*Product Battles* MAC vs Coastal Scents Lip Pencils Pt 1

 coastal scents, Dupes, Inexpensive Products, lipliner, Lips, lipstick, M.A.C., MAC, Product Wars  3 Responses »
Mar 312012
 

I’m always looking for dupes of my favorite products with less expensive ones.  I was on the Coastal Scents website and I noticed very good customer reviews on their lip pencils.  I also was intrigued by the fact that there were pencils with names similar to some of my favorite MAC Lip Pencils.   This is the 1st post in which I’ll begin comparing the MAC Lip Pencils to the Coastal Scents Lip Pencils.

I’m starting off with Currant vs. Current.

Above is MAC Currant Lip Pencil

Here is Coastal Scents Current Lip Pencil

Swatches of the two next to each other.

 On the Left is MAC on the Right is Coastal Scents.  You can see how there’s more pigment in the Coastal Scents Current Lip Pencil.  I had to lighten up my application while swatching.  This is the reason you can see a change in the intensity. They are very close in color and will provide similar effects.  See how

I paired them with MAC Up the Amp lipstick below.

MAC Up The Amp Amplified Lipstick alone.

MAC Up the Amp Amplified Lipstick with with MAC Currant Lip Pencil

Below is the same MAC Up the Amp Lipstick with Coastal Scents Current Lip Pencil

I’m very pleased and impressed with Coastal Scents Lip Pencils.  I love the fact that they glide on very smoothly.  More so than the MAC Lip Pencils.  I’m even more pleased that the Coastal Scents Lip Pencils only cost $2.95 compared to MAC Lip Pencils at $14.

Product Battles: Crown Brushes Pt. 1 Duo Fiber Brush vs. M.A.C. #187

 brushes, Crown Brush, Dupes, Expensive brushes, Hautelook, Inexpensive Products, M.A.C., Product Battles  4 Responses »
Aug 092011
 

Yay! My brushes came in.  I ordered more Crown Brushes from Haute Look a couple of weeks ago. I was disappointed in the selection that they had available so I only purchased 5 brushes.  Here they are below

These are the brushes I was hoping to see available
They are similar to the M.A.C. #217 on the left and M.A.C. #224 on the right.   I’ll do another post to go into detail about these. Here are links to the posts *click here for M.A.C. #217 & click here for M.A.C. #224*
187 Duo Fibre Brush

My favorite face brush to use on clients is the M.A.C. #187 Brush.  It’s a terrific all around brush.  It works for liquids, powders, and creams.  This means I can use one brush for pretty much the whole face.  I can start with moisturizer then go to primer to foundation to powder to blush and finish with bronzer all using one single brush.  It saves me a lot of time, because I don’t have to reach for 3 other brushes.  Because of it’s design, it allows me to have total control of how much product I use on my client.  I can provide anywhere from very sheer coverage to full.  The fact that you stipple the product on instead of painting or sweeping it allows for that beautiful flawless finish.  I never get streaks or blotches when using this brush.  Of course I brush it off on a tissue or paper towel in between, but still that’s great.

I have two #187 brushes and two duo fiber stippling brushes from Coastal Scents.   The two from Coastal Scents get the job done but they don’t come anywhere close to the quality of the #187.  For this reason, I was hoping I would get brushes that were better dupes for the #187 than my Coastal Scents brushes.  Here are more pictures of the Crown Brush vs. the M.A.C. brush.

So what’s the conclusion? These are much better than my Coastal Scents brushes but still not as good as my #187.  The handle and ferrule (the metal part holding the hair together) are nice quality, unlike my  Coastal Scents brushes in which the ferrules look cheap.  The bristles are pretty good, however not as soft as the #187.  Even though the name of this brush was Duo Fiber Brush, it doesn’t feel as though it’s really Duo Fiber.  It feels all synthetic and no goat.  Also a huge irritation was when I washed them (which you should always do before using new brushes) they faded a bit.  This means the black is dyed. :-(  This is a MAJOR frustration I have with my Coastal Scents brushes.  Every time I wash them, the black fades on the white.  Mind you, I’ve had these brushes for about 2 1/2 yrs now.  No more dye should still fade at this point. Hmph!!  Another observation was that the black bristles are longer on the Crown Brushes than the M.A.C. brush, but it appears there may be more white bristles than on the M.A.C. brush.   See below.
All in all, the brushes are not bad.  As it relates to the difference in pricing, the M.A.C. #187 retails at $42 while the Crown Brush Duo Fiber brush on Hautelook.com was $7.  They work extremely well for $7. 
These days I see plenty of companies with duo fiber brushes.  Which ones do you prefer?