Natural Collection recent haul

I have always heard such lovely comments about the Natural Collection, and on a recent trip to Boots I noticed a special offer on the brand, you could pick up 3 products for £5! That was an offer I couldn't miss out on and decided it was the perfect opportunity to try out some of the Natural Collection range.

My three products included one lipstick in Rose Bud, one blush in Pink Cloud, and one pot of Loose Powder in Cool Translucent. The Loose powder is a great little product thats really easy to use, it comes in a little pot which is easy to despense and set your make-up with, this is a step I do more and more now, I never had to set my make-up before, but I do notice that it doesnt last as long if I skip this step.

The lipstick is a gorgeous dusky pink colour which wears really well, its surprisingly long lasting and moisturing, I really love the colour and is a perfect every day product. The Natural Collection blushers are well known for the gorgeous range of colours, but the actual prodcut is also fantastic, really easy to apply and blend, I notice a lot of beauty bloggers have these little beauties in their makeup bags and I can completely see why.

Please let me know if you have tried any of these products from the collection and what you think to them.

MAC Lipstick - Costa Chic

This little beauty has been added to my lipstick collection recently, and I love it! I was looking for a gorgeous coral colour after my disappointment with the Revlon Ultimate Suede in It Girl (I really didn't get it?!)

So I was looking in the MAC store and the lady next to me actually picked up this colour when it caught my eye, I really like the suitable coral tone this colour has, but at the same time it is very bright, especially on my pale skin. This lipstick is from the Frost collection which I am a big fan of, I really like the sheen it leaves on your lips. This is definitely a summer shade, it looks beautiful with a slight tan and a little shimmer gloss over the top.

Topshop Highlighter

I have been looking for a highlighter for a while now, I know lots of people recommend the Benefit highlighter, which I do enjoy using but I was looking for an alternative at a slightly cheaper price. I was recently in the Oxford Street Topshop browsing the beauty section when I came across this product, Its simply named Topshop Highlighter, and what struck me at first was this size - there is a huge amount of product in the compact!

This highlighter is also really highly pigmented, much more than any other highlighter I have come across, you really only need the smallest amount on your brush, this isn't a product you can chuck on and your ready to go, you do need to work it into your skin to ensure the product has blended well and not sat on top of your skin, the powder blends really easier so this isn't difficult to do.

The only down side to this product for me is the packaging, not so much the white plastic outer shell, its more the fact that there isn't a mirror in the lid, this is a small bug bear of mine, I like to have a mirror in front of me when I'm using a product.

I paid £10 for this product, an amazing price for such a long lasting highlighter, its really easy to use once you have figured out where you need to place your highlighter, for me its the top of my cheeky bones, above my eyebrow and on my cupids bow, sometime I place a little down the centre of my nose.
I have really enjoyed using this product, do let me know if you have tried it and what you thought.

Bioderma Créaline H20

It’s safe to say that Bioderma has really made an impact in the beauty world over the last year, I have been using the product for a while but never featured it on my blog.  Bioderma Créaline H20 is known to be one of the most gentle makeup removers and cleansing solutions around. For a liquid that essentially mimics water, it certainly has a little magic in it, especially when it comes to water proof mascara. The solution is perfume free and hypoallergenic, it contains cucumber extract to soothe irritated skin, enables dirt to be emulsified and surface hydrolipidic film to be reconstituted - Makeup literally glides off with no effort at all, its super sensitive and a real pleasure to use.

It can be a challenge to get hold of this product in the UK, but there are plenty of online store you can pick this up from, the famous French skin care product is one of my MUST beauty products, until you try it it’s difficult to explain just how effective it is. The packaging is fairly simple and easy to dispense, I have seen a pump action top on a few blogs but have heard a few negative things, so for the time being I am happy with the original. I have heard rumours of dupes which act in the same way, but for me Bioderma will always have a special feel to it.  

Let me know your thoughts on Bioderma and if you have used any other products.

