No Money March: Soap & Glory Archery Brow Putty Dip Pot & Brush

Brows have always been the one area of makeup that I feel like I can never get quite right. I have naturally sparse, mousey brows and I've always dyed my hair darker and in a way that makes my natural brows look borderline non-existent. With that in mind, every time a new high stress brow product launches, I get a bit excited and so I picked up the Soap & Glory Dip Pot & Brush pretty much as soon as I saw it had launched.

So the packaging of this looks very much like a jumbo pen eyeliner packaging, it's quite a thick tube with a pull off cap and initially I thought the product would be in the cap of the packaging. When you pull the cap off there's a clean brush underneath and the product is in a pot that you unscrew from the bottom of the product.

My initial though is that the packaging is a little clumsy. This is essentially a brow pomade type product and it would have been much more practical for them to package it as a pot with a separate brush like other brands have released and I think S&G have packaged it this way to make it look like it's something really different. At £10 full price it's at the same price point as most of Soap & Glory's other brow products and it sits in the upper end of high-street pricing.

Packaging aside its nice. The brush is small enough for you to not overload the brows and the product is dry enough and sheer enough that you don't end up looking like you've sharpie'd on your brows. The shade selection isn't terrible, there's 3 shades to pick from "Love is Blonde", "Brownie Points" and "Dark Chocolate", Soap & Glory's brow products usually only have 2 shade varieties so this is a step in the right direction for them.

With it being a brush that you have to dip into product it's not nearly as quick to apply as a brow pencil but I wouldn't say that it takes so long that it's impractical and the finished result is nice and natural looking. I do think it's missing a spool-y brush to comb through the brows as with the formula being quite waxy I like to comb through the brows both before application to make the shape easier to follow and then again after I've filled them in to blend in any areas that I may have been heavy-handed in.

All in all I think it's a decent product. While I have some gripe with the packaging it does work nicely and it's not unreasonably priced. If you're into brow pomades it might be worth checking out.

October Favourites

I can't believe October is pretty much over already (I know this is a bit earlier than I normally post my monthly favourites but that's the way the schedule fell due to other posts I've got lined up). I've been testing out a few new bits this month and I think I've found some good picks for this one.

On the make-up front, I know I gave these an honorary mention last month but I just wanted to mention that the Fluer De Force Lip Gloss has been a true favourite this month, I've worn the shade "Written In The Stars" at least twice a week since I picked it up and it's just a great fuss-free everyday neutral.

With me keeping it simple on the lips I've been going for a bit of a stronger look on the eyes and have been gravitating towards my Charlotte Tilbury Colour Chameleon in "Golden Quartz for Hazel Eyes Day" it's a great rusty bronze with golden shimmer that seems to give a subtle hint of green to the lids and I love the uniqueness of the shade. The formula is great too, nice and quick to apply and lasts well.

My final makeup favourite for the month is the Bourjois Sourcil Precision Eyebrow Pencil. I have the shade "07 Noisette" and it's a great eyebrow pencil. It's a bit waxier than other formulas and I find that I don't need to use a brow gel with this one as it's got a little hold to it and my brows aren't particularly unruly. My only bug-bare with this is that the brush on the lid is a bit pants, if they swapped that out for a good spool-y brush this would be perfect.

Possible TMI here: as it's been getting a bit colder I've been finding that my feet have been getting a bit gross looking/feeling. I've been popping on the Soap & Glory Hell Genius Amazing Foot Cream under my socks on a daily basis and it's sorted out any dryness or general winter-woes pretty quickly. A great SOS product.

For skincare I have two new favourites, one high end and one budget. For high end I've been loving the Skyn Iceland Pure Cloud Cleanser. It's a lovely, cooling creamy cleanser and while it can be used both day and night I find that the cooling sensation is just exactly what I want in the morning to wake me up.

My budget skincare find is the Nspa Oil-Free Moisture Gel, this is an insanely good product. I'd moved on to using oils instead of moisturisers 9 times out of 10 because moisturisers just weren't cutting it for me. Having oily but dehydrated skin made it really hard for me to find something hydrating enough but that wasn't too heavy or greasy to wear under makeup but this product has it down. It's a nice hydrating cream that sinks in almost immediately.

