Beauty Products I'm Loving This Week

Hey everybody! Hope you're all well. Today is a rather mixed post, because I am going to show you the beauty products that are either a) rocking my world creatively or b) products that I simply cannot live without!

So without further ado, here's the first:-

Illamasqua Fundamental Palette

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Shades from l-r clockwise Powder Shadow in Hype, Liquid Metal in Surge, Powder Shadow in Inception and Cream Pigment in Bedaub.

I absolutely adore this palette and have already created a number of looks with it, which I will be posting over the next couple of days. I love how wonderfully bold the colours are in this palette, yet they are surprisingly versatile and I will show you how to use these colours to create a beautiful daytime look. Stay tuned!

Rimmel Wake Me Up Foundation and Concealer

If you haven't already tried this foundation, you NEED to. Just to give a bit of context on my skin, it is combination/dry, with an oily t-zone, prone to breakouts (especially hormonal breakouts), but I do get a bit of dryness around the jawline, and on my forehead. With this in mind, I normally opt for foundations specifically created for oily skin types, but there was something that particularly attracted me to this foundation... probably the orange packaging! I won't go into too much detail here, as I would like to do a more detailed post, but I will say this much. Wake Me Up is an incredible foundation. It gives my skin a healthy, radiant boost, and makes it look plump and fresh. It also kinda covers over my dry patches and doesn't make them glaringly obvious like Double Wear or Dream Matte Mousse can do. The concealer is also pretty good, as it can be used to cover both dark circles and blemishes.

No7 Beautiful Skin Melting Gel Cleanser

No7 has recently revamped their skincare range by renaming and repackaging their products and in this instance, created a brand new product. The packaging recommends this gel cleanser for normal/dry skin, and just lately I have been experiencing quite a lot of dry patches around my jaw and my cheeks have been quite dehydrated. I knew I didn't want to change to a heavier moisturiser, so a richer cleanser like this seemed to be a good solution to boost moisture in my skin without making it too greasy. This cleanser starts as a gel, which then melts away to an oil, which turns rather milky when washed away. It smells DIVINE. It cleans my skin relatively effectively without drying it out. In short, I love it. I look forward to washing my face with this. 'Nuff said.

Garnier Intensive 7 Days Hand Cream for Dry/Extra Dry Hands

I picked this hand cream up when it was on offer in Superdrug. I suffer with dry skin on my hands, my cuticles can be particularly haggard at times (too much contact with nail varnish remover!), and my nails sometimes peel because they are dehydrated. That's why I picked the dry/extra dry formula (there were about two other hand creams in the range). Oh, that and I love the scent of shea butter. As you can see in the pic above, this is a rich hand cream, but it spreads really well over the skin and it quickly absorbed, which is great because I really hate sticky, thich hand creams that take, like, forever to sink in! I recommend this hand cream- great price, great formula and lovely fresh scent.

Revlon Liquid Quick Dry

Since becoming a beauty blogger, who mainly blogs about nail art and nail varnishes, I tend to be waiting around a lot for polish to dry! When I saw this in Boots, I pretty much added it to my basket without hesitation. And it rocks. It dries freshly painted nails to be touch dry within a couple of minutes, and within the hour, they are pretty much nudge proof depending on the drying ability of the colour itself. It gives the nails a glossy finish, and it smells nice. Bonus.

L'Oreal Elvive Nutri Gloss Crystal Sparkling Shampoo

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I don't even really need to tell you why I decided to try this, it speaks for itself. A sparkling shampoo. It just kinda bounced off the shelf and into my basket! (I'm such a sucker for packaging!) On a semi-serious note, I normally use the Nutri Gloss light, with the pink bottle and green band, as I have mid length hair that gets greasy quickly, but I really wanted to try this new addition to the Elvive range. To be honest, I can't really tell the difference between the two shampoos, but this certainly looks prettier in my bathroom, and for that shallow reason only, I am gonna keep on buying this!

So there are my current beauty essentials. Are any of these products in your make up bag or on your bathroom shelf? If not, please leave a comment to tell me what your current beauty essentials are!