Quick advice on brushes and The Brush Guard.

The Brush Guard annoys me in a lot of ways. You only get a few in a pack, and if you're like me, you have a lot more than a few brushes. Having said that, they are ingenious in design and they are really good for drying and storing your brushes.

I bought a single variety pack a few months back on ebay. I managed a decent price for it, so far as I can remember. I decided to get some more, instead going for the extra small pack of 10, the blush sized pack of 8, the foundation sized pack of 5 and the kabuki sized pack of 4, making 27 in all and hopefully enough to cover all my brushes.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a cheap price on ebay, they were all going for £5.50, and when I searched for online retailers they all cost £5.50 each, with different prices on shipping. Those four packs were going to cost me £22, and shipping could have been anything from £1 to £4 on ebay, depending on if they gave me a discount for multiple items.

Here's the thing: in the USA The Brush Guard retails at $5.50, and international shipping from thebrushguard.com costs $3.00, making a total of $25.00 for the transaction. Granted, it's slow post from America which could take up to two weeks, but when translated into GBP it cost me only £15.58, plus £1 as an exchange fee for using foreign currency. I actually saved £10 by getting it shipped in from the source.

Keep it in mind whenever you buy online, and especially if you're buying the brush guard.

TTFN,

Hell Thirteen
xoxo

Best Budget Beauty Buys... B4

I'm going to put posts like this under the tag B4, I don't know if it will be a regular thing but for the moment I will add posts when I find something worth posting about.

I have... 3 things to talk about today. One is a tip on getting make up for less, the others are things you can buy.

The first couple of things I'm gonna talk about are from W7, a company I've never been interested in, you can buy it in pound shops... they do some amazing neon eyeliners, but I haven't tried them because they go on your eyes and they come from a pound shop. I'm too scared.

  That said, I was in Savers just before my big night out, and I saw they had some crackle nail polishes priced at £1.99. They only came in black, white and silver, the range was called Earthquake. For your £1.99 you get a decent amount of product, 15ml as you do with premium brands like OPI, not surprising as the bottle is a dupe for OPI polishes. I really like the crackle effect and it does a good job with wide cracks forming almost instantly. The white is a little watery so one coat doesn't give proper coverage of the colour underneath, the silver is very gritty and thick like cement mix, and I think the black is my favourite because it goes with everything, it's thick but not too thick, and it works really well.

The other thing I got from W7 that day was the Africa bronzer. Every knockoff or cheap make up company is now selling their blushers and bronzers in these little square cardboard boxes to make it look like Benefit, W7 are doing it, Primark and Peacocks have their own makeup brands and I know for sure Peacocks are doing it, I think I saw them in Primark and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Claire's had their own too.

Here's the thing - on the outside the product is copying Benefit, on the inside it's copying Too Faced's Pink Leopard bronzer... the pattern isn't even similar, it's almost an exact copy of the leopard print in the picture of it here.

Original

W7 Version

Anyway, it's a very light pinkish bronzer with a really pretty shimmer.

Tip:

 

When I was out the other day I was walking around Superdrug and I came across their clearance shelf. They had a blush that was damaged, down from £2.99 to 99p, so I bought it. It was from Beauty UK, not a massive gem, but I took it home and set to work bashing it to a fine powder (it smelt far too much like talc and I was a bit grossed out, but this is about the process, not the product) and I mixed in some toner (I had no pure alcohol so I substituted) and then I set about sculpting it back into its original dome shape like icing on a muffin. I placed a cotton pad on top to help it stay clean while it dried and help it not to crack, and the next day I painstakingly neatened it with a q-tip dipped in make up remover. I placed a bottle of nail polish remover on top as a weight to help squeeze out any moisture. I waited another day (though I probably didn't have to) and then I took a tube of superglue and put the clear plastic dome back in the top of the container.

It took a bit of work but in the end I had paid 30% of the price for something broken and messy and useless and made it as good as new. Always keep your eyes peeled. Sometimes broken things can be decanted into other bottles or they can be fixed. A lot of make up artists decant their products to make them easier to travel with, even lipsticks get mashed up and put into palettes.

Here's a swatch of the bronzer and the blusher... the blusher's the pink one.

Neither are particularly pigmented.

I hope this helps some of you save some money!

Thanks for reading, don't forget about my Sigma giveaway which ends on Sunday.

TTFN!

Hell Thirteen

xoxo

ebay, I love you.

I was on ebay on Sunday and spotted some expensive make up on the cheap. I managed to bag an Estee Lauder lipstick compact for £1, and a Stila illuminating liquid foundation for another £1. With shipping it came up to about £6 total. They arrived about half an hour ago and that Sigma brush still hasn't arrived having been shipped over a week ago!

My first impressions:
The first thing I did was test the foundation to check that I had the right shade. It seems 10 Watts is in fact the perfect shade for me, but my celebrations at finding such an awesome priced foundation that matches my skin tone were cut short when I smelled the back of my foundation covered hand. It smells rank. Like paint that's gone off, I mean, I like the smell of paint but this just doesn't smell right. I realise I don't know how old this foundation is, and when I opened it, it had clearly been used at least once. Has it gone off? Or does it just smell that way?
It holds none of the usual clues to a bad foundation: separation of the ingredients in the bottle, lumpy or strange consistency, and I'm not sure if it just smells like that because it's an oil based foundation. I shall have to try it on my face and see how it goes. I may post about this again later. I am glad I didn't may $38 just to try it. After the conversion rate that's still around £22.

I've just tried out all four of the lipsticks in the Estee Lauder palette. They are Pure Colour Long Lasting Lipsticks, and one of them is a Pure Colour Crystal shade, 303 Crystal Pink.  The others are 166 Candy, 161 Pink Parfait, and 182 Pinkberry.

When I was really young and was just messing about with makeup, I remember my brother Michael giving me an Estee Lauder gift bag. I think I used to think of it as granny makeup because it was all browns and a bit boring for a kid to play with. I had two lipsticks, two trial sized mascaras and a small duo colour eye palette, and as I grew up I used those lipsticks more and more often for daytime looks. The lipsticks eventually went off, as all oil based things eventually do, but those eyeshadows are still in my make up drawers, still wearable, still beautiful, still smelling new. Michael died around this time eight years ago, but his gift is still here, usable. One of the best things he ever got me. I never bought another product by Estee Lauder until that turbo lash vibrating mascara came out, the most ridiculously expensive mascara I've ever bought. I always remembered those lipsticks for their amazing quality, something that is apparently still there today. The thing I notice is that the difference between colours is a subtle one, in most cases.

Here are my lipsticks:

161 Pink Parfait

182 Pinkberry

303 Crystal Pink

116 Candy

Like I said, the difference is subtle on the lips. They look different in the compact.

They are very lovely lipsticks, they feel really creamy and moisturising, they look beautiful and if I had bought each of these to try as full sized individual lipsticks at £18 a pop it would have cost me £72, and I wouldn't have had a lipbrush or a mirror. I think it highly unlikely that I will use these up all that quickly, as I prefer brighter colours or just a balm on my lips most of the time, but I will use them. I feel happy with this £1 purchase. Actually, I'm ecstatic.

Less than 24 hours left to enter my Eyeko giveaway. Subscribe and comment "enter me" and I pick the winner tomorrow afternoon. 

TTFN

Hell Thirteen xoxo