July Empties

I've managed to get through another bumper crop of empties this month, with some of them being more successful than others!

I've been on a bit of a body lotion rampage and managed to get through three samples in July. The Bee Kind lotion had a slightly lemony/honeyish scent to it that I really liked, but I found that it didn't really sink into my skin very well. I really loved the Naobay and Whish lotions though. The Naobay had a lemon scent which is great for this time of year, and the Whish was a lavender scented lotion which I expected to hate but actually really loved! Both of these were great for my skin and sank in really nicely.

This sample of Glamglow's Supermud Clearing Treatment lasted for 3 or 4 applications and did a really good job of cleansing my skin. Unfortunately I can't really afford the full size, but if you fancy a splurge I'd say it's worth it! I've been using the Blanc Cachemire moisturiser for a while now but I found that it really didn't work well with my make up. It made my skin quite greasy so I was really glad to finish it up! I didn't really get on well with the L'occitane Repairing shampoo and conditioner either. They irritated my scalp and made my hair greasier than normal.

I was really sad to finish up my sample tube of Lancome's Hypnose Drama mascara. It's been my favourite mascara for a really long time so I decided to bite the bullet and splash out on a full size tube. I'm really glad I did because I absolutely love it! I also finished up one of my many samples of the Porefessional. I'm using this every day at the moment so once all of my samples have run out I might end up buying a full size tube.

I've also made headway through my massive shower gel collection! This Dove shower gel was the last of the christmas smellies! It's a really nice nourishing shower gel, just what you'd expect from Dove really. The Anatomicals shower gel was from a previous Love Me Beauty box and even though rose isn't really my kind of scent, I actually really liked this shower gel. I probably wouldn't repurchase it, but it made a nice change from my usual fruity showers!

What did you use up this month? Have you tried any of my empties?

June Favourites

 June was a great month beauty-wise. Lots of new products were introduced that I'd been dying to get my hands on, as well rediscovering some old favourites!

I've completely fallen in love with the Benefit lip balms this month, they've been especially helpful in keeping my lips hydrated as I've been recovering from a cold and hayfever which has left me feeling a bit rubbish at times! Luckily I haven't had to worry about chapped lips because these balms have been keeping them soft and moisturised, with a cute tint thrown in!

I've rediscovered my love for Urban Veda this month as well. This face wash in particular has really worked wonders on my skin, and I've decided that once I've used up my Simple face wash, I'm going to stick to this one from now on! It makes my skin feel so refreshed and clean, and even though £7.99 is more than I would usually spend on a face wash, this one is good enough that I don't mind paying a little bit more.

As it was (at times) a bit hotter last month, I've decided to ditch the foundation and BB creams and just use the Porefessional on my face to blur my pores and make my skin look a bit better than normal. It feels so lightweight on my skin and I haven't had to worry about my foundation slipping during the day. 

This Starry Night palette from MUA has been a recent discovery in Superdrug and I've been loving it ever since! I love a bit of shimmer in my eyeshadows and this palette more than delivers that. I don't find them too over-shimmery for daytime wear, and they have the usual gorgeous pigmentation you'd expect from a MUA palette! 

Have you tried any of my favourites? What did you think of them?

Beauty Box Buys #2

 May was another great month for beauty boxes! Birchbox in particular did a fantastic job with their Harper's Bazaar collab, and You Beauty's theme of the CEW awards resulted in a great selection of products too. Here are my favourite products from each of the boxes I received this month.

Love Me Beauty    

I wasn't overwhelmed by the selection from Love Me Beauty this month, however there were a couple of items that I liked. The Raw Skincare lip balm in 'Rescue Me' has been a life saver at times this month. I suffer from dry lips and this balm has kept them moisturised and soft. It's also a total bargain at £2.98, and you can find it here. We also received these cute notebooks from Go Stationery. I am a bit of a stationery geek so I was pretty excited to get these in my box! The patterns are really cute and I will definitely get plenty of use out of these at work. Having a notebook handy is always a plus! You can find these cute notebooks in sets of three here for £5.

You Beauty Discovery  

This month I've totally fallen in love with the Glamglow Supermud Clearing Treatment that I was lucky enough to get my hands on when the menu went live! The mask is applied quite sparingly, and dries to be quite solid. I could really see it working on my pores and after rinsing it off my skin felt and looked incredibly clear and refreshed. It's an expensive one, but if you're feeling flush I really would recommend it! You can find it here for £39.99.

