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Catrice Glamour Doll Volume Waterproof Mascara

Ok, you’re going to have to forgive me, because it’s time for another mascara rave 🙂

This is the Catrice Glamour Doll Volume Waterproof Mascara, and I am in love! I saw the lovely Anna from Vivianna Does Makeup talking about this a while ago. I kinda feel like I have similar mascara needs to her. She always goes for a waterproof formula as do I, she wants the curl to last and wants some length…so do I, we’re practically lash sisters right?

Obviously when I saw her talk about it, the Catrice Glamour Doll Volume Waterproof Mascara went on my to buy list. And as we know here in Ireland Catrice is readily available in pharmacies and Penneys around these parts and it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, so even a better reason to give it a try. To be fair myself and Catrice have been getting on like a house on fire of late and I am thoroughly enjoying the brand.

I think the easiest way to review a mascara is to just show you in action. I have blabbed on about my lashes being pretty lame many times so I won’t bore you with the details, but my lashes need a bit of oomph and curl to look semi decent. Mascara would definitely be one of my desert island products.

Here they are with no product on them at all.

Here they are curled with an eyelash curlers, I have straight lashes and no mascara really gives me the full curl I want so this is a necessary step in my routine. It just gives them an extra lift, which I don’t have naturally.

Here, I have added a few coats of the Catrice Glamour Doll to one of my eyes.

You can see it makes a pretty significant difference to my lashes right?

The Glamour Doll Volume Waterproof mascara has a small plastic wand, with small spikes tips to it, I think it makes for really easy application, and you can get right into the root of the lashes with it. I layer it too and it doesn’t become overly clumpy and leave you with spider lashes either.

So here’s the mascara added to both eyes top and bottom.

I’m even happy to add a slick of the Glamour Eyes to my bottom lashes, and it lasts quite well. Usually I can be a bit of a mascara ponce and tend to stick to a tubing mascara on my bottom lashes, but the wand on this one isn’t too large so it applies pretty easy to the lower lashes and has yet to smudge on me either.

If you struggle with a curl lasting in your lashes like me and you want some extra length, with a bit of added volume too, I really recommend giving the Catrice Glamour Doll Volume Waterproof Mascara a go.

And the best part, it will set you back €4.99, not bad right?

October 18, 2015/13 Comments/by Gem

Archives, Bargain Buying, Makeup

Budget Undereye Concealing with Flormar & Catrice

I gave first impressions on both of these products that were new to me together over on Snapchat (I’m ‘Beautynook’ over there) a couple of weeks ago and I’ve used them that way everyday since.

They are the Flormar Perfect Coverage Concealer and the Catrice Liquid Camouflage High Coverage Concealer. Both of these concealers were under a fiver individually. I bought them both respectively to try but realised I really like using them together, so that’s why they are getting a joint review.

Now I know you’re thinking Gemma, why are using two products to conceal your lovely under circles? That’s a great question thanks for asking 🙂 Let me show you.

When using the two of these for concealing I use the Flormar Perfect Coverage first.

I picked up the shade 01 Fair Ivory and it works well for my Mac NC20 skintone.

I like the applicator on this product too. It has like a paddle shaped doe-foot applicator, that works really easily under the eyes.

My under eyes without any concealer on (I do have foundation on though) looks a bit like this.

You can see I definitely have some blue tones under there as well some pigmentation.

I use the Flormar Perfect Coverage first because it has a salmon tone to it.

And then I blend it in using whatever synthetic brush I have to hand.

It’s really lightweight and easy to blend.

You can see the finished result here, it does it jobs well and conceals, without caking or looking too obvious.

Then, I pull out the Catrice Liquid Camouflage High Coverage Concealer.

I got this in the shade 010 Porcelain, it is a pretty light shade, this is good for under the eyes as you want to highlight that area just a touch.

I pop a layer (or two) of this over top. It has a lightweight formula that blends easily into the skin, but still manages to do it’s job of concealing and brightening really well.

You can see this has more of a skin coloured tone to it. And I do the same, just blend it down in a triangle motion and then up across the tops of my cheeks with a synthetic brush.

By all means you can just use the Flormar Perfect Coverage on it’s own or even the Catrice Liquid Camouflage and be good to go. Separately they conceal well and do not crease under my eyes, as well as not settling into any fine lines or making any dry patches more apparent. I think alot of the cheaper brands struggle with concealer, so to have found two really good ones at the same time is a revelation!

