Beauty Must Have: Too Faced Shadow Insurance Anti-Crease Eyeshadow Primer

I've been meaning to blog about this product for ages and finally I've got around to it. I mentioned it in my 2012 Favourites post, but I thought it deserves its own review because it's a fantastic product. I used it every day and it never lets me down.

Too Faced Shadow Insurance (TFSI) is an eyeshadows primer that helps keep your eye make up looking vibrant and stay creaseless. It is a light skin coloured cream product that once blended out is practically invisible. I use it under every eyeshadow and it works really well for me. It is very similar to Urban Decay Primer Potion (UDPP), but I prefer this Too Faced version mainly due to the packaging. Unlike the UDPP genie lamp style hard tube TFSI comes in a soft plastic squeezy tube. I always find that when I think my UDPP has run out, there's actually still tonss of it left in the tube, and once I cut it open and scoop out the contents, it dries out very quickly. I know the UDPP tube has now been redesigned and it also comes in a squeezy tube now, but I still have several genie bottles left from palettes that I now can't be bothered to use.

I have been using my current tube of TFSI for years now (on and off) and the texture of the primer has not changed at all, it hasn't dried out one little bit and amazingly there's still lots left in it. You really only neeed a little bit at a time, so an 11 g tube goes a very long way. I also have it in the Candlelight version which is a slightly shimmery, frosty version that is recommended to use under shimmery eyeshadows, but I usually forget about it and just use the normal version more often than not.

This is an absolutely must have product if you wear eyeshadows and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. An 11 g tube costs £16.50.

See more pictures after the jump!

My new Urban Decay goodies

When I went to Florida, I was very excited to be able to check out all the Sephora exclusive Urban Decay eyeshadows (little did i know that they'd immediately become available in the UK from Debenhams, they are still cheaper in the US though) and also some of the new releases that are either not available yet or I've not had a chance to check out in person as there's no Urban Decay counter near me unfortunately. So I came back with a whole load of Urban Decay goodies and I thought I'd show you in detail what I got. (You can also check out this post where I showed you my amazing huge US haul.)

So there they are: 5 eyeshadows, 3 eyeshadow pencils, a glitter eyeliner and Primer Potion in Eden. I'll start with the eyeshadows. There were 6 shades released last year as Sephora exclusives and I'd been wanting to get them ever since. Two of them, namely Psychedelic Sister and Haight were released in the newest Book of Shadows, so I had them, and I didn't get Woodstock in the end because it's coming out with the Rollergirl palette that I really want (anyone knows when it's coming out in the UK by the way?). So in the end I got Dashiki, Free Love and Aquarius, and also Hot Pants and SWF that were also not available in the UK before.

Find out what else I got, see lots more pictures and swatches after the jump!

Why, Urban Decay, why???

This morning, when I was about to do another look with my lovely Alice palette (more on that later), I was applying my Urban Decay Primer Potion, or rather was trying to because the applicator kept coming out of the tube dry. I thought it was a bit strange because I really hadn't been using it that much, so I did what many others have done before me - cut up my tube with a pair of (very) sharp scissors.

I shouldn't have been surprised because I have heard about this so much, but to my horror I saw that there was a HUGE amount of primer potion left in there. When I say HUGE amount I mean AT LEAST half of it was still in there! It was at the neck of the tube, all down the side and at the bottom! In fact the applicator didn't even reach the bottom, so I had to cut the side of the tube off as well, not just the top, to get at all the primer.

This is what it looked like to start with...

...and this is what it looked like when I finished with it.

This is how much primer potion I scooped out of the tube!

For reference, the container is an 18 ml one, the UDPP was 2.66 ml when full!

I really don't understand why Urban Decay is still using these rigid plastic tubes for the UDPP, instead of a squeezy tube like Too Faced's Insurance Primer. I have seen this on so many blogs and youtube videos, so why doesn't Urban Decay take notice finally? Great product, but what a waste!

So girls, if you think you've run out of your UDPP, then think again and cut up those tubes, because you will find weeks and weeks' worth of primer still in there. But mind those fingers! Better still, get your husbands/boyfriends to do it for you! ;)