Hmm?
Well I did mention there miiight be more Essence this week...
Truth be told, this was supposed to be written almost a month ago but Essence's website just never updated with the new items. Don't know what the hold-up was... but, at least I knew what was marked down 50% off! And it's a huge sale - look how many yellow cards!
For the most part, this sale was pretty standard. Nothing quite outrageous as Catrice retiring the whole ICONAILS range... sheesh, I still am not over it! I never will be! There was a little bit of everything 50% off; some Gel Nail Colours, the entire Glossy Jelly Nail Polish range (won't be missed tbh), some special/caring nail products... oh, also the special effect nail polishes. Then, some lipglosses, lip balms and... one Lip Oil shade? Caring Shine Lipsticks seem to mostly be on sale as well. Nooo... the 8h Matte Liquid Lipsticks?? That actually hurts. Okay, well, at least it's not all of them. As for the eyes... wait let me just... aha! Awesome, the Lash Princess False Lash Effect Mascara is still there - phew! It's completely unsurprising that the Luminous Eye Tints and Dewy Eye Glosses are gone, they were pretty... meh. But what is surprising is that they removed the Lash Princess thick felt-tip eyeliners! What am I supposed to use as eyeliner with my Lash Princess mascara now (shh, I know there is another Lash Princess liner)? And the face... some blushes, highlighters, primers and serums... meh, nothing I'll cry over. Also, just why is the Stay All Day 16h foundation on sale but the matching concealer isn't?? This makes no sense! Instead, the retired the Multitask Stick concealer... weird. Oh, also, some false eyelashes were 50% off.
Wait... I missed one thing... NOOO not the Nail Polish Thinner!! My beloved! I am actually heartbroken over this...
Alright, so, as you can see, that's a pretty varied selection of products on sale! But what actually interested me enough to buy it? A lot more than Catrice's sale, that's for sure! I ended up buying a few things that looked very interesting. Of course, false eyelashes were a must, so I bought a few pairs that I managed to find. Also, one more Nail Polish Thinner, I need it badly. And then the black waterproof Lash Princess chubby eyeliner because I already have the brown one so why not? I also got myself one of those Multitask concealers because it just looked interesting and the colour was suitably light. I am happy, I got a good little bunch of items for 50% off! :)
NOW
That was the past, now let's look toward the future: the Spring/Summer 2025 refresh! Just like with Catrice, I hope it's better than Essence's last refresh...
I like things to be organised, so let's separate this into clear sections, shall we? That will make it easier to digest.
FACE
The face items - i.e., base items - seem to be the logical way to start this, no? Most of them are applied early on in the makeup routine, after all! There's a decent amount of face products in the new refresh, and most of them are new products entirely! It's only the What a Tint! Lip & Cheek Tint that is an old product with new colours, though these two new colours are... interesting, for sure. Orange as blush??? Yeesh...
I honestly don't care for any of these products. Nothing really speaks to me, you know? Why do we need more of those goddamn pH-reacting products??? They are always so underwhelming. I guess that the heart shape is cute but nah, I'll pass. Tweezers are always useful, but I already have an awesome set of tweezers, so I'm good. Vitamin C serum is cool, but I don't need it currently. The setting sprays? Whatever. I need soothing ingredients in my setting sprays, that's why I stick with the Wet n Wild Fight Dirty Detox Setting Spray. These don't seem to have anything particularly skincare-adjacent so I am not interested. Both the Silky Blur Poreless Primer and the Highlighting Drops seem like they aren't going to be good products - just a hunch.
