Birthday presents - Benefit Boi-ing Concealer

Part two of the presents from my godmother is the Benefit Boi-ing Concealer! I've been needing a good concealer lately so I decided to get this as I've heard many good things about it .

I adore Benefit's packaging. It just jumps straight out at you and makes you want to buy everything they have although then you get a look at the prices and jump straight back.

I love their little blurbs!

I bought shade 2, which looked a bit too dark on my wrist, but fits my face very well, thankfully! 

It's a decently sized concealer,  I'm thinking it will last me long enough as you really don't need that much, even for dark circles! I also like the way the lid unscrews, it's not held together by some flimsy clasp so you don't need to worry about that breaking (unlike my Sephora eyeshadows).

too dark, as you can see.

before

after

So as you can see, it's a teeny bit cakey, but it doesn't settle into my fine lines (at the moment!) and it does the job. It works really well for concealing spots as well, so I'm very pleased. I'm curious as to see how it'll fare combined with my Collection 2000 concealer, hopefully very well, so I'll let you all know as soon as I've tried that!

Birthday presents - Clinique Travel Set

Today's present is from my best friend who bought this with the reasoning 'I know her mum will refuse to buy her makeup so she won't be getting that much so I'll buy her makeup'. She was right, my mum refused to get me anything *sob*.

So this is one of Clinique's many travel sets which includes:

• 1x Take The Day Off Makeup Remover 30ml/1oz
• 2x All About Eyes 7ml/0.21oz
• 1x High Impact Mascara 7ml/0.28oz ( #01 Black )
• 1x Bag ( Pink )

 So there are four products are all samples except the mascara. I actually have the mascara as a sample as well courtesy of Glamour a few months ago.

First up is the Take The Day Off makeup remover. First of all, I like the name of this, it reminds me a bit of Benefit's way of naming products. This makeup remover's quite good, it works well enough, but as there isn't an extraordinary amount of it, I'm just using it to dip a cotton bud in to remove any mistakes I may have made as I have a tendency of pouring out too much makeup remover.

Next up are the All About Eyes de-puffing eye massage serum. I've used this once but I can't really tell if it makes much of a difference as my eyes aren't really that puffy. It has a tiny bit of a sticky feel to it, which isn't really that much a big deal as it fades away after about five minutes (the feeling, that is).

Finally, we have the High Impact mascara. Although it does nothing to curl my lashes (but then again, what mascara does?), it does add volume, so I think I'll use this for night outs rather than during the day, as it can get a bit too much if I'm not careful (which I'm not during the morning before school) and I don't usually have time to start again before school.

That's it for this post, I shall be finished with my tests this week at the time that this is posted so if I don't get a lot of homework, I may have another update which isn't scheduled! (Although the next one is anyway.)

EDIT: My post scheduling thing is a little funny, it didn't post my previous post at the time I wanted to so I thought I'd just post this one today anyway.

Birthday presents - MAC Lipstick in 'Speak Louder'

[So I managed to take new pictures and that's why I am not scheduling this post for tomorrow!]

Another of my few makeup related presents on Tuesday was something that I've actually had since the beginning of June, but was forbidden to touch and wear until my birthday.

Me and Dani have now decided that we shall make it a tradition to get each other MAC products for our birthdays (I think we have?). She got Impassioned from me and I got Speak Louder.

My first MAC product. Ever! First of all, I adore the smell of these lipsticks. Second of all, I like how the packaging doesn't seem to get covered in marks whenever you touch it (talking to you, Sleek iDivine palette!) and (well duh) how professional it looks.

The lipstick itself looks really dark which for a moment made me wonder whether I'd asked for a colour that was far too similar to lipsticks that I already own, but thankfully it's a lot lighter on the skin.

 Excuse me looking a bit scruffy/tired/meh in the last foto, I'm makeupless except for the lipstick and my hair is unwashed.

So the lipstick is really nice and not too bright, which is good, because I think I have enough of those. Otherwise, it lasts a few hours, although I can't say that with absolute certainty as I wore it to the cinema and I spent those two hours munching on crisps and drinking, so it did wear off a bit.

All in all, I'm very pleased with it and shall be wearing it out ,perhaps Wednesday, it's the grand-duke's birthday (not really, it's more the national day of luxembourg) on Thursday (so it's another bank holiday!) so there'll be fireworks in town and everyone generally goes out on wednesday night and I am as well, so that's probably where I'll wear it!

Birthday presents - Benefit Cha Cha Tint

It seems I have been MIA - again. There's lots to do at school lately as our last term is so short so we have lots of tests after another, the week of the 27th is especially going to be ugly, I can already tell you guys that.

I DO have a few reviews planned as I got some makeup products for my birthday. I would start in chronological order, but I have just realised that the one camera I used for those pictures is awful and I don't like the pictures. So I'm not showing them *stubborn perfectionist*.

These ones, however aren't that bad, so that's why I'm posting them first.

So....Cha Cha Tint. I am a humongous lover of all things coral and when I first saw this in a Benefit leaflet I got on the ferry back to la France and my first thought was 'I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE.' And then I thought 'Oh wait, Benefit is extraordinarily out of your budget, girl.' So I had to settle for looking at lovely swatches on the internet.

BUT THEN I went shopping with my lovely godmother who wanted me to choose a birthday present and she generously bought me two Benefit products (the other I shall review once I have taken better pictures.).Luckily, we managed to get the last one they had so I'm very pelased about that. I'm not sure how much it costs in England, but in Europe, it costs 32€. Yes, that is quite pricey, but I've heard that the little tints you get in sets like Finding Mr Bright or with the Glamour magazine last forever so these will last longer than forever!

I love the look of these tints. The jar is nice and pretty but unlike Benetint, I believe, you can't see how much is in the jar, which is a shame, as I'd like to know when I'm close to running out. Otherwise, it's quite good. The actual packaging is a teeny bit misleading as it makes the jar look HUGE, but it's not as big as the packaging, which isn't all that bad as it's still quite an impressive size.

On to the actual product, it hasn't got the same watery consistency as Benetint, rather it's more creamy like Posietint, which is good as I always swatch Posietint instead of Benetint whenever I'm in Sephora. As per usual with tints, you need to be quick in blending them. The first time I tried this, I ended up having orange fingers, so it is quite messy. 

not a very sharp picture, but one of the best from the batch. may have to take one again

Seeing this in the bottle, one might be put off, thinking it's far too bright. As with many other blusher, it's quite sublte on application, as long as you do it lighthandedly.I think to start off, apply two dots and then blend. Benefit suggest three strokes, but I think that may be too much. Start with less and apply more if you're not satisfied, is my motto ;)

Here we have my bare lips and then my lips with Cha Cha Tint on it. You can't see the difference very well as I'm not too experienced with lips close ups -and it was rather sloppily applied- , but I plan on taking a FOTD when I wear this next (and that way, you'll see what it looks like on the cheeks as well:) )

I'm definitely going to pack this for Paris and use it a lot during the summer as coral is such a summer colour and will look great with a tan (if I ever get one!)

That's all for today, I'll see if I can update anytime soon, if not I'll try and write another post (with crappy photos) and schedule it.