LaurEss: Review & Swatches

It was quite a sad day when one of my staple indie companies Sassy Minerals announced that they would be closing and merging with an unknown-to-me company called LaurEss. The migration was supposed to take place pretty swiftly, but it was about a month until the Sassy products were actually available from the LaurEss website.

Sassy was one of my favourite companies because not only did they sell a variety of great products (eyeshadows, blush, face powder and foundation) but because they sold samples in JARS and orders always came so darn fast, even though they're in the U.S and I'm in Australia.

When the Sassy shades finally came up on the LaurEss website, I was really disappointed to see that they were no longer offering eyeshadow samples, just blush and face product samples. Having ordered a lot of Sassy eyeshadows, I did have a few shades I was interested in purchasing a full size of. After a lot of deliberation I decided to order one of my favourite shades from them, a matte grey called Thunderstruck. The eyeshadows are $5.25 US.

The order arrived in a fairly timely fashion. Sassy pack the shadows in a mesh bag and then an organza one over that. LaurEss just went with the organza - possibly because my order was so small. It did include a sample of a blush/highlighter.

The sample packaging was the same jar as the Sassy samples used, with the same type of sticker and font. However, I find LaurEss's product categories and listings to be a bit confusing. I didn't know what exactly they'd sent me until I looked it up on the website, and even then, I only realised it was a blush-type product because of the pricing and the fact you could purchase a sample.

 The full-size shadow packaging is very different as well. The jar is a lot nicer-looking, but unlike the old Sassy jars, does not have the ingredients list anywhere.

I have several Sassy blushes, so I was definitely interested to try out Effervescent. But what I was most interested in was comparing my Sassy sample of Thunderstruck to the LaurEss full-sized jar... once I could get it open. Unfortunately, the full-sized jars come with those paper sifter stickers that have no pull-tab. That was the case on all of the old full-sized Sassy products as well. I opted to remove the sifter altogether.

LaurEss on the left, Sassy on the right. Swatched dry on bare skin.

The Sassy version looks a little bit lighter to my eye, though they show up almost identically in the pictures. They seem to have the same texture as well.

Verdict? I will probably be ordering a few full-sizes from LaurEss, but I think that the lack of samples will work against them being able to pull in a lot of new fans/customers.

Did your order from Sassy before they closed? Have/will you order from LaurEss in the future?