Best of April 2015

April 2015 was a strange month. Not only did my personal life take a new turn, but also the weather was highly surprising, making me quite unsure whether to embrace spring trends, so appropriate in the ongoing sunshine or to face the chilly arctic air and entrench myself in cosy sewaters and dull, camouflage colours.

My favourites express my emotional instability and present a concoction of brights and neutrals.

However, traditionally I'll start from face products. 

1. Smashbox Contour Kit is probably the best product of thuis kind in my possession. I love the fact that it's very subtle and never looks too obvious and it also comes with its own brush which does the job better than any brush I own.

2. I shopped my stash and found a former love of mine, MAC cream blush in Something Special. It offers such incredible natural flush of colour for pale skin that I just couldn't put it down. I even hit the pan on this one, which doesn't happen often these days.

3.  Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Pomade is by far the best product of this type I own. It's thick and gives so much control ever the application and yet, still makes my brows look natural.

4. Bourjois Clubbing eyeliners are my new drugstore find. They are perfect! Smooth, soft, saturated with colour and absolutely budge and smudge proof. Just how I like it!

5. I returned to my favourite combination of taupes and cobalt blues. Dior blue It-Liner and It-Lash mascara came in very handy. 

6. My most reached-for eyeshadow palette was Nars Narcissist Dual Intensity palette. It offers a variety of shades which are right up my alley. Some of them perform better, some worse, but overall it's a great palette.

7. Since the spring has come, I've  felt inclined towards corals on my lips. I dug out two of my favourites from last year and added one more to my collection. Dior Addict Fluid Stick in Pandora offers incredible shine and last for hours. Marc Jacobs Le Marc in Coral Cora is a long-wearing demi-matte colour that looks so pretty and refreshing on my lips. YSL Baby Doll in Rouge Effrontee is a lip & cheek colour, though last month I used it mostly on my lips over my Charlotte Tilbury lip liner in Pillow Talk (mentioned later). I don't know why I never tried combining this product with a lip liner before. Paired with a waterproof lip liner this lipstick offers budge-proof velvety-matte colour that lasts until you eat something heavy. It takes me through my day at work and that's more than enough for me.

8. And finally, my favourite neutral lip combo. so far I've had some issues with Bourjois Velvet Edition liquid lipsticks. I found it hard to apply these evenly, they didn't last on me for as lond as the story goes, they felt siliconey and migrated around my lips until I distributed them over a lip pencil. All of the issues disappeared and I found my new favourite all-day-long lipsticks within my stash. My favourite combo this month was Happy Nude Year over Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk or Rimmel Exaggerate in Eastend Snob.  

As far as my skincare is concerned, I kept using the same products as last month as I don't like to have too many skincare products going on, but I need to mention one favourite which helped me even out my skin tone perfectly. Esthetic House Vita 3000 Vitamin C Vits-Capsule cream is a lovely cream that can be used alone or in conjunction with other products. It made so much difference to my skin condition that I fell head over heels in love with it.   

And now on to a couple of fails.

Becca Matte Skin Shine Proof Foundation is not new in my collection. I just  thought I might use this again. The application, however, resulted in the biggest fail ever. The foundation failed to blend at all. It clung to my skin in patches like no other foundation before, as a result I had to reapply my face make-up as going out like that was out of the question. It went straight to the bin ,but then, on second thoughts I rescued it and started mixing it with luminising primers, and it performed much better.

Max Factor kohl pencil in Cobalt Blue tempted me with its shade and performed well when swatched in the shop, but in fact is a super hard pencil that makes my lids ache and offers no colour pay off without working it into my lids, which is not a pleasure at all.

Bourjois So Glossy nail polish in Succes Azure seemed such a lovely colour in the bottle, but it leaned more teal-green than blue and chipped horribly within a day.