Tuesday 12 July 2011

Smashbox BARGAIN!!

Recently, whilst on a shopping trip I accidentally *cough cough* stumbled into my favourite shop - TK MAXX! And whilst enduring one of my ever thorough browsing sessions I stumbled upon a few bargains from Smashbox. This being a brand I had heard so much about (from the youtube community and because Lo from the Hills worked there!) and never managed to try, which is extremely surprising considering my ever expanding make up collection. So I had a look through the bits and bobs they had in stock and picked up two items which caught my eye.

I obviously was having a blond day that day (These occur 6/7 days a week) as I originally thought I had picked up an eyeshadow, when in actual fact what I had was a cream eye liner in the shade 'Putty'. None the less this was still a product I wanted to try as I had in fact never experienced a 'cream eye liner' before.

The product itself is a dark brown with an very muddy tone to it, it could be also described as quite mushroomy due to it's grey undertone.

I found the product quite hard to work with. The cream formula was almost too thick and was therefore hard to apply in a neat line without getting clumpy bits around the edges. I also found the consistency of it meant that it was hard to get an even color all the way across the lid and that the shading was inconsistent. To get an even colour you need to keep reapplying the eyeliner which results in a thick line.
Another problem with cream formulation eye liners is that they are prone to smudging and therefore do not last throughout the day. I found that within a few hours my eye liner had blended into my eyeshadow and practically dissolved.
The color of the product was also not to my liking. Simply because it wasn't rich enough and was quite dull looking. I prefer eyeliners which create some kind of impact around the eye and provide a little bit of depth and definition and this definitely didn't accomplish that.


So enough of the negatives


Smashbox definitely redeemed itself with the second product.


I had heard so much about smashbox primers in the past I just had to pick this up when I saw it.

This is Smashbox's Photo finish bronzing primer. I had never heard this variety mentioned before but had heard plenty of glowing reviews of the photo finish primer before and this definitely didn't disappoint.

The product itself comes out the bottle a very dark brown colour which may look scary at first. However, once you begin to blend in the product it
dissolves into an almost powder like substance which leaves a subtle hint of bronze on the skin. The bronze colour is a nice brown with no hints of orange at all.

The bronzer also leaves a very even finish to the skin in regards to both colour and texture, so it provides a great base for foundation.

I found that this primer is great for the summer months. It helps to brighten up your complexion by leaving you subtly bronzed. It also helps your foundation to stay in place in the heat and stops it melting off. Another personal benefit of this primer is that I don't like using self tanner on my face as I find it gives me a lot of spots and blocked pores, therefore I find this is a good primer to use after self tanning in order to give your face a bronzed glow matching that of your body .

Let me know if you have tried these products before or what you think of them below.

Thanks for reading

1 comment:

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