How to pick the right Drugstore Foundation

I suffer from very oily skin and mild acne, so I'm always on a mission to find foundation that suits my skin and delivers what it claims to deliver. Lately I've been focusing a bit more on drugstore foundations, because I find it's not always easy to pick a foundation that suits your skin type and tone in a chemist. The lighting is often bad and can cause you to pick up a foundation that you thought suited you, only to get home and find it's too dark/light, too yellow/pink, and they often have ridiculous claims such as eliminating pores or lasting for 25 hours or something like that.
I think the trick is to not take these claims seriously and I highly recommend trying the testers, wearing them out and about for a good while, an hour if possible, and then decide if it's the right one for you. Definitely try 2-3 at a time so you can see which matches the best, because if you have just one tester on, you may think it's a close enough match to your skin but you have nothing to compare it to!
Another tip is, it's not always the best idea to test the foundation on your face and try to match the colour to your face. Your face may be darker or lighter than your neck and chest (the neck on many women is usually lighter as it doesn't get as much sun as the face and chest, your chin and jawline can cast a shadow on it), so I think the best thing to do is to match your foundation to your chest. It can easily be applied to the neck too so everything will match.
I do think that we shouldn't kid ourselves about our colouring either. Obviously a tan is nice to look at and it can make us feel better, but in winter especially, we wear tan less and less, so we need to ensure we're not still wearing the same foundation. If you're a pink tone, accept it; if you are quite pale, accept it; if you have very oily or very dry skin, accept it and use these points to help you pick the right foundation. The opposite is also true - if you like to wear false tan occasionally, your normal foundation may not match and you will need to pick a darker, yellow based foundation. There's nothing worse than looking back on your photos of a great night out and your face is pink and pale in comparison to the rest of your body, and the artificial light we often end up applying our makeup in can be deceiving!
So the point is, read the bottle, check it's got ingredients that either won't affect your skin or may even benefit it (foundation for oily skin should be oil-free and non-pore blocking and foundation for dry skin should contain some sort of moisturiser like glycerin), try the testers and be honest to yourself about what shade/tone suits you, wear a good primer underneath that also suits your skin type and will help it last and you can't go too far wrong.
On that note, here are a few drugstore foundations that I've tried recently and what I thought of them:

Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation - this is a brilliant foundation for oily skin once you have a good primer underneath, it has good coverage but still maintains a little dewiness, which is nice as most foundations for oily skin have a matte finish, it lasts all dry and doesn't really seem to affect my skin one way or another in terms of oiliness or drying my skin out. I'm wearing this foundation on a daily basis at the moment and so far I've no complaints. One downside of the foundation is it only comes in 8 shades and they seem to be mostly yellow based, so some people may miss out.

Rimmel Lasting Finish 25 Hour Foundation - This foundation claims to be extremely long lasting and sweat-proof; I don't know if that's true but it's still a good, long-lasting foundation all the same. It has a slightly more matte finish so I recommend using a silicone-based primer underneath as it will help the foundation to glide on and blend easily. It has high coverage which is good for my blemish-prone skin, but again, it doesn't have a wide range of shades - only 6 in total.

Max Factor Smooth Effect Foundation - This foundation is oil-free and claims to have a smoothing effect, as the name suggests! I'm not sure if this foundation is great for blemish-prone skin, I bought it because it's oil-free so I knew it wouldn't do anything to make my skin worse. It's a fairly light foundation that doesn't have a lot of coverage, but even so, I like it because it has more of a semi-matte finish so wasn't too drying and it was fairly long-lasting. I think it would be good for normal-oily skin types and for people who don't need a lot of coverage, maybe just some evening-out. Of the 3 foundations I mentioned, it's the worst in terms of colour range - it only has 4 and they seem to all be yellow-based/neutral (nothing pink-based at all!)

So apologies for this blog post being long again but foundation really is something I could talk about all day and I've only scratched the surface of all the different types here! I will say that I have bought all the foundations mentioned with my own money, so my reviews are fair and honest. I don't necessarily like to bash products but when a product is generally good I will mention any small downsides, just so anyone reading this can be fully informed if they go to buy anything I mention!

