Monday 1 March 2010

A week of Indie Makeup Day 6 - Aromaleigh

http://www.aromaleigh.com/

Ok, here we are, the review of the Big Daddy of the indie mineral makeup world! Aromaleigh have been selling natural beauty products on the internet for over 12 years now! They were founded by Kristen Leigh Bell who remains the company president and creative director. Kristen was also the founder of the Mineral Makeup Mutiny (http://mineralmakeupmutiny.wordpress.com) a group which celebrates small cosmetics companies who create authentic handmade cosmetics. I find this a real hint towards the brands personality, that they are happy to advertise other mineral makeup companies who would be competition. She also only awarded Aromaleigh the Mutiny badge after she had sorted through all the requests from other companies.

Aromaleigh make basically every sort of makeup you could wish for: lip balms, lip sticks (both sheer and opaque), concealers, face lip and eye primers, foundations, finishing powders, blushes, bronzers, cream and powder eyeshadows and eyeliners, glitters, brushes, perfumes and various other bits and bobs. Samples are available on any powder product. Ingredients are included on each product as well as swatches and descriptions to give you a really good idea of the colours. It is easy to get in contact and they also have a forum.

Their prices are fair, they depend on the collection the products are from as well as the products itself. You can expect to pay less than $16 for a full 8g jar of foundation, $15 for a 7g blush, $8 for a 5 gram jar of eyeshadow and $7 for a lip product. These prices might be a bit pricier than some of the other companies i've reviews, but you get more product and a lot of the products are cheaper than what i've cited as well as them having costant sales on various items. International shipping is very fair, you pay a set price, sample orders up to $75 or all orders up to $40 pay $7.40 for insured mail anywhere and $14.40 if your order is over $75 (you can choose to buy non-insured mail and that would be cheaper).
All orders come with 3 free samples which you can choose yourself! With my order i also recieved a free sample of lip balm.

I ordered so many colours i can't swatch everything now, and i only tried eyeshadows but i have another haul coming with some other face products. I didn't try the lip balm either as i didn't like the scent (it was sugar plum fairy which smelled like cinnamon and spices which i don't like. I gave it to Claire who likes the smell but i don't know if she's used it yet) some of the other scents sound delicious. The order came prettily wrapped in tissue with an Aromaleigh sticker and invoice all within a bubble mailer.



I bought tonnes of Sonic Rocks eyeshadows, some samples and some full jars and then a lot of samples of other collections.

The samples are all 1/16 of a teaspoon, which doesn't sound like much but will certainly be enough for several applications no matter how heavilly you apply. The full jars come absolutely packed up to the sifter in fact i had to take the sifter out first because there was so much product it had compacted down and would not come through the holes. The quality of the shadows are absolutely amazing with amazing colours and finishes, great blendability and are really long lasting.
I did have one small problem though, as i said i took the sifters out of a lot of the jars and doing this i discovered that two of the colours were not fully blended. There were some little lumps of unblended pigment.





It was practically impossible to photograph this problem. I haven't actually used either of the colours yet so i'm not sure if they will look so streaky it will be a problem. The blue colour did streak when i swatched them but the coral didn't. However this was 2 colours out of the 30-40 i bought so really not a big problem at all :)

Would i purchase again? Well i already have :) And i really really want to try their foundations and get some more of the Rocks makeup which i love. They have a mind bogglingly large selection of products and colours of great quality and they seem like they really know their stuff. Kristen is a friendly, fun woman, who is fair and friendly to her competition (unlike some people who shall remain nameless), their prices are fair and i was overall really happy with my experience purchasing from them.

Swatches to come soon :)

11 comments:

  1. Oh, I love love love love Aromaleigh!
    I bought some of the rocks eyeshadow too, Space oddity and Moonagedaydream are my fave. I also really like the lip tints.

    Sadly though Miss K broke off her sponsorship with Emilie Autumn (rightly so)which is causing large amounts of drama on the Emilie forums. They deleted all the threads talking about Aromaleigh. One muffins even went and made her own forum where we can talk freely about the make up.

    drama aside, along with Morgana Minerals this is my favorite place to shop :)

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  2. i was quite put off from buying from aromaleigh after i asked a genuine simple question about swatches on her blog recently and received an incredibly condescending and snooty response. I was called "drama seeking", though she obviously reconsidered her response and swiftly deleted both my question and her answers. I wasn't at all impressed by that treatment. I did however place an order in the weekend, so im interested to see how i like them when they arrive, if they're good i may just disregard the way she spoke down to me.

