Chi Chi Haul + Review

So this week at Myer they had a special sale where if you spent $30+ on Chi Chi cosmetics you received a free bottle of their Fabulous & Flawless foundation. I have wanted to buy this foundation for so long so when I saw this sale I struck and saw it as an opportunity to reverse the sale and pick up the foundation with $30 of other Chi Chi products free. So here is what I picked up:

Fabulous & Flawless Foundation in 0.5 Porcelain
Flawless Face: Oil free, ultra lightweight formula. Medium yet buildable coverage. Longwearing, smudge proof staying power. Easy glide on application. Skin looks and feels soft, fresh and natural. Colour true, even looking shades.

Fabulous Formula: Super moisturizing. Super hydrating. Antioxidant Vitamin enriched (A, E & B5). With continual use helps reduce the appearance of fine lines. Paraben free. Ideal for all skin types.

I am really impressed with this gem of a foundation for so many different reasons. For starters the colour selection is AMAZING. There are 16 shades but they are all labeled so fabulously that it is not hard to find the right one. I picked up the shade 0.5 Porcelain For Very Fair Skin With Neutral Undertones. So not only do they tell you what skin tone it is for, but also what undertones that it would suit. I feel like a big problem with lighter foundation shades are that companies will make one very light shade but it wont suit a lot of undertones. Bourjois are the worst with this as all their light shades are very yellow tinted and other companies may have ones that are orange based. So with 0.5 when I swatched it on the back of my hand I knew it was the right shade as it blended pretty seamlessly onto my skin. Then I swatched the next shade up which was 1 and it was so orange on my hand. The best colour match I have had with a foundation so far is the Urban Decay Naked Skin in 0.5 that is a 99.9% match to my natural skin tone and this one from Chi Chi comes in at a very close second. The next thing I love about this foundation is that it doesn’t oxidize AT ALL. The shade stays the same on your face for the whole day. What won me over completely though was the fact that it didn’t transfer onto anything. I have such a problem with this with foundation rubbing off on clothes or leaving half of my face on my iPhone. But when I used this foundation I applied it without primer, powder or setting spray and it didn’t transfer at all. The only problem I had with this foundation was how many pumps it took to apply it to my face. I probably used about 10 pumps and that left me with light to medium coverage. So if you have issues with scarring, pigmentation or redness then you would have to use a lot. It has quite a strange smell that is almost fruity and sweet and once applied it doesn’t feel like you’re wearing foundation at all as it is incredibly light. If you’re looking for a better colour match for your foundation then you may find it with this one.

3 in 1 Eye Concealer

I had such high hopes for this under eye concealer because I have been on the look out for a cruelty free alternative for the Maybelline Instant Age Rewind. When I swatched it on my wrist it showed so much promise and the colour match was absolutely perfect for very fair skin. Then when I was doing my makeup this morning I applied it over the top of Chi Chi foundation and it was a complete dud. It didn’t cover up anything and was so disappointing. I also needed to use quite a bit of the product to get barely any coverage, which was also disappointing. So here is what the 3 in 1 concealer claimed to do:

 1 hide dark circles, shadows and signs of tiredness around the eyes. 2 Reduce the appearance of bags, puffiness and dark circles as it contains an active natural ingredient that improves microcirculation and reduces fluid around the eyes with continual use. 3 Conceals imperfections, softens features and fine surface lines in the most natural of ways.

First of all I feel like they’ve basically said the exact same thing in three different ways. Second I try not to be too gullible with outlandish beauty claims like reducing fluid around the eyes as drinking a lot of water and reducing salt intake will do a better job at that than a concealer. Though when applied it does feel quite cooling and moisturising so it does help slightly with puffy eyes after a long night. While the colour match was spot on for me the shades are quite limited with only four available so some might struggle to find a match. I will use the rest of it up because it is the perfect shade for me and I will just have to make it work coverage wise, but I just won't repurchase this after. So I’m still on the hunt for a dupe for the age rewind and I have my eyes on the Collection Lasting Perfection concealer that is so hard to find in Australia.

Makeup Blending Sponges

For their makeup sponges Chi Chi obviously took inspiration from two very well known ones. The pink Hourglass with Pointed End is obviously modeled off of the wonderful Beauty Blender while the yellow is a psychical dupe for the Real Techniques sponge and the orange Hourglass with Slanted Flat-Top is the Chi Chi version of if the Beauty Blender and Real Techniques Sponge had a baby. While these sponges do take influence from the greats, I wasn’t the greatest fan of them. At $5.95 these are a cheap and basic sponge if you are looking for a less expensive alternative. It applied foundation nicely but the coverage just wasn’t as seamless and airbrushed as it would have been using the BB or RTS. They hold a lot more water that is hard to get out and when you are actually holding it your fingers sink in making it hard to get a proper grip while others are a bit sturdier. If you are looking for something that is cost effective that can do amazing things I would suggest the Real Techniques Sponge as it only retails for $8.44 on iHerb. Though I wont go to in-depth of the RTS verses BB battle as I plan on doing an actual post on that this month. If you are just getting started or don’t have access to online shopping stores like iHerb then these are a good basic alternative, but I will just use these as backups to my others.

When I was in my early teens I loved Chi Chi and was obsessed with those eyeshadow stickers, I just thought they were so fascinating. But I feel like the company needs a total rebranding, mostly to do with their logo. A lot of their products are so amazing and the fact that it is an Australian and cruelty free company is so wonderful. But some of their packaging and their logo especially come across incredibly cheap looking. If they switched their logo to a beautiful hand written cursive Chi Chi without the lip design and took influence from brands like Napoleon Perdis when they switched to that metallic gold packaging, they could be unstoppable. In todays world of social media influencers’ appearance is absolutely everything and brands need to tailor their packaging to one that could sell out in an Instagram glance.