COMPLEXION

Roll Up, Roll Up: Benefit Big Easy Multi-Balancing Complexion Perfector and Gimme Brows

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Ah sure, how hard could that be?
BENEFIT BALANCE
Pretty hard, I am guessing.

How easy is it to have to perfect skin? Eh, that depends. Benefit are making a new contribution to the flawless face-stakes with Big Easy Multi-Balancing Complexion Perfector, a liquid-to-powder that is balancing {see what they did there?}, self-adjusting and perfecting. Below, please see Mark Dixon, Irish BeneFit ambassador, making that last point:

BENEFIT Mark

Also: mini-burgers and delicious, delicious chips

I’ve given it a go, under a variety of circumstances, and I find that even though it is not technically a foundation — because the coverage is light-to-medium — when I treat it like a foundation, it works better. That means a good going over the face with PoreFessional and application with a brush.

I am not one hundred per cent sure that this product is meant to merit the full welly, but it got it anyway, because it did indeed feel light, yet comprehensively covering. When I used it on its own, I wasn’t as happy with the result. I mean, you can build it and build it, but that seems to run counter to claims that you’re done in one — coat, that is.

I did find the result to be as impressive as our featured acrobatettes, though: a healthy look with just the correct amount of glow, not shine; and even with the primer, it didn’t feel like I had anything on my face.

***

At the same launch, I was introduced to something that I fell in love with instantly. I am always on the lookout for new brow-defining products, and am stupid impressed with Gimme Brow:
GIMME BROW 1
A vast improvement on their Speed Brow, they took its sensible feature — a wand with a brush that is like a mascara brush — made it smaller, and infused the product with volumizing fibres. There’s pigment, too, either light/medium or medium/deep; this is the light version, which I never would have chosen, always going for the Academy Awards calibre Anne Hathaway brow, but seriously, those fibres fill things out, and even extend, naturally:
GIMME BROW 2
This last is dead handy, and as I am having to re-grow the lengths of my brows {what a life! I know, I know…}, this is helping get the look back without looking like something out of a Fellini film.

Speaking of, once more, with feeling:
BENEFIT Fit!

***

Big Easy Multi-Balancing Complexion Perfector: €37/£32.50/$38

Gimme Brow: €24/£17.50/$22

***

Haiku Review: L’Oréal Nude Magique BB Cream

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Gray, yet shiny cream
With an odd gritty texture?
Strange but true magique.

NO, SERIOUSLY. This BB cream stuff, how is this not merely tinted moisturiser*? I could google that, and I will, but for now, I would just like to say that this latest product from L’Oréal is actually magique.

Nude Magique BB Cream (€14/£9.99) doesn’t much look like it, though.

Yeesh. I don’t know, I thought it might look at least a little bit like a skin colour — a skin colour that was alive. The pearlescence gave me hope, though: it looked pretty, and I figured, well, some highlight-y primers have that kind of sheen. If worse came to worse, I could just put some foundation over top of it.

And it felt weird too, a little bit sandy, or something? The slightest bit of grit, not like a facial exfoliant, but there was definitely some sort of textural thing going on that I didn’t expect. These would be the Smart Pigment Capsules, which are the things that make the magic that occurs upon…

Application! I watched with wonder as the shiny, pearly cream turned into my skin tone, only better. I took some pictures, which I don’t know, are these at all helpful? I didn’t mess around in pshop {maybe I should have; brush your hair, Conley!}, so you can see how strangely unlike my skin the cream is, and then how well it blends to become a light and bright version of the colour of my face.

Eh, I don’t think this is as convincing as it should be, because this is a pretty incredible product. Please visit Lovely Girlie Bits for clearly superior photographic evidence of the efficacy of this jawn. This is perfect for those days when you absolutely cannot be bothered to do your full routine, but don’t want to go out there, well, nude.

I have gotten into the habit – a habit of a whole entire week — of lashing this on before horseriding, because of the SPF. It is great, because I get protection and perfection without looking like I some eejit putting on make up to go horseriding. I put some on yesterday, in fact, when I went showjumping and won my first rosette!

Was the Nude Magique my lucky charm?!?! Hmm, won’t go that far {and believe me, I could} but I will say that this will take up a permanent place in my notoriously fickle make up bag.

* Because, depending upon the brand, you get anti-aging, high SPF, even skin tone, moisturizing, sebum control from the BB, which you don’t get from the tinted moisturiser. So it’s like a treatment thing and a make up thing in one. Right, got it.