My Current Makeup Favourites

I'm going to take this opportunity today to rave about my current favourite makeup products and why I love them so. Many of these products I am a long-term lover of and continue to purchase, whereas others are recently purchased and instantly adored!

1.  Makeup Revolution Iconic 3 Palette. If you hadn't already guessed just by looking at it, this palette is a drugstore dupe of the beloved Urban Decay Naked 3 palette, but at less than a quarter of the price. The shades are incredibly flattering on me and the warmth really compliments my skin tone. You could be forgiven for thinking that a palette priced at just £4 will hold nothing but cheap, tacky, dull eyeshadows that don't blend or work well together. WRONG! These colours are some of the most easily blendable I have ever worked with and the pigmentation is incredible for the price. Even the matte colours are really vibrant and the lightest shade is the best pale eyeshadow I have ever used. Not to mention they are the closest colour and texture dupes I will ever find compared with the Naked 3 Palette. I swatched my favourite 5 shades below (numbers 12, 6, 7, 2 and 1)

Makeup Revolution Iconic 3 palette

2. Mac Soft Ochre Paint Pot. I was introduced to this by Nikkie Tutorials on Youtube who uses it on so many of her tutorials. As we are both mega pale I thought I would give this a try. The texture is lovely and creamy and it blends so easily onto the eyes with either a brush or your fingers. I use this as an eyeshadow primer every single day and the longevity is the best I have ever experienced from an eyeshadow base. If I was being picky I would say this specific colour is slightly too yellow on my skin but this is irrelevant as I always pack more colour on top of it. It is great for providing a smooth base for eyeshadow and it covers any veins on the eyelids (of which I have many!)

3. Benefit Dandelion Blush. I've had this for an embarrassingly long time and I'm not even sure you're supposed to keep makeup that long, but besides that, Dandelion is great! It's a pale pink powder blush that, in my opinion, reminds me of the cheeks of porcelain dolls! Pale, subtle, and so pretty. 

4. Illamasqua Cream Pigment in Hollow. If you're a super pale girl on a quest for the perfect ashy contour colour, then stop searching, because it's right here. I first heard about Hollow from Samantha Chapman on YouTube who described it as the perfect contour colour for pale skin because it doesn't have any orange or red tones in it. It's a pale, ashy brown that's buildable and easy to blend on the skin. The swatch below is very pigmented but blended out it looks incredible and mimics the shadows someone might have on more naturally contoured cheeks.

Benefit Dandelion blush and Illamasqua Hollow

5. Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer. This is already a cult favourite and for very good reason! I don't own any other Collection makeup apart from this product, but I'm on my fourth bottle as we speak. It has just the most perfect full coverage, it's creamy, blendable and lasts a really long time. I haven't had coverage as good as this concealer with any others I have tried, and this is especially important from someone who doesn't wear foundation. Not only that but it actually caters for pale people! Can you imagine that?!  No more having to pick between 'light', 'medium', or 'dark', but instead we have 'fair' for the rest of us. Thank goodness for that, because I typically struggle finding concealers (and foundations) that don't turn me into an orange mess.

6. Rimmel Lasting Finish Kate Moss lipstick in 03. The Kate Moss lipsticks have an amazing formula. They're beautifully creamy, moisturising and they fade gradually on the lips and don't leave a ring around them like some lipsticks do. Most lipsticks I find leave my lips flaky and dry when they fade, but not this one. When I need a top up I find that I can just instantly put another coat on top and not have to worry about exfoliating and moisturising all over again first. The shade 03 is a lovely nude that leans on the darker side. I would describe it as a medium brown-beige colour with a creamy finish. I find this colour very flattering on pale skin and doesn't wash me out like other nudes do.

L- R. Kate Moss lipstick in 03, Revlon Matte Balm in Elusive, Revlon Matte Balm in Striking

7. Revlon Matte Balms in Elusive and Striking. These balms were all the rage when they first came out and I jumped wholeheartedly onto the bandwagon and have built a mini-collection over the last year or so. First things first, the words 'matte' and 'balm' are not two words that you often hear together, but it's precisely what they are! It is the creamiest matte lipstick I have ever worn and instead of dragging across the lips like many of them do, it glides across beautifully and is so easy to apply. The finish remains soft and moisturising about an hour on me afterwards where it then sets. I love these for their ease of application and matte look, but I do find that they leave a sticky, built up residue in the middle of my bottom lip after a while! The swatch in the centre of the picture above is quite a bit darker than it truly is, but it's actually a cool-toned, dusty, pale pink matte that I think could be universally flattering. To the right is 'striking', a vibrant, warm red that instantly lights up my face!

8. Lanolips Lemonaid Lip Aid. Lanolips is wonderful in the way that it moisturises so extremely well but somehow manages to gently exfoliate at the same time! I haven't tried any of the other variations of this lip treatment but this lemonade scent smells amazing. Unlike other lip balms and moisturisers, when I take them off I have to exfoliate the dead skin before I apply my lipstick. With Lanolips the skin seems to come off with the product which is amazing and saves me so much time, especially out and about.

9. Rimmel Scandaleyes Mascara. This mascara works better on my eyelashes than most I have tried. I'm not blessed with long eyelashes and they can be quite sparse, so I need a wand that's big and bulky in order to capture every lash that tries to escape. The wand is quite bulbous and goes inwards at the centre. I don't know what kind of effect this creates but it works! I think it helps in curling the lashes and after I use it I notice that they are much thicker, longer and slightly curved.

That's all for now and sums up most of my 'staple' products that I always return to in times of need.

What would be your one staple product?