Brand new Dupe for MAC's "Mighty Aphrodite" Blush

"Mighty Aphrodite" has been an immensly popular blush of MAC from the Wonder Woman Limited Edition. It gives off a beautiful peachy pink color, very subtle. Because it was limited edition however, it is now only available from ebay for 28 Euro and up. I have found a new drugstore dupe, though, so go and give it a try. The dupe is by essence from their new Cherry Blossom Girl collection. They look pretty different in the pan but on the skin they are really similar, This blush retails for 2,95 but since it's also a limited edition you should probably hurry to get it, if you want to try it!

Perfect Eyeshadow for Green Eyes

I've got green eyes and I like them! I always look for make-up that will make them look greener than they already are. Now I found one, that does a pretty good job. It's one of the L'Oreal Chrome Shine eyeshadows and this one is the color "Dazzling Khaki". It a beautiful color, very shiny and metallic and extremely pigmented. Another plus: it only costs about 5 Euro and it's easily accessable, you can get L'Oreal products everywhere!

This is my eye with it on:

Like it? Is there anybody else out there who's been trying to enhance the green color of their eyes? How do you do it, please share!

How to afford High End Cosmetics

First: what does this picture have to do with the subject? Well, the Lancome Maison blush was one of the most expensive make-up items I have bought ( retails for about 50 Euro - don't tell my husband ). And will it be used? I don't think so. I know, that with every swipe of the brush, some of its beauty will get lost - gone forever ( it's a limited edition ).

See, I have 4 kids. When there's food and diapers and piano lessons to afford there's not much money left for make-up. So I wanted to share with you what I do to still be able to afford things like the Lancome Maison. We've all bought a make-up item that hasn't lived up to our ( very high ) expectation, it's a lemming thing, we buy stuff because other people have hyped it up, on youtube or a blog, etc. Then we don't like it and it disappears in our make-up collection. Well, not with me, everything that I don't use regularly gets sold again or traded for something else. There's tons of websites where you can offer your stuff to be sold or traded, just google them. I do that with make-up, with my clothes, purses, jewellery - even my kitchen appliances ( most of my Tupperware stuff gets sold again within the first year if I find I don't use them often enough ).

You will not build up a large collection this way, but collecting make-up is supposed to be a practical collection ( says the woman who has just admitted she'll never touch the 50 Euro blush ). You want to have pretty things that make you look pretty. If they don't - trade them for something that will do the job better.

Top 5 MAC Lipsticks

Everybody loves MAC lipsticks! I do, too. However, the lipsticks are expensive enough that you can't just buy one every day so when I treat myself to a MAC lipstick, I put a lot of reseach into finding the right one. MAC have an incredible range of lipsticks, there's a color for everybody. That also means, though, that it's harder to find just the right one. I noticed that the color swatches on the MAC website are not always accurate, so it really helped me, to look at swatches online, on posts just like this one!
These are my top 5 MAC lipsticks:

From left to right:
RAMBLING ROSE ( Frost Finish ): A lovely, shimmery nudey peach. Pretty sheen on the lips. An every day lipstick.
TWIG ( Satin Finish ): A browney-pink, very pigmented. A more intense nude, looks lovely with a dramatic eye look, esp. on paler women.
IMPASSIONED ( Amplified Finish ): My favorite going-out lipstick, very bright and vibrant.
SPEED DIAL ( Creamsheen Finish ): The perfect every day pink, a little muted and very natural, for somebody who wants to wear pink but not look like Barbie.
CREAM IN YOUR COFFEE ( Creamsheen Finish ): My favorite MAC lipstick, esp. in the fall and winter. It's a gorgeous brown and I love, love, love it!!

Here's some swatches on my skin ( same order as above ). I find these swatches pretty accurate.

Do you like my color choices. Which one am I missing?

