Been a while since I've posted an eye of the day, hasn't it? I've been forgetting to take pictures. Plus, I've been wearing variations on the same three looks for a while, so nothing really worth photographing I guess. Here's some recent ones that I enjoyed wearing because they were bright and fun.
"Makeup Powered by You! 1st Ever Bronzer with pH Power Complex transforms into your perfectly personalized hue. Fluorescein Based Dye senses the pH level of your skin and adjusts within 60 seconds to create your perfect bronze glow. Photochronic Powders - light adjusting pigments adapt to your environment so color looks the same indoors & outside. Look your Best in Every Light! LED-powered compact lights up and features a full-size mirror for touch-ups anywhere & everywhere!" -product description on physicansformula.com
That sounds kinda futuristic and high-tech, doesn't it? Blush and bronzer that react to your skin's natural pH and adjust with the light to create a custom color just for you. I'll admit, I'm fascinated by this idea, even though I know it's just like those mood lipsticks I used to love when I was younger. I know that makeup can't actually sense what color your skin is an choose to turn a shade that compliments it. But, still... I love a good gimmick and I was very excited to try these.
The shades I tried were the pH Matchmaker Blush in Natural and the pH Matchmaker Bronzer in Light Bronzer. The blush also comes in Rose, and the bronzer has a second shade called, simply, Bronzer.
The pH Matchmaker powders come in a shiny black compact with chrome lettering. When you open the palette, you'll notice two unusual things. The first being that the tray that holds the product flips up to reveal a chamber containing a flat brush and you must manually click the product tray into the palette to keep it down. Second, the palettes come with an LED on each side of the mirror to help you apply the product on the go.
The brush. It's a step up from the last Physicians Formula brush I used- this time around it's a little denser and isn't dyed any strange colors. It's still a little floppy and it sheds quite a bit, but it gets the job done.
The LEDs. These don't turn on when you open the container and I really appreciate that. I've had light-up products that turn on automatically and they get really annoying after the first three uses. Instead, these have an on/off switch inside the palette. I'm pretty sure that the battery is non-replaceable, but these types of LED light-up products tend to last for a very long time so you shouldn't have to worry about it dying too quickly. Be warned, though: the LEDs are blindingly bright. 
Physicians Formula pH Matchmaker Blush in Natural. It's a warm pink matte with coral tones. It doesn't seem to have any shimmer on its own, but if you want some shimmer, you can tap your brush on the little silver rivets to add a little silver to the pink. The silver is overspray, so it will disappear after a few uses.
Physicians Formula pH Matchmaker Bronzer in Light Bronze. This is a warm light brown, a little like a very light milk chocolate candy color, and it has flecks of gold shimmer in addition to the silver shimmer from the rivets around the edges.
Here's the Natural blush and the Light Bronze bronzer immediately after application. I left them both on my arm for about 20 minutes and I can't say they really changed at all. If anything, they just got a tad darker, but I didn't notice any sort of dramatic effect.
I've used them both a few times and here's what I thought.
What I like:
What I didn't like:
So, does it work? Does it really change according to your skin's pH? They work very well as a normal powder blush and bronzer but I personally didn't notice any color-adjusting effect when I wore them. The bronzer shade didn't work for me, but the blush shade looked really nice. I like the blush enough to want to pick up the other shade (Rose), and I'm curious to see if the other bronzer shade is any less orangey because I'd like to give it another try and see if it ever changes/adjusts.
(This was sent for review.)
Much to my great excitement, Physicians Formula has added a handful of new items to their permanent Happy Booster line. If you recall, last year I was really ridiculously excited about the release of the Happy Booster collection, so I'm super happy to see this year's new products. Right now I only have the two new lipsticks, but I also saw a section for a couple of new bronzers and blushes on the display.
These are the two new Physicians Formula Happy Booster Mood and Glow Boosting Lipsticks. The shades are I ♥ Nude and I ♥ Rose.
...And the caps are clear on the top so you can see the color and design.
I Love Nude on the left, I Love Rose on the right.
If you take a closer look at the adorable heart design, you'll see that it is actually a little bit sloppy. It definitely looks cuter from a distance. Mine had some dents and dings, some funny oily spots and just an overall sloppy construction.
