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2013 Make-up Favourites

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1. Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer

I don’t have a close-up picture of this because the packaging is so worn looking. The one annoying thing about this product is that the print wears off the plastic and onto your hand/make-up bag/other products. Beyond that, I have no complaints. It lives up to the hype around its concealing ability, and it’s cheap as chips. It’s not as good at concealing my dark undereye circles as my Lily Lolo concealer, but it is a lot quicker to apply. I bought it to take to a festival as I couldn’t be bothered fussing around with powder, but I’ve carried on using it on days when I’m going to work in a hurry to save a couple of precious minutes!

2. Bourjois Color Boost Glossy Finish Lipstick

I’m going to give these a full-length review with swatches and everything but for now I will say that this are fab. It seems like almost every brand has lip crayons out right now and the quality and pigmentation varies drastically. These are extremely well pigmented, and they have SPF 15. I completely adore the shade ‘Red Island’ and have been looking in every Superdrug/Boots I can in an attempt to find ‘Plum Russian’, so far to no avail.

3. Aromaleigh Penelope

I went through a massive pastel obsession in spring 2013 and was rummaging through my mineral eyeshadow stash and testing out lilacs when I found Penelope, one of the Pure Eyes Lustre eyeshadows. I’d all but ignored it before but I quickly fell in love and it became one of my go-to products. When in doubt, I wear Penelope. It’s currently in the Aromaleigh weekly sale!

4. Barry M Wink Eyeliner Pen

I bought this on a whim because it was in the Boots bargain bin for £1, but I’m quite impressed. The first eyeliner pen I ever tried was from Maxfactor, and was also my first ever liquid eyeliner. Sigh. I’m not sighing because I’m sentimental, I’m sighing because it was really crap. Poorly pigmented – basically, it was grey – and it dried up in about a month. I’m happy to say that Barry M’s Wink is much more pigmented, but unfortunately after a month or so’s use the tip got damaged and now I can’t get a precise line out of it. There’s still product left, so I was happy to discover that is almost perfect for tightlining – the tip is easy to press between my eyelashes and it lasts. I’ll probably buy a pen with a smaller nib next time but this is great for now.

5. Seventeen Lacquer Liner

My favourite liquid eyeliner is by Bourjois – Liner Pinceau. It has a proper brush, not one of those stubby foam things or one of those weird super-thin brushes that are the same width from base to tip. We were very happy together. But while I was using up my last bottle, I was tempted to try this Seventeen Lacquer Liner. Wet look eyeliner, I read. Yes please! And it is delightful, properly black, and shiny. The brush isn’t quite right, but after a few goes I got the hang of it. When I opened up a new bottle of Liner Pinceau, it seemed not quite black enough, and I missed the shine. I guess I’ll just have to keep buying both.

6. Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy

If you’ve never heard of this before, it’s basically glue for eyeshadow. It’s designed to hold on loose powders but is great to use with pressed powders too. It makes glitterbombs like Urban Decay’s ‘Midnight Cowboy Rides Again’ actually wearable. I got this in 2012 but didn’t get the hang of it until late 2013 because I paid too much attention to all the application advice that warns you only to use a tiny bit. It turns out that yes, only a very small amount is needed, but I need need quite a bit more than as little as possible! I suggest you start with the smallest amount you can, but try a little more next time if it doesn’t seem to be working very well. Now I’ve worked out exactly how much I need to apply, I’m really happy with it.

7. LA Colors Jumbo Eye Pencils

These are only £1 in Beauty Base at the Westfields and they are great. The white, ‘Sea Shells’ makes a fantastic base for just about everything, and I regularly use the purple, ‘Bikini Time’ (yes, these do have the worst names ever) as a base for purple eyeshadows. I have two more that I haven’t used much yet – the black, ‘Sunglasses’ (seriously, worst names!), and another purple, ‘Tropical Bliss’.

8. Sun, by Gorilla Perfumes at Lush

This is one of the happiest things I’ve ever smelled. It’s basically sunshine in a bottle. Citrussy and floral at the same time. Because of the mimosa, it smells quite like the Sakura scent, which is used in the Sakura bath ballistic and the Rub Rub Rub body scrub, but most sunshine-y. I’m sorry, I’ve never tried to describe a perfume before. It’s probably best if you just go smell this…

Special mentions go to all of last year’s favourites. I still love them all, except Lush Cosmetic Lad, because it started giving me spots.

I’ve really enjoyed reading other bloggers’ 2013 favourites, here are those I liked the most:
gh0stparties
Do Not Refreeze
Stay Beautiful
The Beauty Milk

Have you written a 2013 favourites post? Leave a link in the comments! Up next: 2013 skincare favourites, a harder one to write!

PSA/Mini Boots Haul

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I’ve never posted a ‘haul’ before because I just don’t think they’re worth the effort. I don’t mind seeing other people’s haul posts but I can’t be bothered to take photos and write a post when I won’t even have much to say! I prefer to wait until I’ve actually used the products/items a good few times so I can properly review them.

However, I wanted to post this just in case you have a little Boots store near you because they, like my local, might have changed their displays and have these items at clearance prices. As far as I can tell with Google none of these items have actually been discontinued, it’s just that they won’t be selling them in smaller branches of Boots any more.

Top to bottom:

  • BarryM Black Glitter Eye Crayon – 50p – To be honest I got this just because it was 50p. I’m sure I will find a use for it, it’s black with silver glitter, shouldn’t be that hard. They also had silver and aqua versions of this.
  • BarryM Wink Black Marker Pen For Eyes – £1 – I had a Maxfactor eyeliner pen years ago. I got it because I was scared of actual liquid eyeliner. It wasn’t very good. I have heard this is better so I thought I’d give it a try.
  • 17 Photo Flawless Mascara in Black Blue and Black Green – £1.50 – Price and curiosity got the better of me. I didn’t get Black Copper, though they had one and I have brown eyes, because brown-black mascaras are too light for my lashes, I prefer blue and green to copper, and I’m not really bothered about bringing out the golden tones in my eyes.

They also had:

  • Blue and yellow (!) L’Oreal lipglosses – £1
  • Barry M glitter eyeliners – £1
  • Barry M Dazzle Dusts, a coral pink one and a gold – £1