Instead, I make my way down the old arcades of central Cardiff, and find Royal arcade which houses the only E.L.F in Europe! (Eyes Lips Face for those of you who don't know!) All you have to d is look up their twitter (@elfStoreCardiff) to see all the high praise from people around the Cardiff area making regular trips to the shop, and even people coming specially from England just to pop in!
The staff are helpful, and as long as its not too busy, will be more than happy to help recommend what shade of blusher you need, or what skin type you have and the best foundation to help combat it!
On my last trip, i had a bit of a splurge;
I love the look of the coral lip for the spring/summer season, but I was unsure how well it would suit my pale skin tone. I thought this orange-y lip balm might be the perfect buildable trial substitute.
The packaging is cute and simple, bearing the ELF logo and easy to open. Its available in 4 different colours, the peach shade I got, but also a nude, a rosey pink, and a deeper berry colour.
The lip balm itself is yummy! It taste like fruit salad sweeties, and as soon as i applied it, I couldn't stop licking my lips. I'm not sure if this is the intention behind the product, but it certainly makes me want to buy it again as soon as my little pot runs out!
The colour is buildable, one quick swipe over my lips gives a light peachy colour, but if you dab the product on instead giving a thicker coat, you get a deeper orange.
The only downside to it is its quite sticky, so when the wind blows you're likely to get hair stuck to your lips, though this is true with alot of lip balms and lip glosses.
Its only £2.95 too! Bargain!
Eye Primer and Liner Sealer
I've only recently got into wearing eye shadow, and its because of this product. Obviously i went through that 'phase' lots of young girls have when they think baby blue eye shadow is adorable or bright pink eye shadow makes them look grown up, but since then (thankfully we grow out of that!) I haven't really experimented with eye shadow.
I picked up a cheap eye shadow pallet and blending brush before and tried endlessly to achieve those perfect smokey eyes you see on make up sites and pinterest, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. I ended up looking smudgey rather than smokey, with fall out everywhere. I left the eye pallet alone for another 4 months, gathering dust on my desk.
When in the ELF shop, I purchased this on a whim. One end is a concealer style twist up stick primer, which glides over your eye socket and you can blend with your finger or brush. You can then build up the colours you want, and the colour of your eye shadow seems a lot more pigmented, and you can contour and blend colours a lot more easily. The primer gives you eye makeup a lot more depth, and allows it to stay put for the whole night. I have minimal smudging when I use it, unless i wipe my hands over my eyes..
The other end is in the style of a liquid eye liner brush, a thin white tip. The idea behind it is the liquid in the pot is the base to a waterproof eye liner, and by mixing the brush in with a little bit of your chosen eye shadow colour, you can create any colour combinations of eye liner.
I used this with a small amount of the Gold pigment eye shadow, and I must admit it worked on my naked eye quite well. It lasted for a good 5 hours, before i took it off for bed, and I'm pretty sure it would have lasted longer!
This is a multi purpose product, instead of paying the same price for large tubes of coloured liquid eye liner which you may or may not use, you can just have this handy tool and use an already owned eye shadow pallet to create your own look!
For this 2 in 1 (or 101 in one if you have a 100 piece eye shadow pallet) item, its £3.95, and its completely changed my eye make up game. I have gone from hating attempting and failing to do nice eye make up, to wanting to wear neutrals and shimmery eye shadow every day just because i have the fun of using this!
Pigment Eyeshadow
This shimmery loose pigment in Golden Goddess is perfect for using with the above shadow liquid liner. It creates a deeply pigmented gold line which you can either have instead of black, or as I liked to use it, above a thin black line. It looks almost like an Egyptian look!
Its so fine you can use it for a smokey eye look too, as a shimmery base if only a minimal amount is applied, or if your a bit more generous with the layering and you build up the colour and use a darker brown to contour the outer part of your eyelid you can make a great statement eye!
The this picture shows the teeny adorable brush that comes with it;
I usually do my foundation first, so because it is such a fine powder, I had a bit of trouble from fall out between picking the product up from it's little tub and getting it to my eye lid. I combated this by holding up an old loyalty card i had lying around underneath my lower lash line, which caught all the shimmer bits before the settled onto my face.
This eye shadow is £3.95, and comes with its own little brush to help with precision application!
My next post will include the Seventeen products in the first image, including 'Phwoarr Paint' a heavy duty concealer, 'Miracle Matte' a compacted powder, and a love Barry M Matte Nail polish in 'Caramel'
Have you paid a visit to the E.L.F store in Cardiff? Or bought online? Let me know, I'd love to hear about your experiences!