Make up artist classes

Since I started Savvy Skin a few years ago, almost every one of my favorite makeup, skin care, and beauty products has been discontinued or reformulated! I know that’s how the beauty industry works - it’s always coming out with something New or some supposed Breakthrough Miracle Product, but once you finally find your favorite product, it’s horrible when it’s taken from you. I have still not completely gotten over the loss of my favorite moisturizer Clinique Moisture On-line, even though it’s probably for the best that I move on, since it came in jar packaging and it was expensive.

Last week I was at CVS and noticed my favorite foundation Maybelline Pure Makeup was on closeout, and upon further investigation, it appears it’s been discontinued. It’s currently half-price at every drugstore. Why??? Why??? Do you know how many foundations I had to try before I fell in love with this one??

What to do when your favorite beauty product is discontinued:

1) Cry. Mourn. Tell yourself maybe you’ll find something even better, even though you know it’s probably not true.

2) Contact the product’s company to find out if they have a similar product that you may have previously overlooked. When my Clinique moisturizer was discontinued, I emailed Clinique (the contact info is on their website) and asked what they would recommend as a replacement. They were very polite and emailed me some suggestions, but the new products they recommended either cost more, came in jar packaging, or had completely different ingredients, so I didn’t end up buying any of their recommendations. You may even find out your product hasn’t really been discontinued, and that there’s still a way to purchase it (either at a different store, only online, etc.)

3) Head over to MakeupAlley.com and look at the product reviews of your favorite product to see if other people have suggestions for what product they found to be similar to your favorite. Then you can look through reviews of other products in the same category to see what else appears to have great reviews, but this can take hours and hours because there are so many products out there.Â

4) If your favorite beauty product has been reformulated, buy the new version and maybe you will still like it. I rarely find this to be the case, but sometimes I am still happy with the new version. Ulta, Sephora, and most drugstores and department stores will let you return used makeup and skin care products you don’t like, and I have no guilt about doing it when my beloved product has been ruined with a new inferior formulation!

5) Stock up! I just bought 5 tubes of the Maybelline Pure Makeup, and I figure it will last me a few years. That will postpone the search for finding the new perfect foundation for quite a while. Hopefully by the time they all run out I’ll have found something even better, and if the makeup goes bad before then, it only cost me a few dollars each, so it was worth the risk. At least I have peace of mind…for now.

6) If you can’t find your favorite product in the store before it’s gone, again contact the product’s company to see if they can help you locate a last few bittersweet bottles of your favorite perfume or precious jars of your moisturizer. Clinique has a service that does this, but I decided against trying to track down any more of the On-line moisturizer because I was just so mad at the time, and I had found a cheaper alternative that was almost as good.

7) Start a Facebook campaign to have your favorite product brought back. Okay this one is pretty far-fetched, but TV shows have been brought back from the dead by people signing online petitions, and Betty White got her SNL hosting job from Facebook supporters. I kind of doubt a tube of lipstick or mascara would garner the same support as a TV show, or Betty White, but you never know…

 Type in the first several ingredients of your favorite product into Google and see if there’s another product out there that has similar ingredients. The same company may make the same product under a different name, or you may find another company that makes a very similar product. This is a slight long-shot, but it’s worth trying.

9) Check online to see if your favorite product is still available somewhere – on a website that specializes in discontinued beauty products, on Amazon, on eBay, on a store website in another country, etc. Just be cautious because I find it’s not always a good idea to buy beauty products from eBay or random websites, and chances are you can’t return the product if you have a problem with it (it’s a fake, it’s expired, etc.) Amazon is a good place to buy from, though, because they offer refunds.

10) Start saving up some money because in the end you will probably have to start the quest for your new favorite lipstick/moisturizer/shampoo/sunscreen, and it will inevitably cost a lot to find it. The whole kiss a lot of frogs thing is totally true when it comes to beauty products (as well as men of course). Unless I get lucky, I will probably have to try 5-10 new foundations before I find one I like as much as the Maybelline Pure Makeup. I will probably end up returning some future foundations I end up hating, but most people keep their purchases, even when then don’t really like them. Despite reading great reviews about a product online (or on my site), everyone is different, so even though a product may work great for most people, you may not be one of them:(

What’s your favorite beauty product that’s been discontinued? How did you go about finding a replacement that you love just as much? The only silver lining in this whole thing, for me at least, is that I’d run out of things to write about if I never tried new products. And even if you think you’ve found the best beauty product ever, there’s probably something out there that’s even better, but you just don’t know it yet…

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