£15 High Street Challenge | July

I know how much y'all look forward to this post, so I'm sorry it's taken me this long into the month to get the post up.  In fairness, I haven't long bought the products either, the month has really flown by and I just didn't know what to buy... well, in a week or so it'll be time for the next one, and this time I really want your help - if you have any suggestions on what I can buy for August, please leave your recommendations in the comments :)

If this is your first time reading my £15 high street challenge, I'll quickly let you know what it is and why I started it.  Basically, in January when I looked back to reflect on 2014's posts, I realised nearly every product I blogged about was a PR sample.  And while I know they're all 100% honest, I know a lot of people aren't comfortable with that.  So in an effort to break up the amount of PR review posts, I'm giving myself a wee budget of £15 a month to spend on high street makeup - the catch is I need to try and buy at least 3 items for my money.  I'm not super strict with it, as long as it's around £15 I'm happy.

If you want to see what I've picked up on previous months, you can read them here.  So lets see what I bought:

I went to Boots in my lunch break on my 1st/2nd day back at work and saw they had a good Bourjois offer on, 3 for 2 and if you do the offer you get a free pair of Bourjois sunglasses - this is an offer Bourjois do every Summer, and for the last 2/3 years Bourjois have supplied my summer sunglasses through this offer :)  Each year they're different from the last, I love that.

I could resist picking up their new blusher, Aqua blush. I picked a coral shade.  It really reminds me of a watercolour blush type product.  It's so beautiful on the cheeks, it gives a really natural flush of colour that says put for hours and hours.  When I apply it, I squirt it onto my finger, dot it on my cheek and blend it in with a stippling brush.

I also went for the Healthy Mix concealer - considering how much I adore the Healthy Mix foundation (hello, holy grail!) I just had to give this a go!  So far I've only worn it under the eye (big mistake), so next I'll be trying it on other areas of my face :)  It's just a bit heavy for under eyes, and for me, the wrong colour.

The third product was a re-purchase, the 1 seconde nail polish remover, it's seriously great, fast and leaves my nails smelling super lovely :)  Much easier than faffing about with nail polish remover and cotton pads.

This was a little over budget, coming in at about £18, but that's not bad considering what I managed to get for my money.

What recommendations do you have for next month?

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£15 High Street Challenge | June

It's that time of the month again, time for the June instalment of my £15 High Street Challenge! If you're not familiar with this blog series, you can read my other posts here to see what I've bought.

I started this series because when I looked back at my 2014 blog posts, nearly all of them were PR samples, and that made me uncomfortable.  My reviews are always 100% honest as I'm sure you know, but I didn't spend any money buying things I wanted to try, so I decided to spend £15 every month on 3 different things, and then review them for you :)

This month Boots.com had an offer on L'Oreal products, it was the traditional 3 for 2 (gotta love that!). I'd been eyeing up the True Match foundation (£9.99) for a while, I know that Em from My Pale Skin blog uses this a lot mixed with the Bourjois Healthy Mix foundation for good coverage, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  Despite picking the lightest yellow-toned shade, it's still too dark for me, so not exactly a 'true match'.  Hopefully as my skim warms up in colour slightly over the summer (I tend not to let my skin get much sun as I'm so pale I just burn) this will become a better match.

Also, in a recent Fleur de Force video I saw her talking about the new L'Oreal Infallible mega glosses (£6.99), so I thought this would be a great option too - I don't tend to wear much lipgloss anymore as it drives me nuts the way my hair is magnetised to it (same as everyone else!), and to be honest, I don't wear much lipstick either, but I still wanted to give it a try.

Lastly, I needed and wanted a new kohl eyeliner, so I picked the black Infallible one (£5.19) to give it a go - I love that it has a little sharpener in the lid, a smudge stick (not that I use these) and it's retractable.

All together my purchase came to £16.98 (excluding P&P), so £1.98 over budget, but that's not bad going considering what I've bought :)

I actually have a first impressions video of the True Match foundation coming very soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that (subscribe here so you don't miss it!).

What do you think of this month's picks?

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£15 High Street Challenge | May

That's right, it's May and that means I get to buy more makeup, woooo! As you know, in an effort to have fewer PR samples in the blog, I set myself a challenge to spend £15 a month on the high street and try to get at least 3 products for my money.

This month I bought 5! How did I do that you might ask? By blowing the effing budget that's how :P Basically, for a while now I've kept going onto the Beauty Crowd website and filling my virtual basket with loads of awesome looking products, then closing the tab. Well, I decided to make Beauty Crowd the source of this month's challenge, but I just couldn't decide what to buy, so I bought lots, hahaha.

