A few of my favourite things - Becca

Becca is a brand that I love for a very natural glowy look (what can I say? I have multiple makeup personalities.) It's an Australian brand, and the makeup artist who is behind the range came up with it as she wanted to create a base system that would provide adjustable coverage without looking obvious or fake. I tend to buy Becca from either the counter at the back of Fenwicks, or from the Becca Website and there are details of other stockists on the website.

Favourite things:

Concealer in Praline. This is a really good match for my pale, neutral skin, and it works on dark circles without looking ashy. There are two textures in the compact - the right side is creamier for undereyes and any drier bits, and the left side is drier and more pigmented for blemishes.

Pressed shimmer powders in Angel and Princess. Angel is a flesh/nude highlight shade, Princess has more of a rosy glow. These give a very soft and subtle glow to the skin, perfect if you want to add a little luminosity without obvious shimmer. The shimmer is hardly noticeable in sunlight, but is more apparent in artificial lighting. The pressed shimmer powder colours also come in loose shimmer powders, and I find the shimmer is more apparent in the looser powder version.

Cream blush in Turkish Rose. This does need to be set with powder as it is very creamy; I set with either the loose powder or a pressed shimmer powder. Once you set it, the colour is very longlasting. Turkish Rose looks quite dark and dull in the pan, but it gives a lovely natural flush that would work well on very fair to quite tanned skin.

Jewel dust in Nyx. The jewel dusts are loose pigments with sparkly shimmer finishes, and excellent colour payoff. Nyx is a chocolate plum shade. I like to wear this applied with a fine brush as an eyeliner for a subtle look, or over more of the lid for a sparkly smoky eye.

Eye tint in Paracus. Becca makes cream eyeshadows in pots, but these do tend to crease quite easily. The Eye tints were formulated to give a more long wearing tint without any creasing. Paracus is a neutral mid-depth brown without shimmer. It applies quite sheerly and one thin coat gives a natural shadowing on the lid, but it can be built up for a more obvious colour. This does not budge until you remove it, and it is an excellent base for other eyeshadows.

Eyeshadow in Lame. This is a shimmery taupe with subtle mauve undertones. It's immensely flattering and easy to wear for cool complexions (a warmer skintone would be better off with a colour like Shantung instead.) Lame gives a very similar finish and colour to the sadly discontinued Shu Uemura ME945 eyeshadow.

Loose shimmer powder in Mermaid. This is a cool gold with a slight green undertone. This no longer comes in a pressed form, as I suppose it would be an unusual colour choice for wearing on the whole face. I love it on the eyes, especially to set cream eyeshadows, and it is very good over Paracus (which does not need to be set, but this adds a very pretty and subtle gilded effect.) The loose shimmer powders give a wash of sheer shimmer, and are much sheerer and more subtle than the jewel dusts.

Sheer lipstick in Vendela. These are scented with vanilla fudge, but while I wouldn't choose to flavour a lipstick if I could avoid it, it does fade quite quickly after being applied. Vendela is a rosy my lips but better shade - it's not really a nude shade in my opinion. The colour payoff is good for a sheer lipstick, and it gives a healthy glossy but not greasy finish. It's a very comfortable lipstick to wear, and feels almost balm-like.

Sesame loose powder (not pictured - it's just a pot of loose powder, and you can't see the colour terribly well due to the sifter.) This is a very fine, pale slightly yellow powder. It's less yellow than Bobbi Brown's pale yellow powder.

Not so favourite things:

Luminous Skin Colour. This is the tinted moisturiser/foundation that is meant to be the first step in your skin system. I like the texture and the spf 25, I do wish it wasn't fragranced though. My real problem is that I don't have a good match in it; Sand is slightly too pale, and Cashmere looks okay when I apply it but oxidises and looks a bit orange within an hour. I also find that this does clog my pores if I wear it for a few days in a row. I tend to just use the concealer and powder on bare skin.

Ultimate mascara. If you call anything the "Ultimate" you're setting yourself up for a fall. This is a reasonably good tubing mascara, it does not add a lot of volume but it doesn't smudge or smear. It does that hideously annoying thing though of collecting excess mascara around the base of the bristles. I can accept mascara collecting around the tip, which can be wiped off easily, but a lot of product is wasted when removing the excess from around the base of the bristles (the bit nearest to the stick of the wand/lid.)

Suede eyeshadow. This is a lovely, lovely colour (a dark cool chocolate semi-matte.) It cracks if you breathe on it. I exchanged this three times before I finally gave up on it altogether, and I did not drop it or have it clanging around in my makeup bag - it chipped and disintegrated just from having a brush applied to it. I understand that many of the semi-matte shades are similarly fragile.

Lipglosses. I find these oddly plasticky feeling on my lips, and I don't like the very artificial fragrance of them.