Birchbox 
 

Birchbox managed to entice me back into subscribing by producing (in my opinion) thier best box to date. It's been incredibly hard to pick just two favourites from the box, but I've just about managed it! Firstly, Benefit's 'They're Real!' mascara. This mascara really is amazing. It's not a product that's new to me, it's just a fantastic mascara and if you don't have or haven't tried it yet, get it! It's available here for £19.50. 

We also received a sample of the Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser. I was intrigued to try this out after hearing so many bloggers rave about it, and it's definitely worth the hype. My skin feels so soft and clean after using this, it's definitely better than any other cleanser I've tried! You can find it here for £14.75.

Do you own any of these products already? Which are your favourites?

Benefit Tinted Lip Balms

As soon as I heard about these I knew my bank account was in for a bashing! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm a huge Benefit fan, and I have a total weakness for lip balms so the new tinted lip balms from Benefit are like a dream come true!

I decided to pick up 3 of the shades for my ever expanding Benefit collection, Lollibalm, Chachabalm and Posiebalm. They all have a slight rose scent which wears off after application, and the packaging is just beautiful. The cardboard outer boxes are adorable, and the actual casings are gorgeously shiny and look really high-end.

The tints are all exactly that, just tints. This is what really appeals to me about lip balms, the fact that you can apply them on the go without needing a mirror, whilst also adding a hint of colour to your lips. Personally I think everyone will get something a bit different from each of these shades depending on thier lip colour. 

Below I've got some on the lip swatches, just to show exactly how tinted the balms are. This first swatch is for Lollibalm, and you can just about see the slight lilac wash it gives to my lips.

Next we have Posiebalm, which has more of a pink tone to it.

And finally, Chachabalm which is probably my favourite of the three.

The balms contain mango butter to soften and hydrate your lips, and they are incredibly comfortable to wear. There's no stickiness, and you can feel your lips softening after wearing the balm for a while.

You can find all three of these balms and Benebalm (the one I didn't get, but will be adding to my collection shortly!) here for £14.50 each.

Which shade is your favourite?

Birchbox - May 2014

I know I said that the April Birchbox was my last box, and I did unsubscribe, but then I saw the amazing things that everyone was getting in the special Harpers Bazaar collaboration box and I knew I was going to have to resubscribe!

I think you'll agree, a pretty impressive range of products! The item that really pushed me into subscribing again was the Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish sample. I've heard so much about this from other bloggers that I just couldn't pass up the chance to give it a go! This came gorgeously wrapped up with a muslin cloth and instructions on how to use the product to get the most advantage from it, and I can't wait to give it a go!

Next up is this cute little bottle of bath and shower oil from Aromatherapy Associates. I've already had a bath with this and it smells divine. It's a gorgeous scent that definitely made me feel invigorated. I felt like it would probably be really nice to use if you have a cold, as it felt lovely when I breathed it in. The scent also lingered on my skin after my bath as well which was a nice bonus!

A couple of months back we received the Beauty Protector hair oil from Birchbox which I really loved, but unfortunately I knocked the bottle onto my bathroom floor and it smashed! Thankfully, the shampoo and conditioner in this months box are in plastic bottles so clumsy people like me don't waste them! I can't wait to give these a try, if they're anything like the hair oil then I'll love them.

I have been loving how much Benefit has been in the past few Birchboxes! I'm really pleased to add a sample of 'They're Real!' to my collection. This is a must-have mascara and I absolutely love it. It really does add volume and definition to your lashes, and if you haven't tried it yet, then you really need to! The only slight downside to it, is that it's notoriously difficult to remove.

 

This polish is absolutely gorgeous. I think this shade is called Cerise, and it's a lovely berry pink shade. I was super impressed with the application, the brush is a great size and the polish was incredibly easy to work with. It's also really high shine as you can see below, that's two coats without a top coat.

Birchbox have really blown me away this month. The April box was good, but this is even better! Obviously the boxes won't always maintain this standard, but I can't get over what a fabulous selection of products there is this month. Not only have you got make up, you've hair care and skin care, as well as a nail polish. I'm sure some people will be a bit grumpy about the lack of a lifestyle extra this month, but the fact that Birchbox have included both a shampoo and conditioner more than makes up for that for me! I'll be staying subscribed for a bit longer it seems...

