"Brand New Mint In Box"

Of the ways to describe the most premium of items in your makeup collection "Brand New Mint In Box" should not be one of them. One of my most awful habits is buying makeup and then not using it and to my even greater shame it is usually with my most expensive purchases.

There is an Alan Carr joke about the extortionate price of a Spanish Onion, the punchline is "when do you save an Onion for best?" This is kind of how I feel about expensive makeup. It's so pretty and so precious that if I get up the courage to actually purchase it, I'm then usually too scared to use it. The pride and shame of this habit is these two items from Dior. 

The absolutely sublime Dior Skin Nude Tan highlighter which I purchased as a pre-release special edition from House Of Fraser TWO YEARS AGO has sat in box all tightly wrapped up only being shown the light to show off to my friends and family. Yes I do show off my prettiest of pretties to my friends and family... Don't judge me. 

In comparison my Dior Addict Lipstick has only been in my possession for a few months but it, much like 90% of the unused items in this post, fell victim to my "can't use before photographing" policy. It then ended up at the bottom of a "to photograph" bag and has only just been rescued by my recent reorganisation efforts. 

In the slightly less shameful but equally as unused categories we have quite a few goodies. A NARS lip pencil which I bought at IMATS a few years ago and didn't even know I had, a Jemma Kidd lip gloss which I'm pretty sure came from a magazine and a few goodie bag/gift box items items I've yet to get round to from this past Christmas; I was slightly preoccupied...

In the eye category I have at least a few items that have been swatched/used once but given their almost pristine conditions in their little boxes I'm still a bit guilty. Do you know how hard it is to keep NARS packaging clean? The secret, according to this cream shadow, is to never take it over the box more than once. A few more goodie bag/IMATS/Magazine Shadow singles from Benefit, MUD, and Inika and then we find the reason that I mistrust most beauty counter sales assistants. I was "matched" with this Benefit Brow Zing in shade Medium. Ginger hair dye aside I am quite clearly a dark but back then (several years ago now) I knew nothing of brows and was happy to take the sales assistant's word for it. Of course the shade is far too red toned for my natural brow colour and thus has been used only once. If anyone fancies it you're more than welcome to it (NB: it's still good, I checked!) 

And now we have my final sin, a brand new mint in box Eyeko Skinny Liquid Eyeliner that is completely dried up and will never get a use. Maybe that should teach me for buying blue eyeliner? 

So there you have my deep dark makeup secret, from now on I'll do my best to keep the mint condition collectables to just figurines. Wish me luck!