Smashbox Vs E.l.f.

I have been using these two products for quite a few months now. They both claim to transform your face into a flawless canvas allowing makeup to glide on and stay in place for longer.

The Smashbox Photo Finish Primer already has an amazing reputation, winning all kinds of beauty awards, and I can see why. The formula is beautiful! It's very smooth and you need only the tiniest drop to cover your whole face, so a bottle this size can last a good while. You can even, apparently, use this primer in your hair to smooth flyaways! I can't say that I've tried this, but still, that's a nice little extra! However, when I bought the e.l.f. primer I really enjoyed using it. Having tried quite a few e.l.f. products before I've never been blown away by the quality, but I think this little bottle definitely holds it's own against Smashbox.

Formula
Both of these products are lightweight and sit wonderfully under foundation. I can definitely notice the better staying power of my foundation when I have taken the time to apply one of these in the morning. I think that the Smashbox primer is definitely smoother and you need a lot less of it to cover your whole face. It also makes a better eyeshadow primer, as the colours I put on my eyes appear a lot brighter than when I use the e.l.f.. I'd say the e.l.f. primer is also a bit more greasy, so if you already have quite oily skin this might not be quite right for you.

Packaging
The Smashbox primer definitely has the better packaging, by a mile. The e.l.f. packaging is badly designed in that the pump does not collect all the product, so you have to unscrew the lid and get it out that way, which is a bit annoying. The Smashbox packaging however, does have the irritating habit of becoming very easily clogged, even after a day. The product that sits in the end of the pump dries very quickly and has to be fired out with some force next time you come to use it, leaving lumpy bits all over your hand.

Price
Weighing in at £25 for 30ml, the Smashbox primer is definitely expensive, and although I really like the product, I wouldn't buy it again purely because of the price. Although the e.l.f. primer falls a little short against its more high-end sister, at £6 I don't think you can really go wrong.

Overall I do prefer the Smashbox primer as far as formula goes, but I think saving £19 on a product that does almost the same thing, far overcomes the e.l.f.'s shortcomings.

Topshop Lipstick Bullet

Hello there,

I thought today that I'd write about a very recent purchase of mine; a Topshop Lipstick Bullet! I've been looking for a dark red/burgundy lipstick for a while, I think it's a great wintery colour and can look very glamorous indeed! 

I got the colour, Rockabilly which is very deep red, almost brown, exactly what I was looking for!

These things are not like your day to day lipsticks, they're very creamy and feel almost like vaseline when you apply them. They're just as well pigmented as normal lipsticks though, the colour comes out very well and doesn't change from the way it looks in the packaging. Since the texture is so creamy, they do have a tendency to bleed around your mouth and it does require some touching-up throughout the day. 

The packaging is typical Topshop, quite minimal and pretty. However, since the texture is so smooth, it gets all over the top of the packaging and inside the little lid. This is very hard to avoid, because it's so easy to catch the lipstick when you're putting the lid back on. 

It also is very staining. If you have this on your lips all day, or even for a few hours, you can guarantee that there will still be some colouring left on your lips the next day. I give my lips a good scrub with my makeup remover but it will still be there when I have a closer look. 

As for what it looks like on...

As you can see, it's fairly dark and has a little bit of a shine to it. You can get rid of this by blotting a couple of times, which gets rid of the shine without losing any of the colour! This is great because it means you can get a lovely matte look from this lipstick too!

Overall, I love this! I think its a very pretty colour and is great value for money at £8! I do have a few little niggles, but nothing that would put me off using it.

L'Oreal Skin Perfection BB Cream Review

I thought I'd kick this off tonight with a product I bought about a month ago, the Skin Perfection BB Cream! When I first saw the advert for this new line of products I was quite excited. L'Oreal aren't my favourite drugstore brand but I can really appreciate a lot of their products.

I was toying with buying either this, or the serum. I opted for this because I've only tried one BB cream in the past, and that's the Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector; which I adore!

As you can, hopefully, see from the picture (photography was never my forte) it is a "5-in-1 instant blemish balm" in "fair". The packaging feels very cheap and I'm not too keen on the hot pink colour either.

I have very pale skin and very often, even the lightest shades of foundation are too dark for me. This, however was quite a nice match and once you blend it out it looks a lot lighter.

I swatched it on my arm to show you:

 You'll have to excuse all the wires, I was using the light from my make-up mirror so you could see the contrast.

The formula itself is unimpressive. It is difficult to properly blend and is completely unbuildable. Once you try to layer this product it ends up clumping all together and collecting more on your brush than on your face. If you use it very lightly, you could probably get away with this, but it is very sheer and I don't think that it made my complexion look any more even. It does feel quite moisturising and my skin feels softer after using this for a couple of days, but I really have to work at it in the mornings to get it to look even and not streaky.

As far as staying power goes, it falls short there too. I set it, once I have applied it in the morning, with my trusty Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder, but a few hours later when I check back it has always collected under my eyes and around my nose etc. It's also difficult to apply any products on top of, say, if you wanted to use a bit of blusher, you'd end up moving the cream half way around your face and have to spend an extra 5 minutes putting it back!

All in all, I really was not impressed with this, especially since it is more expensive than the Garnier BB Cream. It doesn't blend well and it smells just like the plastic package it comes in, very disappointing!

Retail: £12.99

Starting a Blog...

I never thought I'd do this! I've been thinking about it for a while, but truthfully I've never had the courage to actually press the "create blog" button!

And now that I'm here, where do I begin?

I'm a 19 year old student at the University of Plymouth and I love to play around with make-up! There are a thousand things on my make-up wishlist and a thousand more products stuffed into my make-up drawers (indeed, a plural) that I have been wanting to review.

I thought I'd try and show you the way that I get around my insatiable cravings for new products whilst sticking to my minimal student budget. I suppose we'll just see how it goes, dear reader, you single lonely soul!

I hope you enjoy what I have to put out!

Olivia
xxx