The Original Beauty Blender and Solid Review

I’ve found that regardless of the price makeup, having the right tools for the job can make a €10 foundation look like a €40 foundation and leave you looking flawless. I have a mountain of foundation and concealer brushes in my collection but they have all recently been made obsolete in the form of The Beauty Blender.

If you don’t know about The Beauty Blender already it’s similar to the Real Techniques blender. It’s an egg shaped sponge but a bit pointier on top. There are 3 types of Blender that you can get – the Original, Pure sponge and Pro Sponge. I picked up the Original.

There are a lot of blenders on the market but from reading around the beauty blogisphere the Beauty Blender trumps them all. Since I’ve started using the blender I haven’t touched any of my foundation or concealer brushes, the Beauty Blender does everything for me.

How it works:

When you get The Beauty Blender first you might be thinking “How is this little tiny sponge supposed to do anything to my face” but once you run it under water it nearly doubles in size.

I’ve only ever used it wet, I couldn’t imagine using it dry. Using it wet makes sure you don’t get too cakey looking and never puts on more makeup than you need.

Putting my foundation on the back of my hand I just dab the sponge into it and then in dabbing/tapping motions I pop it all over my face. The key rule here is to dab and not drag like a brush otherwise your face won’t look flawless.

The Beauty Blender has also cut my application time in half, it only takes a minute or two to put my foundation on and because the blender is damp I think it makes the application smoother regardless of which brand I use. I also find that I don’t need to use as much foundation on as it’s not getting sucked up into my brush.

I’m just back from a weekend away in Rome and I found the Beauty Blender to be super travel friendly, I just pop it into its little box and popped it into my bag and I was good to go, I didn’t have to think about what brushes would be best and because foundation brushes can be a bit bulky I didn’t have to worry about what size makeup bag to bring and when you’re on a Ryanair flight the less bulk in your bag the better.

I did have my own photos but they vanished on me

The Blender Cleanser Solid has also revolutionised how I clean brushes and the blender. To clean the sponge I just wet it and rub it into the Solid cleanser. It’s basically a bar of soap but works wonders for cleaning makeup off. You only need to rub the Blender into the solid for a little bit then to lather it I just squeeze it and massage the sponge with my hand and then rinse, I do this a few times till I see the water run clear. It’s not only great for cleaning you blender but cleaning you shadow brushes also. It makes the task of cleaning everything less of chore.The one problem I have is that the foundation does stain the sponge a little. 

You don’t have to go all the way to America to buy The Beauty Blender just check out their stockists for the UK and Ireland to see where you can buy it. It costs around €20 for the Blender and around €18 for the Solid, it might seem expensive to some but trust me when I say it will change the way you apply foundation forever.

Should I do a comparison of the Beauty Blender and the Real Techniques Blender?
Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

Love Sarah xoxo

Sephora Haul

I’m nearly a month home now from Orlando and the depression is nearly over, the post-holiday blues where pretty tough this year.

I had an amazing time over there and would recommend anyone who has never been to head there on your holidays; it was probably one of my best holidays I’ve been on.

Before I left I had trawled through the Sephora website and made lists of everything I wanted. I had saved a good amount and new that the majority of it would be spent in Sephora alone. My mission was to buy things that I can’t buy in Ireland or that was much cheaper than Ireland.

As part of my preparation and planning of my shopping list I set up an account to join the Sephora Beauty Insider club. I had set one up when I found out that Sephora had begun ordering to the UK and was going to use Parcel Motel to get my order to me but I have yet to be successful – if any of you have managed to get a Sephora order to Ireland please let me know in the comments below. 

Anyway when you set up your account you need to give your date of birth because each birthday you get a special gift and as my birthday is in July I set up a second account and put a date in September so that when I got to Sephora I would get my little gift. The second reason for setting up your account is that you collect points, a lot like the Boots card. For every dollar you spend you get one point and after 100 points you receive a deluxe sample size or if you manage to get 500 points you get a box worth of products.

Getting down to the nitty gritty of what I bought and I bought a lot, an awful lot, so much so that in the middle of the holiday I had been told that I can’t go into a Sephora shop or buy any more makeup. I was also told that I have a “problem”, my boyfriend didn’t get angry but he did tell me he was “disappointed” which is probably worse than being angry at someone.

Anyway let’s start off with the little birthday gift, I think they change these each year and my gift was a sample set of a Make Up For Ever Smokey Extravagant Mascara and Rouge Artist Natural Lipstick. I haven’t tried either of these yet but it’s always nice to get something for free.

