October Favourites

Hi beauties! As I didn’t do a monthly favourites post last month, I have a few new favourites to share with you this month. I also have two ‘disappointments’ in my bag, which I thought I would just briefly mention 🙂

First up – Nuxe! I’ve been loving my Nuxe products lately, but more so these two goodies.

I hate the feeling of dry, parched hands. I’ve spoken about the Nuxe Reve de Miel hand cream before (here) and this is my second tube. I love it because it isn’t greasy or sticky, but rather quite light in texture, fast absorbing and actually moisturising! The moisture doesn’t disappear after a few minutes but rather lasts and leaves my hands feeling comfortable. This effect is probably thanks to the inclusion of coconut oil, sweet almond oil, avocado oil, beeswax and acacia honey in the formula (there’s also a touch of argan oil and shea butter). The scent of this hand cream is floral and slightly sweet. I love this hand cream and I don’t think I will be searching for another any time soon!

A new discovery for me, is the famous lip balm from Nuxe’s honey line (just like the hand cream) Reve de Miel, called their Ultra Nourishing Lip Balm. The texture of this balm is wonderful! It’s thick but it isn’t sticky like say the Lanolips balm is (the Lanolips balm is so difficult to get out of the tube when it’s cold and it is majorly sticky!). I just looove applying this balm to my lips. It’s nourishing, smells slightly sweet and soothes my parched lips. I also love the heavy glass packaging. Beeswax is the number one ingredient in this lip balm, so it deserves it’s honey like name! 🙂 It also contains sweet almond oil, acacia honey, shea butter, grapefruit and lemon peel oil. Usually the lip balm comes with a white cap, however I was able to score a coloured birthday cap for my lip balm 🙂 Apparently this baby is 20 years old this year 🙂 That’s one good formula!

You can find both Nuxe products on Adore Beauty or from Look Fantastic (they still have the coloured caps available if you are interested).

My third monthly favourite is also a lip balm (this was clearly unplanned lol) but this one isn’t ‘new’. I’ve been using it for weeks and weeks and have finally finished up the tube! I am talking about Hurraw’s Moon Balm (Night Treatment Balm).

I love the oval shape of this lip balm, it’s actually quite novel! The balm itself is quite light, clear, non-sticky and moisturising! It’s not as thick as the Reve de Miel Nourishing Balm, but it still moisturises well (Reve de Miel Nourishing Balm is probably a bit more heavy duty). I hate when you apply a lip balm, only to have the balm disappear from your lips, leaving them even drier than they were to begin with. The fab ingredients prob have something to do with why this lip balm works so well! Take a look 🙂

Ingredients: Persea gratissima (avocado) oil, Prunus amygdalus dulcis (sweet almond) oil, ‡Euphorbia cerifera (candelilla) wax, *Theobroma cacao (cocoa) seed butter, *Cocos nucifera (coconut) oil, *Ricinus communis (castor) seed oil, Olea europaea (olive) fruit oil, *Argania spinosa (argan) kernel oil, *Rosa rubiginosa (rosehip) seed oil, *Limnanthes alba (meadowfoam) seed oil, Tocopherols (sunflower), *Vanilla planifolia (vanilla) bean, *Myroxylon balsamum (peru balsam) oil, Matricaria recutita (blue chamomile) flower extract

*organic & cold pressed ‡wildcrafted

“Avocado Oil: Thick and vitamin rich, exceptionally high in Vitamins A & E. Highly recommended for sensitive and problem lips; rich in essential fatty acids. Rosehip Seed Oil: Combats dry lips and has amazing anti-aging and rejuvenation properties. Proven to regenerate skin, reduce scars, knock out wrinkles and UV damage. Meadowfoam Seed Oil: Amazing moisturizing and rejuvenating capabilities. Loves to adhere to lips making it a great assistant in preventing night time moisture loss. Argan oil: Berber women Fair Trade harvest this amazing oil while the profits go back into preserving the argan forests. Super restorative; perfect to use at night!”

Oh – I also should mention this. I recently tried another all natural lip balm which had a high percentage of caster oil in it’s formula. I found that with that particular lip balm, if I happened to lick my lips (while eating or drinking etc) it made the back of my throat dry. I know that sounds odd, but it’s the only thing I can put it down to (the castor oil). Luckily, I don’t have that same problem the the Hurraw Moon Balm 🙂 This one is super handy to have lying around the place! Oh – and I don’t only use it at night, it works fantastically as an everyday staple lip balm! You can find Hurraw lip balms from Biome (an Australian online shop) or at Hurraw’s official website! They have so many great ‘flavours’ available, that I really want to try more (green tea and the lip balm with spf are on my wish list)!

