Accessorize Baked Duo Eyeshadows

I truly believe that Accessorize is one of the most underrated high street make-up brands amongst beauty bloggers.  It’s really one of my favourite brands and I usually have to stop myself from buying all their new season products in one go, but I see hardly any coverage in the blogs I read.

Superdrug are currently running a special half-price promotion on these shadows so you can pick them up for less than £3 each for 4.5g of shadow– which given their quality is an amazing bargain.  I have nearly all of the current shades so I figured that now was as good a time as any to post swatches of all the ones I have in one post.

As an additional cute touch, all of the shades are named after ancient goddesses. All of the below swatches were done dry.

Shade 11 – Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love) – bright white and red-tinged glittery black

16 – Freya (Norse goddess of love/fertility) – a light bright gold and gold-tinged copper

14 Venus (Roman goddess of love) - a deep purple and beautiful unusual pink-tinged silver.

15 – Zoria (Slavic goddess of beauty) – bright light gold and turquoise

4 – Break Up (I think this shadow must actually have been from the previous collection but I decided to include it as I had already had the photos anyway) – white gold and light golden green

I love how the complexity of the beautiful patterns in the pan is translated when the shadow is applied to the skin, with unexpected streaks of colour and texture.  Every single one of these shades is smooth, pigmented and blendable.  At less than £3 a pop, I say grab ‘em while you can!

More like this, please!

Just how cute is this limited edition eyeshadow packaging by Bourjois?

This range actually came out a couple of years back if my memory serves me as part of a limited edition “Paris” series but I didn’t pick any up at the time and actually found this in TKMaxx recently. I’m a big fan of cute packaging and definitely think they should illustrate more of their products like this.

The shade is called Argent and while I’m not sure if it’s still currently available, it’s not a unique shade so it’s easy to find similar colours across different ranges. All Bourjois little round pot eyeshadows come with a mirror in the lid and a tiny tiny foam applicator which I guess most people chuck away but that I always find quite useful to keep. It’s a bright, cool toned silver with good pigmentation. I’m not the biggest fan of Bourjois eyeshadows though so I probably won’t be buying anymore unless they come up with some more cute packaging!

Keeping Cool

Phew, it sure has been hot in London this weekend!  There was no option but to go for cool colours all over my face today.

I used some old favourites and some new products.  It’s a pretty uncomplicated look but I think the result is still quite striking and cute.

First up I swept a shimmery lilac all over my lids then applied a turquoise gel eyeliner.  The eyeshadow was a mixture of the two lightest shades from my new Look Beauty Triple Hit eyeshadow trio in Party Fever and the eyeliner was one of the new MUA gel eyeliners in the shade Tribe. The product comes with an integrated brush in the lid – you just have to remove the protective sticker and click it together.

This eyeshadow feels absolutely massive in its packaging and you do get a generous 10g for £7.50. The eyeshadows are quite smooth and pigmented and easy to apply and blend.  My only slight bugbear is that all the shades are shimmery – very shimmery – so you do end up with a very shiny and reflective result if you decide to use all the shades together to create a smokey eye. I can see myself using these shades individually or blended together as one colour to create a wash of block colour across my lids.

The gel eyeliner is a lovely colour and I quite like the fact that they have kept the packaging small and the price low (£3) as gel eyeliners have a habit of drying out long before you manage to use them all up.  The consistency is soft and creamy and it’s very forgiving when you apply it so it’s perfect for beginners.  It’s also long-lasting and easily lasts all day on me.The integrated brush is actually quite good too, even though the tip of mine was a bit bent.

I actually bought another shade of this eyeliner at the same time although I’m not wearing it in the photo above.  It’s a lovely sparkling grey in the shade Fairground. It has the same consistency and longevity as Tribe so I definitely recommend checking it out if you’re interested in gel eyeliners.

I used some blue mascara today as I wanted something more colourful than black.  I used the Body Shop super volume mascara which I think is fantastic and a product that I definitely don’t use as much as I should.

In keeping with my cool theme I went for this cool toned pink blush in the shade Sakura by MAC.  It was a limited edition from spring 2012 and a shade that I usually reserve for spring but it seemed to go well with the cool tones I used on my eyes. I’ve featured it several times on my blog already and you can click on the “MAC” label in my side bar to read the other entries.

MAC Heavenly Creature–Summer 2012

After the excitement of last week’s outdoor photoshoot (here) it’s back to the indoor photo studio this week – i.e. my living room! Today I thought I’d share some pics of and thoughts on the MAC Summer 2012 mineralize collection Heavenly Creature as I’ve had these products for a month now so I’ve had some time to play around with them.

MAC isn’t really my favourite make-up brand and I find it quite expensive but I was travelling through an airport last month and since I hadn’t really tried much of their mineralize make-up before I thought it was as good an opportunity as any to pick up some pieces from their latest collection. I’ve given the current prices from their website below which include VAT but I paid 20% less at the airport.

I bought a mineralize skin finish (MSF) in the shade Star Wonder (£21.50 for 7g) and a mineralize blush in the shade Solar Ray (£19 for 3.2g).  Let’s look at some photos first before getting down to some number crunching…

Above left Solar Ray; right Star Wonder

Above top Solar Ray; bottom Star Wonder

Swatches left Solar Ray, right Star Wonder.  Top swatches intense, bottom swatches blended out.

