Cover Girl Clean Matte Pressed Powder Review

Last month I went on vacation. The night before I left my house, I made sure that I packed all of my essential makeup items in my hot pink Clinique toiletry bag (yep, it was a free gift). Well, almost all of my essential makeup items. I deliberately left out my Make Up For Ever HD Ultra pressed powder because I knew I would be using it prior to leaving for the airport. My plan was to pop it into my daughter's diaper bag after I had applied it. But guess what happened. Yep, I forgot to pack my beloved powder.

So a few weeks ago I found myself in a rural Alberta Shoppers Drug Mart looking for a new pressed powder that would help keep my makeup in place while fighting shine. On the advice of the store's beauty consultant, I ended up taking home Cover Girl's Clean Matte pressed powder. It's been years - no, decades - since I've used Cover Girl but I figured if the beauty consultant liked it, I would to.

Cover Girl Clump Crusher Mascara by LashBlast

I have no idea where or how I received my full-sized Cover Girl Clump Crusher Mascara by LashBlast. Its mystery origins are likely why its been sitting in a box for months, while I used and tested other mascaras (that and it is a Cover Girl product).

Finally though it was time to try out this freebie and I'm now wishing that I had opened this product a lot sooner because it's not bad. According to Cover Girl, this product is, "A breakthrough in no-clump mascara" that generates "200% more volume and zero clumps." The end results are "super-volumized, beautifully separated lashes." I don't agree with the bulk of those claims but despite that, I still like this mascara and can see a time and a place for it.

Cover Girl Outlast Stay Brilliant Nail Gloss

There are a lot of good reasons to live in Toronto and one of them is that it’s not uncommon to get free stuff while walking down some of the city’s busier streets. Last week, while I was walking down Queen, just past John, I was handed a bag that contained several goodies from Protector & Gamble, including a small bottle of Cover Girl’s Outlast Stay Brilliant Nail Gloss.

Cover Girl is one of those brands that I used to regularly buy when I was in high school but since turning 18, I rarely pick it up. I have no idea why; I guess there are just so many other, shinier brands out there that I don’t really think about Cover Girl. But after trying this polish, it might be my go-to brand for cheap, glossy nail enamel.

Cover Girl SmokyShadowBlast

Cover Girl's SmokyShadowBlast is one of those items that suffers from poor packaging, at least for me. Maybe someone else, with nimbler fingers, would have better results when it comes to using the overly thick, awkward plastic tube that houses the two eye shadows that make up this product.

On one end, we have “step 1”, which, according to the instructions on the back on the packaging, is the lighter shade that should be applied first and to basically the whole eyelid. Seems simple enough except, in order to fully saturate the eyelid with colour, you have to press down with almost an uncomfortable amount of pressure.

Initially, I used a much lighter hand but then only a faint amount of the pretty, sparkly white shadow ended up on my eyelid. In some situations, that might be all you need but if you want to “achieve colourful smoky eyes” like the package offers you, you’re going to need to use a bit of force.

The other end of the tube contains step 2, which is your darker colour and is shaped on an angle, in order to let you line your eyes. However, this angle could have been sharper; between it and the overall awkwardness of the tube, I found drawing a thin line quite tricky. And I imagine that creating that line will only get trickier as usage erodes step 2’s angle.

According to the packaging, you use step two to line your eye as well as its crease. Maybe it’s because of the colour combo I was using (onyx smoke), which is essentially a paring of white and black, but following these instructions left me with eyes that were more “dark” than smoky. Thankfully, it’s easy to remove this product so I could easily start again and this time, just faintly apply the black liner to the outer part of the crease.

This product’s big line is that it give you, “…an easy way to achieve smoky eye perfection.” Personally, I didn’t find this but I will agree with the “expertly matched shades” line since the colours did work quite nicely together.

Unfortunately, after just a couple hours wear, the impact of those lovely colours is diminished as the shadow migrates to the eyelid crease and rubs off on your fingers.

This product is cheap (under $10) but it’s also not very good. Since I have it now, and I do like the colours, I will use it but once it’s gone, I won’t be buying another SmokyShadowBlast.

Would I Buy This Again: No.
Should You Buy It: No.