January Favourites

Hey loves,

How is it nearly February already?! Soon it'll be christmas again and my tree will be going back up. (is that too much of an exaggeration?) So for todays post i'm going to be talking you through the products i've been loving through the month of January.

Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish - £14.00

I bought this from the hype that I was seeing on lots of blog posts and youtube videos as everyone was rating it so highly. When I first used it it a couple of times I absolutely hated it, I couldn't see why my skin wasn't improving and my skin didn't feel clean enough as everyone else made out it was so magical? I stopped using it for about 2 months finding other cleansers which did the job but still didn't make my skin feel as clean as I know it could be. Recently this month I ran out of my much loved Nivea cleanser and didn't have another one spare, so I rummaged through my draws and found my cleanse & polish at the back holding its head in shame and decided to give it another go not expecting it to be much better than the last time I used it. I decided to use it with a different cloth than what came with my cleanser and instead of using cotton pads just incase it would perform better with something different. So I found another cloth which was a lot thicker and almost felt like a towel/ flannel material. So I tried it again, used 2 pumps and put it all over my face and then ran the cloth under hot water and then used it to clean my make up off. Oh my god my skin has never felt so good and my make up completely vanished from my skin. I've also seen a dramatic improvement on my skin as well, it looks so much more healthy and my break outs have decreased more and more. I used to think it was this which was giving me break outs but turns out I was just having a bad skin day. Will deffo be repurchasing. 

Estée Lauder Double Wear Stay In Place Powder - £33.00

I feel like this post is coming across as I started hating all of these products and now suddenly love them again! It isn't I promise. Now with this product I bought the matching Double Wear foundation which is a cult for most beauty lovers with its full coverage and amazing staying power. I've fallen in love with this again but before I used to think it made my skin super dry but it just turns out my moisturiser was really naff. I've got the shade Ivory Nude which has a slight yellow undertone which matches my foundation but also doesn't make me look like a complete ghost by giving me a tint of colour. It stays on all day and and makes my skin look completely flawless on top of my foundation.

Anastasia Brow Powder Duo - £17.00

If you don't own any type of Anastasia brow product, oh my god are you living under a rock? I originally purchased this just under a year ago and its still going strong. It is so easy to use and and the product stays in place ALL day. I stopped using this for a while and switched to the Anastasia Dip Brow Pomade which I love equally as much. I recently took this back out of my drawer and wondered why I ever stopped using it, it makes your brows look so full but so natural at the same time. I'll be so heartbroken the day this runs out but I know i'll definitely be repurchasing another, nothing compares.

Too Faced Born This Way Naturally Radiant Concealer - £20.00

I'm really picky with concealers I find it really hard to find something which competes which my Maybelline Age Rewind Concealer. I bought this as an impulse buy, I had been looking into it for a while and then bought it one day as a comfort buy when I was having a really crappy day and i'm really glad about it. I find it covers everything in just the right amount and doesn't budge. I've got the shade "Light" and I find it is the perfect shade for under my eyes to brighten my dark circles but great for covering blemishes too, I think this is my second tube of this? YAY.

L'Oreal True Match Foundation - £9.99

The amount of foundations I have tried is getting ridiculous now, I just couldn't find one which I loved so much and ticked all the boxes. That was until I found L'Oreal true match again, I tried this YEARS ago after hearing Lauren Curtis rave about it for years. I absolutely HATED it, it looked horrible, my skin looked so so dry and it clung to all the dry patches. I tried it again early last year and fell in love with it! I've repurchased it in different shades for when i've got more of a tan and for when i'm a lot paler. I'm not sure if they've changed their formula or I just learnt to moisturise my skin properly but oh my its my absolute FAVE. I took this foundation away with me when I went to Menorca and Mexico last year, super hot countries which means super sweaty melted skin. It has such good coverage and is SUCH a good price, it stays on my face all day and I just cannot get over how amazing it is. I've tried some of the most expensive foundations and it doesn't even come close to how amazing this is. Its got such good coverage but feels incredibly light on the skin, they have a great shade range too.

