Locking in Moisture, Cleansing for Less and an Eye-lifting Trick You'll Immediately Try

Three little beauty discoveries that are well worth your attention: I know I promised you books and television recommendations next but I need to get these delectable morsels down on paper first. I try so much beauty stuff that quite often I become a little bit overwhelmed by it all and find it difficult to get myself excited: when true inspiration hits and something wows me, I must stay in the moment and immediately convey my enthusiasms!

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1. Cleansing for Less

The first discovery is an exemplary facial cleanser that’s as creamy and plumptious as they come, truly moisturising, yet costs just £13 a bottle. It’s the Inkey List Hydrating Cream-to-Milk Cleanser (actually is currently £9.10 on their website here!); it’s unfragranced has quite basic no-frills packaging but this is a highly effective cleansing cream that breaks down sunscreen and makeup and rinses off clean without greasy residue.

(I remove with a warm flannel, which is how I do all of my cleansing, because the cloth grabs onto everything and pulls it off your face, whereas sploshing water at your face is frustrating and takes ninety times longer and gets everything within a five metre radius soaking wet. Also the gentle friction of the cloth gives you a mild exfoliating session. Also you can press the warm cloth over your lashes to help loosen mascara - whether it’s the tubing sort or the normal. After writing this list out and then rereading it I cannot fathom why you would now not use a flannel.)

2. Locking In Moisture

The second discovery ties in with a big old skincare post I’m about to send your way in the near future, because in that post I talk about beauty items that I have previously sniffed at, deeming them a waste of time and money and completely unnecessary in a routine. Am I allowed to change my mind? Because facial mists were firmly on my useless items list but have now shot up to the top of my “brilliant things to have in a post-40 skincare routine”. Oh, the added hydration! The way the mist locks itself in between the cleanser and the serum! The feeling that your skin has been glossed like a doughnut, that it is been magically infused with some sort of plumpifying juice!

And so I stand corrected on this misting thing that I privately scoffed at. And also my previous dismissive treatment of the primers category, too, but that’s a separate post. My favourite hydrating mist of the moment? The Mist Have from Yepoda, which is £18 here. Light, refreshing, but is akin to spritzing on a full-whack hydrating serum. This is glorious stuff!

3. Eye-Lifting Trick

Full transparency: this isn’t completely a new discovery because I’ve done a version of this eye-lifting trick for the past ten years or so. What you do, to counteract down-turning eyes that are sagging with just the general weariness of life and overall sense of ennui that comes with the passing of decades, is you take a dark eye pencil or smudgey shadow stick, and following the upwards curve of your lower lash-line, you sort of draw in a small flick or splodge that continues that line about 5mm up towards the tip of your eyebrow. Like a feline flick, or winged liner, but messier and softer and shorter. God it works wonders. This has always been my failsafe way to make myself feel as though I look more awake and less like a stayed up until midnight trying to find the class email containing essential info about the school trip to the Roman Baths. (Do they need five pounds spending money for the gift shop? Or did I imagine that!) (He came home having spent five pounds, by the way, on TWO PIECES OF STONE. Not even precious in any way. I cannot differentiate between these five pounds stones and ones from the driveway. Oh, and a pencil. IS IT ANY WONDER MY EYES ARE GIVING UP AND FOLDING OVER, I ASK YOU.)

The adaptation that I have made recently is to use an angled brush to make the little flick more defined and neat. This is because my eyelid has drooped over more than it did and I am not prepared to go and have it removed and sewn back on shorter, or whatever is the fashion of the day, so I have to basically try and create an optical illusion using kohl or shadow.

The angled brush dipped into very dark shadow (or one of those Bobbi Brown cream liner pots, also very good) means that you don’t have to do any guesswork. The line is as straight as a, I don’t know, ruler, and then you can just soften it out a bit with a fluffy brush to blend. Let me see if I have a video clip for you of this…

Here you go - this is actually a clip from a video that doesn’t go live until next week, maybe week after, so it’s a sneak preview!

The brush I’m using is the Zoeva angled brush and it’s £12.50 here. I’ve just seen how lovely my foundation looks in this video and am now in even more of a hurry to edit it and get it live! If you don’t follow my Youtube channel (I usually link to the videos here too but you never know what you might be missing out on!) then you can subscribe to it here.