Blank Canvas Cosmetics: Master Series Palette One

For those of you who may not be familiar with Blank Canvas Cosmetics, they are a quite new Irish brand established in 2011. They are mainly based online but their products are available in selected stores throughout Ireland. The original product of the company was makeup brushes but they have recently branched into producing makeup products. Firstly was a collaboration with Irish model and blogger Pippa O'Conner, to produce the very successful Pippa Palette. Now they have launched what suggests to be a series of own brand eye shadow palettes. Having tried Palette One myself, I cannot wait to see what is yet to come! I own one face brush from the brand, the F21, and it is such good quality and so dense. I would highly recommend trying some of their brushes. The brand has a close association with many bloggers and Youtubers such as TheMakeupChair. 

So now onto the palette. Straight up, I love it!  It is the perfect neutral eye shadow palette filled with warm wearable colours. There are 11 velvety matte shades,and one shimmery highlight. The palette also comes with a vegan friendly double ended E40/41 Tapered Crease Blender/Smudger,which itself would retail at €11.99. The full palette costs € 34.99, which is great value for the quality of these eye shadows when you consider that the Urban Decay Naked palettes retail at € 46.00. 

These colours could easily be worn during the day or darkened and smoked out to create a night time look. The colour Corruption is actually not black,but rather a very dark brown. As these colours are so pigmented, you would need to be light handed in applying them, but they are so easily built up to a richer deeper colour. They are also great to last the day when applied on top of a primer. 

The brushes are also of great synthetic quality,however I personally prefer to use natural hair brushes for applying eye makeup as I think they are better at picking up and and blending the product. 

I hope this review was helpful,questions are welcome in the comments. xx

Sleek Midas Touch Highlighting Palette

Sleek Makeup has launched a new 24K Gold Collection with a few products, one of which is the Midas Touch Highlighting Palette. This is a pretty cool toned palette but don't be put off by the blue and silver options. These are highlighters, not eye shadows, so colour pigmentation was never intended to be their strong point! The shades you see on the palette appear more as undertones when blended into the skin. 

I was hesitant in buying a Sleek highlighter,as often cheaper highlighters can be just chunky glitter that will never look natural on the skin.But I was very surprised by the quality of this product! This is sold as both a face and body highlighter, with 3 baked powders and one cream formula (the silver shade). The colours from top left going clockwise are Solitaire, Tanzanite, Cubic Zirconia and Rhinestone. Tanzanite and Cubic Zirconia could easily be worn during the day, but personally I think the other two are more suited to night time looks. Rhinestone would be a good shade to apply on your cupids bow as the blue undertone would give the appearance of whiter teeth.

Hope this review was helpful. Let me know if any of you have tried this product and what you think of it! xx

Brush Cleaning on a Budget

Cleaning makeup brushes is a task that everyone avoids, but at the end of the day it is so important that we make ourselves do it. Think of it this way, you wouldn't pour out some foundation, leave it out for weeks and then apply it to your face? Would you? ...Na. So the best thing to do is make it part of your weekly routine. Maybe every Friday night?Or every second Saturday. It really only takes 15-20 mins..... but I guess that depends on how many brushes you have too.

 Cleaning makeup brushes is a simple task
and does not require a lot of equipment. You could spend a fortune on brush cleaning solutions and fancy gloves, but there are always cheaper alternatives available. I bought a rubber oven glove in Penneys/Primark for €2. It has ridges on it, and so works the same as other cleansing gloves. Baby shampoo is the best and most affordable option as a cleanser. It breaks down the makeup, but does not contain the harmful chemicals that could damage your brushes.

After your brushes are rinsed with clean water and towel dried, it's a good idea to comb through the hairs to remove any tangles or loose hairs. You can reshape the hairs by hand, however it is better if you can get your hands on some kind of brush holder with elasticated bands to hold the hairs in place. This is one that I got as part of some cheap makeup kit years ago. But, I'm sure if you were creative enough, you could make one of these with some elastic and a board. A potential blog post for a later date maybe..?

Hope these tips were helpful!

Jenny xx