BLab.co.in: shopping experience and site review

There's been a lot of weddings in my family recently and I've bought so many kanchivaram silk sarees for these and I think I've been conditioned from those coz I've developed a great liking for shot colours. You know, duo chromes that flash different colours at different angles. So when I saw the ad for BLab at a beauty blog saying they now have zoya polishes, I immediately went to the site and started drooling ordering.
Zoya has such incredible duo chromes. You must check them out. And they are of extremely good quality, but more on this later.

B.Lab Home Page

The Package

The Packaging

Zoya Nail polishes in Angella and Adina

 So what did I think about BLab?
Yay for:

• They stock a lot of wellness and personal care brands that are not available in India that easily such as Dermalogica, Nu skin, la Roche posay and eminence amongst others. They also have perfumes and make up from other brands like revlon and maybelline and OPI and zoya polishes.
• They have good discounts on almost all products
• They offer cash on delivery
• Free shipping, but only for purchases over 400
• They offer 15% off on your first purchase once you register but not sure if it's a permanent offer or a limited period one.
• Site layout is very pleasing and easy to navigate.
• The swatches on this site are much better than some others out there.
• Packaging of the products for shipping is very neat. They send it in a sturdy black box and lots of bubble wrap so you can rest assured that no damage will happen during shipping. (I now use this black box to store some nail polishes.)
• Good customer care and service

Boo for:

• Delivery takes a tad longer- about 5 days, which is slightly slow compared to sites like urban touch and Cosmetix who ship within 2 days. I guess this is not their fault. It's probably because they use Aramex courier while the other use Blue Dart that's faster. But this is not a big issue.

Overall I like this site but feel they can expand to other brands like NYX.. In fact I noticed they've recently added some products from NYX but they could include more such brands that are not available in India. Otherwise this site is excellent.

My rating:****

NYX nailpolishes in "The Taupe", "Chocolate Taupe" and "Golden Lavender"

This was a part of my BeautyJoint haul and the quality of these nail polishes is just great! The brush is dense enough to allow application in a single dip and it doesn't streak or clump and dries pretty fast too. They last for a week without a top coat. And they have an amazing shade selection- from creams to metallic to shimmer. The best part? Insanely cheap at just $1.99 (Rs.100) for a bottle. Too good to be true, right? Yeah baby!

The Taupe, 2 coats, natural light

The Taupe, 2 coats, with flash

Chocolate Taupe-2 coats, in natural light

Chocolate Taupe-2 coats, in natural light

Golden Lavender, 3 coats, natural light

Golden Lavender, 3 coats, bright sunlight

The shades:

The Taupe: a grayish mauve shade. Perfect taupe. Cream finish. Goes perfectly opaque in 2 coats.

Chocolate Taupe: Greyish brown shade. Cream finish. Goes opaque in 2 coats.

Golden Lavender: A pretty lavender shade shot with golden micro glitter. Thinner than the other 2. Goes opaque in 3 coats.

I love these nailpolishes and will definitely buy more. 
You can buy these here.

My rating: *****

Bourjois Lip Creams: Brun Raffine and Prune Sophisticate- Swatches and Review

Continuing with my search for the perfect lip cream, I chanced upon these at the Bourjois counter at my recent trip to the mall. I'd also read some decent reviews for these on other blogs and after swatching all the shades I picked up Prune Sophisticate and Brun Raffine. My shopping style post-baby has completely changed. I used to amble along stopping to look at stuff through store windows and imagining them on me, and if I think it flatters me I'd go in and try it on, twirl around.. oh you know the drill.. But now, it's- go in, find something I like- pick it up in at least 2 colours, no time for trials so check for store's return policy, rush to billing counter, pay and leave. Why? Because the baby sleeps only for 2-2.5 hours at a stretch and I need to be back home by then. And no, I can't take the baby with me. Too much hassle.
Anyhow, so where were we? Oh yeah the Bourjois lip creams. So I was doing my hurry-shopping when I saw these. Swatched them and picked 2 shades and paid and left. But only when I came home I saw that the pieces I got were very old! The mkfg date was more than a year old! Ugh! I wanted to kick myself for not noticing at the store. And the tube looked old too. How could I have not noticed this?? Stupid me! And these feel like they've dried out a little. Esp Brun Raffine coz it's nearly 2 years old!!!! Aaaargh! Don't you just hate it when you feel you've been ripped off? Worst. Feeling. Ever.
These cost me 600 and contain 6mL in each. Below are the pics followed by a review. Pics are clickable.

