MASSIVE ULTA Haul!

I've decided that ULTA is my worst enemy and my best friend at the same time. Every single time I walk in there, I am tempted by some amazing "Sale of the Week" and I wind up buying more products than I  intended. Case in point: I was randomly browsing the ULTA site and saw that NYX Jumbo Eye Shadow pencils were Buy 1, Get One 50% off. Of course then I couldn't decide which colors to get, so I bought six. And then there was last week's sale where you got three free Benefit samples with any $25 purchase, so of course I had to buy the "That Gal" brightening face primer so that I could get the samples (which probably cost the company $2 to make!). Let's face it, I'm an ULTA (and cosmetics) addict.

Of course, now comes the fun part: sharing all of my purchases with you! Keep in mind that I did NOT purchase all of this in one trip, rather it's compiled from all of my ULTA visits in the month of June (and truth be told, I know it probably doesn't justify getting this much product anyway, although I will throw it out there that I used a lot of coupons and bought most of this when it was on sale or came with a freebie!). Ok, let's get on with it!

Benefit

I'm a fairly new consumer of the Benefit line, so there are a lot of products from the brand that I haven't yet tried. I did try the Erase Paste at the end of May, so this month (as mentioned above), I decided to try the "That Gal" brightening face primer for $28 which, according to the Benefit site, is supposed to "take your complexion from dull to darling!" and make your skin look brighter and smoother whether applied with or without foundation. I tried this for the first time today in place of my foundation, and honestly didn't feel like my skin looked much smoother or brighter, although the candy smell was delicious and the silky consistency felt nice on my dry skin. I'm going to try this tomorrow under my foundation and see if it makes a difference.

Since I bought the primer, I also got a pretty pink sachet filled with samples of Benefit's "Bad Gal Lash" mascara (retails for $19 full size, which feels pretty expensive for a black mascara), "Stay Don't Stray" primer for concealors and eyeshadows (retails for $24 at full size, so unless this is better than Urban Decay's Primer Potion, which sells for $18, I doubt I'll repurchase) and a creasless cream shadow/liner in the color R.S.V.P. (which is a sparkling champagne color according to the Benefit site and retails for $19). I haven't tried any of these free products yet, but will do a big Benefit review once I have!

Bourjois

Bourjois has actually been a favorite line of mine for a long time -- they used to have a counter in Macy's and were my preferred brand for bronzers, but then the counter closed and I had been told the line was being discontinued altogether (a lie!). You can imagine my fervor, then, when I saw that the line was carried at my local ULTA! Alas, this love affair was just not meant to be -- during my last ULTA trip, I saw that all Bourjous cosmetics were 75% off and the shelves had been cleared out, apparently to make way for a new brand. Naturally, I was sad, but my sadness quickly turned to happiness when I realized I could indulge my Bourjois fetish for 25% of the retail price due to the sale! I wound up picking up three Little Round Pot eye shadows in 16 Ambre Nude, a shimmery peachy nude that is great for a highlight or lid color, 08 Beige Rose, which is a matte champagne color and 72 Violet Absolu, which is a really pretty pearly purple (these retail for $17 each and I got them for $3.50!). Then I also got a Little Round Pot blush in 33 Lilas D'Or, which is a deep shimmery rose shade with gold reflects (retails for $19 and I got it for $3.50!) and I picked up my very first liquid eyeliner EVER (hard to believe, I know), called Liner Clubbing in 81 Absolute Black (retails for $20, I got it for $4). 

NYX

I feel like NYX is getting a TON of buzz lately for being a high-end-like, low-end brand, so of course I had to give it a try. I decided to pick up some Jumbo Eyeshadow Pencils first, since they are a popular product and were Buy 1, Get One 50% off at ULTA.com last week (I wound up getting 6 pencils for $20!). The shades I got were 608 Cottage Cheese, a very shimmery highlight shade, 605 Strawberry Milk, a very pretty pearly pink, 610 Oyster, a purple-pink with silver metallic reflects, 611 Yogurt, a bronze-gold brown, 617 Iced Mocha, a mid-tone deep gold brown and 602 Dark Brown, which really is just a matte dark brown as the name says. I tried a couple of these on my eyes this morning, and found that I really liked the texture, but they didn't show up very well in daylight (I did my makeup in the bathroom this morning, so dull lighting may have been the culprit). I'm going to continue using them over the next few days, both alone and as bases, and will report out my findings soon!

Random Brands

Four more to go! As I've made obvious throughout my ramblings on this blog, I'm a sucker for a good deal, so I was really excited to pick up this 3-color "It Girl" Stila eyeshadow palette for just $10! ULTA claims that this is a $54 value (and actually, the same is reiterated on the Stila site), but I don't quite believe that now that I have browsed the Stila site and see that they actually sell many three and four-color eyeshadow palettes for $10-$15 at $50+ "values." Regardless, the colors are really pretty for a daytime look: Lame (there is supposed to be an accent on the "e," it's not that they named an eyeshadow "lame") is a shimmery pink, Chloe is a light bronze/brown and Kitten is a shimmery yellow/gold.

Next, I picked up the Too Faced "The Bronzed and The Beautiful" bronzing kit (and used my $4 ULTAmate rewards coupon to ease the hefty price tag of $35). It comes with each of Too Faced's "best selling" bronzers in Snow Bunny, Sun Bunny and Pink Leopard. You also get a flat-topped kabuki brush, which is SUPER soft. What I liked about this kit was the chance to try three different bronzer shades without the hefty cost of buying a full-size of each (sold separately they are $28 each, so to buy three would be $84!), and truth be told, even though the pans are clearly smaller than full-size products, they are still big enough to last you a REALLY long time!

Last, but not least, I picked up two mascaras. I had never actually tried a Lash Blast mascara by Cover Girl, so I decided to pick up the Lash Blast Fusion in Black/Brown since it was 30% off. Apparently this is supposed to help you achieve volume PLUS length (I guess I don't understand why anyone would want volume without length or vice versa). Then I also got the Maybelline Lash Stiletto Voluptuous in Brownish Black. I had previously tried the regular Lash Stiletto and liked it, but this one has a new curvy kind of wand that I thought might make for interesting application (this was also 30% off!).

And that's the end (for now!) :) Have you gotten any great ULTA products lately? Let me know in the comments section!