The Murad line of products is weird. Some of them are wonderful and contain and do wonderful things; others range from smelling terrific (the Murad Acne Clarifying Cleanser) all the way to smelling like something your dead grandmother wore (the Brightening Lotion). Yet others are loaded with irritants, and you wonder why a dermatologist would dream of putting irritants in a skincare product (see the Clarifying Cleanser for an excellent example), slapping a big pricetag on it, and foisting it onto consumers who either don’t read the ingredient panels or don’t understand them. (I am neither of those.) Murad Perfecting Day Cream SPF 30 for Sensitive Skin is a beautiful, rich, creamy (unscented!) cream for those of us with dry, sensitive skin, and it contains essential fatty acids as well as anti-oxidants (including magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, the stable form of vitamin C. Yay!). And the best part (besides the pleasing SPF 30) is that it doesn’t make my face so greasy that my glasses/sunglasses keep sliding off. Cool! But wait! What’s this? In looking further down the ingredient panel, I find… no, it can’t be! Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Lipstick Face! I’m going to kick this off with one of my all-time favorite products, and that’s Urban Decay’s Surreal Skin Liquid Foundation. While Urban Decay markets to club kids and twenty-somethings closer to twenty, they have some terrific offerings if you can get past some of the more outrageous, glitterfied nonsense, and their foundation and eyeshadows are two of them. (More on the eye shadows in a later review.) Surreal Skin doesn’t exactly give you skin I’d call “surreal,” but it is a great matte foundation. It used to come in a more useful, less embarrassing “I Dream of Jeannie” container (a nice tube which stood on end), but if you overlook the bottle designed for teenagers, transvestites, and hookers, you’ll find a medium-coverage, lighweight foundation containing antioxidants (A, C, and E) (and the vitamin C takes the form of magnesium ascorbyl phosphate, the most stable form of that vitamin). It’s neither chalky nor heavy, so you don’t end up with that “pancake face” look. And finally, it’s oil-free (though it contains several silicones, hence the non-pancakey-look), so it isn’t greasy and doesn’t turn orange even if you have oily areas on your face. You may feel kinda silly pushing past goth types at the Urban Decay display to get at it, but it’s worth it for a foundation this nice. So long as Urban Decay keeps making this, I’m gonna keep wearing it; I love it, and at this price point, it’s a steal! Tip: when the foundation thickens and gloops up around the cap (it does sometimes), use the gloop with a small brush to cover blemishes. $24.00