MeMeMe Cosmetics - Coral Blossom Lip and Cheek Tint review

It is summer and I am all about bright colours at the moment! I have just come back from holiday and all I want to use on my nails, lips or cheeks right now is something bright like coral or orange! If this sounds familiar then the new Coral Blossom Lip and Cheek Tint could be for you.

MeMeMe Cosmetics are a new discovery for me and from reading other blogs the products get rave reviews and they aren't expensive. So when I was offered the chance to try the new Coral Blossom Lip and Cheek Tint I was keen to put it to the test.

Tints are not a new concept for me. Benefit make some well known tints - Benetint, Posietint, Cha Cha tint and Lollitint. I have them all! I use them on my lips rather than my cheeks although the idea is to use them on both. I like the long-wear effect of a tint and I tend to use it as a waterproof, matte, lip base colour and then apply a Clinique Chubby Stick or other lip crayon over the top. Best of both worlds!

Coral Blossom is a really pretty coral, peach colour which is right up my street! This kind of colour really suits my complexion and gives a really healthy glow. It is much more subtle that Benefit's Cha Cha Tint - which is more of a bright orange. Seeing as I only dare wear Cha Cha Tint when I am tanned in the summer, I think Coral Blossom will be more of a year-round option for me.

To the Test: Maybelline Baby Skin vs Benefit's The Porefessional

Pores, pores, PORES! It is all I see when I look in the mirror nowadays. For years I have not given them a thought but now there are two much-hyped products which are drawing my attention to them. Does it really even matter if they are visible? I was certainly keen on the claims of smoother even looking skin so I had to give them a go.

I bought Maybelline Baby Skin Instant Pore Eraser for £7.99 for 22ml from Boots (HERE). I received a sample of Benefit's The Porefessional as part of a recent Twitter promotion Benefit were running. It has similar claims to Maybelline's Baby Skin so my inner scientist thought it was a good idea to try them out together... *Warning: Contains extreme pore photographs and bad skin moments... (well don't say you weren't warned)*

To keep things on an even playing field I applied Maybelline Baby Skin to one half of my face and Benefit The Porefessional to the other. I then applied my Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation as usual, all over my face using my Real Techniques Expert Face Brush (review HERE).

Top: Maybelline Baby Skin    Bottom: Benefit The Porefessional

First impressions of the two products were that they were quite different. Maybelline Baby Skin is a clear silicone type gel which acts as a light weight primer. It applies nicely and doesn't feel heavy on the skin. Benefit's The Porefessional is a tinted product which feels more like a cream than a gel, it blends in well and the finish becomes matte in a cream-powder way (but it doesn't feel drying on the skin). It felt quite silky to the touch. Neither product has any fragrance or shimmer.

Once blended the matte nature of Benefit's The Porefessional becomes evident. Maybelline Baby Skin is not shiny but to the touch it has a moisturising gel feel to it rather than the powder finish feel of Porefessional. Once blended the tint of The Porefessional isn't really apparent, although I did feel that it disguised some pale freckles that I had.

Under foundation, I felt that the half of my face where I'd used The Porefessional was very matte - it made me look more made-up and my make up look heavier. To be honest I wasn't really comfortable with that. The half of my face that had Maybelline Baby Skin looked fine and still had a slight gel feel to the touch.

After a couple of hours I went to examine my skin closely in the mirror. I noticed that the foundation on the Porefessional side of my face (on the left in the photo below), was now clinging to dry patches. It looked slightly cakey too. In the name of science here is a dreadful photo of my skin and the dry patch in question. See what I mean? Yep you can see that the cakey-ness.

Foundation clings to dry skin on the left of my face - where I'd used Benefit's The Porefessional

By the evening I have to say I really couldn't see any difference between each side of my face. My foundation had faded on both sides. I would say that my skin still felt more gel-like on the Maybelline Baby Skin side, although it was in an oily kind of way.

You may have noticed by now that the one thing I really haven't mentioned is PORES! I think that when you stare at your pores in the mirror it becomes quite difficult to ascertain how they looked before you applied the product. Luckily I took some hideous close up horror pictures of my pores before and after. So here they are: The money shots!

On the left half: Benefit The Porefessional   On the right half: Maybelline Baby Skin. Before pore product, after pore product & after product with foundation also applied

When I look at these photos next to each other I can see an improvement after I applied the products. Both products initially gave a more even look to my skin and pores are less visible! But if I am honest in the flesh I didn't really notice. Looking at the last photo where I have also applied foundation over the top I can start to see a little patchiness in the foundation on the left side where The Porefessional was applied. But there isn't a great deal of difference between the two products immediately after application.