Cocoa Brown 1 hour tan by Marissa Carter

It’s caused quite a stir in the fake tan market recently, and I can absolutely see why! Cocoa Brown is the brain child of Irish beauty lover and guru Marissa Carter, amazingly she developed the product while on maternity leave – nothing like multitasking! The reason this tan is such a hit is because of the quick development timing, the product contains hi tech accelerating agents which claims to leave you with a golden glow after just 1 hour, you can leave it up to 3 hours for a real deep tan.
1 HOUR = Light Glow
2 Hour = Medium Glow
3 Hour = Dark Glow

I was lucky to get my hands on a sample of the 1 hour tan and couldn’t wait to get started. I read the bottle expecting some instructions, there wasn’t much to go by which reassured me it must be easy to use, normally fake tan is riddled with instructions of what to avoid and how to blend, this didn’t so I slapped it on with the Cocoa Brown mitt (Which is pink!) allowing an even applications. What I was initially surprised with was how well it blended, it really sunk well into my skins, and the mousse itself is a light brown colour so you can use it as guidance, the other thing I noticed straight away was the smell, it 100% didn’t smell of fake tan – Halleluiah! It was quite a citrusy/floral smell which was lovely, something I don’t normal say about fake tan!

The mousse is very light which as I said before, makes it very easy to blend in evenly, after applying to my whole body I waited, I was actually really impressed with the colour straight away, I would have been happy to pop to the shops with this stuff on, it dried so it wasn’t sticky and wasn’t a horrible mud colour, and no smell! It was a clean applications, there wasn’t buildup of fake tan around the bottle so I could pop it straight into my draw with no cleaning.

I waited an hour and a half and washed it off in the shower, I didn’t want to leave it for the full 3 hours as I was worried about how the colour might be, but I needn’t of, I was so impressed with the results. I was left with a gorgeous natural brown colour, no sight of any orange, even the difficult areas (Knees, elbows, hands and feet) were perfect, I didn’t have to do any fixing work or scrub anything to blend, it was all done for me.

As a qualified spray tan technician, I know a lot of fake tans, and I can honestly say this is one of the best I have used, the product is fantastic, the packaging is amazing and the price is unbelievable. I would absolutely be recommending this product to everyone who is looking for a new self-tan, its super easy to use, you really can’t go wrong. Also available from the brand is their Tough Stuff body scrub, perfect for prepping the skin and removing old tan.

For more information about Marissa Carter and where you can buy Cocoa Brown please visit the website http://www.cocoabrown.ie/

Dior Addict Eau Delice

I love it when a brand brings out a summer fragrance based on their original scent, which is exactly what Dior have done for their Summer 2013 Dior Addict fragrance Eau Delice! Other brand who do this really well are Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein, but I have had my eye on this fragrance for a while since seeing the super cute adverts on TV (I’m an advertisers dream!)

My perfume choices until recently were pretty safe, I stuck to what I knew and wasn’t too adventurous, However I have become braver and delved a little into more sophisticated scents, Dior being one of them. I am a big fan of the original Dior Addict scent, which I know a lot of people don’t like, my natural bodies chemical react well with it so I had high hopes for the Eau Delice.

Firstly the packaging is beautiful, the pink ombre is stunning and I really love the Dior Addict style bottles. Secondly, but most importantly the stuff inside smells wonderful, I don’t often use that word but it’s the only way I can describe it, its summer in a bottle for me with real fruity notes, what I really love about this fragrance is the transformation the scent takes on once its dried, you can really smell the cranberry scent that’s mostly talked about when this fragrance was released.

Overall, I love this fragrance, for me it’s a summer smell and I will probably only use it at this time of year. I have had a little look on the Debenhams website and this perfume starts at £52, pretty standard prince for this type of brand.

Please let me know if you have used this scent, or any other summer releases!

YSL Golden Sand (05) Terre Saharienne

This is one of those products I have had my eye on for a while, but because of the price I have always persuaded myself I didn’t NEED to buy it, but when in recent holiday mode, I treated myself – and I’m so glad I did! The YSL Golden Sand Terre Saharienne is an absolutely beautiful bronzing product with hardly any shimmer, as I have pale skin, I do have to be quite careful with rich dark bronzers and I end up looking like a clown, but surprisingly the pigment of this product is very light. I know people with more of an olive skin tone might find that a little annoying, but for me it’s perfect! Golden Sand is a rich, golden bronze with an orange undertone. It has very, very faint shimmer, which translates into more of a subtle sheen that reflects light in an incredibly delicate way.The packaging is very YSL, you know you have posh makeup when it comes in a dust bag! This is definatley going to be a summer time product for me, one because my skin needs a little colour to be able to wear bronzers well, and two because I want it to last! As I bought this product in duty free, it was a little cheaper than in stores, but after looking on the House of Fraser website I can see it retails for £34, this is a lot for a brozer, especially when there are fantastic dupes out there on the market, but as a one of treat its great and I know it will last a really long time. I am really pleased with my purchase and would absolutely recommend this to anyone wanting to spend a little cash on something special.