Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Fiend

I looked at these in the John Lewis beauty hall so many times before i actually took the plunge and bought one of these. I spent so many breaks looking, touching, swatching these beauties and eventually i persuaded myself i didn't need one. However, as you can see after looking at reviews and swatches online i decided upon a colour and i'm so glad i did.

I bought myself the Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick in Fiend, which is described on Temptalia as a 'muted pink... A Subdued, medium rosy pink with a luminous sheen.' However, if you look at on Christine from Temptalia it looks a lot rosier, a lot warmer. I feel on me it looks slightly cooler, and slightly more nude but i really love it. It is so, so easy to wear and it's so comfortable. I just love that you can wear it with everything and it's not at all drying, and smooths onto the lips.

K|xo

Clinique Take The Day Off Cleansing Balm

I am a huge fan of the cleansing balms for the removal of make up, i love the kind of products that kind of melt into the skin to get rid of every last trace of make up. This Clinique one is my current choice but don't get me wrong, i get lazy and use the dreaded face wipes sometimes - just don't tell Caroline Hirons. There are a few other products that i use, including the Emma Hardie Cleansing Balm and the Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish, but this is my most consistent product.

Although it's a balm it's not too hard, and becomes more pliable at the warmth of your fingers and even more so when rubbed between your hands before being applied onto a warm, slightly damp face. It'll continue to melt when being rubbed into the skin, and glides all over the face. I personally use a finger full all over the face and then another finger for the eyes, as that's where the concentration of my make up is. Simply rub this, in circulation motions, all over the face and then on the eyes and gently on the lashes, and there's no need for any tugging and no damage to the lashes or skin.

I sometimes go for a second round over the eyes and lashes just to make sure there's nothing left, but this really does get off every last inch of make up. I also love how easy it is to remove too, just by using a warm, damp flannel to wipe away all of the balm and the make up.

Honestly, this is such an easy way to remove your make up even when you have no time. If you're a rookie when it comes to make up removal, then this is a good place to start. It's gentle, it's not too pricey and it gets rid of everything.

K|xo

Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet & Aqua Lacque

These are something i've had in my collection for such a long time, but just never got around to talking about. Bourjois is a brand that i have really never been interested in, i know very little about it or it's products and it's just never been something i look at while i'm browsing in Boots. It got on my radar probably a year or two ago when it had a major birthday and they reproduced their famous Poudre de Riz de Java or their Loose Rice Powder. Since then, the liquid lipstick products have been a huge trend and nothing really excited me until i saw the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvets.

This was the first shade from the Rouge Edition Velvets that i picked up, and it's right up my street. 07 Nude-ist is a mid-toned, pink-based nude shade and goes with all sorts of make up looks. I am not usually a matte lipstick kinda girl - i hate how dry they are, i hate how they highlight every dry patch and sit in all the lines of your lips and they usually drag on my lips to apply too. However, this little beauty is a dream to work with. It glides on so easily, doesn't bleed, and is so easy to get neat lines around the mouth. It doesn't set too quickly so you've got time to get it as opaque as you want it, although it's pretty solid with one swipe. However, when it does set it's not at all uncomfortable and doesn't dry out your lips either. You can move your mouth without any cracking or flacking, plus you can eat and drink with little movement - but you will need to reapply after excessive eating and drinking. Honestly, it's just so lovely to wear and it comes in plenty of gorgeous colours from brights to nudes.

The newest is the the Rouge Edition Aqua Laques which, i must say, i don't love as much as the originals. For starters, this doesn't come in as many colours and they're honestly all fairly similar. They're all of the pink toned family and don't offer all that much to as broad a range of people. Now, to begin with i don't love the texture. These are very liquidy and i know they have aqua in their name, but it does make the application process a little more difficult to apply than their matte counterparts. These also have a weird chemical smell to them that does go away but it's just not all that pleasant applying to your face. When you rub your lips together too, i just don't love how they feel. These are really, super glossy however if that's something that you're into then these are perfect. Although these aren't quite up my street they are if you're a gloss wearer as they have more impact than a gloss but i'm not sure if they'll last as long as the matte option.

