Laura Geller Vanilla Nudes Collection

Following this tip-off from the lovely girls over at London Beauty Review, I cracked and bought my second Laura Geller set from QVC.  I bought one last year, loved it, and totally forgot to review it, so I'm not making that mistake again!

The set comprises:

• Balance n'Brighten Foundation (choice of Tan, Regular, Fair and Porcelain - I bought Fair)
• Baked Cheek Dream blush and highlight compact in Neapolitan
• At Long Lash mascara in black
• Italian Marble Lipstick in Banana Berry
• Baked Eyeshadow and Eye Rimz in Vanilla Toffee and Black Cherry

 Here's a closer look:

Laura's range is based around baked minerals, and I've always found her products to be really high quality.  Last time I bought a Laura Geller TSV, I bought the foundation in Regular, and have found it to be just a tad too dark for year-round wear, so I selected fair this time:

I love the camouflage appearance of this in the compact!  It's a mixture of pigments, designed to correct and cover flaws, and it's delightfully soft and silky on the skin.  It gives light-to-medium coverage, I've found, but you can also use it as a very nice finishing powder.

The highlighter-blush combo is very nicely done too:

These have been swatched very heavily in order to show up on the photo, you have a pale yellow (it's not gold as I anticipated) a strawberry pink, and a browned-berry shade, which makes a good contour colour if used alone.  Mixed together, you get a nice, sheeny medium-pink which is very flattering, but I couldn't get this to show up in swatches.  Suffice it to say that it's a lovely healthy pink shade, which will be suitable for cool skin-tones and paler warm-toned ladies.  If I had a criticism of the palette, I'd suggest that it would have been nice to have a wider strip of the pink so it could be used alone, but it's a minor quibble really.

The Vanilla Toffee  and Black Cherry Eye Rimz is a lovely product with a dreadful name.  On the skin, Vanilla Toffee is a creamy copper shade, perfect for a polished but not too over the top daytime look.  Black Cherry has a slight hint of pink micro-shimmer in with the black base.  It's not too pigmented though, so, again, is perfect for a softly smokey daytime liner look.  Both shades can be applied wet for a more intense "foiled" look.

The Italian marbled lipstick is the one product that gave me pause before ordering, as Laura was making a big song and dance about how the lipstick contains banana extract, and I was worried that the lip colour would be banana-flavoured as a result.  I'm happy to say that the lipstick is actually both scent- and flavour-less.  However, it's a very nude shade on me, owing to all the yellow in my stick, and, as a result, it's about as flattering a thing that is not very flattering.  At all.  It has a nice, light balm-texture though, and is very moisturising, so if concealer-lips are your bag (baby) then you'll love this.

At Long Lash mascara is very wet, and very thin, mascara - I normally prefer my mascaras a bit drier - but it has very good lengthening properties, and it doesn't flake or run during the day.  There was some hoo-ha on the show I was watching that made a song and dance about the mascara having a semi-permanent colouring effect on the lashes, but I can't say that I've noticed my lashes being any darker after removing the product.  The brush is nice and thin, and is shaped well to coat the lashes though, but it is not very volumising, so for me, this is very much a nice "day-time" mascara, for a nice natural look.  You will need to use an oil-based remover when taking it off though, as it's stubborn and likes to stay put ...

Overall, I'm really glad I picked this up and, some minor quibbles aside regarding not enough pink in the blusher, and the lipstick making me look like death warmed up, this is a really nice kit, and well worth the £33 or so I paid for it.  Laura's makeup is always well worth a look, and you can find a collection of her cosmetics on QVC, 

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