And there we have it, I still can't believe how fast this year is going.

Skint-tember Begins! Top 10 Under £10 - Eyes

So in light of many of you that are jetting off to begin (or continue) your university adventures this month (and because I love a good pun), I thought I'd dedicate this month to budget beauty buys, and what better way to kick things off than a top 10 under £10? This is the first instalment and we'll be focusing on eye products.

I've been loving cream eyeshadows in stick form lately and I've got two to mention today that won't break the bank, firstly theres the Bourjois ColourBand Eyeshadow Sticks. These are lovely, pigmented, long-lasting eyeshadow sticks that are easy to blend and come in a small but carefully selected colour range and you can pick these up in Boots. If a large colour selection is something you're after, the KIKO Long Lasting Eyeshadow Sticks are a little bit harder to find (I'd try the website if you're no where near a store) but the colour selection is insane and they're very comparable to much more expensive formulas.

I've picked out quite a few neutral palettes in a variety of sizes so there should be something for everyone here. If quads are your thing I have two that I like, Soap & Glory Lid Stuff is the most expensive product in this line-up at dead-on £10 but it's lovely and the shade selection in the neutral version is well thought out and comprehensive. If that's a little too indulgent I'd also recommend the NYC HD Quattro Eye Shadow quads, I have the shade "Best of Broadway" and it's lovely but their selection of these is really nice and they're well within the £10 budget.

If you're looking for a slightly bigger eyeshadow palette, again, I have two that I'd recommend. Firstly the Maybelline The Nudes Palette is a great pick, the 12 shades are laid out in the palette to be used as duos, trios or quads or of course you can mix and match the whole palette to create your looks, and the shadows are buttery smooth to apply. Alternatively, you can pick up the Revolution Redemption Palette Iconic 1 (which you'll hear more about later this month) for a mere £4 in super drug. The quality isn't quite as nice as the Maybelline but you're still getting 12 shadows and the price point on this is amazing.

If you're sat there thinking "just give me a loose pigment eyeshadow" you need look no further than the Barry M Dazzle Dusts, they're an old classic but they're brilliant and they're still available in a really good selection of shades (and if you ever manage to finish one, well done to you).

My favourite budget eyeliners are the Rimmel Scandleyes Eyeliners, the shade selection is nice for a high-street liner and the formula is up there with the Urban Decay 24/7 Liners. It was very difficult not to pick up every colour when they first launched.

The brow product I decided to include is the No7 Beautiful Brow Sculpting Pencil, mainly because it's the fuss-free high-street option. The pencil is nice and chunky which makes for a speedy brow application. The shade selection is great and the spool-y brush on the end is brilliant.

And finally, my high-street mascara pick is obviously the MaxFactor 2000 Calorie Curved Brush Mascara and I will continue to repurchase this until death or discontinuation (although the thought of it finding a way off the shelves of Boots makes me want to run out and buy 20 right now). It's a brilliant mascara that makes even my worst-of-the-wort lashes look somewhat acceptable.

So there we have it, a round-up of all of my high-street eye favourites, I hope you enjoy Skint-tember!

High Street Hero's - The Make-up Edition

In a bid to write posts that were maybe a little more budget-friendly, I've lined up what I'm calling "High Street Hero's" for this week, which is going to be a series of 3 posts that are basically a "15 under 15" type post. I wanted to put a price limit on it because I've been noticing recently things I like in Boots that are high-street brands are creeping up in price ever so slightly, and now L'Oreal eye-creams are on par price-wise with brands like Kheil's and I didn't see the point in recommending products like these as "budget" offerings.

So to kick things off we'll start with the Soap and Glory Sexy Mother Pucker Gloss Sticks, particularly in the shades "Nudist" and "Plum Jam". These are the perfect no-fuss lip colours that you can generally apply without the need for a mirror. They're sheer and super glossy which makes them a good comfortable lip colour and while they don't hang around too long they are pretty much my make-up jogging-bottoms equivalent.