K|xo

All About The Base: L'Oreal True Match Foundation

I have heard about the L'Oreal True Match Foundation for such a long time, and it's one of those products that is kind of known as a cult blogger product. Everyone's tried it and, usually, loved it but i was just never that into foundation so i never bothered to try it. So, when i finally decided it was time to switch things up this was one of my first port of calls. What i love most about this foundation is it's colour options. It comes in three ranges: W, C and N. For all you warm toned girls W is for you, cooler tones should go for C and what drew me right in was that they had a range for neutral girls which is N. As you can see, N1 is my shade and it really is neutral which is amazing as most foundations, high end and high street, tend to lean to either pink or yellow. Something else i love about L'Oreal, as a brand, is their quality. Their packaging is lovely, for example this comes in a lovely glass bottle with a silver pump which looks lovely, and their price range is amazing too.

Here we go for our last before and after shots for this series, and what i love is that you really can't see a huge difference.

N1 is the perfect colour match for me, as you can see my skintone is evened out and most of my smaller blemishes covered. Anything more hardcore i'd go back in and cover with a heavier concealer, but for the purposes of the review you can see what it does and doesn't cover on it's own. Honestly though, it covers quite a lot. It has lovely medium coverage, it's fairly liquidy so easy to apply all over the place, it glides on smoothly and somewhat sets, without hardening or becoming uncomfortable, into a semi-matte finish. I just love how light it is, as it really doesn't feel like you're wearing anything, but you still get that decent medium coverage.

Some of the qualities that this foundation boasts are that it's super blendable, which is so true. It's so easy to to smooth all over and it's so easy to blend into my jaw and hair line, it honestly looks so seamless you couldn't even tell i'm wearing anything. It's also supposed to match your skin colour and texture, no idea how it's supposed to do that but it actually does. As i said, it's a perfect colour match and it really does look like my skin when i'm wearing it. For a drugstore foundation this is such a high quality, if you're looking for something new then this should be a definite try for you. It's actually now become my everyday foundation that i wear to work and otherwise. Now it's getting hotter, my oils are making it a little tricky for me but honestly the foundations itself stays on pretty well, i just use products such as the Urban Decay All Nighter or De-Slick Spray to keep my oils at bay and keep my make up looking its best for the longest. The foundation itself does a pretty good job of staying on despite my oily skin, and it's definitely all still there at the end of the day and it doesn't become patchy.

This is a great everyday foundation if you're looking to try something new, the quality is amazing and the price is so reasonable - i highly recommend it.

True Match comes in a lovely 30ml glass bottle, with a pump, and can be bought for £9.99 from Boots.

K|xo

Seventeen Eye Eyeshadows in Rose Quartz & Statuesque

So, last week i reviewed a product i really disliked from the Seventeen brand, i thought it about time i showed you something that i love from the brand and a product that is really worth you spending your hard earned money on.

The Seventeen Eyeshadows are amazing. The quality you get for the price is out of this world, honestly. They're so buttery and smooth, similar quality to the Urban Decay shadows but literally about a quarter of the price. I love wearing these to work because they're so easy to apply. Simply pack the colour on to the lid, blend out the edges and you're good to go. The two that i have, Rose Quartz and Statuesque are so beautifully shimmery but not glittery which i really like. You get very little fall out from them too, and nothing that you can't easily sweep away with your concealer brush or finger.

Honestly, there is so little to say about these, all amazing things, but i had to share with you the beautiful quality and shades that Seventeen has to offer. I can't tell you enough about how lovely they are to work with alone, and with other shadows. Easy to blend, easy to pack on the colour and beautiful quality.

Here i'm wearing Statuesque, a gorgeous shimmery pink toned bronzey, rose gold colour. The other shade is Rose Quartz, a shimmery purple based grey/silver colour. They're both really unique, which i love. You can buy the Seventeen Eyeshadows from Boots stores and Boots.com.

K|xo

YSL Lipstick Collection

I'm pretty sure i've done posts on these separately but that was a while ago, and i've upped my blogging game since then, so this post has lip swatches and all. Although they're not my go to lipsticks, i adore these three. They're probably the most beautiful that i own, and definitely the most special. I got two of them nearly two years ago now, and the third just one.

Since now i'm really enjoying high end makeup, i thought it only fitting to revisit probably my first high end purchases, and still to this day my favourite.

This was probably my first really bright lip colour, and actually probably what kick started my love of lipstick. YSL Rouge Volupte Shine in 19 Fuchsia in Rage, i would say, is more of a purple than a fuchsia pink. I see it as a purple with pink undertones, and i just love it. It can be worn as one swipe or built up to be really opaque, but either way i love it. It's so juicy, easy to wear and so comfortable. I honestly love how glossy it is, but this does mean that it doesn't stay on forever. It never really looses it's gloss, but it does kind of set and leave behind somewhat of a stain.

