The end of the month has been and gone, so it's time for a good old beauty round up. It's been a while since I did one of these full on beauty chat posts, so I have loads to catch you up on from the things I've been trying over June and July.
Starting off with some new makeup I've tried out this month, House of Fraser kindly let me choose a new foundation and lipstick from their huge makeup range. I decided to go for Benefit's Hello Flawless Oxygen Wow foundation, which is one I've wanted to try for a while. I went for the shade 'I'm all the rage' beige and really like the medium coverage from a foundation which still feels really light-weight on the skin. I was spoilt for choice when it came to lipsticks, so ended up going for another Nars Audacious shade because they're one of my favourite lipstick formulas - so creamy and easy to wear as well as highly pigmented and quite long lasting. This is the shade Anita which is a lovely deep pinky nude - I know, what a wild choice!
Earlier in July, out of nowhere my skin became extra dehydrated and dry, particularly under my eyes and around my nose. I couldn't place what had caused it and then about a week later I came down with the whole sore throat, cold and cough business and it made the dryness even worse! I reached straight for La Roche-Posay's Cicaplast Pro Recovery, which I've used before to fight extreme dryness around my eyes, and it has come to the rescue for me again. I actually own every product from the Cicaplast range and can vouch for their amazingness when it comes to dealing with dryness. My skin's still not back to normal yet, so I'm being careful not to try too many new products right now and am using Cicpalast all over my face morning and night to keep my skin happy.
Alongside this dryness or dehydration issue I've been getting through a lot of MAC Fix+ to stop my makeup from looking cakey and clingy. I'm not really used to having dry skin and have spent more time battling oil, so it's been quite odd for me to be able to use more hydrating and even glowy base products during the day at the moment. I went out and stocked up on a new Fix+ because although it's probably just overpriced water in a spray bottle, it really does help mesh my makeup nicely and reduce any cakey powdery look, especially whilst my skin is drier. I've tried cheaper versions and they just don't do the same job for me.
I spotted this new priming spray from Makeup Revolution when I was browsing Superdrug and it reminded me of a much more expensive priming spray I used to buy from Urban Decay. I thought I'd give it a go, as again with the dryness I've been having, I can't seem to add enough moisture under my makeup these days!
I'll stop banging on about these dry skin issues in just a sec, but first one more product which I've been trying alongside my Cicaplast is the Filgora Optim-Eyes. I've introduced this slowly, just at night, and my skin seems very happy with it so far. Whilst the Cicaplast is super hydrating, I was very aware that due to the dryness I'd stopped using anything anti-ageing, and for around my eyes especially, I wanted to get something back into my routine asap to keep addressing fine lines. I'll update on this one after I've used it over a longer period, but so far so good.
Okay away from dry skin and on to other moans! I have a blog post in the works about a horrible experience I had with lash extensions which has probably put me off for life, but that's a story for another day - what you need to know is that it left my lashes so weak, broken and sparse *very sad face*. I've been wearing falsies a lot while I wait for the lashes to grow back and I'm now trying out StimuLashFusion from Fusion Beauty which will hopefully encourage that process to speed up! It can take twelve weeks to see results and I'm only a few weeks in so far, so I'll let you know if I think this has helped when I get to the end of three months - just need to remember to use it every night!
Fab packaging alert! You know I'm a bit of a sucker for fun packaging, and these syringe style tubes from NB Labs Bio-Extracts are no exception - skincare can be pretty dull sometimes, so why not inject a little fun? I've not started trying these out yet but the products I have from the range are the Intense moisture face cream, Anti-Wrinkle Boost and Lifting Boost. As soon as my skin's back to normal these are getting on my face asap!
KIKO have a great summer range out just in time for holiday season and it includes this sun protection oil for hair. I've never tried something like this before and I really like the concept - I don't think many brands carry sunscreen suitable for hair but I'm sure it'll become more popular. I've already been on my sunny beach holiday back in May this year, but this is certainly something I'd want to use next time, especially now I have some bleach in my hair which obviously makes it more prone to damage.
The solar protect serum is a bio phase serum so you can see the two elements of the product in layers - obviously I've had lots of fun shaking this up and watching it settle again - so satisfying! It offers both sun protection and hydration all in one and it's non-oily. This is perfect for those days when you want to wear your usual makeup and skincare products that may not contain SPF but don't want to put a heavy sun lotion on your face - this just feels like a normal light weight serum.
Have you seen the collaboration TIGI S-Factor have with Spectrum brushes? When you buy two full size S Factor products you'll get one of these gorgeous coloured makeup brushes from Spectrum and a makeup bag with a cute little pompom! I only had one Spectrum brush in my collection up until now - a gorgeous purple and blue fan brush - so I'm really pleased to add another of these beautiful brushes to my collection.
The only perfume I've bought lately is this one - Daisy Dream Blush - from the infamous Daisy range by Marc Jacobs. I just can't resist the lure of the Daisy, especially when I'm in duty free and there's a new version out. I bought this one when I went on holiday in May - I've just recently started using it and I love it just as much as all my other Daisy scents... which is no surprise as to be fair, they're all quite similar!
My splurge of the month was on these three lippies from Charlotte Tilbury's Hot Lips release. There are twelve colours in the collection, so of course I had to hit up the pinky-nudes. I intend to do another post with swatches and close ups on these, but left to right these are Kim KW, Kidman's Kiss and Liv It Up, and I love them all.
After years of messing around with teeth whitening kits that just don't do what they promise, I brought in the big guns and ordered some CREST 3D white strips from the US. I could really see that these were working, and although they made my teeth very sensitive, it was only temporary. I've currently run out and can see the effects wearing off, but I'm off to the states at the end of August and will definitely be stocking up my suitcase with some more of these.
When I was feeling poorly with a cold I decided to have a little Beauty Bay spree to cheer myself up and finally took the plunge with some Makeup Geek eyeshadows and a Z palette to fill up. I just picked out these three neutral shades to start with - Latte, Peach Smoothie and Barcelona Beach - but I'm already making a big list of all the other shades I want to get.
In that same haul I spotted that the Morphe 35T palette was back in stock, and as I've had my eye on it for a while I decided to give that a go too. Because of my dry eye situation I've not actually be wearing much eye makeup, so I'm excited to start giving this a good old road test and I'm sure I'll pop up a blog post with lots of lovely swatches.
So that's us all caught up for now, pretty much! I'm hoping to have more time for blogging soon because I have so many other things I can't wait to tell you about - I'm plotting a post of my favourite bronzers, my go to face masks and also a summer favourites round up, oh and of course a New York wish list - 24 days to go!!
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