May Favourites

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light
The Ambient Lighting Powders from Hourglass are the perfect finishing touch for your makeup. They feel so lightweight & help to airbrush the appearance of your skin. The one I've been reaching for most lately is Diffused Light. This is a yellow toned powder that subtly corrects redness. As I've been going for lighter bases such as the NARS Pure Radiant Tinted Moisturiser or Radiant Creamy Concealer I've been using this to set my makeup. It's not brilliant at oil control but that's not really a concern of mine. It just makes your foundation look a bit more flawless with a beautiful soft glow.

Sally Hansen Maximum Growth
I don't have a problem with growing my nails but they are very prone to breakage. Rather than shell out £18 on OPI Nail Envy I decided to give some good old Sally Hansen products a go. This product is basically a clear basecoat for your nails. It dries to a shiny finish and protects your nails so that they can grow without splitting. It seals any weak areas & my nails get seriously long whenever I use this stuff. It has no long lasting effects, your nails won't grow any stronger but as long as you keep applying the polish every other day they will keep on growing. I really like it as it makes my nails look strong & healthy. You can wear it alone or with polish on top. I probably will give Nail Envy a go at some point but this product is much cheaper & it works so well.

Ole Henriksen Truth Serum Collagen Booster*
My skin had been looking a bit dull recently so I went back to using this Ole Henriksen serum. It's packed full of Vitamin C which is brilliant at brightening the skin & gives you a really healthy looking glow. This product has won so many awards for it's ability to plump up the skin & reverse the signs of ageing. It works well on freckles, post-blemish scarring & congestion too. It feels quite sticky to begin with but once you apply moisturiser over it that soon goes away. After it has absorbed properly it leaves your skin feeling really soft & juicy. I can't get enough of that orange sherbet scent either. This is easily one of my favourite serums & it's definitely deserving of it's cult status.

MAC Ever Hip Lipstick
Sorry, this lipstick is a limited edition one but if MAC ever bring it back again, you need to buy this! It's hard to find flattering peachy shades when your skin is so pale but this lippie is the ultimate peach for fair skinned girls. It's more of a pink toned coral but it looks peachy on me. It's very 60s-ish & looks gorgeous combined with a lipgloss. I love the MAC Cremesheen formula as the lipsticks glide on, are semi-opaque, look slightly glossy on the lips & feel very creamy. They melt so easily though, I'm forever worried that this lipstick will break off. I really wish they'd make it a permanent shade! You can see me wearing it in this makeup look.

NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer
I absolutely love this concealer! It's similar to the Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer but it looks a tad more natural on the skin. It offers high coverage in a lightweight formula with a luminous finish. It covers everything without ever looking cakey or dry. NARS have such a brilliant shade range for all of their base products so you're sure to find something to suit your skin tone. The creamy consistency means it blends like a dream & promptly perfects the skin. I like using this on it's own as a quick and easy base product. The price is pretty high but I really do think it's worth every penny. Read my full review here.

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Anastasia DipBrow Pomade In Blonde

Anastasia DipBrow Pomade in Blonde - £15

In my opinion Anastasia Soare is the unrivalled queen of eyebrows. I'm obsessed with both her Tinted Brow Gels & the Brow Wiz pencils. Unfortunately we don't have any Anastasia Beverly Hills counters in the UK & therefore the selection of products available is relatively limited. BeautyBay & Cult Beauty are currently the only UK websites you can order them from. Luckily they both stock one of Anastasia's most innovative products - the DipBrow Pomades. MAC, Tarte & Laura Mercier all do similar products but if there's an Anastasia version, that's the one I'm gonna buy. If you like your brows big, bold & beautifully defined then this is the product for you.

DipBrow Pomade is a waterproof, smudgeproof creamy brow colour that offers the ultimate definition for your eyebrows. The product simply glides on and stays put all day along. It does not budge! I find it really easy to apply & it gives such an effortlessly flawless finish. The best method of application is with an angled brush. I use the Laura Mercier Double Ended Eye Brow Brush but any angled brush will do. The flat edge of the brush allows you to get a precise & clean line so your brows look perfectly groomed. I've also used the Real Techniques Silicone Liner Brush to fill in any little gaps & it works surprisingly well on my eyebrows. You can use it to get a really finely tapered tail too. Even though the Pomade beefs up my skinny brows quite a bit, they don't look overly drawn on. There's still something natural about them. The product adheres to the brow hairs for optimal definition so it gives the illusion of naturally fuller brows. To further enhance my eyebrows I like to use a bit of concealer above & below them. This makes the shape look even cleaner & is good at hiding anything your tweezers might have missed.