This Rouge Volupte Shine is in 17 Rose in Tension, and is such an easy shade to wear. Similarly to Fuchsia in Rage, it's beautifully glossy but this time in a beautiful classic, deep pink. It leans on the side of red, with pink undertones and i'd probably describe it as a Raspberry. The Rouge Volupte Shine formula is all about comfortable wear, with luminous shine. They contain hyluronic acid to seal in hydration for up to eight hours and are supposed to soften lips too. They really are so comfortable to wear, and i love how they make my lips look and feel.

This is a Rouge Volupte, a creamier formula than the Volupte Shines and it's in 9 Rose Caresse. They're more pigmented than the Volupte Shines, and they're a silkier application. They're not quite as glossy but keep their shine, smooth out lips, plumping, and leave a satin finish. I really do love this colour too, it's what i would wear as a nude. I'd call it a dusky pink colour, and i feel like it's quite an elegant shade. It's something i can wear year round and really get my use out of.

I feel like three of these is perfect for me, i have a shade for every eventuality and as i much as i love this beautiful packaging, i think i have my YSL fix.

K|xo

All About The Base: Seventeen Stay Time

For such a long time i used the Seventeen Stay Time Concealer all over my face as, basically, a foundation and i actually kinda loved it. The coverage was nice, the colour was slightly off but nothing a little blending wouldn't fix and it stayed on pretty well. However, it gets pretty expensive using concealer all over the face and i just wanted to try something new. Seventeen is one of those brands that, i think, used to be considered as one of the cheaper brands that could be bought in the drugstore but since it's rebranding - from 17 to Seventeen - it seems to have upped itself in the drugstore stakes and is really holding it's own. It's packaging isn't amazing but it does boast some really lovely products.

So, when i saw that Seventeen had a matching Stay Time Foundation to my beloved concealer i thought it to be a match made in heaven. My first issue, however, was colour matching. The Seventeen Stay Time Foundation comes in a limited six shades, and they don't go particularly dark so if you're a dark skinned beauty this probably isn't for you. They're also pretty tricky to match because of the undertones, most of them were either very pink or very yellow so for girls like me, with neutral undertones, it's quite difficult to decide which way to go. I was deciding between Porcelain, which is marketed as the lightest shade, and Soft Ivory, the second lightest, the shade i went for. Porcelain was very pink toned and Soft Ivory fairly yellow, but when swatched Porcelain just looked like it was completely different to my natural skin tone so i turned to Soft Ivory. As you'll see in the images below, i'm not quite sure if it's the right shade for me. However, the next shade down, Natural, was super dark so perhaps that just makes this foundation not up my street.

Below is my bare skin shot, and in this before and after you can really see a difference which i'm not sure is what i'm after.

As you can see it really lightens my skin colour, first and fore most, which makes me see that this isn't the right shade for me but as i said before, the next shade down was far too dark. Although it does even things out, i just found that it didn't really do anything for concealing blemishes. In fact, i felt like it made them more prominent. This is just one, even layer all over the face but i think if i went in with a little more over the places i needed a bit of extra help it would become cake and unnatural. As marketed, this is a full cover foundation and i would expect a full coverage to really conceal everything that i needed to hide before i even went in without concealer.

The main thing i really didn't like about this foundation was it's texture, it was just so thick and heavy. Now, i know it's full cover and that's not really my thing but it was so hard to blend all over the face. I also think, and it can be noticed in the images, that it's slightly drying - even for an oily girl like me. It's hard to explain, but it felt patchy and not liquidy enough to cover everywhere so you need more product to get an even base which, in turn, creates a little bit of cakey-ness to the look. As you can tell, this wasn't my favourite foundation.

Although i didn't test it for this amount of time, it's advertised to last for 25 hours. Now, i really hate these sort of claims because lets be honest, who wears their make up for 25 hours?! However, i could see this lasting a good amount of time because it really grips to the skin. Once applied it adheres to the skin and kind of sets, which i found uncomfortable but i'm not used to wearing full coverage foundations.

Overall, i found this settled into my lines, clinged to dry patches and basically did nothing for me.

You get 30ml for £6.49 from Boots and it comes in a plastic bottle with a pump.

K|xo