Shopping for your make up necessities and ‘nice-to-haves’ has now been made easier for my Australian beauty aficionados with the launch of Sephora.com.au. As part of the launch, Sephora have started introducing niche brands into the market including Anastasia Beverley Hills. Beauty blogging is certainly not my natural forte but I have been told that I do know a thing or two about creating a no fuss beauty look. I was introduced to this brand not so long ago and have been testing three products from the range this last month – so naturally I thought I should give my two cents (for what it’s worth). I probably should add a precursor that I am currently reviewing this whilst sailing through the Andaman Sea for yacht week and have really put the endurance of the product to the test given the 95% humidity and searing heat.
I’ll start with the Anastasia Beverley Hills Contour Palette in Medium to Tan. The packaging of the product – at first glance I’ll admit it looked like something you would give to your five-year-old daughter to use on her Barbie dolls. But once I actually held the palette in my hands I was instantly surprised at how solid it was. The black slender packaging doesn’t have any fancy bells and whistles like some of the other palettes you’ll find in the market. The palette contains magnetic cutouts, which will allow you to customize the shades that suit your skin type as you please. It’s packaging made it quite easy to just throw in my make up bag on my trip. Though there are pre-arranged shades in the standard palettes you can easily customize your palette and choose from the 21 other shades that have been released. Each standard palette will come with 3 powder highlighting shades and 3 powder contouring shades. My choice of a contouring shade would have to be Havana given my olive complexion.
The fact that this is a powder based kit means that there will be a fair amount of fallout from the palette so I suggest giving your brush a good tap before applying. After a few uses you’ll find that the palette does get a little messy but this can be easily cleaned with a quick brush over. In terms of the pigment, the coverage is light to medium as the color goes on quite light; allowing you to easily blend and build in more as you go. I think my favorite is the highlighting shade that I’ve been religiously dolloping onto my face everyday. The shimmery highlight ‘10K’ really brings out the glow and detracts from my dark circles. I would suggest using the shimmer shade under your eyes first before going over ever so lightly with the matte shade.
The Anastasia Beverly Hills Black Gel Liner has got me with the intensity of the color. The black eye liner is my go to look as I feel that women with darker complexions and dark eyes can get away with black liners as a day look. The black of this liner is intense and dries completely matte – just the way I like it. Only downside is that I am quite slow with drawing my liner and this does dry quite quickly. So if you like to dawdle when you draw your eyes then this probably isn’t the right liner for you, as you have to be quick. The staying power of this liner is also quite handy if you’re going to be in an out of the water as much as I have been this past week or if you’re an uncontrollable sweater in tropical climates (also guilty). I’ve worn both the Stila liquid liner during this trip for comparison and have found the Anastasia gel liner to be quite impressive whereas my Stila liner just ran like no tomorrow.
As for the Anastasia Beverley Hills Highlighting Duo Pencil in matte shell and lace shimmer – this product I would say is a nice to have in your collection. Its great if you’re trying to finish off your look and need to highlight perhaps your cupid’s bow or just under your brows. It glides on incredible smoothly and blends quite easily using just your fingertips.
The price-points of the products are quite reasonable and the best part of the palette is that you don’t need to buy a new palette if a shade runs out. You can simply reorder the shade online and refill your palette as you go. I’ve included the hyperlinks to all products within this post so if you’re keen on testing out the product then head to Sephora.com.au and check it out. Of course – I’m always happy to hear your thoughts on the product.
Sending you all much love from Thailand. xx
