Thursday 7 March 2013

Smokey Brown with MUA

MUA have just released a whole raft of new products so I placed an order last weekend and my goodies arrived a few days later. I had a chance to play around with them this weekend and came up with this look yesterday, where all the products that I used except for my face powder are by MUA.

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Above: the selection of products that I used. Clockwise from top left: Undress Your Skin Illuminating Foundation in Porcelain (£5 RRP but purchased on special offer at £3), eyeshadow palette in Undressed (£4), Pro-Base Conceal and Brighten Kit in Porcelain (£3.50 RRP but purchased on special offer at £2.50), Mega Volume Mascara in Brown (£3), MUA powder blusher in shade 2 (£1), Undress Your Skin highlighting powder (£3 RRP but purchased on special offer at £2), MUA Lip Boom in OK.com (£3)

I also used an Intense eye colour pencil in rich brown (£1 RRP but purchased on special offer as a free gift) which I forgot to include in my photograph, oops! It’s a brilliant product and I definitely recommend checking out their range of pencils. They basically tick all the boxes – soft and smooth to apply, highly pigmented and very long lasting. And as an added bonus, they even come with an integrated pencil sharpener in the lid!

If you’re interested in the maths then the total that I paid for all these products came to just £18.50 which is an absolute bargain for a full face of make-up. But let’s move on to some product swatches and mini-reviews to see if they are actually any good.

I haven’t swatched the Illuminating foundation on my arm but you can see it on my face in the pictures at the top of my post. It’s a very light, warm toned shade so it’s actually a pretty good match for my skin tone. I’m not a big fan of the consistency though, which I find to be a bit sticky and difficult to blend. It’s much easier to apply if worn on top of the Undress Your Skin Flawless Face Primer (also from the MUA Undress Your Skin Range, not pictured here) but I can’t really be bothered with the hassle of layering so many products just for the coverage of a foundation. I’ll definitely be using this foundation up but I probably won’t be repurchasing it.

I’ve already swatched the Undressed palette in this post. I really like this product and at £4 it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of neutral eyeshadows.

The Pro-Base Conceal and Brighten Kit comes in three shades, of which mine is the lightest, and contains two concealers and a highlighter. One concealer is cool toned (excellent at covering dark circles under the eyes) while the other one is warm toned. My skin is very warm toned so it’s quite a good match for me already, but since there are two shades you can mix them to create your own perfect match. All three products have a very sticky, oily consistency which I think works well for the concealers (the lasting power is quite good as long as you set them with powder) but I don’t like this consistency as a highlighter. It’s also quite pigmented so for me it’s more similar to a cream blush. I would only use the highlighter in the summer if I was going out with very light coverage and not powdering my skin, otherwise I don’t think it would fit in with the rest of my make-up.

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The Undress Your Skin highlighter has already been compared by some to MAC’s Whisper of Gilt extra dimension skin finish, but as you can see from my swatch above it’s a completely different shade. It’s a pale white pink but Whisper of Gilt, as the name suggests, is very golden (a light, yellow gold) and personally I think they’re completely different.

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Above: Whisper of Gilt, and left-most in swatches.

The highlighter actually has quite a nice finish and it’s my favourite product from MUA’s new Undress Your Skin range.

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The Mega Volume mascara has a plastic wand packed with bristles. It actually works quite well on my stubby, sparse lashes and I could definitely see myself buying it again as I find mascaras quite over-priced in general, especially as I’ve never found one that I’ve considered particularly amazing.

I’ve also reviewed the blush already which you can read about in this post. It’s not my favourite blush ever but they’re good to try if you want to find out which shades you like best as they are all wearable and only £1 each (so you could buy the whole range for £6!)

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I’ve been meaning to try out the MUA Lip Booms for a while but I only got round to buying this one a couple of weeks ago. The Lip Boom contains a matte lipstick in one end and an extremely glittery lip gloss in the other. There are currently eight shades in the range but I have to admit that some of the colour combinations do seem a bit strange. I went for this caramel nude and orange glitter combo which I’m really pleased with. The lipstick glides on quite well for a matte finish (often I find matte formulae very dry) and lasts me from the morning until lunchtime. The lipgloss is a nice colour but it is very glittery and consequently a bit gritty. I tend to either wear it alone or just a dab of it in the middle of my bottom lip if I’m wearing it over the lipstick. I’m just wearing the lipstick in the first photo at the top of this post.

To conclude: a mixed bag of products but on the whole more hits than misses. My must-have from the new Undress Your Skin range is the highlighter, the Undressed Palette is great value for money, their eye pencil range is brilliant – the quality is simply incredible given that they only cost £1 each - and if you like matte lipsticks then the lip booms are definitely worth checking out because even if you don’t get any use out of the lip gloss £3 is still great value for money for a good quality lipstick.

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