Drive-By Reviews - Part 2

Haus of Gloi Vice Sugar Creme
(photo: Haus of Gloi)

It's technically part 2, because these used to be called 'Bottom of the Barrel' reviews when I first did them, but I like this name better. Essentially, every once in a while I'll post a few quick reviews in one go, short and sweet, because for whatever reason, I couldn't be bothered to give them a full run-down. They are not inherently good, or bad, for being here, I just didn't fancy writing a long, individual review for them.

• Clinique High Impact Mascara £14.50 - I said this in my yearly round-up post, but it was a really nice mascara. Volumising, lengthening, no clumping. Alas, it made my eyes burn. A lot. This is the first eye product to ever do that to me. I wouldn't re-purchase it, based on that.
  



• Illamasqua Cream Eyeshadow £15 - Got a bunch of these in the sale. As a base, I like 'em. They don't dry like MAC Paint Pots, so they're more like the MUFE cream eyeshadows. Worked nicely as a base for me, but creased within about 10 minutes on their own. I'd buy again, on sale, but not at full price.



• Illamasqua Powder Eyeshadow £15 - Hit and miss. They're mostly matte, and the swatches can be way off. For instance 'Tangle' is a horribly-not-me dull brownish red shade in reality, and looked much nicer online. That's going on eBay. But the formula's good. Good pigmentation and colour pay-off, and nice formula, for mattes. Reasonably smooth, I didn't have any trouble using them, making them apply evenly, or blending them. I'd re-purchase shades I particularly liked.



• Haus of Gloi Sugar Creme $10 - Scents are individual preference, so I'll focus on the product. It's a sugar-scrub, beautifully packaged, packed with varying oils. It exfoliates nicely, but under running water melts into a cream afterwards, so using it in the shower leaves you exfoliated and then moisturised by the oils left behind, like a lot of spa salt scrubs. This is something which I've been missing from my LUSH exfoliants, so I was really pleased with it. For $10, it's a really, really nice product. Samples are only $2, too, so affordable for you to try them out, and you get a decent amount. I love using these for my hands, because they exfoliate and the oils they leave behind function just as well as a hand cream. I'd definitely re-purchase, and already have.



• Haus of Gloi Soaps $5.50-6 - I got a sample of their Troika soap, which isn't even a scent I particularly liked in the scrub. But in the soap, it's more subtle, and I found myself liking it. I've also never been much of a soap person (not that I don't use it, ew, but I tend to use bogstandard supermarket soap) and this changed my mind. I've since ordered two full-sized ones, because I liked it so much. I'm not sure entirely, why. It lathered up, made my hands soft (although there's a little of that 'squeaky clean' feeling from glycerine soap) scented them lightly, and was in general, just really nice. I mean, there's only so much you can say about soap. But I liked it, and I bought more. There you go.



• Gudonya Too - I haven't bought anything from Gudonya. I wanted to, and then I saw how much their international shipping was. On virtually every item it is either as high or higher than the product cost, and I'm including the combined item discounts here. Particularly ridiculous: $6 shipping on a $3.25 tube of lip balm, $3 if you get it with something else (still, an extra $3 for LIP BALM? How much does that weigh?) same for the same-sized cuticle stick, $7.75 on a $4 jar of 4oz of body whipped stuff, $4 when combined with another item. If you bought two 4oz jars, shipping would total $11.75 when the total product cost was only $8. Suddenly your $8 sale is now almost $20 instead. But it's heavy, right? Yeah, but according to USPS.com shipping an 8oz package (and 4oz jar doesn't necessarily hold 4oz of product, particularly whipped product, which contains air) to the UK costs $7.32.
  
  So I sent Gudonya a message on Etsy, since their homepage is big on 'convo us for options', to ask them if they did any kind of international shipping discount on larger orders, since some things seemed a bit high - like the lip balm, for instance - and that I'd love to try out some of their stuff, but didn't fancy paying $20 shipping on a $20 order, if there was any way around that. I sent that message on February 1st. To date, they haven't bothered to grace me with a reply. Not even a simple "no". Guess I won't be shopping there.