Benefit Fine One One

Benefit Fine One One - £23.50 - Benefit Website Here

Hi Ladies! Hope you're all okay & had a wonderful weekend and a nice Monday! I just want to say thank you so much for all of you that have now began following me on blog lovin, i'm happy that a lot of my readers have converted so you can still keep up to date with my blog posts & for those of you who haven't gotten around to it yet it would mean a lot if you could click follow on this link for me - http://www.bloglovin.com/en/blog/3954424! Anyway today's post is about a product I've been really using lately & I thought that it deserved a full review on my blog because it's such a good product! Some of you may have seen this product mentioned in a post I did this time last month on my blog called '3 products that I've been loving' here and after a month of using this product pretty much everyday I'm still loving it so I thought i'd share my thoughts about it with you all.

Firstly I thought I would explain to you what this funny looking stick actually is. When I first saw this product and heard loads of people on about 'Fine One One' I had no idea what so ever what the hell it was. Basically Benefit had a pretty damn smart idea to combine a contour colour or bronzer, a blusher & a highlighter in one handy stick so you can literally sweep on your cheek makeup just as easy as you would slick on your lipstick. The name behind the product comes from 991 which is the American Emergency Phone Number & instead of calling 911 you need to call fine one one for a makeup emergency (haha no idea if that made any sense, to be honest i'm still not sure of the name but I think that's the idea behind it). The reason I was drawn to this product is the fact it's so individual, I haven't seen a product like this & I think it's such a good idea and a pretty good concept. Also it's really good if you're quite lazy like me because it means you can do 3 steps of your makeup in one.

The first thing to notice about this product is the gorgeous packaging. I think Rose Gold has made a massive come back over the last few months & therefore I think it was a great choice by Benefit to use it as a colour scheme for this product. I also thought that the idea behind the packaging was pretty funky, I see this almost as a lipstick for your cheeks & I think that's pretty cool. You just pop the lid off and screw up your cheek product just like you would a lipstick, which means its a pretty perfect handbag essential. If you're like me you'll find that blush and highlighter especially runs out during the day and the great thing about Fine One One is that you can chuck it in your bag and it literally makes reapplying a dream, you don't need a brush just the stick and your fingers and you have a contour colour, a blush colour and a highlight colour in one tiny product that works really well with pretty much all skin tones. It's perfect to make your cheeks pop and it makes reapplying your makeup a dream, I can find you can just carry this and a lipstick around with you & if you want to go somewhere after work or your makeup is starting to fade than the addition of slapping this off and giving it a quick blend and then topping up your lippie just seems to work & instantly rejuvenates your makeup. Also I'd just like to mention that this is a really small product, it's much smaller than my iphone & you can see if you see the picture in my hand it's pretty tiny!

The product is really impressive. I really like it, you get 3 segments which are in order of how you want them to be applied to your cheeks. The orangey colour goes at the base of your cheek, this is the darker colour and would take place of your bronzer or contour shade. Next you have the blush colour and in this case this is the really bright pink and this would be your blush colour and then lastly you have a really nice champagne colour with a slight iridescence to it which works as your highlight shade. You simply hold the stick at the bottom of your cheek and then pull it along your cheek so that you have your contour shade at the bottom, then your blush & then your highlight. It's so quick and simple and pretty much fool proof (which is good for me!) then you can blend in the products with your fingers just to soften it a bit or I use my real techniques stippling brush just to blend out the edges and give it a really soft and natural affect. The only thing I would say about application is that you need to use this product combined with the right foundation, I found that foundations that are a bit heavier and stay wetter for a bit longer before they set can kind of be a bit of a night mare with this because it's easy for the cream product to kind of take the foundation so I think you just have to wait for your foundation to really set and not be tacky at all before you go in with this, don't apply it over powder either cus that could make it go a bit patchy!

