Hey everyone!
I really want to share with you the prizes I received for a giveaway I entered over at the amazing
Addicted to Beauty. It came in the post this morning and I was so excited I literally sprinted to the front door. I love all of my prizes and want to say a huge
thank you for them, as it's really cheered me up after a week of high stress Uni work!
So this will be pretty picture heavy. I swatched all of the lip and face products sent to me, have the perfume on now, but the nail polishes will be featured in upcoming NOTDs because I just wanted to hurry up and show you!
So here's what I won:
I love the purple envelope it came in! And you can see I got a
lot of stuff. Yardley
Iris perfume, Paul & Joe Protective Foundation Primer UV
02, Soap & Glory
Wish Upon A Jar 21 Day Collagen Overhaul Cream, W7
Perky Peach Lipbalm, MAC Blush in
Pink Cult, Nails Inc Polish in
Special K, OPI Polish in
I Only Drink Champagne, Bourjois So Laque! in
Santal Opulent, Avon Glazewear Sparkle in
Gleaming Gold, and and Estee Lauder Limited Edition Pure Colour Extravagant Five Colour Lip Palette.
WOW.
So you can imagine my glee when I opened up the packet. Then I got down to swatching everything. Here are my first impressions!
This Soap & Glory face cream looks amazing! I really love the packaging - it's got such a retro, 50's feel to it and makes my dressing table look a little more sparkly. The cream itself is rose coloured and smells orangey, and claims to make skin look plumper and younger in 3 weeks. Whilst I'm only 21, I feel like my skin looks tired because I don't have the most restful of lives at the moment, so it should be good to see if this makes me look brighter and more awake! I'll test this out over the next three weeks and report back.
As I've mentioned a couple of times before, I love NARS Multi-Protect Primer. But it's very expensive. So I've been using a Rimmel Primer for a while but I might have to give this a shot too - because it's not clear, and has an orangey undertone, this might be especially good for reducing the dark circles under my eyes. At first swatch it feels slightly lighter than the Rimmel primer, but not as fluid as NARS.
Three nail polishes! I've heard that the OPI I Only Drink Champagne is now discontinued so I'm chuffed about that. And isn't the Nails Inc bottle so cute? I'll be trying the Bourjois first though so you'll see that here soon.
I have this on as we speak. It's actually quite lovely - when I looked it up online I wasn't sure it'd be my kind of frangrance but it settles into a lovely fragrance. It's clean but floral - described officially as having top notes of green leaves and citrus (yay!), heart notes of iris, muguet, violet and rose and a warm vanilla base. It smells classic and not as mature as I thought it would. Online, I've heard that if you like Hermes Hiris, this is a less expensive alternative.
Please ignore my broken out chin and the fact that in cold weather, the scar on my lip comes shining through with renewed force! This W7 lip balm is nice - I like the slide-up packaging a lot and it will be helpful in this horrible weather for avoiding chapped lips.
Isn't the sparkly packaging of this Avon lipgloss cute? I was worried it was going to be overly frosty and cold (a type of shade that does not suit my skintone) but this is more of a warm, sheer sparkle. As you can see, it works well alone but could also be layered over another lipstick for some shine. Another thing I love about this lipgloss is that it's entirely non-sticky. I
hate sticky lipglosses, but this is smooth and feels more like a wet balm on application.
The packaging of this feels very classic and glamorous. And I've never tried any Estee Lauder products before so I was excited for this. I've also never used a lip palette before, preferring to apply from a lipstick bullet, so I was eager to try this out. There are five shades here - two golden shimmer lipglosses, a pink lipgloss, a dark red lipgloss and a more lipstick type red shade (in the middle).
Here are my swatches of the two gold shimmer glosses (the top left and top right):
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Top to bottom: Top left shade, top right shade
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Top left shade
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| Top right shade |
These glosses were sticky. Although I really do like the light shimmer they give. The top left shade was a lot thicker and stickier, whilst the top right shade was a lot smoother and sheerer. Perhaps layered over another colour these would be nice for a subtle shimmer.
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| Left to right: Centre red shade, Left red shade, Bottom right pink shade |
These were my favourites in the palette. Much smoother application, not sticky, had a nice sheen to them. With my red lipstick obsession I was mostly enamoured of the centre red shade (left on the hand swatch). Here they are on the lips:
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| Bottom right pink shade |
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Left dark red shade
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| Centre red shade |
Much more pigmented, and lovely application and finish. I really like these, particularly the true red. It's nice to have some more glosses in my collection!
Sorry for the grumpy face in the final photo! That's the blush applied only to foundationed skin. I'm also wearing the Estee Lauder red colour. Isn't this lovely? It's an LE MAC blush from the Jeanius collection, and is a wonderfully neutral matte rose pink. It's very soft and pink and easily buildable and I love it. For my first ever MAC blush this is spot on. Do you have any recommendations for MAC blushes I should try in the future? Because this is easily my second favourite blush formula (NARS beats it by a hair). And this is such a gorgeous colour. I can see this becoming a staple, which is worrying since it's an LE shade!
So, once again, thank you
so much to the wonderful
Addicted to Beauty for these amazing prizes!
S xx
