Hello friends!! I hope you all had a refreshing long weekend! I was in Palm Springs on a girl’s trip celebrating my girlfriends’ birthday, and we had the perfect mix of relaxing and fun – which included a little excursion to a wild little bar in Pioneertown 🙂 Now that I’m back a little worse for wear, this week is all about getting ready for New York Fashion Week and finalizing my schedule and outfits while there.
Before leaving, I wanted to make sure to share my favorites from this past month. August was such a great month for favorites because all of these items I’m sharing with you I could not put down. Most of them are newer discoveries, but a couple are old flames that made their way back into rotation.
Bobbi Brown Vitamin Enriched Face Base – This has changed my life for the better. I was intrigued by the notion of a primer + moisturizer because it can always be a little tricky to know the best way to prep the skin for makeup while making sure it’s hydrated. You don’t want anything too greasy or your makeup will slide around all day and you want whatever moisturizer you use in the morning to absorb quickly so you can get straight into your makeup application without waiting 30 minutes. This is an oil free, vitamin rich shea butter based moisturizer that plumps the skin and creates the perfect canvas for makeup. I haven’t used my usual favorite primers the last few weeks because my makeup just lays so beautifully on top of this and I can cut out a step by moisturizing and priming with this one product. I don’t get oily throughout the day and my skin is really soft and hydrated. It is perfection.
Hourglass Vanish Seamless Finish Foundation Stick – Coming out of summer, this is my new holy grail foundation as I’m getting back into fuller coverage makeup for fall. It claims to be a foundation with the coverage of a concealer, the fluidity of a liquid, and the weightlessness of a powder. I was highly skeptical as stick foundations have never really been my thing, but I gotta say, you got me Hourglass. You got me on this one. What I love about it is that you can manipulate the coverage from sheer to full and no matter how many layers you build it up, it just looks so seamless and skin-like. Also, a little goes a very long way so you don’t have to use much to get great coverage payoff and it doesn’t feel heavy like anything is even on your skin. I will say, if you are on the oily side, you will definitely want to set this with a powder because I notice after 4-5 hours my T-zone gets very shiny, but other than that, it wears like a dream. I have a light shade to highlight, my actual shade, and a darker shade to contour and they have been so easy to travel with because there is no messy liquid, bottle, or cap to mess with and they’re very compact.
Juice Beauty Phyto Pigments Flawless Serum Foundation – While I’m talking about foundation, I have to share my other new favorite for days when I want something a little more dewy and hydrating with some skin benefits…AKA when I want to look like I have fresh glowing baby skin. This foundation can also be built up to full coverage, but for daytime it is just a great natural finish serum/foundation hybrid. This formula does contain some nourishing, hydrating oils, so if you have oily skin, it may not be the play for you. I personally LOVE adding a drop of two of beauty oils into my oil- free foundations to give them extra luminosity and a satin-y finish, so I looooove this formula, especially after traveling when my skin is a bit dehydrated. This has been my go-to for daytime when I just want to look fresh, dewy, and youthful.
Chanel Le Volume de Chanel Mascara in 10 Noir – Girl, this mascara. I’ve never really been a mascara snob, and frequently bounce between drugstore and more high end , but this has replaced every tube in my drawer because it is my new lover. It is a deeply pigmented carbon black color that is about as jet black as it gets, and one coat reeeeeaaalllly thickens, lengthens, and separates, which is the holy grail triumvirate in the world of mascara. When you put all of these qualities together it makes such a world of difference to your eyes, and it is so easy to achieve with just one pass of the wand. Speaking of the wand, it’s unique shape features short, nubby little bristles really gets into each lash thoroughly coating the hairs with product from root to tip.
Dior Diorskin Nude Air Luminizer Powder – I’m a highlighter whore, so when I saw this in the “New Arrivals” section of Nordstrom, I just added it to my cart no questions asked, and I am SO glad I did. This is the only highlighter I used last month and I still can’t get enough. It is a beautiful golden beige shade that complements my summer tan so perfectly. When I place it on the tops of my cheekbones, brow bone, down the bridge of my nose, and cupid’s bow, you can see my highlight from space and I am all about that life. It is such a richly concentrated highlight that you don’t need much to get that bronze-y goddess glow that brightens up your entire face and makes you look illuminated from within. I think this might be a limited edition from Dior, so if you are a highlighter queen, pick this up ASAP!
