Goodies I Picked Up in Asia - Part 3 - Etude House

Another brand that I was excited to look for in Asia is Etude House. This is a super popular brand - what is not to love - cute packaging, reasonable prices, and the products that seem to work quite well. I saw several stand-alone stores, but made the mistake of going to one in a busy district during the early evening. The store was packed! The last time I saw a store this busy was when H&M finally opened in Canada! But, I think this was just a normal evening at the Etude House store. So I dove in and elbowed my way up to the lipstick testers. I managed to pick up a few items:

• Shini Star Clear BB Lotion - according to the description of this BB Lotion, it provides sheer to medium coverage and prepares the complexion for foundation.  Well, I didn't read this until using this as my actual foundation for several days. Honestly, for a light complexion, you really don't need much more than this if you want a medium coverage. This product comes in only one shade: clear. So I suppose if you had a darker skintone, you would use this just as a base. These days my preference has been to use something with medium coverage and then go back in with concealer where needed, and this product really does the trick. I'm really obsessed with Asian BB creams as the coverage is beautiful.  Shini Star is a product that I would repurchase for sure.

• Magic BB Pact in #2 Natural Beige - I have been using this to set the Shini Star Clear BB Lotion. It is advertised as an oil-absorbing, long-lasting powder with a moist and dewy finish. I don't know if I would say it has a moist and dewy finish, but it doesn't leave me with an extremely powdery look. It provides quite nice coverage. Also, this product is talc, oil and wax-free.

bottom left: Shini Star Clear BB Lotion, applied thick
bottom right: a pump of Shini Star Clear BB Lotion and a swatch of Magic BB Pact pressed powder

• Hand Bouquet Rich Butter Hand Cream - this is a nice hand cream. Smells pretty and does the trick. Not much to really say about this.

• Magic Tint Balm #1 Magic Red - this is just a really pretty sheer red glossy balm. I've been carrying a retractable lip brush around though because I hate sticking my finger straight into the product. But l love the look this gloss provides.

• Dear My Blooming Lips-talk in shades PK001 and RD304 - the lipsticks are my disappointments with the Etude House line. I was excited about these because everyone talks about how cute the packaging is, so I really wanted to love these, but the colours just aren't fantastic. I feel like they look like a lipstick you might have as a child. The colours are opaque and kind of flat. No real dimension. Also, when I rub my lips together, they get a bit patchy, with my natural lips peeking through. I'm going to work with them, and try wearing them with different glosses, but so far, I'm not in love. Also, there were no English names for the colours on the packaging, but I'm assuming that the PK means pink and the RD means red.

• Free gifts - since I spent a certain amount, I received a package containing five mini-sized products. The package contained Collagen Moistful Cream, Real Art Cleansing Oil, Precious Mineral BB Cream, Nymph Aura Volumer (?? have to google this one, as I'm not sure what it is for), and Wonder Pore 7 in 1 Freshner (?? not sure about this either). I haven't tried any of these yet. 

So, I went to Etude House with the intentions of picking up cute lipsticks and blushes, but the real standout products to me were the BB Lotion and the BB Powder. My happiness with these more than makes up for my disappointment in the lipsticks. I actually didn't even try any of the blushes because they didn't appear that pigmented, although I didn't get much of an opportunity to look that closely since the store was so busy. 

Have you ever tried Etude House?

See Part 1 - Shu Uemura here.

See Part 2 - Skinfood here.

This concludes my posts related to Asian beauty products! Hope you've enjoyed them!

Thanks for reading!