E.L.F Studio Flawless Finish Foundation Review

Although I haven’t tried a lot of ELF products before, generally those I have tried have definitely impressed me, so obviously I was pretty excited to try out a few more things from ELF recently.
One of my guilty pleasures when it comes to buying makeup is foundation, so obviously when I placed my ELF order I ended up purchasing ELF's studio flawless finish foundation, and this review will be my honest opinions of the product after testing it out for a couple of weeks!

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting of this foundation when I initially ordered it, I’d just heard quite a few good things about it, so whilst on the ELF website I decided to pick it up and give it a try.
As I was ordering online I was unsure what shade to pick, so I searched for some reviews online of people with similar skin tones to me and found that the lightest shade would probably be best, as it is known to be darker than you’d expect from the lightest shade of a foundation. The colour I picked up was ‘Porcelain’ and found this to actually be the perfect shade for me, and luckily this foundation didn’t seem to oxidise either which is a big plus point! If you’re really fair skinned though, I probably wouldn’t recommend this foundation as there are no lighter shades.

Personally, I’m into the pretty high coverage, long lasting foundations like Revlon Colourstay and Estee Lauder Doublewear, so was hoping this was going to be something along those lines (being called ‘Flawless Foundation’) but unfortunately for me, it wasn’t. I’d say the coverage was medium, and only slightly buildable, but the texture was definitely smooth and ‘flawless’ which is what I realised the name of the foundation was referring to.

This foundation applied really easily and evenly with my  Real Techniques expert face brush and didn’t cake up when I applied my powder over the top, so in terms of how the foundation looked on the surface of my skin, it did look good. But one thing about this foundation that may put you off is the smell – It smells like baby powder. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is certainly something to keep in mind if you’re thinking of buying this foundation, as the smell is quite strong.

As with all the foundations I’ve been trying out recently, I applied this before work and monitored how it looked throughout the day to see how long it lasted. After only a couple of hours, it had started to slide off my face. I do have quite oily skin so unless my foundation is really long lasting, it usually starts to slide off after a couple of hours anyway, so this didn’t surprise me too much. I also noticed later on that the product actually advises you to reapply after 2 hours, so if you have oily skin like me, or don’t fancy reapplying layers of foundation every couple of hours, then this foundation is definitely not for you. 

Personally I wouldn’t repurchase this product again as it simply isn’t the right coverage for me, doesn’t last very long at all, and most likely isn’t tailored for oily skin! But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend it to others. If you have dry/combination skin, aren’t looking for a super long lasting foundation and only need a medium coverage, then for the price I would definitely recommend this. 

'Pure' Product Reviews

A couple of months ago I went on a bit of a makeup binge, and decided I wanted to try a few drugstore makeup and beauty brands that I’d never tried before. I’d seen the ‘Pure’ beauty brand in Home Bargains a few times but never bothered to take a look at any of the products as the seriously low prices put me off. But as I’d passed the products so many times before, and was eager to try new things, I decided to give the ‘Pure’ brand a try. 

I picked up a BB Cream, CC Cream and Cucumber Undereye Roll-on, all marked at £1.99 each, and decided to test them out for a couple of weeks (though I can’t say I was expecting much) and here’s what I thought!

Pure BB Cream - £1.99

I only noticed this BB cream in two different shades ‘Light’ and ‘Medium’. There may be a ‘dark’ shade available but I definitely couldn’t find one anywhere that stocked this product. As I’m a little pale, I picked up ‘Light’ and was expecting this to be an okay match, and when I initially applied the BB Cream it seemed to match really well! The coverage was actually pretty decent for such a cheap BB cream, and I was pretty impressed with how it applied to my skin.

The squeezy tube allowed me to dispense just enough product which was a bonus too, and after I’d applied the rest of my makeup and set off for work, I was feeling pretty positive about the £1.99 I’d just spend.

Until I got into work.

I have naturally oily skin, so a deciding factor for me is how my foundation looks after an hour or two. And not only was my foundation sliding off my face, but it was ORANGE. Obviously the foundation had oxidised which is really annoying, but because I was wearing a hat on the way to work, my foundation had worn off under the band of the hat, and left my with a white forehead. EVEN MORE ANNOYING!

If you have dry skin, this foundation might actually work a lot better for you as it may not slide off the skin as it did for me. But be aware of the oxidising, and definitely stay away from this foundation if you’re any paler than me.

Pure CC Cream - £1.99

I tried this product shortly after trying out Pure’s BB Cream, and assumed it wouldn’t be too different. Again, I was given the option of only ‘light’ or ‘medium’ shades, so I picked up the light shade again, and this matched fairly well when first applying. However as I blended it into my skin, it almost disappeared! I tried using both my fingers, and my foundation brush to apply this foundation but nothing seemed to improve the coverage.

I know this product is called a ‘Colour Correcting’ cream, but generally these sorts of products provide a small amount of coverage in order to ‘colour correct’ however this did not. I decided I couldn’t go to work with such little product on my face, so had to apply my usual foundation over the top.

