My Epic Make Up Kit Haul

I have never shopped for makeup with so much money and such precision. Getting a kit ready for my makeup course ended up being much harder than I imagined, as I spent the day in town weighing up every product and every price. If I could have afforded to buy everything from Mac that would have been much easier but since that wasn’t an option I bought a mix of tried and tested high and lower priced products that I believe are a good purchase and deliver great results. Plus the odd new product that I was dying to try! Here’s the low down from my epic spending spree –

My Boots Shopping Spree:

I love Boots, they have a fantastic selection and the brands there really give the more expensive ones a run for their money, so I was happy to browse around there and choose what I though was best. I could have bought a discounted kit from Inglot but I felt more comfortable mixing and matching products I had a little more experience with so I didn’t feel trapped with any one make.

Foundations: I choose Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundations because I find the results from them to be really impressive. They give a fresh made-up look that gives good coverage without being too heavy and the range of shades is excellent. I had to go easy on how many I bought so in the end I purchased Light Vanilla, Vanilla and Dark Beige. I have a lovely Art Deco foundation I received for a review lately which is in ‘Light Beige’, hence me not buying that shade in the Bourjois range. The four together seem to cover a nice enough range of shades for now but of course there are so many different shades of skin that this will be an area I’ll have to invest in as time goes on. There was a three for two in Boots for Bourjois so at least I got one for free!

Concealers: I also opted for the Bourjois concealers  in Medium and Dark Radiance as I have a light Dior concealer I can use for cooler skin tones. Concealers can be tricky but I have found these to be nice. I may end up investing in different brands eventually but am happy enough with these!

Mascara: I needed a brown and black mascara and luckily I have my brand new Art Deco mascara in black so I only had to purchase the brown. I actually found it really hard to even find a brown mascara in Boots, every stand seemed to only stock black! The best I could find was Brown Black in Rimmel Glam Eyes Mascara. I haven’t actually used this but figure the black will get the most use so I’m not too worried about this one!

Eyeliners: There was quite a few empty sections for brown eyeliners but I eventually found Revlon had the black and brown shades (Charcoal and Sueded Brown) I was looking for. In an ideal world I would get Mac Smoulder and Teddy, but hope these will be good for now!

Radiance Powder: Ok, I confess I didn’t really need Soap & Glory’s Glow All Out face powder but I’ve heard good things about it and thought it would be a nice addition to give girls a sheen to their skin!

Lipsticks: Again, students need two shades, a natural shade and a red so I got Rimmel’s Birthday suit for the nude shade and Soap & Glory’s Red My Lips. I always opt for glosses so was a little unsure but had to be a little frugal while still picking wisely so hope I did ok with these two!

Lip Pencils: I don’t use these so I was a little hesitant about what to get and spent a fair few minutes running around like a headless chicken trying to pick two. I had to get a natural shade as well as a red so I got Rimmel Exagerrate Lip Liner in Addiction and Revlon Colourstay liner in Red. How will these fair? I’ll have to wait to use them on someone before I find out!

Gloss: I only bought one gloss as I have some others here that I can use and I wasn’t sure if I really needed one for class. Rimmel Royal Glass in Clear is great as it’s in a tube so it’s hygenic and gives a good shine.

Gel Eyeliner: I use this all the time and find it really good, especially since I’m a huge fan of Mac’s gel eyeliner and always compare any other gel eyeliner to it.

Blushers: I love Maybelline dream mousse blusher and may get these for my kit in the future but thought that powder blusheres were the right way to go when learning how to apply them properly in a class setting. Revlon are a good brand and I liked the look of these so I chose their matte powder blushes in Tawny Peach and Perfectly Peach.

Lashes: Three sets of lashes are required for the course, individual, strip and ‘fantasy’, which is open to interpretation. I was in Terri Sales looking for my tunic so I picked up a set of Dimples individual lashes that comes with three different lengths and have a good amount in the packet as I’m bound to make many, many mistakes. I got Eyelure Super Full strip lashes and got a suitably OTT pair of fantasy lashes in Inglot that would make Bambi jealous! I also purchased Inglot’s Duo Adhesive.

Eye Lash Curlers: Again, if money was no object I would get an expensive pair but I had to be frugal if I could in some areas, so I purchased Model’s Own eye lash curlers in boots as they have nice pink finger padded handles to help you use them!

Everything above was reasonably priced so below are the few things I bought that were more expensive, you’ll notice there’s not a lot of them but that’s because they cost so much:)

Mac Mineralize Charged Water Invigorating Mist: Did I need this? No, probably not but I wanted something like this to use on skin beforehand to hydrate it before I apply any makeup. The very helpful girl in Mac said she always uses this on her clients. It smells yummy too!

Shu Uemura Colourless Face Powder: I’ve heard great things and I knew this was the way to go when choosing a powder to use on everyone. It doesn’t impart any colour and gives a lovely finish to makeup. Now I plan to decant part of this into another container because I’m running low on powder and want to use this so really this is two buys in one and therefore twice the value. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette: I wanted a nice all rounder eye palette to create natural or more full on looks and I basically fell in love with this as soon as I saw it. I have a cracked and well used original Naked Palette and love the quality of the eyeshadows so this will hopefully give me a large range of looks and over the course I’ll be able to figure out if I needed other eyeshadows. And of course, I want to use this on myself!

Inglot 42 Piece Synthetic Brush Set: It’s so new and shiny and there’s just so many of them! All I wish is that there was a manual that told you how to use them all:) This is a must have though and I’m delighted with it. I’m a vegetarian and animal lover so wanted a synthetic set and, with a 20% discount, these were an expensive but valuable purchase!

So there’s the lot! I have primers I can bring myself and I have to purchase a bronzer at some stage (suggestions welcome as I’m pale and never use them) but apart from that I’m delighted with my kit. There’s a lot of brands in there but I’m happy with all of them and smaller items such as lipsticks and pencils can be chopped and changed in time! So what do you think of the kit? Have you used any of the products? Comments welcome:)