Beauty: My make up bag essentials

Following on from my blog post about my skincare essentials (which you can read HERE if you missed it) I thought I’d do a similar post about my make up bag. I am a HUGE make up fan, I am a sucker for anything new and mascara is my ultimate product. I don’t wear a lot of make up on a daily basis (just a tinted moisturiser and mascara most days) but I do dabble with different looks when I go on a night out. Like most beauty bloggers I have drawers of make up, creams, lotions, nail polishes, you name it! This is my favourite daily/nightly products but I’ll introduce you to the rest of my drawers (ooo-er!) in time. If you are interested in anything in particular do let me know, I’m always happy to start with the things you like to read about the most.

So to start this post, my make up bag itself! I love this Benefit bag as it is just (and I mean just) big enough to fit in my must haves and has a covered area on the inside to keep my brushes, not only in place, but covered so they don’t get make up all over the inside of the case. I’ve had this years and am thinking I really should upgrade to a newer model. Maybe a slightly bigger one so I can fit more in…

On a daily basis I use the best tinted moisturiser/bb cream I have found and that is Laura Mercier tinted moisturiser oil free. The texture is perfect and it glides right onto the skin giving it a lovely dewy look. I find this amazing considering it is oil free, something that usually zaps moisture right out of a product in my experience! I’ve used this for a while and, like Liz Earle’s cleanser, I stopped using it due to the hefty £33 price tag. I just can’t find one I like anywhere near as much.

I also LOVE the Laura Mercier primer but at £28 I just can’t justify it that often. I also love Smashbox Photo Finish primer that I used when it was only available in the US but, once again, at £25 it is just too expensive. The closest I have found is Vivo primer from Tesco for £4. My Mum bought it me after getting sick of spending nearly £100 on my base products at Christmas time! She had seen it advertised in one of the free Sunday newspaper magazines as a must buy product and thought it was worth a try. She was so right! It is a clear gel formula like Smashbox Photo Finish and feels just the same on the skin. I love it.

I’m not a huge bronzer fan, I’m not sure why! My Mum bought me the MAC bronzing powder in golden (£19) as a gift and I find it the easiest bronzer to use so far. It glides on with a touch of shimmer but not so much that I look shiny. I dust it across the top of my forehead, down my nose and along my cheek bones to accent where I would normally catch the sun. I feel the same about blusher but more for the fact that I found one I like so quickly that nothing else is worth trying so far. That product is Bourjois little round pot blusher in rose d’or. The little brush is the perfect shape to contour my cheeks with minimal effort and the light golden shimmer compliments my blusher perfectly. It even has a lovely rose scent. I don’t think I’ll be swayed away from the £7.99 price tag any time soon either!

If I am going out for the evening I opt for Maybelline dream matte mousse foundation in honey beige (£6.99) as I love the weightless feel it has. I used to use a No7 mousse foundation and this is so similar. I then dust Bobbi Brown shimmer brick in bronze (£32) over my cheeks for a contoured look. I absolutely love Bobbi Brown, I’ve not tried a product of theirs that I don’t love. More of this love in a later post.

I have 4/5 mascaras on the go at any one time but always end up going back to my favourites and, this, is my ultimate favourite! MAC false lashes mascara in black (£18) has a lovely slim brush and lengthens lashes without making them look clumpy. Just the look I try and go for! Before using this I curl my eyelashes with Shu Uemura’s eyelash curler (£20) and use a pen style eyeliner. I use a few different ones but my favourite is MAC penultimate liner in black (£16) for its super sharp tip and ease of use. I do find it dries up quick though, I just can’t resist it and its staying power!

I line the bottom of my eyes and inside my eyelid with my favourite make up product EVER – Chanel le crayon yeux in noir (£17). The creaminess of this eye liner is just perfect and you can tell by how far down mine is just how much I like it. I’ve had this a long long time, it lasts ages.

 

I have so many eyeshadows you would die if you could see them all, in fact I think I could blog every day for a year and still not talk about them all! My ultimate favourites are these… my Urban Decay Ammo 10 palette (£23) which I got on a flight to Egypt a while ago and Bourjois intense extrait 7 (£7). All these eyeshadows are incredibly pigmented with a lovely shimmer meaning they stay put as long as I need them to. I’ll do another post about these with swatches soon, I just wanted to introduce the wonder of such good products to you :).

I have used lots of cheap make up brushes in the past and my biggest tip is to invest in some decent ones. They should last you a lifetime if you look after them properly! I use travel sized MAC brushes, that I got in a lovely round bag, with a Bobbi Brown blusher brush for my shimmer brick and Benefit powder brush for when I need powder for the oily patches. That said, you will see no powder here. The reason for this? I haven’t found one that is just right for me yet. A challenge for me perhaps?

What’s in your make up bag? Do you use a perfect powder that I need to try?