BLACK FRIDAY HAUL: Coastal Scents w. Mini Reviews

by - December 10, 2014


It was really, really hard to be good during Black Friday... I tried, I swear I did! I really only picked up a few of the Sephora $12 deals and then a great pair of riding boots that were discounted from $84.99 to $19.99. Not bad, right? Well... Then I came home from the mall. It started with Coastal Scents, because I had been wanting to try the Revealed 2 palette and everything on the site was 50% off, and it was all downhill from there. Okay, that's not entirely true, but I did order a NUME curling wand and 3 new pairs of glasses online during Black Friday sales as well. Bad Trysh! Anyway, the only Black Friday order to arrive so far has been the Coastal Scents one, which came incredibly fast, and I've been holding off on doing this haul because there was a slight problem that required me to deal with customer service at Coastal Scents and I wanted to include that experience here.

So, keep reading for a closer look at what I picked up and to read about my customer service experience...



Though I could have gone a little mad with power during this sale because there were actually quite a few Coastal Scents items that I had heard a lot of good things about and was wanting to try, but I did my best to be good and just grab a few items to try out the brand and see what I thought. As you can see, I picked up the Revealed 2 palette, which is a 20 pan eyeshadow palette containing mostly rosy toned neutrals, the BR-250 Pro Blending Fluff brush, and the BR-C-N06 Classic Blender Natural brush. As you'll notice above, I was also sent a sampler for the original Revealed palette that included a $5.00 Gift code for the full sized Revealed palette... which was pretty much brilliant because I'm probably going to end up ordering it at some point.



I'm pretty much obsessed with brushes these days. The other day, I was showing a friend my Real Techniques blush brush while we sat at my dining room table having tea and even long after we finished talking about it I just kept stroking the bristles because they're so soft and lovely. I'm a freak like this sometimes, I admit. Anyway, I'd heard that Coastal Scents had some really good dupes in their line for much higher end brushes and I always love to sniff out a good dupe. The Pro Blending Fluff is pretty well known as a very passable dupe for the cult favorite MAC 217 brush, so this was actually the first thing in my basket. At at less than $2.50, it was basically 1/10th the cost of the 217 brush. I also picked up the Classic Blender Natural because I'm a little obsessed with these kinds of blending brushes lately and I liked the look of this one.



Pro Blending Fluff - So I have this thing about white/cream bristles on an eye brush. I always get so sad when it gets product on it and isn't clean and perfect anymore. That aside, I really like this brush as far as performance is concerned. While the MAC 217 might be ever so slightly softer, this brush is pretty bang on as far as dupability. The bristles are slightly longer, which I find to be more of a benefit than a draw back, but beyond that you likely couldn't tell them apart. I really like using this  brush to apply colour in the crease, because it applies just the right amount of colour with soft, blurred out edges without having to do any work. I'm going to be ordering about 3 more of these for my collection in the near future.

Classic Blender Natural - This brush looks very similar to the Pro Blending Fluff, but there are definitely some differences. The first for me is the length of the handle. While the Pro Blending Fluff has a shorter, round handle that is the same with from top to bottom, the Classic Blender Natural has a much longer handle that tapers to a rounded point at the end that is very similar to an artists paint brush. The second thing is that the bristles are shorter and much less pinched at the base on the Class Blender than the Blending Fluff, making this brush a little bit fluffier all around. All of that being said, I feel like these two brushes perform very similarly on the eye.

Overall, I'm really happy with both of these brushes and would like to have more in my collection.



So, this is the item that resulted in my having to contact Customer Service. In these photos, it's hard to see, but when I received this item there was a crack in the top right corner and the cardboard packaging looked like it had been somewhat crushed. Also, there was glue oozing out of some of the pans. I had actually been really looking forward to receiving this, so I was distinctly disappointed. That being said, no matter how much I like to focus on packaging, it isn't what actually matters when it comes to makeup products. SO, let's talk about the actual quality.

I was pretty impressed, overall, with the quality of these shadows. Of course, this has been referred to as a NAKED 3 dupe pretty much since it came out. I don't actually own the NAKED 3 because... the truth is that I own the NAKED 2 and I very rarely use it so spending $60 on the NAKED 3 didn't make sense to me. That's just the facts for me. I'd rather spend my money on palettes that I'll actually use. (Lorac Pro, I'm looking at you... if I can ever find you now that Sephora doesn't carry anymore.) Anyway, there are a lot of blog posts and Youtube videos on this as a dupe all over the internet, if you're interested. I was drawn to this as a dupe since the price point is so much lower, and getting it for $10 during a sale means that I don't really have to worry about how much I'm going to use it. #TryshLogic


I actually quite like this palette. There are a few dud shadows in this palette, but there are also dud shadows in most palettes as far as I'm concerned. One thing that I really like about this palette is the number of matte shades. Lately I've been gravitating more towards mattes than shimmers, so it's nice to have a good selection in this palette. I also do really like the variety of the shimmers in the palette, because I feel like they can be used to create a lot of different looks even though they're mostly very tonally similar. Texture wise, most of these are quite nice. I find them soft and blendable without too much fall out for the most part. Like I said, there are a few dud shades.


As I said above, this order also came with a palette sampler of the original revealed palette which featured two shimmer shades, a matte shade, and a satin highlight shade. Also included with this sampler is the $5 Gift code off the full sized Revealed Palette, which I will definitely be taking advantage of.

Now, to close this, I want to talk about my experience with the Coastal Scents customer service rep that I dealt with. I decided to contact them because, even at a sale price, I expect to receive products I order without damage to the packaging. Initially, I just sent them a message explaining the damage to the packaging and they got back to me in about 2 days to ask me to send photos of the damage so that they could proceed with my options. After I sent them a picture, they got back to me within another couple of days to let me know that they were sorry that I was unhappy and that I had three options with how to proceed. The first was a store credit for the price of the palette, the second was a replacement palette at no charge, and the third was a full cash credit for the price of the palette. I feel like these were very reasonable and inclusive options and I'm actually very happy with the service that I got - which is why I went with the store credit option, so that I can pick up a few more things in the near future.

Overall, in spite of the damaged packaging, I'm quite happy with what I ordered from Coastal Scents and look forward to trying out more things.

Have you tried anything from Coastal Scents? Do you have any recommendations?


You May Also Like

0 comments