Benefit Wrapped Up In Love

On Friday I went along to the new Benefit Boutique in Carnaby Street to have a nosey round - it is great! Not only can you purchase all the Benefit goodies you'd like, they also have a Shellac nail bar, Vita Liberata tanning room, and a little hair styling salon where you can choose from a list of hair styles to have done. To celebrate their opening they are offering a free hair styling sesh every time you purchase a product (for a limited time only so if you have anything you want to buy and you're in the area, get there quick to take advantage!)

While we were there we got to have a look at the new Christmas collections coming out. This year the sets come in tins, which I love! They all feature a graphic print on them and stack on top of each other if you were to get more than one. They are perfect for re-using on your dressing table.

I took home the 'It's a love fest' tin which contains a full sized The Porefessional Primer and They're Real Mascara, and mini Sun Beam highlighter, and Coralista lipgloss. It retails at £39.50 and would make a fab gift for a makeup lover.

The other set I really loved the look of at the event was the Little Love Potions - a great way to try out lots of Benefit products and super sizes for if you travel a lot. This set is £29.50 and will definitely be going on my Christmas list!

Other new products joining the Benefit shelves is under my spell Noelle perfume, and Bathina body oil.

The perfume comes in the Benefit perfume trademark cute cocktail shaker style bottle. It's a sweet but grown-up smell, with top notes of cardamom, black pepper and lingonberry. Middle notes of wild orchid, jasmine petals, vanilla flower, fresh rose and soft violet. Bottom notes of patchouli, accord oud, black amber, vanilla beans, benzoin resin and raspberry. They make a gorgeous wintery woody fragrance. Noelle is on sale now and retails at £29.50 for 30ml.

Bathina takes it back to the old-school with the original Benefit scent. If you remember Benefit from long ago, you will remember this smell - and it still smells gorgeous. Lightly floral and clean smelling, this body oil is great - the spray mists it on to your skin, and it dries as soon as you rub it in - so no feeling like a grease-bomb. It's lightweight and hydrating and leaves the skin lovely and soft with a delicate smell left behind. It goes on sale on 26th October priced at £26.50 for 75ml.

Crescent Row is the new limited edition perfume set - with miniature 10ml bottles of Benefit favourite perfumes - the new under my spell Noelle, laugh with me LeeLee, ring my Bella and my place or yours Gina and is priced at £29.50

All of the Christmas sets launched on Friday, so if you're near a Benefit counter, be sure to pop in and check them out, or you can have a look on the Benefit website.

The other thing to set a reminder for in your diary is the launch of the advent calendar, 'Countdown to Love' - it's priced at £50 and filled with mini Benefit products. It goes on sale on 2nd November but each store will only be getting around 15 calendars each, so if you want one you need to be quick!

Benefit Fake Up Concealer

Last week I went to the Benefit's launch party for their latest release - Fake Up. It's a new, hydrating concealer which has a ring of balm around the concealer which contains Vitamin E and apple seed extract to moisturise the area you are concealing.

The party was aimed at giving us bloggers the facts - they have solved the problem of concealer that creases, giving a fab product that conceals while leaving a smooth finish. It comes in three shades; light, medium, and deep - I was given one of each to test out for myself.

As always with Benefit, the packaging is gorgeous - I love the silver and pink casing of the concealer, it's compact and the design of the shape of the product means it's easy to apply it directly to the area needing coverage. It's quite a targeted, harsh line - however as the concealer is so smooth, blending it in is easy and it isn't as much of an issue. 

It's main use is for under the eyes - to reduce the appearance of dark circles and minimising fine lines. They are all quite warm and peachy toned shades, which is good for knocking out the blueish hue of dark circles. At the event, Lisa, Benefit's head make up artist, showed us how to use the deep shade to contour under your cheekbone and encouraged us to use ours to contour as well as conceal. Of course, you can do this with any creamy concealer, but ever since Kim Kardashian posted that contouring picture on Instagram it seems it's something more and more people want to achieve and these seem to make it more accessible to people - telling them to use two of these and voila!

They are the perfect consistency to blend - extremely silky, but perhaps a little too balmy for my oily skin when used in this way. For a creaseless concealer I was pretty disappointed to see it had travelled straight to the crease under my eye! I used a light coverage foundation over the top to fill in the gaps and to give it a test under my eyes, I decided not to powder over it. Because of the levels of moisturiser, unfortunately my mascara ended up transferring down under my eye. It also didn't look great over the spot on my chin which had gone a little dry and crusty (yum!).

I next decided to try it as an under eye concealer, this time powdering over it as I would my usual concealer and I'm happy to report it did the job and stayed put all night, without any product transferring down onto it, and without creasing.

