Foundations for Pale Skin - with swatches

hi there!

This is my first post on this blog, so I decided to go for a topic that I've seen other fellow fair-skinned bloggers do, the inevitable foundation post!

Now, I'm a bit of a foundation junkie; it's practically what I spend all of my hard-earned cash on! I guess I'm on a kind of mission to find my perfect or 'HG' foundation that has top marks in the following sections:

• Colour: has to be pale enough; not ghostly white but definitely not orange. Undertones, of course, play a big part. Too many times have I bought foundations only to find out that they're too pink for me or too yellow. Personally, by following all the guides online concerning skin undertones, I think I'm quite neutral toned and this is the tone least catered to in the foundation market. Great.
• Consistency: can not be too heavy on the skin! Revlon Colorstay is a wonderful colour match for my skin but it's just too heavy, to the point where it feels like paint on my skin! I only ever wear it on bad skin days when I need extra coverage.
• Coverage: I like a nice middle ground when it comes to coverage, I have my foundations for days when I need lots of coverage and I have ones that are perfect for that no-makeup look, but my perfect foundation needs to be somewhere in between.
• Scent: for me, scent is quite a big factor. Most foundations carry that 'make-up' scent and that doesn't particularly bother me. I quite like floral scents (Laneige Snow Crystal foundation, gorgeous!) as long as they're not too overpowering. However, when make-up smells like industrial chemicals or paint (I'm looking at you, Revlon Colorstay!) then frankly I don't really want them anywhere near my face.
• Price: price used to be a big deal for me, but since making my way through most of the drugstore brands in my local Superdrug, I knew it was time to loosen my purse strings and start testing out the more higher end brands in hope of finding 'the one'. 

Every time I go to buy a new makeup product, or any product now that I think of it, I check out reviews from blogs online as they usually have photos and indepth analysis of the product and this is usually a deciding factor in whether or not I spend my money on it or not. I have spent so much money over the last year on buying and testing out foundations based on other people's recommendations that they are 'ideal' for pale skin, only to be disappointed.

So, I guess, the point of this blog is to help other people out there looking for their perfect foundation by saving them time and money and weeding out the foundation winners from the losers.

swatches of all my recently purchased foundations

L to R: Laneige Snow Crystal (13); L'oreal Infallible (Porcelain); Boots Botanics Complexion Refining (Almond); Bourjois 10 Hour Sleep Effect (71); YSL Teint Radiance (Ivory); Bobbi Brown Skin foundation (Alabaster)

Last three: Gosh X-ceptional Wear (Porcelain); Missha Perfect Cover BB Cream (13); Revlon Colorstay (Ivory)

Revlon Colorstay; a nice colour match but too heavy on the skin!

Hope you enjoyed the swatch fest! As you can see, I have to wear the lightest shade in every range. I've ordered Illamasqua's Skin base foundation (02, nervous as it's not the lightest but then again, the lightest shade was white so...) and Nars Sheer Matte (Siberia) so I'll go into separate reviews on each foundation once those two babies are here and I've had time to properly investigate them!
Laters!