Well hello!
Catrice and Essence always keep me on my toes - never know when the next LE will be released! So, for today, I thought I might check out one of the new LEs Catrice has released recently: Eternal Red!
"Welcome the arrival of spring with the Eternal Red Limited Edition – intense colours, a soft shimmer, and a lightness that will revitalise your beauty routine. ❤️✨"
- Catrice, www.catrice.eu
So... a spring collection, got it! Although, with a name like that, it could easily be a Valentine's day LE as well... just saying.
But it really is appropriate because, what colour is some of the most iconic spring fruit? Yup - red! Think: cherries, strawberries. Although, for cherries... oh we will have to turn to Essence for that - soon! Now that I think about it, this is kinda a sister collection to Essence's... hmm.
Now, let's see...
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| Source: www.catrice.eu |
Okay, so this is a mini LE, Catrice has been doing smaller-sized LEs a lot lately. Not that I mind, that's less FOMO! This LE features 'only' 4 items, but there is stuff for both the eyes and lips, so you could make a sort of a cohesive look with this, though it would be pretty bare if you truly only used these items and nothing else.
There's two eye products and two lip products. Let's start with the eyes.
For the eyes, there's a coloured (burgundy!) mascara and two eye crayons, in a peachy and a burgundy colour. This is one of those things that can theoretically be both an eyeliner and an eyeshadow stylo. Though, tbh, these are almost always too thick for any sort of not-extreme wing. I already have a few eyeshadow crayons and I mostly use them as that - eyeshadow. Though I always have problems with these types of eyeshadow crayons, they almost always crease like hell on my oily eyelids and aren't too long-lasting.
Catrice does claim that these are long-lasting but are they really? Are they, after this Catrice eyeshadow crayon? Because they sure wouldn't say: "it has crap longevity", now would they? Whatever the case may be, I probably won't buy any of them. Now, if I were to buy one of these two, I would go for the burgundy because it is just mmm! Such a vampy dark purple-red! I'm not really a fan of red eyeshadows, but this shade is really gorgeous, but since I think that it will, without a doubt, crease like mad, I most likely won't purchase one just to see. Probably. I have to say, though, these two colours go so well with both the lip oils and the mini mascara.
The other eye product is a mini version of the Glam & Doll mascara. In case you didn't know, the Glam & Doll mascara has been a staple of Catrice mascaras for years now. There's different varieties for different purposes, of course, depending on whether you want lengthening, curling or volumising or any combination of those.
And it makes a re-apperance here as well, though in a mini format. I find this to be odd, why make it mini-size when all the previous variants (even the brown one) were all full-size? It is half the standard price roughly, so it isn't just shrinkflation... perhaps they aren't confident this colour will sell? I doubt that very much; coloured mascaras have been trendy for a long time now, but burgundy as a colour in general has been trending HARD lately, including in mascaras. However, unlike blue or lilac or whatever, burgundy can be a little hard to distinguish from black on the lashes sometimes. Unless this is a truly intense burgundy, I fear that it may just look like a black mascara, fingers crossed that it is colourful!
This is just a burgundy variant of the standard Glam & Doll Volume Mascara, that I haven't tried yet. I have tried the Glam & Doll Boost Lash Growth Volume Mascara and liked it; it wasn't the best mascara around but it was decent and it actually made my lashes grow faster. So, remembering the good times when I used that Glam & Doll, I purchased this one. I have been on a coloured mascara kick lately, so this will fill that desire just nicely!
Now, the lippy stuff!
So, for the lips, there is a lip oil in 3 colours (peach, candy red, and burgundy), and a lip care set... huh.
Not the first Catrice lip oils, not even remotely. These are all very vibrant in the packaging, but since these are lip oils, I don't think they would be this intense on the lips... or?
Anyways, I have used Catrice's lip oils before and I loved them (mostly), so I was really contemplating buying that gorge candy red shade. It was calling to me! But, even though this isn't mentioned in the name, these are actually plumping lip oils. Yikes! Good thing I checked the ingredients instead of blindly throwing it into my basket! The way these oils plump isn't via peptides but rather the classic way: via menthol (menthyl lactate). My lips absolutely hate menthol so I sadly have to leave these on the shelf ;-; . Such a bloody shame, I really wanted the candy red one, I'm sure my lips would look so plumpy and juicy with this on... ah well.