With that being said, I wouldn’t recommend buying this product at all, as it was pretty much useless in my opinion. I personally don’t think I would repurchase either BB or CC products, but if you wanted to try one of the two I would definitely go with the BB Cream.

Pure Cucumber Eye Roll-on - £1.99

I’ve been using this eye roll-on for around 2 weeks now, as this is the sort of product you can’t really rely on first impressions for. And whilst I can confidently say it hasn’t improved my dark circles or undereye bags, it is definitely soothing to apply under the eyes when first waking up.

The product features a cool metal rollerball which allows easy application under the eyes for those mornings when you just can’t seem to open your eyes properly! There are probably better alternatives out there, but at this price I still think this product is fairly useful, if only used as a ‘waking up’ aid! (I definitely rely on one of those!)  

Overall, I’m not amazingly impressed with the ‘Pure’ brand, but I guess this is just one of those times where ‘you get what you pay for’, but although I will be getting rid of the BB and CC creams, I will probably be keeping the undereye roll-on close to hand for those tough mornings.

If you’re a follower of my blog or Youtube channel, you might have noticed that recently I’ve been on a bit of a makeup binge, and have ended up with a fairly large collection of makeup I’ve yet to try!

As I have so much that I can test out and compare, I thought I’d do a few reviews on my blog and Youtube so you guys can hear my opinions on some products you may never have tried before either!

If you want to check out the hauls of these products then click on the videos below, and stay tuned for some reviews coming up very soon! 

  

   

Festive Gingerbread Men Recipe

As it’s Christmas, and I love baking, I thought I’d have a go at making some Gingerbread men this year! I found a really good recipe online, tweaked it to my liking, and came up with this!

You will need:
350g Plain Flour
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
2tsp Ground Ginger
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
125g Butter
175g Dark Brown Sugar
1 Medium Egg
4tbsp Golden Syrup

For the Royal Icing:
2 Egg Whites
2 Cups Icing Sugar
Food colouring (I prefer using gel as it doesn’t seem to affect the consistency of the icing)

Here’s how to make them!

1.   Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two trays with greaseproof paper and set aside

2.    Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon until combined well. Add the butter and rub through the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add in the brown sugar and mix further.

Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, then slowly add to the dry mix until it starts to clump together.

3.   Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.

4.   Take the dough out of the fridge and roll out to a 5mm thickness onto a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out your gingerbread men shapes and place onto the baking trays, leaving enough space inbetween each one. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden brown, then remove from the oven and leave on a wire rack to cool completely.

TIME TO DECORATE! 

You can use whatever you want to decorate these, but I wanted to go for a more traditional piped royal icing design.

For the royal icing, I combined 2 egg whites with 2 cups of icing sugar and whipped this mixture together until smooth and glossy.
I separated the mix into different colours, and used piping bags to pipe the icing carefully onto the gingerbread men and left them to dry completely. I find icing these with royal icing makes them much easier to package up without being ruined, if you’re making these as gifts (which I am!)

I really hope you enjoyed this post, if you want to watch the video of me making these, go check out my Youtube channel, where I have a few more Christmassy-themed videos!

Hey guys!

If you’re a subscriber to my Youtube channel, you may have noticed last week I posted a DIY Christmas wreath and garland video. I enjoyed making these so much that I decided to do a blog post on the DIYs too, so here it is!

I started with my supplies, most of them were conveniently from Wilkinsons in the UK, this place is surprisingly GREAT for crafting at Christmas so I highly suggest you take a trip there as everything is so affordable! I managed to pick up my rattan wreath from there for £5, and my luxurious 2m garland for £10 (quite a bargain in comparison to some other I’d seen around!)

Other supplies were priced as follows:
- 50 pack of berries for £1 
- 2 packs of 5 cinnamon sticks for £1 each 
- 3 berry stems for £1 each 
- A can of snow spray for around £1.70 (all from Wilkinsons but you can find all of this online) 
- 42 snow covered pinecones for £2.99 from B&M

I also had to purchase myself a glue gun which I found on Ebay for around £6, but you might already have one of these!

I roughly worked out where I wanted everything to go on my wreath, and used my glue gun to attach everything down when I was happy. I stuck down the larger items first, then used the smaller berries to cover up any obvious patches of glue. 
When I was happy with everything, I sprayed the snow spray lightly over the majority of the wreath. I then coated the entire thing with a light spray of clear lacquer to keep the snow spray in place!


When making the garland, I decided to use the snow spray first to cover the entire length in a layer of snow before adding the decorative bits. I then sealed the snow spray with clear lacquer. 
I pulled apart the berry stems so I had more to work with, and distributed these evenly along the garland. I placed the pinecones and cinnamon sticks evenly along the garland, then stuck them all in place with hot glue. 
I used the burlap ribbon that was originally wrapped around the garland to make hanging loops to hang onto my fireplace, and then as an added touch, I hung some IKEA fairly lights along the garland.

If you’re interested in watching me make both of these, go check out my Youtube channel for the video!