I think this product is really good, I'm much more of a bronzer girl than a blusher girl normally, I just find that bronzer suits me better and to be honest I normally find blushers look quite unnatural and I end up looking a bit like a clown (I know! It's probably all in my application) but anyway this is one of the only coloured cheek products I can use and actually think looks nice. I find that once the colours are blended together they give a really nice coral glow and I think because the undertones run more coral it's not so unnatural and looks like more of a flushed glow. I find that this product really helps to define my cheekbones and I really really love the colour of the blush & the highlight. To be honest the orange shade which is meant to act as the bronzer/contour isn't really too my taste because I prefer a bit of a darker shade. So I just apply my bronzer a bit in the contours of my cheeks first and then apply this & it looks like a really nice blush & highlight together. I find this product really buildable and I therefore think it would work on a range of skin tones, you can do one swipe if you're really pale or keep building up the colour if you are darker and like a more prominent cheek colour, a lot of people have said negative things about this product just because they say it's not that pigmented and a bit sheer but I don't think it's the case. Benefit do call this product a 'sheer brightening product for cheeks and lips'. I think if this product was too overly pigmented you could easily look like a clown so the fact it's a tiny bit sheerer means you can control it better and get a much more natural look.

Overall I would really recommend this product, I think it's pretty brill & I think Benefit have out done their selves once again! I'm really interested to try out 'Fake Up' their new concealer & also their World Famous Neutrals Palettes as well so if you have done any reviews on either of those products let me know! :) hope you enjoyed this & i'll speak to you all soon! xxx

March Wishlist

Hi Lovely Ladies, Hope you're all okay & doing well. Before I get on to the post which is my March Wishlist and things I am eyeing up and want to buy throughout this month. I just thought i'd give a little mention to the GFC Scandal, for those of you who don't know, Google Friend Connect which the majority of my readers follow me on is rumoured to be leaving over the next few months as Google is getting rid of its partnering app Google Reader, so in the possible future all blogs could be left with 0 followers if Google does decide to go ahead and do that. To be honest I don't think they really will but I'm going to start using Blog'lovin more to follow blogs just because I feel like it's a little more secure, anyway therefore I would love it if you could give me a little follow on blog'lovin on the link here and I would also really appreciate it if you could check out my contact page here and follow me on any of the links you find their too because i'd really appreciate it & it would give me a massssive smile! Now that's all out of the way lets get on to the actual post.

There are loads of things I've been really wanting in the month of March, I've been trying to save and not spend this month and whenever I do that I kind of feel like my wishlist just grows and grows and I end up wanting more and more stuff. There are 7 things I've really been lusting after this month & they're all pretty pricey :( boohoo for me!

Zara Office City Bag - This bag is so gorgeous, I don't even work in an office but I would buy this bag in the hope that I could get a job in an office and take this bag to work with me everyday. It's gorgeous, loads of people have even compared it to Chanel & Prada Bags, so that's how utterly gorgeous it is. I love that this bag is so big, it can fit a full size laptop, has a pocket for your tablets or kindles, can carry A4 folders and is actually so nice. Seriously the pictures I have there do not do it justice, it just looks like such a solid and well made bag. I was looking for reviews of it last night (ya know just to make myself want it even more!) and I found this one from Chloe over at CVG and you can see a detailed review (including pictures) of her blog here so yeah go and show Chloe and her blog some love & check it out because her review was super helpful to me. Definitely going to save up for this bag now because it retails at a pretty pricey £49.99 on the Zara website here.

Naked Basics Palette - I've wanted this bad boy for a really long time now, it's the perfect matte palette and it's Urban Decay's 3rd offering of the Naked palette, I love that the shades are perfect for every day and from all of the reviews I've seen the colours are all really pigmented and blend well. If you've read my blog for a while you'll know that I really love Urban Decay & I don't think that they can really be beaten in term of eyeshadow quality so I'll defo be picking this up at some point in the future. I also think it's pretty reasonable in terms of price as well, it retails at £20.00 which I don't think is too bad for an Urban Decay palette, plus I love that it looks pretty travel friendly too. You can pick this bad boy up on the Debenhams website here.

Mac Rebel - I've been eyeing up this lipstick for ages, it started becoming really popular in the blogging world in the fall time & i've seen it featured on loads of blogs since. The thing that attracted me to it was just the fact that it's so individual, you don't normally see a lot of shades that are such a vampy pink and I think it's quite wearable after seeing it on lots of different people. The person who made me want to get it the most though was the gorgeous Sammi over at Beauty Crush! I was reading her Outfit post here and saw she had it on and I just thought it was the most gorgeous colour ever & I really like it. You can pick this up on the Mac website here for £14.00 which again is pretty pricey here.