In terms of colour story, these fit perfectly with the rest of the collection. In particular, shade C01/Scarlett Spark would look so matchy-matchy with the eye crayon C01/Immortal Rose! And shade C03/Dark Romance (why no alliteration??) would look so vampy with both the eye crayon C02/Eternal Ember and the mascara. That only leaves shade C02/Ruby Radiance as the outlier, but this is such a classic shade of red that it can be worn a million different ways.
I also love that GIANT applicator; ever since I started using Maybelline's Lifter Gloss, all the other lip glosses and lip oils suddenly have too small applicators. Having such a giant applicator makes it a breeze to coat the lips in this nourishing oil. You know what they say: once you go large, you don't go back!
Lastly, there's the lip care set. So, what this is, is a set consisting of a lip scrub, lip mask and a lip exfoliating pad. Oh, and a tiny little baby spatula for the mask!
Lip care is, obviously, very important. Lips are very delicate by nature and prone to drying out (in varying amounts for different people), so they need some extra TLC. The easiest way to give them a nice nourishing gift is to use a lip mask. The mask in this set contains a few nice ingredients (sweet cherry seed oil, pomegranate seed oil, jojoba seed oil, vitamin E) that should be able to at least hydrate the lips. In particular, jojoba should help, since it is the closest in molecular structure to our natural sebum.
The lip mask is rose red and you know, I stopped caring about tinted lip masks a long time ago because I always made a mess of my pillowcase too quickly with them on. And it's a pain getting it out of longer nails like what I have currently. I prefer to just slather on a lip oil before bed and call it a day, no fussing about with a spatula.
The other kind of TLC lips require is exfoliation every once in a while. Some people exfoliate their lips daily, but that is too often for such delicate skin. I, personally, exfoliate twice a week with a lip scrub and, if absolutely necessary, do a quick scrub with a wet towel, just so that lip products I am about to apply don't look patchy. But this is only in dire situations.
So I would absolutely appreciate this lip scrub but, here's the thing: I am very picky about the size of exfoliating grains. I need them to be large (and in charge), but not too abrasive. Most lip scrubs have the opposite problem: the exfoliating grains are far too small and gentle, so nothing gets exfoliated in the end.
Seeing as how the exfoliating agent here isn't salt or sugar, but erythritol (why???), and knowing how tiny erythritol grains are... yeah, this doesn't sound promising. I vastly prefer sugar scrubs - now those give me a real scrub! But I cannot be the only one thinking that using erythritol instead of sugar is weird, can I? Like, sugar is dirt cheap...
Remember how I mentioned just now that I sometimes use a wet towel for a more mechanical approach to lip scrubs? Well, that's what the exfoliating pad here is for. This is just a silicone pad that has little raised nibs that tear off any dangly, stray pieces of lip skin that are ready to be removed. I have used these before; I found them to be a bit too aggressive on the lips. Sure, my lips felt as smooth as a polished gemstone but they also dried out too soon. Although this is super useful on-the-go!
Okay! That's all! Now, let's recap quickly.
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| Source: www.catrice.eu Never mind the broken image for the lip care set, idk why it's broken |
Two eye crayons, mini mascara, 3 lip oils and a lip set consisting of a lip mask, lip scrub and a lip exfoliating tool. Most of the stuff is some shade of vibrant red or burgundy, for an overall very bright, spring-coded theme. When I look at this LE, I think of cherries and, indeed, you can see cherries on some of the official product photos. Seeing as cherries are only just arriving in supermarkets, this LE couldn't have arrived at a better time.
I love the colour story, even if red isn't my typical eye or lip colour. But burgundy is! Burgundy like sour cherries! I'd say that this isn't a half-arsed LE, it is cohesive and all the products make sense as to why they'd be there. There is also precisely zero fluff/filler! Clear, concise, to the point - with a clear vision.
If I wore more reds, then I'd be making some purchases, but as it stands, I will likely just have the mini mascara. I still have a few mascaras to go through, but I will review it soonish. So look forward to that!
Now, I bid you all farewell! Until the next new release or review!
See you soon!
Maja
Maja
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