Some Sephora favorites!

I love Sephora, I really do. It is a place where I can easily drop my money for all sorts of brands that I love all at once. They carry four of my top five cosmetic lines: BeneFit, DuWop, Fresh, and Urban Decay. (The fifth is MAC, which Sephora USA does not carry.) Other lines I love include Tarte, Stila, and Cargo, and let's not forget my beloved Philosophy, either.

If you haven't already joined Sephora's Beauty Insider program, you definitely should. Whenever you spend a hundred dollars (easier to do than you think), you get a free exclusive sample -- once it was a deluxe of the Urban Decay Primer Potion, which is easily worth the money you spend on it, but getting it for free? Boy howdy! Plus they give you recommendations based on your hair/eye color/skin type, Insider exclusives such as a Stila lip glaze that's only been released in Japan (!!), and it keeps track of everything you've purchased either online or in a brick-and-mortar Sephora after joining up. It's pretty awesome.

Anyway, back to the Urban Decay Primer Potion: this is possibly the best stuff for eye make-up ever. You put it on and let it set before you put on your eyeshadow, and then your eyeshadow stays on. All. Day. For someone like me with easily creasing eyelids, it's amazing. I wore it in New York the day after a blizzard -- no creasing, no budging for hours. I wore it in San Diego last weekend in the muggy heat -- ditto. The salesgirls at Sephora will always ask you if you use it if you wander anywhere near the Urban Decay display, and they're not just upselling, it's really that good. Whenever I'm at Sephora with anyone, I will point it out as something everyone needs.

Fair warning -- it won't keep your cream eyeshadows (like BeneFit's new cream eyeshadows) on; I tried and got almost immediate creasing, probably because the cream eyeshadow is formulated to stick to skin, not primer. Another warning: apparently it has latex in it, so if you've got latex sensitivities, it's not a good idea to use UDPP.

While UDPP is legendary among the beauty communities online and off, I really haven't seen much love for this product: BeneFit's Galactic Shield. Maybe everyone's ashamed to admit that (gasp!) they get pimples every now and then? It's a concealer with salicylic acid built in, so it works on shrinking your bumps as it conceals them. Brilliant! I'm surprised we don't see more salicylic acid-added concealers around in different collections. It also has a twist-up tip, so you don't have to sharpen it (let's face it, how often do you really sharpen your pencils?).

So these are just a few little things from Sephora that I love and are definitely worth checking out. Don't get me started on eyeshadows, lip glosses, and bath and body products, though...

images from sephora.com