Sure, the Highlighting Drops are enriched with niacinamide but my skin is already very oily and doesn't like liquid bronzers/blushes/highlighters; plus, it just sounds like it's going to be hella messy. The Lip & Cheek Balm? Whatever. It's too dark and I, in general, don't really like that kind of products. Because they often fail at being either a good lipstick or a good blush, so why bother? Just make a normal lipstick and/or blush. And speaking of blushes! Remember the Natural Matte Mousse Foundation? That was a successor to the Soft Touch Mousse Foundation? I am mentioning this because Essence decided to go back to the old name for the Mousse Blushes. This bothers me because now there's a name mismatch but whatever. Anyways... I can get behind the idea of a mousse blush but who asked for these colours??? What the hell?! Literally brown??? Yeah, because people normally turn brown when they blush naturally... I could understand this as a bronzer colour but as a blush??? Either I am stupid or... no, this is just baffling. No normal pink or rose colour, like wtf? It's a shame because I was down to try it before I saw these hideous colours. And this just leaves the Babies who've got - well, a variety of things! They've got Diamonds, Glaze, and Bronze! Not the first Baby Got [...] products for Essence; they had a liquid version of the blush, bronzer and highlighter, as well as a stick version of the highlighter and the blush. The funny name aside, these never interested me. I kinda get their practicality, but, again, my skin doesn't really tolerate cream highlighters/blushes/bronzers. And they just look kinda cheap. Especially the Diamond Highlighter Stick! That just looks like cheap mica powder. Oh and don't get me started on the shimmery bronzer stick... just two colours, and it's one warm and one dark. Sucks if you're pale and neutral toned... oh, also, there was a certain foundation that I left out for now, I'll dedicate an entire section to it because... well, you'll see why!
Not the best start. Let's see if thing improve from now on.
EYES
Now! One of my favourite areas in terms of makeup! Pretty decent amount of varied products and quite a few that piqued my interest! Also some that I am going to avoid completely, but that's life: balance.
There's some entirely new products and some that are different colour variants to already existing products. Like the Blend & Line Eyeshadow Stick, now available in a light beige/champagne colour, for highlighting of the eyes. That's super useful! But I prefer powder highlighting eyeshadows. And a darker brown variant of the Make Me Brow Eyebrow Gel Mascara; this is actually a colour that might suit me quite well, but I prefer sharply drawn eyebrows, and that's something that brow mascaras simply cannot provide. Idk, I just cannot get used to the fluffy brow trend. I always go back to sharply defining my brows. I must question the sanity of including a pale rusty red eyeliner... that can quickly devolve from looking cool to looking sickly. And the last new colour variant is something I was deeply hoping to never see again: Meta-Glow Duo-Chrome Eye Pencil. I thought this was stupid when it first released, and I think it is even more stupid now, now that I have actually used a similar product. The first batch of colours looked horrendous on pale skin, which was already bad, but the effect is just not at all what you'd think. It's supposed to be all "futury" and woo-so cool but in actuality it flops most of the time. All that "duochrome" and "multichrome" stuff is, in my opinion, a fad. Just check out these two pencils from the Catrice Advent Calendar to see what I mean by this effect being disappointing. Ugh. And it's a light blue that is going to look like crap on pale skin... yeah, I don't want this at all.
Now, for the all-new products. There's a "Dramatic False Lash Effect" mascara that may or may not have better results than the Lash Princess False Lash Effect mascara. It's not particularly interesting to me, however. And neither are those eyeshadow toppers. Tbh, they look awful on models on Essence's website, so I don't believe they would look good on me. They wouldn't show up properly on pale skin anyways. While I am not particularly against eyeshadow toppers, for me they are mostly useless, especially when they come in this sort of pot. That's just a recipe for bacterial overgrowth. There's also a double-sided eyeliner, but the trick with it is that one side is dipped in makeup remover. This should, theoretically, allow you to easily fix any mistakes you make while drawing wings... though the video demonstrating that on Essence's website isn't too inspiring. There still was eyeliner residue left on the model's skin so how good is this actually? Well, I intend to find out because I love to try out these weird, interesting products!