Nicka K New York

This is one of many brands on Beauty Crowd I'd never heard of, but that I thought looked lovely and intrigued me.  They're priced for the high street with both products costing £4.95.  The first product I picked up is the eye shadow quad in the shade Sierra - this is a warm, berry-toned neutral palette. I've used it once, it's nicely pigmented and blends well, and the packaging is lovely! The other product is an eye shadow base/primer in Pearl.  I'm not sure if it's right for me, I did get some major creasing yesterday after just 4ish hours, but I do have terribly oily & hooded lids, so it could be that :)

Milani Cosmetics

Yep, Beauty Crowd sells Milani!!!!! This excited me a LOT! There was still a couple of things I didn't buy, like their eye shadow foils, baked blusher and mascara, but what I did end up with is pretty epic.  First up the Rose Powder blusher in Coral Cove - £8. The first thing that struck me about these is the high quality packaging, you'd never know they were high-street priced, such high quality. The pigmentation is great, you really don't need much product to create a flushed look, and it's completely matte.  Then there's the illuminating powder in the shade Beauty's Touch - £8 - now this is an odd one, to look at it, I can hardly see any shimmer, and when I've tried to use it as a highlighter I've failed - I think I need to use it as a proper blusher to see if I can see a pretty shimmer - I almost don't want to use them because they're so beautiful though!

Finally, I also picked up the Eye Tech eyeliner - £6 - now this I like. It's not without fault, it's not easy to create a thin line on the inner corner of your eye, and if you have slightly aging skin, you might find it's hard to create a straight line, but I have managed it :) It's lovely, jet black and stays put all day, as well as being nice and compact.

All together this little lot was £31.90, so 2 months worth of budget went into this, lol, I'm such a failure... but I just couldn't help myself! I blame Beauty Crowd for having too many beautiful products, I could literally spend another £100-200 there on all the things that have caught my eye, how I've managed to stop myself so far I'll never know!

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£15 High Street Challenge | April

It's that time again for my next instalment of my £15 high street challenge! I was planning on upping the budget to £20 this month, since I needed to return £5 of goods from last months' haul - but what with e.l.f closing down in the UK I'm not confident it'd all work out, get to them and get my money back, so I'm just going to keep hold of it - maybe I'll sell it in a blog sale? :)

This month my haul was from Boots.com - they had a 3 for 2 offer on where you get the cheapest item for free which is how I was able to get 3 decent products for my £15.  If you're not familiar with why I started this challenge, it was because when looking back at my 2014 posts, I realised nearly all of them were PR samples.  I wanted to bring items I've bought myself back to the blog, but since I'm on maternity pay I needed to keep the budget down (hence the £15).  My goal is to find 3 pieces of makeup on the high street for about £15 each month.  If you want to see my previous months' challenges, just have a look here.

After seeing a lot of people talking about the new L'Oreal Infallible foundations, I thought I'd give them a go - I love reviewing foundation (that and mascara are my favourite to review).  I've also had my eyes on the Maybelline Coloursensational Elixir for a long time and decided to pick one of these.

If you're one of the many people who requested an Essence haul for one of these, don't worry - I've taken what I earned from my mummy blog last month (only a little bit) and put it towards a decent-sized Essence haul too which will be on here in the next few days, as well as individual reviews.

Here's what I picked up:

L'Oreal Infallialbe 24hr Matte foundation in 10 Porcelin - £6.99

I'm a big fan of matte foundations but I do struggle to find one that really works for me - my Makeup Forever HD foundation is the closest I've found (it's seriously amazing!).  Since this arrived on Saturday, I have worn it once (yesterday) and well, I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet.  Obviously this is just a first impression, but it did highlight dry skin, I wouldn't say it was very good coverage - it classes itself as heavy but I'd say it's much lighter than that.  It also didn't set that well (something I often find with L'Oreal foundations).  But, 6+ hours after applying it, a little creasing aside, it looked pretty decent.  It's not a patch on my Bourjois Radiance Reveal Healthy Mix foundation, I think this one makes me look older, but I'll give it a few more go's and see what it's like.

L'Oreal Infallible 24h Foundation in Vanilla - £9.99

My biggest mistake here was picking the 2nd lightest shade, it's too dark, I should have gone with Porcelin (the same as the matte foundation) as that is the closest.  That aside, I will still give it a go and see what it's like, it'll just have to be on days when I don't leave the house :P  Maybe these are more contenders for blog sale stuff?  I'll be back with a full review of all of these over the coming weeks.

Maybelline Coloursensational Elixir in 710 Rose Redefined - £6.99

For ages now I've seen people talk about these, some love them, some not so much.  For me this was more of a 'this will look pretty with my other lipsticks' purchase - I love the packaging and I didn't realise that the colour you see there is plastic, I thought it was the actual product, but sadly it's not. Ah well! We'll see how I get on with this - what do you think of the Elixirs?

Overall it came to £16.98 (not including delivery) as I had one of the £6.99 items for free. Not bad really - but did I pick well!?

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£15 High Street Challenge - March

This month for my £15 High Street Challenge I decided to focus on one brand, e.l.f.  They have a 50% sale on so I thought I'd be able to get a lot of bang for my buck.

There's a caveat on this post though I'm afraid - on the website for the Personal Blend Foundation, they only had Medium and Dark listed, they didn't have a light that was sold out or greyed out etc, so I'd assumed that the Medium shade would be suitable for fair skin.  But when it came I realised it's far too dark for me and I'm having to send it back.  I do wish they'd had it listed on there but as unavailable as I'd been able to avoid this mix up then.  That aside, because of this, I'm now nearly £5 short of my challenge target - that's good because it's always nice to save money, however, I can't really get to the shops easily now I have Squidge, so I do most of my shopping online it's just not worth me spending £5 on something and paying like, £3 delivery... ah well.  Let's take a look at what I bought.

