Last week I did a Burberry makeup tutorial, recreating the AW15 show look and revealing a couple of handy smokey eye tricks that their makeup artist, Wendy Rowe, had demonstrated. It actually gave me a good opportunity to really have a proper play around with some of Burberry’s base makeup products, as well as the colour- or trend-led cosmetics and I have to say that I’ve found something of a surprise love: the Fresh Glow BB Cream.

Now you must know by now that I have a  love/hate relationship with so many of these BB/CC/DD/EE creams; for a start, the letters mean something different to nearly every brand, so you never know whether you’re going to get a full-coverage high-SPF cream or a skin-adapting barely-there tint. Then some of them, to be quite honest, are just claggy, horrible, paper-paste products that won’t spread or blend and feel heavy on the skin – others are so sheer and colourless as to be virtually pointless. There doesn’t seem to be an industry standard, you just have to take each product on its own individual merits.

Which is what I do, completely ignoring the name and the marketing spiel and testing with an open mind – always asking the question what does this add to my makeup routine? In the case of Burberry’s Fresh Glow BB Cream it’s a juicy, healthy tint that’s light on the skin and easy to apply. I use quite a generous amount and so the SPF is perfectly adequate for me, at the moment, with my limited amount of outdoors time, which saves a step in the skincare routine. It also provides just the right amount of coverage (light) to even out my skin a little, so that if I want to I can go in on top with a light concealer or a dab of foundation here and there just to correct the serious bits (eye circles, nose redness etc) and still look as though I’m barely wearing any makeup.

Here I am actually not wearing any makeup:

Then here I am with a quick coating of the Luminous Fluid Base in “Nude Radiance”:

– which I find works amazingly well underneath both the BB and the Fresh Glow Foundation – and then here’s the BB blended in – shade 02, Medium:

Apologies for slight differences in light; that’s what happens when you shoot in natural daylight, the sun does a disappearing and reappearing act every ten seconds! But hopefully you can see that the coverage is sheer-ish, but good enough to begin to even out redness and take some of the blue out of the undereye circles. It doesn’t do spots and blotches (see upper cheeks!) but it does give a general look of “your-skin-but-fresher”. For those wanting more from their base, behold the Fresh Glow Foundation. Granted I have added mascara in this pic, too, so the whole thing does look more polished, but the finish is lovely:

I used shade 31 very sparingly over the BB, because shade 31 is a bit too dark for me. Shade 26 is a bit too pale, and I had nothing in between. Though looking online I think perhaps there isn’t anything in between, and on closer inspection of my picture I rather like 31! But anyway, can you see how it suddenly pulls everything together? I just applied very lightly around the centre of the face, buffing with a Real Techniques brush. Yum.

Which level of coverage do you like? I must take a pic of the BB with some mascara on, to give it a fair chance against the last photograph! Mascara makes a world of difference, doesn’t it? You can find the BB Fresh Glow for £30 at Net-a-Porter and all of the base products on the Burberry website. The Burberry Fresh Glow Foundation is £35 and the Luminous Fluid Base, £34.

Watch my latest Burberry Makeup Tutorial…

*please note that this post is NOT sponsored or part of my previous work with Burberry.