London beauty buys: Maybelline

For the past three weeks I’ve been almost on a mission: to check the best UK beauty buys and focus on the brands and products which are not easy to find somewhere else, especially in Italy. I prepared for the task with a long read of UK beauty blogs + Sephora international + Spacenk + Boots and other online shops, because I wanted to seek out both luxury products and drugstore ones.

Regarding the last category, I came back home with just two products:a L’Oréal red lipstick I’ll be showing you soon among my top 5 red lipsticks and the Maybelline Dream Sun Bronzing Powder with Blush. If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I’m not at all a fan of bronzers and contouring. I seldom find something that works on me in this category and apart from the Honey Bronze from The Body Shop, I have very few favorites. So why did I put this product in the shopping list? Because the beautiful and lovely Anna from Viviannadoesmakeup has been praising the Maybelline Dream Sun Powder with Blush many times and looking at the final result on her, I was very curious to give it a try, but here it was impossible to find, because nobody seemed to be selling this product in the right shade for my skin, which is the fairest. So thanks to a very quick visit to one of the Boots shops in Oxford street, which happily sold this item, I can now show you the Maybelline Dream Sun Bronzing Powder with Blush on Chicfirst as well. Reasons to love it?

The super cute design: more than a half of the cake is occupied by the bronzer – a very soft and natural one – while less than one third of the cake is occupied by a pink blush, with the shape of palm leaves.

The very convenient pricing : for less than a tenner you get two products in one. Amazing!

The natural look: it’s nice on me as well, which is not so obvious…Have a look at the swatches below, to understand how natural and light this is. I re-applied both powders three times to achieve the color you see in the picture I posted.

The only minus I can think of is the dimension of the blusher, which is a bit tricky to use with the usual blusher brush. You’ll have to pick up a contouring brush or try to swipe your usual one, as far as you can, at the corners of the cake. The ‘palette’ would be perfect with a wider blush, so I hope it will be upgraded or lightly re-designed soon. You can even mix the two shades together for a multi-dimensional blush effect, which seems to be the trend of the moment. If you’re planning a trip to the UK or you leave there but haven’t purchased this yet, I’d recommend a little shopping. It’s a budget-saving item and an extremely high value-for-money. Cheap, but chic!