Don’t you love a good haul? It’s one of the oldest posts in the book (along with ‘What’s in my bag?’ which I also find endlessly fascinating!) but it’s always a good one!
This month’s beauty haul was one of those that creeps up you - do you ever have those? You don’t think you’ve been shopping but then you seem to have quite a lot of stuff at the end of the month. Oops…
Too Faced ‘Sexy Lips & Lashes’ travel kit | $15.00
Although for some reason, I never THINK they are, it turns out that Too Faced are my favourite beauty brand. I love Chocolate Bar palettes, think the Born This Way foundation is one of the best and Better Than Sex is definitely my holy grail mascara.
So when I received an email about the travel sets they were doing for summer, I got drawn in. I didn’t realise at first, but I was actually shopping on the American site. And that turned out to be great because there were some pretty serious freebies on offer (unlike in the UK).
There were three travel sets –‘Sexy Lips & Lashes’ – with a travel size Better Than Sex mascara and Lip Injection plumper, ‘Love at First Kiss’ with a blush and a lipstick, or ‘Kiss and Makeup’ with another lipstick and a Chocolate Soleil bronzer. The sets were 15 dollars (£12.00) and originally I was planning to order two of them.
But then I realised at the checkout that they were offering two deluxe travel-size products on any order, regardless of value. So for my $15.00 I got the lips and lashes set, plus a bronzer and another mascara included. Around £12.00 for four travel size products? I think that’s known as winning at life!
BTS is the best mascara I’ve ever tried. I just love the brush, which looks a little like a fluffy roller in a car wash but grips onto every single lash and gives really soft and fluffy, but super-volumised lashes.
With Acacia Senegal tree extract, this nourishes and conditions, while the filling polymers and peptides give a perfect dark lash that lasts. This is probably the mascara that I’ve come closest to ditching my beloved falsies for. And the smaller size works for me - I actually prefer travel size mascaras as they don’t have a chance to dry up before you need to bin them.
Lip Injection isn’t something I’ve tried before, but it claims to use natural botanicals to smooth and plump the lips by 20%. It’s a best-seller from a brand that certainly knows their stuff, so it has to be worth a try. Once there, the volume is supposed to last four hours, which seems a long time. There’s also Avocado oil in there to soften your lips, so I’m quite interested to try this out.
With the Chocolate Soleil bronzer, I know it’s a favourite for a lot of people, although I hadn’t tried it before. It’s a deep matte brown and just like the Chocolate Bar palette is wonderfully cocoa-scented.
Cocoa is also full of antioxidants which are so good for skin, and the pigments in this neutralise redness and even out the skintone. I’m not one for dusting bronzer all over my face though, so I’d probably only use it on my cheeks. The travel size is ideal for taking away on my upcoming holiday to Croatia.
W7 Porefection Pore Minimiser | £3.50
So this month I’ve accidentally stumbled across a couple of amazing dupes. This primer came up on my Amazon recommendations, and at such a low price I was curious enough to give it a go.
W7 is a brand that is based entirely on dupes – and although the packaging isn’t similar, this product is identical to my beloved Benefit The Porefessional. I wrote about if Porefessional was really worth the hype before – because none of the supposed dupes I’d tried at the time really came close.
W7 Porefection really does! It’s the same peach tinted silicone skin finisher with a silky, matte finish. It does the same great job of blurring out my fine lines (I don’t use either primer for pores, it’s all about fine lines for me!).
The tube is very small and slim though, so you don’t get a huge amount, but for the price its fine. I only dot a bit on my forehead and under-eyes, so I don’t go through huge amounts of it. Although it’s a primer, I tend to apply it after my other makeup. This is a really great dupe for smooth-skin lovers and a brilliant purse friendly find.
Beauty Pie Futurelipstick Matte – Hot Saucy | £2.44 (member price)
Beauty Pie is a brand I’ve been writing about a lot lately, as I’m seriously falling for some of their great skincare and makeup. After really liking a lipstick I picked up from them last month – which was pretty much the perfect pink-nude – when I was re-ordering some of their Jeju Daily Antioxidant Superinfusion Serum (UH.MAY.ZING, seriously beauty lovers) – I also decided to try out another of their lipsticks.
This time a matte, which I’m never as keen on as a cream or satin finish, call me old-fashioned. But the gold standard of mattes is usually given to the Charlotte Tilbury Matte Revolution line, and this is supposedly the same formulation. If you don’t know, Beauty Pie’s whole schtick is offering products made with the same ingredients as heavyweight luxury brands at a factory price to paying members (read about how that works).
The only thing with make-up online is that the shades never quite match up with what you saw on screen. In this case, I thought this was going to be much more orangey – sort of like a slightly redder shade of Mac Morange – but really it's more of a bright red, like Mac Lady Danger. It goes on smoothly and lasts really well, without drying out the lips like a cheaper matte lipstick usually would. I really like the very minimal packaging as well!
Rodial Glamolash XXL mascara | £24.00
Luxe skincare brand Rodial have been slowly branching into beauty for a while now, and the results are great. Having tried and really liked their Smokey Eyes pencils, I was very intrigued to see what they would bring to the mascara game.
Glamolash XL promises high-definition results and buckets of volume, which to me is the ultimate. Everyone wants something different from their mascara, but I like a full, very volumised finish that still looks light, soft and fluffy, rather than heavy and clumpy.
