Nars Albatross

Not sure why I decided to swatch it twice?!

I am a total highlighter freak, so it was only a matter of time 'til I purchased the much loved Albatross by Nars.

Being attracted to all things shiny, I literally ripped the packaging off this product to reveal the white shimmery goodness. In the pan the powder looks pure white and quite chalky, however when applied to the skin it transforms into a champagne gold, almost pale yellow glow. This highlighter feels high quality, there is no fall out and the powder transfers seamlessly to the skin. What I was most impressed with is how it gives a sheen to the skin, rather than a shimmer and there is definitely no chunky glitter!

Being a Nars product this is at the more expensive end of the make up scale, costing £21.00, however a little bit of this product goes a long way so I can see this lasting a really long time....unless I decide to drop the pan and shatter the powder everywhere, which knowing me is a possibility!

I do tend to neglect this highlight somewhat as I've come to favour cream highlighters, however for any highlighter freaks out there, Albatross is superb.

No 7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter

'Awaken the new season look in a flash of radiance with the No7 Vital Enlightening Highlighter. This super-soft, almost velvety powder gives a luminous, natural wash of colour. The peach undertones add warmth while the pink shimmer gives a youthful glow.'

So truth be told the cute packaging may have been the deciding factor in this purchase, however I do take a great interest in the No 7 collections as I know the beauty genius of Lisa Eldridge is behind them. This Vital Enlightening Highlighter from the Spring 2012 Floral Brights collection was too beautiful to pass up.

The highlighter is a light gold shade which adds luminosity to the skin and looks perfect dusted on cheekbones or under the eyebrow. The powder is very finely milled, it is soft, easy to apply and very blendable, I have found that a little goes a long way with this product and it is easily buildable.

The packaging is sweet and girly, I love the pink flowers on the front, this is a compact I like to leave out on my dressing table. The box feels sturdy enough, however I am terrified of dropping this one on the floor, the pattern of the powder is so pretty I would hate to smash it!

The Vital Enlightening Highlighter costs £13, however it's worth beaing in mind that Boots are currently running their £5 off No 7 voucher. I was in my local Boots over the weekend and there were still a few of these milling about, however my advice would be to snap one up quick.

What's in My Holiday Bag? Part 2

When I'm on holiday I rarely wear make up during the day, so make up application is reserved mainly for night time. I hate to take expensive make up products on holiday as I worry about losing them or damaging them in transition, with so many quality drugstore products out there it's easy to build a great holiday make up collection. The products I am taking are (Clockwise from top):

Lypsyl tinted Cherry Blossom Lip Balm 4g £1.49, Boots: A very cheap product, I like the fact it is ever so slightly tinted, smells lovely and contains an SPF 15. To give you all the blurb it also contains Vitamin E, Aloe Vera and helps protect against UVA and UVB rays. On application it feels moisturising on my lips and even tastes nice, however you need to warm the product up slightly in your hand before applying otherwise it is very hard and waxy.

Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder in Transparent £3.99, Superdrug: This is my everyday powder which I use to combat shine, you can tell how well loved it is from how little is left in the pan. I don't like to wear powdery products in warm countries as they don't look good on the skin, however I am taking this as I hate the look of a shiny t-zone!

Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection Concealer in Fair £4.19, Boots: My favourite concealer, see my post on it here.

Revlon PhotoReady Foundation in Vanilla 30ml £12.99, Boots: My favourite light foundation, which is perfect for summer evenings. I like to mix a touch of this with moisturiser to make a DIY tinted moisturiser.

Benefit Gilded Tangerine Gold Highlighter Pencil £14.00, Benefit: A gorgeous gold creamy highlighter which I like to smudge under my eyes, I love gold eyes on holiday so this pencil is perfect.

Benefit High Beam, Sample Size Free with Glamour Magazine: A great highlighter for cheekbones, brow bones and the cupids bow.

No 7 Gel Liner in Black 4g £10.00, Boots: - This was part of No7 Spring 2011 collection, see my full review here. It's a great multifunctional liner which can be used on the eyelids and on the waterline, best of all it's waterproof so will hopefully stay put in humid conditions!

Bourjois Bronzing Powder Shade 51 16.5g £6.99, Superdrug: The much loved Bourjois Bronzing Powder in the lightest shade, see my review here. I'm hoping this will go someway to making me look tanned on holiday....wishful thinking!

Gosh Jumbo Lip Gloss Pencil 02 Flamenco Coral 2.8g Discontinued:  Sadly this lip gloss has been discontinued which is a shame as it's fab and I wish I'd bought more colours! This colour is a beautiful glossy coral and will be great to wear in the evenings.