In conclusion - if you have oily skin, be careful with how much of this product you use - it has a lot of dewyness in it already. Normal or dry skinned people could perhaps afford to use it over their foundation, but my oily skin needs it underneath. Make sure you blend it in really well, and out of your under eye crease, and set it with powder then you have a tip-top under-eye brightening concealer!

Fake Up costs £18.50 each and is available from Benefit's website and counters. 

Free Benefit Goodies with Glamour Magazine

The UK is really doing well for magazine freebies at the moment, and this is another one not to be missed. Free with the July issue of Glamour magazine (with Adele on the cover, looking rather gorgeous), is the choice of three Benefit items - High Beam, Posie Tint or BeneTint.

I knew the products wouldn't be full sized, but once they were out of their packaging they looked tiny - like they'd been designed for The Borrowers. They are 4mls each - as full sized products Posie Tint & BeneTint are £24.50 for 12.5mls, and High Beam £18.50, so you're getting about £10 worth of product, despite how small they seem.

As you may have guessed, I decided to go for Posie Tint, which is a pink coloured cheek and lip stain, and High Beam which is a highlighter. Both come with a brush applicator, a little like nail varnish, and they are easy to apply.

The photos above are of Posie Tint. It looks quite a shocking candy coloured pink on the brush but once it blends in to your skin it is a pretty, babydoll pink colour. The swatch on the left is it dobbed onto my hand, and the right is it blended in. As I write this blog post, about 3 hours later, the tint is still well and truly on my hand, and looks a little like felt tip pen!

I used it on my lips in the photo above, it is still quite a natural look, but makes the lips more interesting than being completely bare. I think it is a universally flattering shade, a nice soft look. I imagine as a cheek stain it is also very pretty, but as I already had blusher on for the day I didn't swatch it on my cheeks.

High Beam is described on the Benefit site as a satiny pink liquid highlighter accents cheekbones and brow bones for a radiant glow. It's known as the "supermodel in a bottle".

As well as being able to use it as a highlighter, you can use it all over your face for a glowing complexion, but I would recommend using a small amount of product to do this as it does highlight rather a lot! The swatch on the left above is it brushed onto my hand, and on the right blended in.

Here I applied a small amount to my brow bone, it gives a nice subtle shimmer. You can be more heavy handed for more of a glow, but be careful not to get any on your actual eyebrow as the colour does show up, as I discovered!

I am looking forward to having more of a play with both of these. Although they are small, I think it's a good, inexpensive way of trying out a product, and perfect for having in your handbag on a night out.

Glamour seemed to be flying off the shelves in the two shops I went in, so get in there quick if you want to take advantage!

Benefit Thrrrob vs Me Me Me Blush Me! Pink

As I was browsing the aisles of Superdrug I saw a brand I've never seen before - 'Me Me Me Cosmetics'. I know they have existed for a while as my friend had one of their lip glosses which lights up when you undo it (how cool!), but I've never seen it sold before. All of their products look suspiciously like bigger brands products - particularly the cheek products which look like copies of Benefit and Bobbi Brown products. 'Blush Me!'s look remarkably like the Benefit boxes of Hoola,  Thrrrob, Sugar Bomb etc. There is a range of four shades - bronze, pink, coral and rouge. The pink was the most appealing to me so I bought it along with something which looks like a Bobbi Brown Shimmerbrick, and thought I'd compare the Benefit alternative.

My thrrrob is looking a little worse for wear, please excuse it! As you can see the design is almost identical, with the box of blush and squared off flat brush inside.

Inside you can see that the Me Me Me is more of a bright pink, while the Benefit is more of a blueish pink.

There is a cute little angel printed on the packaging.

And the bonus feature of the Me Me Me is that there is a mirror in the lid, something Benefit really should consider as it's a great addition.

I swatched the two colours side by side on my hand in daylight.

The Me Me Me is on the left, Benefit on the right. You can see that the Me Me Me is more of a frosted finish, where the Benefit is definitely matte.

Not quite sure why I am putting a photo of me out on the world wide web that has day-old make up on but hey ho, I don't want to put odd blusher on if I'm going out! The Me Me Me is on the left, and Benefit on the right. The Me Me Me was a lot more noticeable and seemed brighter, the Benefit slightly more natural.

Both colours needed a heavy application to get it to show. The brush provided with the Me Me Me blush is a lot softer than the Benefit brush which makes it harder to apply.

I wonder if Benefit are ok with this brand taking on a lot of their styling and charging a lot less - check out the Me Me Me version of the Benetint on their site.

I am most definitely interested in picking up more products from this range - please let me know if you have any recommendations!