When big designer brands launch into the beauty market, I'm always skeptical of it. In a lot of cases, you're getting mediocre product in fancy packaging with an extortionate price tag. Back in 2014 Christian Louboutin launched his Louboutin Beauté range with a collection of stunning nail polishes, which I tried and actually quite liked. (You can find my review of Rouge Louboutin here!) Last year he expanded his line to include lipsticks, lacquers and lip liners. At €85 for a lipstick and €40 for a lip liner, they are definitely a massive splurge, but is it worth the crazy money?

Obviously, in true Louboutin style, the packaging is absolutely stunning. The Lip Definer's packaging was inspired by Middle Eastern antiquities and the Art Deco movement, using a tall, slender body for a calligraphic-style application. I didn't think I would like how this is much more weighted than your standard lip pencil, but it's actually so easy to use and control. My favourite thing about the pencil is that it has a self-sharpening tool hidden in the lid. I initially didn't realise this and spent about twenty minutes giving out that I had just spent a fortune on a lip liner that I couldn't even sharpen!

The Lip Definer comes in five shades, and I settled on Nats, which is a nude-brown that compliments most of my nude lip colours. They have some beautiful shades to choose from but I wanted one that I was going to get a lot of wear out of for the price I was paying. Interestingly, Louboutin's website says that the Lip Definers are designed to be used with any lip colour without interfering with it. I personally only use it either on its own or with shades that I know will compliment it (it looks absolutely beautiful paired with MAC's Kinda Sexy lipstick!). It's actually comfortable enough to wear on its own, and gives a very natural 'your lips but better' sort of look.

In terms of formulation, Mr Louboutin definitely performed. The Lip Definer is soft and creamy, although I found it quite dry the first time I used it. Once I put the cap back on and let it sharpen itself, I didn't have any issue with dryness after that. As you can see from the swatch above, it's highly pigmented and very long-wearing. The website claims that it'll last for about six hours, and I agree with that. Any lip colour that lasts that long on me is an absolute wonder as my lipstick tends to slide off within an hour!

Now, the million dollar question - is it worth it? Although I absolutely love this lip liner and it's fast becoming my most used lip colour, I don't think I can say it's worth €40. If anything, this is a collector's piece that makes a gorgeous addition to your makeup collection, but it's nothing revolutionary. If you wanted to splash out on a high-end lip pencil, MAC and Charlotte Tilbury are just as good and a fraction of the price. The main reason I wanted to get my hands on a Louboutin Lip Definer was because I collect Louboutin shoes and I have a nail polish from his line, so it was purely a case of adding to my Louboutin collection. However, I don't ever think you need to splash out €40 for a high quality lip pencil.

To be totally honest, it's no better than my favourite Kylie Lip Kit pencils, or my beloved Charlotte Tilbury ones. You definitely get a fantastic product, but this is really just something of a collector's item or a nice gift idea. It's certainly not a product I think you need to race to your local Louboutin boutique to get!
As I said, this retails at €40 and is available from Brown Thomas' Christian Louboutin Beauté counter in the Beauty Halls.

Catrice HD Liquid Coverage Foundation Review

In the last year or so, the drugstore brands have seriously upped their game and are creating real competition for their high-end counterparts. One brand in particular that has really impressed me recently is Catrice - from their highlighters to their mascaras, they just continually launch excellent products at incredible prices.

Enter their latest launch - the HD Liquid Coverage Foundation. Now, I find that I'm hard to please when it comes to my foundations. I want to look flawless, but without feeling like my face is caked, or that I'm noticeably wearing a mask of makeup. This is a tricky balance to find, and I'm quite picky when it comes to finding that perfect foundation.

Although I'm fussy when it comes to foundations, I'm a marketing team's dream as I love a good gimmick. The Catrice foundation doesn't come with a traditional pump, but a pipette. This is generally a feature you only get with serums or much more expensive foundations, so I think it's a lovely touch to make the foundation feel that little bit more luxurious. 

Starting off with the only fault this foundation has - it's only available in four shades. Hopefully Catrice will expand the colour range soon to cover more skin tones. I have the second lightest shade, 020, which is a little dark on me but it's nothing that can't be sorted once you blend it down the neck.

The foundation has a lovely velvety texture and is extremely lightweight on the skin. It offers flawless yet natural looking coverage and it sets like a second skin. Although it's a mattifying foundation, it doesn't make the skin look flat - I would say it's more of a satin finish than matte. As I have oily skin I generally would always use a primer but this foundation stays flawless on its own without a primer or a setting powder. I would usually find my t-zone would start to get oily a few hours after applying foundation but this really doesn't budge!
In terms of application, I've found that this works really well using a Beauty Blender for high coverage or using a buffing brush (my personal favourite is the Powder 'N' Pout P230) for a softer, light to medium finish.

