CHARLOTTE TILBURY: MUST-HAVES, MAYBES AND MISSES

If this is your first time to encounter Sharon’s blog Behind Green Eyes, you have seriously been missing out. I love Sharon’s blog. She is beyond honest and absolutely hilarious. In fact she is hands down my favourite snap chatter. Her snaps crack me up on a regular basis. When I have a long list of snaps to view, hand on heart Sharon’s are the first ones that I watch. I have even been caught in public crying laughing at some of her snaps. She’s brilliant. 

Sharon also has fantastically expensive taste in makeup, while at the same time she mixes it up with more budget brands. It blows my mind how she gets so much makeup through the door every week without her husband divorcing her!!! Behind Green eyes is a must follow. You can check out Sharon’s blog here, Facebook, here, Twitter right here, and Instagram here, but if you’re going to do just one thing; for the love of god follow her on snap chat. Her handle is @sharonleavy. You won’t be disappointed. 

Over the past few months, I’ve built up a small collection of Charlotte Tilbury cosmetics. I wanted to talk you through some of the bits I picked up, and to tell you what I think are the standouts so far.

First up – The Must-Haves.

The Filmstar Bronze & Glow is my top must-have from Charlotte’s range. It has a cool toned bronzer that works really well for contouring, plus a gorgeous  highlighter that builds up into a nice shine without any shimmer. Here’s a comparison between this palette and a couple of well-known bronzer and highlighter shades – as you can see, both Give Me Sun by MAC and Luminous Bronze Light by Hourglass are warmer and more orange toned. Mary Lou-Manizer by The Balm is a much lighter, but the texture is similar.

The Eyes to Mesmerize cream eyeshadow in Marie Antoinette is beautiful, it’s a great colour for everyday. Also on the must-have list is the Lip Cheat lip pencil in Pillow Talk – this is gorgeous, it’s a real my-lips-but-better shade. I’d recommend Charlotte’s lipsticks too – at €30 a pop they certainly aren’t cheap, but they are fantastic quality and they come in really wearable colours. The three I own are Penelope Pink, Hepburn Honey, and Confession. They’re creamy, long lasting, and feel lovely on.

I know that it would probably be considered blasphemous in some circles to put the eyeshadow quads in the “maybe” pile, but I just haven’t gotten the usage from these that I thought I would. In particular, the Vintage Vamp palette disappointed me a little bit – the prime shade feels a little grainy, and the pop shade doesn’t have great pigmentation (if I’m paying €50 for four eyeshadows, I want good pigmentation from all four). I got on much better with the Fallen Angel palette, but again I just don’t find myself reaching for either of them on a daily basis. Same goes for the Eyes to Mesmerize in Mona Lisa – it’s a lovely shade, but there are similar ones from several different brands so I don’t think it’s special enough. I do think that you need to have a swatch of the quads in person – I think if I had considered it more, I would have gone for more wearable everyday shades. Then again – do you want everyday when you’re buying Charlotte Tilbury?

Finally, the two products that I don’t think were worth the money:

Yes, that is an expensive pencil sharpener. €7 is a ridiculous price to pay for something you can get in a Euro shop. You know what they say about fools and their money……seriously, I need a kick for falling for this. Any bog standard double sharpener will do the same job, don’t waste your money on this. I think Essence do one for around €2. The second product is the Colour Chameleon eye pencil in the shade Bronze Garnet. I just didn’t get on well with this at all – it didn’t last very long on my eyes, it didn’t really do anything for me, and it wasn’t anything to write home about. The only time I liked it on my eyes was when I layered it under eyeshadow – who has time for that? There are much better eye crayons out there – Zoeva ones are fantastic and about a third of the price. At €25, this is definitely something I would tell you to think long and hard about. It’s not a must-have by any stretch of the imagination.