High-end foundation at the High Street price?

Hello everyone.

I’m writing a review today, a review on a Bourjois foundation, it’s a little unusual for me as I don’t tend to buy high street products. In fact, I’ve always used high-end cosmetics and never really thought of buying drugstore products instead (especially not foundation) until a few friends of mine suggested that I  review some drugstore products as many many women use those. After researching what ‘cheaper‘ product was worth trying, I picked up the Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum because Nicola of Pixiwoo uses it in many of her makeup tutorials.

The product comes in a plastic bottle and has a red transparent lid. I wasn’t impressed with the packaging but the dispensing pump did make up for the poor presentation, it’s always nicer than having to pour the product out.

This foundation only comes in five shades : 51, 52, 53, 54, 55 and 56. It’s a shame there isn’t a wider range of colour but if that wasn’t enough, all these shades have a yellow undertone so I can’t see it work for ladies with pink undertone. I tend to go for shades that have very yellow undertone so I didn’t have issue with this, I just needed to get the right shade. Finding the right shade of foundation in a drugstore can be a nightmare; most samples have been there for ages and the colours have oxidized, the lighting is terrible forcing you to go outside to see the true colour, not a good experience… I stared at the shades for ages and originally bought 55 only to exchange it for a 53 the next day. I suppose I should have read the reviews where it’s explained that the shade 53 suits NC25-NC30 skin tones… I’m glad I went for 53 in the end, it goes on a bit too light but changes into a pretty good match for me as it oxidizes.

The foundation itself has a nice consistency, you can see that the foundation isn’t runny on the photograph below, it’s actually quite thick without being sticky.

I use a Sigma F60 or a Shiseido Perfect Foundation Brush to apply it and it blends very well with both. This foundation can be used as a very sheer layer but it is build-able and you can get a very nice medium coverage. I suppose a full coverage is achievable but I don’t think it’ll look as good. The finish is very natural, a little dewy at the beginning then goes into a more semi-matte finish, it suits my dry skin very well.

When it comes to staying power, it did pretty well, I think I’ve worn it for up to eight hours and it didn’t look bad at all. I’m not sure how it would work on oily skin though I’ve got a feeling it might not stay as long.

See the foundation totally blended into the skin below. It is hardly noticeable and has a good coverage, the veins on my wrist have almost disappeared.

One last thing to note is that this foundation has a very heavy floral fragrance to it, it is so heavy, I would wonder what was the scent I could smell as I was walking down the street on the first and second day. If you don’t like your foundation to have any fragrance then this isn’t one for you.

Overall I really like this foundation, I’ve worn it for several days in a row, it hasn’t broken my skin out or irritated it. I actually still use it a couple of times a week and will definitely repurchase when/if I run out of it.

If you need more convincing, maybe you’d like to know that Bourjois and CHANEL are actually the same company, so this Bourjois foundation could very well be a high-end product sold at a high street price tag… This product has been compared to the famous CHANEL Vitalumiere Aqua foundation after all!

Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum is available at Boots and Superdrug for £10.99.

Let me know what you think of this foundation. And maybe you could recommend more drugstore products?

Juliette

Wish List #1 – Makeup Tools.

Hello everyone.

I have been stuck in bed with a cold for a couple of days now and that’s given me plenty of time to lust over many products! I thought I’d cheer myself up and make a wish list of products I’m hoping to try.

I didn’t use to apply makeup with brushes until a few month back, I was more of a Beauty Blender kind of girl (still am a little bit). After trying a few brushes I want to try them all! Here is a list of the ones I have my eyes on :

– Louise Young LY34 – Super Foundation brush. It looks like a classic foundation brush but it isn’t flat, this one is round and quite full. I want to see it in the flesh before buying but it looks quite big and nothing like anything I’ve tried yet. Oh and it is Louise Young‘s bestselling brush apparently.

– Jemma Kidd Pro Brush 10 – Pointed Cream Blush/Foundation. I’ve first heard of this brush on FleurDeForce YouTube channel. Again, I haven’t seen in it the flesh but it looks very similar to the one above. I want to try it because of the pointy tip, I’m sure it would be great to go around the nose with this one.

– M.A.C. 163 Flat Contour Brush. It’s just came out with the new Face and Body collection and it looks great! I need to get my hands on this brush and one of those Pro Sculpting Cream bronzers. I’ve started to contour this past summer, I need to keep exploring this.

– DIOR BACKSTAGE Make-Up Full Coverage Fluid Foundation Brush. This one reminds me of the Shiseido Perfect Foundation Brush which I reviewed here. I really like the Shiseido one but wasn’t too keen on its short handle, well it looks like the DIOR one has a long handle. A bit pricey at £36 though.

Other tools and brushes.

– Louise Young LY24A – Superfine Liner. I’m a fan of very little on the eyes, I just like having a fine line of gel liner for definition and that’s all I usually go for for my everyday look. The finer the line the most natural the eye.

– Shiseido The Makeup Eyelash Curler. I’m just in the market for a new curler and this one is highly rated by many beauty bloggers and YouTubers.

The list could go on and on but I think this is quite enough. Maybe one of these items will make an appearance in one of my future hauls, who knows?

What do you think of this wish list?

Juliette

 

The perfect canvas?

Hello everyone.

Today, I think I’ll write about foundation. This article starts with a lot of babbling, feel free to skip the few first paragraphs or not; either way, I apologize that this might take a while.