Bourjois Lip creams in Prune Sophisticate and Brun Raffine

The doe foot applicators

Swatches: Prune Sophisticate and Brun Raffine

Prune Sophisticate: Its a rust red shade with pink undertones. Neither too bright, nor too subtle. Suitable for day wear as well as night time.

Brun Raffine: When I saw this on the website I thought it was a dark brown shade but I was pleasantly surprised when I swatched this. It's an MLBB kinda brown shade. Sorta like caramely brown, not nude brown. Looks very nice, not like my lips have gotten dark from smoking or something. Muted and sophisticated. Suitable with formal wear and for no-make up looks.

Bourjois Prune Sophisticate

Bourjois Brun Raffine

Alrighty then, how do these perform?

Yay for:

• Decent pigmentation. Goes on little sheer at first but can be layered for full coverage
• A total of 6 shades are available, most of which look nice.
• Sleek packaging, comes with a regular doe foot applicator
• This has the consistency of a whipped mousse when you first apply it. Goes on smooth. Feels very light on the lips.
• When it fades it leaves a stain-like effect behind and fades evenly.
• Can be blotted immediately after application with a tissue to create a stain effect

Nay for:

• This is supposed to be matte and I expected this to dry out in 10 mins and turn matte but it takes much longer to dry. More like an hour min. And if layer this over a lip balm for protection then it takes even longer. This isn't like a matte lip cream at all. Just liquid-y mousse-y lip stick.
• Once it dries, it emphasizes the dryness on your lips and gets a little patchy, especially lighter shades. Or perhaps i experienced this with Brun Raffine since it was old!
• Doesn't feel like there's much product in the tube when you dip the wand in. Maybe its all sticking to the sides and the opaque plastic won't allow you to see it either. No "glooshp" sound when you dip the wand in, unlike other lip creams from FACES and NYX. You won't be able to get all the product out, especially once it starts drying. Grrrrr.
• Slightly expensive at 600 for 6 mL
• Has the typical Bourjois lip gloss smell that's very synthetic smelling. Like sweet plastic smell? Little annoying. But fades in about 5 minutes.

Overall, I think this is an ok product, nothing great. This fares better than FACES lip creams but still nothing special. This will stay on your lips till you eat. Darker shades fare better coz they can be used as stains. I strongly suggest you look at NYX lip creams instead.

My rating: **

Faces cream matte lip gloss in "PUCE" and "PEACH LOVE" : Review and swatches

First of all, I don't like this looong name- faces cream matte lip gloss. What rubbish! Henceforth these shall be called faces lip creams. Much simpler and more effective. Capiche? Cool.

I've suddenly been obsessed with (amongst several other things) lip creams. Whats not to love? They're creamy, long lasting, pigmented and dry down to a matte finish. Sounds good in theory and many brands have jumped on this bandwagon but do all deliver? I'm in the process of researching this. How? By buying lip creams of various brands of course. Purely for research purpose you see. ;)
So the first ones that I'm reviewing is from the Canadian brand FACES cosmetics. These come in some 15 shades I think but I've never seen all of them at once, ever. Anyhoo, so I picked up 2 of these in shades 01-Puce and 05-Peach Love. The Puce I got from cosmetix.in and the other one from HealthKart. These online stores all offer varying discounts and I paid 343 for one and 391 for the other. The MRP is 399 for 4.5mL.

FACES lip creams-Peach Love and Puce

FACES lip cream applicators-Peach Love and Puce

FACES lip cream swatches- Peach Love(bottom) and Puce (top)

FACES Lip Cream 05 Peach Love

FACES Lip Cream-01 Puce

Puce is a mauvey pink with a bit of brown. I know it looks brown on my arm but on my lips it becomes more pink. It looks like a light mlbb type of shade. Very good for those no-makeup or all-natural looks.

Peach Love is a bright, almost neon peachy pink shade. I wore it and the first word that sprang to mind was Nicki Minaj! All I was missing was a fuchsia wig. This shade is light but still bright. Oh just see the swatches for reference. I still haven't worn this outside. This would need to be paired with the right eye makeup (sparkling blue liner?) and clothes to work. Definitely a night time shade, at least for me.

The pics below are clickable for a closer look.

