The Repurchase - Clinique Take The Day Off Cleansing Balm

Clinique Take The Day Off Balm £22.00

So here's the rarest of things for the beauty blogger - the repurchase.

This one is for the Clinique Take The Day Off cleansing balm - a product I use as my first step in removing my make up before going in with my second cleanse to properly get my skin cleaned, normally with a different cleanser.

I used to reach for Bioderma to remove my make up, and I won't deny that I always do keep some Bioderma in stock for the days when I have a lot of make up on or I'm just feeling extremely lazy, but in winter my skin has a tendency to be more dehydrated anyway and using water on the surface of your skin - whether thats water in the shower or water in the form of micellar - will just contribute to that. Last winter I picked this up in Florida to try and combat the dehydration caused by the plane journey and the change in temperature freaking my skin out a little, and it was love at first use.

I use this straight on to dry skin and remove it with either a muslin cloth or cotton wool pads - though I prefer the former. It melts make up off my face and leaves me skin feeling hydrated and clean but not stripped. You can see it in action in my night time routine video below.


In case you couldn't tell from the fact I've repurchased it I love this cleansing balm, and I can see me repurchasing it many a time hereafter.

I do sometimes use the Lush Ultrabland cleansing balm in its place, which is a much more budget friendly option (£7.25) and is much more gentle on my eyes - the Clinique one doesn't irritate them if I'm careful but I do need to be careful, whereas the Lush version can be slapped on with no thought and no irritation; however when it comes down to it this has more slip to it than the Ultrabland and that's ultimately why I prefer it on my skin. Though for the foreseeable future I will have both in my stash and switch between them depending on what take sky fancy. Because I'm flighty like that...

Rimmel Salon Pro Nail Varnish

Rimmel Salon Pro Nail Varnish - 125 Oh, My Darcy! £4.49

Today's post brings you a prime example of what is in a name - because it's safe to assume when this nail polish name referenced one of my biggest and oldest literary crushes (yes, there is more than one!) I was going to buy it - no matter what type of colour it actually was.

What it is is a super wearable greige that I'm getting a tonne of use from, because it's that perfect colour that blends into the background and goes with any outfit but is also a fast track to looking totally polished and put together.

Colour aside the formula of this is top notch - I can't paint my nail for shizzz and I can chip them within a minute of painting - I go in the shower, wash my hair and come out to find half my nail varnish gone. Somehow though this formula really does last and I do get a few days out of it without chipping. It's also super easy and quick to apply because of the lovely wide brush, even for a cack handed painter like me.

Now, what colour should I go for next?

Cargo Vintage Escape Palette

Cargo Vintage Escape Palette - £35.00

Whilst this palette was in stock on Debenhams I wanted to bring it to your attention, because this might just qualify as my favourite palette ever. It's neutral enough that it compares to the likes of the Naked palettes in terms of wearability but the shadows are versatile and pigmented enough that you really can produce a show stopping look with this.

The top picture was from when I photographed the palette when I first bought it and the second picture is a more recent snap - I wanted to show you guys just how much use I have had from this one in a few months - you can see me hauling it here back in November, every shade has been touched and I'll admit to having to run a wet wipe round this palette just to make it look presentable for photographs!

All the swatches are one swipe up and one swipe down with my fingers, so as you can see they're all massively pigmented, but a 217 touched lightly to them buffs them in to look totally natural, or you can really pack them on with the 239. The only shadows that aren't totally smooth are the darkest two - you can see that Black Crow in comparison to the rest isn't maybe quite as pigmented and buttery as the others but I don't reach for black shadow all that much so it doesn't make much difference to me, and it can still be built up with more than 2 swipes of a finger if you're really keen for a deep black pigment.

The matte shades in general in the swatches look slightly less smooth than the shimmers (that's Harvest Moon, Hot Cocoa, Autumn, Chestnut and Black Crow, with chestnut being probably the worst looking) but that doesn't really transfer to the lids when used with a brush so it's really not a problem.

You can see me using the shadows in this post and this post, and I'd say overall my most used shades are predictably Cuddle, Frolic, Cinnamon and Rustic, but I love all the shades and have used all of them multiple times, with the exception of Black Crow which I've used a handful of times - though as I say that's down to personal preference!

