Target Beauty Bag

Hi! I know I'm a little late on this because I got this bag a few weeks ago, but clearly I am lazy and suck at updating.

Anyway. Target appears to be doing this promotion every so often where you sign up for a free bag of beauty products! I'll go ahead and let you see what came with mine, and then I'll talk about it some more.

The box it came in.

The Bag! so pretty:)

looking inside

Hair care samples. Tresemme Naturals, John Frieda Full Repair, and Garnier Fructis Pure Clean

Coupons! Aveeno lotion, Burt's Bees sample, L'oreal Youth Code sample, Ponds face wipes sample

I have to say I'm never really excited about the samples they give out, I just want the coupons. The last bag I received had a lip balm and a lip gloss sample and I preferred those. I ended up finding my new favorite lip gloss from that bag (Revlon Color Burst!) 

I probably won't use any of the hair samples. The Aveeno lotion is really nice, I like it a lot and might purchase it. I'm not a fan of the Burt's Bees sample, as I've tried it before and didn't like it.

The only big bummer about this is that the coupons expire I do believe November 11th, which is a little less than a month after I received my bag! I'm pretty sure my last bag had coupons that were good for at least two or three months. Oh well, they were free right?

How about you guys? Anyone get a beauty bag too? Get anything different? Let me know.

Pixi Softly Smoky Palette Review/Comparsion

So remember how we talked about the pop beauty pin up pop palette?

And I told you I was disappointed. You would know that if you clicked that nifty linkage right up there.

The Pixi Softly Smoky Palette is what I wanted the pop palette to be and more.

[click to make the pictures bigger!]

annnnd here it is compared next to the pop palette:

The Pixi palette was also 9.99US$ They also had a neutral one composed of nothing but browns/golds/pretty colors and such that I bought for my best friend. The pigmentation on this one ROCKS! It blows the pop one out of the water. The colors are more in the same family than the pop one which seems to be all over the place. Unlike the pop palette however, it has no matte shadows. That doesn't bother me because I'm not really a big matte shadow user.

The colors blend really well when using a primer, base, or both. They are vibrant and stay vibrant. Not going to lie, the main reason I bought this was the second color- that gorgeous purple with gold sparkles that looks almost blue in the picture. I love it.

The first look I did was one I wore to the symphony, I used the shimmery peach color from the pop palette then the purple from the Pixi palette. The purple stayed vibrant and in place all night. I took these pictures after I got home and the peach color has faded out and looks a tad gross in my opinion. 

The second look I did was using the light purple along with the dark purple with the white as my highlight color. Bonus? The white has a pink duochrome. A strong one. Ah-mazing. This is after TEN hours of wear. Hello, I live in Florida and this was on a really hot day.

One thing that drove me nuts about this was the way it came packaged. The pop palette came closed, so you couldn't see the inside. These are sold flat and you can see the colors/mirror, so to get the magnets that hold it close to actually close it, I had to leave it shut under a heavy book overnight. It was kind of a pain, and the packaging it came in was really cheap. My best friend's had to be re-glued shut when I got home because it was splitting open. This palette is also less than six inches long and has a mirror much like the pop beauty palette. The outside design is light green and very simple, no pin up girls or sparrows, but I like it.

All in all, I really like this palette. I would totally buy it again and I obviously bought one for someone else after using mine.

Tell me if you have either palette and if you like it or not. Would you rather get the pop or the Pixi and why?