Have you had a chance to try out any Aerin cosmetics whilst browsing the beauty counters? If you haven’t then it’s well worth making time to have a play with the products. The makeup is beautiful and natural-looking and impossible not to like. The kind of makeup that makes me think of those fresh young faces that you see in magazine beauty stories that are called things like Nude Attitude! or Get the Glow! Simple, subtle shades that flatter the skintone and don’t try to make a song and a dance – bronzers that give just a kiss of colour, lipsticks that perfect and smooth the lips, eyeshadows that give a gentle wash of glowing sheen. In short: my kind of makeup.

So, two little makeup bag trinkets from Aerin that I’ve become very attached to: the Multi Color for Lips and Cheeks in “Natural” and Pretty Bronze Illuminating Powder in “Level 2”.

The creamy, glossy Multi Color (£30) is great for adding a slick of high-shine colour to the cheeks. You can see it in action if you watch my Essentials for the Perfect Makeup Base video. The “Natural” shade is just right for my skintone, though it would also suit fairer tones I think. It’s not too warm (read orange) and it blends away beautifully into a sheer wash of colour. Again, see the video for a little demo of that going on.

 The Illuminating Powder (£34) is rather interesting (it’s the compact on the left in the picture) because in some lights it seems to kick out a bit of a glow, in others it looks quite flat. I can’t quite work out whether it’s illuminating my skin or not – I suspect that my eyes are looking for shimmer and glow because my brain is telling them to! I would definitely put this in the “bronzer” category (I have shade 2) but it’s not a “Maldives” bronzer, more just a kiss of healthy colour. I really need to do some more experimenting with it in harsh daylight so that I can pick up on any shimmer, but so far I can’t find any. Here are a couple of pics I just knocked out on the iPhone to show you – the first is with NO Illuminating Powder, and the second is WITH.

There’s a definite sense of outdoorsy-ness and health to the bottom picture, but at any rate they are a poor illustration so I’ll pop this into a video soon so that you can see it properly. I must actually do a “best bronzers” video in the run-up to Summer. Or should I say “summer” using a very sarcastic tone? “Summer”.

Let me know what you’ve tried from Aerin – I love to hear what other people have been poking their noses into at the makeup counters.

Aerin can be found online at Estée Lauder