For the past year, if and when I could get away with it, my everyday makeup consisted of a dab of concealer and a swipe of lipstick. The reality was there wasn't a lot of point in me wearing makeup for a few reasons - working from home, 50% of my face was frequently covered by a face mask and the small fact of having a nonexistent social life. I’m sure you can relate!
Oh, and the one time I used Zoom it was for a physiotherapy video call - worthy of going full glam, I think not.
And while the ongoing 'situation' (the one I'm trying not to refer to) hasn't greatly changed, I think quite a lot of us are now getting back to a semi-normal way of living. Especially when it comes to being around others for more than 30-minutes while doing the weekly food shop.
This has meant I’ve begrudgingly started to wear more makeup. At first, it felt alien, I forgot how to apply a steady line of liquid eyeliner and there have been a few occasions I've been overzealous with bronzer and foundation that I've had to wipe it off and start all over again... I wish I was joking!
But then something happened, I began to enjoy applying and wearing makeup again - woohoo! The old me was back! Okay, that's a tad dramatic, but life feeling indifferent to makeup wasn't for me. It just felt a little bland.
So of course once I got the bug there was no stopping me. Yes, I could have simply re-discovered old favourites but I wanted new fresh feeling products to try out to quench my thirst for makeup again. This is where the post starts and I stop telling you the most obvious and tedious story you've ever had to read.
Cue the makeup brands I've loved buying from and using in the past six months that have contributed to the reason I returned to beauty blogging.
RELATED POST: Why I Returned to Blogging
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When I first started Makeup Savvy way back in 2010 I wholeheartedly didn't expect to keep it up. Other than enjoying reading books I'd never been consistent with hobbies and my history of starting blogs and letting them fizzle out after a few months was strong.
But beauty blogging was different, something stuck.
It was still the early days of blogging, well in the beauty niche it was, and if you were blogging about makeup it was for the pure love of it. There was a sense of community, mainly on Twitter, and a rawness that meant a blog post didn't have to contain editorial-quality images or professional copy to be enjoyed.
Blogging was an outlet for myself and many other bloggers I knew at the time and most importantly it was fun! Content wasn't PR samples led (more on that later) or wrote in order to make money. It was just simple; take some badly lit photos with the flash still on, skip editing them and write up a review without any links what so ever. Done!
Fast forward to today and there's a definite standard to aim for if you are still in the beauty blogging game, a lot aren't. With ever dwindling magazine sales across the board in the last 8 years I expected beauty and fashion blogging would pave the way for a more authentic kind of content - or, so I naively presumed.
And in some ways it has. There are still bloggers that will give you unbiased reviews but even then it comes with the caveat of 'not too many negative reviews' and pairing it with images that look straight out of a magazine, something I'm guilty of trying to achieve.
So What Happened?
Last year I managed to pick up the second Cult Beauty Starter Kit (worth over £70) which sold out within days (see my Cult Beauty Start Kit review) and I for one was very pleased with the selection/contents of the box.
So, when Cult Beauty dropped their latest box this morning, which is still in stock for now, I know I had to tell you about it.
Read below for box content breakdown and if I think it's as good as the last Cult Beauty Starter Kit!
Did you know it was World Book Day Yesterday (23rd April)?
Nope, neither did I!
However, I did discover that Amazon are celebrating WBD by giving customers nine FREE Kindle books translated from different languages around the world.
Today I wanted to talk about the best drugstore brands for lipstick because as a fan of mainly premium branded lipsticks I've like to think I've still found some amazing rival drugstore brands along the way.
These are one the lipsticks I love and use just as much as my favourite Charlotte Tilbury and MAC lipsticks and are of such good quality with a much lower price tag! Read on to discover three drugstore brands that know how to do lipstick!
Over the next few weeks and most likely months of spending most of our time at home there is going to be unexpected items we with require. I mean, there will be no popping out for a hair trim and there's likely to be side effects of sitting inside most of the time.
So I thought I'd put together a list of health and beauty essentials you may have overlooked that could be vital for your time spent at home! I hope this list helps.