My one gripe about the DipBrow Pomades is that the colour range isn't quite as good as that of the other Anastasia products. The Tinted Brow Gel in Granite & Brow Wiz in Medium Ash couldn't be better matches for my cool toned blonde hair & brown eyebrows but it was much harder to figure out which DipBrow Pomade to go for. The question I see others being asked most about this product is which shade should they buy so it seems I'm not alone in my colour match confusion. After much deliberation I went for Blonde as the three brown colours were horrifically dark. Blonde looked like a transformative taupe that could be built up to suit each person, much like MAC Omega eyeshadow which is one of my favourite brow powders. There are a lot of yellow tones in Blonde though and even when I layer the product on, the colour isn't quite right. It's ever so slightly too light & too yellow when you look up close. The colour is a warm taupe rather than the ashy taupe I was hoping for so it would be better suited to those with natural blonde hair. It's still fairly dark though so I'm glad I didn't go for one of the brown colours. I feel like I would need to mix Blonde & Dark Brown to get my perfect colour. Instead I've been using Blonde as a base & then I go over any lighter bits with a brow powder or pencil. That way I still get the smudgeproof clean finish of the DipBrow Pomade but the colour is slightly improved.

If colour matching isn't an issue for you then I couldn't recommend these enough! No matter how rubbish your natural eyebrows are these creamy gels can sculpt them to perfection. These pots of colour are incredibly pigmented so you only need to use tiny amount each time. I love the luxurious looking glass jar it comes in, Anastasia's packaging always looks gorgeous. They're well worth the £15. If you're after immaculately defined eyebrows without looking like you've gone a bit mad with a Sharpie then look no further - Anastasia's DipBrow Pomades are the one.

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NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer

NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer - £22

There are few concealers I love more than the Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer but at the minute I can't get enough of the NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer. Previously I'd only really been a fan of NARS Blushers, Multiples & Illuminators but I finally got round to trying some of their base products and they are all incredible. What took me so long?! The colour of the concealer I have is Chantilly which is the lightest one available. NARS describe it as a true ivory shade for the fairest complexions. It's very neutral in colour so I find that it covers redness well & balances out my skin tone. The coverage is medium to full but the texture is so light that it looks seamless on the skin. Used as a traditional concealer it covers blemishes very well. The formula is very moisturising so it's great for smoothing over bumps without emphasising dryness. Compared to Collection Lasting Perfection in Fair, it's slightly lighter & yellower. I find that the Collection concealer is better for my undereye circles as it's so high coverage & the pinker tone cancels out any discolouration in that area. I have to use a peach toned corrector first if I want the NARS concealer to look as flawless. The Collection concealer tends to look a bit cakey though & the formula is fairly dry which is what led me to trying the NARS concealer in the first place.

What I like best about this concealer is that if I'm a bit pressed for time or staying somewhere overnight, it works as a light base so I don't actually need to use foundation with it. In the above photo this concealer is all that I have used on my skin. With a tiny bit of powder under my eyes, this concealer is my go-to fast base product. I basically dot it around my skin as you would with a foundation & then blend it out using a Real Techniques Contour Brush. Although you can do this with any other liquid concealer, the creamy consistency of the NARS concealer makes it really blendable & the radiant finish stops the coverage from looking like a mask. In comparison the Collection concealer can look a bit cakey if you slap it all over your face. My skin is nowhere near perfect. I have tons of freckles, redness & scarring but this concealer alone is more than enough for my everyday makeup. I adore the luminous finish of this product. It covers pretty much anything you need to cover and still looks natural on the skin. The staying power is really great too. The only real downside is the price tag. For the cost of one NARS concealer you can buy five of the Collection concealers but I have to say that I'm a NARS convert. There's something special about this luxurious creamy formula that makes me keep on reaching for it over all my other concealers. I've never been one for 'no makeup' makeup looks but I think I might have finally cracked it thanks to this wonderful concealer.

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