For a little over a year now Everyday Minerals has been my mineral foundation of choice and I can say that I have no complaints about it, but I did want to see what else was out there too. I found out that Joppa Minerals has a similar almost free sample offer and since I was running low on foundation anyway, I decided to see if they were better than my EM.
Comparison at a glance:
Everyday Minerals
- FREE, you only pay for shipping
- 5 Sample jars with sifters
- Your choice of 3 foundations, 1 blush, 1 concealer
- lowest shipping cost $3.99
- Limit of 1 sample kit per order
- generous sample amount
Joppa Minerals
- 3 piece sampler for $3.50, 6 piece sampler for $5.00 [the 6 pc sampler used to be 1 cent for a while, but it was a limited "sale"]
- 3 sample jars without sifters, 3 baggies
- Your choice of 2 foundations, 1 finishing powder, 2 blushes [baggie], 1 concealer [baggie]
- lowest shipping cost $4.60 [I've read reviews where it was cheaper at some other time though]
- Limit 1 sample kit per order
- Generous sample amount in jars
Everyday Minerals is definitely the cheaper option because even when JM had the sale on their sample kit, it was still more expensive than EM. The full size of JM foundation comes in a 50 gram jaw with 14 grams of product in it and it costs $14 for full size. EM is $12 for a full size and you get less than you would with JM, but the website doesn’t say how many grams or oz is the jar or the product [if someone could help tell me how big the jar is, that would be great!]. So JM might possibly be the better value in the longrun, but personally I would rather have a smaller jar because I never use a lot of of the product and if I had a huge jar of it, it’ll take years to finish. I’d rather have smaller jars where I can order multiple shades since my skin gets lighter or darker depending on the season.
One thing that enticed me about JM is that their full coverage and soft coverage foundations as well as some of their finishing powders contain kaolin clay which has oil absorbing properties. Supposedly the kaolin clay has the ability to absorb oil from your skin without drying it out. EM foundations do not contain kaolin clay.
JM likes to include freebie baggies of samples, even with sample orders. I received a sample of their Simple Radiance foundation in Toasted Sesame with quite a generous amount [which led me to believe they were just trying to get rid of it, haha]. And I’ve heard of other people receiving more samples than they originally ordered as well which is very nice of the company. EM includes extras when they are having promotions and they’ll actually give full size freebies when you order a certain amount of product, for example, you can receive two predetermined eyeshadows if your order totals 35 dollars or more.
The JM foundations seem to be more finely milled than the EM ones, therefore they were powdery and light and could be more messy. I’ll do a formal review on what I think about the JM foundations later. I like that the EM samples have sifters because it’s easier to tap that out into a bowl or wherever you’re going to dip your brush into, and also you don’t have to worry so much about spillage. With the JM samples I take my makeup spatula [plastic paint spatulas] to dip into the jar and get the amount I need.
I won’t say which mineral company I prefer because I’m still testing out the JM foundations, but I will say that I usually gravitate towards things that are more affordable and that would be Everyday Minerals.
