Recently I made it back to the place that started it all for Sephora and continues to be a playground for makeup addicts everywhere – SAN FRANCISCO! If you have not been, you must plan a trip soon! San Francisco is not only home to Sephora, but Benefit Cosmetics and many other well-established and newcomer brands that we are all blogging about. It’s a makeup artist’s candy store and there is MUCH candy to be had!

Needless to say, I hauled and hauled and hauled away. The next few posts I make will surely be about my snags in San Fran, but for now, I thought I’d take the time to rave about my Sephora musings while in the bay.

Sephora has made it’s way EVERYWHERE, but San Francisco is home to the flagship store. So naturally, this store will have some items that can only be found online or at the flagship store. Why is that important? Well, for starters I have been searching far, wide, and on the Internet for the YSL lipstick line Rouge Pur Couture in the shade “Beige Tribute 10” and I was finally able to snatch a tube of this creamy nude perfection! And while a simple blog post cannot convey the feat it was to get my hands on the item, know this. This was the absolute LAST tube at the Sephora flagship store. Yes, it’s true. We can buy things on the Internet. But call me crazy (and I don’t think most makeup addicts will) for saying this – nothing feels quite like having the thing in your hand the moment you purchase it, right?!

What’s To Love:

• A great go-to nude! Not too pink, not too matte, not too brown. Quite simply – it’s the actual NUDE shade of pure skin tone.

• Soft and conditioning on the lips! YSL makes quality products. No debating that. Just try their lip products. Even the driest lips become soft little pillows of the face.

• Tint, full color, or just a quick gloss! This product is the best to build up or strip down that I have ever had! It’s long-wearing, but not so much that you can’t add more color when you want in the middle of the day. What’s more, if you just want to pop something on your lips in a hurry, this works well as a quick tint too!

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Not only did I find my coveted lipstick, but I stumbled upon something else I had not seen before – Naked Illuminated Shimmering Powder for Body and Face by Urban Decay. While I’m certain this is more accessible given how popular a good highlight is becoming, I was no less impressed. I snagged this in the shade “Aura” and it’s my new must-have for a glowing dew. I have been searching for a highlight that has an iridescent pink hue and this shade hits that ball out of the shimmering park.

Other scores – some simple stock-ups I always keep in my kit. Brows are my favorite part of any look, and if there are two brow products I would make sure to have in a bind, they would be Speed Brow and Hi Brow from Benefit Cosmetics. For brush and sponge cleaning, no dupe or soap is quite as effective as the blendercleanser solid by beauty blender (the lower case letters is a brand thing, not a grammar preference by this girl!) And just because I’ve heard so many great things about the Agave Lip Mask by Bite Beauty I decided to grab that as well. As a lip primer and balm in general, I must say I am LOVING it after just a few uses. Plus, it smells just dreamy.

Stay tuned for more haul posts like this. I can certainly say that my pocketbook is happy that I have returned home to Seattle. But my addiction is never fully fed…

XOXO– cdubdoll