Hello Shiquers and welcome back to Nerdy Shique Universe and glad to be back to do another post! So, last time we looked at how wearing fake lashes is a harmful thing to oneself and that it’s not really necessary in a day-to-day wear and now it’s time for a newer post.

Back in my Blog Spot days, I wrote a post about how pricing is effected in drustore dupes and higherend makeup and that not everyone can use it due to skin problems or even don’t have the money to splurge on it when you find something as equal to it. Now with drugstore items starting to step up their game and meeting with the hype of the higerend train by improving their products to meet the demands of their customers.

Yes pricing is important and how we tend to buy our products but to me as a user and consumer, quality of a product whether it’s moisturizer, a nail file, or even a liquid lipstick, is reflected by a customer’s experience with that product to have them buy it again or buy more of it.

Experience Meets Quality: So, we pretty much watch a lot of videos on YouTube and a good majority is on makeup and there are times they review the products that they pick up. Those reviews are pretty much based on their experiences with the product and it helps give an idea to the one who is curious if they want to buy it or not. There are times when the audience have picked up the product already before the reviews or based on the recommendation of the video or the person doing the video have been recommended to get that product and sometimes these reviews on the products can be positive or negative due to the experience with the quality.

Some of the negative reviews were based on more of the luxury products which I’ve been noticing lately. What do I mean by that? Well, one good example is the Too Faced Sweet Peach pallet. I know some of you are booing but this was a very hard pallet to find for a lot of people since it sold out and I have seen some reviews where that it wasn’t worth the hype due to some of the shades not being pigmented and not showing up like they’re supposed to while others say it is worth it! Some people even say they prefer the other food smelling pallets they released which are the Chocolate Bar, the Semisweet Chocolate Bar, Chocolate Bon Bons and the newer Peanut Butter and Jelly over this one because some of the lighter shades have to be really packed on for a color to show. This pallet is not guilty with some of these reviews since I seen the same idea with the Coastal Sense Revealed 3 and Smoky, which are more affordable than the Too Faced pallets. I did do a video on the Revealed Smoky and Naked Smoky which my experience with both have been great due to my primers helping and the Revealed Smoky pallet does show up on me while others’ experience not so much.

Another part of the idea with experiencing the quality is how people’s skin types react with some of these products on both sides, also skin tones can’t forget that, since not everyone would have the same kind of amazing experience. Let me use one example, the L’Oreal Pro Matte foundation that I tried out! So many people I heard from that have tried this product said they loved it and were able to find colors well. Unfortunately, my skin is very light medium and hard to match with certain brands and had to get help from the girls at Walgreens and was matched with Sun Beige, what happened? My face turned yellow! I went back to my fave Almay foundation since that matched me the best and it goes with my sensitive skin type a lot more too. I think people have better experiences with this foundation because their skin matched a lot more to this and they have easier times while others have to pretty much play with the colors until they find the right one that meets their skin shade. Plus, some people who have oily skin or dry skin sometimes have good experiences with certain products, including skin care, while others not so much due to how their skin can’t handle it as much. For instance, I seen Tati do a series known as “WTF Wednesdays” and now “OMG Tuesdays” with both drustore and higher and higher end products and sometimes they do work on her oily and sensitive skin combo skin while other items not so much because it can be patchy. One good example is how her lips handle liquid lipstick formulas except for Ofra. Which a lot of us who have tried this kind of product, we do have some of them crack on us and slop ond slide or even dry out our lips, which grings me tour next point besides not being able to work on everyone!

Quality Meets Experience: I know I should’ve done this first but the results from above can lead to how the product is made or how we tend to buy our stuff based on how we like it from trying it before. Most of us do buy our products base on the reviews and there are times when that didn’t work out as well as we hoped once trying it out. Experiencing the products with a first try does help in buying the product and how well it works with the person that bought it. Such as liquid lipsticks, a lot of people experienced different things and that is especially with the NYX Liquid Suede lipsticks and they tend to dry a lot on people, causing cracking on lips, even a bit drying for most depending on the color, such as Amethyst for example which I have noticed how dry it became every application. While Kitten Heels, which I got in Ipsy, didn’t feel dry because of how the formula felt better and comfortable. One thing that everyone seems to agree on their experiences is that the formula is not waterproof and does transfer which it claims to be that and even does the same with just setting it. These experiences do show how the quality can be on or off for most people since they experience different things from most people. My tip would be in order to see product quality is try buying one item of that line to see how it goes on you. Not everything will work out for everyone like foundations and lipsticks since different skin types and formulas react differently with other people, that even includes higherend products too, especially really luxury items in the hundred dollar range.

What if you don’t want to buy it and test it? There is always going to some places that allow testing and getting that sample. Sampling or swatching does help see the quality of the product in front of you while getting a sample, like I do with Lush and Sephora time to time, it gives you an idea of how it will work over time and if it does work and the quality is excellent for your skin then purchase it. One good thing about some brands, which I sometimes like, is the deluxe sample sizes that they sell or give out because it gives you the idea of testing it first before make that purchase or just want to stay with the deluxe size since it can be hard to finish a certain product or just on the budget. Plus, shouldn’t torture yourself in buying a product if it didn’t work the first time despite that makeup collector inside of us.

In the end, quality in higherend and drugstore can be how people experience the products and review them. It kind of gives an idea to see what to splurge on or what not to splurge on because not everything works on everyone whether it’s a Mac lipstick or an Urban Decay eye shadow pallet or even a sample in an Ipsy bag, trust me went through samples that broke me out or not as pigmented as I hope, makes us choose in our purchases a bit carefully in seeing how the item feels and leads to buying more.

Well, that is it for this post! I do have an announcement, unfortunately we won’t be covering MegaCon for press. It’s because we never covered the convention before and it makes me sad since we have done conventions in the past it seems like we had to cover them first which Metro was our first one to cover. There are other conventions we will be looking into and Holiday Matsuri is definitely another one we want to do again at the end of the year.

That is about it! Til next time!