Mac Woodwinked - Again another Mac product makes my makeup wishlist, I think for as long as these have been a feature on my blog Mac have always been mentioned. This time I blame wanting this eyeshadow on Alix from I Covet Thee here (See! If I didn't read blogs or watch You Tube Video's I wouldn't want any of this stuff!!). Anyway Alix did a video here on all of her Mac eyeshadows and it left me with a list as long as my arm but I decided that the one I wanted most was Woodwinked, It looks perfect & a colour that I would get a lot of use out of. So I think that's on my wishlist now, as well as loads of other Mac eyeshadows :(! Anyway you can pick up this eye shadow from the Mac website here.

Sleek Eyebrow Kit - This was is purely me and I'm not going to blame it on the blogging community! I've recently ran out of my Elf Eyebrow Kit after using up every last bit of both the wax and the powder all up and I've found that I actually really love using eyebrow kits to fill in sparse areas on my eyebrows rather than using a pencil & therefore I thought the next one I would try out would be the Sleek one just because I want to try out a few more Sleek products & see what the brands all about. You can pick this up from the Sleek website for £8.50 here.

Revlon Nearly Naked Foundation - This is a new release in the drugstore beauty range & if you know me or my blog at all you will know i'm a sucker for foundation, it's probably my favourite product to buy and the amount of foundations I have from Boots at the moment is ridiculous (but there's a post to come soon on all of that) and therefore because this is new and I've heard great things about it from America for months and months now I really want to pick this up and give it ago. From what i've heard it has a really good coverage but looks like you're wearing no makeup! Sounds pretty perfect to me. You can pick this up from the Boots website for £8.99 here.

Tangle Teezer - Again the blogging world is to blame for me wanting this so badly, I'm not someone who has ever gone out and spent money on pricey hairbrushes or anything like that but i've heard pretty amazing things about this one. The idea behind the Tangle Teezer is that it apparently combs through all the knots and tangles in your hair & detangles them without it hurting you. I haven't tried one so I don't really know about that but I've heard a lot of people in the blogging world rave about it so i'm interested to give it a try. You can  pick this up from the Boots website here for £10.99.

Anyway I hope you all enjoyed this post & are having a nice day and I would love to hear what's on your wishlist this March! :) xxx

The Beauty Parlour - Shine Oil Control Mattyfying Moisturiser

Beauty Parlour T-Zone Oil Control Mattyfying Moisturiser - £1.99

Hi Lovelies, Hope you're all okay, sorry for going missing for a few days but I've got a lot of fun stuff going on in terms of my blog for the rest of the month so you should be able to forgive me. Anyway today i'm going to review for you something completely random and weird and it's the Beauty Parlour T-zone Oil Control Mattyfying Moisturiser (what a mouthful and can I also just say that the product name is spelt mattyfying and i'm not just spelling it wrong haha!) now about 6 months ago now I did a Savers haul, which i'm not going to link because it's too cringey for words & it's not a very good post really but anyway this was one of the products I featured in the haul. I said at the time that the packaging reminded me a bit of Soap & Glory's but just a bit cheaper and that's what caught my eye about it in the first place. Basically this product was meant to be a primer for specifically the t-zone and I've been trying out ever since.

Firstly I would say that this product isn't too shabby, I picked it up for the bargain price of £1.99 for 100ml and to be honest I didn't expect that much of it, you get a heap of product for a ridiculously cheap price. Anyway Beauty Parlour were claiming big things of this product, they said 'fight shine, blemishes & clogged pore our mattyfying moisturiser maintains moisture levels throughout the day, gives long lasting shine control with Witch Hazel and fights bacteria with Neem and Quassia Bark extracts'.

So I was pretty much intrigued just from reading that. If i'm honest I do think it actually really does help to fight shine on my t-zone, keeps me looking fairly matte and it does keep moisture levels on my t-zone pretty good during the day. I don't think it really resulted in me having less blemishes or anything like that though and I don't think it really helped the levels of bacteria on my face but for £1.99 it seemed to work as a pretty good primer. The thing I find weird about this particular primer is that it's called a mattyfying moisturiser and that's exactly the consistency it has, it doesn't have the consistency of a normal primer it's more like a moisturiser that keeps you matte and I think that's quite a good concept. I feel like this product leaves your skin soft but not soft that you feel like your makeup will just melt away or slide off which I have found with some other primers in the past. I just feel like this product gives me the right balance between your skin having moisture and your skin being oily and that's why I think it's really clever.

