Guest post! Matching your make up to the weather...

Jeneille kindly offered to guest post for me, thanks Jeneille!

Going on a holiday to the Caribbean? Here’s what to take in your makeup bag!

Different climates call for different types of makeup- something I learned the hard way after I moved back home after spending a year in London. While there, I wore cream foundations because my skin (usually oily) now tended to be a bit dry, especially during the winter months.

But being in St. Vincent did not mean that I could automatically switch to liquid foundation-as a matter of fact, it took quite a bit more experimentation before I found the products that worked for my skin IN this climate that didn’t result in me looking like I’d slathered my face with olive oil.

If you’re unsure about what to bring (and we never think too much makeup is too much do we?) do what I do! My favorites for foundation are the MAC Pro Long wear foundation which is longwearing but still gives a natural finish. On days where I can’t be bothered to wear foundation, use the MAC Face and Body which is so light it might as well be a tinted moisturizer!

Bronzer during the day (yes!) and blush at night (for a punch) along with a few lip glosses and eye shadows of your choice will clinch the deal….along with mascara, eye-liner and lip-balm. Below are a few of my faves and what I find myself reaching for as of late...

Jeneille is from Caribbean Beauty Blog, go check it out! Are you interested in guest posting on Queen of Turquoise? Let me know with a comment or drop me an email on queenofturquoise@gmail.com

May favourites

This month has definitely been one of trying new products and getting to grips with older ones or testing new combinations.

T-B- NYX cream blush in "Natural", Beauty UK blush in Royal Rose.

My NYX cream blush has become an everyday staple for a dewy finish to an everyday face. It adds a healthy tint whilst remaining in place pretty much all day. I've been using one of the new baked blushes by Beauty UK which I'm a big fan of, it's very pigmented with some fine shimmer to it, and it complements the NYX blush well enough to use on top just to add a bit of extra kick to the colour or keep it on for longer.

Ooh la la Naked is a wonderfully creamy moisturising body wash with a heavenly scent that makes me want to eat it and produces mountains of creamy lather when used with a shower scrunchie (buff puff/ mesh-thingy... Everyone calls them a different thing!) 


Naked's Perfect Getaway cream cleanser is something I've been using everyday for the last week and a bit and so far it's pretty much perfect. I don't use it quite as the directions suggest (smoothing on and removing with a cotton pad) but use it like a hot cloth cleanser which seems to be working well. Full review on this to come once I've been using it for longer! 

Max Factor Experience Weightless Foundation - I'd seen Fee @ Makeup Savvy rave about this foundation and I love, love, love it! The coverage is amazing, for general blemishes I don't need anything extra but spots do require either a tiny bit extra foundation (which can be built up without looking at all cakey) or a dab of concealer. It visibly perks up my skin leaving it looking smooth and perfect whilst not looking like I'm wearing a heavy foundation or feeling as though I'm wearing anything on my skin at all! It lasts all day, doesn't need any powder on my normal-combination skin and is what I'd describe as a satin finish. This is definitely a must have and something I'll be sticking with. I actually got hold of this for £6 including postage on ebay instead of the Boots £10 price after swatching instore for a colour match.

elf Studio cream eyeliner- after quite a number of months of this being my only used eyeliner the top of this started to dry up and made application difficult and a bit messy. Having started to burrow down past the top layer of drier eyeliner it's got a new lease of life and I'm back to using it every single day without fail. Such an amazing product for the tiny £3.50 price tag. 

elf Studio stipple brush- perfect for cream blushes and for a quick swirl in pigmented powder blushes too. 

Bourjois Delice de Poudre bronzer- a tiny price for a lot of bronzer! This smells delicately of chocolate which in my books can only be a good thing, it's just about totally matte though there is the odd bit of shimmer thrown in. It's great for evening out my chest and neck if my fake tan is starting to fade or for a bit of all over colour on my face, this is a really buildable powder ideal for us paler girls (mine's number 51 which is the lighter colour I believe). 

Nivea Daily Essentials oil free moisturising day cream is another new product, I was running low on my Simple oil balancing moisturiser and this was on offer in Tesco for £1.50 (usually £3) so I thought it was worth a try. If anything I prefer it to my Simple moisturiser, it's scented, which I like, and it's possibly a little more moisturising too, the formula is more creamy and less gel-like. Does a great job of keeping my skin from getting oily through the day and moisturises too!

17 Wild Curls is definitely my favourite everyday mascara (and that's not to say it doesn't deliver fierce curled lashes!) but with No7's exquisite curl mascara layered over it I'm left with even bigger lashes that are both volumised and lengthened. 

A long favourites post this month! Anything outstanding that you've used this month? Let me know!

x

January Favourites

Urban Decay's Naked palette, ELF stipple brush, 17 Wild Curls mascara, L'Oreal Telescopic mascara, ELF cream eyeliner, ELF essentials primer, ELF cover up and colour stick, Clarins' True Radiance foundation!

Urban Decay's Naked palette... I've used this just about every day now since I got it when it first came out (in November?) and I love it. It's simple, it's easy to choose a combination that works and the shadows are beautifully soft and pigmented. 

