Lush Colour Supplement Review

I picked this up at the Lush in Place Stephanie, Brussels at the end of October on the store's opening day. I promised back then that I would review it along with the L'Oracle (Vanishing Cream) moisturiser that I also bought, so here's my tuppence worth.

The pot is lip balm sized but the product itself is very concentrated. Lush say that you can use this one of three ways; as a tinted moisturiser mixed in with a face cream, as a foundation applied neat over your moisturised skin, and as a concealer applied directly to blemishes and blended out.

Lush Colour Supplement in Dark Yellow

At first I couldn't get the hang of using this. I tried a couple of times using it as a tinted moisturiser, mixing a small amount into the Vanishing Cream and then applying it to my face, but this did not give me near enough coverage and I wasn't convinced it made me look that much better. As a concealer this doesn't really cut the mustard, but I always use a separate concealer anyway so for me it's not a problem. 

Colour-wise I picked the shade Dark Yellow which suits my pale olive skin quite well. For reference I'm shade B30 in Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua, and when I used to use Dior Forever foundation I was shade 030 in that.
It's one of those base products that seems to adapt somewhat to your skin tone and doesn't really alter your natural colouring as can sometimes happen with foundation which is a tad too pink or orange.

Lush Colour Supplement - Dark Yellow, swatched heavily

Another heavy swatch!

So, not being that convinced by it I left it to languish a bit in my make-up box only to pull it out recently and give it a second chance. This time I applied it over freshly moisturised skin....
..... and then the magic happened.

My skin just glowed with health.  There was coverage, not full-coverage but enough for me not to go crazy with the concealer afterwards. It had blended beautifully into my skin and was undetectable. The finish is what I would call satin, kind of between matte and dewy, and is generally the kind of finish I favour.

What a result! I couldn't believe I'd left this lying dormant in my collection for so long. I was so enamoured with my Vitalumiere Aqua though, that nothing else really got a look in. The reason why I got to rediscover it was because my skin was feeling a bit dull and dry and Vitalumiere Aqua just didn't seem to be giving me enough oomph in the glow department. This Colour Supplement has proved to be the tonic I needed.

For me the key to loving this has been in the application. Mixing it with moisturiser just didn't work for me. Neither does applying it to dry skin, by which I mean un-moisturised skin or skin without a trace of moisturiser left on it. This kind of goes against the traditional beauty rule of letting your moisturiser sink in properly beforehand, but with the Lush Colour Supplement I find it doesn't blend so well on a drier skin. The slight slip of moisturiser helps it on it's way.

My moisturiser of choice with this has been Oilatum Natural Repair or Lush's Vanishing Cream which I will review very soon, suffice to say that I'm on my second pot of the stuff.

Overall this is a very good quality product for the price (well, for the UK price at least!). Lush need to promote these more as they are often hidden away in the shop and somehow don't inspire much confidence. 

Score: 8/10

Lush's Colour Supplement is £7.95 in the UK for 20g / €15.95 in Belgium (What on earth is up with those Euro price hikes??)

Have you tried this?

Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua Review

I'm so totally late onto the Vitalumiere Aqua bandwagon, but I'm going to post this anyway.

I picked up Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua foundation from Boots last month.

Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua

I was matched to B30 - Beige Sable which is generally a good match for my skintone. Although  the Beige range is supposed to be for skin with yellow undertones (as opposed to the Beige Rose, or BR numbers) it does still lean slightly pinkish on my incredibly yellow complexion. However that is probably a good thing as I don't really want to look so sallow, so this perks up my colour a bit without making me look odd.

I won't beat about the bush. I love this foundation. The texture is very light and creamy after you've given the bottle a good shake. This is the key, you MUST shake it really well to mix the components together. It's a water based foundation so it separates easily each time you put back in your make-up bag. Remember the shake and you're all set.

The bottle is compact and plastic, light and easy to carry which I love. It's still the standard Chanel foundation size of 30ml, but minus the heavy glass bottle which I find impractical and bulky. I'm all about convenience, me.

I like to use this with a standard flat foundation brush, but it works fine with fingers too. It blends into my skin beautifully leaving a gorgeous natural matte finish. It's not a glowy foundation like the original Vitalumiere, which I used to use a good few years ago, but it doesn't make the skin look completely flat either. As it settles and 'warms up' the skin takes on a very natural 'glow' without going shiny.

Coverage is good and there is obviously a decent amount of pigment in such a light feeling product. I would say that it gives light coverage which is buildable to medium. It evens out the skin so beautifully and makes concealing those darker blemishes and scars much easier as it minimises them significantly with just one thin layer.

Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua (B30): Straight out the bottle (left), blended in slightly (centre) and blended out to almost nothing (right)

I find I don't need to powder at all when I use this. I rarely powder anyway, but sometimes with the Vitalumiere original and with the Prolumiere too I needed to add a dusting of powder. For your reference my skin type is combination-dry but I reckon that oiler skin types could use this happily with just a small amount of powder if necessary.

It has a fresh, slightly floral scent which I really like. I generally don't like face make-up to be scented but this is a really pleasant, non-headache-inducing smell. 

Staying power is between 6-8 hours of perfection without a primer. To be honest I haven't tried this with a primer yet, partly because I've been lazy and haven't been using one. For special occasions I will prime, promise!

This has been such a great everyday foundation for me when I don't wear my BB cream. It's natural, makes me look 'fresh', and feels so light on the skin. When I look in the mirror and forget that I've put foundation on I think that's the best sign of all.

Knocks spots off Pro Lumiere and Vitalumiere (original). My sampling of the new Perfection Lumiere tells me that I still prefer Vitalumiere Aqua. Perfection Lumiere is geared towards medium- heavy coverage and is more matte. What you would prefer pretty much depends on what you're looking for in a foundation but in my case Vitalumiere Aqua wins hands down. 

£31.00 in the UK from department stores and Boots

€39.50 (prices vary) in Belgium and the Netherlands

Have you tried this?

The Ten Commandments - Foundation for beginners

The first foundation I ever tried was an old jar I found in my mum's make-up bag one day. I was 13 and just started reading Mizz, Just Seventeen and Looks (not to be confused with Look magazine). They were filled with makeover pages. Sweet, puffy faced teenagers were transformed into sleek, sexy starlets ready to be taken to the Odeon to see Kevin Costner in Prince of Thieves by their perfect boyfriends with curtain hair and a leather jacket.

I wanted a makeover so desperately so I asked a friend from school to come over to my house one day so that we could make ourselves beautiful. Cue the contents of my mum's make-up bag and along with it the sad realisation that her abandoned cosmetic relics were no more suitable for her than they would be for me. I figured back then that mum really didn't care for these frivolous things which I so hankered for.

So out came this glass jar of Max Factor cream foundation in a shade called 'Warm Almond'. It was dark. A deep, burnt caramel waxy cream.

Friend: "Are you sure this is the right colour for you?"
Me: "Well, mum and I have the same colour skin" (which is very pale olive FYI)

My friend carefully rubbed the beautifying foundation over my puffy face. I looked at her expectantly with big hopeful eyes as she stood back to admire her work.

Friend: (doubled over in fits of laughter) "You look like me!!"

My friend was Indian.

Thus I learned (humiliatingly) the cardinal rule of colour matching. I later asked mum why she had such a dark foundation. She told me that she just bought it without trying it and didn't seem to care much. To her credit she never wore it so at least she didn't commit the sin of dark brown face, white neck.

The bottom line about foundation is this:

YOU SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO SEE IT. 

If you can see it sitting on your skin it's not making you look good, it's just making you look caked in make-up. Fair enough if that's the look you're going for, but most women just want to look like they have great skin naturally.  Every day I see so many women with very obvious foundation 'masks' due to the following:

• Wrong colour (too pale / too dark / too orange)
• Wrong texture/consistency (too oily / too drying)
• Foundation not blended (obvious streaking / patchiness)
• Foundation applied to thickly ( hence 'mask-like' effect)

 My mission? To spread the glosspel. Here are my ten commandments:

1. Thou shalt not buyeth a foundation without trying it first.
   
2. Test not on thy hands. The colour must matcheth thy neck therefore test it there. If it blendeth completely and you cannot see it then the colour be right.  
3. Sales assistants cannot always be trusted (particularly in Belgium and Italy!). Use thine own eyes to determine if the colour matches or not. 
   
4. Though shalt knoweth thy skin. Be it oily, dry, combination, sensitive, thou must select an appropriate formulation. e.g. Dry skins should avoid more drying, matte formulations.
5. Thou shalt procure testers if at all possible to trial at home. Beg, borrow or steal.
6. Thou shalt not steal. (Just in case thy took me in the literal sense)
7. Applyeth thy foundation with a light hand. Less is more. 
8. Blend, blend, BLEND! So important I sayeth it thrice. Most don't blend enough. Even a slightly too dark/too pale foundation can be rectified by blending in really well. Use thy fingers, a brush, a damp sponge, whatever-eth. 
9. If thou wish to take photos then thou shalt be aware of SPF. Too much SPF photographs WHITE.
10. Thou shalt change foundation shade when suntanned. Pale face - Bronzed body: Just say no! 

So there you have it. Basic rules for your base. Now go forth and apply.

:)