The quality of these shadows really is up there, I'd say actually more so than the Naked palettes and the wear time without creasing has been super long - my eye make up has still been fully intact every night when I'm taking off my make up having out this on in the morning, so it's a minimum of 12 hours!

I'm trying to sound vaguely balanced in this review but honestly, it's just a rave. I love this palette a lot, it really doesn't let me down on any front and it's perfect for both every day wear and building up for a night out. There's really nothing bad I can say (and that's not something I say all that often!)

Illamasqua Aura Palette Review

Swatches: Blush - Highlight - Contour - Brow - Base - Colour - Define - Line

Illamasqua Multi Face Palette - Aura - £45.00 £22.50

Another sale bargain for you all today - this palette is now reduced down to ££22.50 on the Illamasqua site!

Anyway, I bought this before Christmas (when it wasn't on sale, grumpy face!) and i was massively massively excited about it, mainly because I'd been meaning to try the Aura highlighter and the Hollow contour for absolutely ages, so saw my chance to snap up both of those products in a palette with a few other bits... I can never resist a palette.

I don't know if my expectations were too high or what but I feel just a bit disappointed by this. Let me say that I believe there arena bad products out there, just products that suit some peoples' needs better than others (let's face it, if our needs were all the same we just wouldn't have the same array of products to get excited about and would never try anything new as the same things would just be produced over and over again!) but I'll go through by individual product and give my thoughts, since that seems the fairest.

The aura highlighter was one of the bits I was most excited about, and it's ok. I've come to the conclusion I'm not a massive fan of cream products and this is a pretty wet cream product - bye which I mean it melts and moves as soon as you touch it. I feel as though it sort of disappears on my cheeks but sinks in to pores and when used down my nose when I had a little bit of dry skin it really emphasised the dry skin. In comparison to my Chanel powder highlighter or even the Mary Lou Maniser which I reviewed here it just doesn't really cut it. I don't need a highlighter that seems to make my skin look worse than it is, and that I would use only on my cheeks, brow bone and cupids bow and then have to use an alternative elsewhere. I also don't generally feel that the cream products ever live up to powder in terms of longevity, which wouldn't be a problem if it was a case of popping it in my bag and topping up through the day but the thought of carrying the platte plus the highlighter I'd be using elsewhere? Not that appealing really!

The blush is a powder blush in the shade Tremble - it's totally fine, I like a powder blush better and the longevity is there with it. It looks a lot less pink on the face than it does in the pan, which isn't really a good or bad thing, just a comment on it and I have no real complaints. Having said that I also wouldn't have rushed to buy it as an individual blush as I don't think it's anything particularly special.

I do actually quite like the contour shade - Hollow and the longevity on the contour seems much better than the highlighter. It's also much more natural looking when buffed into the skin properly than the swatch would imply. The only complaint I have about the contour is the size of it, it's the same size as the eyeshadow and brow products, so fairly difficult to get the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush or the Illamasqua Highlighter Brush in to properly. The contour should have, in my opinion, been the same size as the blush and highlighter.

The brow cake in Thunder is fine. It's a little dark for my ideal tastes, but when you're putting a palette together you have to go with the shade that suits most people and I totally get that1 I can get away with it so it's not a total waste, though to be honest I do prefer a pencil so I'm not sure how much use I'll get from this. Colour aside though the formula is good and the longevity is there, its easy to apply with my Louise Young 31 sable brow brush. For travelling if I was taking this palette I'd be more than happy to use this to cut down on packing multiple products, so I definitely don't hate it, but it doesn't make or break the palette overall.

As for the eyeshadows, the base and colour shadows are a bit redundant, they're both pretty much lost on my pale skin (#palegirlproblems) but they work well enough to even out skin tone etc.

I actually really, really like the define shade - a nice reddy brown, though I have quite a few shades like this now because I like it so much (I still love this Smashbox palette if you're looking for some great eyeshadows with the reddy toned browns in there). It's a nicely build able one - I have it on quite lightly in the pictures but you could definitely keep building with this one.