One that everyone and their nan will have mentioned on blogs and YouTube channels a like is the Rimmel Scandaleyes Eyeliner Pencils. If the colour selection for these was as good as the range of Urban Decay 24/7 Liners, I'd have given up on buying UD liners long ago because they are pretty much just as good. The Rimmel ones come in a decent array of colours and my picks from the range are the nude, the taupe and the bright blue.

A product that I've harped on and on about on this blog is the Maxfactor 2000 Calorie Curved Brush Mascara. It's just a brilliant mascara for length but it still gives a little bit of volume and (most importantly) makes my limp lashes hold a curl without the need to go waterproof.

A couple of Soap & Glory base products that you'll have also heard me mention on multiple occasions are their Solar Powder and their One Heck of a Blot Powder. The solar-powder is a blogger-rated bronzer and it's lovey. As a pale-complexion girl I often struggle to find bronzers that work for me but as this one has the 2 shades in 1 I've really been enjoying using it. The one-heck-of-a-blot is now my go-to setting powder, have recently repurchased for the 3rd time!

The L'Oreal True Match Foundation is an oldie but a goodie. I've been using this on-and-off for years now and I always come back to it. The shade selection is brilliant and it's one of the few high-street foundations that is a perfect skin tone match for me. Super pale girls might want to give this one a try.

Another foundation I've been really enjoying lately is the Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation. While their lightest shade is definitely more my summer colour I find that mixed with moisturiser it gives a nice coverage that isn't too obviously dark on my complexion. I've been loving it now the wether in England has finally started to brighten up as it's giving my skin that slightly sun-kissed glow that we all crave this time of year.

My Holy-Grail brow product is the Soap & Glory Archery Brow Pencil. While the shade selection leaves much to be desired I find that the shade "Hot Chocolate" works well for me. I love the thin-nibbed pencil and the spooly brush on the other end of the product is a very nice one. I do mix it up with brows quite frequently lately but I'm finding that I keep coming back to this one.

So for a while I didn'y bother with high-street eyeshadows as they generally only came in singles, so when you could buy a high-end palette where for £36 you got 12 shades and it worked out at £3 a shade, it made very little sense to me to be paying £5-£8 for drugstore single shadows. Then the L'Oreal La Palette Nude (Blush) hit the high-street and I found myself getting excited about high-street eyeshadows for the first time. Okay, so the pigmentation and blendability isn't as good as my much-loved Urban Decay shadows, but for what you pay, it's a beaut.

One that I've mentioned before but not for a while now is the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvets, AKA my favourite high-street lip products ever. I have the shades "Hot Pepper" and "Frambourjois" but I'm also eyeing up "Olé Flamingo" at the moment. They're just a great long-lasting matte lip that's comfortable and easy to apply. That being said, avoid the shade "Grand Cru", have read many a duff review on that shade and it seems to really let the line down, hopefully they'll reformulate that shade eventually.

Another budget eyeshadow find for me was the Soap & Glory Lid Stuff palette. This palette does come in a few different shade ranges but I like the one with the more neutral shade selection just because those are the types of shades I reach for most often. Not as god a deal as the L'Oreal as you get 4 shades for around £10 but the shade selection and the quality of these for me is what sells it.

When it comes to blush, Maxfactor have got it down. I've got a couple of their cheek products and I think both are brilliant. For the powder-blush lover their Creme Puff Blushes are lovely, lots of bloggers compare them to the Hourglass Ambient Light Blushes but since I don't currently have one of those I couldn't validate that claim, my faouvirte shade from the range is "Nude Mauve". And for the cream blush wearer? Their Miracle Touch Creamy Blush, particularly in the shade "Soft Pink" is delightful. Blends nicely and gives just the right amount of colour, I like to apply this one with a Rela Techniques Expert Face Brush.

Another Maxfactor base product that I've been loving is their FaceFinity Primer. It's basically suerglue for your foundation and it also has SPF 20 so if you like your make-up to have some SPF to it, this is probably something you'd like. It glides on the skin like a moisturiser and dries down under foundation for a super long-lasting base.

And finally a fairly recent find of mine, the Soap & Glory Hocus Focus Highlight, this to me is very much like Benefit High Beam. It's a liquid highlight that can be applied before foundation, on top of foundation light a targeted highlight or, my personal favourite, mixed into your foundation for a subtle all-over glow.