How Much Is My Face Worth?

I have seen a fair few people do this blog post in the last few weeks and I thought it was a really intriguing one so I’ve hopped onto the bandwagon. After seeing Sarah from Zero do this post on Monday it made me want to do it too! You can read her post here.

I was debating between doing my everyday make up routine and my current full faced routine, but in the end decided to go with the everyday as, after all, it is the routine I follow, yep you guessed it, every day.

So lets get on with it- the products in question:

• Make Up For Ever Step 1 Skin Equalizer Hydrating Primer: £24
• Make Up For Ever Ultra HD Foundation: £29
• Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer: £17.50
• Rimmel London Clear Complexion Powder: £3.99
• The Balm Mary Lou Manizer Highlighter: £17.49
• Benefit Hoola Bronzer:£23.50
• NYX Tame & Frame Tinted Brow Pomade: £5.50
• Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara: £7.99
• Make Up For Ever Aqua Liner: £16
• Rimmel Exaggerate Lip Liner: £3.99
• Miss Sporty My BFF Lipstick: £2.99
• Urban Decay All Nighter Setting Spray: £22

TOTAL: £173.95

My total hasn’t actually surprised me all that much; I expected it to be pretty high- if not higher! I suppose for my quick everyday make up look for work I don’t use my beloved eyeshadow palettes which would definitely have increased the total! I do also think I have a good mix of high end and drugstore products- in my opinion there are some high end things I can’t resist buying (cough anything from Make Up For Ever, cough) but I can’t deny how great some of these drugstore products are. Having said this, as a student with only a part time job this is an eye watering amount of money- especially to be putting on my face all day! To put it into perspective this is about a third of my monthly bills and rent put together…

Anyway, Over To You: How much is your face worth? Does your total surprise you?

Bargain Beauty Buys

So I went shopping today and didn’t expect to be writing up a blog post on my purchases, but I got some really good bargains that I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let you all know!

As you might not know, Make Up For Ever has quickly become one of my favourite make up brands alongside Urban Decay, and while I was rummaging through the beauty section of my local TK-Maxx I came across a couple of their products. Me being the incredibly lame  person I am, got very excited the moment I spotted their signature packaging (black boxes with white writing). Now as most of you UK people will probably know, the beauty section in TK-Maxx is one of those things that is very much hit and miss- sometimes (like today) you can find some really great products, but on other days it’s all just a load of junk if I am being brutally honest. You have to have a lot of patience to sift through everything there but more often than not it definitely pays off. Another thing I find very frustrating is that 90% of the time the packaging has already been ripped open and is damaged, sometimes so much so that you can’t even tell what brand the product is from. More often than not this unfortunately means that the product inside has also been wrecked and can occasionally be smashed/broken. A few of the MUFE products in my store were like this which was slightly irritating as I probably would have bought those too, but what can you do? (Probably a good thing for my bank account!)

The few things I did manage to find however are great! I found one of the MUFE HD Concealer’s  -something I have been wanting to try out for the longest time- and it was in the shade 325. On a whim I decided to buy it even though I hadn’t been able to test out of the colour (I probably should have but TK-Maxx ask you not to open the packaging/products which I wanted to respect, despite the fact that no one else in the shop seems to..) and I am so glad that I did! I did whip out my phone in the middle of the store and google what kind of shade it was and it is the second to lightest shade so I figured seeing as I am shade Y235 in the Ultra HD Foundation I figured that it wouldn’t be that far off. Luckily it seems to be the perfect shade, so I am pretty pleased with this purchase! The applicator is something I have never seen before which I think is going to take a while to get used to but I will most likely be writing a review on this sometime in the near future. This product retails for £22 but I purchased it for £7.99- that’s over 50% off!

Next, I found a MUFE Artist Plexi Gloss in the shade 500, which is a gorgeous purple colour (I will include swatches of all the lip products at the end of the post) which just really caught my eye. Despite already owning 3 other purple lip products which I never wear, I convinced myself that yes, I really did need another one… Who knows, maybe I will get on better with this as it is a lip gloss so will be a lot less vibrant and in your face than some of my others. This retails for £16, and I bought it for £5.99.

The final MUFE product I found is the Aqua Lip Liner in the shade 21C- a beautiful baby pink. Now, I don’t understand quite how this is the case but this is the first lip liner I have ever bought. Yes, I know, what the hell have I been doing? I guess in my defence I very rarely wear lipstick other than my trusty nudes so I haven’t really found the need to pair it with a lip liner (although I know that I should and that it’ll last longer etc..). Anyway, I couldn’t resist buying this as it retails for £14 and I bought it for £3.99. Who can say no to a MUFE product for just £4? I certainly couldn’t. As soon as I got home I tried this on- both on its own all over my lips and underneath a baby pink lipstick I have and I absolutely love it! I think that I may need to get some more courage to actually wear it out of the house (and put on a less dramatic eye make up look) but I am really loving how it looks. As I write this blog post it is 3 hours later and it is still very much on my lips (in fact I think I might have a bit of a mission to get it off!) I am definitely going to be trying some of MUFE’s other lip liners, and looking in some of the other TK-Maxx stores near me to try and find some more bargains!

Behold a terrible snapchat selfie- sorry I can’t resist the dog filter! But here is the MUFE Aqua Lip Liner paired with a Make Up Revolution Lipstick in Crime.