The good news is that this delivers on its promises. It uses synthetic beeswax to bulk up the lashes follicle-by-follicle, so the finish is feather-like. It doesn’t weight down the lashes, which I love because mine are super-straight and really struggle to hold a curl.
It's definitely up there with the best I’ve tried. My only criticism would be the packaging, which is a flimsy black plastic tube. I’m all for simplicity, but this just feels a bit cheap, especially for the price – considering Better Than Sex comes in a heavy pink metal casing, this just doesn’t appear like a luxury product – although it does perform like one. The best part? You can grab a full size one free with Red magazine this month. Go,go,go!
Anovia Coffee Body Scrub | £4.19
Coffee exfoliants are a bit of an obsession with me, and I’ve been hooked on the Grounded range for a while. It's become an in-shower essential, as nothing else makes my skin so clean, glowing and smooth. But at £15.00 a bag, you can really tear through it. Again, I stumbled across what seemed like a cheaper dupe on Amazon, which seems to have twigged that I like great value beauty products! At under a fiver, it had to be worth a try.
There are Coconut and Chocolate Orange variations on offer, and although the packet is slightly smaller, it's also made of water resistant material. A big bug bear of mine is the paper packaging Grounded use which doesn’t fare so well in the shower!
Made using Robusta coffee grounds and packed with vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants, this did a great job. I feel like the Grounded scrub is a bit better though – instead of just being coconut-scented, it actually contains coconut oil, so it moisturises as well.
However, this is still amazing for the price, especially as I use it 2 times a week – and it makes my shower smell deliciously of coffee, while polishing it to perfection.
Sanctuary Spa Wet Skin Moisture Miracle | £8.00
I’ve flirted with Sanctuary products over the years, but never fallen in love (I know, I’m a skincare commitment-phobe!) but recently the range has had a revamp, with all new products and pretty packaging to match. This body lotion caught my eye, and as it is currently on an introductory offer at Boots, I decided to pick some up.
I love the sleek new packaging with hints of rose gold, and this also smells amazing. Instead of applying after you’ve dried off, you pop this on straight after your shower, while your skin is still wet., so it can lock in moisture and deliver super-soft skin using apricot and avocado oils.
What I really like about this is that it’s very quick to sink in, so you’re not left hanging around in the shower waiting for it to work its magic. Popping it on before drying off is actually a lot more convenient that moisturising afterwards – which I’m terrible for skipping when I’m in a rush. A really good find.
Hylamide HA Blur Prismatic Surface Finisher | £19.00
This is something I’d been wanting to try for a while. Obviously, I’m all about light skin perfectors and I’m also a big fan of Deciem, so this product from their Hylamide range caught my eye. I was in two minds because the only product from their other line, The Ordinary, that I don’t really like is the blurring primer, which does nothing for me. Would this be worth the price?
Unlike most smoothing primers that just use silicones, this is something different. HA Blur uses an unusual new form of hydrating skin saviour Hyaluronic Acid as a powder base. This plumps out the skin and also provides the optical blurring effect that makes skin look airbrushed.
Not only do they claim the blur is superior to any other, but the finisher is also supposed to be exceptionally compatible with makeup. It can be used over or under makeup or mixed with any liquid foundation. This is vegan and cruelty free, and keeps skin hydrated all day as well.
Sounds phenomenal? It is! I am absolutely in love with this and I’m so glad I gave it a try. It really does make my skin look flawless, and the effect actually lasts for hours as well. It's everything I hoped it would be – like nothing I’ve tried before. This has immediately become a make-up bag essential for me.
Beauty Pie Pro-Glow Super Strobing Drops | £22.00 (non-member price)
Another beautiful discovery! Everyone wants that dewy, luminous finish that J.Lo was rocking way back in the 90s, it seems pretty timeless.
And now that ‘strobing’ has become such a trend, it feels like a product comes out every week promising to help us achieve it – and I’ve tried most of them. These little droplets of joy are the best thing I’ve tried!
For a start, the peachy golden colour works so much better for my skin than a bright white a la Mac Stobe Cream. It's subtle but a few drops mixed in with my foundation makes me look really healthy and well rested. And of course, you can also dot this over the top of your skin as a finisher to bring put your cheekbones.
It has a light, serum-like texture and actually seems to help foundation blend better. There are no mineral oils, parabens, alcohol and other skin nasties and it gives a gorgeous, camera-ready finish. Another great product from a brand that is growing on me more every week.
Rimmel Exaggerate Waterproof Eye Definer -211 Sable | £3.99
It's been a very long time since I bought anything from Rimmel, but I know they do produce some great products, and this liner has to be one of them! It's a great dupe for the Bare Minerals Lasting Line range, which are the queens of all liner pencils in my eyes.
The colour is rich and deep, goes on really smoothly and lasts really well, with no smudging and flaking. I also really love the fact that it's a twist up liner (I am NOT about faffing about to find a sharpener when I can help it, and stubby sharpened down to nothing pencils annoy me and look awful. Not sorry.)
The end has a smudger, which also ticks my boxes. This is also the ideal liner for taking on holiday, as it's waterproof. I can't believe how good it is for the price, especially when I've been paying so much more for the Bare Minerals version! Proof that great quality products are available at all price points.
So, those are my beauty discoveries this month - what have you been buying? Link me to any beauty haul posts below!
Post a Comment