Lastly we come to the black shadow, which they suggest you use as liner. Again it's quite build able and in the pictures I applied it with the angled brush from the Real Techniques Nic's Picks set and smoked it up a little bit. My issue isn't with this as an individual thing, but in terms of the palette I think a dark brown might have toned in a little better with the other shadows - I feel like the black looks very stark against the rest of the eye.

Overall? I realise this review sounds negative but I don't hate the palette, I just think there are better choices out there and for the sake of the Hollow pigment I could have bought it individually for the price. I didn't pay £45.00 as I bought the palette when ASOS had a 30% discount code running, but I'd be absolutely gutted if I had paid the £45. Now that you can get it for £22.50, if you want to try hollow or aura, which were two products I'd been meaning to for ages, it's still a great way to give them both a go and cheaper than buying both the products individually, but I certainly wouldn't say this one is a must have.

Cargo Northern Lights Palette Review

Cargo Northern Lights Eyeshadow Palette £35.00 £24.50

When I noticed online that Cargo had two eyeshadow palettes go into the Debenhams sale my interest was piqued. If you watched this haul video back in November 2014 you'll have seen me raving on about the Cargo Vintage Escape palette, which ranks as one of the all time best palette purchases I've ever made. I can't find that one online now anywhere, nor was it in store when I purchased this palette the other day, but if you do ever get the chance to get your hands on it then hug it to your chest and run for the till before anyone tries to take it off you, every shade is wearable, they're buttery soft, super pigmented, blend easily and generally just perform incredibly. 

Anyway, having had such a positive experience with that palette I'd been meaning to get back and try more Cargo for ages, but hadn't gotten round to it - till now. 

The Northern Lights palette currently has 30% off at Debenhams, the fact it's a percentage reduction makes it sound like it could go back up in price so I decided it was as much of an excuse as I needed to grab another shadow palette to add to my collection, and it's one I fully recommend you grabbing too.

I'm glad though, that I didn't buy it online and did wait till I saw it in store, as I loved it even more in store and a few of the shades clearly come up very differently swatched to how they look in pan, all for the better in my opinion. For example I thought Fjord - the bottom left shade - would be blue judging by the palette, but it comes up more of a slate colour with hints of bluey green shot through it. Finland (3rd from let bottom row), which has a distinctly yellow hue in the palette is actually a gorgeous gold. Aurora, above Finland in the top row, is a definite rose gold tone with a hit of bisc shot through just to deepen the colour slightly, whereas I thought it would be very pink and very not wearable on my skin tone. Lastly Greenland, which I thought would be a really dark, deep green is actually pretty black when used, with iridescent green sparkles that catch the light when you move. 

The shades are all beautiful - though Osetra, Finland and Lapland are my personal favourites - and they all blend beautifully and build beautifully. I swatched the top row quite lightly and you can see how pigmented they are, but also how they could be applied with a very light hand and buffed away with something like a MAC 217. The bottom row I did two layers of colour to each swatch and you can see from that how easily they build and how you could really pack on the colour with something like a MAC 239/242 (or one of the flat ended brushes from the Urban Decay Naked palettes).

Speaking of brushes, this one comes with a double ended fluffy brush, one side slightly bigger and the other side smaller - not quite tiny enough to be a pencil but small enough to get under the eyes. I don't have a whole lot to say on the brush, it's good enough to be kept around for emergencies and doesn't quite deserve to go straight in the bin but it's definitely not a great brush - but at the end of the day I didn't buy the palette for the brush. I do think bad brushes in palettes cheapen them slightly and to be honest I'd rather just not be given a brush at all, but I realise for some people they do like having the brush in the palette and, like I say, this one isn't the worst I've come across.

Overall this palette is another winner from Cargo for me, I just love the quality of the shadows,  they perform as well as the likes of Urban Decay and better in some places. I'm not overly keen on the faux snakeskin casing but, to be honest, what's inside is pure eyeshadow gold. 

PS Just realised this is the first post of 2015 - happy new year everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and festive season <3 

Dior 2014 Christmas Collection Lipstick

Dior Christmas Collection Lipstick in 006 Ardent Shock - £29.00

I already reviewed this lipstick in the shade 008 Mysterious Shock, but wanted to share this little post about the shade 006 Ardent Shock. 