I quite like pretty much everything about this product and I think it's a good all rounder, I don't think it's ground breaking or life changing or really even a must have product but it's really nice to have and it's cheap as chips. One thing I don't find so lovely about it and the thing that would probably put me off it a bit would be the smell. I can't quite work out what this smells of but I don't find it very nice. It kind of has a very clean smell, a bit like the smell of a floor cleaner or a window cleaner or something along those lines, which some people may really like but i'm just not a huge fan of it.

Overall, I would say that I really do like this product and I'm glad I tried it and saw what Beauty Parlour were all about and I really like the concept of putting something as light as a regularly moisturiser on the skin instead of slapping on a big heavy primer in the mornings but I find the smell something I can't really deal with and I also find that I'm just a little bit more inclined to reach for the Rimmel Fix and Perfect Pro Primer, which is one of my favourite beauty discoveries ever, because I like the fact it makes my whole skin feel like velvet and although I think this product is helping me to stay quite matte I'm not sure how much 'priming' it's actually doing or whether it's just a pretty nice moisturiser. I would recommend it though if you're on a budget or looking to try something from the range because you can't really go wrong with it and it's not a bad product just not one that wowed me! You can pick this up for £7.99!! At Superdrug here but personally I would head over to Savers & have a browse and see if you can find it because I don't think it's worth nearly £8.00 when I picked it up for £1.99! Anyway thanks for reading & I'll speak to you all really soon! xxx

Soothing Shower Gels

Radox Smoothie Shower Gels in Island Indulgent (here), Soul Soother (here) & Original Source shower gel in Vanilla & Raspberry (here).

Hi lovelies, hope you're okay! I have another review for you guys today, I've kind of been on fire with my blog this week & I've posted every single day so I hope you've been enjoying that. Today I thought i'd talk about something pretty random, I don't often see shower gels really talked about on blogs, I guess because they're not that interesting but I personally love buying shower gels, they're such an essential. I think they should be talked about more really because we all have to use them and I can bet people try out lots of different brands when trying to find a good one. I've therefore decided to pick out 3 of the most gorgeous, soothing shower gels that smell amazing, work wonders and that you can pick up for quite a bargain price too so I hope you don't find this too weird haha!

As you can see I have picked up 3 of my favourite shower gels and I thought whilst they were looking nice and new and squeaky clean I would share them with you. These are all pretty cheap and they all smell amazing and really leave your skin feeling really soft and lovely. As you can see I really love fruity scents in my shower gels and I like anything that really leaves my skin feeling really clean but has a lovely scent and is also moisturising on my dry skin.

The first two of these shower gels are from Radox and they are from the smoothie range, I know a lot of you may not have tried these but if you haven't I couldn't urge you more to pick one up next time you see them. There's something about these shower gels in particular that is just amazing, they smell good and they work so well they're probably my favourite shower gels and my whole family love them too now so it shows they're pretty damn good.

The first one that I've never tried before but picked up recently is the shower gel in  Island Indulgence, I picked this up off the shelf because I love the other Radox smoothie gels and I think the bright orange colour just caught my eye so I wanted to give it ago. I flipped up the lid and almost instantly fell in love with this scent, it says on the bottle that it's a "vibrant passion fruit & papaya shower smoothie with juicy aronia berries and real fruit seeds" I would agree it's really fruity and just smells amazing. It's just a really refreshing scent and I think this one would be really good to use in the morning if you're trying to wake yourself up a bit.What's cool about this one in particular is the fact that it contains bits of papaya which means it can double up as a really soft scrub, it's not harsh at all but I swear to god I have never found a shower gel that leaves your skin as soft as this range does. Plus this one in particular really gets me in the mood for summer!

The second one from the Radox smoothie range is this pink one in Soul Soother, I loveeeee it! This one has scents of black current, chamomile and has real cranberry seeds in. This is my favourite shower gel in the whole entire world and I actually swear by it. I find this scent really relaxing and I love using it before bed because I actually find it helps me wind down and sleep better which seems crazy. This is a very sweet smelling scent and is just so thick and lovely and lathers really well too. I have a lot of loving for this line and they actually have the same consistency as smoothies so I really do like them a lot.

