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{ As a disclaimer, this post is going to be moderately photo-heavy, so please wait for the images to load! }



For a few years now I’d been using Jane Iredale’s mineral foundation, which was a response to Bare Minerals not having a shade light enough for my skin despite my interest in loose powder foundations (and at the time they were the most well-known company for this). At some point along the way, the neutral shade I’d chosen started to make me look sort of orange-y, which is not very flattering. I don’t know if my skin changed colors, or if they changed formulas, but the end result was the same – I had to find a new brand to use.



I was skimming livejournal’s paleskin community to find suggestions for companies that produced really pale foundations, and discovered Alima ( http://www.alimapure.com/ ) made a wide variety of shades, all the way down to something that barely had any color at all. The shade choices are actually so abundant it took me a long time to decide on a shade! Luckily Alima is very good about providing samples, and I spent a couple weeks using different shades before I finally settled on the one I would buy a full size of.



Last week I placed the order for the full size, along with a bunch of samples.





The order was shipped in a Priority mail box, wrapped in this cardboard netting.





Alima is very meticulous in making sure everything is packaged neatly – this is the overall tissue paper wrapped parcel, closed with a green sticker featuring Alima’s bird mascot.





Unwrapping the tissue paper reveals even more meticulous packaging. Visible here are the box for the foundation, a free (!) lip balm, and a brown paper bag containing my samples. Not visible was the small package of free samples.





Yet more organization! The white pouch contains little ziploc baggies of free samples.





Three baggies of samples: some shimmer eyeliner, shimmer eyeshadow and shimmer power (for face). Holly Berry shade of lip balm.







Packaging of the foundation











Foundation container, complete with cute bird mascot on the cover. Very classy.





All 9 of my shimmer eyeshadow samples ($1 each)





Face-related samples: some shimmer powder, finishing powder, primer powder.



The satin matte foundation is very light, like most loose mineral foundations, and won’t provide heavy coverage, but definitely helps create a smooth, airbrushed look. I have yet to try out the eyeshadows, but they look like they are fairly heavily pigmented. I love the shimmer powders (favorite shade so far is Whisper) for a little sparkly highlighting. The lip balm has a slight tint to it, almost no scent, and feels very creamy. I just put some on and within a minute or two I could already feel the difference on my dry lips. I might buy a different shade when I make another order (it’s inevitable!) since deep red isn’t a color I use much, but I am very appreciative of the free item! I don’t know if it was because I spent over a certain amount, or because I’ve been ordering kind of frequently lately…. XD



If you’re looking for a wide variety of shades in loose mineral foundation, Alima is definitely the place to go. Samples are $1 each, and max out at 2 per color per order, but the amount is pretty generous – I went at least a week on the foundation sample, if not more. You can pile as many samples as you like into your cart each order (I bought 16 samples in this order, so I can’t imagine there’s much of a limit!) so I should probably warn you that the sampling is a little addicting to do – it’s so tempting to just add one more, one more XD Also, there seems to be a slight discount the more samples you buy, doing some quick math it looks like for every four you order it’s $0.25 off (so one sample out of four would be $0.75 instead of $1).



Shipping is always fast, this last time I ordered July 10th, it shipped 13th, and arrived today. Everything was packaged marvelously as you can see above, and arrived with absolutely no problems.



I highly recommend Alima Pure!