4 High Street Contour Kits You Need

4 High Street Contour Kits You Need

Sunday, 11 September 2016

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It used to be that contouring was not something the normal girl did. Contouring was used for editorial make up or by Drag Queens and Kardashians. But in the last 5 years or so contouring has entered the mainstream consciousness and we're all at it. Even me! And it has to be said I'm really not very good at it, BUT there are some tried and tested products that even I can't mess up with, and they're all from the high street!

Rimmel Kate Sculpting Palette in 002 Coral Glow & 003 Golden Bronze - £6.99  (currently 2 for £10 on Rimmel products) from Boots

Rimmel's Kate Sculpting Palette is a super handy palette that contains a blush, highlight and contour shade. The palettes are housed in pretty, but cheap, rose gold packaging and come in two shades, three in the US you lucky devils!, 002 Coral Glow and 003 Golden Bronze. 003 Golden Bronze is warmer in tone and designed for darker skin tones, but actually works surprisingly well on paler skin tones too, I can even use it on my ghostlike complexion with no problems. The highlighter is a cool toned gold with a fine glitter running through it, the blush is a shimmery golden peach in the same vein as Nars Orgasm, and the contour is a warm matte brown. 002 Coral Glow is the lighter of the two, and more suited to my pasty skin tone, the contour shade is ashier than 003, a lighter honey tone that can double as a bronzer. The blush is a coral pink with a slight sheen to it and the highlighter is a pale champagne shimmer that adds a beautiful radiance to the skin. Despite the slightly naff packaging the overall quality is excellent. The powders themselves are blendable, soft and pigmented, with excellent colour pay off and wear time. I've been showing these palettes a lot of love lately, they're really nice.

Maybelline Master Sculpt Contouring Palette in 01 Light Medium - £6.99 (currently buy 1 get 1 half price on Maybelline products) from Boots

I've been a huge fan of this nifty little contour kit since it's release last year. The powders are smooth, silky, pigmented, easy to blend and the shades are a perfect match for my pale, verging on pasty, skin. The grey/ashy tone of the contour creates natural looking shadows on the skin, without looking muddy, allowing me to carve fairly realistic looking cheekbones into my moon face. But it's actually the highlighter that's the real star of the show! A pale ivory with a subtle golden shimmer running through it, it adds the most beautiful, natural looking radiant glow to the skin. I'm now onto my second pan of the stuff and I still love it. 

Sleek Make Up Cream Contour Kit in Light 095 - £10.99 from (currently 2 for £12 on Sleek products) from Boots

I picked this up in a recent Sleek Haul (read more here) and I have to say this palette is the ultimate in drugstore contouring. It's amazing! A high street dupe for the now cult Anastasia Beverley Hill's Contour Kit, Sleek's cream offering is something very special indeed. Made up of six shades: two highlighters, a concealer and three contouring shades, there is something for everyone and every contour look you could ever want to achieve. The palette is available in Light, Medium and Dark. I have the Light palette as my skin is very fair, - read deathly pale - and it works really well for me. The creams themselves are flawless! Velvety, blendable and well pigmented. They apply beautifully, without moving any of the make up underneath and sit really nicely on the skin. With  a palette like this you have so many options but personally, I like to pack on the colour with the Real Techniques Contour Brush and blend out with a Beauty Blender for a more natural look. I love this palette a lot, and tend to use it more when I'm going out and need something that will last a long time,  or want my contour to be a bit more dramatic.

L'Oréal Infallible Sculpt Contouring Palette in Light/Medium - £9.99 (currently 3 for 2 on L'Oréal products) from Boots

I've raved about this contour kit from L'Oréal in a previous post (read more here) and it really does have a special place in my heart. I might even go so far as to say it's my favourite contouring product - but it does have some stiff competition! - it's that good! I've used it so much you can see the dent I've made in it! The most natural of the bunch, the cream to powder formulation is on point, combining the wear time of a powder and the finish of a cream. The formula is smooth, blends seamlessly into the skin and looks awesome! I have the shade Light/Medium, which I'll be the first to admit does look quite scary and dark in the pan, but it's cool toned so once it's applied it looks natural and shadow-like on the skin. The highlighter is very subtle and I've not had a ton of use out of it to be honest. Even so I love this contour palette and if I could only have one this would be it.

What are your favourite contouring products? Let me know by commenting below, on twitter, or dropping me an email at lolarocknroses@gmail.com. Also check out my instagram, facebook, bloglovin', snapchat -search lolarocknroses - & pinterest for regular updates.

Love love love xxx

Sleek Make Up Haul with Reviews & Swatches

Sleek Make Up Haul with Reviews & Swatches

Sunday, 31 July 2016

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l-r: Equinox, Subsolar, Hemisphere & Ecliptic

l-r: Purple Fandango, Bittersweet & Backstage

I don't think us UK based beauty lovers really appreciate how lucky we are to have easy access to Sleek Make Up. I certainly don't. In the beauty stakes I think us Brits do high street/drug store products better, and everywhere else has Sephora, so they definitely win in the high end stakes. Anyway my point was Sleek Make Up is awesome and we are really lucky to have easy access to it. So when I found myself in front of a beautiful Sleek display in Superdrug with some spare cash, purchases were inevitable. Let's take a look at what I bought.

