Chanel Hydra Beauty Micro Serum

I've been holding onto this product for a while before I did a review - if for nothing else just for the price. This serum is £66 and while I've been dipping my toes into more expensive serums there are some great serums you can pick up on more of a budget. I picked this up after Caroline Hirons mentioned it being worth picking up (surprise, surprise) but I actually picked it up in Duty Free on my trip to Amsterdam to save myself some money. So lets have a look.

The texture on this is interesting, it holds together like a gel when you pump it out onto the back of your hand but when you try to spread it across your face it feels very liquid and has almost a watery silicone type slip to it. It does attract and lock in moisture on the skin and feels great. The little bubbles in the bottle burst as you pump the product out so it's completely smooth on the skin - I was a little surprised that it wasn't at all lumpy or bumpy as your spread it across your skin.

The Hydra Beauty Micro Serum has the same scent as a lot of the other products in Chanel's skincare range. If you're really sensitive to fragrance you might want to keep it in mind that it is present in this product. It has a slightly perfume-y sweet scent that is pleasant and not what I would call over-powering.

The packaging isn't my favourite. The pump is nice and sturdy and the lid is reasonably secure. The bottle is plastic so with all of that in mind, I can see it being good for travel. However for the price of the product, it doesn't feel overly luxurious and I feel like the packaging it designed to trick the eye into thinking you get more product than you do. The bottle is rectangular but the product is actually contained in a cylinder inside of the bottle so there's excess packaging. Aesthetically it's nice but it does beg the question are Chanel trying to make it look like a better deal?

All-in-all, I wanted this review to end in a "is it worth your money?" and if I'm honest, I'm not sure it is. Don't get me wrong I do really like it and I've enjoyed using it and it makes my skin feel great. However with the cheap feeling packaging and the lack of any seemingly expensive ingredients, I do think the price is steep.

30 Lips in 30 Days - MUA Luxe Lip Stain

Day 8 of the 30 Lips challenge brings us my least favourite lip product so far: the MUA Luxe Lip Stain. For an affordable lip product, the packaging is lovely, a nice frosted-glass effect casing with nice gold writing to tell you what the product is. It's the formula that lets this one down massively.

When applied it goes on with a creamy, almost whipped texture similar to their Whipped Velvet Lips that I mentioned earlier on in the 30 lips challenge (clicky link here) but when it dries down, it creates almost a film over the lips that is unbearably drying. Now I did think with it being so drying that this might at least make it a super long-wearing lip product, but it crumbles and flakes off as soon as it comes into contact with moisture, so if your eating or drinking or even just talking this isn't great. The shade I picked up "Atomic" was really off for me too, I love a bold lip but this went on like a radioactive orange shade that I didn't think suited me all that well.