Don't forget to enter my giveaway to win TheBalm's 'How 'bout Them Apples?' blush palette HERE!

March Favourites

I haven't really bought a lot of beauty products this month, so my favourites are a bit sparse! It was my birthday on the 20th, and I mainly received books, dvds, and games for my new Nintendo 3DS. I'm not complaining, it's just meant that things on the beauty side haven't really featured much for me this month!

I've definitely been loving this Nip + Fab Viper Venom Eye Fix. You can see my full review here, and it has basically become a new daily staple. Not only does it feel super refreshing on application, it also visibly reduces my dark circles. I'm super pleased that I was introduced to this by Love Me Beauty this month! You can get the Nip + Fab Viper Venom Eye Fix for £14.95 here. 

Having finally finished up my Peaches and Clean face wash, I've been able to crack open this Urban Veda Radiance exfoliating facial polish. I really like Urban Veda, I've used their moisturisers before and loved them, so getting this sample in a recent Birchbox made me really happy! This face wash leaves my skin super smooth, and I really like the scent. It's quite floral but also a bit fruity, and quite hard to describe! If you've used their products before, no doubt you'll know what I mean. You can get it here for £8.99.

I've definitely been loving Benefit this month. The Porefessional has been tried and tested by me this month, and you can see how it did against Dr Brandt's Pore no More here. I know that a lot of people find the Porefessional to be a bit hit and miss, but I've found that it works really well for my skin, and I just absolutely love it. The Porefessional is available here for £24.50.

 I've also picked myself up a few extra Benefit goodies in the form of these gorgeous eyeshadows, a lovely blush, and a super girly lip gloss. You can read a more in-depth review about these here. I'm particularly in love with the lip gloss and the powder eyeshadow. The packaging is totally gorgeous too! All of these goodies are currently available on the Benefit website.

Have you tried any of my March Favourites? What do you think of them?



Benefit Haul

I was lucky enough to get some lovely spending money around my birthday, so naturally I decided that I would pick up some new Benefit goodies to play with. I'd seen a few reviews floating around for these cute lip glosses and eyeshadows, and I absolutely couldn't resist.

Firstly, I will never get over how gorgeous Benefit's packaging is. I love the 'Gatsby' feel that these little boxes have, and I'm definitely not throwing them away. They're currently making my dressing table look super pretty.

The first product I picked up was the Longwear Powder Shadow in 'Thanks a Latte'. This is a gorgeous shimmery brown, and comes in a cute plastic pot. The pot itself feels quite sturdy for plastic, but I still probably wouldn't want to just chuck it in my bag. Below I have a couple of swatches, just to give you some idea of the colour on the skin. The darker swatch is how I wear the shadow, as I find that it just needs building up slightly to get a stronger hit of colour. The shadow is incredibly smooth to apply, and there is very little fall out. I used this one without a primer, and found that it lasted most of the day which is pretty impressive as I apply my make up at about 6am and by 5pm it was still hanging in there.

I also decided to pick up one of the creaseless cream shadows. The shade that I've picked is much darker than I thought it would be (the woes of ordering online), but it's still a shade that I can use. This shade is 'Holy Smokes', and I absolutely love the glass lid on the pot this is in! When applied the shadow is almost liquid in texture, so I would definitely recommend a primer for these if you want it to hang around. I used the 'Stay Don't Stray' primer from the March Birchbox and found that the eyeshadow applied very smoothly, and was held in place for the majority of the day. There wasn't any creasing either.

I also picked up this adorable lip gloss in 'Fauxmance'. This colour is described on the Benefit website as being a 'soft berry' and I would definitely agree with that. It applies like a dream, and doesn't feel at all sticky on my lips. This is definitely going to become a firm favourite and I can easily see myself getting a few different shades from this range.

Finally, I decided to pick up one of Benefit's famous blushes. I absolutely love Rockateur, so I decided to try and get something with a similar peachy hue. Coralista definitely fit the bill! This is a gorgeous peach blush with a slight shimmer to it. I also really love the cute little brushes included, I think they work really well with the product and they feel like really good quality too. The blush itself looks great when it's applied, I would say that it is definitely more pigmented than Rockateur. I might have gone a bit crazy with it initially, you really don't need to apply an awful lot to get a lovely rosy cheeked look!

So that's my haul! Have you tried any of these Benefit goodies?