Moving on, we have Smashbox’s Photo Finish Under Eye Primer. This is a primer for your under eye concealer. Because I have bad under eye circles, I figured that anything that could make my concealer look better, would also make my under eye circles look better…

I’ve never used an under eye concealer primer before, so this was a total newbie for me. It’s a little ‘silicone-y’ in texture, but still has enough slip to it, in order to spread it comfortably around the eye area. It’s light pink in colour, but goes on clear and blends out nicely. I place it directly over where my under eye circles are (which is exactly where I also place my concealer).  I then let it ‘set’ for about 30 seconds to a minute. This really does improve the look of my concealer. My concealer of choice atm, is the Balm’s Time Balm concealer. Depending what eye cream I am using and how it sinks in, the concealer can look a little patchy. This drives me crazy, but because it otherwise covers well and is a great colour match, I used to sometimes spend up to ten minutes trying to perfect my under eye area. When you are rushing in the morning this is NOT ideal. With this under eye primer, I don’t have that issue anymore! My concealer lasts all day (I also set it with a little translucent powder) and doesn’t look patchy! Winning! Smashbox also says that you can use this concealer primer on it’s own, on top of eye cream. I haven’t noticed any difference to my under eye area doing this, so I will stick to using it as a primer, rather than a brightener.

Next up, another now famous makeup product, Bobbi Brown’s gel eyeliners.

I bought these two gel eyeliners duty free when I was coming back from my Japan/Korea trip. That was… about 3-4 years ago (probably leaning towards 4…)? And these babies have not dried out at all! I obviously don’t use them daily, let alone weekly, so I do not want to be spending money on buying gel eyeliners frequently. I am so so happy with their consistency, lasting power and their opaqueness. They are easy to use for beginners and dry semi-quickly so you still have some time to play with the formula before they set. They are also more matte in finish, rather than shiny. To me they are everything a gel liner should be and hopefully they last me a little longer 😉 I have them in the colours Black Ink and Sepia Ink.

Next up we have Shiseido’s Shimmering Eye Color in Sunshower (OR313).

I won’t spend to much time talking about this cream eyeshadow as I did a thorough review of it recently (here). I’m still loving it and it has most definitely been a staple of mine. It brightens my eyes on sleepy mornings – and paired with an eyeshadow primer it last all day 🙂 For swatches, check out the full review!

Now to move on to two disappointing products…Firstly we have Napoleon’s China Doll Gel Eyeliner in Yang (a matte white). The reason I bought this is because I thought I had a brilliant idea – to use a white gel/liquid liner and then to go over it using bright eye shadow to create a coloured eyeliner look. This idea was a total fail! It didn’t help that this white eyeliner, even though it is described as a ‘opaque white’ – it isn’t opaque. It is patchy and when applied, it looks like liquid paper lol

Not only is it not opaque, the colour doesn’t look evenly applied on the lid. So when I tried applying coloured eyeshadow over the top of it, it only semi stuck to the ‘liner’ and adhered to some places better than others. Fail. A big complete fail which cost me $39.00. The only redeemable feature of this gel eyeliner is that you can use it as an eyeshadow base all over your lid. Because it isn’t opaque, it doesn’t wash out your lid completely and doesn’t look stark white.

The second disappointing product was the Laura Mercier High Coverage Concealer for Under Eye concealing. I have it in the shade 1.5. I sooo wish I had read Karen’s review of this product before purchasing it (check out her blog here, her blog is wonderful!) as she suffers from under eye circles and her reviews are very thorough .

This concealer is soooooo dry, it’s really difficult to even get it out of the tube. It is super concentrated so you only need the tiniest amount. Unfortunately the colour of my shade is way to yellow (I prefer neutral undertones – I hate it when under eye concealers are way to peach toned or pink and end up looking unnatural, bringing more attention to your under eye area). The coverage is good, but it isn’t the easiest concealer to work with because of it’s texture, so this will end up getting wasted and never used (if I’m honest) *sigh. If I had a suitable colour then maybe I could play with it sometimes but the colour is just not workable for me (and I even researched the concealer colours before ordering it online, so I have no idea where I went wrong 🙁 ) It wasn’t the cheapest either, coming in at $28.

Above: Swatches of Napoleon’s China Doll Gel Eyeliner in Yang and Laura Mercier’s High Coverage Concealer for Under Eye in 1.5.

That wraps up the month of October 🙂 I don’t feauture to many products in my monthly favourites posts because my staple skin care and makeup products don’t change around to often. Hopefully you enjoyed this post anyway and perhaps read something new when it comes to some of these tried and trusted favourites!

Do you love any of the products I mentioned? Disappointed by any of your recent purchases? I’d love to know, so leave me a comment! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Catch ya next time beauties,

Beauty Bee~

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