All Made Up: Gift Giving – Recession Style

It’s the Holidays! Time for giving fabulous gifts to everyone in your life. But, crap, we’re in a recession and we’re poor college students to boot. So here’s a trick to put a little glamour in your loved ones’ lives without breaking your piggy bank.

By Lauren

Holiday season means beauty gift sets – a box jammed packed with fabulous high end makeup at a deep discount. So here’s a list of great gift sets that make a great gift, even when you break them up. You can cross a bunch of people of your list just by splitting up these sets and giving one product to each person on your list. Or group two or three items to give a whole look for just a little dough.

Bare Escentuals Bare Pleasures Eye Shadow Set – Sephora.com

9 Gifts for $48 ($99 value)

Bare Essentuals has fantastic loose eye shadows that women of all ages adore. This set has NINE different shades. You can give one to your mom, aunts, suitemates, and nieces still leaving a few shades leftover to keep for yourself. You can even pair the colors off to create custom eye shadow duos to add a personal touch.

LORAC Superstar Collection – Sephora.com

12 Gifts for $125 ($253 value)

The Superstar Collection – it’s not just a clever name. This set is really stellar. It has two moisturizing lipsticks, a cream bronzer/highlighter duo, three lip polishes, a convertible lip/cheek color, a glitter eyeliner pencil, three eye shadow duos, a mascara and a partridge in a pear tree. For real. Except the pear tree part. The best thing is all of the products all FULL size. So you are actually getting the exact same thing as if you bought everything separately. You can mix and match these beauty staples to create a great makeup look for every lovely lady on your list!

Best of Duwop Kit – Sephora.com

6 Gifts for $44 ($122 value)

Ahhh Duwop. A beauty brand that consistently delivers new and creative innovations. This kit features 6 of their top selling products, at about 1/3 the cost. There’s a blush, a bronzer/higher duo, a bronzing shimmer body lotion, an eye shadow intensifying potion, a reverse lipliner (perfect for mom!), and a lip venom trio. This set has some really unique items, perfect for the makeup maven who has everything.

Philosophy the Cookie Exchange – Philosophy.com

4 gifts for $30

Make up can be a tricky gift to give, matching the right colors and textures with the right person. Luckily, anyone can enjoy a good cookie scented bubblebath/shower gel, and Philosophy is happy to oblige. Philosophy is basically the prom queen of beauty gift sets. Putting together an adorably themed gift set for any occasion is pretty much their MO. This one is adorable as ever with four different cookie flavors – Sugar Cookie, Snickerdoodle, Oatmeal Raisin and Chocolate Chip. If cookies aren’t your thing, check out their website for literally dozens of affordable gift sets you can disassemble and distribute to the ladies on your gift list. With items from Champagne lip gloss to serious skin care product there’s truly something for everyone.