Since I've already raved about the beautiful formula, which is just as beautiful in this shade as in the other, the beautiful packaging and the whole 'two colours in one' phenomenal idea I won't go on too long.

The red shade was always going to catch my eye, the matte shade (again, it's a matte shade not a matte formula, still the same nourishing one as the last!) is such a classic red, perfect for Christmas or, if you ask me, any other time of year. When I went to Disneyland Paris this year this was the shade I popped in my travel bag and it's a perfect true red.

The other side was great for days on holiday when I didn't want to be thinking about my mouth - the other side is much more peachy, low maintenance formula with a heavy enough dose of shimmer running through it to make it shimmery, without being gritty or frost finish-esque.

I love both sides of this lipstick and it's a perfect one for travelling, and also probably perfect for any make up lover - the combination of a peach lipstick with the matte red means that even those who wouldn't do red as an every day option like me still have a dressing up shade, but their every day colour comes in pretty special packaging! 

Dior Christmas Collection 2014 - Mono Fusion Shadow 'Mirror'

Dior Christmas Collection Mono Fusion Shadow 621 Mirror - £24.00

Continuing on from my last post here's another piece from the Dior Christmas Collection 2014, and this time it's the Mono Fusion Eyeshadow in the shade Mirror.

I'll fully admit that when I bought this product I thought it was going to be okay... Nothing special, just okay but I'm pleased to say that I was massively wrong, I think that actually out of everything I bought from the holiday collection (Christmas collection? Holiday collection? Whatever!) this might be one of the things I'll get the most use out of.

The mono fusion shadow is a pressed pigment style of shadow, something I'm sure we're all fairly familiar with and as such it works bets when packed on with a flat brush or fingers, which is how I applied it in these photos - utilising the tools God gave me and all that! It does come with a little brush - pictured in the top photo - but other than to get in under the lower lashes and stuff it's probably not going to get a whole load of use!

It looks a lot more gold in the pan and in the swatch than it actually transfers on the lids, where it instead seems to become a more iridescent glow albeit with a gold base. In these photos the shadow is on alone but I think this will be absolutely beautiful pressed on over more pigmented shadows. 

There is a fair amount of fall down with this product, but nothing that can't be cleaned up with a little wipe of the finger and some concealer - I just put mine on after I've done my eyes rather than wasting product beforehand!

So overall? A glowing recommendation from me for a beautifully glowing product - get your mitts on this one before it goes! 

Dior Christmas Collection Lipstick - Mysterious Shock

 

Dior Christmas Collection Lipstick 008 Mysterious Shock - £29.00

The Dior Christmas Collection 2014 is a pretty beautiful one, and I've indulged in a few pieces, but I decided they all deserved their own posts - especially the lipsticks which are actually a two in one product. This review concentrates on Mysterious Shock, the deep berry shade in the right hand side of the photograph.

The lipstick is beautiful - although it's pricey at £29 as you can see you get two colours of lipstick, each side of the bullet is different. 

The first photo of me is me wearing the matte shade, which, although I love both sides, wins as my favourite. Although the colour is matte the formula isn't, it's creamy without being too creamy - I'm not scared it's going to move all over my face during the day but it's not drying in the slightest. 

The second photo of me is me wearing the other side of the lipstick, it's from the same colour family and is still a pretty highly pigmented berry shade but it's got that shimmer finish and it doesn't make the same impact as the bold matte colour does. It's still pretty bold though and I think anyone who likes bold lips like me will love this lipstick. The shimmer side does have more grit to it in terms of formula but it still feels comfortable on the lips and doesn't cause flaking the way some shimmer lip products can.

The sales assistant at Dior explained that these lipsticks are meant to be used in an ombre look, the bold colour all over with the lighter, complimenting colour in the middle to enhance the lips and make them look bigger, so you essentially get the three looks in one which makes this lipstick ideal if you're jetting off over the holiday season. 

They don't bleed and you don't require a lipliner as the squared off edge makes the lipstick super easy to control and can we all just take a moment to appreciate that packaging? They're pretty much Christmas decorations in themselves if you just happened to leave these lipsticks on your mantel.