Ahh, falsies! I'll be honest, at first, I wasn't interested in these; the first pair is way too large while the second pair looks a bit messy. But the more I look at the Volume version, the more I like it... I may have to try them out! Both are sort of 3D effect, which is not new to Essence, though the packaging isn't very Essence-y. And finally, the two products that interest me the most! First up is the Brow Powder Duo Set. This isn't the first brow powder from Essence; in fact, they just retired one duo brow powder; however, this one has a more natural combination of colours. I honestly forgot how awesome and versatile brow powders were until I started using my trusty Revolution Pro Duo Eyebrow Powder again, after a looong break. However perfect that one is, it's no longer available, so I'll have to replace it wit something similar and... man, it can be deceivingly hard to find the proper combination of colours! But the Medium colour of Essence's Brow Powder Duo Set looks almost perfect! So yeah, I will absolutely be reviewing that one! And lastly, something I don't recall seeing on Essence's website, or at least, they didn't have this for a long time: a gel eyeliner pot! I used to stay away from these; I only ever used one gel eyeliner (L'Oréal's Gel Intenza eyeliner), and... yeah, you wouldn't want to see how I butchered any kind of look I was trying to achieve with it! But now I am more confident, and, more importantly, way more skilled -- err, at least, I'd like to believe so, haha! So I felt immensely happy when I saw this eyeliner pot! And in brown as well! I am so hyped for this, ngl! It's just a shame it doesn't come with an eyeliner brush. But this will probably be the first item I get! I cannot wait to see what it's like!
I wasn't expecting to like the eye products this much - not after the last refresh, which had a very disappointing line-up of eye products. I am glad to see they are putting some classic items back into rotation, instead of going with full fad trends.
LIPS
Time for the lips! Not of ton of new products, with most of them being colour variants of already existing products. I already have a ton of lip products, but I always love to try out new stuff so... is there anything interesting here? Honestly, not really... not to me, at least.
But let's go over what got new shades. Like the Juicy Bomb Balm; I love brown lip products but since it is a balm, we all know it is just going to be subtly brownish. I've never been too big on these kind of chapstick balms, they never seem to heal my lips properly, so I just stick to lip oils and lip masks instead. And I am not hyped over this. Oops, I just noticed I accidentally put the liquid eyeshadow here... my bad! Anyways, like the other matte liquid eyeshadows before it that were part of the previous refresh, I am precisely 0% interested. My eyelids don't tolerate liquid eyeshadows well and besides, if it is anything like the luminous eye tints, it won't look good anyways. The colour is very blah as well - like, what, are they really going for 'pink eye chic'??? Such a bad colour.
Anyways, let's get back to lips! Ah great, another plumping lip gloss that plumps using chili extract... these are unusable for me as my lips crack massively after using them. So I avoid these types of products like the plague. Next! Ah, the Extreme Shine Volume Lipgloss... a trusty old product for Essence. Seriously, this thing survived years of refreshes and it keeps coming back with new colours, this time, a dark brown and a rusty one. Aha, I get it, the rusty one is so that you have a set with the rusty eyeliner and liquid eyeshadow - because pink eye shouldn't just be limited to the eyes, right?? (/s) If you couldn't tell, I am not a fan of either of these colours, although the dark brown will look amazing on dark skin so yay for inclusivity! More lip oils that - even though I prefer lip oils - I never thought about buying because they look a bit too goopy from product photos. I will choose to ignore the first shade being ph reacting, don't need that. Idk, these look more like lip glosses to me, so I just don't have an interest in them. Plus, there was a whole lot of controversy surrounding the "re-release" of the Cranberry Lip Oil; it seems that something has changed with its formulation as people were pissed on Essence on TikTok. I never used the old one so I have nothing to compare the "new" one to. Also, another variant of the always adorable Juicy Bomb lip gloss! But with a birthday sprinkles flavour which is... that's disgustingly sweet. No thanks. Remember the Super Peptide Glossy Lip Treatment? It used to be only available in one colour, but they now added 3 new colours! I actually really like these colours, it's a good variety and look, they even have a pinky colour! I am torn between that one and the brown one... might have to do a coin flip to decide; I am going to try them for sure, to see if there are any differences compared to the basic version.
