Duty Free Beauty Haul!

When I went on my hols, I flew out of Gatwick.  It's a bit of a pain to get to for me, although we were helped by my lovely parents who let us leave my car at their house in south London and gave us a lift.  However, it did mean that there were plenty of opportunities for splashing out on duty free goodies before flying.  We were slightly pushed for time in the duty free area, but I managed to fit in a bit of shopping and got a small haul of nice products.

Firstly I got a second bottle of Lancome Teint Miracle foundation - I've got some left of my first bottle, but it's a product I will repurchase again and again.  I love this stuff, and it's convinced me that it's well worth spending the extra on a decent foundation.  I paid £25 for this non-duty free (and before the Vat rise), but this cost about £21 duty free, so worth picking up.

Secondly, I wandered over to the Mac counter.  What a joy it was to browse a Mac counter which was completely empty of grabbing customers, with two available members of staff to attend to me!  They had all the main line stuff, as well as the Wonder Woman as well. I'd highly recommend visiting a duty free Mac counter.  I was interested in the concealers, and one of the SAs had the time to properly colour match me - something I've never been able to get at a normal Mac counter.  The SA also talked me through my underlying skin tone - more yellow than pink as I had always thought - applied it for me, and gave me some tips on concealer application - all in a relaxed and unpressurised environment.  I bought a Studio Finish Concealer in NW20 which cost about £11.  I'm not sure what the non-duty free price would be, but it seemed reasonable for Mac.  I had (for some reason) bought two concealer palettes with me on holiday already, but as you can see, I didn't need them, as I only used this one!

Finally, on the plane I bought a Clinique Exclusive box set of Moisture Surge products, exclusive to Virgin (I think).  This cost £35 and I think was a complete bargain!  I contains a gigantic 75ml tub of Moisture Surge, as well as a Moisture Surge spray (very handy for long haul flying - I tested it out) and an Moisture Surge Eye Gel.  I'm so pleased I've discovered Moisture Surge, and it has got me through the harsh conditions this winter.  Last autumn I bought a 50ml tub for £30, so paying £35 for 75ml, as well as the spray and gel was very good value.  My 50ml tub didn't quite last me through the winter, but I'm sure that the 75ml will do.  I also got a tube of it with Glamour magazine before I went on holiday, so I've got loads of the stuff now!

I also got some sunglasses in Next for £8 as I managed to completely break my normal sunnies somehow sitting in the car on the way to the airport.  They were in my handbag, so it was very lucky I noticed just in time (whilst going through security)!

Unfortunately there was very limited choice of beauty products to buy on the way home.  Due to the US embargo on businesses operating in Cuba, very few brands were available.  There were a couple of perfume brands I recognised, but none I liked and some Adidas gift sets, but nothing that caught my eye at all, despite having a few spare pesos to spend.  I just stocked up on lots of yummy rum instead - anyone for a Pina Colada, or perhaps you'd prefer a Mojito?

Have you picked up any duty free bargains on your hols?

Don't forget to enter my Mac Wonder Woman giveaway.

Thanks for reading! xx

Elf Studio Corrective Concealer

Evening everyone.  I have quite a few blemishes on my face, so I get through a lot of concealers - I'm yet to find my HG concealer, although I've found some pretty good ones.  Last summer I spotted the ELF Studio Corrective Concealer on the ELF website for a bargainous £3.50, so I snapped it up.  What could go wrong?

Well, much as I love some of the products that ELF produce, this is very definitely a miss from me.  Don't get me wrong, it looks nice, is the expensive looking Studio black packaging, and it has a decent sized mirror inside the case as well as coming with an actually quite decent little (Studio quality) brush for applying the concealer.  However, appearances can be deceiving, and this one definitely had me fooled.

The website states that there are four colours:  green for neutralising redness, lilac for concealing yellow tones and a nude and beige shade for covering blemishes.  Well here's the first problem - I cannot tell the difference between the supposed nude and beige shade - I honestly don't know which is which, other than they're both an orangey shade and wrong for me.  With other concealer palettes I own, I like to mix up the different shades before applying to my blemishes.  However, ELF have handily designed this palette with the two blemish shades at opposite ends of the palette, so if you don't look down at what you're doing, you can easily dip you finger or brush into the lilac or green by accident and end up with a very weird colour combination.

Other issues I have with this palette are that it is underfilled in the pan, and not easy to get the product out with your fingers (which is usually how I apply concealer), and the terrible quality of the concealer itself.  I like a concealer to be a relatively firm consistency, although creamy, so you can apply it, blend it out and then it sets.  I've used other sub-five pound concealer palettes which have achieved this, but the ELF one is a big fail.  The consistency of the concealer is really soft, watery and slippy.  It is so insipid that it slips onto your face and you can't actually see where you've applied it, so weak is the pigmentation.  Actually, the lack of pigmentation is probably a good thing, judging by those frightening orange shades. The concealer is not buildable and it doesn't set.  So, if you cover a blemish and you can still see it, which given the terrible pigmentation is highly likely, you won't be able to apply any more concealer on top of it as it's so watery you'll just wipe off your first layer of concealer.  By the way, the green and lilac are just as poor quality as the beige and nude colours.

Here are some swatches, swatched in the order the colours are in the pan.  I took loads of photos and these are the best ones.  These were swatched onto my arm, after really rubbing my finger into the colours - no actually gouging out the colours, and my arm was dry with no moisturiser on it - imagine the lack of pigmentation dabbing these on to a moisturised face!

Well can I think of anything good to say about this, other than nice packaging and nice brush?  Well, I suppose it's so watery and soft that it won't dry out your skin like more cake-type concealers can do.  However, given that it doesn't actually do what it is supposed to do, that is to conceal blemishes and colour correct, then I don't think this is a unique selling point myself.

Incidentally, this is not the worst concealer that I've ever used.  Powderflage by Benefit is clearly the worst concealer ever marketed - I'll have to do a review of it sometime, as it is simply useless and conceals even less than the ELF palette.  However, you can use Powderflage as a highlighter instead of a concealer, so you can put it to another purpose...

The ELF Studio Corrective Concealer is one of my Project 15 Pan items, and is probably the item that I'm struggling with the most to use up as I just hate it.  I usually get through concealers really quickly!  I am trying my hardest though, so hopefully I can throw it out soon!

Have you tried this?  Did you have a better experience than I did?

Thanks for reading!  xx