Juara’s Tamarind Tea Hydrat­ing Toner pro­vides seri­ous oil free hydra­tion. This toner is water based, der­ma­tol­o­gist tested and suit­able for all skin types. The key ingre­di­ents are hyaluronic acid, tamarind and three types of teas. The hyaluronic acid is a pro­tein that is nat­u­rally found in skin and it decreases with age. When applied to skin it helps skin retain it’s nat­ural mois­ture, stud­ies have also shown that it helps to decrease skin irri­ta­tion and may enhance heal­ing. The extract of the tamarind see has been found to increase skin hydra­tion and stim­u­late the skin’s regen­er­a­tive process. The teas included in the toner are white tea, green tea and black tea all of which have been shown to decrease the free rad­i­cal dam­age to the body and help stim­u­late cell repair.

Imme­di­ately after wash­ing you would apply the toner is with your hands, not cot­ton ball required. The tex­ture is not like other ton­ers as it’s a lit­tle bit thicker with a gel like con­sis­tency. The toner imme­di­ately was absorbed by my skin and the scent was light not too heavy like I expected. My skin felt silky to the touch and was so soft! I have com­bi­na­tion skin and my cheeks tend to get dry with­out any mois­tur­izer but in this case I really did not need any.

Juara prod­ucts use botan­i­cals and herbs found in the Indone­sian trop­i­cal forests. Juara offers an inno­v­a­tive and lux­u­ri­ous line of prod­ucts that com­bines the best in mod­ern tech­nol­ogy with ancient beauty secrets of Indone­sian roy­alty. Many of their prod­ucts con­tain heal­ing teas, san­dle­wood, turmeric and can­dlenut oil. This prod­uct is paraben free, alco­hol free, oil free, 100% veg­e­tar­ian, has no arti­fi­cial col­orants, is unfra­granced and is not tested on animals.

The Tamarind Hydrat­ing Tea Toner retails at $27 for a 4.75 oz bottle.

Thanks to Blue Mer­cury you can join Beauty experts from cos­metic brands: Laura Mercier, Trish McEvoy, Bobbi Brown and Nars to explore new Spring Sum­mer col­ors and learn cool new tips and tricks.

All events are from 11am — 6pm and are by RSVP only. Please call to book your appoint­ment, these events will sell out soon!

CALIFORNIA:

Corte Madera
1624 Red­wood High­way, Corte Madera, CA 94925
(415) 924‑5400
TRISH MCEVOY Fri­day March 12 & Sat­ur­day March 13
NARS Sat­ur­day March 27
LAURA MERCIER Sat­ur­day May 1

CONNECTICUT:

West­port
62 Main Street, West­port, CT 06880
(203) 227‑6900
BOBBI BROWN Fri­day April 23 & Sat­ur­day April 24
TRISH MCEVOY Fri­day May 7 & Sat­ur­day May 8
LAURA MERCIER Fri­day March 26 & Sat­ur­day March 27
NARS Sat­ur­day May 1

NEW YORK:

New York City
2305 Broad­way, New York, NY 10024
(212) 799‑0500
TRISH MCEVOY Fri­day March 26 & Sat­ur­day March 27
NARS Fri­day April 9 & Sat­ur­day April 10
LAURA MERCIER Fri­day April 30 & Sat­ur­day May 1
BOBBI BROWN Fri­day May 21 & Sat­ur­day May 22

PENNSYLVANIA:

Philadel­phia
Rit­tene­house Square
1707 Wal­nut Street, Philadel­phia, PA 19103
(215) 569‑3100
BOBBI BROWN Fri­day March 12 & Sat­ur­day March 13
LAURA MERCIER Fri­day April 9 & Sat­ur­day April 10
TRISH MCEVOY Fri­day April 30 & Sat­ur­day May 1
NARS Sat­ur­day May 22

WASHINGTSON DC:

Dupont Cir­cle
1619 Con­necti­cut Ave, NW, Wash­ing­ton, DC 20009
(202) 462‑1300
BOBBI BROWN Fri­day March 5 & Sat­ur­day March 6
LAURA MERCIER Fri­day April 9 & Sat­ur­day April 10
TRISH MCEVOY Fri­day April 30 & Sat­ur­day May 1
NARS Sat­ur­day May 15

Please visit Blue Mer­cury for addi­tional event locations.

Bobbi Brown Cos­met­ics asked makeup lovers every­where to cre­ate a video of their best beauty tips and Pretty Pow­er­ful sto­ries. The ques­tion posed was: How do YOU go from feel­ing pretty – to pretty pow­er­ful? They have now nar­rowed down their selec­tion to 15 semi­fi­nal­ists but here is where they need YOUR help. Bobbi Brown Cos­met­ics needs you to help them select a win­ner to be flown to New York City for a mas­ter class and brunch with Bobbi Brown her­self. The best part of this con­test is that by vot­ing, each and every one of you will be mak­ing an impact on the lives of women in need. For each vote received Bobbi Brown Cos­met­ics will donate $1 towards Dress for Success.