I had seen so many Youtubers rave about the Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector in Opal and when I tested it in store I just fell in love with it immediately. The highlight this gives off is like nothing I have ever seen before. I wish I went back to get Moonstone which was slightly darker, I’ll just have to go back next year.

I love how Sephora have what I call beauty selection boxes; I wish boots did something like this, even just for Christmas. They have different boxes with a variety of beauty goodies featuring deluxe sample sizes and sometimes full size products. I bought 4 of their boxes, Give Me More Lip, The Superstars, Give Me Some Lip and the Meet your Match. I would have loved to have brought all the boxes home but I had struggled to fit everything in so I had to remove the items from the larger boxes.

The Superstar and the Give me More Lip are probably my favourite boxes. The Superstar box has the following:

- Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz in Dark Brown (Full Size)

- Benefit Cosmetics POREfessional

- Benefit Cosmetics They're Real Mascara In Jet Black

- Bumble And Bumble Surf Spray (full Size)

- Chloè by Chloè Rollerball (Full Size)

- Formula X Nail Color in Ignite (Full Size)

- Fresh Sugar Rosè Tinted Lip Treatment

- Josie Maran 100% Pure Argan Oil (Full Size)

- Nars Cosmetics Blush in Orgasm

- Smashbox Camera Ready BB Cream Broad Spectrum SPF 35 in Light (Full Size)

- Stila Cosmetics Stay All Day® Waterproof Liquid Eye Liner In Intense Black

- Urban Decay Eye shadow in Sin (Full Size)

The Give Me More Lip has:

- bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie™ Lipstick in Speak Your Mind (bubble gum pink)

- Benefit Cosmetics Hydrating Tinted Lip Balm in Posie

- Bite Beauty Luminous Crème Lipstick in Palomino (vibrant magenta)

- Buxom Mini Full Bodied lipstick in Menace

- Fresh Sugar Berry Tinted Lip Treatment

- Hourglass Opaque Rouge Liquid Lipstick in Icon

- Kat Von D Everlasting Liquid Lipstick in Outlaw

- Laura Mercier Lip Glacé in Blush (medium rose brown)

- Laura Mercier Crème Smooth Lip Colour in Red Armour

- MAKE UP FOR EVER Waterproof Lip Liner Pencil

- Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Black Dahlia Lip Tar: Matte Test Tube

- Sephora Collection Rouge Infusion in 10 Red Essence

- stila Stay All Day® Vinyl Lip Gloss in Nude Vinyl (medium pink nude)

- Tarte LipSurgence Lip Tint in Moody

- Tarte LipSurgence Power Pigment in Flush

- Too Faced Cosmetics La Creme Color Drenched Lip Cream in Naked Dolly

- Too Faced Cosmetics Melted Liquefied Long Wear Lipstick in Fuchsia

I love how you get so much in these boxes and there are a lot of products in them that I haven’t tried as well as colours that I wouldn’t usually buy. With there being so much variety it’s a great way to sample colours and items that you wouldn’t necessarily have thought of buying and you don’t have the commitment of buying a full size item and then have it not work out for you. These are great stocking fillers too but this time these are all for me J

Among the full size lip products I popped into my basket was the Smashbox Long Wear Lip Lacquer in After Dark. These are gorgeous highly pigmented lipsticks that are very long wearing, except when you’re eating they come right off. I’ll be reviewing these soon so keep an eye out for that soon enough.

The other full size lippies I bought where:

-          Bite Beauty Luminous Crème Lipstick Duo

-          Bite Beauty Matte Crème Lip Crayon

-          Bite Beauty Agave Lip Mask

Finally I bought the Marc Jacobs the Lolita shadow palette; I fell in love with this as soon as I saw it. I have yet to try it out I’m waiting for a special occasion to break this bad boy out but I can’t wait to try out a smokey eye with it.

I also bought the Glamglow Supermud, the Beauty Blender sponge and Solid cleaner, Urban Decay Triple Treat Travel Pencils, Urban Decay Perversion Mascara, Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade and Brow Wizz Pencil and Tony Moly Lip Balm.

So as you can see I did buy a lot and after some contemplation I probably do have a little problem and maybe I did buy a lot, I certainly spent a lot, a whopping $544 dollars’ worth of goods. I managed to get my 500 points and got a Buxom Too Hot to Handle Box (Pictured below). I also got upgraded from Beauty Insider to VIB and received a point’s card and a 10% off voucher that I got to useJ. I have to the end of next year to use the rest of the points; we’re already planning on going back next year so I should get use out of my remaining points and you never know I might get upgraded to VIB Rouge.

I will be doing in depth reviews on the majority of what I got so keep an eye out for that. Thanks for reading.

Love Sarah xoxo