Gosh Jumbo Lip Pencil 02 Flamenco Coral Swatch

Beauty UK Earth Child Palette £3.99, Superdrug: I have previously discussed the Earth Child Palette on my blog, see here for swatches. I am mainly taking this palette for the black eyeshadow however the other range of colours particularly the browns and greens will be lovely to use too. This palette is cheap enough to repurchase if it does get damaged.

MUA Heaven and Earth Palette £4, Superdrug: A very recent purchase, a full review of this palette will be coming soon! I couldn't resist taking this with me as the neutral colours are beautiful and it saves me lugging my Naked Palette half way around the word!

Max Factor Masterpiece Mascara in Black £8.99, Boots: My favourite mascara of all time! See here for more details. This is not the waterproof version so this will only be used during the evenings, I don't want to be sporting panda eyes by the pool.

Collection 2000 Clear Lash and Brow Mascara £2.99, Boots:  I purchased this instead of a black waterproof mascara, I'm hoping it will give my lashes some definition during the day with no worry of smudges and keep my brows groomed at night. I last bought this product 10 years ago so it will be nice to revisit it, plus clear mascara is a very handy thing to have in your make up collection.

Stay tuned for the third and final part of this series :)

Supermarket Sweep

Occasionally I decide to take spur of the moment, late night trips to Tesco...for no reason at all (obviously I lead a very thrilling life). Recently I pootled along to my nearest 24 hour store to stock up on some concealer, only to find the shutters on the make up counters locked - on a side note why do Supermarkets do this at night? Can make up only be sold during the day? Is it because more people steal make up at night? If so, what are all those very obvious security cameras attached to each make up counter doing? All that was left was a limited peg section housing All About Face and Barbara Daly cosmetics. These are two brands I have never really explored before, but have heard only good things about the Barbara Daly range so I thought it was worth a browse. 

First up the All About Face brand which is Tesco's affordable make up range. Everything in this line is £1.49 which is a pretty good price point, I purchased 3 eyeshadows:

From left: Baby Doll, Gold Shimmer, Meadow - all £1.49

These are three very pretty colours, however the pigmentation isn't amazing. Rather than a standard eyeshadow I would describe these as giving a wash of colour, a product I would use as a base or a highlighter rather than using alone. All three eyeshadows are shimmery, but Gold shimmer is the only metallic eyeshadow of the three, as a result it has a slightly different texture from the other two, and seems more crumbly which makes it a bit messier to apply.

All About Face eye pencil in Bronze £1.49

My next purchase was the All About Face eyeshadow in Bronze. The eye pencil also came in a silvery/grey colour, however I felt the bronze version would be more wearable. The colour comes out a beautiful metallic golden, bronze and I imagine it would look lovely on all skin tones. The pencil is pretty fat and you can twist the end to bring more product up....no sharpening required. I really love this eye pencil, it's very soft and easy to apply, the only downside is it isn't long lasting and disappears relatively quickly. It's a shame Tesco don't produce this pencil in more colours, I would like to have seen a shimmery baby pink, gold and a frosty white version. 

The final product I purchased was from the Barbara Daly range.

Barbara Daly Light & Easy Shimmering Highlight

The Barbara Daly range was pretty slim pickings but this highlighter caught my eye. It's a beautiful frosty shimmer which I have taken to using everyday on my cheekbones, just under the arch of my brow and on my Cupid's bow. The packaging is very simple and sleek, but the talcum powder like dispenser is slightly annoying. I would prefer for the product to be a loose powder, the dispenser means I have to shake some product onto the back of my hand to dip my powder brush into....slightly messy! 

I would like to check out more of the Barbara Daly range, unfortunately most of it was locked away at the time of visit, so I will have to go back when the make up counters are open. I would say both brands are worth a look, All About Face is cheap and cheerful and I would recommend the eye pencil, but more exciting high street brands can be found in Boots and Superdrug.

Cham-Pale

Mac Special Reserve Highlight Powder in Chez Chez Lame

Draped Silk or WrinklySkin?

Top - Lightly Swatched, Bottom - Heavily Swatched

I thought Mac's Cham Pale collection was beautiful, I just love nude colours ever so much!

I have a plethora of nude colour cosmetics (hello naked palette!)....it's pretty much all I buy, but I did make one little purchase from the collection, in the form of the Chez Chez Lame Special Reserve Highlight Powder. 

Mac describes Chez Chez Lame as a soft gold with silver shimmer. I was attracted to the product because the colour is not a bright, yellow gold which is often too harsh on my pale skin, instead it's a light, shimmery, champagne colour. Also, the powder is finely milled...you won't find any big chunks of glitter here, just lots of lovely, subtle shimmer.

This highlighter has got a real luminous quality when applied to the skin, it has been designed to catch the light and give you a real glow, rather than being obvious on the cheeks. It's buildable, you can go for a soft shimmery highlight, or use more product for a really obvious sheen effect. It really is a perfect highlight for my pale skin and I'm just as comfortable wearing it during the day for work, as I would be on a night out.

