It’s been a long time since I’ve done an edition of my newly discovered makeup faves, but there hasn’t been a lot to update you on as I’ve been mostly using my favourite products from the last editions on repeat. I have found a few good new products here and there, though, so it’s finally time for another round.

Makeup Revolution £1 Eye Shadow in ‘Mocha Love’ – This £1 eyeshadow single is a great neutral shadow crease shade, a light brown that can be layered below other shades to create great depth in your shadow look, but the purpose I actually use it for is contouring. Using this alone for contouring would be too intense and too muddy a look, but after I’ve done a subtle contour with a lighter and warmer brown contour shade under my cheekbones, down the sides of my nose and around my hair line, I then dust a small amount of this into the very hollows of my cheek bones and beside my ears to create extra depth in my contour and to lead people to believe my cheek bones can cut them.

Maybelline Dream Flawless Nude foundation – This lightweight foundation is the drug store answer to a dupe of the Urban Decay Naked Foundation. Designed to give coverage without the heavy, caked on foundation feeling, this product is buildable in coverage, though personally I don’t think you’ll manage to get it anywhere above medium coverage no matter how much you apply. That’s okay though, because personally I love this foundation for the days when I’m not aiming for a polished, flawless look with a face full of makeup, but instead for the natural days when I just want to have even skin and a lick of mascara to make me look a bit more awake and put together. Here in the UK it costs £8.99 available from Boots, Superdrug, and other in-store and online pharmacies and beauty stockists, but prices will vary globally where available in your country.

Collection Lasting Perfection Foundation – Costing only £5.99 and available from Superdrug and Boots both in-store and online, this foundation is great budget-friendly matte effect medium to full coverage foundation. As with every foundation I have ever tried, I still need to layer concealer over this for particularly bad blemishes despite the fact that the product claims to  prime, conceal, cover, smooth, protect and mattify, but it does a great job of covering a multitude of sins and includes SPF20. There’s a limited colour range available, unfortunately, with only 6 shades available, but both shade 1 and 2 work for me, especially if I mix them together with other foundations or one another to get a perfect colour match.

Makeup Revolution Pro Fix Mist – I recently ran out of my Urban Decay setting spray, which I wasn’t overly impressed with anyway. I didn’t feel it made any great difference in the longevity of my makeup compared to the e.l.f setting spray I had been using previously, so instead of repurchasing the UD spray I returned to testing out cheaper drugstore sprays instead. This Makeup Revolution Spray is £5 and besides having a bit of an odd smell when you spritz it, otherwise does the best job I’ve yet found of a setting spray helping my makeup stay in place. Makeup Revolution also offer an Oil Control version of this spray, but I haven’t tried it yet. All Makeup Revolution products are available from their own website, which ships globally,with a select range of products available in the UK in-store and online from Superdrug, and the brand expanding in-store to America.

Makeup Revolution Ultra Aqua Brow Tint – I don’t like brow pencils and prefer not to use powder, so that means I like to test out other kinds of brow products that don’t fit easily into those categories. This product is a pigmented cream formula that you apply with an angled liner brush. There’s only 4 shades available, Fair, Light, Medium, and Dark, the latter of which is black and should simply be named as such to avoid confusion when ordering online. Light is a warm toned mid-brown, like milk chocolate, and Medium is slightly darker brown with more of a purpley/grey undertone. I used to think the Dark was too dark for me because getting used to having filled in brows means having to adjust to what genuinely is ‘too much’ on you and what simply feels that way because it’s all new and strange looking to you. Now, though, I can recognise that the Dark tone is an almost perfect natural looking match for my red brown dyed hair over my dark brown brow hairs, whereas the Light option is too light a brown against my hair. This product lasts great all day and is easy to apply. Plus, it only costs £3, which is a penny-pinching bonus.

Wet ‘n’  Wild Take On The Day Primer – A product from the Fergie collection with W&W, this product has been around a year or so, and even in my possession for just as long. I tried it a couple times and liked it, but Urban Decay Primer Potion has always been my faultless Holy Grail product for eye primer so I never bothered changing it up. Recently, however, UD has been failing me, allowing my shadow to become oily and to build up in the inner corner fold of my eyelids after a day at work, no longer seeing me through my evening plans after work before eventually succumbing to some product build up. I haven’t figured out whether the particular tube I’m using has just gotten a little old and needs replacing to work flawlessly again, or whether, after 8 years, my eyes have finally conquered UD. So I gave this W&W primer a go one morning, expecting this $4.99 product to fail me even greater than UD has been doing, only to find that it is perfect. Applied beneath my makeup around 7.30am, it can last me through a full busy day at work and a long evening of socialising afterwards to still be doing it’s job admirably past 11pm. I’ve got plenty of product left in this tube, but now that it’s become my Holy Grail I plan to stock up on several tubes of this bargain beauty badass when I’m in the states in October.

LA Splash Lip Couture and LA Splash Smitten Lip Tint Mousses – Despite the long-winded name of the latter, I love these liquid lipsticks. Both lines are matte liquid lipsticks, with the Smitten mousses being slightly more so than the Lip Coutures.  They’re the best I’ve tried in terms of long-lasting powers, and I give them credit for being better than the ever-popular Lime Crime Velvetines, which I find overhyped and ethically dubious. The Smitten range has some more unusual colours in it than your typical makeup range, including 7 new colours to the expanded range, and all are named with Harry Potter references, which I love. I can’t tell much of a difference between the two formulas except that I think the Smittens are more matte. Products in both lines cost $14.99 a piece and are available to buy from LA Splash online, but I prefer to order mine from Dollmeupdarling.com because they offer cheaper international shipping and the occasional discount code that helps bring down the cost. LA Splash sell an intensive lip balm to remove the product and hydrate your lips afterwards, but any balm or oil based remover will remove the product and won’t cost you $10 to do so.

Maybelline Superstay 24hr Color – I’m not really one for any lip product that leaves a glossy finish these days, as I prefer my look to be entirely matte, but a lot of matte lip products can be drying and sometimes downright uncomfortable. When I want a break from that and want to feel like I’m wearing a balm, I opt for this, as this duo lasts really well. It does wear off some as you eat, more so in the centre of your lips, but it does so more subtly than a lot of liquid lipsticks do, which can tend to flake and clump off during eating. I wish the lip balm wasn’t such a glossy finish, as a matte product with this staying powder would be perfect, but unfortunately their matte version of the product has a very limited range of 5 shades last time I checked, none of which are red, and the product didn’t seem to last as well when I tried it, wearing off far more noticeably. Still, the comfort of feeling like you’re only wearing a balm thanks to the thin duo layers of lightweight colour and balm is worth the slight touch ups. Costing £8.99 a piece and available internationally, UK pinups can pick this up from Superdrug and Boots in-store and online, and at other pharmacies or online beauty stores.