Overall it comes down to whether you like these colours, there's no point spending nearly £30 on this lipstick if you're only going to use one side of it. However I think it's a beautiful choice for party season, and even if this colour doesn't appeal they do have more nude choices available. The formula of the two colours I've bought are equally good, so it doesn't seem to be a case of the formula differing between colours as can sometimes happen and generally... I think it's pretty much lipstick love for me!

Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Range

Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Shampoo - £13.95*

Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Conditioner - £14.95*

A few weeks ago I headed along to a Paul Mitchell event in Glasgow's beautiful Blytheswood Square Hotel and found these in my goody bag upon leaving - along with a few other bits and pieces that will no doubt be popping up here as soon as I've got a good feel for them to review.

Those products are from the Tea Tree range and when I first noticed them I was a bit scared that they'd strip my coloured hair, but when I noticed they were marked as 'colour safe' I took a deep breath and decided to give them a go - since my hair is due a dye soon anyway it wasn't going to be the end of the world. As it turns out they didn't strip the colour at all and they are actually totally colour safe.

The reason I thought they'd be stripping is that they're really pretty close to a clarifying shampoo - not quite as much as my favourite detox shampoo which I'll post about soon (though those of you who have been following my main blog Rose Keats might already have worked it out!) - but definitely a great couple to reach for for a good deep clean to get rid of product build up and not leave any deposit. Neither product leaves your hair that squeaky clean almost dry feeling (hopefully you guys will know what I mean!) - even using the shampoo on it's own there was still a healthy dose of moisture left in my hair without it feeling heavy and with the conditioner used in conjunction these give my hair a good clean but still leaving it feeling perfectly nourished. Even my fine hair feels like it's as light as air after using both of these!

I find for my dry hair I could use these for every wash as long as I was using a good hair treatment to inject the nourishment it needs at least once a week, but instead I've been using them once a week to keep my hair happily clean and swapping them out for other products for my other washes - I usually wash it around three times a week.

Overall I'd definitely recommend these to a lot of people - they're gentle enough for coloured hair, nourishing enough for dry hair and light enough for oily or fine hair, so if your hair fits the bill check these out, though remember this range is only available at Paul Mitchell salons or on their website, you can't get these guys in Boots yet sadly!

The Balm Mary Lou Luminizer

The Balm Mary Lou Manizer - £16.00

The Balm's Mary Lou Manizer is a product that has been circulating as cult for an awful long time but I kept forgetting to try it - since I can't walk into a shop and pick up bits from The Balm it's just all the effort of remembering to order stuff online - but I finally did remember and slipped it into an ASOS basket - bonus of student discount there too!

I was a little bit apprehensive when I saw just how glittery this stuff looks in pan, not to mention the fact it looked a bit American Tan as well, but none of that transfers to the face.

What does transfer is a beautiful glow, one that catches the light and looks incredibly pretty but it doesn't give the Edward Cullen effect, it gives that 'I'm really healthy, sleep eight hours a night and drink tonnes of water' look. 

You can build it up though, I have it on the inner corner of my eyes in this photo as well as on my cheekbones and I've built it up to give a more distinct colour - more than you'd really want on the cheeks - but it's still not overboard.

The glow lasts all day too, you look just as healthy at the end of the day as at the beginning, which is always a good thing and at £16 I feel that the price point is really fair, nowhere near as high as some of the other highlighters out there but one I'm more than happy to pay for a product that delivers the way this does, not to mention that comes in such incredible packaging!

Smashbox Cherry Smoke Eyeshadow Palette

Smashbox Cherry Smoke Eyeshadow Palette - £32.00

I'm in love... with an eyeshadow palette. 

When I took a fancy for MAC's Cranberry eyeshadow to be told it was sold out in my local store the obvious thing would have been to go home and just order it online. But me being me I didn't want to do that, or wait, I wanted something that very day that would fulfil my red toned cravings, so when I spied the Smashbox Cherry Smoke Eyeshadow Palette in Boots I jumped on it.

In the first look I've created I wanted to really emphasise the red tones, so I've layered the matte red-brown with the sparkly one lightly over the top - though it can be layered and packed on for really impressive sparkly impact. I took it slightly under the eye too and you can see the difference in the shades - the matte one is on the outer part of my under eye and the sparkly one is on the inner half of my under eye. To combat putting the red so near my eyes I used my Rimmel nude eyeliner.