I bought:
Mineral blusher in Rose £5.95
Mineral concealer in Light £5.95
Personal Blend Foundation in Medium £8.95 (sending back)
Mineral Glow in Shimmer £7.95

A grand total of £19.85 (not including the Personal Blend Foundation), but it was 50% off, so the actual total cost was £9.92, bargain!

It's a bit of a mixed bunch really - I always seem to do this with e.l.f - browse their catalogue, buy a few products and wish I'd bought other things - not that I don't like what I'd bought, but I feel like I'm missing out on some real gems of theirs by not researching what I'm buying properly.

Take the blusher for example - I think it's a little dark for me, but on the website it looked perfect - what I should have done was look up swatches in advance, and then I'd have picked a different shade. The Mineral Glow - I'm not really sure on the best way to use this - it doesn't seem to be a highlighter, more like a pressed powder with a bit of glitter in it - so do I dust this over my face before a night out or do I use it as a very subtle highlighter?

The concealer looks great, however I should have listened to my instincts and bought the lighest one as this one, I think, will be the tiniest bit too dark - we'll have to see once it's in place and not on the back of my hand (which is darker).

I'm not disappointed with this months' haul, but I'm not elated either.  I'm looking forward to trying the products out and seeing what they're like, I was just quite excited about the foundation, so I'm disappointed I won't be getting to try that.

Do you have any suggestions on how to use the Mineral Glow?

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£15 High Street Challenge - February

Cast your mind back to January, I started a year-long challenge to hit the high street, spend £15 and try to pick up at least 3 products.  I decided to do this to try and reduce the amount of PR sample posts on the blog, and give some more variety.  Here's what I bought last month if you want to refresh your memory.  

This month I have spent countless nights browsing the Superdrug and Boots website in search of products to try, and after so much deliberation, I finally made a decision :)

I've never tried anything from Beauty UK before, and this shimmer box really caught my attention. Priced at £4.99 I thought it was pretty good value too, and a potential dupe for the Bobbi Brown ones. I haven't swatched it or even tried it yet, so I can't say anything about it's quality - but I can say that the packaging feels really well made.  

Next up, the new Maybelline Lash Sensational mascara - on offer for £5.98 at Superdrug.  I'm a BIG fan of Maybelline mascara's, 'The Falsies' is probably one of my all time favourite mascara's, it's so good!  I actually unwrapped this today and used it for the first time, I'm not yet decided on it, but I do like it, I'm just deciding how much I like it :)  What I will say as a first impression - it gripped my lashes brilliantly, and was fantastic on my bottom lashes :)

Last but not least, a Barry M metallic liquid eyeliner in Gold (£4.79 in Superdrug) - now, I'm not one to normally sport a gold eye liner, however, I bought this for a look I've had in mind for AGES, I'll post back here with the look when I've perfected it, I need time to practise first :)  If it looks good and I'm happy, I'll invest in some other liquid eyeliner colours for the look.

I'll be back in the next few weeks to review each of these, some sooner than others :)  Oh, and I did go a little over budget with this by 76p

Do you like my picks? Any recommendations for next month?

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Mini high street haul

** I do lighten my pictures a little as there isn't quite enough light where I photograph products **

One of the things you guys have requested a lot are haul posts, well, you ask and you shall receive!  I popped into Superdrug today (today being Wednesday 10th, I'm being organised and writing in advanced!) and had a chat with my friend that works there about all the new things that have come out recently and made a cheeky purchase - it's lethal when I go in there, she's my makeup enabler!

So I picked up my first ever Max Factor mascara! I know, how dare I call myself a beauty blogger and not have ever worn a Max Factor mascara!  Well, seeing as it was only £4.99 it would have been rude not to :)  I aslo picked up one of Maybelline's new limited edition Neon nail varnishes in a bright zingy purple (you know how I'm a sucker for purple!).  Then finally I stopped off at Rimmel and picked up one of their new cream eyeshadows in Rich Russet.

Rich Russet really reminds me of Maybelline's On and on bronze (or Bad to the bronze if you're reading this in the states).  So much so, I felt compelled to swatch them together (pic above) and they are really similar, especially when you first apply (on to the back of your hand).  The Maybelline one is a tad darker, but not by much.  When they were both set, the Maybelline one still felt a little tacky but the Rimmel one was touch and rub dry (for what it's worth, it felt really creamy and soft when I applied it to the back of my hand).

However, after about 4 hrs of it sitting on my hand, and my hands being washing and moisturised, the Rimmel one has nearly washed off, but the Maybelline one is still going strong!  Watch this space for a full review of all of these beauties in the next few weeks, once I've had time to give them a good road test of course :)

This months Bigest-Pixi3 advertiser is the lovely Stacie from Life is worth the fight

 

Written by Georgina Kent