My Autumn Beauty Boosters

So the mornings have started to get quite crisp round these parts lately and the sun seems to be setting earlier and earlier every day and that can only mean one thing: autumn is well and truly on it's way. Autumn is my favourite season and I'm looking forward to snuggling back into my chunky knits and boots. So now the weather's settling down and the light is starting to fade a bit, here's my autumn beauty edit:

 In the summer I actually took a quick break from my Oskia Renaissance Cleansing Gel in favour of a more creamy cleanser, but now it's cooling down I'm back to using this more in the evenings as a nice pre-bed-time treat. Another skin treat I've coming running back to now the summer's saying its goodbyes is the MV Organics Rose Plus Hydrating Booster. It's a deliciously rose-scented oil that hydrates the skin well and it's another bed-time beauty boost.

I always like to go a bit darker as autumn comes in and two lipsticks I'll be reaching for a lot more will be Illamsqua "Growl" and MAC "Rebel". I've also been wearing Fleur De Force's Lipgloss in "Starry Starry Night" a lot lately but my top dark-lip pick this autumn is the Rimmel Kate Moss Lipstick in "107". I've resisted for a few years but I finally caved and it's such a beautiful colour.

If I'm not feeling a dark lip the eyeshadow palette I always come back to in the autumn is the Urban Decay "Smoked" Palette. Unfortunately they've since discontinued this and released the Naked Smokey which doesn't compare really, but you can pick up a lot of the shades in "Smoked" from UD's permanent range, my favourite is "Mushroom", a metallic grey-brown that makes a great neutral smokey eye.

For hair I like to go to town with the texture in autumn. For general volume I love the Color Wow One-Minute Transformation. It's a product I love all year long for giving my fine, flimsy hair a bit of volume at the roots. I also like a good sea-salt spray to give the ends of my hair that laid-back lived-in look. Autumn is the season for wooly hats and scarves and I think nothing goes better with a wooly hat than some messy texture in your locks. (And I know I'm not the only person who has those emergency hat days when autumn comes around).

And finally, for nails, while I'm not normally a nail polish girl I can get behind one of two nail trends that seem to come back every autumn. I love a dark or metallic nail once the days start getting shorter. I think it might be because darker nail polish formulas seem to be easier to apply than the pale/pastel colours that come back every spring and summer and a darker/metallic nail is a lot less maintenance. Whatever it is, it's a trend I can get behind and a couple I'll be cracking out this year are Essie "Bahama Mama" and Tanya Burr "New York Night", nice vampy red/purple shades are my favourite.

High Street Heros - Other Beauty Bits

So for the final installment of my High-Street Hero's series, I thought I'd touch on hair, nails and body. As usual I've bunched these categories together because they tend to be the beauty categories that I neglect a little bit and so I didn't have enough favourites from any of them to put together dedicated posts for them, but I still didn't want to miss them. So without further a due:

A product that I've been repurchasing for years now is the VO5 Heat Protect Spray, i just love this product as it's light, smells nice, protects my hair and isn't something that going to break the bank every time I find myself needing to make a repurchase. I have tried other heat protect sprays in the past and have liked them, but I always go back to this one. Bonus points for the spray-mist application method.

While I've recently developed a love for the Bumble & Bumble Hairdressers Invisible Oil Shampoo, it's eye-wateringly expensive for a shampoo, and so I like to rotate it with the more budget friendly L'Oreal EverPure Shampoo. I've been through multiple bottles of this now and I really like it. It doesn't contain any sulphates so it's great for my coloured hair and is less irritating on my skin (if anyone is currently suffering from horrific back acne I'd suggest looking at your shampoo because my skin has gotten to much better since switching to a sulphate-free shampoo).

For once I've only got one conditioner in my shower and that's the OGX Argan Oil Conditioner, it's just so nourishing on my hair and it's smells nice without being over-powering. I do like to do a hair mask on the weekend for a suped-up hit of hair hydration but day-to-day this does the trick perfectly.

A hair favourite that fills me with sadness is Batiste's Hint of Red Dry Shampoo, mainly because it's been out of stock for the last 4 months and I've had to go without it for such a long time that I'm worried it's in the process of being discontinued. It's my favourite dry shampoo and it's great for hiding roots if you're as bad at getting to the salon to have your hair re-coloured regularly as I am. Come back into stock soon Batiste! I need you!

For those with naturally wavy hair, I'd recommend the Naked Style Devine Curls, I picked this up on a whim and it became a favourite pretty quickly. This is the only hair styling product I ever take on holiday with me as it gives my naturally wavy hair some real curl that I love. It works in any temperature so I can use it when I'm at home too, I wash my hair, blow dry my roots and then scrunch this into the ends and let them air dry and I get some really nice curls from it.

And my final hair favourite is Ion Volume Dust, I'm not too sure how available this product is but I pick it up from Sally's and Salon Services (thank you mother for being a nail technician so I can get insane deals on beauty products). If you pick this up anywhere it's a great dupe for + Fluff Dust and it's basically one of those powders that you work into your roots to get volume.

A couple of Soap & Glory body favourites are their Heel Genius foot cream. A minty foot cream that absorbs into the skin quickly, it' designed to be applied and then worn under socks overnight but as I can't sleep in socks I use it on the weekends when I'm just hanging around the house (most of which is time I spend working on these posts actually) and it leaves my tootsies feeling nice and soft. My other favourite from them is their Pulp Friction body scrub. I've tried lots of other body scrubs in the past but I always go back to this one because it really is my favourite. The squeeze-tube bottle is a great delivery method and the formula is quite creamy so it sticks to your skin in the shower and makes for an easy exfoliation job. Also, the scent is amazing.

I thought I should include a nail polish favourite in this post because while I don't usually bother painting my finger nails, my toes nails are always painted and my favourite budget polish brand is definitely Top Shop Nails. They're so affordable and the formula is great and even better? The colour selection is insane for a high-street polish brand. Much love.

And finally a scent favourite. Now perfumes pretty consistently fall outside of my £15 budget for this series of posts so I had to think slightly outside of the box and then I realised there's a budget scent that I use constantly! The Soap & Glory Body Sprays are my scent-purchase of choice for work just because no-one wants to be using their £100 perfumes for the office now do they? I do often get compliments on their "Glam-A-Lot" scent but I also like the "Mist You Madly" fragrance.

And there we have it. Slightly shorter than the other instalments with just 10 products in this post but like I said these are categories that I struggle with. Back to my regular posts next week!