Despite the name of it the Cherry Smoke Palette will create way more than the red toned looks the name suggests, which is what I've tried to show in look 2. I used the silvery shade in the top right of the palette all over the lid and under the eye, then used the bottom left shade on the outer edges of the eye.

The palette is incredibly versatile - the lighter shades could create the ultimate day look, maybe with some of the matte red-brown or the mid-grey in the crease, there's your main cherry smoke look which you could create as I've done in look 1 or make more dramatic wight he black shade blended in, or the right hand side of the palette could create a gorgeous traditional dark smokey eye. 

The shades are all highly pigmented and they all blend beautifully. I'd dabbled with Smashbox primers before (who hasn't?!) but this is my first dalliance with their eyeshadows - safe to say more would be welcome in my collection!

Brooke Shields x MAC

MAC X Brooke Shields Eyeshadow Palette - £70.00

MAC X Brooke Shields Cream Colour Base -  £18.00 

On Saturday I made a fairly expensive impulse purchase - naughty naughty! Though aren't they always the best?

I've never identified myself as a particular Brooke Shields fan (I think my experience of her is pretty much a reference made to her in The Princess Diaries and when she turned up as Chuck Bass's Ed Westwick's mother in Chalet Girl) and although I like MAC I don't actively follow their collection released (mainly because there are so many every five minutes now) so I didn't even know about this collection when I wandered in to waste some time waiting on the train the train on Saturday. Needless to say I left with a few pieces.

The first, which I'm most excited about is this 15 shade eye shadow palette (shades are Pretty, Soft Brown, Expensive Pink, Clove, Satin Taupe, Canter, Luscious, Antiqued, Psyche, Carbon, Shroom, Persuade, Plummed, Lofty and Pepper).

Individually these shadows retail at £10.00 for the palette filling versions or £13 for the individual pots, so to fill a palette of 15 alone would usually cost £150 plus the £14 for the palette and £2.50 for the insert - bringing you to a cost of £166.50. This palette retails at £70. Of course it means the colours are pre picked for you, but still - a massive saving and as long as you like the colours then I don't personally have any issue with them begin pre picked at all.

It's sold out online but I picked it up in store on Saturday so I imagine there will be available palettes dotted around most stores. All MAC shadows are brilliant quality, I've never had a dud yet so I'm not foreseeing any problems with this palette and if you're looking to expand your eyeshadow collection this palette is full of wearable shades that can still make an impact and give you freedom to get creative without being OTT.

The second bit I picked up was the cream colour base which retails at £18.00. I was more attracted to the darker colour in the palette, I find red based colours can often give the most naturally blushed look, especially in winter, but the pink is also a lovely colour. Both can be applied with fingers but I have a feeling the Real Techniques Expert Face Brush is going to be the ideal partner for these.

They're both well pigmented but you can definitely dab them lightly on or build them up for your preferred finish - I used my fingers yesterday to go from light though to a more intense colour coverage and these sit beautifully on top of foundation and don't disappear after a few hours wear, though the colour does fade slightly but not completely as with other cream products. I was able to go back in as well and top the colour up even after having applied powder and the product still blended in really easily with my fingers and no fuss.


Overall unless you're a massive Brooke Shields fan I think these releases are to be considered based on how much use you'd get out of the products, but for me I'll get a tonne of use from them and they've been great choices. I think the fact Brooke Shields is, arguably, less of an icon in the UK than in the US means I've bought these because of the products and not the face of the line, which I really like and which makes me confident that I've bought them for the right reasons - something which, in an over saturated and over marketed world like the beauty world, is something to celebrate!

Rimmel Pre Tan Exfoliator & BB Sunshimmer

Rimmel Pre Tan Exfoliator - £6.99

Rimmel BB Sun Shimmer Instant Tan - £6.99

I'm not a massive fan of fake tan but every so often, usually when I'm getting a few limbs more out on show than they usually are, I will reach for it. The problem is I use it so little that there's absolutely no point in investing in the St Tropez I used to, since it was always out of date before I was even as much as a third of the way through the bottle. 