FACES Lip Cream-05 Peach Love- in natural light, 10 mins after application

FACES Lip Cream 01 Puce - in natural light, immediately after application

FACES Lip Cream 01 Puce- in natural light, one hour after application

The good and the bad: Yay for:

• Good pigmentation. Gives full coverage.
• Decently priced
• Transparent tube allows you to see how much product is left
• Smells yummy- of Bourbon biscuits

Boo for:

• Very drying, needs a balm underneath. But this defeats the whole matte look purpose as it takes much longer to dry- about an hour
• Becomes flaky and crusty when it dries. Also turns patchy when it fades emphasizing fine lines.
• Lasts about 2 hours and then starts to fade.
• The mouth of the tube gets messy with the product coz every time you push the wand in, it makes a "glooshp" sound and some oozes out. So you really gotta be careful to not push the wand in too fast.

Overall, I'm not too happy with this product. I know it's got some good reviews on other blogs but didn't work for me. Maybe lips need to be really well exfoliated and smooth for this to work. I dunno. Or maybe I could make it work by layering a gloss on top. But defeats the whole matte effect. Sigh. Not. For. Me.

You can buy this online here and here. Also available at FACES counter at AMPA mall in Chennai, and at the Health and Glow outlet at Express Avenue mall. Not sure about other cities. :)

My rating: *

NYX round lipsticks: Dark shades- Swatches and Review

As a part of the NYX haul from BeautyJoint I also picked up some darker shades to see if they suit me before I splurge on Chanel or YSL (I'm really eyeing the red and fuchsia from the rouge allure velvet collection.) The lippies are just $1.99 /Rs.200 so you won't go on a guilt trip from getting too many. I recently saw an editorial of Freida Pinto's where she was wearing a deep berry shade of lipstick and it looked soo cool. I've been wanting to try that shade ever since. And again after much research and Internet trolling I decided to order 3 shades from NYX: black cherry, expresso and brown sweet.

NYX Round Lipsticks-dark shades: l-r: black cherry, expresso and dark sweet

NYX round lipsticks- l-r: black cherry, expresso and dark sweet

Ingredients

So how do the colours stack up?
Black cherry: A deep blue based red. Cream finish. No frost or shimmer. Looks slightly goth. Not sure if I'll ever wear it in public. Maybe as a lip stain with gloss on top.

Expresso: Deep brownish berry colour. Cream finish. No frost or shimmer. This is a dark berry shade like Freida Pinto's but dunno why but it ages me. Looks aunty-ish, no offense to aunties. Gave this to my mom. She loves this. Win-win.

Brown sweet: The exact shade of dark chocolate. Has slight frost which only shows in flash photography. Again quite aunty-ish. Gave to my mom too.

Fire: Well this is actually my sister's but i tried it on and so I've included a lip swatch here. Dont have the lipstick with me so couldnt include swatch on my arm or the actual photo of the lipstick. Anyhow this is a brrright pink-ish red with coral undertones. Pretty shade. Quite young. My sister loves this, wears it at weddings.

NYX Black Cherry

NYX Black cherry

NYX Expresso

NYX Expresso

NYX Brown Sweet

NYX Brown Sweet

NYX Fire

Ok so how do these perform? Yay for:

• Amazing pigmentation. One swipe is enough for full coverage. Dark shades are very saturated.
• Huuuuge shade selection.
• Very inexpensive. So you won't feel guilty about picking up more shades. :)
• Very creamy. Glide on like butter.
• Don't feel waxy. Very lightweight on lips.
• Don't dry out your lips
• Round lipsticks have this transparent bit at the bottom with the lipstick shade inside it which makes locating these easy.
• Tube closes with a satisfying click so you can be sure that it won't come loose in your bag. But it might melt from the heat though. :/
• Verry cheap (did I say that already?)

Boo for:

• Not long lasting at all. Stays for 2 hours before fading
• If swiped more than once, can look cakey
• Darker shades tend to bleed and shift around and definitely need a lip liner.
• These shades tend to settle in fine lines and so fading is uneven and becomes patchy after sometime.
• Since the lipstick is so soft it can break at the base during application. In fact 2 of these have already gotten bent and rub against the side of the tube when twisting up and down, making it messy. Hate it!
• The sites don't have reliable swatches. Colours are off.

My verdict: skip these. Dark shades of these round lipsticks don't really work and I won't recommend these unless you just want to explore and find out which shades suit you.
You can buy NYX lippies at BeautyJoint.com. They have the cheapest rates for NYX products and ship real fast too. Also available at CherryCulture.com and Porkdaisy.com and closer home at UrbanTouch.com, Cosmetix.in and BLab.co.in but only limited shades.