When I first saw the product in the pan, I loved the way it looked, kind of like draped silk, but then I saw someone comment on how it looked like wrinkled skin and now that's all I see every time I look at it....nevertheless, it's a beautiful colour, and has found it's way into my everyday make up routine.

Products I'm Loving

A little collection of products I love at the moment...

Batiste Brit...buy it for the scent!

I don't think I could live without dry shampoo, it's such a cheap and effective way to refresh your hair between washes...a godsend when you have long locks like moi. I have tried various other brands of dry shampoo, but with Batiste doing such a fine job and costing a mere £2, why bother with high end products?

When I first started using Batiste, there was only the original version available, but with the rising popularity of dry shampoo came more fragrances. The latest offering is Brit, which is exclusive to Superdrug and costs £2.13 a bottle. Firstly, I love the fragrance!! Definitely the nicest smelling Batiste product out there, the scent reminds me of Chloe by Chloe. It refreshed my roots just as well as any other Batiste product does, but as usual you have to watch you blend it in well or you run the risk of having grey-looking hair.
The thing I love most about Brit is that the scent was long lasting and my hair smelt great all day! This replaces Diva as my favourite Batiste product, I will definitely be repurchasing!

Glycerin and Rosewater Toner - lovely stuff!

A classic rosewater toner from the traditional skin care range at Boots. I use this all over my face, including on my eyes to remove eye make-up, as you can see I have already made my way through a quarter of the bottle since Christmas. The product is described as toning and moisturising and as a result does leave my skin feeling tacky, this doesn't bother me as I only use the product at night. The old-school bottle is very cute looking and has a handy top which means you can control the amount of product you use. The toner smells like roses....mmm turkish delight! I would definitely buy again, it's a lovely gentle toner and leaves my skin feeling clean, refreshed and soothed rather than tight, dry or oily.

Merged Baked Blusher in Pretty Pink

Shimmery pinky, lilacy marble-ness

Lightly swatched - top, heavily swatched - bottom (please excuse my veiny wrist!)

This product is so pretty! My first purchase from the Accessorize make up range, I think it cost around £5. Pretty pink is a light pink colour with peach and lilac shimmer marbled through it, the product looks more shimmery on the skin than pink. I personally cannot get enough of glowy, shimmery looking blushers so this is right up my street, but the colour pay off might not be adequate for those die hard blusher fans. This product would be perfect to use as a highlight, but I have worn it alone everyday since purchasing and it gives me a light pinky-peachy glow. I will definitely be checking out more of the Accessorize range next time I'm in Superdrug, very pretty packaging and decent sized products.

Magic golden tube of wonder

My absolute favourite mascara ever! No clumping, no flaking, just gorgeous dark lashes. I haven't used it for a while as my mum kept buying me mascaras (lovely mum!)....Maybelline falsies (hate - caused dry itchy eyes - gave it to my sister in the end), and Revlon Grow Longer (nice mascara with huuuage wand, but bad flaking), so I was overjoyed to find my faithful Masterpiece mascara in my Christmas stocking. I don't have to worry about having panda eyes anymore, yay!

I popped into Superdrug today in the hopes of snagging a Sleek molten metal cream duo, but they were all sold out. I'll just have to make do with the ridiculous amounts of make up I already own 'til I can get my grubby paws on it.

Stuff

I took advantage of the last few days of my Christmas break to have a nosy round my local shopping centre.

The shops are a bit of a mess at the moment...sale items everywhere, including the floor, and a weird mix of winter and summer clothing.....bikini in January anyone?

I picked up a few items....nothing of much interest, but I thought i'd share them here.

2011 Diary - WHSmith

The all important 2011 diary, this is actually really teeny....even smaller than A5. I buy a diary every year, whether I get round to using it is a different story. I chose this one because its handy size makes it perfect for shoving in my handbag, and I'm feeling pretty committed to being organised this year!

Clutch bag -  Zara

There was absolutely no need for me to purchase another clutch bag - particularly one made out of a material that will inevitably find itself covered in my grubby fingerprints. I had previously lusted over this bag on the Zara website, so when I saw it on sale for a mere £9.99 I grabbed it. I love the vibrant hot pink colour, and it comes with a detachable chain....yes I am a pro at justifying my purchases.

Cream blush in Neon Rose - Topshop

I've read good reviews on this and thought i'd branch out from my usual nude colour blusher/highlighter. I love the packaging of these products, so simple and cute.

Purse - Topshop

I have been on the hunt for a new purse for months. I hadn't come across one I liked, but with my current purse practically falling apart it was time to bit the bullet and pick one. I chose this leopard print number from Topshop. I don't think I'm completely sold on it but it has all the required compartments.

Et Voila!