Beauty To Go

Having travelled a fair bit in my time I thought I'd share some of my favourite travel-friendly beauty products and the reasons I chose them. Whether you're going away for a weekend or several months, you're going to have to cart everything around with you and it gets very heavy and tiring after a while, so here are some tips that might make life a little easier.

For foundation I really recommend buying something in a squeezy tube. That's not the reason I bought Estee Lauder's Double Wear Light but now that I have it, it's my first choice when travelling because almost all of my other bases are in glass bottles which area lot heavier and have the potential to break in your suitcase. It's also a nice, long-wearing light/medium coverage base which is my preference and which comes in handy if you're going to be out all day and night exploring your new surroundings.

For blush I've chosen the Max Factor Miracle Touch Creamy Blush (sadly only available in the UK/EU) and the Bourjois Cream Blush in Rose Tender because they're both housed in light-weight plastic packaging and they're also super tiny and will take up almost no space in your makeup bag. The Bourjois option is a cream to powder formula but the Max Factor has a dewy/cream finish, which means it can easily double up as a lip product as well. I never really interchange my lip/cheek products because I like my lips to be red and my cheeks to be, y'know, not red, but you can certainly do it.

When it comes to eyes, cream shadow sticks are a good option, and these mini Laura Mercier Caviar Sticks are some of my favourites. You can draw them straight on and blend them out with your fingers - no brushes required. Or you can use them as a base under powder shadows, like this incredible Smashbox Full Exposure Travel Palette which is what gave me the idea for this post. It's the size of a credit card and only a few millimetres thick and it contains four matte & four shimmer shades - I can't really imagine anything more convenient or adorable.

I know for a fact that my skin looks horrible after I fly, so if you're going away for a weekend taking a hydrating sheet mask with you is a good idea. You don't have to pack any extra bottles or tubes, you can just use it once on the night you arrive and then throw it out. Sheet masks aren't huge in Australia - this one is from The Face Shop (sent to me by the lovely and super sweet Jennifer) but if you're curious about Korean beauty and you don't have a The Face Shop near you, there are plenty of places to pick them up online, or Indeed Labs offer Hydraluron Sheet Masks which are quite a bit more expensive, but they're easy to get your hands on at Priceline.

If you're a nervous flyer or find it difficult to get to sleep an unfamiliar bed, the This Works Can't Sleep Duo would be great for you. I'm neither of those things but I love the lavender & chamomile scent and although they're definitely luxury items since they're completely unnecessary, they sure are nice to have around.

No one wants to lug around heavy glass perfume bottles when they're travelling (unless they've bought something new at duty free of course) so buying these $1 glass bottles from eBay and decanting your perfumes is probably the best idea in this post. You just have to buy little plastic funnels (use a new one for each scent) and you can spray your perfume into the vial through the funnel and take away as many fragrances as you like. And whether or not you're travelling they're great for keeping in your handbag so you can touch up throughout the day.