I like using both these products together because, the Flormar works great for the pigmentation and darkness and then the Catrice really brightens the under eye area. Together they make me look more awake…and alive :p

It’s really love at first swipe for me with these 🙂 You can buy the Flormar Perfect Coverage from SimplyFoxy here or in any stockists around the country. The Catrice Liquid Camouflage is online here from Sam McCauley’s or again you can pick it up from stands nationwide including Penneys.

xxx

October 10, 2015/6 Comments/by Gem

Makeup

Mary-Lou Manizer- the Balm

I have put off writing about Mary-Lou Manizer, even though I have her in my possession a long time now. I felt like she was well represented in the blogging community. Everyone was writing about her and rightly so! She deserves to be talked about in loving tones 🙂

This is why now I am choosing to add my little blogpost to the pile.

Mary-Lou Manizer has reached cult status, and most makeup lovers own and love her (yes I am calling her a her 🙂 Just in case you haven’t come across her though I felt like it was my duty as a blogger to share her with you.

Mary-Lou Manizer by the Balm is of course a powder highlighter.

It is buttery, it is smooth and it is beautiful!

It is a light champagne colour, so it’s great for paleys like myself. Although it looks sparkly in the pan, it translates onto the skin as a shine rather than glitter, so don’t let that deter you.

Here it is blended into the skin

Depending on how you apply it, you can get a subtle glow from it or you can go all out and shine so much, the aliens in space can see you 🙂

It is also the perfect inner corner highlight to finish off an eye look, to make your eyes pop. AND it is lovely used all over the lid aswell (multifunctional don’t ya know 🙂 )

And it works great over the upper lip to create the illusion of a bigger one. I love this trick as my lips are definitely not symmetrical.

I have oily skin and tend to create my own glow as the day wears on, so I powder pretty heavily. I hate my skin to look flat and powdery though. A wash of Mary-Lou sorts that right out for me and helps gives my face a bit of life and dimension. It lasts really well on my skin too, which is such a bonus, as I feel alot of highlighters I have tried through the years tend to just soak into after a couple of hours and disappear.

If you are a makeup fan, you need Mary-Lou Manizer by the Balm in your life, I think the product speaks for itself, right?

Cloud10 Beauty stock the Balm. You can get Mary-Lou Manizer here and it will set you back €20.50

xxx

August 28, 2015/11 Comments/by Gem

Makeup

Nars Dual Intensity Blush In Adoration

Nars have been doing the rounds with their Dual Intensity collections for a while now. I have the Dual Intensity Eyeshadow Palette which I reviewed here a while back and love. They also have individual shadows which are pretty gorgeous too.

The whole point of calling them dual intensity is that you can use them wet or dry, but they look fab either way, just much more in your face when dampened.

I really wanted to try the blush duos when they came out because I loved the shadows so much. So, I grabbed just one of the Nars Dual Instensity Blush Duos, (they’re expensive), and that was in the shade ‘Adoration’.

As you can see this is a pretty pink pairing. In the usual Nars sleek rubber packaging.

There is obviously a much pinker powder on the right of the palette which of course is your blush. But you also get a much lighter pink highlight shade too.

The shades in the Nars Dual Intensity Blush duos are super pigmented.

They’re also really easy to blend.

The blush shade is a what I would describe as a hot pink shade, and the highlight is lovely and shiny without being too glittery.

As I mentioned you can use the powders as is or you can also use them wet so here they are swatched.

Dry:

Swatched Wet:

You can see there’s definitely more intensity from dampening the product. I don’t know if you would want your blush this crazy though, or maybe you would? 🙂

As lovely as the ‘Adoration’ shades are, I don’t see myself grabbing for the duo alot. I think the blush is so super pigmented, that it doesn’t lend itself to everyday makeup wearing, for me anyway. Of course, they can be blended out, but if I’m in a hurry to get out the door in the morning I tend to choose something a bit more wearable.

The Nars Dual Intensity Blush duos come in an array of different colours, six to be exact.

You can pick them up from Brown Thomas and they cost €39.

August 20, 2015/5 Comments/by Gem

Makeup, Makeup Tools

Top Five Foundation Brushes

I popped up a post about the top five eyeshadow brushes to have in your collection last week here and it went down really well. So I thought I would add onto this and talk about my top five foundation brushes. Now I’m not saying you need five foundation brushes in your life, that’s just for beauty junkies like myself who just can’t stop buying them. I just thought I would list five different types of foundation brush that are on the market and explain a bit about them and you can just pick your favourite from the bunch…or all of them… it’s you prerogative really 🙂

First up I have, the kabuki style brush.

These come from all brands in all shapes and sizes.

They are a basically a tightly packed, (hopefully soft) synthetic foundation brush. They can apply alot of product and do it quickly and can be used to really buff foundation into the skin. These are probably my favourite type of foundation brush, as I have large pores and I find I can get the foundation into the pores really well with a kabuki brush and fill them in.

Next up is the old school flat foundation brush.

I only have one of these in my brush collection, because for me personally it’s not my favourite application tool.