Benefit Hoola Bronzer - £23.50

I've loved this bronzer for years, I think this might be my 3rd or 4th pot. Which doesn't sound a lot but the product lasts such a long time. This bronzer shade is the perfect colour for contouring and bronzing my face, it looks so good for my paler skin and doesn't make me look like i've rolled in mud and like I don't know how to blend.

Laura Mercier Transulcent Powder - £29.00

This is definitely one of those products that was super hyped on Youtube and on loads of blog posts. I was really nervous buying this as it clearly isn't the cheapest product on the market but it is 100% worth it. It sets my under eyes perfectly and if you blend your eyeshadow too high one day brush some of this over it and it fixes EVERYTHING. So worth the money and I don't know where i'd be without it!

What are your January faves?

Lauren x

Anastasia Modern Renaissance Palette

Hey loves,

I've just got back from London after watching the NBA game of the Indiana Pacers vs Denver Nuggets which was amaaaazing. Denver won which happened to be the team I wasn't supporting but all in all it was one of the best nights ever. The atmosphere was incredible, luckily i've been to the States a few times and it honestly felt like I was there. Except, when we stepped out of the O2 Arena, it was freezing cold and heavily snowing so not quite the same.

Whenever I go travelling somewhere I always pack way too heavy with the make up even when i'm there for 1 or 2 nights, I like to have options okay. 

This time though I managed to restrain from packing my entire make up collection and only brought my essentials with me. One of them happening to be my post recent purchase The Anastasia Modern Renaissance Palette - for ages this was out of stock on the Cult Beauty website but I signed up to the waiting list and then received the best email saying it had been restocked, of which I Purchased...Immediately. 

With it being priced at £41 I thought is it really going to be worth it? I have quite a few Anastasia products already in my collection which I adore. I did find myself reading lots and lots of reviews (which I do anyway for most things) before I bought this just to make sure that i'd done all the research I could, even though just looking at it alone I could already tell I was going to love these colours. 

The palette comes with 14 shades - 3 metallic and 11 matte. Every shade compliments the other so you can make hundreds of looks from a natural everyday or a warm bold smokey eye. This palette would most likely be put into the "autumn make up look category" but I wear these sorts of colours all year round so its a win win from me.

Knowing that all of my other Anastasia products are super pigmented, I knew this would be no different. I wasn't expecting for it to be as pigmented as it truly is though, one small tap of your brush picks up so much product that you don't want it to go anywhere near your eye. In the fear of not being able to blend it out and then you're stuck with a patch of super dark product trying to think of how you can pull it off. (this has happened to me, it isn't pretty) After tapping off the excess and praying to the make up gods that you're not about to ruin your entire face which has taken about an hour to perfect. The shadows blend so so beautifully that you sit there and wonder what you were ever concerned about in the first place. I then moved onto the metallic shades, I often have a love hate relationship with these types of shades, they often look beautiful in the pan but when you go to put them on your eye there is no colour pay off. Which means I'm often switching between palettes as there isn't a shimmery/metallic colour which is as pigmented as all the mattes (hence the taking every palette I own away when travelling, see there is some form of reason to it). 

You also get a little  dual ended brush in the palette aswell which I haven't used yet as often brushes that come with palettes tend to be quite crappy. However, one end of the brush is super fluffy and looks like it would blend quite well, some reviews have said that they can use the brush to do their eyeshadow which is a plus I guess. I'm just very loyal to my MAC 217 and Zoeva Soft Definer Brush.

I'm so glad I purchased this palette and will definitely become one of my most used in my collection. My one dislike with this palette is the outside packaging, I love the pink covering and its great that it comes with a mirror which is so handy for travelling. As the outside has a velvet feel to it, I can see it picking up dirt quite quickly and easily and its already become scratched and damaged in my suitcase cries.

Apart from that its so so worth the money. Purchase the palette here - https://www.cultbeauty.co.uk/anastasia-beverly-hills-modern-renaissance-eye-shadow-palette.html 

Lauren x