Shop & Tell: Massive Beauty Haul (Makeup, Skincare, Hair, Fragrance)

Do you remember this post? Yeah me neither.

In my defence, this is over 2 months’ worth of purchases. Since I’ve been pretending trying to cut back on my makeup and skincare purchases, I’ve really gotten into haircare and fragrance. A ridiculous transition, I know, since I was trying to save on beauty spending, but alas, it still happened, and here we are.

I didn’t completely stop buying skincare, and then there were a few makeup launches that caught my eye, but most of all, I’ve been really obsessed with beauty edits, goody bags, and gifts with purchases. You know, those supposedly great deals? They were like Pokémon to me. Had to catch them all. So much so that I think I ran out of things to get (ah- that’s a bold faced lie. Bald faced lie? Whatever, it’s all of it. Big, bold and bald.)

So let’s go over this haul, separating it by each of the culprit retailers:

Look Fantastic Haul:

Look Fantastic launched a limited edition box in partnership with Nip+Fab, with 6 (I believe full-size) products for just £20 if you were one of their beauty box subscribers. The value definitely seemed to be there, so I wanted to get one. It comes with a Glycolic Fix Scrub Extreme exfoliator, a Highlight palette, a Liquid Blush in the shade ‘Sunset Glow’ (which is pretty metallic for a blush), two sheet masks, Retinol Fix and Vitamin C Fix, and the Glycolic Fix Daily face pads. I plan on making a brand review.

Some new brands have also arrived at LookFantastic, one of them being Dolce & Gabbana Beauty, an obnoxiously expensive and awfully beautiful brand that I’ve seen nowhere else. I could not resist. Even if the quality was crap, I’d be happy to have it just for the packaging. I got the Solar Glow Ultra-Light Bronzing Powder in the shade Sand 20, and the Solar Glow Illuminating Duo in the shade Peach Blossom. Review incoming.

Another purchase I managed to make at LookFantastic, as soon as the collection landed, was the MAC x Cruella de Vil collaboration. Ahh, my favourite Disney villain. I know some people were disappointed with the design of the collection, but honestly I really like the eyeshadow palette. I purchased the lipstick De Vil in the Details, because the shade is a bright coral red that really appealed to me, and the Cruella To Be Kind palette, because I like the design, the fact that you can separate it into quads or duos (it’s magnetic), and the online swatches looked good. Again, review incoming.

Cult Beauty Haul

Whenever I go to this website I’m constantly checking for the Cult Beauty edits. They sometimes have really well curated boxes with an extraordinary value – and the Female Founders Edit, made specifically for International Woman’s Day, was one of them (full details here). I’m really glad I snatched it – it gave me a chance to try Charlotte Tilbury eyeshadows, since it came with the full size Easy Eye palette in shade Darling. Some brands were new to my stash (Vieve, Kosas and Paula’s Choice) and I was really intrigued about the Laura Mercier Hydrating primer and the Briogeo Farewell Frizz spray. There were 8 products in total, 4 of them full size and 3 really generous travel sizes, for £45. Totally worth it.

Right after this edit the Hair Care Heroes Kit launched (full details here), in which you had to get £65 worth of hair products in order to receive it. So I purchased the Living Proof Thickening Cream, because I was looking for something to make my hair look really full, and the HUM Hair Sweet Hair vitamins (which was a 2-pack, but I’ve gone through the first bottle already). The main reason I wanted the goody bag was to get a travel size version of the Colour Wow Dream Coat, that I know I love, to take with me on my honeymoon. But it gave me a chance to try OUAI and Virtue products as well.

More recently, the Tried and Tested Goody Bag was released (full details here), with a value of £295 and you got it free with a £150 purchase. I had some items on my wishlist and my retinol serum is really on it’s last leg, so that seemed like the right time. I’m not going through all the products of the goody bag here, but what I was most excited about was the Huda Beauty lipstick, the Honest beauty primer, the Sol de Janeiro Rio Sunset Glow oil, and the Medik8 C-Tetra serum.

