I’m a huge Home Bargains fan as I love to buy homeware, candles and stationery from there. However, when I was last in, I spotted a whole dedicated bay of makeup from a brand that I hadn’t heard of before – Olivia Hale. All the products from this range are 99p, so I didn’t expect much from them, but I picked up a selection to test for you.
Makeup products where you get change from a Pound doesn’t sound very good, so I was keen to test out this range. Like i’ve found with all budget makeup brands (thinking about you in particular PS Beauty), some products are horrific and some are actually surprisingly good.
Let’s start with the foundation – officially the worst makeup product I have ever used. I picked up the lightest shade Ivory Lace, which was a bit too dark for me, but could have been workable had it been any good. I’m struggling to find the words to describe how bad this stuff is. You get absolutely no coverage from it, but it covers your face in grease so that you are shining like a beacon. It’s an absolute disaster of a product and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
In order to give the other products a fair chance, I had to take this foundation off and replace it with my Urban Decay All-Nighter in 0.5. I went on to try the eyeshadow next and actually found it to be rather good. It has a metallic finish with small flecks of glitter. It’s decently pigmented, applies smoothly with no fallout, and blends nicely too. I really like this shade and have kept it in my makeup bag to use again, as it stays put all day.
A powder product from them that I didn’t like however, was the Blusher Brick. These are essentially dupes for Bobbi Brown’s Shimmer Bricks, but they aren’t flattering on the skin at all. They are so shimmery that they don’t make good blushers – yes you get the colour, but the intense shimmer just highlights all the pores on your cheeks and makes your cheeks quite reflective too. If this cost a lot of money, i’d suggest that you could use it as eyeshadow instead, but for 99p, it’s just not worth keeping.
Finally, I got myself two lip products – a liner and a lip gloss. The lip liner is shocking – it’s very hard, very dry and really drags on the lips, and you have to press really hard to get any real colour payoff from it. Definitely not a product I would recommend. The lip gloss however, is actually really nice. It doesn’t have any added scent, so it smells a little bit of the formulation, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s smooth, non-sticky, super-glossy, highly pigmented, and it makes your lips look extra plump too. I might even go back and try a couple more of the shades.
Have you spotted this brand anywhere?
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