Saturday Skin Talk - The Glow

 

I decided to try something; A few posts set to specific topics and days. One of them will be Saturday Skin Talk, however I will not do one every saturday and some saturdays I might put up something else. But when I am in the mood for making a post about skin (foundation-tips/highlighter/ bronzer/blush/skincare etc) I will do it on a Saturday :) I will also come with a few more of these, although I haven't decided on which ones so if you have a suggestions or a request then let me know in the comments and I will be sure to read through them!

On today's agenda is "the glow". I know dewy and glowing skin has been huge on the SS13 runways this year, however it is not always easy to know which products are the best to use for different skin types/tones as using the "wrong" products and the application of them can sometimes lead to a shiny disaster...

Therefore I bring to you, my lovely readers;

Glowy Summer Skin 1-0-1!

I am no expert but I do know the basics (I am sure many of you do to), so to break it down for you into Do's and Don'ts:

Do use bronzer on the areas of your face where the sun would naturally hit you (forehead/hairline, cheeks/cheekbones, bridge of the nose and on your chin.

Do apply any shimmer/highlighter to the high-points of your face only. (E.g. Cheekbones, nose-bridge, cupids-bow).

Do make sure to blend the bronzer/highlighter or blush well enough for it to look natural.

Do choose colours that suits your skin tone. 

Do use cream products if you have dry or normal skin. Be careful with creams and too much shimmer in the products if you tend to get oily as it might end up looking very shiny - and that is not in a good way. (Powders are good for most skin types, except maybe very dry skins as they might end up looking patchy/flakey)

Don't use colours that are too dark for your skin tone. If they are slightly darker, make sure to blend properly and consider taking it lightly down your neck to make the transition seamless and natural.

Don't contour with your bronzer (at least not if it has any shimmer). Choose a cooler toned bronzer or an actual contour product instead.

Don't apply bronzer/blush in bad lighting. Try to get as natural light as possible, and if you do not have a lamp that provides this, apply your make-up near a window!

Don't take your blush too high/low/close to your nose as that will look unnatural and is less likely to be flattering than if you focus it on the apples of the cheeks and take it up along the cheekbones toward the temples.

Product Recommendations: 
Oily Skin: Go for powders that have little to no shimmer and apply them after you have set your foundation with a setting powder. Finish off with a setting spray such as MAC Fix + or one of the Urban Decay ones (e.g DeSlick). This way your glow will stay on better and longer, as  well as looking more natural than if you would skip the setting spray.

TopShop do some great powder highlighters that would be perfect and for blush and bronzer pretty much any brand has some good powder formulas these days but to mention some: Maybeline (the Dream Terra Sun Bronzer - i think- is supposedly very nice), Too Faced Chocolate Soleil, MAC blushers, Sleek blushers. 

Dry Skin: If you have dry to very dry skin, keep an eye out for cream products! They will give some moisture to your skin whilst adding life and sheen to the face. No need to set your makeup with a spray/powder, just apply foundation and go straight into your bronzer, blush and highlight! 

You all know how much I love the Chanel Bronze Universal cream bronzer, and for someone with dry skin this would work very well! Try one of the TopShop Cream Highlighters or maybe go for one by MAC - I know the colour Pearl is on my shopping list! Revlon do incredible cream blushers and so does Stila I have heard, so I suggest having a look at those if you want non-sticky but still creamy products!

Normal Skin: Here comes the lucky ones! If your skin is fairly normal/combination then all the products mentioned above will most likely suit your needs. Just get the application right and know what your skin needs regarding setting powders/sprays and you will be well off. 

Those were all my do's and don'ts and tips for getting glowy skin this Spring/Summer! I hope this helped some of you, and if it did or if you have any points you would like to add then please let me know in the comments! :)

If you have any requests for future posts of this kind (any beauty/fashion/life related topic you would like some help/information about!) let me know and I will try do it as one of the next "specialised" posts.

I wish you all good luck with getting your glow on! :)

- Em

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Origins

I came across an incredible offer today when I went to pick up a few necessary bits and bobs for my shower (shampoo tends to run out very quickly around me...erhm). Anyway, I wasn't supposed to actually buy anything but that shampoo and nail polish remover but then I walked passed the Origins corner and noticed quite the deal. 3x75 ml face masks for £35. I mean, that is plain ridiculousness! Originally they would be over £55 so I saved quite a bit there, and these are quite decent sizes, so I bet they'll last me a year or maybe more! To top it all up and make the deal even better, one of the 3 face masks was the Origins Clear Improvement mask, which Anna has raved about quite a few times, so obviously I have been dying to try it (and so I did tonight - review coming in a week's time).

Along with the Clear Improvement charcoal mask you get the less intense version of the DrinkUp Intesive mask, which is called (no surprise here) DrinkUp.  It works in more or less the same way as the intensive mask does, and I have a review on that here if you want to check that out. The last mask in the set is the Out Of Trouble (love that name) which claims to "rescue problem skin"which I have to admit sounds pretty cool, so I might try that one out during the weekend!

I think that for the quality, the amount and the simple amazing-ness of these products this was quite a small prize to pay, in other words it was a bargain! I am thrilled about stocking up on some facial goodies for the spring so expect to see reviews on these soon :)

That's all from me today, but if you have tried any of the Origins face masks, let me know your thoughts on it in the comments, I would love to hear how others feel about these!