However alot of people love using this type of brush for applying foundation and then even using something like a beauty blender to work it into the skin more. For me, I feel a flat brush leaves the foundation sitting on your skin more, it tends to apply like a paint brush. I have oily skin, so for me especially this doesn’t bode to well throughout the day. Again, it’s just personal preference really 🙂

Here we have the stippling brush.

The stippling brush is a duo fibred brush. This means it two different types of fibre within the same brush. It has denser (usually darker) bristles at the base of the brush, with lighter looser packed bristles at the top, which are again synthetic hairs. Synthetic bristles are much better for creams as the the product doesn’t soak into them and disappear as much as it would real hair.

A stippling brush as you would assume is softer on the top, so you can really massage your mug with it in whichever way you prefer depending on the pressure you use. You can kind of have the best of both worlds with it.

Buffing brushes are next in my top five.

These are like a less densely packed kabuki brush.

So they splay out more as you use them to work your foundation in. Because of this they give a less concentrated coverage, so a lighter coverage of product ensues 🙂

Ok the last brush I’m going to talk about is not a brush at all. But I wanted the title of the blog post to be the same as the eyeshadow one so apologies (I’m sad I know).

So makeup sponges!

Sponges have been used since the dawn of time to apply makeup so there’s nothing new here really.

You can buy packs of them in the euro shops for next to nothing. I personally would say dampen the sponge before you use it, it makes for a smoother application and it doesn’t suck up all your foundation. Sponges like the Beauty Blender and Real Techniques ones I have here market themselves to be dampened, but the cheaper one wouldn’t always tell you so tis’ a handy little tip. Sponges are a great tool for using after your foundation brush aswell, to just roll on your skin, and take up any excess product and just make sure your work is blended as much as it can be 🙂

So there you have a little synopses of some of the foundation brushes on the market :p

Of course there is a million and one ways of doing it, this is just a break down of a few I have tried and tested.

Cheers for reading as always.

xxx

August 10, 2015/1 Comment/by Gem

Makeup, Makeup Tools

My Top Five Eyeshadow Brushes

When I say top five eyeshadow brushes, I don’t mean you have to run out and buy these specific brushes. I just mean having similar brushes in your life will make your eyeshadow application a little bit easier.

I’m a firm believer in letting your eyeshadow brushes do the work for you. Obviously, makeup lovers tend to accumulate alot of brushes over time, but if you take care of yours, I think 5 (or so) will get you through any makeup look.

First and foremost, you need a blending brush.

Blending brushes can be used for pretty much everything.

The Mac 217 is probably the most infamous blending brush, but most brands have their own version of them nowadays. I use a blending brush for applying my crease colour and blending it out softly . As they have a rounded top, you use the higher bristles to apply the products and then diffuse it using the whole of the brush. It’s handy to have two blending brushes in your collection so if the one you are using gets too much product on it, you can switch, but you can always just wipe it off as you go. Noone wants a muddy crease line do they? 🙂 A blending brush works just as good for applying colour all over the lid to, so it’s a bit of a multi tasker in your arsenal which is never a bad thing.

For more defined crease work a tapered brush will come in very handy.

These are just examples of what I use, but again anything similar you can get your hands on will work fine. You just want a soft(ish) brush with a more pointed top. It will let you isolate the colour more when adding it to the crease, so you get a more distinct line there, but you can still use it to feather out the colour if it’s looking a bit too harsh.

A flat brush is a great one to have in your collection too and is definitely a part of my top five eyeshadow brushes list.

Something you can pack colour onto the lid with. It’s great to have a bigger one and a smaller one, but whatever your budget allows is really ok. You just don’t want something too big, unless you’re just using it for washes of colour all across the lid.

I think a pencil brush is another essential brush to have in your collection.

Like a blending brush, they can be used for a plethora of reasons. To apply colour under the lash line, above the lashline, in the tear duct, on the brow brone, or for applying very precise lines in the crease, if you are being particularly fancy.

Finally, I think an eyeliner brush is a must.

I think which one you choose comes down to comfortability really. Whether you are a bent liner brush gal, a straight thin brush, or one of an angled variety, there’s one of to suit all.

There are so many brands out there now that do fab eyeshadow brushes, for all different uses and price points. Sigma, Zoeva, Louise Young, Real Techniques, Mac the list is endless. And us Irish have some fab brands on our doorstep like Nima Brushes and Blank Canvas Cosmetics which is pretty brilliant.

When it comes to real hair or synthetic, just remember don’t apply liquid products with real hair brushes, it will soak up all the product and it will probably damage your brushes in the process too. Synthetic brushes are much more suited to this and you can apply powder with them aswell.

There you have it my top five eyeshadow brushes. I hope that was somewhat helpful, if you’re in the market. If you have any more questions, just ask me in the comments sure 🙂

Thanks for reading.

xxx

August 5, 2015/6 Comments/by Gem