I have talked quite a lot about primers in my previous posts, since I really do believe that they make a difference to a) what your skin will look like with foundation and b) how good it’s going to wear throughout the day. I have included some primers in my recent favorites as well, so go check those out if you are interested.
So currently, I have quite a few primers that I use on a regular basis. I thought that the best way to go about this is from my least favorite to my personal favorite primer, something that we already did with mascaras (click here and here to view those posts).
6th place: MONU First Defence Illuminating primer with SPF 15
I got the deluxe sample of this primer in the Look Fantastic Beauty Box and I’m almost out of it. It says it’s suitable for all skin types, but I feel that he is somewhat responsible for the breakouts I’ve been having recently. It’s also quite drying, which could be expected for a mattifying primer, but I feel that it sticks to the dry patches on my face a bit more and thus makes them even more apparent. I’ll give it a point for the SPF, but that’s about it. The full size costs a whooping 40 € of Feelunique website.
5TH place: New Baby Skin Instant Fatigue Blur (Warm Apricot)
First of all, I need to talk about the smell. It’s absolutely horrible, like the 1 € apricot ice cream you’d get from a store that had never seen a real apricot in its life, but had rather been smothered with tons of chemicals and additives.
It is light orange in shade, so it’s supposed to really be color correcting and good at hiding your dark circles etc. I personally don’t see any difference in that area. Similar to the original Baby Skin primer, it’s silicone base so it does a good job at preparing your face for foundation, but really, it’s nothing special. You can get it from Asos for about 11 €.
4TH place: Bourjois Happy Light Matte Serum Primer
This primer has been a favorite of mine for quite some time, until it got cooler in the winter time. It says that it’s best for normal to combination skin, promises airbrush action and pore minimization – which it really does. But in the winter, I felt that it really tug on my skin, which is probably due to the mattifying effect it promises. My foundation does look nicer and holds longer with this one, so I will not chuck it, but it’s certainly not one of my favorites. It sells on Lookfantastic for about 11 €. View Post
Now, obviously the first thing that pops to mind when we talk about the differences is the price. The Real Techniques sponge for example sells on Licila.si for about 8 € and you can get the Beautyblender on different pages, like the Beautybay for a hefty 20 €.
When dry, the Beautyblender looks absolutely tiny compared to the RT sponge.
But as any other sponge, both of these give the best results when they are wet. While the size of the RT sponge doesn’t change much, the Beautyblender actually increases to almost double the size. Also interesting – when completely dry, Beauty Blender shrinks to its original size. View Post
As I already mentioned in my B-day haul, I got some gift cards from friends and family and naturally, I went into Müller the next day to spend it allll. But what I didn’t know is that faith actually had another mini gift in store for me.
Anyway, I was wondering around (I was on vacation so I had much more time than I normally do) and came across the counter of the Couleur Caramel Cosmetics. I’ve never spotted them before so I was super excited to try something new. As I was literally doing swatches of every single thing on the shelves that caught my eye, a very pretty lady approached me and asked if I needed any assistance. And Oh. My. Gosh – it was Maja Šušnjara!!! Now I know that this doesn’t mean much to my international readers, but I’m sure that my fellow Slovenian beauties and bloggers can understand my excitement. I spent a good 15 minutes chatting with her and picking her brains for ideas and knowledge. She was so sweet and so lovely and completely made my day!
Anyway, the whole line is absolutely beautiful. I’m obviously not being paid for this or anything, but even the catalogue is stunning and really informative, with some lovely ideas for make-up looks. Here’s a random page that really makes me want to go back and buy more things, especially the blushes (so incredibly soft and pigmented, oh my).
What I ended up choosing is a Dark Circle Concealer. The entire range of Couleur Caramel is completely natural (100 % of ingredients are natural and 20 % of those are even from organic farming) so the packaging really matches the theme – all cardboard, but beautiful nevertheless.
The product itself is really quite darker than it seems in the pot, so make sure you swatch everything before purchase. It really smells a bit like caramel.
The concealer itself is softer than you could believe. Because of this, it does not crease at all when applied – I used it a couple of times and never even set it with a translucent powder, but it stayed in place and didn’t crease for the entire day. It slightly reminds me of the Pixi Concealer, but the latter is a bit cakey and as said before, the Couleur Caramel concealer is as soft as touching silk.
I am in love and completely happy to have found a natural line of make-up which suits me, so I’m sure that I should try more products. Do you have any recommendations for me?
As some of you might know, I share my birthday with our lovely Slovenia, which is awesome because I get a day off each year to properly celebrate – and so do you! I almost didn’t make it through the pre-birthday party this year though – we were having dinner at Ljubljana Castle on the 24th of June and in the middle of the dinner, without any warning, cannons went off right underneath our feet! Of course, it was just a part of the official celebrations, but still – a warning to all that might attempt something similar in the years to come 🙂
Anyway, what’s lovely about being a beauty blogger is that you get to ask for all kinds of make-up products as presents and nobody finds that strange. So here are the gifts and some things I picked up for myself with gift cards I received.