Clarins True Radiance foundation- perfect for evening out the complexion and brightening with it's dewy finish and gold coloured micro-particles this is a perfectly easy to wear, easy to blend foundation. It doesn't dry the dry parts of my face out and stops me looking shiny with it's oil free finish.

Both 17 Wild Curls and L'Oreal Telescopic have been favourites for a while now, either alone or layered... wild curls is great for volume and telescopic is fab for length. Together they're amaaazing.

L-R ELF cover up stick in apricot beige and color (bleurgh, COLOUR) stick in spotlight. ELF's cover up stick has become a firm favourite over the past couple of months, as my Clarins foundation is relatively light coverage and I'm prone to blemishes and redness this is great for splodging on underneath. I also use it on it's own. It's so easy to use and at £1.50 it's probably one of the best value-for-money things that I own. The colour stick makes a great highlighter, blends easily and looks perfect without any fuss. 

Once again ELF's eyelid primer, use this under every eyeshadow and it does just as well as UDPP in my opinion! Keeps shadows crease free and in place allll day long.

It's taken me a while to make my mind up about the ELF stipple brush. I'm not really sure that it's firm enough to use for application of foundation, but that's not something I've explored much.. however it's great for blushes- especially cream- and for stippling over my make up after using a setting spray of some description. Better than a certain Sigma F15 that I had to send back due to epic shedding! 

The cream eyeliner I've been using just about everyday. Not much more I can say about this! Full review here. 

If you're interested in finding out more about any of these let me know and I'll try and do a more detailed post on it :)

What are your current essentials?

x

Review: Bourjois 10 hour sleep effect foundation

It's been a while since I used a liquid foundation, but every winter I start thinking about it and then I get disheartened and overwhelmed in Boots with the shades, and being in the way (aisles are too narrow for more than one person to browse properly at a time!) and I leave and forget about it.

It was only when I was in one of my bigger local Superdrug's looking for sleek Sunrise blush (didn't find it annoyingly!) that I started to look at the foundations.

The choice came down to this one, Sleek's foundation (looked quite flat in the bottle) and Bourjois Healthy Mix (a little too yellow looking in the bottle, but one I want to try) and at around £8 it was one of the cheaper ones too.

As I've mentioned (many times!) before, I'm really pale, with skin leaning more towards the neutral-pink base tone, and the shade that I chose was 72- Rose Clair, which matches surprisingly well. I do have to be careful not to apply too heavy handedly but to be honest that's what I've come to expect. The picture below looks incredibly orange for my skin tone but it blends in well to match my skin colour.

It's a relatively thin foundation which makes it really easy to blend and I've been using my ELF studio powder brush to apply which has been doing a really good job at applying this so that it just looks like my skin but better. The finish is gorgeous, a nice middle ground between dewy and matte, a satin-y finish, however it's oil free which stops my normal/combination skin from becoming at all oily.

(Pictures taken mainly in an attempt to capture beautiful glowy (in a good way) finish! Also illustrate how well this blends in).

Coverage is light and you'll definitely need an extra concealer to use with this if you've got redness or blemishes as this isn't heavy enough to double up as cover up (I'm quite impressed with that little rhyme myself...) as well.

My biggest problem with this is longevity, it just doesn't last, whether I've got a base or primer underneath or with powder on the top.

Overall, this starts off looking so promising only to be ruined by it's staying power which is really disappointing! I'll be finishing this by using it for at home and pop to the shop days where it doesn't matter so much if it doesn't last.

Have you tried 10 hour sleep effect? What did you think?

x

Lily Lolo Blondie foundation review..

For the last year or so I've been using Everyday Minerals (a US company) for Bismuth free mineral concealer and foundation. Whilst I love the different finishes they offer and the decent amount of shades that they offer the fact that an order takes about 2 weeks to get here puts me off. Plus, last time I worked out how much it costs by the time it's got here (£12 for 5.5g) it wasn't really the total bargain I thought it was (although still very good value, it lasts me around 6 months!) and I'd put off buying it...

So having put off buying it, yesterday I discovered that I had totally (and I mean totally) run out of my foundation.. DISASTER! I had a look for some high street mineral foundation but I wasn't happy with the ingredients in them (I've never used mineral make up with Bismuth in, and I don't want to risk a reaction!) and the fact that they were quite expensive given the limited range of shades and being unsure of their quality.

I quickly tapped "mineral foundation" into Google and up popped Lily Lolo. I'd heard of them before but assumed they were quite expensive. Wrong. 10 grams of product cost me just £14 including shipping, which makes them about half the price of Everyday Minerals! I expect it to last me around a year, maybe a bit less, which makes them a huuuge bargain!

Not only that but having ordered around midday yesterday I wasn't expecting to get it until Monday and was surprised to see a package from Lily Lolo this morning, less than 24 hours after ordering! That was with their £1.99 standard shipping option, so I'm well impressed!

