COLLECTION Cover & Go!

One of our New Years Resolutions is to scale down our makeup bag. The suitcase full of slap we cart around most days is just excessive, so we’re planning to invest in some multipurpose products and palettes. So we quite like the look of this new foundation and concealer in one from COLLECTION (formally Collection 2000).

The foundation comes in a screw top bottle and there is a matching concealer and mirror contained within the lid. We’ve not tried many products from COLLECTION, but we think this is a really simple but ingenious idea. We’ve got a bottle of this winging its way to us at the moment, so we’ll bring you a full review soon and let you know whether the product itself is as good as the packaging.

If you’ve got a great multipurpose product then let us know, we’d love to hear!

COLLECTION Cover & Go Foundation and Concealer Duo will be available in 6 shades: Vanilla, Ivory, Biscuit, Natural Beige, Honey and Golden for £5.99. It hits Boots stores nationwide from 23rd January 2013 and Superdrug from 6 February 2013.

Going balmy for Balmi!

Sometimes you see a product and just know it’s going to be popular. That’s how we feel about Balmi*. This little lip balm is really appealing for a number of reasons, which is unfortunate because we have too many lip balms already!

Remember when you were a child and there was the latest must have toy or collectable? Well, let’s not pretend we all grow out of that stage. Some of us are still enticed by beautiful packaging or innovative containers. How many times have you spent rather too much on a non-essential like lipstick or nail varnish, because the packaging has sucked you in?

The Balmi makes us think of this phenomena and really appeals to our sense of fun and thankfully being priced at £4.99 it won’t break the bank either. Encased in a silicone sphere, you can apply it without having to use your fingers and spread bacteria. It also has a cord meaning you can attach it to your handbag or purse; we’ve attached ours to our keys so it’s always with us!

In terms of actual performance the Balmi provides a moisturising sheen which can be used on its own or on top of lipstick to give it some gloss. It won’t work so well under lipstick as it will make it slide so be mindful of that. We’ve tried the Raspberry scent and love it, it’s not overpowering and doesn’t smell really synthetic like some scents can. There are four other “flavours” to chose from; Mint, Coconut, Blackcurrant and Strawberry. All of them have SPF 15 and contain Vitamin E, soothing Shea Butter and Jojoba Oil. Balmi don’t test on animals and they’re suitable for sensitive skins.

There have been questions about how similar they are to the EOS balm, which comes in a similar shape. We think they’re both great, and the EOS is brilliant for using under lipstick and it doesn’t slide off. In our opinion the packaging of the Balmi is more appealing and practical; being able to take it everywhere is a bonus. The Balmi is 10.5g compared to the 7g EOS and all the Balmi flavours contain SPF whereas only the Lemon Drop flavoured EOS does.

You can buy Balmi online or in-store at Boots or Mountain Warehouse and you can find out more about them. EOS isn’t stocked in stores in the UK but can be bought online too.

**Balmi is currently 3 for 2 at Boots.com**

Have you got a Balmi? Which is your favourite flavour?

Thanks for reading.

tbo

xxx

Makebelieve… we do!

We weren’t really aware that Makebelieve had a cosmetics line before we received our November She Said Beauty box. We knew they’ve been around for sometime in the self-tanning market and have had good reviews, but now they’ve branched out into the cosmetics market we were keen to see how they lived up to the hype. 

Our She Said Beauty box contained the Makebelieve Enhance, Luminize Skin Highlighter and we’ve been using it everyday for the last week. We liked the packaging, the black and gold box looks stylish, although the actual plastic container is quite plain and unexciting. The highlighter itself is in cream form, which we like as we’re mainly using either liquid or powder highlighter at present and we like to try different textures depending on our look.

The colour is also something we were very pleased with, it has pink/gold undertones which we felt would suit warmer skin tones. Other highlighters are often more silver/blue based and can give a rather unnatural halo effect but Enhance matched really well to our skin tone and gave a very natural looking glow. The cream consistency meant it was easy to apply with fingers and blended well. We found the product to last well and still be shimmering at the end of the day. We use the word shimmering deliberately as that’s exactly what it does, it doesn’t sparkle or glitter thankfully as that is something we detest in highlighters, we don’t want to look like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree!

Apply to the cheek and brow bones for a natural glow, build up the product to get the right level of shimmer for you and blend well with your fingers for the best effect.

We did find it quite difficult to find stockists through the Makebelieve site as they don’t appear to have updated with their own range yet! However a quick search revealed that Boots, asos, John&Ginger and other stockists are available and it’s priced at around £7.

There are other products in the Makebelieve cosmetics range, have you tried them? What did you think? We’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading.

tbo

xxx