I’ve found Essence Cosmetics to be one of the most affordable makeup brands available in stores here in NZ. I’ve loved the brand ever since discovering it in Farmers stores. I managed to pick up a few things from the brand last time I was there.

I think the products I picked up are fairly new to the range so if you want to know more, click below.

I’ve featured Essence on a previous haul before and everything I’ve tried from this brand have been great.

I have four things to share with you in this haul and I’ve actually been trying them for over 2 weeks now.

The first one is this Stay All Day Concealer. I got it in the shade 20 Soft Beige. It’s a really light shade which I use under my eyes. I’ve found this to be quite thick but blendable and it’s also not cakey. For $5.65, I really like this concealer.

This Shape Your Face Contouring Palette is the one that drew me in making a purchase. I’ve never seen it before and I got curious.

As most contouring palettes, this one has a blush, bronzer and a highlighter. The bronzer and highlight are both matte while the blush has a slight shimmer.

At first, I thought they got it wrong because the shimmery blush swatched more like the highlight but when I applied all three on my face, they worked! I surprisingly really liked the blush and the bronzer is a nice shade for me. As for the highlight, this palette could probably do without this. Because it’s matte, it looks like it’s more of a face powder than a highlighter and I’ve been using it as such.

For $8.95 though, I can’t really complain. I liked two out of the three products in the palette and I’ve been using this almost every day for work.

I also picked up this Silky Touch Blush in Indian Summer. My sister has two of these silky touch blushes and she loves them so I thought I should finally give it a go. She was right because I just love this blush. It blends nicely and it’s a great shade for me. I definitely want to try more of their blushes.

This blush was $5.65.

Lastly, I got the Make Me Brow eyebrow gel mascara. I think there are only two shades and I have the 02 browny brows. I love trying new brow gels/mascaras because more and more brands have them now. This was $5.65 and I prefer it to the Maybelline Brow Drama and Rimmel Brow This Way I’ve both featured in my Battle of the Brows post.

I love how small the brush is. The brush is slightly smaller than my all time favourite L’oreal Brow Stylist Plumper and for only $5.65, I would probably choose this Essence one because I go through brow gels a lot. The shade matches my dark brows pretty well too and keeps them in place throughout the day.

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The silky touch blush and the brow gel mascara were two of my favourite new finds from this brand. If you’re after affordable but good makeup, check out Essence. My sister loves their mascara too.

If you’ve tried anything else from Essence, let me know your recommendations below.

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