And the highlight of this post is...

You may, or may not, have heard that theBalm Cosmetics are releasing a new luminzing,highlightering, shimmery shadow goodness in the form of 'Cindy Lou-Manizer a.k.a.The Con-tour Artist'. The swatches are making me hyperventilate! It is very pretty and looks to be a great shade for us pale skin girls.  I am waiting patiently until it arrives on our shores though, shipping off of theBalm website to Aberdeen is $25!  Thats one dollar more than the actual item itself!
I digress, seeing the new release made me take another glorious look at my 'Mary'.  This is one of the best highlighters I have tried and I thought I would do a comparison with a product from another of my favourite brands, Benefit.  

Meet 'Moon Beam' liquid highlighter and 'Mary-Lou Manizer' powder highlighter.

So lets start on ease of use.  'Mary' is nice and easy, just lightly dust across where you require a little glow and you're done.  The 'Moon Beam' is a bit trickier because it is liquid.  A little goes a long way with these liquid highlighters and it's usually best to just put a few dots along where you need it and then blend.  This is the bit I struggle with as I often feel I end up undoing my base to blend this.

So colour wise, initially they would appear in the same colour family, so to speak,  'Mary' is a bit of a lighter, champagne gold whereas the 'Moon Beam' has a bit more warmth to it. However, once you get to blending, that changes more than I had expected!

The 'Moon Beam' ends up with a reddish, apricot tone to it which is totally different to the 'Mary'.  The change is quite drastic, and although it is very pretty, it has the potential to change the make up look that you were intent on having. It's still nice and shimmery but on my pale skin, to suddenly have reddish tones along the top of my cheekbones makes me look a bit oddly flushed.  Not ideal if you were aiming for Kim K. style contours.

A few more pics just because I was thrown by how much the 'Moon Beam' changed!  

It's very pretty and on skin with a bit of a tan, the apricot tones would look gorgeous but for now, 'Mary' suits my paleface and my needs much better.

'Moon Beam' is discontinued now but that's not to say it won't come back, however, I did some digging and found a blog post by What Larry Loves, which compares 'Moon Beam' with a super cheap, easy to get a hold of alternative, if the colour sets you aflutter!

I got my 'Mary' from feelunique when they had a 10% off sale however I have noticed it has went from £15 to £16! Sad times!  Save your pennies up and wait for the sales folks! 

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx

Hello Flawless Custom Powder Cover up - A review

A few months ago, I think October, I purchased Hello Flawless from Boots.  I hadn't intended to, I was on the lookout for a loose powder so to come home with a pressed, expensive powder was a bit of deviation from plan but I had high hopes as A) I have always loved Benefit and 2) I had seen a few good reviews about it.  So, does it meet those expectations?  All will be revealed...

These pictures were taken when I first got it and it was all pretty and new.

I love the packaging, its very similar to Topshop Cosmetics packaging though with the white background and black polka dots.  It comes with a handy instruction leaflet which gives you a brief 'how to' depending on the method of application and type of coverage required.

The compact itself contains 7g of product and has an SPF 15, I'm not sure how well it photographs with regards to flashback as it contains SPF so that is something to be wary of.  It has a nifty little compartment in which resides a wee brush and a wee sponge.  They are cute but as with the benefit blushes, the brush is a bit meh.

And this is it in it's untouched state, I got this in shade 'Ivory - gee I'm swell' which annoyingly isn't the shade I wanted as it is darker than 'Ivory - I love me' and yellower than 'Champagne - Me, Vain?'.  I wasn't informed by the Customer Advisor that there were two shades of Ivory! Grrr! for £25.50, I want this to be the right one for me.

It's not this little fella's fault though, although what happens next is not for the faint hearted and if you don't like cosmetic abuse, please look away now...

I broked it! *sobs* the works night out where I lost like half my stash? this happened.  I lost the brush before I had even used it, miraculously saved the sponge, cracked the powder so that I left half of it in my work chums hubby's car and the powder now comes out completely!  Whoops! 

This is the sponge, it's spongey... recommended for use if you want a fuller coverage and so you just pat it on the areas where you need a bit more coverage.

This is my hand with Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum on in shade '51 Light Vanilla'

And this is my hand with Hello Flawless over the top.  It may just be me that is hyper critical but how yellow does that look?!? The skin on my hand is relatively similar to that of my face, it is my neck that is really pale and man alive this is waaaay too dark and too yellow!

