New to the Handbag

Hand cream is one of those few products that when I put them in my bag or on my bedside table, I forget to use them. However, this offering from Grown ensures I will never do such things again.

This is such a beautiful hand cream to use. it smells ahh-mazing and sinks in to the skin fairly quickly so you avoid problems such as your iPhone slipping out of your hands post application. I've also used it on other areas of dry skin and grazes and it smoothed those out instantly, I love a good multi purpose cream and this ticks all the boxes.

October Favourites 2013

I am a bit delayed as we are already nearly two weeks into November, but I did have A LOT of faves this month. It was my birthday and I did get a tiny bit spoilt which only enabled my makeup addiction (YAY!).

I said I had a lot of favourites, but I'm only gonna focus on skincare, because I want to go over the others in a bit more detail with swatches and things like that. 

Firstly, the L'oreal EverCreme Nourishing Leave In Spray saved my hair. I have quite thick hair and I haven't cut it in a while (hairdressers are scary), and it was starting to look very dry and dull. I used this after I shampooed and conditioned with the products of the same line and it is impressing stuff. It smells heavenly and left my hair feeling very smooth and looking shiny. It also made it much easier to blow dry and straighten. I would recommend being very light handed with this and combing it through your hair to avoid it weighing your hair down.

Origins is a brand I've wanted to try for ages and I'm so glad I started with these two. The Ginzing Moisturiser is really light, hydrating and sinks in really fast and makes my skin glow. The High Potency Night-A-Mins has a super cute name and feels great when you use it at night. It's thicker than the Ginzing and leaves your skin so soft and refreshed when you wake up. They both smell like oranges which is awesome and they do exactly what they say on the tin. A little goes a long way with both.

Lastly, the Clarifying Clay Cleanser by Ren I'm also so glad I discovered. I use it at night and you can really feel it deeply cleansing the skin and getting rid of all the junk from the day. I wet my hands and take one pump of this and massage it into my skin for a minute or 2 and it has cleared my skin dramatically. It does smell like clay which I'm not overly fond of, but once you wash it off it goes away.

Maybelline 24hr Color Tattoo

If you read beauty blogs you will know that almost everyone who features the Maybelline 24hr Color Tattoo adores it, and of course I am no exception.

Amongst the drug store brands there really isn't a very high variety of cream eyeshadows. I have very oily lids so finding one that will stay on is a bit of a mission. And I believe it has ended.

This eyeshadow is the most long lasting shadow of tried in cream form. It comes on very opaque and I just use my fingers to apply it and it dries within about a minute. I had it on from 7 in the morning till around 11 in the evening and it still looked the same as when I put it on. YAY.

I got the shade 'Bad to the Bronze', it kind of looks smoked out when you apply it alone and that appeals to my laziness when I have an early start. 

Mood: impressed 

Bourjois 'Rose Cupcake'

Bourjois is soon becoming a favourite drug store brand of mine. Their 1 Seconde Nail Polsih comes in a cute little variety of colours and the brush is quite thick, so you get most of the nail in one careful sweep. 

I got the shade 'Rose Cupcake', it's much brighter on than it looks in the bottle, and they go on ridiculously smooth. 

They're on sale at Priceline at the moment for $9 and I'm not sure how long that lasts for so don't be crazy and get one.

MAC Palette Construction

If MAC is a brand that you have no interest in (are you sick?!) there's one thing they offer that has got to tickle your fancy, their Pro Palettes. 

They're just empty eyeshadow palettes that you can get in different sizes and you just pick shades you love that you can get in the refill pan or de-pot the ones you have and pop them in. They also do this with their blushes and it's such a cool idea because I find with most palettes I buy I tend to stick with some colours more than others. Problem averted.

I got the empty quad and to fill it 'Naked Lunch' and 'Sable'. They're really good everyday shades and go well together. However they're looking pretty lonely next to the empty spaces, and I've got my eye on a few (15, actually) shadows that I think will work well with the brown theme I've got going on. I can feel another trip to MAC in the near future.

I also bought a paint pot in 'Painterly' as a base, and a travel sized Fix+, which I have no idea how to use so if you have any idea please let me know.

Bourjois Lip Crayons

I've never bought anything from Bourjois before or had any interest in it but the cuteness of these lipsticks drew me in and I had to try them. 

I love a good crayon-like lip product because they're easy to apply and you can just chuck them in your bag and touch up on the go. These Color Boost Lip Crayons are so smooth, feel amazing on the lips and have a really nice glossy finish. They come in four shades, Peach on the Beach, Orange Punch, Fuchsia Libre and Red Sunrise (which was sold out so I'll have to go searching for it), and are SPF 15. The colour pay off on these are way too impressive especially for a crayon, and last for ages.

Fuchsia Libre is definitely my favourite and I think they'll be really good in summer when your'e taking your makeup from a day to night look.

Bioderma + Hydraluron

Most of the time I'm a little late to jump on the bandwagon with skin products. My skins very temperamental. I had bad acne throughout high school and now it's quite oily and I have a bit of scarring (like the acne wasn't bad enough right?!). Before I use something that's getting heaps of praise I do my research, check the ingredients and of course check that it's been beauty blogger approved.

Almost everyone in the beauty world has a bottle of Bioderma Crealine H20 Solution in their makeup kits. I was using makeup wipes to remove my makeup at night and I was always left with panda eyes in the morning. Bioderma gets rid of every trace of stubborn mascara which I LOVE and all the makeup on your face. I just dampen a cotton wool pad with it a wipe all over my face before cleansing.
Hopefully I'll be able to find a bigger bottle of the stuff.