Swatched heavily, natural light. I Love Rose on the left, I Love Nude on the right.
I ♥ Nude
I ♥ Rose
What I didn't like:
Overall, I like them, they're cute, they're fun, but they're not flawless. I'm really disappointed by the construction of the tubes and the sloppiness of the design. For $10+ each, depending on where you buy them, I expected a higher quality product. Plus, even though the formula isn't drying, it looks dry on my lips. Very cakey/chalky going on and it makes my lips look like they're chapped and flaky. But, I still like them for the novelty factor and I really do like the colors, so I'll probably stick to applying these over a lipliner or a lipstick primer to help ease the chalky looking finish. The heart design and the shiny package make these lipsticks irresistible to me, especially this time of year.
I've been drugstore makeup shopping a lot recently... I've been really impressed with how much drugstore makeup quality has improved since I stopped buying it ages ago. I've had some supreme misses, but a lot more surprising hits! Anyway, I've been dying to try out those Physician's Formula eyeliners with the gorgeous chrome packaging and saw these sets. I took it as a sign that I finally had to try them! These sets are a really good deal because you get the color coordinated Shimmer Strips eyeshadow plus the three liners for only $11.99. These were the only two my store had, but I'm curious to try the other eye color sets now.
Physician's Formula Eye Candy Collection kits; left one is for hazel eyes, right one is for green eyes. I have neither... heh.
This is the Shimmer Strip eyeshadow for the hazel eyes set. Nice shimmery taupes, silvers and greys plus a candy pink.
The green eye color enhancing Shimmer Strip. Purple, lavender, pink and green. Very shimmery.
I've tried Physician's Formula Eye Color Enhancing Shimmer Strips before, but I haven't used these ones yet. The other one I used was pretty nice. I just realized that the other one I have is the Hazel Eyes one, but it has slightly different colors!
The liners. Oh man, will you LOOK at that PACKAGING?! It's chrome! Bright, colorful chrome! This needs to win some sort of 'awesome packaging' award. Can't get over how awesome these tubes look. Sadly, the liners aren't shiny chrome metallic like the tubes, but they're still pretty great:
You're going to want to enlarge these photos. The first three are the green eyes trio colors, the last three are the hazel eyes trio colors. The black shades from each set have colored shimmer corresponding to the color of the band on the liner tube! The green one has bright green shimmer, the hazel one has pink/purple shimmer. Amazing.
I love the colors, but I have some minor complaints. The first being that they're not chrome like I had mistakenly assumed they'd be. That's okay. The second is that they're kinda sheer and I need to go over my line a few times to get the color intensity I wanted from them. They are nice and smooth but not as smooth as an Urban Decay 24/7 or Milani Liquif'Eye. They last just as long, they're waterproof but you can still smudge them a bit.
The shimmer isn't really that noticeable, but if you do a thick enough line you can see it when the light hits it just right.
I like these liners enough that I'd buy them again. The packaging ROCKS and the colors are really cool. I don't know about the shimmer strips because I haven't worn them yet, but I really just bought these for the liners since the set with both only costs $1 more than the liners by themselves. Next time I'm out I'm going to see if I can find the blue and brown eye sets.
So... heads up if you've been wanting to try the liners or the shadows, these sets are an awesome deal.
Look at this, my blog has been all girly-foofy-pink-hearts all the time lately! But I assure you, I am not an impostor, the real Scrangie has not been abducted by the body snatchers and I don't have a head injury. I'm just in full-on holiday mode. And don't worry, there are only a few more pink heart-shaped things left to post... But these might be my favorite of all the heart-shaped things.
The minute I saw the first pictures of these, I HAD to have them. They're in shiny hot pink packages, they're covered in 3-d multicolored hearts, they claim to make you happy and they're SCENTED. I know... I might have been able to resist them for a little while if it wasn't for that last fact. Scented adorable shiny Valentine's themed makeup? Sold. I'll take 576.
I got four of the five or six items in the line.
Rose and natural Happy Booster Blush on top, light bronzer and translucent face powder on the bottom. The blushes are a slightly smaller size than the bronzer and face powder, but the compacts and designs look the same.
