My Make Up Staples

I thought it was time to show you what I mean when I say my staple products. Although sometimes I vary them a bit (eg. if I need waterproof mascara or a foundation with less coverage), but generally these are the products I reach for most often nowadays.

Guerlain Blanc de Perle foundation in 02 Beige Clair. Guerlain Divine Pressed Powder (this is an oldie!), Too Faced Shadow Insurance, Mac highlighting palette (homemade and no idea which shades it contains), Cargo Last Activator mascara in black and Mac Brow Set in Show Off,

So now you know what I mean when I say my staples.

My Current Favourites - Part 1 : Make Up

As it's been a long time since I last blogged frequently, I thought I'd put together a couple of posts about the products I currently use the most. I'm starting off with make up and will also show you some of my nail related favourites.

First up is Chantecaille White Tiger powder which is just possibly the most luxurious face powder you can find. In the picture below it looks a little sad as the gorgeous picture's almost completely disappeared, but you can see a picture of how it used to look here (need to scroll down a little). I love this powder, it's really nice, well, I guess it had better be anyway since it cost £88! It appears to have been discontinued now, which is a shame, but luckily I have a few back ups of it.

While still on the subject of face powder, my favourite brush to apply it with has been the Guerlain Meteorites brush. This particular one is an older, limited edition one, but they're pretty much all the same except for their colour.

See what else I've been loving lately after the jump!

Guerlain Meteorites Aquarella Light Revelaing Pearls of Powder

So it turns out I do buy some make up even nowadays, and this is one of my latest purchases: Meteorites Aquarella, the newest limited edition beauty from Guerlain. As you may know by now, I'm a big fan and collector of Meteorites pearls and of course I couldn't leave this one out either. (In case you are interested, here's my collection of Meteorites as of June 2012. I also have a few other Meteorites, some I have, some I haven't blog about.)

The Aquarella Meteorites contain a mix of gold, silver, white, pastel pink and pastel blue pearls. The gold and silver are quite glittery, so the overall look of the powder is slightly shimmery. Not disco ball glitter, but definitely not shimmer free. I don't mind a bit of shimmer, but if it bothers you, this powder might not be the one for you. The 

Guerlain Meteorites Aquarella are exclusive to Feelunique in the UK and cost £37.50 for 25 g (didn't it use to be 33g once???). I believe they are limited edition, so get them while you can! 

See more pictures after the break!

Make Up Is Art: Chanel Mouche de Beaute Illuminating Powder

This post isn't a review, it's just merely a series of pictures. I just haven't got the heart to touch this gorgeous work of art. But just look at it, isn't it beautiful?

I don't know if this powder is available in the UK at all (I asked in Selfridges a while ago, but they didn't know anything about it), this was sent to me from the US. It costs $80 and is still available from Chanel.com. It is a limited edition.

See lots more pictures after the jump!

Guerlain Spring 2013: Meteorites Perles du Paradis

For me the most anticipated product in the Guerlain spring collection was the new Meteorites named Perles du Paradis. As you probably know, I collect Meteorites and if you want, you can check out my extensive collection here (although it doesn't include the holiday Meteorites which you can see by clicking here).

Now about these new Meteorites. They come in a gorgeous light pink cardboard container (the old style, pre-2010 before the tins with the lids) which looks very glam and pretty. It's a larger than normal size (comparable to the 2008 Butterfly Pearls container) and contains 53 g of product which is 23 g more than the regular Meteorites. The pearls are bigger too, probably not quite as large as the Butterfly ones, but prety big. The container also comes with a pink furry powder puff with a black bow on top of it.

When I opened the container and removed the puff I was shocked to see how little there was at the bottom of the container. I know that promo images usually show more products and more vivid colours, but I was still very surprised to see that the container is basically half full and the colours are quite a bit duller than the promo images were. There has to be quite a big gap left for the puff, it's more bulky than the usual sponge on top of the pearls, but it does look rather odd that there are only 2 layers of pearls at the bottom of the container.

Product-wise it's also a little disappointing as I was expecting it to have more of a colour payoff, I was hoping it would be useable as a subtle blush (like the Blushy Blush Red Pearls from years ago). It's not, it's pretty much colourless. It is also not at all shimmery on me, which is a bit odd since they named it "Illuminating Sparkling Powder". It's basically another finishing powder which is fine, because that's what Meteorites are supposed to be. So I'm not saying it's bad, I just probably had a bit high expectations. All in all it's a lovely product, very pretty and smells gorgeous. And the container is just so adorable.

The new Guerlain spring collection is now available from Debenhams, House of Fraser and other department stores and online retailers. You get 53 g product for £43 or it's only £38.70 from Escentual. Debenhams are giving away a free Guerlain mascara sample with every order, plus you get 500 extra points if you spend £35.

See lots more pictures after the jump!

Finished! The November Edition

I managed to finish a lot of products this month, so I'm pretty pleased with that. Of course most of them are skincare products as usual, but I did finish two pieces of make up, so it's alright.

First up is the most expensive face cream I've ever owned, it's Guerlain Orchidee Imperiale Exceptional Complete Care Cream. This is a 50 ml size and it currently retails for £255. No, I've not gone mad, or maybe I have! I didn't pay nowhere near as much as this was actually a tester that I bought on eBay and the lid actually looks pretty worn, although don't know why because the cream inside was untouched. I've had this for quite a while, especially as I tended not to use it in the summer as it doesn't have any SPF. Also you really only need a tiny bit, so it does last forever. It's really lovely, but I don't know if it's 25 times better than my Nivea face cream that I've also finished. So I won't be repurchasing this for now, although I do actually have about 15 samples of it as well for travelling, so I'm okay for now anyway.  