Sleek Solstice Highlighting Palette - £9.99 from Superdrug

Okay let's all just take a moment to marvel in the absolute beauty of this palette. Give me a second I'm not done revelling..... and I'm back. I picked this up a few weeks ago after being mesmerised by it and I do not regret it. The palette is made up of four cool toned highlighter shades; a cream, two baked powders and a shimmer powder, for use on different areas of the face.  The shades are: Ecliptic - a cool rose gold-y champagne cream, Hemisphere - a frosty lilac shimmer powder, Subsolar - a light pale gold and Equinox - a shimmery peachy gold, that rumour has it is a pretty spot on dupe for Becca x Jaclyn Hill's Champagne Pop. The packaging suggests that you use Ecliptic to highlight the brow bone, Hemisphere on the cheekbones, Subsolar down the bridge of the nose and Equinox on the cupid's bow, however I've found myself dabbing Ecliptic on my cheek bones for a more radiant glow. I think the whole palette is pretty stunning but Ecliptic is my favourite, it's beautiful in every sense! Colour, texture and application. It's well pigmented and packs a real punch in the shimmer stakes without being over the top. Having said that the overall quality of the palette is amazing. And that packaging though! Housed in a warm, gold, plastic compact, with a good sized mirror, the packaging feels strong and secure and totally luxurious! It looks way more high end than high street. I love it, it's so beautiful.

Sleek Make Up Cream Contouring Kit in Light - £10.99 from Superdrug

A couple of months back I wrote a post about L'Oreal's Infallible Sculpt Contouring Palette where I lamented the lack of good quality cream contour products on the high street - although the L'Oreal one is amazing, just fyi - and then Sleek added their offering in to the mix...and it is so good. No scratch that it is so awesome. The Contouring Kit is available in three different tones: Light, Medium and Dark, so they do cater to a number of different skin tones, which will always get a huge thumbs up from me. I picked up the light palette as I have really pale skin, and the shades in the lighter palette are cooler and more ashy toned, making them ideal for us pasty skinned guys and girls. So let's talk about the formulation, which, by the way, is really good! It's light and creamy, applies really easily and blends beautifully. It also has decent wear time, which is great, because my contour is always the first thing to wear off. The palette is made up of six shades: two highlighters, a concealer and three contouring shades, and it comes in a sturdy, matte black compact, with a really good sized mirror. It also comes with a contouring guide, which outlines the best way to use the palette for more dramatic contouring. Personally I prefer something a little more subtle and have been using the first two shades on the bottom row to create definition under my non-existent cheek bones. It's a lovely palette and is so versatile. It has everything for super dramatic Kardashian-esque contouring to more subtle definition. I like it a lot.

Sleek Matte Me Lip Cream in Fandango Purple & Bittersweet - £4.99 from Superdrug

Matte liquid lipsticks are my jam! They're my favourite type of formulations and I'll take any excuse to play with lipstick, so when I saw these it was obvious that a couple would be coming home with me. After spending a really, really long time deliberating I chose Bittersweet: a rosy pink with a hint of brown and Fandango Purple: a vibrant, electric purple. I have to say I'm a bit mixed when it comes to these lip creams, so let's get the Negative Nancy bit out of the way first. The formula is not great, it's okay, there are definitely worse out there - I'm looking at you MUA Luxe Velvet Lip Lacquers -  but it does feel quite dry on the lips and isn't the most comfortable to wear. Having said that it's not a deal breaker, and nothing a slick of lip balm beforehand can't fix. Other than that they are creamy and smooth, have really nice colour pay off and apply nicely. They dry down almost instantly to an even matte stain and have some serious lasting. Bittersweet comes with a standard doe foot applicator but Purple Fandango has a longer, flatter applicator which makes for less precise and messy application. I'm not too sure why the applicators aren't standard across the whole range... weird. Other than that they are quite nice, BUT if you're looking for a matte liquid lipstick that is not drying, sticks around and has dreamy pigmentation than really look no further than Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvets, that stuff is incredible.

Sleek Lip V.I.P in Back Stage - £5.49 from Superdrug

Corals aren't usually my thing, when it comes to lipstick I like them either red or pink, usually long lasting and with a matte finish BUT after swatching this on the back of my hand I completely fell in love with it and I had to have it. The formula is stunning! Creamy, beautifully pigmented, soft and smooth to apply, with a semi-matte, velvety sheen finish that is just dreamy. I've worn it a few times and I love it. It lasts well, is so comfy to wear and the colour is stunning. I've got my eye on some of the others in the collection and will definitely be picking them up soon. Gorgeous!

Have you tried any Sleek Make Up? What did you think? Let me know by commenting below, on twitter, or dropping me an email at lolarocknroses@gmail.com. Also check out my instagram, facebook, bloglovin', snapchat -search lolarocknroses - & pinterest for regular updates.

Love love love xxx