With the ever increasing rise in numbers of Beauty Blogs, and the continually increasing awareness of Beauty PRs to this new type of media and ‘advertising’ by offering free products for Bloggers to review, it was bound to happen at some time, that some bad apples were going to start rotting the whole bowl. I’m talking freebies. Bloggers, like printed press journalists, are now being... 

At the risk of sounding boring while I bang on about bronzers all summer as I meet and fall in love on a daily basis, I’ve decided that rather than cover MAF’s front page in articles about them, I’ll collate some of my favourites and put them all here for easy review! I’ve already enthused about Clinique’s and Estee Lauder’s bronzers, both of which I’ve been... 

If there’s anyone who’s going to take a seasonal trend of colours, and make it literal, it’s going to be www.findmeagift.com who do it. They’ve taken Ice Cream back to child-like fun!  6 Ice Cream flavoured/scented lipbalms in Strawberry, Tutti Frutti, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Cookies ‘n Cream, Bubble Gum and Mint Choc Chip!  These mini pots of balm look like miniature... 

Its Wimbledon season, get out the Champers and Strawberries & Cream, we’re in for a hot one!  Statistics say that Wimbledon catering staff will serve 112,000 punnets of strawberries and 7,000 litres of cream over the 13 day tournament so rather than putting them into your body, put them onto your body with a little help from the fruitiest company around.  Lush! I remember my first experiences... 

Have you heard of Rituals?  No?  Then why not?! This very clever and most innovative of companies takes mineral makeup to the next lever. It is a gentle formula opf minerals, without perfume and parabens, but with gemstones.  Yes, you read that correctly, gemstones! I’ve previously mentioned an eyeshadow with sapphire in it, and this particular palette is enriched with amethyst. But is there... 

Floaty Fabrics, lightweight maxi dresses, your hair pulled back with a chiffon scarf, and a pair of oversized sunglasses protecting your eyes. But in these glorious summer days, what’s going on behind those oversized Chanels? You can bet it’s not a full on smokey eyes look with heavy black liner and mascara. This year, its all about the pastels. Soft baby pink with a light layer of mascara,... 

Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle! On a technicality, these at first glance, don’t look like they fit into my summery ice cream colours category, but afte the first brush stroke through them, they most definitely do! 4 shades of gold, green, lilac and blue, they positively ooze sparkle and shimmer. They are another of Barbara Bort’s clever glimmered eyeshadows, I already adore their Starlight... 

Urban Decay Razor Sharp Ultra Definition Finishing Powder This is what they say – “Be Facebook-ready and camera-perfect everyday, thanks to this high tech finishing powder by Urban Decay. Razor Sharp’s silky, micro fine powder fools the eyes with ‘optical blurring’, and miraculously seems to airbrush away skin’s imperfections. It’s a smooth, flawless, soft-focus... 

As any makeup artist will tell you, it’s not just about the product, but it’s about the tools too.  You can take the most amazing formulation of eyeshadow, but if you’ve only got fingers or those nasty bristly stubby brushes that we all get given by our grannies, there’s only so much you can do.  Yes, you can do smudgy smokey looks, and a barely there look, but you can’t... 

If someone had told me 12 months ago (maybe even 2 months ago actually), that I would be singing the praises of a Tinted Moisturiser, I’d have told them to stop lying to me! I’ve never ‘got’ the concept of tinted moisturiser.  To me, a moisturiser is a treatment product that is absorbed into your skin to balance it out.  A colour product adds colour to sit on top of your... 

Bronzer.  The staple of every makeup artist’s kit, but something we’re all searching for to get the perfect colour.  I don’t use shimmery bronzers all that often, they can translate quite badly in pictures, leaving the model/client looking greasy and shiny, and just not that great! I came across the Estee Bronze Goddess Bronzer quite a few years ago, when a bronzer I’d been... 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve used Lancome Eyeshadow Quads.  What initially appealed to me, as a younger fledgling makeup artist, was that the colour quads are very cleverly thought out. No matter what collection of 4 you get in your chosen palette, every colour will work together.  You can choose any 2 at random and they’ll work, take 3 of your choice, and they’ll work equally...