Category Archives: beauty products

I was tinkering about with some gorgeous Tom Ford makeup over the weekend, experimenting with a few products that I want to include in upcoming videos. I loved the autumnal feel of the photograph above; warm, slightly tawny and beautifully glowing. The skin is less golden than the summery looks I’ve been wearing until now; there’s still a touch of bronze but it’s confined to the area under the cheekbones, as a contour, rather than being an all-over dusting. I used Tom Ford’s Shade and Illuminate contouring duo (Intensity One) to create the slightly contoured look – I’ll be doing a more in-depth review and “how to” soon – and the foundation is the Traceless Perfecting Foundation in Bisque. On my eyes, the cream shadow in Spice (coming out in November) and the Ultra Length Mascara in Ultra Raven. Nothing on the lips apart from a slick of Cicaplast Lips from La Roche-Posay to get rid of the dryness. Do you like this? I think that the glow from the skin is very impressive – it’s just natural daylight, as usual, from the window behind the camera.

I’ll be back soon with more detailed posts on some of the products shown here and others I haven’t had a chance to play with yet…there’s also an Autumn Makeup Look video in the pipeline, if you fancy it?  You can find the full Tom Ford range at Selfridges.com or House of Fraser.

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Makeup primers, I love to hate them. An annoying extra step but one that is often necessary to keep your face in place all day. I’ve tried a few natural ingredient-based primers over the years now and have never been too impressed with the formulas, often too greasy for my oily skin, or they just simply didn’t do their job well enough to bother using.

With my skin being all over the place these days from oily to dry, I’ve been reaching for a primer more often to help my makeup look it’s best. I’ve been testing out two that I’ve had for a few months and have compiled a little showdown to see which is best. Let battle commence!

Inika Pure Primer with Hyaluronic Acid, £25

Pros

• lightweight aloe based cream
• sinks in quickly
• super hydrating
• not greasy
• smells like orange sherbert

Cons

• Contains coconut oil
• not smoothing or perfecting
• not mattifying
• contains essential oils

Jane Iredale Smooth Affair Primer & Brightener, £36

Pros

• smooth water/gel texture
• sinks in quickly
• smoothing and perfecting
• longer lasting on oily skin
• brightening & anti-aging benefits

Cons

• very strong (zesty oranges) scent
• contains dimethicones
• expensive
• contains essential oils

What do you think after reading that? which would you choose? I like them both and choose the Inika for more every day use and when my skin is a little dry. I reach for Jane Iredale when I’m making more of an effort, my skin is oily or just not looking it’s best and needing some serious help in the makeup department.
I mentioned their scents as a pro for one and a con for another, and even though they do actually smell very similar the Jane Iredale is just so much stronger – I know some people are really put off scented products so wanted to mention it. It doesn’t hang about for too long though, maybe 5-10 minutes.
I have to say, I think these are two of the best natural primers available, though to be honest there aren’t many to choose from… have you tried a natural primer that you love? let me know!

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Oh hello August, you sizzling-hot little git! Where did you spring from? I’m still answering emails with “hope you had a good New Year”! I’m not going on holiday until September (too much to do, too much to do) and so for now, I am making do with scents that remind me of my summer holidays. Orange-blossom, coconut, fruity and woody and musky notes… I was supposed to film these products as part of a video with Lily Pebbles, but when I got all of the bits and bobs out of my bag, they were nowhere to be seen. So here they are, in written form, my “smells that remind me of summer”…

1) Roger & Gallet’s Creme Sublime Or. The scent is almost secondary here, because this is such a beautiful body cream. It outperforms loads of far more expensive ones – it’s blend of Argan, Camellia, Macadamia, Evening Primrose Sesame Seed and Almond oils is really moisturising and feels rich and nourishing on the skin, and the effects are long-lasting for such a non-greasy formula. It’s supposed to be shimmery, but fear not shimmer-haters; I have never been able to detect a proper shimmer. It’s more of a gentle sheen – unless I’ve always had duds! The scent is absolutely incredible; orange-blossom, yes, but with coconut flower and ylang-ylang and cedarwood and musk… It’s just an absolute dream. Exotic but without any kind of in-your-face coconut or synthetic-smelling fruitiness. It’s just a finely-tuned, skin-softening beauty winner. You can find it at Escentual.com – it’s usually £15 but (at time of writing) is on sale, £12.

2) NUXE’s Prodigieux le Parfum: beach in a bottle. Fruity tangerine and mandarin and orange blossom with the sexy warmth of vanilla and coconut and a fair whack of floral thrown in too. This is the kind of perfume that makes you dress for sunshine whatever the weather – you can’t help being optimistic! It only launched this year, but I can see it taking on Bronze Goddess status at some point… It’s usually £44 but is £35.19 with free delivery here.

3) l’Occitane’s Néroli & Orchidée; so heavy with orange blossom it almost makes me drowsy. (Obviously orange blossom must be one of my “trigger” scents when it comes to thinking about summer!) It starts off bold, but actually quietens down into something quite delicate, after a while. There’s a kind of sharpness there, too, so it doesn’t feel sweet and cloying, it’s more…sitting under the tree rather than chomping on the leaves. If that makes any sense. Does it make sense? My perfume descriptions are getting more and more abstract! Néroli & Orchidée is £49 here.

4) Caudalie’s Parfum Divine; based on the scent of the bestselling Divine Oil, this is a warm and woody number that isn’t at all overpowering. There’s something about it that just smells very clean, even though the notes are the opposite of “fresh” or “zingy”. It’s not your classic summer scent, but it reminds me of warm sand – probably because I usually take a mini Divine Oil away on holiday with me and put it on the ends of my hair! You can buy Parfum Divine here – it’s £39.

5) Phyto Plage Huile Sublimante: fruity fruity sugary fruity! This is the smell of overly sweet fruit cocktails that have been left out in the lunchtime sun. But without the wasp risk. And you wouldn’t want to wear it in the lunchtime sun, because it’s an oil, and you’d burn. But after you’ve finished on the beach? Brilliant for massaging into skin and hair, if you want to get that sheeny, sexy, glowy-skinned look. It’s a new addition to my summer oil collection, but already it’s a favourite. It claims to help with damage and prolong a tan; can’t vouch for these yet but it is Phyto and they know what they’re about… £26.50 at FeelUnique.com here.

5) A special summery mention goes to the Monoi Body Cream from Elemis, which launches this month. (You can find it already at Elemis TimetoSpa.) If anything is going to get you in the mood for a holiday it’s this. Exotic frangipani – same scent as the Monoi Body Oil, but with no bottle-warming required. It’s £24 here.

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Well this is a nifty little number: a non-cakey, long-lasting, matte-but-not-flat foundation that comes in at less than seven quid. I don’t usually get on with a lot of the cheaper foundations, but the L’Oreal Paris Infallible Matte applied and blended beautifully on me and left my skin looking perfected, but not “masked over”.

I must point out that this is not for those who have dry skin – even remotely. My skin has been drier during pregnancy, but it’s still not what I would called dry, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I can hazard a guess that the Infallible 24H-Matte wouldn’t blend nearly as nicely on skin that had dry patches or a texture that liked to soak up product! My skin was actually prepped with moisturiser and a bit of primer (Laura Mercier’s Radiance, because I wanted to demonstrate the mattifying abilities of the foundation), so it was well greased up…

Here’s my skin before the foundation. Laura Mercier’s Radiance Primer (£29 here) is one of the most ridiculously glowy on the market – I wanted to see what the Infallible would cover up, in terms of shine. And yes I know that this is fake shine, not real, oil-from-the-pores shine, but we’ll get to that later.  Here’s my skin after very lightly blending in a small amount of the L’Oreal Paris Infallible foundation:

You can hopefully see that any trace of robot face has been eradicated. In terms of coverage, I wouldn’t say that Infallible is a full, heavy coverage – it’s medium, but a very good medium. If you had very red marks or blemishes, I think that it would struggle and you’d need to do a bit of targeted concealing, but to be quite honest I prefer this approach. There’s nothing worse than seeing a face caked in what looks like an inch of foundation, and some face bases just look caked on because they are so unbelievably heavy. It’s always better to have a lighter hand and layer up where you need more help.

Some skin close-ups. “Before”, above, wearing just the Laura Mercier primer, and “after”, below, with one light coat of the Infallible 24H-Matte.

You can see if you look at the mole to the right of my nose that the colour of it has been reduced in intensity and that my dark circles have had the edge taken off – personally, I wouldn’t really apply concealer over the top of this because that’s good enough coverage for me. I’m happy with a bit of reality peeking through! In terms of shininess, it has been all but obliterated. And in terms of real shine, the stuff that happens towards the end of a long day, it handled that pretty well too.

More foundation reviews…

There was no shiny nose or forehead and the colour pigment seemed to stick on well into the evening. Despite that, there seems to be a nice reflectiveness to the finish of this foundation – not a glow, exactly, but a bit of a radiance, like the one you get from Chanel’s Perfection Lumiere Velvet. I’ve tried it with and without various primers and the finish always seems to be the same. Very good, and all for £6.99. I don’t have extremely oily skin, though, so if anyone has and would like to feedback on this foundation, please add your comments below!

 You can find the L’Oreal Paris Infallible Matte Foundation at Boots.com here for £6.99. I wore shade 11, “Vanilla”.

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