Both products are very shimmery with Solar Ray being exceptionally glittery as well, which can hopefully be seen somewhat in the skin swatches.  Both products are in fact pigmented enough to be worn as blushes but the price per gram of the blush is £5.94 while the skin finish comes in at £3.07 per gram, meaning that weight for weight it actually works out 48% cheaper than the blush.  Therefore I’d say that if you’re looking for a product that you intend to use a lot your best bet is to go for one of the MSFs – there are four shades available in this collection ranging from light pink to dark plum. I’ve been using Star Wonder as my everyday blush since I got it (you can see it on my cheeks and more pics in this post) and I’m really pleased with both the pigmentation, application and longevity of the product so I would definitely consider buying more MSF in the future.  I do quite like Solar Ray actually because it’s not apologetic – it’s a loud, glittery orange and proud of it!  Unfortunately for me I was wearing this the day they decided to update our staff photos at work so I ended up with an orange face in mine, but I do think it’s good fun.  It’s really expensive compared to the MSF though.

Next up let’s take a look at the two eyeshadows I bought – the medium brown shade Earthly and the light silvery blue shade Bright Moon.

These retail in the UK at £16.50 for 1.8g. The selling point of these has to be the beautiful swirling pattern of the shadow in the pan - there are three different three distinct veins of colour and shimmer clearly visible in each of these shadows.  Unfortunately though that just doesn’t translate to any complexity in the shadow once it’s applied to the skin – in the swatches above these shadows are inescapably banal; a rather dull mid-tone brown and a very run of the mill light blue.  The colours are nowhere near as interesting as either the blush or the MSF above in my opinion.  They’re good as everyday colours, quick to fling on in a hurry for work as a wash across the eyelids, but not really what I was hoping for given the price point and the beautiful pans. I would have to love the colour a lot to buy another mineralize eyeshadow.

Finally I picked up one of the skincare products in the collection, a face scrub containing volcanic ash.

Now despite having studied chemistry at uni I don’t really remember much about it at all but I don’t see many minerals in that ingredients list unless you count volcanic ash and the iron oxides, which are present in the smallest amount of any of the ingredients given that they come last in the list!  The first ingredient on the list is sucrose- yup, plain ol’ sugar. That’s what gives this product its grainy consistency and provides the physical “scrub” as you wash your face with it.

A little bit goes a long way which I was trying to illustrate above. I actually quite like the use of sucrose because, being water soluble, it dissolves the more you rub it in water, so while the scrub has a very gritty consistency when first applied it soon smoothes out.  Oh and it also tastes sweet if you ever accidentally get any on your tongue! The back of the packaging recommends use once to three times a week. This retails at £21 for 100ml and I would expect this to last me up to six months of use as directed.

A Trip to Lush is Worth a Trip to the Spa Any Day!

I’ve been having so much fun with Lush products recently – yes, they are a bit more expensive than my standard toiletries but just a few Lush pots in my bathroom is enough to turn it into a home spa so when you think about things that way they’re actually amazing value for money!

As a special treat for my blog I took my little armful of shiny new Lush products into the garden to do my first ever outdoors blog photoshoot – woo! I think the pics turned out quite nicely and anyway it was fun to have a change of scenery.

Below, clockwise from top left: face cleanser in Herbalism; Big sea salt shampoo; Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter

Below, top to bottom: Herbalism, Big Sea Salt Shampoo, Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter

Lush facial cleaners are a completely different consistency to any other cleansers I’ve ever tried. They’re quite dry and paste-like, and you have to mix them with water in the palm of your hand to create a “milk” that you then gently rub over your face to cleanse with.  Herbalism (around £6 for 100g) is the perfect consistency for everyday exfoliation – it’s grainy but not scratchy, so you do feel as if it’s getting to the dirt without actually scraping off your skin. It also leaves a gentle film of moisture when you rinse it off. It’s been working well so far with my combination skin and as an added plus for me it smells like hay or cut grass which is quite an unusual scent for beauty products but one that I love.

Big Sea Salt shampoo is like a bloomin’ entire spa experience in one small tub – it is ah-maze-ing!! You simply take a tiny amount in wet hands and rub to dissolve the large salt grains and start a lather which you then work into your scalp and rinse through your tresses, whilst soaking up the intoxicating, heady scent of jasmine that simply explodes out of this product. When I bought this I felt it was a bit of an expensive treat at just over £11 for a tub of 330g but having used it several times now I actually think it’s fantastic value for money because for one it feels expensive – you really get the sense that it’s packed with exotic fragrant oils – and for another you only need to use a tiny amount of product each time.  I also don’t think it needs to be used in conjunction with a conditioner as it leaves my hair soft and full without any other products, so you’re saving time and money there too.  This has immediately become one of my favourite Lush products ever. Big shampoo = big hit!

Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter lives on my desk at work where I use it once or twice a day to moisturise my cuticles.  Even though I use hand cream after I every time I wash my hands I still suffer from horribly dry, cracked cuticles so I was in desperate need of a product like this.  I like the fact that it’s very moisturising and has an amazing fragrance – like concentrate of freshly squeezed lemons – but it is a tad greasy which does mean that I leave greasy fingerprints all over my keyboard and mouse – yuk! It’s the perfect overnight moisturiser for those same reasons, and although it’s called cuticle butter it can be used all over the body.  This costs around £6 for a 50g tub but again you only need a tiny amount each time so should be quite long lasting.

Lush also currently run a recycling reward scheme whereby you can take back five empty Lush containers and swap them for a face mask instore, so I will be working my way towards that!

Finally I was really eager to buy something from Lush’s newly released Emotional Brilliance cosmetic range. The products – which include lip, cheek and eye make-up -come in tiny glass bottles with integrated applicators which have an old-school apothecary feel – very cute. The theory behind this make-up line is that you can empower yourself by wearing colours associated with distinct emotions or personality traits, and that the way to select which colours to wear is by spinning a colour-wheel then choosing the three colours that your eye is drawn to straight away.  These colours represent different aspects of your personality such as your strengths and weaknesses, your subconscious, and something that you need more of in your life.  You can read the full details and spin a colour wheel online at the Lush website here.

Of course, you can always just choose whichever colours you fancy which is the selection process that I went for! I had tried and been incredibly impressed with one of their liquid lipsticks last month so I decided to buy a bright summery shade and opted for the coral shade Believe.  I’ve done a bit of photo-editing on the shots of the packaging below but there are some truer-colour photos of swatches on my skin.

This is one of their liquid lipsticks so the applicator that it comes with is a standard sized doe-foot. It does the job just fine and is perfectly suitable for the consistency of the product which is rather smooth and creamy.

While this product is called a lipstick, it’s also suitable to be used as a cream blush.  You can see in the swatch below that it can be applied as an intense, bright coral and blended out easily to a lovely warm flush that would be super pretty as both a lipstain or a blush.

I usually don’t wear bright lipsticks to work as I’m scared of them fading and I can’t be bothered with the hassle of constant re-application during the day.  However this lipstick is so amazingly long-lasting that I only had to reapply once during the day and that was after I’d wolfed down a bowl of pasta for my lunch.  It’s so comfortable to wear as well that it really feels like you haven’t got any product on your lips – it’s not at all drying like some other long lasting formulas.  Basically I’m in love with this lipstick and although it’s expensive at £14 a bottle (5g) I will definitely be picking up more colours from the range.

And finally, here’s one last picture for today from my garden of a gorgeous lilac buddleja plant which also happens to smell amazing – a favourite amongst both bees and me!

Limeade

So far this month this fizzy green eyeshadow has been my favourite colour – it seems to strike the perfect balance when it’s too hot and light for deep colours but not quite hot enough to go totally tropical with my make-up colour palette.  At weekends I like to pair it with bright pink – here I’m wearing pink on my cheeks and lips.

The green that I used is from the Sleek Monaco palette, which was a limited edition release (part of the Mediterranean collection) last May.  I didn’t actually use it that much last year and just started re-discovering it this spring. It has some great colours in it and I’ve been getting good use out of it over the past few weeks. The green is light, bright and shimmery and I think it looks great as a block colour across the lids paired with a generous flick of black eyeliner. It lasts all day on me on top of a primer.

The eyeliner that I used was “Flirty Flick” by Look Beauty, a brand that I’d never actually tried before.  I bought one of their trio eyeshadows in Superdrug this week as there was a special offer to get an eyeliner free.  The normal price is £5.

The liner has a nice formula that’s really long lasting, but I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners as the applicator is a very stiff felt tip that’s quite difficult to control.

On my cheeks I’m wearing my favourite blush of the moment, a mineralize skin finish by MAC from their summer 2012 “Heavenly Creature” collection in the shade Star Wonder.  I was umming and ahhing over whether to get anything from the collection as basically MAC is pretty expensive, but eventually I bought this in Duty Free when I went on holiday a couple of weeks back as it was a good few quid cheaper there.

The pattern is kindof weird but cool – outer space inspired swirls of raspberry, light pink and gold.  I think this would suit a wide range of warm-toned complexions as I’m pretty pale but I’ve also used this on friends with medium skin tones and it looked great on them too. I sweep it across my cheekbones with a duo-fibre stippling brush for a light pink shine, but the colour is very buildable for more intensity.

Finally on my lips I’m wearing a product from Revlon’s Just Bitten range, the duo-ended lipstain pen + balm in the colour Passion.

You’re supposed to colour your lips in with the pen then apply the balm on top to moisturise and add shine.  The colour is very long lasting, but I’m not a big fan of this product. It’s actually quite difficult to get an even colour and I don’t like the fact that you have to add a lipbalm on top to get any moisture. You can see the finish a bit more clearly in the swatch on my arm below than on my lips.

There are loads of pen-style lipstains on the market from various brands at the moment but I can’t see myself buying any more any time soon.  I did pick up a completely different type of lip product this weekend though to show soon that I am excited by – watch this space, pics + descriptions will be coming to Chilled Pink Grapefruit very soon!