lush Easter collection", I do want to acknowledge that whether you still wish to support this brand is up to you based on the recent lay-off that has happened with Lush and many other companies. I am part of the group of people that have been now temporarily laid off and though I hope I will have my job back in a few weeks, I know that it's hard for companies to make guarantees on ANYTHING right now. Promising to take care of people for 2 weeks is very different than 4 weeks and beyond and we are all going to be hurting financially for awhile before things go back to normal or if they even do. I can't say that I'm not scared and full of doubt over the coming weeks and there is only so much self-care I can do until the fear of uncertainty creeps back into my brain. The way I look at my self-care experience now, whether I am masking or using a bath bomb, is that I am trying to fill my day with as many positive thoughts and memories as I can in the hopes that I can look back on this time with a sense of growth and optimism. Now, let's look at some really cute Easter stuff and may each bath bomb be a blast of good energy!

Lush Easter Collection
 Both PR gifted and purchased by me. PR gifted is denoted with a "*"

MAKEUP | Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk Collection

Anytime Charlotte Tilbury releases new makeup, my social media blows up with products I need to have with beautiful swatches and wearable looks that I feel I can pull off because the colour stories are so cohesive. The newest addition to the Pillow Talk family was a big one and though I already owned the Matte Revolution lipstick and lip liner, after waiting a couple of weeks, I started seriously thinking of adding some of the newer products to my makeup collection which resulted in THIS post and makeup look! Suffice it to say, I have new go-tos in my makeup life!

Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk Collection
 Both PR gifted and purchased by me. PR is indicated by *