Please take a look at the semi­fi­nal­ists and then cast your vote, go to: http://www.bobbibrowncosmetics.com/prettypowerful . The Pretty Pow­er­ful cam­paign strives to focus on the belief that all women pos­sess a nat­ural beauty and are empow­ered to a higher level of pretty and not just in the phys­i­cal sense. So I am ask­ing my read­ers to please take a moment to vote to help a very wor­thy cause.

Today is my birth­day and I’m 21! Yay! Ok just jok­ing, my 21st birth­day is far behind me but I still love to cel­e­brate. So I thought instead of expect­ing gifts, I thought that maybe I should be giv­ing gifts because it’s always nice to give back. My last post talked about the new makeup line by Tarina Taran­tino, so I decided to give away her Con­di­tion­ing Lip Sheen in the shade Cameo (medium rosy pink).

Cameo

The rules are pretty sim­ple, just add my Face­book Fan page and leave a com­ment on the FB Fan Page stat­ing why you would like to try this prod­uct and you will auto­mat­i­cally be entered to win this glam­orous new lip­stick. This con­test is open to all US res­i­dents and ends on Thurs­day, March 25, 2010 at 10 PM EST. One win­ner will be cho­sen at ran­dom and announced on my blog the next day. Good Luck!

Acces­sory designer Tarina Taran­tino “The Queen of Irrev­er­ent Lux­ury” has delved into the beauty world with her new line of glam­orous makeup and luxe pack­ag­ing. Tarina is a for­mer makeup artist so it was no sur­prise that she would even­tu­ally come up with a makeup line of her own. When I passed by the Sephora store on Madi­son Avenue and saw the huge sign in the win­dow announc­ing that Tarina’s line would be sold exclu­sively at Sephora I walked right in to check it out. The dis­plays inside the store were eye catch­ing and most of the makeup had already been sold out but beauty the prod­uct junkie that I am I still wanted a lit­tle some­thing for myself. I picked up the con­di­tion­ing lip sheen in Cameo because I loved the nude shade and because you can never have enough makeup!

The pack­ag­ing on the prod­ucts is just gor­geous, I espe­cially loved the high inten­sity eye shad­ows, the cases are encrusted with crys­tal gems, purty! I adore the names of her products:

• Spark­lic­ity Pure (a high­lighter for eyes, cheeks and lips)
• Doll­skin Cheeks (High def­i­n­i­tion blush in 5 colors)
• Eye Dream Hyper­liner (shim­mery water­proof eyeliner)
• Spark­lic­ity Shim­mer Dust (hair/body glitter)
• Con­di­tion­ing Lip Sheen Para­mour (medium pig­ment lip color)

These are some of the items that I was able to try out at Sephora and I absolutely loved them. I’d be curi­ous to see if any­one was able to snag a few of her prod­ucts and what they thought of them. I’m a fan of Tarina’s makeup already and I will be com­ing back to pick up a goody of five of her new line. Per­haps I’ll  even have a lit­tle giveaway…

Spark­lic­ity Pure $19

Doll­skin Cheeks $25

Eye Dream Hyper­liner $17

Spark­lic­ity Shim­mer Dust $39

Con­di­tion­ing Lip Sheen Para­mour $22

All items are avail­able exclu­sively at Sephora.

Too Faced presents the ladies with their Walk of Shame set which con­tains “Every­thing a girl needs to get her man and still look respectable in the morn­ing” or so the label says. This kit is designed to be a beauty on the go overnight kit built for refresh­ing your­self in the morn­ing after per­haps a long night out . As a mar­ried gal I would not need this kit for that pur­pose but I still thought that it was cute enough to pur­chase when I saw it in Sephora. Per­son­ally I love an all in one kit that you can toss in you bag for an overnight stay or week­end trip. So what does the kit come with? Well here is what you get:

• An adorable pink and satin black makeup bag
• Pink travel toothbrush
• Shadow Insur­ance eye shadow primer
• Mini Primed & Pore­less Skin Smooth­ing Face Primer
• Mir­rored com­pact that con­tains two shad­ows (Totally Toasted & Silk Teddy) and a bronzer (Sun Bunny Light)
• Totally Nude lip color
• “Oral Fix­a­tion” mints

This palette is ideal for cre­at­ing the nat­ural look. The col­ors are very earthy and can work well with most skin tones. The only down­side is that I wished that this set came with some appli­ca­tors — so unfor­tu­nately you will have to sup­ply your own. The col­ors are light enough so that you can look refreshed and not overly done up. For me this would be a per­fect week­end look because it gives me face a sun kissed look and wakes up my face!

Eye Shad­ows: Silk Teddy ®, Totally Toasted (L)

Lip­stick: Totally Nude

This kit can be yours for $38 (val­ued at $95) — this is a total steal.