See what other products I've finished after the jump!

Guerlain Meteorites Perles de Nuit

Continuing with reviewing the Guerlain holiday collection, I have the gorgeous Meteorites powder to show you today. This year's limited edition Meteorites come in a teal container, but are the same design as last year's holiday meteorites and also the new permanent shades. The teal colour runs through the whole collection and the outside black box has the same teal-black zebra pattern on the inside as the Parure de Nuit highlighter powder.

Inside we have the powder balls in different sizes and colours: pink, white, gold, orange and silver to correct, illuminate and even out skintone and give radiance. At first I was slightly disappointed with these pearls because I had read that these limited edition Meteorites were going to contain green/blue pearls, but it appears they had been replaced by the orange ones for whatever reason. I still love them and they're still very pretty, although they don't seem that special. Anyway, that's just me.

The Meteorites cost £36 and for that money you actually get 30 g of product which is pretty good. These powders last for absolutely ages. Plus they are so pretty and smell so gorgeous.

I haven't provided a swatch photo as Meteorites don't really show up in photos, but you can see me wear them in the full face picture in this post (make sure you scroll right down to the bottom). The silver pearls seem to be slightly glittery and you can see some glitter on my face, although that was a lot less noticable in person.

I'll leave you with lots of product photos after the jump!

Finished! The September edition

Not too many things this month I'm afraid as I finished an awful lot of products last month and there are quite a few products that I've been using every day and they refuse to die. Hopefully there'll be a lot more next month.

First up is actually a product that I was planning on including in last month's Finished! post, but it simply refused to run out. I used it pretty much every day and it still lasted another month. Actually it still had some life left in it, but since I'd actually had it for about 2 years already, I decided it had to go. It's Givenchy Phenomen'eyes mascara, one of my HG mascaras, I love it, it really works for me. I have reviewed it already, so read this post if you want to know more about it.

See which other products I've finished this month!

Finished! The August Edition

Another month has gone by and I've managed to finish a few more products. Mostly skincare, but there are a couple of mascaras in there too. Let's start with the one thing I don't have a photo for, that's because I took it with me on holiday and managed to leave it behind. It was nearly finished, and since I don't have it any more, I'll consider it finished. What I'm talking about it a sample of Clinique's 7 Day Scrub Cream. It's an okay scrub, but not too special. Certainly not £17 per 100 ml special, so I will not be repurchasing it.

Onto the next Clinique product, I also had a sample of Take The Day Off make up remover. I did like this one very much, it's very effective at removing make up, and I will definitely buy a full sized one once my current Estee Lauder make up remover runs out. The full size (125 ml) costs £14.50, it's not cheap, but it is certainly a very good make up remover.

Read about all the other products I've finished this month and see more pictures!

Finished! The March edition

I had quite a successful month as I managed to finish 7 products. First up is Avon Shimmer Swirls Face Illuminator. I actually finished 2 of these as I had one upstairs and one downstairs with not much left in either. This has long been discontinued, but I wouldn't repurchase anyway because it's not that good. There was a time when I thought it was great and bought tons of it, but back then I didn't even wear foundation just used this, however, this isn't even a good base, let alone good illuminator. Doesn't blend very well and ends up quite patchy, plus it's quite drying on my skin. I have since managed to flog my remaining stock on eBay, I was surprised how many people still wanted them and they soldat quite a good price. Originally I think they cost £10, I sold mine for £5-6 which isn't too bad. 

This is what they looked like when full(ish):

Find out what else I managed to finish after the jump!

Finished! The December edition

I have seen this on other blogs and thought it's such a great idea to review products that I've finished over the course of the month, however, I'd never got round to it (I did a Hitting Pan post a while ago, but that's as far as it got.) As I have such a big stash, it's not very often that I use up anything, so it's pretty unusual that I've actually managed to finish 4 products pretty much at the same time. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to show you the products I've finished, tell you how I liked them and whether I'll be repurchasing them. I will try to make this into a regular feature on the blog, but we'll see how it goes since I don't often finish products.

First up it's my favourite face primer, Meteorites Perles Light Diffusing Perfecting Primer by Guerlain. A very light gorgeously scented (parma violets, mmm!) slightly shimmery quite runny liquid that gives a nice sheen to your face while mattefying it (I know, it sounds odd, but it works) and helping your make up last through the day. It's expensive at £40 per 30 ml, but you don't need a lot, one press of the pump dispenses enough for your whole face. It's very interesting, you have loads of little balls filled with primer and the pump sucks up one or two balls and squeezes them out onto your finger. The outer "shell" is so soft it just disintegrates, so you get this gorgeous smooth wonderfully light shine controlling illuminating primer. Do you get the impression that I love this stuff? 

Here is a picture of how it looks when full. The bottle is heavy glass, it feels luxurious just as much as the primer inside does. Will I be repurchasing it? Of course. For now I have 2 back ups, so I'm okay, but I'm always looking for good bargains on this, so might stock up again soon.

Find out what other products I've finished after the jump!