Dermalogica Phyto Replenish Oil – I absolutely love beauty oils in my skincare routine, but took a breather in July on my travels because Fiji was so humid and in Spain, I didn’t have my bag (as you all know since I bitched about it already) 🙂 Now that it’s cooling off a teeny bit and I’m starting to ease back into a more hydrating skincare regime, I added this new oil from Dermalogica into the mix last month and I really love this product. I have some very dry areas on my face AND some very oily areas, so I have to use oils that are lightweight enough that they don’t over hydrate my oily areas, but are still effective enough to give my very dry patches the moisture they need. This one is amazing because it doesn’t sit on top of the skin at all – it absorbs immediately. I have been putting a few drops of this into my moisturizer at night and pressing it into my skin, and 2-3 drops into my foundation in the morning to give it a luminous dewy finish, and it has made my skin so clear, soft, and nourished!! Note, when I use a stick foundation and can’t mix an oil into it like I do with a liquid foundation, I simply drop 3-4 drops of a beauty oil onto my damp beauty blender and use that to press the foundation into my skin after I’ve applied the stick to my face. This helps it blend beautifully and mixes the oil into the foundation easily.
Eat Pretty: Nutrition For Beauty, Inside and Out By Jolene Hart – This book! I am all about beauty from the inside out, and the correlation between the foods we eat and our skin, hair, and nails is one of the biggest revelations that made me so obsessed with nutrition as a child and led me to get into juicing, and ultimately start a juice business. I grew up with terrible eczema, and when I was diagnosed with Celiac and saw it disappear after cutting out gluten, I understood there is a big connection between the way we eat and how we look. This book is a very very informative, yet simple guide of many different foods and why they are good for your beauty, the best foods for certain issues, and the top beauty foods in general. I love the idea of eating for the benefits of food vs. counting calories or losing weight because food is functional and supposed to work for us. We eat to have energy, nourish our skin, our organs, our hormones, etc. and this book really looks at food from that perspective.
Laura Mercier Caviar Stick Eye Colour – This has been my go-to one and done eye product when I want to create an eye look quickly in the morning that looks like I did way more than I did, and last all day. This WILL. NOT. BUDGE. I am telling you, once these caviar sticks set, they are there to stay. This color, Copper, is the most drop dead beautiful ultra metallic shade that really complements my brown eyes and my summer tan. I simply swipe it all over the lid and blend with my finger. Then I add some brown liner (the Hourglass 1.5mm from last month’s favorites) to the upper and lower lash line, curl my lashes and apply a healthy coat of the above mentioned Chanel mascara, and I am good to go. The result is a super beautiful, complex looking eye that has depth and dimension but takes less than 2 minutes to achieve. For nighttime, I layer this shade several times to get an even glossier, high shimmer effect that amps the eye up a few notches, and I use a black liner instead of brown. I get asked what I am wearing on my lids every single time I wear this.
First Aid Beauty Charcoal Cleansing Body Polish – I love love love this body scrub so much, I went through an entire tube in the month of August. There are few things that feel better to me than taking a long hot shower, and exfoliating my entire body from head to toe. It is so therapeutic to me to feel like every inch of dead skin is getting sloughed off and I can’t wait to get out and moisturize my fresh baby soft layer of skin. This scrub feels ultra clean and refreshing because it contains charcoal to draw out dirt and impurities, and it also contains salicylic acid to chemically exfoliate the skin and prevent ingrown hairs. If you have a super rough dry patch, this scrub will buff it right out and it also contains argan oil, honey, and vitamin E to put moisture back into this skin and calm it out. I will definitely be repurchasing this guy.
Ok! Those are all of the things I was loving in the month of August! I would love to know what you guys have been trying and loving (or disliking) and I would also love to know what changes you are making in your product lineup now that it’s beginning to change seasons!
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