I couldn't recommend this foundation enough. At €7.99, it's an absolute steal and a serious competitor to much more expensive foundations. I've been finding it pretty difficult to secure a lighter shade of this foundation as it's sold out everywhere, so if you see it be sure to pick it up straight away!

Inglot What A Spice Eyeshadow Collection Review and Swatches!

In terms of makeup looks, Autumnal makeup is my absolute favourite - I love using dark berries and browns, I really think it's a look you can't go wrong with. When Inglot released their What A Spice collection recently, I was all over it as the shadows are just stunning, and actually very unique. One of the main things that intrigued me about this collection was the fact that I honestly don't own any other shadows like these in my collection.

Inglot have released 10 shadows, 10 lipsticks and 5 lip liners. The lipstick shades are absolutely stunning, but I had to resist them as my lipstick collection is completely and utterly out of control at the minute! 

I settled on 5 shades from the eyeshadow collection and I'm absolutely in love with them. From left to right I got the shades 304, 305, 299, 301 and 303. These are €6 each and the quality of them is phenomenal when you consider the price. They're incredibly smooth and buttery, and blend together so seamlessly. I generally tend to use a transition shade in the crease (normally Beaches and Cream by Makeup Geek) in order to help blend out my eyeshadows a little easier but it's really not necessary with these shadows. My favourite thing about the Inglot Freedom System is that you have control over what shades go in your palette. This will be my go-to shadow palette for the autumn/winter as I have everything I need to create the perfect smokey cranberry look. 

As you can see from the swatches above, the shadows are highly pigmented and the colours really pop, even without a base. In terms of longevity I think Inglot eyeshadows are some of the best on the market - they really stay in place throughout the day. I always use Urban Decay's Primer Potion underneath my shadows but these are actually good to go on their own! 

I love the fact that this is a matte collection as I think matte eye looks are particularly striking in the autumn/winter with dark lips and a good bold eyeliner. I used this palette on a night out last week but to add some sparkle I topped the look with one of Inglot's burgundy pigments, which I'll be showing you in a blog post next week - I'm obsessed! 

As I said, there are 10 shades available in the What A Spice collection, and the 10 shades and your Freedom System palette will set you back €75 if you can't settle on just a few shadows from the collection. 

Kylie Lip Kits: Brown Sugar, Dirty Peach and Love Bite Review and Swatches!

Ever since I finally got my hands on the Kylie Lip Kits earlier this year, I've been obsessed with them. The formula, colour range and pigmentation are fantastic - they're my absolute go-to liquid lipsticks. Despite the mixed reviews, I've always been a huge fan of Kylie's lipsticks. Naturally when she announced her Fall shades, I had to get my hands on them. I got the bundle of three on her website the day they launched so I've had them for quite a while now. Annoyingly, I got duties on them when they arrived (making them ridiculously expensive treats!), but I had high hopes for them so it didn't bother me too much. But did they live up to the hype?

Unfortunately, no they didn't. I'm majorly disappointed with the formula of Kylie's new shades. The colour selection is absolutely stunning, I have nothing like them in my collection which is what drew me to them in the first place. However they're incredibly dry and patchy.

Dirty Peach is my favourite of the three in terms of formulation - as it's a light shade it's quite easy to work with, and is opaque with one layer. It wears relatively well and sits pretty comfortably on the lips. Funnily enough I expected it to be my least favourite as I thought it looked quite pale on Kylie, so I wasn't sure how that would translate on to my even paler complexion. The colour is absolutely stunning on - it's incredibly bright and warm, but it applies lovely and smooth. It's the colour that I thought I would get the least wear out of, but it's definitely one I reach to often simply as the quality matches that of my other Kylie Lip Kits.

Brown Sugar is the perfect lip colour for me - I love a good brown-nude that's more on the brown side. I love Exposed, but I find that it veers more towards a nude shade, whereas sometimes if my eyes are fairly neutral I love a pop of brown on the lips. I feel like in terms of colour, Brown Sugar is the perfect in-between shade if you think Exposed is a bit pale, but True Brown K is too dark for you. When I first applied it, I loved the shade as expected, but it's incredibly dry and patchy. It took about three layers to get it opaque, but the more I layered it, the more it began to flake on the lips and feel very uncomfortable. No matter how I prepped my lips before applying it, nothing made a difference. The lip liner is actually very nice though, so sometimes I just use that on its own as my lip colour!

Love Bite was the shade I was most intrigued by - I've never been one for dark, vampy shades like this before so I was so excited to see how I got on with it. The colour is everything I expected - a stunning deep berry shade that's so dark it's almost like a blackened purple on my skin tone. Unfortunately, this colour did not translate well onto the lips. It's very patchy, it's so difficult to get an even layer of product on the lips. Even with the lip liner it's quite messy to apply, so if you aren't blessed with big lips, it's a tough one to work with! When I eventually got it to a finish I liked, it didn't wear very well and needed to be applied quite regularly. It must be something to do with the formulation of the darker shades, as many other bloggers reported this about Kourt K too.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend the newest additions to Kylie's Lip Kit family. I'd definitely go ahead and try the older shades like Dolce K and Exposed, but for the price you pay these lip colours really don't perform as well as they should. At $29 a kit, with $15 shipping, I really don't think these are worth splashing the cash on.