I ordered "Blondie" which is the second lightest shade that they make. As I find it really hard to get anything that matches my skintone and gives me the coverage I want (medium, and if I do actually find a shade that matches my skintone, I can't build it up for the coverage without it being too dark) I've discovered that I'm just as happy to get a very fair concealer to use underneath my foundation to give better coverage, and then I can use foundation sparingly over the top of the concealer... This also means that I can use the same shade all year round (in the summer when I'm fake tanning I use the foundation alone as I can layer it up for the coverage without looking orange as the rest of me's a little darker) which is really useful.

The packaging is gorgeous, really girly and expensive looking, the plastic is frosted and it looks like glass but without the obvious travel problems associated with it, whilst at the same time avoiding that hideous cloudy look that happens to clear plastic when it has powder in it which I think makes it look grotty. Even the label on the bottom looks lovely!

Unfortunately this packaging lacks the handy swivel over plastic cover that Everyday Minerals use which means that travelling with it could be slightly messy... But I actually don't expect it to be. The sifter holes seem to be just the right size. Even if I tip this up and down and hit the bottom of it I don't get a whole load of product! It gives me a really decent amount and I think it would take a lot of jiggling for it to get messy. That might change as the amount of powder in it lessens and there's more space for it to move around, but I can always tape it up.

Overall, really really happy with this purchase, and looking forward to trying out more of Lily Lolo's products (wish I'd bought some samples now, but I was so desperate to get this ordered!) over the next few months!

Have you tried any of Lily Lolo's makeup? What did you think?

Rach xx

New foundation... Choices choices!

Much as I love my Everyday minerals foundation, I'm in need of something that I'm able to use when my skin is dry and misbehaving. As I've not been able to look after my skin over the last few days it's really dry and just generally in bad condition, trying to put powder foundation on top of it currently would not make for a flawless face! There are other times like this, or just when I want a bit of a change that having a non-powder foundation would be most useful.

There are sooo many choices though! Before my mineral foundation I used Maybelline dream matte mousse for quite a while, as I'd found a shade that matched my skin and to be honest just couldn't face the crazy foundation shopping! It was only when I switched to E.M that I realised how little time Maybelline had lasted for and how it dried out my skin, and the coverage was rubbish etc!

So far I'm thinking I'll probably go for..

Bourjois Healthy Mix or L'Oreal Matte Morphose. Shade permitting, as I'm really pale with pink undertones and so many foundations are just too brown, or yellow-y for me!

I've heard good things about both of these, but would be really great to hear opinions about either of these from you lot, or suggestions for others!

Thinking about foundations, does anyone remember their first?! Mine was a Miss Sporty one!

Rachel xx

Everyday minerals foundation...

I discovered Everyday minerals maybe a year or so ago, on the MoneysavingExpert forums as E.M were doing 5 (1g! That's pretty big, enough to last you at least a week of solid use, probably more, there are still some sample pots I've not got to the end of!) sample pots for free, with just $3.50 shipping. I got mint correction concealer, Fair medium matte base, a blush, intensive fair concealer, and one other that I don't remember... 

A few months ago (yes, it took me that long to decide!) I started using the matte base everyday as my main foundation and bought the full size- 5.5g- for something like $10 (about £6.50) it comes with a sifter, though only half of it has holes, which means you don't get a huge overload of it, and it also has a plastic cover that flips round over the sifter bit so that it doesn't all escape into the top of you chuck it in your bag for the day, genius!

I've got a scary before and after picture for you....

This is me before... Having just washed my face (L'Oreal perfect wash) toned and moisturised- both Botanics, and having got toner in my eyes- I know.  I'm still in my jamas and everything, though I did vaguely do my hair for you ;) Note the weird red cheeks, I do not know what has happened to them overnight, they're red and bumpy, I have a feeling it has something to do with me using a half dry cheap face wipe to take my make up off last night.... Sorry face!

I then used ELF's mineral primer, and due to the fabulous red cheeks I used some of my mint correction concealer which worked wonders. Then a mix- in the top of my base jar- of intensive fair concealer, and Fair medium- as the base on it's own is a little dark for me if I'm not careful so it's much easier to apply with a bit of the concealer in too and it gives me better coverage, quicker. A couple of sprays of The Body Shop's Vitamin E face mist to get rid of any powdery bits, over my whole face, and let it dry :)

After picture(s)

I really am wearing a whole top, not a half a top as it would appear...! I use a mini Kabuki brush- I really must get a normal size one!- to buff it onto my face, and it really is pretty decent coverage that lasts well (Notice that my freckles have just about disappeared in this picture, compared to the before one, and freckles are annoyingly difficult to cover with liquid foundation in my opinion) In fairness today's foundation is probably a little bit heavier than normal because of the covering of the red cheeks, normally you can see some of my freckles coming through (yesterday's pictures show that) so the coverage is impressively flexible.

Everyday Minerals are currently doing 5 1g sample pots for $5 plus shipping of something like $3-$4, or if you make an order of any value you get $5 of samples of your choice for free! Just remember that the limit for commercial purchases before customs charges kick in is £18 including P&P. Go go go!

Now wish me luck, I'm off for my first driving lesson in nearly a year in just over an hour *eeeek* 

Rachel xx