- Em

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ChanelChanelChanel

So that was a strange title, but I have a reason for it. Chanel was my inspiration a few weekends ago when I created the make-up look that my good friend Siren is wearing above. You see I have been applying to universities and a few of them require a creative portfolio. Now I am not very good with sketching, drawing and all that stuff so to have something to put into this portfolio of mine, I ended up doing some of my friends makeup, and well...with one of them I became quite a lunatic and took my inspiration from Chanel's famous glitter brows from the Autumn 2012 Runway. 

It was a friday and I was going shopping for the bits and bobs I would need for this look I was going to create, and 1st if all - I am one to stick with high street products as I don't really have a budget for all the high end products out there, so to go into the more "luxurious" make-up stores was quite fun. Very fun actually - just imagine me as a little kid in a candy shop and you've got it! Secondly I had no clue as to what exactly I was looking for so I had to come up with something as I went along. But oh well, with Karl Lagerfeld's out-of-the-box brow designs in the back of my mind, I stepped into the streets of Stavanger and started this quite exciting little hunt which in the end led me to this:

Make- up Store had quite the selection of loose glitter, and such a gorgeous range of cream highlighters!  (I will add the name of the products later today as I am not at home right now)

Eyeshadow palette from Accessories which has surprisingly good pigmentation! Care for a review?

Smashbox HD complexion set with a travelsize foundation, concealer, primer and powder.

Very good sizes for the price (£30) and the quality is extremely good so I will definitely do a review of these soon!

I am not sure if any of you are interested, but here comes a quick run-down of how I created this look: I primed her face and eyelids, then used a pritt-stick to "cover" her brows (just remember to wipe away any of the glue that might have come outside the brows). I then applied the Smashbox foundation in Light all over her face. Next came the "Very Berry" pencil from Make-up Store which I used to outline and fill in the brows with. I then added eyelash-glue on a cotton bud and spread that on the eyebrows (one at a time) before I applied the glitter, gradually moving from pink to green/blue (I created a mix of the two colours for the middle part so that they would fuse together naturally. Then I cleaned up any fall down of glitter with a tissue and then applied some concealer where it was needed, which was pretty much nowhere :) (a tip is to make your model hold a  tissue paper under her eyes while working with the glitter to reduce the amount of "cleaning" needed. )  For the eyelids I applied the cream highlighter from Smashbox and a swipe of the eyeshadows Copper and Bootycall by Urban Decay (Naked2) all over with some mascara on the lashes just to keep it subtle and natural. To finish off the face I used my Chanel Soleil de Tan Bronze Universal (Review Here) to warm up her complexion and do a little contouring, and the Smashbox highlighter on her high-points set with the TopShop highlighter in Crescent Moon. And that was it, as simple as that. Well it did take me about 2.5 hours so I guess it wasn't that simple but its not too complicated, just very time consuming.

I will leave you with a few more pictures of Gorgeous Siren and the completed brows, and if you want to know anything more about the products, the procedure or just have any questions or comments then don't hesitate to write them below or send me a tweet :)

  

Have a lovely weekend!

-Em

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The Review: Chanel Bronze Universal

Before I applied it, and after. Below is with blush and contour as well. Apologies for the yellow light in these, I know that distracts from the true colours, but I did this in the morning so the lighting was bad... 

Ok so I admit that I have been cheating a bit with only posting polyvore creations for the past week, but honestly I don't know where the time went! All I can say is that I will try to resume to my somewhat more normal content, starting with my Chanel Soleil De Tan - Bronze Universal review which is coming just below the next paragraph.

As for what I have been up to, there's not much to tell other than that my birthday was last Thursday which meant a celebration was in order for Friday, then a birthday party for a friend of mine on Saturday - and then a visit to my grandparents on Sunday.

So here it is, the long awaited review of my beloved (yes I attach quickly) Chanel Soleil de Tan, Bronze Universal. I showed you a quick glimpse of the actual product in this post so I will skip that part today and stick to the fun stuff, which is how it works.

This product is raved about on quite a lot of beauty blogs and in even more beauty videos. It is a staple for many make-up artists and on the runway it happens to be one of those “instant bronzed face” staples. So how does it work for us non-models? At first glance it looks like someone popped a big dollop of chocolate mouse in a Chanel jar, with the consistency of cold, hard butter. But once you actually get some on your little synthetic brush (I use this one) and apply it on your face it blends into a smooth, velvety creamy bronze glow that doesn’t look cakey, powdery nor too “creamy”. In a way it disappears, leaving only a nice glow and some colour, because it is quite pigmented and has a slight shimmery finish (although nothing too overpowering). As for the colour, it is more on the orange side than the grey-ish brown,  so please, if you have a skin tone close to mine (I’m MAC NW20) then use it as more of a bronzer, and not so much a contour product as that can easily look fake and not so flattering. In the pictures above I have applied it just above where I normally apply my contour and then blended it upwards and slightly down to the hollows of my cheekbones. This does create an illusion of a contour but not a super obvious one. I then applied some of my Sleek Contour Kit in Medium (only the contour colour) to shape my cheekbones and my temples. To finish off I used a swipe of my Sleek Blush Trio in Lantern.

The lasting power for this badboy is quite impressive, at least on me and I have combination skin. It lasts a good 10-12 hours without too much budging and it’s only when I wear it for longer that I notice it going slightly patchy.

All in all I love this product and it is now an everyday staple in my make-up routine. I just love how it gives my face that little bit of colour and healthy glow.

Have you tried it or du you want to give it a go?

- Em

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