Rimmel X Kate Moss 15th Anniversary Lipstick Review + Swatches!

This year marks the 15th anniversary since Kate Moss first brought the London look to Rimmel. To celebrate, Rimmel have released a stunning collection of all-new lipsticks in rose gold packaging. Kate's Rimmel lipsticks are my all time favourites from the drugstore, they're absolutely phenomenal so I always expect great things from new additions to her lineup.
The 15 year collection lipsticks come in six shades, ranging from deep reds to soft nudes. As you all know by now, I'm all about my nude lips so I picked up two of the lightest shades in the range. Kate's lipstick collections are always so diverse in terms of colour selection, there's something for everyone in her line.

                                          Rock 'N' Roll Nude, a pink-toned nude.

                                          Boho Nude, a brown-toned nude.

These have the same lasting finish formula as the other collections Kate has released with Rimmel so they're highly pigmented and have a beautiful satin finish. They're very comfortable on the lips and the same classic fruity scent as Rimmel's other lipsticks.
These are an absolute steal at €7.99 each, and they're always on special offer in Boots - Rimmel is currently buy one get one half price! As I said earlier, the range boasts six new shades, there'll definitely be something for you amongst the shade range.

                                            Rock 'N' Roll Nude and Boho Nude.

Are you a fan of Kate's Rimmel collection? I can't get enough of them!

The Ultimate MAC Strobe Cream Dupe: Freedom Pro Studio Strobe Cream Review

There's nothing I love more than a good makeup dupe. I love high-end makeup, but I love knowing that the drugstore brands can offer products that are of the same quality, but at a much lower price. The last few months I've been all about glowy, dewy skin so MAC's Strobe Cream had become a staple in my everyday routine. Although I love it, it's quite a pricey addition to my makeup routine at €33.50, so finding this dupe was a major sigh of relief for my purse!

Freedom's Pro Studio Strobe Cream is a radiance enhancing product that can be used under your foundation, or mixed into your foundation to give the skin a healthy, luminous glow. The product initially is a thick white cream, but when you blend it into the skin it sheers out to a pearlescent glow. I personally love applying this before my foundation, focussing it on the high points of the face. I then just apply my foundation over it and it gives the skin a beautiful healthy glow.

Left: MAC Strobe Cream Right: Freedom Pro Strobe Cream

You only need a pea sized amount of Strobe Cream to do your whole face, and even less if you're mixing it into your foundation. I find that it works really well when mixed with a foundation, but you don't want to use too much for fear of looking like a disco ball! It doesn't provide a very intense glow, but it's not a product you want to go overboard on as it has a slightly pink tone to it, so less is definitely more.

I absolutely love this Strobe Cream - I can't fault it at all. It's a mere £8 for 50ml of product, which is exceptional value considering it's pretty much identical to MAC's Strobe Cream. It's also a great way to try out strobing without having to go off and spend a fortune on more expensive highlighting products. It's a win win, really!

Dior Star Foundation Review

As luxury brands go, I've never really had much interest in Dior products. I don't know why, but I just never felt drawn to their products although I've heard nothing but good things about them. For ages I was dying to try their Airflash Foundation, but when I was searching through blogs for reviews of Dior foundations, the Diorskin Star was definitely the one that stood out for me.

Diorskin Star is Dior's first brightening foundation that claims to instantly make your complexion more luminous. I would say it's a medium to full coverage foundation, which is right up my street for covering redness and blemishes. It's a weightless foundation that blends seamlessly onto the skin, and I've found the best way to apply it for a fuller coverage is with a Beauty Blender, or with your fingers if you're looking for a light finish.

I always use a primer under my foundation as I just prefer the way my makeup applies with it, but the lasting power of this foundation is incredible. I find that foundations tend to break up and get shiny around my nose after a few hours, but this doesn't budge at all once you apply it.
I love the dewy finish that the foundation gives - it's very natural looking on the skin. Although the coverage is brilliant it doesn't look cakey or heavy, it sits beautifully on the skin.
It also has SPF 30 which is a great addition, but I find that it gives bad flashback in pictures so just keep that in mind if you're wearing this foundation on a night out!

This has been my everyday foundation for a couple of months now and I don't see myself reaching for anything else any time soon. I wear two shades mixed, 10 and 20, to get the perfect shade for my skintone at the moment, but the shade selection is excellent in this line.

The Diorskin Star foundation is €49.50 and available on Dior counters now.