10

I was tagged by Polish Chest and necessary★nails for the Top 10 award, and thought it would be kind of fun to show you the top 10 beauty products I swear by, so here they are!


You may click to see details in the rather large photo here, but here's my list, in no particular order:

1. Nubar Foundation Base Coat
2. Nubar Diamont Seal & Shine Topcoat (the good formula, that is!)
3. Estée Lauder Double Wear Foundation (I use 1N1 Ecru)
4. The Body Shop Hemp Body Butter
5. Nuxe Aroma-Perfection face cream
6. Lush Soft Touch
7. Kanebo Sensai 38° mascara
8. Avon Length & Strength Complex
9. tweezers!
10. Too Faced Lip Injection

The Nubar nail products I always use. Always! (Until I run out of a good formula bottle of Diamont...)

The Estée Lauder Double Wear foundation I was once recommended by the girls on the MakeupAlley makeup board, as an answer to my desperate calls for a foundaton that would both cover and stick most of the day. It's utterly divine. Buildable, covers flaws well, and yes, it stays put even on oily skin!

The Hemp Body Butter from The Body Shop is very much a miracle in a jar. After 30, I started getting these weird dry patches here and there, that would stay for weeks, but applying this smelly stuff helps immediately. After one day, the dry patches are basically gone. Gone, I tell you. I also use this for my feet and sometimes hands. However, there is a whole line with specific products for both hands and feet, but the body butter contains a little less water than the hand cream, from what I can tell by the feel of it. Which is of course better for the overall results.

I have used Nuxe facial products for the last few years. I tend to want products that give me a natural feel, but some all natural products are just counterproductive, especially for someone with oily and acne-prone skin. Nuxe is the perfect blend between natural and laboratory science. I have a small range of their products permanently stashed on my bathroom shelves, as I find many of them great. For day wear and summer, I use Aroma-Perfection, during night I use their Crème Fraîche de Beauté - for summer the one for normal skin, during the harsh Swedish winter, the one for dry skin. They also have a great meakup removing toner. And sadly, they have discontinued my favourite one of them all: the Crème Étincelante resurfacing cream. This one worked miracles on my skin - now, no more.

The Lush Soft Touch solid hand and cuticle treatment is sadly discontinued. I went up in pieces after I heard, since this product has made a huge difference for my nails and cuticles. It's basically an oil, and its solid form makes it easy to rub off a fair amount of product and then let it melt all over the nails and cuticles - I often sleep the whole night just soaking in it. You can tell my piece is painfully small by now, and when it's all finished, I don't know what I'll do. Lush does have a new, similar product; Tiny Hands, that I haven't yet tried, but it does not contain some of the goodies Soft Touch does, renown for its great impact on nails, such as beeswax.

I have been a slave to the Kanebo mascaras for a few years now. They require some building, which suits me perfectly since that makes it possible to use the same mascara for everyday wear and a night out. And, it stays on without being waterproof! It's one of those tube mascaras, that comes of in chunks once you apply hot water - 38° C or warmer. Normal body temperature is of course 37° C, which makes these stay put for tears and what not.

The old style Avon Length & Strength Complex bottle was a product I initially received from Monica over at wixology. I had ruined my nails terribly with Nubar's (in)famous Nu Nail strengthener and just couldn't figure out a working way to save them. Monica sent me this one, and it worked! Since, I hunted down a large amount of these old bottles on ebay (I think I paid one dollar a bottle), that I have also shared with friends. It is still in the Avon range, but in a new bottle, and, I hope, with the same ingredients. Works for dry, brittle nails, and I use it wintertime - during summers my nails are too soft, and then it does very little good actually.

And tweezers... I can't live without them! Unfortunately I have misplaced my very trusty Vitry tweezers, which I loved, and the ones shown in the photo are not as good, but still does some of the job. Brows, random hair strands, picking cuticles... You name it. I think I use my tweezers almost every single day.

Too Faced's Lip Injection is the best working lip plumper I have come across. It itches like hell, but it works, and it makes my lips look yummy! I have gone through vast amounts of lip plumpers over the last few years, and beside polish, lipglosses and lipsticks are my secret thing. (And perfume.)

Wow, this post came out long, but hopefully you were able to skip through the parts that don't interest you!

If I had done this award thing properly I would also have included 10 bloggers to tag, but you know how I do these things. If you want to do this, just do it! Consider yourself tagged.

Swedish word of the day:
skönhet -noun beauty
Most of us are slaves in one way or another.