The next shower gel is from the lovely Original Source line, these get a lot of hype in the blogging world and I really like them too. The lime one in particular is really gorgeous and refreshing but i'm more a really sweet scent girl and this one in Vanilla and Raspberry probably just sums me up in a scent. I love smelling sweet and this shower gel leaves me smelling just like that this actually smells more like strawberries and creams to me but I don't mind that at all, it's again a really thick shower gel which lathers up and just leaves you feeling smooth and silky. I love the ethics behind this brand too, they are a vegan brand and it's packed with all natural ingredients meaning that the fragrance is all natural too. I also love the bottle of this shower gel, I know it's stupid to talk about the bottles of shower gel but I really like this one, I think it's designed really nice and I like that in all 3 of the shower gels I've chosen you can easily see how much product you have left so you know when to repurchase them.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this post and if you get a chance I would really recommend trying out these shower gels, these all retail between £2.00 & £3.00 but they are all half price in Boots right now so you can  pick them up on offer. Do you have a favourite shower gel? :) let me know & I hope you all have a really lovely weekend! xxx

Mac Studio Fix Fluid Foundation Review

Mac Studio Fix Fluid Foundation - NC20 & NC15 - £20.50 - here.

Hi Ladies, Hope you're okay, today I thought i'd finally get around to reviewing the Mac Studio Fix Fluid foundation that I've mentioned about a hundred times on my blog in passing, this regularly features in favourite posts and what's in my makeup bag and I've never actually fully reviewed it so I thought it was about time that I bite the bullet and get on with it. I love this foundation and it's pretty much holy grail status for me so let's get on with the review.

Firstly I love the packaging of this foundation, it comes in a really nice luxurious glass bottle that I think is really stylish and nice, it's not that great to travel with though because i'm always scared i'll drop it and it'll smash into a thousand pieces right in front of me. It comes with a matte top lid that's quite annoying because it captures finger prints like no other because it's rubberized and slightly like the Nars packaging. Probably the worst thing about the packaging though is the fact that it doesn't come with a pump & if you want one Mac expect you to dish out an extra £3.50 so that you can pick one up, I think this is a bit cheeky but it doesn't put me off using the foundation.

Next I would say that I love the coverage of this foundation and it's probably the reason I like this product so much, this is pretty medium to full coverage and you can build it up so it covers pretty much every single imperfection and I find that when I do that I literally have no need for concealer. Also the lasting power of this stuff is pretty insane, it's the one foundation that lasts all day on my oily skin and I can apply it in the morning and come home at night and my makeup will still pretty much be in place. I think that's because it's such a thick consistency though so it doesn't just melt away like a lot of foundations do. Mac actually claims that it can last for up to 8 hours and I would say that I certainty agree with that claim. Even though this foundation is really thick I find that it doesn't look cakey or make me look like i'm wearing a lot of makeup it just really blurs all my imperfections and makes me look much healthier and nicer. I think application is key with this product though, because it's so thick I think you have to work quite hard with it, I normally use a flat foundation brush to spread the product due to its thick consistency and then once I've done that i'll buff it in with my Real Techniques Buffing Brush and I find that it really works and looks natural and nice. The foundation dries to a matte finish so for oily skin girls its pretty perfect and it's lovely for a night out as well because it makes your skin look pretty impressive. The drying time of this foundation can be a bit of a problem when applying it because you don't have long at all so I tend to do each part of my face separately so that I can buff it in properly.

The smell of this product can sometimes really put people off it because it smells exactly like paint, it's got a really strong scent which I think goes away once it's been applied to your face but you can without a doubt smell it when you open the bottle & also when you're applying the foundation to your face. I personally really like the smell and it doesn't bother me at all but if you're a bit sensitive to smells you might want to go to a Mac counter and give this a sniff first. I know a lot of people also find that Mac foundations break them out because they're so thick and because they contain Silica but I don't find that at all and my face is pretty sensitive, I think you have to make sure you really wash this off your face though because it's not a foundation that easily comes off so you must make sure to clean it properly.

I think the price point of this product isn't too bad anyway, well at least not for Mac, I find that drugstore foundations are getting more and more expensive and you can put up too £12.00 for a foundation from Boots so to pay £20.50 for Mac which lasts longer and is much better quality isn't too bad. I tend to reserve mine for days I want more coverage or nights out although I could happily wear it every day. I also have two shades as you can see above, when I first tried this foundation I picked up NC20 because I was ordering online, when I got it I didn't like it at all, it was way too yellow and orange for me & I now use the shade NC15 which is a pretty good match so I would say make sure that you do your research. There are absolutely loads of shades in the Mac foundation range but the differences between them still seem pretty big as you can see by the swatches.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed this review! Let me know what your holy grail foundation is and if you've tried any from Mac! xxx