I, like many others, have been on a quest to find the perfect foundation to create a perfect canvas for my makeup to stick onto. All of us bought foundations on a whim, the lady at the beauty counter applied it perfectly, the finish looked perfect, it concealed all our little troubles and the lights in the department store tricked you into thinking it was a perfect colour match. Fast forward a few hours /days and you realize that the finish isn’t that great, the colour doesn’t match and the foundation doesn’t hold very well on the skin. Think about it, how many times has this happened to you? I count three… And that’s only how many I’m happy to admit right now.

And so over the years, I’ve learnt that most beauty brands will give free samples. Getting samples allows you to try the products for a few days and see how you get on with them. You should never give your money to those who don’t, we are talking high end products here, they should offer an excellent service as well.

When Yves Saint Laurent launched its new foundation, there was a 7-day trial sample scheme to allow customers to try their new product and I couldn’t be more pleased, YSL was giving free samples of the Teint Touche Éclat, and advertising it too. I had to try it, I went to my local YSL counter, nobody was there to colour match me (this was on a weekday). So I went to another counter, no YSL lady either. Same situation at the third place but a lovely man from another brand helped me find a match. I was apparently a BD50, I took my sample home.I was so happy with the product that I went back and bought a full bottle the next day, I even bought a new Touche Éclat.

My old demons came back to haunt me a few days later when I was wearing a shirt with a lower neckline than I would usually go for; I started having second thoughts about the colour match. While I clearly did it again and bought something that could potentially be the wrong colour, I hadn’t open the bottle yet (I was still using the free sample) and I still had the receipt! I just went back to the counter and asked for a lighter shade. Below BD50 is BD40… There is a huge colour difference between the two though. So much so that the BD40 just created a ghostly mask on my face. I went back and picked up several samples and nothing matched me very well, until I started using some self tan, that’s when my friend BD50 was a very good match! So I never returned the bottle and started using it while I had a tan.

I’m sorry if some of you find all this story useless but I felt like it should be included in the post. I’ve been trying to decide wether to keep the BD50 for 30 days (which is how long I had to return it with receipt), when I did keep it I used it for another 3 weeks thinking thinking maybe I should get another colour to mix it with. I mean, as I explained in my Late-August/not-quite-September-yet purchases article, I still felt the foundation ‘might be a tad too dark for my complexion’ (without self tanning). When I got a chance, I bought a BD40 as well.

Most high end foundations come with a price tag of £30 and up. Le Teint Touche Éclat‘s RRP is £28. Not only is it ‘cheap‘, it comes in a gorgeous glass bottle with a signature YSL gold lid. And like this wasn’t enough, it also comes with a pump! I personally am not too fond of dipping my fingers in foundation bottles or of pouring the product out. The pump is a hygienic dispensing system and it also helps me when measure how much of each shade I need.

The foundation comes in a wide range of colours, twenty-two in total. The full range of colour is exclusive to Selfridges, all other counters and department stores only stock sixteen. The shades are divided in three groups, BR or Beige Rosé (pink undertone), B or Beige (neutral undertone) and BD or Beige Doré (golden undertone). Pale and Dark skin tones should have a match. If you were courageous enough, you would have read the few paragraphs about finding the correct shade above and you know that I wasn’t totally happy with the colour, I am now very picky. As a reference I’m usually a NC25 and go up to a NC30 when I self tan, I mix equal amount of BD40 and BD50, it’s the perfect match, you read it right, perfect match.

Now onto the actual product! It is a liquid foundation, I’d say quite a rich consistency and it feels quite silky. I have used a Sigma F60 then a Beauty Blender and the Beauty Blender on its own to apply the foundation, both applications worked very well. I now use it with my Shiseido Perfect Foundation Brush and it’s brilliant.

I’m aware that some people might not like using fragranced foundations but I personally adore the smell, I have been trying to figure it out what it remind me of, and I just can’t put my finger on it. I’m certain it’s something to do with one of my childhood memories. I have been sat here writing this article, sniffing the smell it left on the back of my hand (where I applied it).

I’d say the foundation has a radiant dewy finish. It gives light to medium coverage and this is exactly what I’m after. So it’s perfect right after the application but how does it wear throughout the day? Well… I was running errands in the city one afternoon and decided to go to Debenhams to try the Soleil Tan de Chanel Bronze Universel Makeup Base. When the lady handed me a mirror to see how it looked on my face I was horrified… I was shining (from the foundation and not the bronzer, that looked amazing, I bought it straight away) and the foundation had oxidized a lot (and I was wearing BD50 only back then…). My skin is dry to normal, I never use setting powders (don’t really like then, never needed them), I never needed blotting sheets… I never looked so shiny in my entire life.

So what was it? The heat? My natural oils? The only factor I could try to adjust was my moisturizer. And so, the next day, I applied less moisturizer than usual. Well, that was it, I had a radiant dewy finish but no shine or oxidization occurred during the day. I have been wearing Le Teint Touche Éclat for up to 12 hours on some occasions and I’ve just used a couple of spritzes of Caudalie Eau de Beauté when I felt like I needed to refresh my makeup.

Now that I have the correct shade and that I know how to work with it, I am extremely happy with this foundation. I personally cannot fault it, it is my favourite. I wouldn’t say it is perfect, but it is the most perfect one so far.

I would highly recommend this product but I must warn some of you that it might not be your most perfect foundation. If you have an oily skin, try powdering it? For those of you who love full coverage, I fear it might not look as good as it does with a lighter coverage. And, going back to a point I’ve made earlier, this product is fragranced, some of you might not like it.

Le Teint Touche Eclat is in the summer sales here for another few days.

Have you tried Le teint Touche Éclat? What do you think of this foundation? Are you picky when it comes to colour matching too?

Juliette