I came across the original Rimmel Sunshimmer in 'Fair Matte' a few years ago and it seemed to be the answer to my problems - it applied perfectly evenly when used with my tanning mitt and was the ideal colour to just give me some glow without adding masses of colour. Unfortunately the 'Fair' shade seems to have been discontinued and the lightest shade I can now buy is 'Light', which is darker than 'Fair' was. In the regular sun shimmer though 'Light' is a shade I can just about get away with, when used with a light hand... 

When this summer rolled around I decided to try the new Rimmel Sunshimmer Instant Tan + BB Cream and, long story short, I really wish I hadn't bothered. Maybe it's because of the BB Cream providing more coverage but 'Light' in this range is nowhere near light, you can compare it to my non tanned leg for guidance on just how ridiculously dark this product is - and that's one coat.

In terms of application I used my Hei-She tanning mitt as I'd use with any tanning product and it applied evenly - it's definitely a thicker consistency than the usual Sun Shimmer but I expected that with a BB version. It showed its full colour straight away as the other Sun Shimmer instant products have done, but other than the much darker colour I didn't really notice any BB properties to it, though maybe if I had a bruise or something on my leg I might have been in a better position to judge, I've never actually bothered putting it back on after this first go to see!

I had to properly rub at it in the shower to come off so it's not a case of apply water and rinse of - thankfully for those of us who live in the UK and will be pelted with rain as soon as we get out of a taxi on our way out - but it is definitely a wash off, one use and you're done product.

Overall it's not a bad product but the colour is way, way too dark for me, despite it being the lightest offering in the range. If you're looking for something quick on a night out and you're darker skinned than me you'll probably carry this off well and it's a great option for a one stop instant solution for last minute nights out when you've been cuddling under blankets with the central heating cranked up met days this Autumn. If you're at the paler end of the spectrum this is definitely one to give a miss.


As for the prey an exfoliator it's a good product for a reasonably price point, if you're looking for an exfoliator. For some reason I presumed the 'pre tan' but meant it was a new type of exfoliator that maybe wasn't so oil based that you could use in the shower before slapping on the tan, but it's not. Which is my own fault for chucking the bottle into my basket without reading anything. When you assume you make an ass out of u and me and all that. It's a traditional exfoliator with an oily consistency and which is quite gritty and greta at exfoliating the body, but you do still need to use it 24 hours in advance of tanning. For anyone on the hunt for a body exfoliator at a good price point then I definitely recommend it, and I love that it comes in a tube and not a tub (see my empties video here for a rant about tubes vs tubs!) but it's not anything new or any wonderful alternative to any other exfoliators on the market (or already sitting in your cupboards!)

Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes Mascara Review

Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes 4-in-1 Mascara | $20.00 Sephora | £19.50 QVC

Last Saturday I talked about the L'Oreal Telescopic Mascara and this Saturday it's the Tarte Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara. Who knew I was such a mascara fiend?!

Mascara isn't something that massively excites me all that often - I got this little small size in a set of Tarte products that I bought when I was in Florida at Christmas and I definitely wouldn't have made the effort to pick it up on its own, but once I finish up a few of my mascaras that I'm currently trying to get rid of, I'll definitely be replacing this - though the fact the Sephora price is so much cheaper thanks to the conversion makes me think I'll use it as an excuse to place my first Sephora order to be shipped to the UK (along with some more of the amazing brushes I fell in love with when I was over last time!)

Whilst the L'Oreal mascara gives defined individual lashes with a lot of length this one brings volume to the table as well, without compromising on the length. According to the Sephora website this claims to volumize your lashed by 424%, I don't know if I'd go that far but it definitely adds it by the bucketload. It also claims to condition lashes, but I'm trying to use up a few mascaras at the moment so I'm switching between them and can't comment on the long term effects of that. I'm fairly lucky in that my eyelashes are already fairly curly so I also can't massively comment on the curl power of this bad boy, but if it delivers the way the lengthening and volumizing promises do then you won't be disappointed.

This mascara feels so light on the lashes, no matter how much I build it up it never gets dry or flakey or crumbly, it feels like there's nothing on my lashes, and it never smudges. I'm not a massive fan of the snakeskin purple packaging, but it's what's inside that counts and what's inside delivers, so I'll forgive the tacky snakeskin print.

All round, discounting packaging, this baby is a 10/10!