The Hydraluron from Indeed Labs is the best skincare product I've ever used, hands down, ever! It's a serum which maximises your skins ability to retain moisture. It does EXACTLY what it says on the bottle and it works instantly. I've only been using this for the past four days and I'm hooked! My makeup lasts so much longer throughout the day and I hardly get shiny in my t-zone like I did before. 
Everyone of every age should be using this product. Everyday, until you die. 

Essie Chinchilly

During the week I head to Priceline  to look for new products to feature on my blog. It's conveniently close to where I work which I'm starting to realise is a bit dangerous for me. 

The other day as I was searching through the aisles on my beauty mission, I almost peed my pants with excitement when I noticed a stand full of brand new Essie nail polishes. 

Finally! After I calmed myself down I was looking through and they ALL looked cute but I opted for 'Chinchilly'. It's sort of like a deep grey/mauve/purpley colour thats looks a bit different in certain lights. It's very sophisticated and a nice change from my usual pink-red-black rotation. 

They're not available to buy online yet so if you've got some spare time, I'd recommend going into a store and having a look.

Now the question remains: exactly how many of these will I accumulate before the years end?

Dr Bronner's Magic Soap

Every week or so I like to give my brushes a really deep clean. Up until last week I was using just a normal facial cleanser when I took them to the bathroom sink spa. 

It did an okay job but I wasn't really 100% happy with it so after hearing about the Dr Bronner's Magic Soap I decided to try it. There are a few different ones, I picked up 'baby mild'.

What I do is wet my hand with warm water, put a small 5 cent piece amount in my palm, and swish my brush in it until all the makeup is gone. Then I rinse my brush under the tap with the handle facing down. This is really important because if your brush faces upward it allows the water to go inside, and will cause the hairs to loosen and shed. I always squeeze the excess water out, and lay them flat over a bench to dry overnight. I also reshape them while they're damp. 

The magic soap makes brush cleaning so easy, and is also good for people who have allergies or sensitive skin (and of course babies) as it's unscented and organic.

August Favourites

Here are the products that I have been using religiously this month.

Firstly, the Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow foundation by Benefit. This is so easy to blend and can definitely be built up to get the coverage you want and never sticks to my dry patches, WIN. 

The Mega Plush Volume Express Mascara from Maybelline. I LOVE Maybelline mascaras so much, I always recommend them over any high end mascara. I love this one in particular because there is less wax in the formula and it has quite a large brush, it works so well in giving me long thick lashes without having them stick together. The Shu Uemura curler is the best I've used. With curlers its always good to splurge, cheaper ones don't really do the trick.

From Nars I've been using three products almost everyday since I got them. Blush in 'Deep Throat', bronzer in 'Laguna' and the Radiant Creamy Concealer. Every time I use the blush and bronzer together they give me such a subtle, fresh look that's every day appropriate, and the concealer just brightens up my i-had-four-hours-sleep circles under my eyes and lasts ages.

MAC's fluidline in 'Blacktrack', I've had this for a while but when I first got it I was applying it with a small angled brush because I heard it was easier to achieve a winged liner. It was a bit awkward to use so I put it aside, then this month I tried it with a pointed liner brush and it worked SO much better. I'm not so scared of gel liners anymore. 

Finally, Chanel's lip colour in 'Rendez-Vous', so smooth and a great peachy-pinky-coral shade for summer. Even though it's not technically summer in Sydney. 

Hope you guys enjoyed my August favourites x

The Newbies #1

My week consists of working and going to uni so the only thing I REALLY look forward to is my deliveries. Especially, if its new makeup that awaits me at my door. I don't know, its like a magical beauty guru who knows exactly what I like and want brought me my new toys, and I forget that I was the one that clicked confirm order over a week ago. 

Don't judge me, you do it too. 

Nars Radiant Creamy concealer in Light 2 Vanilla

Nars blush in Deep Throat (LOL)

Nars Bronzing powder in Laguna

Rimmel Scandaleyes Shadow pencil in Bad Girl Bronze

Maybelline Mega Plush Mascara

My other products are my old faithfuls. I mixed the Verve shadow from my Naked2 palette with my bronze pencil and blended which created a nice neutral colour as they're both quite strong on their own. 

I only get my Nars products from Kiss and Makeup , if its something like foundation, I colour match in the stores here first. 

Product Exile

I'm always keen to try new primers or any product that claims it will make my makeup last for long periods of time. So you can imagine my excitement when I had discovered that Benefit had come out with their new Stay Flawless 15- hour Primer. I'm HUGE fan of Benefit cosmetics, their cute packaging sucks me in more times than I'd care to admit, and I'm an avid user of the Porefessional as you could have guessed. 

So, long story short I have exiled this product straight out of my beauty bag for several reasons:

1. It's glue-stick application form makes it harder to get product in the smaller bits of your face like under eyes and around nose etc.

2. Once I put it on my skin it felt extremely tacky which I did not like

3. I like to tap my foundation on with a brush then blend outwards, this primer was so sticky that I couldn't blend much at all and left my whole face very blotchy

And lastly after much struggle, I realised there was nothing I could do to save my makeup and had to take it all off and start again. 

I've read a lot of reviews on this before and after I tried it and the general consensus is that its working for every other woman out there, so why not me?!

What do you think of Stay Flawless?