Most Versatile Blush: Clarins "Blush Protige"

Blush may very well be my favorite type of make-up. I love blush and I've tried a lot of different blushes. I don't think I could single out a favorite blush, but I can show you a very versatile one. It's the Blush Protige by Clarins. I have the color 03 Miami Pink. This blush consists of 4 squares, two matt ones of a lighter shade of pink and two shimmery ones of a darker pink. You can use them swirreled together or by themselves. The pink is a sort of muted pink which suits every skin type, it just gives a healthy flush. The packaging is elegant but simple in gold and it comes in a red velvet sachet. This blush retails for about 30 Euro and you can get it at any Clarins counter or even online.

Here's a swatch on myself. Swatching it feels lovely, by the way. This blush is the most soft and velvety blush I've ever felt!

Here's what Clarins has to say about it:

http://www.clarins.co.uk/Blush%20Prodige%20Illuminating%20Cheek%20Colour/C050107005,en_GB,pd.html?dwvar_C050107005_color=01%20lovely%20rose&start=1

The best Soap & Glory Skincare products

With this post I'd like to show you one of my favorite skincare brands: Soap & Glory. I love the products, I love their names and I love the 50s style packaging. The descriptions are also hilarious! Not irrelevant: I love the pricetags, too - you get a lot of product for reasonable prices!

I've tried a lot ( alot, a lot! ) of their products, but these are just some of my favorites. I've seperated them in bodycare products and facecare products.

Facecare first:

Scrub Your Nose In It: My favorite exfoliator ever. It smeels fresh and minty, it feels like it's really doing it's job and it makes you look really healthy, like you've just spend an hour out in the snow.
Motherplucker Lipgloss: There's a normal version of this and "extreme" version. It makes your lips prickle ( in a good way, we all know how much these lip plumbers can hurt sometimes ) and I think, it really works.
Glow Job: This is a tinted moisturizer which has little bronzing pearls in it which pop when you massage them into your skin, which gives you a very natural glow. Smells amazing, looks amazing - perfect!
Peaches & Clean: A facewash which does it job, it takes all your make-up off and makes you feel really clean and fresh. It smells great, like mint and peaches ( hence the name ) and again, a whole lot of product, it lasts for ages.

Bodycare:

The Righteous Butter: I have tried the body butter and the body lotion and they both give you amazingly soft skin and smeel lovely and floral.
Flake Away: a body exfoliator, smells good, feels good, gets the job done. They also have an exfoliator called "Sugar Crush" which is also really nice and smeels very sweet, as the name suggests, while this one smells more minty and fresh.
Glad Hair Day: A lovely, floral scented shampoo, which I keep for special occations.
Clean On Me: A shower gel which smells amazingly fresh and floral, the scent lingers on your skin for a really long time. Again, this products lasts forever, you get 500ml in a full size bottle, which is A LOT!!
Girligo: A moisturizing body mist, you spray this on your body after your body lotion, it comes on white, like a very runny lotion. When you rub it onto your skin it acts like a perfume and makes you smells just lovely.
Hand Food: Hands down my favorite S&G product. Makes my hands feel super soft and smells soooo good. I will never go anywhere without it!

Well, there you have my favorite S&G products. Let me know, if you've tried them and how you liked them. Is there another product, I should have mentioned here?

Diorskin Shimmer Powder "Rose Diamond"

As my first product worth showing you I decided on the Rose Diamond Shimmer Powder by Christian Dior. I wanted to have it because it was so pretty - inside and outside! The packaging is gorgeous, just imagine casually pulling that out of your purse to touch up our make-up! The inside is just as pretty with its different shades of pink. At first, I only kept the powder as collector's item and admired it from time to time. But it's actually quite useful - and don't worry, it's not one of those powders which get really messy once you've used them a couple of times, I've had it for a while and as you can see I'll probably have it for the rest of my life, it hardly looks used!

You can use the light colors as eye shadows or highlighters and the darker pinks as a blush, it'll make you look beautiful either way - just give it a go!