I won’t go much into detail since I want to write a separate review on most of these products. Starting in a clockwork order, we have two Sigma E40 tapered blending brushes. I already have one and it’s so amazing it’s always dirty, so a couple more were necessary.
Underneath, we have the Gerard Cosmetics BB Plus Illumination Face Cream. This goes in the “YouTube made me buy it” category, and I’m not even ashamed to admit that. It’s basically an illuminator, but a tan shade, so you can mix it up into your foundation for that glowing summer face.
In the midst is the present from my best friend – a Davidoff Cool water Eau de toilette. I love this fresh summery smell, which actually reminds me of a Fa body wash we always buy for our summer house – so I completely associate it with summer and I suspect that this perfume will be gone by end of September.
If you remember, I was obsessing over Lord&Berry liner I got in a Look Fantastic beauty box. When I saw this trio underneath on sale, I naturally couldn’t refuse, so I am now a proud owner of a Sparkle black liner, Polish eye pencil in Mirror black and a normal black liner. I am a happy bunny.
I always wanted some Invisibobble elastics since I have really thick hair which always gets tangled, but for some reason I though that each single one cost 5 € which I though was completely unreasonable. But I found these in Müller and they’re actually 3 for 5 €, so naturally I snatched them up.
Next to the Invisibobble, there is a beautiful box which holds a Coleur Caramel concealer, which again I will not go too much into, since it deserves its own post, and so does the lip gloss above it – it’s from Gerard Cosmetics and it is the first piece of make-up which actually scared me! Keep your eyes out for future posts about this dangerous one 🙂
Last but not least, we have the Essence 16 hour Stay All Day concealer – the 3rd one I’ve bought and I’ll continue to repurchase them.
So that’s it for the make-up haul and presents, I hope you enjoyed it. If you don’t yet, follow me on Instagram (@low_maintenance_beauty) and also let me know in the comments below what you’d most like to receive out of these bits and bobs above.
If you follow me on Instagram (@low_maintenance_beauty), you probably noticed that I received a few packages from Licila.si and Makeuprevolution.si through the month of May. Well, one of the packages got me all excited and today, I’d like to do a quick review of the product.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years, you know that it’s not all about the bass (no treble, lalala), but rather, it’s all about contouring. When looking at photos, I feel like I could cut bread with some of the cheebones of various models and actresses. And with this new trend came a myraid of new products, intended specifically for the purpose, creating a whole new category of beauty product – the contour kits.
Anyway, I was sent the Makeup Revolution Ultra Sculpt & Contour Kit in light-medium.
The palette brings three different products – a matte bronzer, a highlighter and a shimmer blush.
The packaging itself is nothing special, but that can be expected for the price range (with the exception of the MUR Iconic Pro lipsticks I wrote about here – how about that for spectacular packaging). It’s a plastic palette with a mirror. I like that it closes up really well – I wouldn’t be worried to travel with it.
The bronzer has a milk chocolate color and is all matte. For my fair skin, it’s stuck somewhere in the middle – a bit to warm to be a contour color and a bit too dark to use as a bronzer all over my face. I did however try to use it over NYX Taupe blush that I sometimes use for contouring and it really emphasized what I was going for. That, for me atleast, is now the perfect contour combo.
Highlighter is really, really nice – I don’t have anything like this in pressed powder version yet. The color ranges somewhere between peach and champagne and is spectacular on the high points of the face. I would say that a light touch is needed, though, since it really does contain quite a lot of shimmer.
The same applies for the blush. The color looks quite dark and really brown in the palette, but once applied it turns into a lovely copper blush with orange undertones and a lotof shimmer. Again, it will be the perfect summer blush for those sunkissed cheeks, but for now, I’m keeping it in the closet, since I’m still rocking the tan of a Google computer programmer.
I need to say that I had plenty kick-out with the Real Techniques brushes and absolutely none with any of my other brushes. I can’t really put my finger on what makes the difference, but I think that it’s a nice little reminder for any of you.
Here are the swatches – bronzer, highlight and blush from left to right. I tried to seek out some dupes but quickly realized that these colors are completely unique to my collection.
The quality and pigmentation reminds me very much of the Sleek contour palette, but while the Sleek palettes cost about 14 € on Licila.si, this one will be about a third of the price. So far, it’s not yet available in this particular shade (Ultra Fair), but you can already get your hands on the Ultra Light palette (click). I think that it’s absolutely worth the money and give it my seal of approval.
What is your favorite contour palette? Let me know below – I only have four different ones and really feel that I could do with a couple more 😉
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