And now, the new products, such as the Pearly Potion Multi-Reflective Lipgloss. Not even remotely a new concept for Essence, but it's always fun to have lip glosses that are ultra sparkly! Although, why the peachy colour again?? Wait, those sticks are lipsticks? I mean, I guess it does have stick in its name but still... that looks more like a blush stick than a lipstick to me. Very cheap looking. The colours are okay, but I honestly doubt these have any real pigment to them. I am happy to be proven wrong, so I'll probably get shade 01/Livin La Vida Mocha, just for the funny pun. And because I am kinda craving Shrek 2... hmm. And lastly, what seemed interesting at first: Line n' Stain! Tattoo Lip Liner. I know there are people who love lip stains but I ain't one of them. Never have been. Anything that stains my lips annoys the living hell out of me, so I stay away from such products. Last thing I want is a stain from a previous lip product affecting the colour of the one I wear after. It's kinda a shame, the pink colour looks real nice... but I've already had similar products before (from Catrice) and they were mostly bad.
Meh, not a very exciting lip refresh...
NAILS
Time for the nails - after all, Essence is well-known for having a wide variety of nail products, whatever their quality may be. No huge changes here; the Gel Nail Colour stays, with 8 new colours, which are all pretty suitable for summer. They are too bright for me and I don't like to wear too many orange nail polishes. And they are not all just plain glossy nail polishes, there's also 2 new shimmery colours; one deep purple and one a more neutral mauvey colour. So if you enjoy the Gel Nail Colour polishes, you'll have plenty to play with in this season. Then, there are a few other polishes that aren't coloured. Two base coats, of which one is true gel nail polish, so hope you have a UV lamp! I don't do gel nail polishes, so this isn't for me. Neither is the base or top coat as like 90% of base and top coats peel off on my nails, no matter how I apply them. The strengthening treatment seems interesting, it should be good for those who have weak or brittle nails. You know, I don't really use nail stickers, but these little bows are just too darn cute not to buy!
On the opposite side, there's the Glassy Ice variant, which looks sleek; it's a glazed nails kind of look which is cool, I guess. There's also Birthday Fun, which... yeah, that one really looks terrible. It looks like a child splattered a bunch of chunky glitter and then covered it in nail polish. I don't like it, though I can see kids loving it. It's just too childish and immature for me, not cool or elegant or classy enough. But you know what's mega cool? Glow in the Dark nail polish! Hell yeah! I had to take a double take when I was going through this refresh... like, wait a second... it actually glows in the dark??? Sign me the frick up! I know this is goofy, but I couldn't help myself, I just started laughing when I saw this! I must know: does it really glow like those glow in the dark stickers that glow sickly greenish in the dark? It also has shimmer in it but I don't care as long as it actually glows - I want to have 10 mini glowsticks on my hands! And finally, another effect that I wanted to try out for the longest time: magnetic nail polish! I absolutely get how this works, I just never had the opportunity to try them out; you don't really see them often, you know? However, I wish they provided a mini nail magnet, most magnets that I have are extremely strong neodymium HDD magnets... I fear those will literally tear of my entire nail bed if I try to use them on this nail polish, haha! Snake green is a bit of a meh colour for this, but it is fitting - it is Lunar Year of the Snake after all!
I am very excited for some of these products! This was a pretty good nail refresh!
FOUNDATION STICK
I saved this for last because it's a big launch. As you may know, Essence foundations and concealers don't usually have this many shades available, and when they do have pale and/or dark colours available, it's usually just one or maybe two shades, with the rest being varying shades of light/medium. Even tan can be hard to find sometimes.
Although, it's a cream foundation, which can be heavy sometimes. I used stick foundations before and indeed, they were too heavy for my skin. And this isn't ul;tra-matte; rather, it has a natural matte finish which, on me, would quickly become oily. So I will pass, but this is awesome for anyone who struggles to shade match foundations!
OVERALL
Phew, we're done! This was a more involved, thorough, look at the new stuff simply because I like more things than with the Catrice refresh. Unlike Catrice's refresh, which left me with a very meh feeling, this one is exciting to me! I already have almost a dozen products that I am eyeing to buy, much more than with Catrice.
So look forward to eventually seeing reviews for those, when our shops do actually end up stocking the new refresh!
And that's all from me! Adieu!
See you soon!
Maja
Maja
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