Rating:**

NYX round lipsticks- neutral shades: swatches and review

I recently discovered the brand NYX.. It all started with the cream blush and then I saw how cheap everything else was and what a huge range and shade selection they had, and I was hooked. Their quality is quite decent for the price actually. I recently picked up some round lippies as the part of my BeautyJoint haul. I wanted some nude/neutral shades of lipsticks that I could wear daily.
So after much research and Internet trolling I narrowed it down to these four: Heather, B52, Frappuccino and Cocoa. Got these for $1.99 each from BeautyJoint which is around Rs.200. Not bad at all eh?

NYX Round lipsticks

NYX Round Lipsticks

NYX Round Lipsticks-Ingredients

Swatches- l-r: Heather, B52, Frappuccino, Cocoa

So how are the shades?

B52: a mauve pink shade that's nearly an mlbb shade for me. Cream finish, no frost or shimmer.

Heather: again a mauve pink shade which is more pink than b52 and is slightly lighter too. This has slight frost which only shows up in flash photography. Again nearly mlbb.

Frappuccino: a peachy nude shade. Very nice for smokey eyes. Has a slight peach tint so doesn't look like you're wearing concealer on your lips. Cream finish. Love this one. But I found that it oxidized on me a couple of times! Never knew lipsticks can oxidize.. Lips don't produce oil right? I dunno what exactly happened but this turned a shade darker after a couple of hours. Weird right?

Cocoa: A mauve brown shade. Very close to my lip colour, but brown. If not paired with right eye makeup and clothes, it looks as though my lips have turned dark from smoking or something. Tricky shade. Cream finish.

Heather

Heather

B52

B52

Frappuccino

Frappuccino

Cocoa

Cocoa

Ok so how do these perform?

Yay for:

• Amazing pigmentation. One swipe is enough for full coverage. Even light shades will give full coverage.
• Huuuuge shade selection.
• Very inexpensive. So you won't feel guilty about picking up more shades. :)
• Very creamy. Glides on like butter.
• Don't feel waxy. Very lightweight on lips.
• Doesn't dry out your lips
• Round lipsticks have this transparent bit at the bottom with the lipstick shade inside it which makes locating these easy.
• Tube closes with a satisfying click so you can be sure that it won't come loose in your bag. But it might melt from the heat though. :/
• Verry cheap (did I say that already?)

Boo for:

• Not long lasting at all. Stays for 2 hours before fading
• If swiped more than once, can look cakey
• Since the lipstick is so soft it can break at the base during application. In fact of these 4 three have already gotten bent and rub against the side of the tube when twisting up and down, making it messy. Hate it!
• The sites don't have reliable swatches. Colours are off.

So overall these are ok if you wanna experiment with shades to see what suits you. But again for the price the quality is quite decent. I might de-tube these and melt them into little dabbas and use them like lip paint pots coz i cant stand to see the bullet rubbing against the side when twisting up and getting messy. But I would recommend these for sure.

My rating: ***

HealthKart.com: Shopping experience and review

So purely for research purposes I ordered from healthkart to see how they stack up against the other sites like UrbanTouch and Cosmetix. Ok, also coz I wanted the FACES lip cream. I knew about this site from all the ads on other blogs that I visit. It's an offshoot of FlipKart and my husband has ordered form them before with and was quite satisfied with the experience. So I decided to go ahead and order from HealthKart. They have COD so I didn't have to beg for my husband's credit card too. Yay! So I ordered a FACES lip cream for 343 and a Sally Hansen top coat for 374. My total was 717 so I got free shipping and COD. Immediately after placing my order I got a confirmation email with the invoice and subsequently another email saying the order had been shipped with tracking number and link. So far, so good. I'd placed the order on a Wednesday and received the package the following Tuesday.

HealthKart.com

Product page-no shade names!

HealthKart Box

Packing

Yay for:

• Wide range of brands available, covering health, fitness, personal care and cosmetics and even baby products
• Packaging is neat. They wrap individual items in bubble wrap and ship it in a nice orange healthkart box.
• Good customer support
• Easy to navigate site layout
• They have a nice referral scheme where if you refer someone or are referred by someone, you get Rs.100. So if you want Rs100 use this code for your first purchase from the site : NITYA1RSQRP2AGG
• They have very good discounts on almost all items.

Boo for:

• Their colour swatches for cosmetics is totally off and they don't have the names of the shades also listed! You only have to go by swatches! Major goof up!
• They delivery in 5-7 days which is slower compared to other sites like UrbanTouch.
• They offer free shipping and cash on delivery but only for orders above Rs.500

My overall experience was decent and I would shop here again since they offer more discounts than most other sites. If only they included shade names with the swatches, it would make the experience so much better. Rating: ***1/2