What I purchased in order to get it is on the left bottom side – the new, limited edition Chantecaille Flower Power cheek shade, the Victoria Beckham Smoky Eye Brick in the shade Tweed (which by the way, the packaging is sooo luxe, tiny but very heavy, you can kill a b*tch with that thing), the Mineral UV Filters SPF 15 with Antioxidants from The Ordinary, and the Paula’s Choice Anti-Aging 1% Retinol Booster to replace my retinol.

Feel Unique Haul

Again, those bundle deals really got to me. Feel Unique was having a special Spring Glow Beauty Box (10 products for £49, worth almost £200), at the same time that they were having a gift with purchase (the Spring Makeup Edit Beauty Bag). So I got the box and an Ecooking Peeling Mask because I love Ecooking and that was the product I was most excited to try from them.

The Spring Glow Beauty Box content is on the left of the image above: there was a full size RMS blush, a brand I’ve never tried, in the shade Crushed Rose, an Ecooking full size sunscreen (SPF 30) that I used up almost entirely in my honeymoon, a full size Perricone MD No Makeup Lipstick in the shade Rose, the Kérastase Elixir Ultime L’Original Oil which is a lovely contribution to my current hair care obsession, the UpCircle Face Scrub (that I’ll use on my body, because coffee grounds are too rough for the face), the Aurelia Miracle Cleanser that came with a little washcloth and has a balmy texture.

There were also some mini sized products: the Balance Me Vitamin C Repair Serum, not depicted here because I’m a bad blogger and I forgot, the When Rose Coconut Exfoliating Scrub Mask, the First Aid Beauty Ultra Repair Hydrating Serum, and the Aromatherapy Associated De-Stress Bath and Shower oil.

The gift with purchase came with some interesting products: the Elemis Superfood Glow primer, a YSL Blur primer, a Huda Beauty Silk Balm, and a Morphe Luminous Setting Spray that I can’t wait to put to the test, just to name the things that excite me the most.

Fragrance Haul

Just before my wedding I was trying to decide what fragrance I wanted to wear. My all time favourite and long discontinued perfume is Avon’s Sweet Honesty, but finding something similar was proving to be difficult, so I decided to look for the next best scent. The fragrance that has granted me the most amount of compliments by strangers is Guerlain’s l’Instant Magic, which is lo longer sold in Portugal, so I went on a hunt to find something close.

This eagerness resulted in me falling into the rabbit hole of perfume notes, reviews, opinions, etc, and it sparked the somewhat dormant perfume enthusiast in me. I purchased Prada’s Infusion d’Amande, Guerlain’s Mon Guerlain coffret, Sisley Eau du Soir coffret, and a collection of mini sizes of Hermès perfumes that I picked up on the way back from my honeymoon, that contains Twilly, Eau de Merveilles (my favourite and the main reason I bought the kit), Eau de Rhubarbe and Un Jardin Sur le Nil.

Some More Makeup and Tools

A few days prior to the wedding I realised I had no waterproof mascara amidst my giant collection. I’ve also been out of the loop with waterproof formulas, so to make sure I had my bases covered, I purchased three: Essence I Love Extreme, and because L’Oréal was having a 3 for 2 sale, I picked up Lash Paradise and Unlimited mascaras, both waterproof, and the Life’s a Peach blush, because I obviously needed more blush.

Rèphr brushes were also having a big deal on some new eye brushes from their concept store, and I couldn’t not buy them. I also used 2 of them on my wedding day. It was a set of four brushes (26,27,28 and 29) but only three are depicted here because like I said, I’m a bad blogger, and I couldn’t find the third and wasn’t that bothered. I also need to do a review on Rèphr brushes.

So, we can look at this as me being a shopaholic or it could be me just getting some new content to write on this blog. It could, but it isn’t.

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5 Comments

  1. You´ve got plenty to try and to write about! You were getting married, so you had the best excuse to overspend in beauty. I´m sure there are quite a few gems in all these beauty hauls.

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