As I'm sure y'all know by now, the man and I are getting married in August. We have most things booked and sorted and now I'm getting down to the details of what I want to look like on the day. I have my most amazing and gorgeous dress and some accessories already stashed away. One of my biggest problems though is what my make up should look like.
I don't really have a skin care routine apart form water and Aldi moisturiser and I tend to only wear a sweep of black eyeliner which I've done for many a year. Prior to that I was goth girl and wore black lipstick so I guess I've never had much of an idea about make up!!
I was talking to the lovely Chaz who is the marketing manager for John Lewis in Leicester and she invited me in for a consultation with Clarins to see if they could help with some make up ideas but also to give me a decent skin care routine. On Sunday I popped over for a lovely relaxing visit.
My consultant Helen was a complete Clarins expert having worked for them for a number of years and just by touching my skin could see that I was hugely dehydrated (erm.....yes that would be the vodka!!!)
So I started off looking this hot:
(who knew it was so hard to take a good selfie in the bathroom mirror??! This was about my 20th attempt!!)
The first thing that Helen did was use a very gentle cleanser called water comfort that smelled of delicious peach. It was actually really gentle on my skin and didn't at all feel like anything unnatural was being used, nor did it have that awful gritty texture that some exfoliators feel like.
Next up she used a hydra quench serum and cream that rehydrates, nourishes and rebalances the skin. This feels amazing and doesn't clog up your pores like some moisturisers do. We then had a splash of the flash balm which I'm told is great for Brides as it gives you a radiance and glow and holds your make up in place..... perfect for when I start crying, which is guaranteed to happen at some point during the day!!
The last of the skin care was the BB (beauty balm) cream. This gives you protection and cover and is very natural. I think it was at this point that my skin actually started to glow and look amazing! I discovered whilst I was there that John Lewis also have a Clarins Skin Spa. It looks soooo fab and relaxing that I might have to treat myself next time I'm there:
From there we moved on to the make up and to be honest this was the bit that I was dreading. I've only been to a make up counter once before to get a new look. I was in Vegas on holiday and I came away from that looking very orange and vaguely clown like so I wasn't a massive convert!!
Helen started off with an eye base which intensifies the colour of your eye shadow and keeps everything in place so again hopefully I shan't look like Alice Cooper when I start blubbing!! Some under eye concealer was definitely in order and then eye shadow, eye liner and Be Long mascara. I even had a sweep of the new cream blusher, finished off with a hydraquench lip balm. Soooooo after having my brows done the final effect looked like this:
I look so smooth and silky! I do have some better pictures with much more detail about the colours but I want to save the full effect for the wedding pictures!!! I may have treated myself to a few goodies:
It's like a 'taster' set which at the moment is on offer for £20 which I think is an absolute bargain. I've been using the products for the last couple of days and I have to say that my skin looks and feels so much clearer. I think I'll be treating myself to a full sized set pretty shortly!!
I'd like to say a huge thank you to Chaz for arranging this for me and Helen for spending a good hour talking me through all the lovely products and for giving me the exact look that I was after. My treatment normally costs £30 but this is redeemable from any products that you buy. I paid for the extra products myself and all opinions are mine :-)