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  3. Aromaleigh is my current MMU obsession. I'm so jealous of your epic haul, haha.

    I totally agree about the samples - doesn't sound like a lot, but I've gotten several uses out of all the Aromaleigh samples I've received, even though it can be hard to apply eyeshadow from out of a little bag like that. The fact that I keep using them and scraping out the bag until they're all gone tells me that it's worth the hassle XD

    Oh, you can remove the sifters? I only tried once and I found it difficult so I thought maybe they were fixed (which would be a bit silly, thinking about it, but hey).

    I find that most of the jars come packed full too, but you can usually get the powder to start dispensing by turning the jar upside-down, holding it over the lid (so that you don't lose any) and tapping sharply on the bottom. Sometimes the sifter holes are clogged and just need freeing up.

    You make me want to buy more Aromaleigh, and my last order hasn't even arrived yet! XD

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  4. I would contact MissK about the eye shadows . I love their foundation ! it's the only one I've found that matches my pale warm undertoned skin.

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  5. I just purchased some Rocks shadows and two lip balms a few days ago, and they got here today. I really love this company, I wasn't expecting to love the colors as much as I did but they're amazing. I actually placed another order only hours after receiving the first. >.<

    Hope you're having a good week so far :)

    (as I'm typing this I'm STILL staring at Psychocandy, I've never seen a shadow quite like it. :)

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  6. How lovely! I am dying to try some of these :)

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  7. I love Aromaleigh! I'll be placing yet another order with them soon, this time for brushes.... I really like the brushes they carry.

    My favourite eyeshadows from them right now are Flying Flower (best. pink.EVER.), Cosmos and Absinthe Rock (An angel colour - wish I had gotten two full sizes instead of one!)

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  8. I've had the problem with the separated colours as well. I think this may be why she's reformulating them. I love the Brownsugar shade but it has bright orange chunk bits in it. I'll have to see if I can blend them in myself. I'm still probably going to order more before she remakes them anyways :)

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  9. Yep, had the same problem of some colours not completely blended. They are still gorgeous tho and I haven't noticed any streaking when using them. :-) I plan on getting the entire rocks collection somewhere down the road...

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  10. Zoƫ Danger Awesome:
    I haven't tried any of their lip products yet so i'm really sad they're being discontinued! I really wanted to try some of the delicious flavours of lip balms they had :(
    It's a real shame about the Emilie Autumn thing, Kristen didn't do anything wrong and said lots of things about still liking her music and so on so it seemed mean for them to block all mention of Aromaleigh on the forums.

    Catherine:
    Oh dear that's no good! Can i ask what she said to you? I wouldn't disregard your feelings just because the products are good, if she treated you badly there should be a proper explanation :/

    Simone:
    I've got another haul coming, and as the Rocks shadows are on such a big sale i might have to make another one XD
    You can get the sifter off by prying it open with a fingernail or similar :P
    Thanks for the tip, i'll try that next time i want to unblock a sifter :)

    Sarah Alfor:
    I really want tro try their foundations, i've never used a mineral foundation before and it looks like they might have a good match for me (i'm very pale and very pink).
    I don't really think i'll contact Miss K, it was only 2 eyeshadows and would be a bit of a hassle.

    caseybby:
    I really wish i'd tried some of their lip products, now they're being discontinued and all the delicious sounding flavours of lip balm are already gone :(
    Psychocandy really is gorgeous!

    surreallife:
    They're really good.

    Femaleclaws:
    I've not tried their brushes but i may have to with my next order (which may be soon :P)
    I didn't get to try any of the Angels eyeshadows, it's a shame :(

    KittenMittens:
    oh dear, i've not tried Brown sugar myself. I'm going to have to order some more while they're on sale anyway :P

    BLIX:
    It's a shame that it seems to be a problem with a lot of people and not just a one off thing with me. Maybe it will be fixed when the formula is changed. I'm still going to buy more while they're 35% off though :P

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  11. What a great haul! I too have splurged on the Rocks! because of the great clearance price. There were unblended lumps in my Prettyvacant shadow, too! I've never run into that with the tons of other AL eyeshadows I own. Mine streaked when I swatched it, but otherwise it's a nice shadow. I'm really excited about the reformulation.

    The lipbalms are one of the best I've ever tried and I am addicted to lipbalm! Unfortunately they only make up less than 2% of Aromaleigh's total sales so it's smart of her to discontinue them as much as I love them. Cocoa Orange Decadence smells just like a Terry's Chocolate orange~

    I missed out on the Angels colours too but there are some people on forums and groups who do trades, so you might have some luck there.

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