Current Skincare Favourites May 2016

Hey guys, 

I've recently become a lot more aware of the importance of having a good skincare routine and I've therefore been researching into some skincare options and I've been trying various different products. I now feel that I've found products that work really well at preventing spots and keeping my skin clean, glowy and fresh so I thought I would share them with you!

The first two are for washing/cleansing your face, they're both products from Soap and Glory and they're called 'Peaches and Clean Deep Cleansing Milk' and 'Face Soap and Clarity Facial Wash'. I had never tried any skin care products from Soap and Glory since around 6 months ago when I tried the Cleansing Milk, and I thought it was amazing! When I first used it it made my skin feel so fresh and clean, and I've had this product since just after Christmas and I've been using it every day since then and it's still got so much left in it, as you can see in the picture!

Around 2 months ago I saw the Face Soap and Clarity Facial Wash in Boots and I knew I had to try it! I have been using it a long with the cleansing milk and they work amazingly together! I have definitely seen a major difference in how radiant my skin looks, and how many less spots I get since using them. They aren't extremely cheap, however, they aren't really expensive at £8.00 each, but they last for so long!

The next products are two moisturisers that I absolutely love. The first one is the Simple Rich Moisturiser which I've been using every day for a few years now. I have sensitive skin and this moisturiser just works amazingly at keeping your skin hydrated and it's not ridiculously expensive at £4.19. 

The next moisturiser is a little different and I've only had it for a couple of months. It's the 'Olay Complete Radiance Illuminator' and I personally use it in the morning before my make up as I feel that it makes your skin look so much more radiant and glowy and it creates a really dewy base ready for make up application! This moisturiser is a little more expensive at £9.99 for only 50ml, however, I personally think that it is totally worth it as it's such an amazing product. It also has SPF15 which is great for protecting your skin in summer. 

The next product is a face mask from Lush Cosmetics, called 'Cosmetic Warrior'. I've always loved Lush face masks as I think they're so amazing at cleansing your skin with their natural ingredients, however, I had never tried this particular one until a few weeks ago. 'Cosmetic Warrior' is suppose to be good for cleansing your skin of any spots/blemishes/impurities and I love it! Whenever I use it, it makes my skin feel so fresh and it is amazing at clearing up spots. It's £6.75 for a pot which I think is really good for what it is as you can get around 5 or 6 uses (or even more dependent on how much you use per time). Lush do a range of different face masks for all different skin types and problems so I definitely recommend looking into them!

 The final skincare item that I've been loving recently is another product from Soap and Glory called 'The Fab Pore' face mask. This face mask claims to reduce the size of your pores and I honestly think that it works! I've been using this around once a week/ once every 10 days and I do feel that my pores have shrunk slightly and become less visible. Obviously it isn't going to be able to completely get rid of your pores as it can't work miracles, but I was very surprised with it! It's also just a really nice cleansing mask as it makes your skin feel so fresh and clean after using it and it also makes your skin look so radiant. This product is a little expensive at £10 a pot (and it is quite a small pot), however, you don't need a lot of it so you can get a lot of uses out of it and it is amazing!

Thank you for reading, let me know if you have any skin care favourites that you think I should try!

Soph xo

Urban Decay Beached Bronzer Review

Hey everyone, 

Urban Decay have recently released some new Summer products, including bronzers, highlighters and a new foundation. Urban Decay are one of my favourite make up brands, and I've been looking for a new bronzer so I thought I'd try this one out! 

There are two shades; 'Bronzed' and 'Sunkissed', Bronzed is slightly darker and targeted at medium/dark skin tones, whereas Sunkissed is lighter and aimed at lighter skin tones. I got mine in the shade 'Sunkissed' as I have fairly pale skin. 

I was a little apprehensive of what kind of colour the product would be as I hadn't seen it as person, as I bought it online. It is a little more orangey than I would usually like, however, once you blend it into the skin, it looks so natural and gives you a really nice 'sunkissed' glow!

The formula of the product is so creamy, which means that it is really easy to blend to create a natural look, and it's definitely one of the creamiest bronzers I own. The product retails at £20, which is quite expensive, and I'm currently not sure if it's worth it as I've only had it a few days, put I'm loving it so far!

As the bronzer is slightly more orangey than I expected, I thought I would do a comparison to two of my other favourite bronzers. Hoola bronzer by Benefit is my favourite bronzer and it has a lot of a cooler undertone, however, the Bourjois bronzing powder is slightly more of a darker orange. 

I'm overall loving the formula of this bronzer, with how creamy it is and how easy it is to blend, and how natural it looks. However, I'm not 100% in love with the colour, but once its on the skin it isn't as orange and I think it's partly just because I'm so used to the cooler undertones of the Hoola bronzer! I think this product will be so nice in summer when I have a tan. 

Let me know if you've tried any of the new Urban Decay Summer products, and if you like them! I definitely want to try one of the highlighters next!

Soph xo

Nude Mac Lipstick Collection

Hey Guys!

Today I thought I would share my nude Mac lipstick collection. I only have 5 nude Mac lipsticks, so it isn't a massive collection but I thought I'd show you all anyway!

I have a mixture of finishes of nude lipsticks, I have 3 matte, one Satin and one Amplified Creme. They're in the shades: Blankety (Amplified Creme), Cherish (Satin), Honelove (Matte), Velvet Teddy (Matte) and Whirl (Matte).

