Zoeva En Taupe eyeshadow palette review |Smugnificent

Zoeva is a really well known German brand mostly famous for its high quality budget-friendly makeup brushes. I have quite a few Zoeva brushes in my collection as I have got the makeup artist Zoe bag set (here in Greek) in the past and I have fallen in love with many which I have shown you in my favourite eye brushes video (here in Greek). 

But one of the most common makeup related questions I am asked has to do with my opinion about the Zoeva eyeshadows. And until recently my only answer was " I am sorry, haven't tried them yet". It is not so easy to get Zoeva in Switzerland (in contrary with most other countries the official website doesn't deliver here) so I jumped to the opportunity of ordering one of their palettes during my last trip to Germany. There is a large selection to choose from mostly of their 10-pan palettes but they also released recently some larger 15-pan ones. In the end I went with a quite unexpected choice, the En Taupe palette, leaving the darker, richer colours for another time.

Morphe 35D palette breakdown review |Smugnificent

Morphe brushes is one of the most talked about makeup companies on the internet nowadays which is a fact attributed by many to the company's great PR policies and her strong relations with many known blogging and YouTube personas. Besides all this discussion the company has a lot of supporters who find their products to have a good quality for a great price, so I think it really worths to check if there are real reasons behind all this hype. I have already tried and reviewed (and here in Greek) for you some of their eyeshadows which I got as singles and they were a selection of shades from the Jaclyn Hill favourites palette and I found their quality very decent for the price. 

But even I first tried those shadows I had always in the back of my mind a doubt about how these stand alone eyeshadows, single-handedly selected by Jaclyn compare with the non named ones contained in the large 35 palettes. I admit that since I started getting into makeup I never felt attracted to these large multicoloured palettes everyone had and I have never owned something similar. But  a couple of these Morphe 35 palettes look quite attractive and have nice colour combinations so I decided to get the 35D (35 color dark smoky palette) and put it to the test.

Fighting blemishes without getting dry skin? Kiehl's has the answer |Smugnificent

Several weeks ago around the end of January I have visited my local Kiehl's counter in Globus Bern to use my coupon from December's advent calendar and after a nice discussion about my skin and its problems, the clerk suggested me quite a few products suited to my needs and prepared me a samples bag in exchange for the coupon. You can see these as well as a round up of the travel sized products my calendar had in and I am trying in a previous post.

From all the products she showed me there was one that caught my one as I have not until now used something similar; Kiehl's Blemish Control Daily Skin-Clearing Treatment. This product claims to be a treatment against imperfections caused by acne while helping blemishes clear quicker all in lightweight cream formula which can be used twice or even three times a day. There are a lot of interesting claims here so after using it indeed daily for almost 1.5 months I have some thoughts to share with you.

The product comes in a tube of 30ml and has a creamy but thin and quite fluid consistency which makes it easy to use up without it sticking in the walls of the packaging. It contains a trio of acids, idiotic acid, salicylic acid and lipo-hydroxy acid (LHA). With a bit of online research I found that it contains 1.5% salicylic acid but the product's pH is relatively high for the acids to be really effective as exfoliants. This certainly fits with my impression that this is not the miraculous product which will kill all your blemishes overnight. And it is also not one of these drying lotions or liquids which act like this either. What it is, is a mild, easy to use in your morning and night routine creamy product, quite effective in blemish control long-term. For me the most important thing is that although they warn you that you might experience dryness (cultivating the fear of acids) this product has not in any way dried my skin out. I am using it in combination with an exfoliating toner (the Clarins one currently), an oil or serum and under my moisturiser. As a precaution I chose to use a more hydrating cream at night (the Recifis Soothing restorating cream) but I feel that I don't necessarily need to as I have not experienced any dry patches or anything like that. I apply it all over my face in particular the areas I am more "spotty" and I have seen my blemishes as well as the marks they leave go away easier. I also believe that long term it helped preventing acne outburst although I still have of course the occasional hormonal or stress breakouts (I will never get rid of those I know). 

I think what make this special is not so much that it is super potent but that it is gentle to the skin while it does its job. I see it as one of those products working on the background, slowly and quietly helping you to get a better skin in the long term. What I fear is that after using it for quite some time its results seem to reach a limit and you cannot see much further improvement, but this also makes sense based on the ingredients. I will use this up with joy and try something else for a while afterwards, before repurchasing it which I certainly plan, just so that my skin doesn't get completely used to it. If you are serious with your acids (and you should) I advise you to combine it with other products but if you want to try out a mild and not drying solution which will help you to deal with imperfections you have definitely a good candidate in this one.

Overall I am quite pleased with this product, although it hasn't swept me off my feet or offered me any mouth-dropping moments. If you live in Switzerland you can get it in any of your local Kiehl's counters in Globus or Manor or at the Kiehl's store in Zurich or order it online from their online shop or Marionnaud. It retails for 49CHF. My Greek readers can find this at the Kiehl's counters inside Attica but I am sure Kiehl's products are available in other shops too.

Have you ever tried this product? Which is your go to anti-blemish clearing product?

My Insta-February 2016 |Smugnificent

February was overall a boring month and maybe one of the few months I posted so little on instagram. Still as always, there very quite a few fun moments that I would like to share with you as monthly-recap on this post.

I hope you are reading this post with a full stomach as I have to inform you it is highly delicious. Don't forget to write me about your favourite moments of the month in the comments!