Make Up Academy Review

 

I recently became the proud owner of all but 3 of the MUA eye shadows! 3 were out of stock but I will be buying the rest ASAP!

I first heard of MUA products in a magazine quite a while ago, all I knew was they were available at Superdrug in the UK and everything in their range was £1. I went on the Superdrug website to find out where my nearest stockist was and unfortunately, as they are only available in bigger stores, there wasn’t one near me. I hate buying make up online, pictures are never the same as the real thing, but needs must, so I picked out 7 of the brightest eye shadows from the range, along with a couple of liquid and glitter liners. The rest of the eye shadow pictures on the site unfortunately looked dull and boring.

When I received the package, to be honest, I put them away with the rest of my make up collection and pretty much forgot about them! It wasn’t until a YouTube guru did a haul video on them and showed the colours in “real life” that I decided to get them out and order the rest. And my goodness I am so glad that I did!

For £1 each I was expecting chalky, powdery shadows with hardly any pigmentation. However, I was totally wrong! The shadows are almost creamy and have incredible colour payoff. Not to mention the colours themselves! The dull and boring ones turned out to be the most exciting! There’s a dark violet (shade 13) a green/brown (shade 12) and the silver is beautifully metallic (shade 3). There’s also a matte black (shade 20)which is essential for everyone’s make up collection, and gorgeous purples and greens. Surprisingly no blues.

I would do swatches for you, however, as you can see from the picture above, my camera’s not the best and you can’t see the colour very well. However, take it from me they’re worth every penny!

The colour goes on well used with a primer (Urban Decay Primer Potion) and with that, lasts all day/night. They blend well with each other, along with other brands. After receiving these, I can’t wait to go out on Saturday night and my 120 colour palette will be getting a well earned rest!

xoxo Lisa

*Disclaimer – I bought all of the above with my own money and am not sponsored by any company to do this review. My opinion on this product is entirely my own and 100% honest. The product testing was on myself and while I experienced no problems with this product there is no guarantee that you will not.

Introduction

Hi guys,

For the first post I thought I'd better introduce myself and let you know what to expect in future posts :-)

First of all, I must confess something, I've never written a blog before, nor have I really read one as such! But I thought, while I'm saving up for a video camera to actually make videos for YouTube, I'll give it a go!

So, basically, I've been into make up for a few years now. My friends think I own tons of make up, whereas in reality I haven't got loads!

The reason for "Beauty on a Budget" is:

1) I live in a very small town, no department stores and a very small Boots, so unless I go out of town I haven't got much readily available to me, and shipping costs can sometimes be way too much to pay! I'm more of a 'buy one at a time so I can't see exactly how much I'm spending on make up' kind of girl :-)

2) To be perfectly honest, I haven't got much money. I'm between jobs at the minute, and even when working, I don't wear make up everyday due to my strange skin tone (more on that later). It's more of a going out at the weekend and see how many people I can shock with bright colours type of thing for me!

and 3) I've never been into brands as such, I think there's perfectly good make up available at a lower price than MAC, Nars, Bobbi Brown etc. Not that they're not nice to have of course, and if I had the money, who knows?

My make up collection is mostly eye shadows in every colour imaginable, except many browns. I don't do neutral.

I have Revlon Colorstay foundation, Urban Decay Primer Potion, L'Oreal Studio Secrets primer and MAC brushes. If you achieve a good base, and have the best brushes, you can make your make up look awesome no matter what the brand.

My skin tone has a yellow undertone which is fine, but I have very noticeable red patches all over my face. Not rosacea, just broken capillaries which has been passed on via all the women on my mum's side of the family, we've all got it and I won't lie, I HATE it. You have no idea how many products I've tried to cover it up/eliminate it completely. Up to now I've found nothing that works which makes it very hard for me to achieve "flawless skin" which so many of us strive for. I know I should try and enhance what I've got, but it's hard to find blush, contour or even lipsticks to complement my skin tone. At the moment my face routine comprises of Revlon Colorstay foundation in Buff, along with L'Oreal Studio Secrets anti-redness primer. It's ok, definitely the best foundation I've ever tried, but not sure if I notice a big difference with the primer or not. I probably won't be buying it again if I don't notice a huge difference. My next product to try is the Clinique redness relief. And yes, I know I have contradicted my Beauty on a Budget title already however, I've tried the cheaper alternatives and so far, nothing. The colour of my skin is also the reason why I don't bother with make up everyday. While you'd think I'd be the first person to try and cover it all up after what I've said, I go redder and redder throughout the day. If I get hot I go red, if I go cold I go red, and it makes my foundation visible. Although I've recently discovered that Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection concealer under my eyes kind of changes the focus of my red bits to my cheeks which looks slightly better.

By the way, all of the above products mentioned will get reviewed in full :-)

So yeah, back to to my make up collection. I am the very proud owner of the 120 colour palette available on eBay. If you don't own one and you're interested in make up, GET ONE NOW! They are incredible, I use mine almost every time I wear make up. Definitely worth every penny, there's every colour you'll ever need in there.

I have recently discovered Make Up Academy (MUA) available at Superdrug, and every product in that line is £1, which when I first heard of it sounded too cheap and therefore poor quality. How wrong I was! MUA will be my 1st review and I'm expecting a delivery of the rest of the eye shadows tomorrow (fingers crossed) so keep an eye out for that.

Other brands I use frequently include: 17, Natural Collection, Rimmel, W7, Barry M, GOSH, and Collection 2000 to name a few. Almost everything I buy is from Boots or Superdrug and occasionally bought online from discount beauty websites.

Well that's it for now, long post to start with, apologies for that!! In the next few weeks expect posts on essential products, reviews on MUA, Natural Collection, Cien nail varnish remover and Revlon Colorstay foundation along with anything else I may think of!

Thanks for reading (and well done if you got this far!)

xoxo Lisa