The back of the box describes all the benefits of this product. They all contain Happy Boost Blend which has something called Happy Skin and Euphoryl in it. They're supposed to mimic the effect of endorphins to give you a happy feeling... Interesting!
Now, there is one flaw with these items. It's superficial and not necessarily significant, but it is still a flaw!
You have to destroy the box to open it! I know that the boxes get thrown out right away, but if you're someone who likes to store things in their boxes, you won't really be able to easily do that with these. It's not really a big deal, but the next photo will demonstrate my annoyance:
The compacts are glued into the box! It's that sticky type of removable rubber cement, but it's strong enough to rip the labels off the back of the compact. It happened on all four of mine. Wasn't there a better way to secure the compacts in their boxes? Did they have to put the glue directly onto the label? Also, some of the glue gets stuck in the square vents on the back of the compact and you get little sticky glue squares inside the brush chamber.
I was able to peel my labels off of the glue and stick them back onto the compacts, but still, it seems like a packaging design oversight.
Luckily, there's not a thing wrong with the products themselves.
The compact is a shiny hot pink chrome. Once you open the lid, you can lift up the powder tray to reveal a mirror and a brush. It's a nice little touch. The brush is a little on the floppy and scratchy side, but I do think it applies the powder nicely for a sheer application.
And, it is rather cute. It's red and pink with a metallic pink chrome handle to match the compact. I wish it was a little stiffer and softer feeling because then it would be absolutely perfect! But it is usable for a quick wash of color, just like a fan brush.
All of the powders have the same style compact and brush.
This is the light bronzer. It's a combination of light and medium brown/tan with one light pink heart. It has both matte and shimmer hearts mixed together.
This is the Natural blush. It has light pink, peach-nude, rose, mauve and one darker pink near-red heart, also a combination of matte and shimmer.
This is the Rose blush. It has medium and dark pink, peachy pink, cocoa pink and one deep hot pink heart in matte and shimmer.
And the Translucent face powder. It has pink, peach, beige, cream and nude colors, mostly matte but with a hint of shimmer.
I tried swatching them on my arm , but they didn't really show up on camera. These are all sheer formulas. Which, for me, is good! While I do like a very pigmented blush or bronzer, you have to be really good at applying blush to use them, and I'm just not that good at it. The only thing that I can apply blush perfectly with are those flat Benefit brushes that come in the boxed powders. The brush for these is somewhat similar, but a lot more... limp?
Anyway, the sheer formula allows you to do just a light wash of color OR you can build them up for more color. It has a little shimmer to it, but you can easily buff that down if you're not into shimmery cheeks (like me). The colors were all very subtle and flattering on my pale cool skintone, so in addition to being cute they're actually useful. I have not used the translucent face powder other than swatching it, but on my arm it was just a sheer powder.
I do like everything about these, but my favorite-favorite feature might be the scent. They describe it as violet, but I smell more than violet. I can't quite pin down what it is exactly, but it smells to me like a very light, sweet candy floral. Not a sharp, perfumey, heavy, headachey floral like in some scented makeup. The scent in these is pretty and enjoyable, but it's not too strong. I don't smell it once it's on my face, but you get little hints of it while you're applying and it just sorta makes you smile :)
As for the claim that they improve your mood and make you happy? Well, scientifically, I have no idea. I have no clue if the compounds in this actually have some sort of chemical effect on my mood. But I can honestly say that they do make me happy. They make me happy just to look at. They're so pretty and shiny and colorful I can't help but smile when I use them. The scent gives me a little mood boost as well, I suppose it's a form of aromatherapy. So, I guess they do live up to their claim of boosting my happy! But then again, makeup in general makes me happy, so who knows. Either way, they do totally cheer me up.
They're a little pricey for a drugstore product, they range from $10-$13 depending on where you get them, but luckily they all have $3 off coupons on them. Even if they weren't $3 off, I'd still buy them because I just love them so much.
These might be one of my most favorite cosmetic products of all time. I love looking at them, using them, wearing them... The combination of cute, colorful 3-d heart powder with that pink chrome compact and the sweet sugared violet scent is just absolutely perfect to me. They're the happiest looking makeup items in my collection, for sure!