I then popped into Wilkinsons as I needed to get some wrapping paper and pens, and of course, I was unable to walk past the beauty section. I haven’t been into Wilkinsons for about a year so I didn’t even know that they sold make up brands like Rimmel, Maybelline and Collection until now. After having a browse on the Rimmel section I spotted the lip liner in East End Snob, which I always hear people raving about. I think I was in one of those moods where I just wanted to buy everything in sight, so I decided to get it. Again, I’ve never used a lip liner before so I’m not sure what lipsticks go nicely with this (if you have any suggestions do let me know!) but I know I’ll have fun playing around with it. I bought this for £3.98 which is a tiny bit cheaper than buying it from Boots or Superdrug.

I was initially looking for some of Collection’s glitter eyeliners that I have seen so many Youtube’s use in tutorials lately but I got distracted when I saw their range of lipsticks. Again, I’m not entirely sure why- I rarely wear lipstick- but I was floored by the pigment of the lipsticks for such a cheap price. I probably tried just about every one on my hand (seriously I had to get a wet wipe out of my bag because I made such a massive mess) before deciding that I really didn’t need them. I then saw their Cream Puff range and ended up buying two of those in the shades Cotton Candy and Fairy Cake. For just £2 each I figured I wasn’t really doing too much harm if I decided I didn’t like them! They remind me of the Nyx Soft Matte Lip Creams a little bit except these ones aren’t matte. I haven’t tried them on my lips yet so I can’t properly comment but I they do seem to be a little bit sticky- something that will no doubt irritate me.

So that concludes my bargain beauty buys of the day- this post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected so if you actually made it to the end, thanks! Below is the swatches of the products I bought today.

Over to you: Have you had any beauty bargains lately? Have you ever found a really great product in TK-Maxx?

 

Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Renaissance Palette: First Impressions

Anastasia Beverly Hills have been taking the beauty world by storm and unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll be familiar with their coveted brow products and glow kits. Personally, I am still yet to try out these products (I know, what have I been doing?) but when I saw the hype around this palette I just knew that I had to get my hands on it.

Priced at £41, I tried to put off purchasing it for as long as I possibly could, but after 3 weeks of watching what felt like everybody in the world using it, I bit the bullet and bought it. I purchased it from the trusty Beauty Bay (Yes, we all know just how much I love this website) and it was in my hands my lunchtime the next day.

At the time of writing, I have only used this palette once but I already know it is going to become the one I reach for everyday for the foreseeable future. I absolutely love the colours in this palette- I think I’ve said this in another blog post but I’ve been leaning towards the browney red smokey eye more or less every day and these shades are perfect for this. Each of these shades are all very wearable- nothing is too intense. At first glance the colours that immediately jumped out at me were Love Letter, Venetian Red, Red Ochre, and Burnt Orange. Buon Fresco caught my eye as it is unlike any other colour I’ve ever seen; its a strange mix between a dusty pink with both brown and purple tones.

My initial reactions to the shadows themselves were that they were very pigmented- the first swatches I did on my hands showed that they had some great colour payoff, but they have a lot of fallout. The first time using the palette properly for a eye look I ended up getting eyeshadow absolutely everywhere and I can tell that the palette itself is going got get very dirty very fast. You definitely need to tap off the excess on your brush before using it on your eye or I would imagine your whole face would get covered. I am slightly worried that this is going to result in a lot of wastage though, and the eyeshadows aren’t that big to begin with in comparison to some of the other palettes I own. This is something I can get over easily though as the colours themselves are so pigmented and beautiful.

Surprisingly, I also really liked the brush that is included in the palette. Usually I find that the brushes are absolutely awful which is something that I have never quite understood, but this one is great. One end is really great to use in your crease to really blend out the eyeshadows, and the other end is good for packing on some colour to your lid and would probably also work well at blending out eyeshadow along your waterline.

The first look I created with this palette is one that I think is very quickly going to become my go-to look- I absolutely love it! I started by running Buon Fresco throughout my crease, making sure to blend it out. Like I mentioned earlier, this colour is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and it definitely wasn’t the colour I was expecting when I actually used it on my skin but I really love the colour it is! Next I took Red Ochre and ran it through my crease and over my eyelid- I mainly covered my whole eye and just blended the hell out of it, making sure that it wasn’t too intense and didn’t leave any harsh lines behind. I then used Venetian Red in the outer v, blending it into my crease slightly, and I have to say I absolutely love this shade! Love Letter is up next and I placed it all over my lid. I did spray a bit of Mac Fix + onto my brush before dipping it into the eyeshadow in order to make it look brighter and much more intense, but even so the colour payoff for this eyeshadow is absolutely insane! I then took a tiny bit of Cyprus Umber, making sure to tap off the excess as I didn’t want it to be super intense, and I patted it onto my outer v to give the look a bit more definition. I also took a little bit of both Love Letter and Red Ochre and blended them both under my eye on the water line. Finally, I took Vermeer and used it as my inner highlight colour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I absolutely adore this look and I know that it is something I am going to keep recreating! All in all I do believe that this palette is definitely worth the hype! Despite being slightly overpriced (lets face it, most eyeshadow palettes are) I do think it is worth the money and I can’t wait to see what other looks I am going to come up with!

Over to you: What Anastasia Beverly Hills products have you tried? Will you be purchasing this palette?