Thanks for reading!

Suzanne

New Blog!

So, I've started up this blog for a number of reasons, and would really like to hear from anyone who is in or has been in a similar situation and how they're dealing with it. Basically, a year ago I made one of the biggest decisions of my life, which was to quit my job to do a makeup course. This was a huge risk as my partner's job was coming to the end of it's contract and the economy in Ireland has been so bad (as I'm sure many people already know), plus the course cost quite a lot of money, so we potentially were going to be in a bad situation if it didn't work out. I got support from my family and friends, I think my mam was especially happy as she always wanted me to go to college and knew I couldn't stick dead-end retail jobs forever (I was especially unhappy in the job I was in at the time). So I went into the course, worked hard, learned a lot, made some friends, got good results and ended up with a diploma in makeup artistry and a cert as a beauty specialist, which I'm quite proud of!


Well, moving on, to say that this last year has been the most eventful of my life is an understatement! After I finished the course I looked for makeup-related jobs and even did a tiny bit of freelance work in my hometown; this didn't go very well as I didn't drive so it wasn't easy to get around, and I didn't have a massive makeup kit (although the case I had was too heavy to carry for more than about 5 or 10 minutes walking), plus as I said, things aren't so great in Ireland so getting your makeup done was a luxury most people couldn't afford. Also, my partner's contract wasn't renewed (which is what we were afraid of but didn't think it'd actually happen!) so were both basically jobless, and life was very tough for a while (not as tough as some people have it, but tough for us, who never had to worry about money before). Then, things just totally changed. My partner, who works in the food science industry and had been looking for jobs nonstop, was offered a job in the UK, which he took.


In the space of about 3 weeks, he had the interview, was offered the job and moved over to the UK ahead of me. We knew that it would be hard to leave our families behind but it definitely was the right thing for us to do. We were apart for 3 months, with just 2 short visits in between, and it was one of the toughest things our relationship has ever gone through. I had to stay behind to sort a few things out, like the house we lived in and getting our things over to the UK. But eventually it passed and in early September I arrived! So that's just a bit of the back story, I don't want to go on about it too much, it just explains how I came to be living in the UK and I hope it explains why I feel the need to start blogging.


So one of the reasons I came here too was because I knew I'd find it much easier to find a job in the makeup industry, and I knew the best place for me to start would be on makeup counters. I know some people may not agree with that but as I explained, freelance didn't work so well for me at the time and I think I'll learn a lot working on a counter. I am trained but I don't think you can ever learn everything there is to know about makeup, techniques and products are changing all the time. But finding a job has not been as easy for me as I thought it would be, I've had a few reality checks. I have had an interview recently but that's all I'm saying about it for now because I don't want to jinx it!


I suppose then, in light of everything I said so far, why I want to blog is, first of all, I know virtually nobody in the UK, and while my partner goes to work, I spend my days job-hunting, watching makeup tutorials, reading blogs and other related things. So I pretty much have nobody to talk about makeup with! My partner tries but he's a man (not saying all men aren't interested in makeup, obviously there are some well known male makeup artists), he wants to watch football and play the playstation! So I'm hoping I'll find some people to chat about it with and also it's just another way for me to vent about it! Another reason is, I think it'll be a more useful, constructive way for me to fill my time.


I know this blog entry is very long but it's my first and I just wanted to give a bit of background, they won't all be this long! The blog itself will be mostly makeup and beauty related, whether that's to do with my new venture into the makeup industry or whether it's product reviews or anything else along those lines. I think I'll also talk a little bit about my new life in the UK too, and what goes on in my day to day life or if anything exciting happens!! I hope to learn a few things so I'm happy to hear any suggestions anyone has (about anything!), and maybe I can give advice to someone who needs it if I've had a problem similar to theirs or whatever, speaking from my own experiences.


So I'll leave it at that for now! Thanks for reading!


Suzie