Whilst I like the cream-to-powder silky finish of Porefessional when swatched on my hand, it didn't work on my face. I didn't like the over made-up matte look it gave me and I certainly didn't like how it clung to (previously unnoticed!) dry-skin.

And the winner is.......

For the sake of this experiment my vote goes to Maybelline Baby Skin - not least because it is £7.99 vs £24.50 for Benefit's The Porefessional. I don't think there was anything drastically different between the two performance wise so I don't see why you would pay the extra. Perhaps The Porefessional would work better on oily skin because of the mattifying effect. I do think Maybelline Baby Skin would be a bit too heavy for an oily skin and the silicone type feel would not be a good fit.

However, whilst I think Maybelline Baby Skin is a decent drugstore primer I don't think it compares to my favourite Smashbox Primers. I think I can feel another experiment coming on....

Have you tried any of these? How did they suit your skin type, do you think it helped disguise pores?

Maybelline Baby Skin Instant Pore Eraser is £7.99 for 22ml HERE. Benefit The Porefessional is £24.50 for 22ml HERE. Smashbox Primers are £25 for 30ml HERE.

MUA Blusher - A Review

MUA is a brand which intrigues me. It lurks away in the back corner of my local Superdrug. The display is frankly festering - there is never any stock and what is there is just bashed up testers or things people have opened and used.

MUA Blusher in Lolly and Candyfloss

After that glowing review you are probably wondering why on earth you would look twice at the brand. I have mainly blogged about high end products so far, but I love a good high street / drugstore offering too. I have to say that the MUA products I have tried are actually quite good. They are also unbelievably cheap!

There are lipsticks for £1, eyeshadow palettes for £4, foundation for £2. Incredible - but I do think you have to choose carefully, although at those prices perhaps you can just take a punt! I haven't tried everything (remember the shoddy out of stock display I just mentioned...?). But most recently I picked up a couple of MUA Blushers in Lolly and Candyfloss.

Top: Lolly, Bottom: Candyfloss

Unlike my eyeshadow & lipstick stash, I only have a couple of blushers in my collection. It is one area where I manage restraint - how many do you need? However, I normally choose peachier tones to warm up my complexion.

I had been wondering whether I could pull off a paler rosier pink. Blue toned pink lipsticks terrify me, but for some reason I thought it would be a good wintery blush option. Picking up a cheapie seemed like an ideal way to experiment. Seeing as these are only £1 each I thought I may as well also pick up one closer to the normal shade I would wear (did I just say how many do you need? ahem...) - and so I chose Lolly, a peachier warm tone and Candyfloss a cool blue toned pink.

My main gripe with these are the practicalities. The blushes are quite small which makes it harder to get a normal sized blush brush evenly covered without risking overloading it. That is of course if you can get the damn thing open in the first place! I broke 2 nails trying to prise mine open, but I guess once you've got the knack...

After that things got better. The powder isn't as tightly pressed as some other blushes meaning a lot goes onto the brush. I discovered this the first time I used the blue-pink one and instantly looked like I'd developed a rash. Warning - its easy to over-apply!

MUA Blusher in Lolly and Candyfloss

That said, the colour pay-off is good. I compared the two shades to the pinkest blusher I already owned - Benefit Dandelion and found it quite hard to get a good swatch of the Benefit one.

Swatch comparison of MUA vs Benefit

It is a little tricky to see in this picture, but MUA Candyfloss is a deeper blue-pink than Benefit Dandelion, and MUA Lolly is a peachier shade. In fact I would say that Benefit's Dandelion is a cross of the two MUA shades.

I'm not sure that wear time is as good as other blushers I have tried, and I still prefer my favourite Bourjois Cream Blush (HERE) in Nude Velvet but for the price difference the MUA Blushers did well.

Overall I am impressed with these. I can't believe they only cost £1 each where as the Benefit Dandelion blusher was £23.50 (HERE if you are interested). It is definitely worth picking up a couple to try different shades or to just throw in various bags in case you want them on the go.

MUA Blusher comes in 6 original shades (just numbered 1-6 but no names) and 6 new shades were released last year which are: Marshmallow (Pink), Bon Bon (Apricot), Lolly (Soft Orange), Cupcake (Soft Peach), Candyfloss (Pink Shimmer) & Bubblegum (Coral Rose Pink).

MUA Blushers are available from Superdrug HERE or direct from MUA HERE.