Mac lipsticks retail at £15.50 and in my opinion they are 100% worth the money! I absolutely love the formula of all of the lipsticks, and they smell amazing too! I only bought my first Mac lipstick in July 2015 (which was Velvet Teddy), and since then I've just wanted more because of how much I love them! 

My most recent purchase has been Blankety which is the lightest shade out of all of them, and it's an Amplified Creme. Because it's an Amplified Creme, it has the same pigmentation of a Matte lipstick, however, it's so much more creamy. Blankety has definitely become my favourite nude lipstick!

The darkest nude lipstick I have is Whirl and it can be a bit too dark sometimes, I find it quite hard to pull off sometimes, especially as it's matte as well, and its definitely a better shade for the winter months and for going out. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about my Nude Mac lipstick collection, if you have any Nude lipstick recommendations for me to try please comment them below!

Soph xo

Kylie Jenner Lip Kit Review

Hey everyone,

About a month ago, I ordered a Kylie Lip Kit in the shade 'Koko K' and I've been using it for the past month and absolutely loving it so I thought I'd do a review on it for you!

Koko K is such a nice, pretty pinky nude shade, which is perfect for everyday wear. The lipkits come with a liquid lipstick and a lipliner, and they are only available from Kylie Cosmetics website. The lipkits are on sale for $29 USD which is around £20, however, shipping to the UK costs $14.95 which is around £10, so in total, you're paying around £30 for one lipkit. The delivery took around 2 weeks which is what I expected as they are a popular company to buy from and it was being delivered from America, but it was packaged very well and arrived safely. 

The shade that I bought was Koko K, it looks a lot lighter in the bottle and when you first put it on, however, when it dries on the lips it comes up a little darker. The formula of the lipkits is so nice, they take around two minutes to dry on your lips, and once they're on, they last so well. When I first used the lipkit I thought that it was a lot more liquidy than I expected, however, it works so well and creates such a nice matte finish. 

Lipkit in Koko K
Left: Liquid Lipstick, Right: Lipliner

The applicator of the liquid lipstick is a 'doe foot' applicator, which makes it really easy to apply it. The lipliner is a plastic material, which does make it a little harder to sharpen, which is a little annoying, however, the lipliner makes the liquid lipstick so much easy and nicer to apply, and it can be used with other lipsticks as well, or even on its own!

Overall, I really like this lipkit, I think that Kylie has really put a lot of thought into the making of it and thought about what the consumer wants, rather than just making money from it. I do also think that it is worth the money, however, if you are thinking of buying one, it might be better to see if a friend wants one as well so you can save on shipping and reduce the costs of the lipkit! The only major downside the lipkits have is that the shipping costs so much and they aren't available anywhere in the UK yet- however, I imagine that once her company starts getting bigger, they will branch out!

Let me know if you've got a Kylie Lipkit, or any of her other products, and what you think of them!

Soph xo

Sleek Cream Contour Kit

Hello everyone!

I have been looking into buying the Anastasia Cream Contour Kit for about 2 months now, but I just can't bring myself to spend £40 on it when I haven't seen it in person! I therefore started doing some research into some cheaper cream contour kits and I discovered that Sleek Cosmetics had recently released some. 

The palettes are on sale for £10.99 at Boots and Superdrug, which I think is a bargain for a cream contour kit, especially if you just want to try out cream contouring (like me) before you splurge on a more expensive, high end palette. 

The contour kit that I bought is in the shade 'Light' as I'm fairly pale, and this has been a good match for my skin tones. The palette has quite a cool undertone to it which I really like as I feel that that suits my skin tone the best. Sleek do three shades of this palette- Light, Medium and Dark. 

The palette comes with 6 shades, including a yellow toned highlight shade, a pink toned highlight and a cool brown contour shade. Due to the fact that the palette has a variety of lighter colour shades, I think that it's perfect for a range of skin tones, as if you have yellow undertones you are able to use shade 1 to highlight, and if you have pink undertones, you are able to use shade 2 to highlight. 

All 6 of the shades have such a creamy formula (obviously), but what I mean is that they apply to the skin so nicely and blend so well. I would say that the lighter two shades are a little sheer, so you do have to build it up to really get the true effect of the highlight, however, as the shades get darker, they get a lot more opaque. 

The application of the product was a little strange at first as I'm not used to working with a cream product, however, after I had used this product a few times, I found out what the best tools are to use with it and what shades to put where etc... to get the perfect contour look.

Shades from left to right: 1 2 3 4 5 6

After trying out a few different methods to apply the product, I decided that the best way was to apply the product to your face with a brush (especially the contour shade to get a precise line) and then to blend it out with a beauty blender/sponge. This leaves you with the product exactly where you want it, rather than it being all over your face, like I found happened if you apply it initially with a beauty blender!

The kit comes with a little piece of paper that instructs you where to put each shade which is useful, however, I personally didn't use every single shade on my face as I feel that it can take a lot of time and it often isn't necessary.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this product if you're looking for a cream contour palette, it blends amazingly and the contour shade (shade 6) is such a nice cool toned contour shade which creates such a natural contour. I would recommend to set the contour and highlight in place, which will make it more intense and make it last a lot longer, however, once its in place it lasts all day!

Let me know your opinions on this product if you've tried it out for yourself :)

Soph xo  

Buy Sleek Cream Contour Kit