Three New Makeup Discoveries and if I Can Put Them On...
Three new makeup discoveries you might just want to take a little look at, because they have immediately landed themselves prime place in my daily makeup bag. They’re all easy to use yet give instantly brilliant results. Products you can splodge on, or scribble on, or swipe on, and that require little in the way of skill or time or unnecessary faff. No extra tools or brushes needed.
And because I’m a living legend, I have filmed myself putting all of these products onto my own face so that you can see the difference they make. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll find the video, complete with voiceover.
THE GROWN-UP BLUSHER STICK
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The first foolproof product is the Pixi On-The-Go blusher stick and it is - I’m going to say it - sublime. It has just enough pigment to give you a good dose of healthy colour, to knock the undereye shadows back (did you know about that trick?*) and to add a bit of spark to a tired, dull complexion. The pigment is suspended in a balm that’s every bit as moisturising as a proper lip balm and gives a gloss and a sheen to the skin, so that ultimately what you’re getting is a bit of perky colour and the luminescence of one of those grown-up highlighters that don’t have sparkle.
It’s a killer combo.
And the best thing about this blush stick is that it has the most genius shape: it’s really wide and when you swipe it on (I like the top of the stick to be just on the cheekbone) it deposits just the right amount of colour in just the right position! I barely need to blend this in. There are no hard edges. It’s sheer in its effect but you still notice the colour, it’s deeply hydrating but not greasy, it could possibly be the best blusher stick for grown-ups I’ve ever used.
It doesn’t look like makeup for grown-ups, it looks like it might have fallen from a Duplo box, but who cares. When something works this well, it could arrive in a case woven from spider legs and I’d still give it pride of place on the dressing table.
This Pixi On-The-Go blush stick comes in six shades and another that adapts to your own skin tone: I’ve been using Mauve, which is a pretty pink and Chantilly, my favourite, a soft peach that’s not too orange. Very enlivening on sallow skin. I think I may buy Fleur too because I do love a very pale-yet-bright pink going into spring!
You can find it here online - £18.
(* I was taught, decades ago, that if you have a sheer wash of blusher positioned quite high, almost onto the undereyes, it really knocks back shadows and makes you look more awake. If you get it wrong then it’s all sorts of madness and you look as though you need urgent medical attention, but if you whisper just a bit of pink there, slightly higher than usual, it really wakes everything up.)
THE PERFECT BROW FEATHERER
Do you want those brows that are sort of feathery and go in an upwards direction, making your whole eye area look more open and sparky? I’m not talking about those eyebrows that are drawn on with dark stripey brushstrokes, the ones that make people look as though they have a barcode above each eye. More natural than that: normal eyebrows, just defying gravity a bit. So that you get more space between lashes and brows and look less like you haven’t slept since 145 BC.
There are loads of brow gels on the market - many of them are glue, really, and set hard and spiky so that your brow hairs won’t move for the entirety of the day and possibly the next day after that. I have loads that I like, including Boy Brow from Glossier, which has a tint to it and a waxy texture that sticks to your natural brow hairs to bulk them out a bit, and Brow Freeze from Anastasia Beverly Hills, which is a gel in a pot that you apply with a brush and comb through with a spoolie.
The reason that the new Brow Aid Browtox has made it into my favourites is that all of the application tools necessary to create lifted, set-in-place brows are incorporated into the product itself. It’s a gel in a tube and the applicator has a soft sponge side to apply product and a comb side to comb and set the brow hairs in place. (Official instructions say to do it the other way around but I find either way works and I often go in with both sides of the applicator multiple times before I have everything the way I like it.)
This Browtox gel sets firm but doesn’t feel too crunchy and also doesn’t pull the skin underneath too tight. It contains ingredients to help with hair growth, though I hadn’t noticed that until I started writing this up. This is a really, really easy way to give the eyes a bit of a lift without too much hassle, just comb the hairs upwards and outwards into a position that doesn’t make you look too much like you’ve just electrocuted yourself.
It’s here online - £19.50.
THE COOL-TONED CREAM SHADOW
I’m always on the hunt for eye products that can essentially be applied in the dark, with no mirror, whilst in the backseat of a getaway car that’s the target of a high-speed police manhunt involving helicopter searchlights and exploding oil tankers and 180 degree turns in the middle lane of the M5.
I have no intention of every being involved in this sort of car chase, but I like to imagine that if a makeup product could be applied in such a scenario then it’ll be an absolute cinch to use when you’re sitting still in full daylight in front of a magnifying mirror.
And this one is. Trinny London’s Eye-2-Eye Cream shadow. Just smoosh a finger onto the surface of the pot and dab onto the eye lid: this shadow is very forgiving, doesn’t drag the skin when you blend it but manages to stick fast all day long.
But the foolproofness of this one comes not from the cream shadow itself but the shade. It’s has a heathery, purplish warmth to it but essentially the overall tone is cool, greyish. If pink and orange-based tones tend to make you look ill then this is well worth a try. It’s not overly dramatic, despite the specks of metallic in the photograph: I’d say this is firmly in the “daytime eye” category.
It’s £20 online here.
Video evidence that all of these are a cinch to use: