What I loved in February.

This last month has been so hot that I've spent a lot of days with only minimum makeup - tinted moisturiser, a swipe of a single eyeshadow colour, mascara and lipstick or lip gloss. I really, really hate Adelaide summers. I want to live somewhere cold - not snowing, just cold. I want to be somewhere where I have to put a cardy on before I go outside.

 But enough whinging. In February, I was still loving a lot of the stuff I used over and over in January,  and I also dug up a couple of items that had been languishing in the bathroom drawers. I reviewed Alpha-H a couple of weeks ago so I won't say too much more about that one. I was watching one of Lisaz09's youtube videos the other day and she talked about using Clarins Instant Smooth Perfecting Touch under her eyes before applying concealer. I've had this stuff for ages, and I never really liked it as a full face primer, but I have used it around the eyes in the past to smooth out fine lines. I'd forgotten about it until Lisa mentioned it again, so I've hauled that out to get some use out of it. It's a teeny tiny jar but you only need a teeny tiny scrape so it lasts FOREVER. I'm finding that my under eye concealer does go on more smoothly if I use this first. Good show, Lisa!

I go on and off face primers, depending on how dry my skin is. I haven't been using one for some time because my skin becomes more oily in summer and I don't like layering product after product on my face. However in the last couple of weeks, I've felt a bit "dry" with just a moisturiser under my foundation, so I got out my Face Of Australia Face Base. This stuff is great - it costs about $10 at Priceline and it's oil-free so it doesn't go greasy later in the day.

I've been doing a lot of perfume testing in the last month, but whenever I got sick of testing new fragrances (and as much as I love it, it does get a bit too much at times and you just want to smell like something familiar) I went back to one of these three perfumes - Miller Harris Fleur Oriental (my all-time favourite perfume), Chanel Gardenia and Fendi Theorema. (I only have decants from those last two because Chanel Gardenia is only sold in Paris and Theorema has been discontinued and is quite hard to find.)

And finally with makeup, I was shopping my stash for pinks and purples this month, and these are the ones I kept heading to over and over. I love this Chanel eyeshadow quad (it's called Garden Party) - that peachy colour in the top right is one of my favourite eyeshadows ever. Next to that is Joey New York blush in Faith, a light, springtime pink, and NARS eyeshadow in Ondine. This is a gorgeous colour - a shimmery plum-brown.

Centre left is Urban Decay eyeshadow in Toasted - a shimmery bronze/peach. I was amazed by the pigment in this - I loaded it on my brush the first time as I normally would with any eyeshadow, and ended up with a massive swipe across my eye that I had to spend about ten minutes blending out! It was my first experience with Urban Decay eyeshadows and people have told me they are super-pigmented, but I guess I didn't realise how right they were. The NYX shadow on the right is Prune, and I've been using that a lot as a crease colour - very pretty.

I spent two weeks using lip glosses exclusively, but not one of them jumped out at me as a favourite - I used a different one each day just for the sake of using them. My favourite lipstick is still Stila Natasha, and even though I only received Rimmel Airy Fairy earlier this week, I've worn it every day since, so it definitely counts as a February favourite. I have also used NYX Citrine lipliner almost every day, changing occasionally to Prescriptives Sheer Lip Pencil in Candy, which works particulary well with lip glosses. Oh, and that peachy/pink eyeshadow in front is Bourjois Ombre Stretch in Rose Etastique, my current favourite highlight colour.

Next month I'll be working through blues and greens.

 

 

I haven't really got a colour theme going for lipsticks for March - I'm just going to try some that I haven't used before.