And again, at a slightly different angle to show it in a different light, it's still yellow folks.

This is it after I have taken my RealTechniques powder brush over the top and unforuantely, it's still yellow. 

And look at how much is left on the sponge, that is the one and only time I have used the sponge and look how grotty it is, there is so much product left on there.

There is a fair bit of fall out too when used with a powder brush, so if you are wanting to do some 'finishing touches' once you have put on your LBD then I strongly advise some sort of bib device.

So, onto the actual finish, is it worth it?  No.  I really wanted to say yes, I have a lifelong affinity to Benefit products and used to have quite a stash of them but this has me thrown which is why it's taken me so long to review it.  

The shade range is not exceptional, I really wish brands would start making their light shades lighter, they need to spend some time in Scotland and see what no sun does to a complexion! Apart from being too yellow and too dark, I found that when this was applied with the sponge is was a wee bit too cakey for me, but again I think that was more due to the shade rather than the formulation.  I would say I have normal/combination skin although on some of my spotty bits there was some dryness and I definitely feel that was accentuated rather than masked by this powder.  I felt that it oxidised during the day too, which means it got darker and more yellow! it does last fairly well on the skin, albeit clinging to said dry bits and can lean towards patchy on me as the rest of my makeup where I have lightly powdered this has disappeared and I'm left with a slightly yellow, flaky muzzle - schexy, no?!

As I say, I wanted to love this but as it turns out, I can't wait until it's finished.  I think I might try Soap & Glory's 'One Heck Of A Blot™'  next or if I'm feeling flush, I quite fancy trying out Illamasqua's loose powder,I have never tried any of their products but have always heard good things (the nail polish 'Facet' and the lipstick 'Shard' are both high on my 'if I ever put an order in' list, oh and so is Perseid, Raindrops and Pink Raindrops - uh oh!). 

Have you got a 'Holy Grail' face powder for me to try?

Do you find it easy to find shades to suit you?

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx

Swatching it up a little...

I was in the sacredest of sacred places recently, yes, Boots, again and didn't buy anything!! Except some halls soothers! However, I wasn't feeling that rotten that I couldn't do a few swatches.

Benefit Hydra-Smooth Lip colour in 'Fling Thing', £15 here.  First off, the colour of this is lovely, a perfect autumnal, berry shade.  The casing is so unusual too, it kinda looks like a Doric column from ancient greece. With shea and mango butter along with Vitamin E, this packs a hefty hydration punch for your lips and has a double slanted tip for precise application.  It did glide on very smooth and I can see why this would be classed as medium-full coverage.  My only bugbear is paying £15 for a lipstick, but I could be tempted with this one!

Bourjois Rouge Edition Lipstick in '07 Fuschia Graffiti'.  A superbly bright pink!  This contains Orchid Blossom extract to help it glide on lips smoothly and it feels as though it would do just that.  Bourjois can do no wrong at the moment with new releases popping up every other day it seems and each collection just as good as the last.  There are 18 shades in this particular lipstick ranging from nudes to dark purples, so there is something for everyone.  This is also claimed to hydrate and protect lips for 10 hours, a claim that I usually take with a pinch of salt. This can be purchased at Boots or Superdrug for £7.99.

Lastly, was a rather melty Sleek 4 Lipstick Palette in 'Ballet'.  Sidenote, I do wish people would take a bit more care when handling products in the shops, I love a good swatch myself but it doesn't kill ya to put lids back on and not get lipstick all over the place! *steps off soapbox*. 

 Back to the matter in hand, Nudes are not something I tend to go for when picking a lippy, my dark hair, green eyes and pale pink skin, seem to me to be a better match for pinks, purples and reds.  Having saying that, nudes are something I want to experiment with as they can look great with a smokey eye and this wee palette is a great way to try out a variety of nudes.  

The pigmentation was really good with these four and the consistency was nice and smooth, the palest one on the top left corner looked to me like concealer at first glance and it seems to be softer than the others.  Still, a great introduction to the nude lip for £8.99, these only seem to be available on the Superdrug website, here, it doesn't seem to be on the Boots website at the moment, but I think that the range is quite new to Boots.

Do you have plans to buy a new lipstick for Autumn/Winter?

How much is too much to spend on a lipstick?

Hugs,

Jodi

xxx