Review: No7 Perfectly Bronzed Quick Dry Tinted Lotion

Previous readers of this blog will know my predilection for a spot of tan. Fake, false, anything but the real deal. I sometimes try to get on my high horse and spout lots of anti-tan chat about sun beds and cancer, but really my skin just refuses point blank to change colour. Not a freckle in sight, not a hint of redness after a day baking on the beach, absolutely zilch. If I thought it were physically possible, I would claim that I reflect sunlight.

Thus, I have tried every fake tan on the market. I don't much enjoy spray tans (never dark enough after showering, have to leave the salon in London looking like a rather grubby coalminer without the aid of a car to hide in, no thanks), I'm very much a DIY girl. I had brief dalliances with Rimmel Sunshimmer, L'Oreal Sublime Bronze gel (the pungent smell still reminds me of my school days), Xen-Tan and St Tropez (too green). I have an on-going fondness for Vita Liberata, Sally Hansen and now, I can add No7 Perfectly Bronzed to the list. I popped into Boots needing a tan fix pre-pay day. I was in no financial state to invest in my trusty Vita Liberata, and as I had just changed my white sheets, Sally Hansen-ing my entire body wasn't a viable option. Friends had mentioned the No7 tan before and I had tried it in the past but hadn't been a fan. I think my downfall was the colour choice - I chose Light/Medium for my extra pale skin tone, which resulted in an almost imperceptible hint of tan, certainly not sufficient to protect my fellow partiers from a blindingly pale and deeply unhappy Irish girl. There are conflicting thoughts on tan shades from experts, but I always follow the advice I read from the Olsen twins make up artist - the darker the tan, the more naturally olive it will look on your skin. Paler tans will simply impart a more orange shade - not what any self-respecting tanner is after. This time in Boots, I knew better. I choose the Medium/Dark Lotion and skipped away a mere £9.95 poorer.

Now for the application. The lotion itself is a mid-brown cream, when rubbed on the skin it gives a very slight tint but not much - excellent news for bed linen countrywide. It smells inoffensive and does dry fairly quickly without a sticky residue unlike many others on the market. I used a tanning mitt for application, it's creamy texture works well on a mitt rather than latex gloves - which I think are simply an aid to streaking. I showered the next morning as usual. Once dried, my skin felt hydrated and smooth. There was a slight lingering smell which was well covered once I applied a scented moisturiser. The colour was excellent - this is definitely a once-only application - coming from me this is high praise indeed. Over the next few days the colour didn't crack or dry out, by the 5th/6th day I looked slightly patchy where the tan had worn off. Pretty good going in a world where a good fake tan usually goes bad within 3 days!

The price, colour and endurance make this an inexpensive staple in my beauty cabinet, I have used it religiously since my first try and have no complaints. When you can buy three bottles of this for the price of one department store tan, who am I to argue?

Review: Make Believe Self Tan Lotion with Bronzer

As you are all aware, I am quite the fake tan aficionado. Being Irish and all that jazz, the girls I grew up with were obsessed with colouring their skin as deep an orange as possible. So much so that I believe my old Bebo account (God, now that really was a long time ago) from back in the day cites "waking up to a biscuity smell and a satsuma-hued glow" as one of my favourite things.

It kind of still is.

Which is what upset me about Make Believe, or more specifically, as I don't like to paint all products under the same brand name with the same brush, Self Tan Lotion with Bronzer. Now, first things first. My tanning preferences require a good, dark colour. I'm not saying it HAS to be orange, but I would like to look pretty damn sunkissed if I'm going to the hassle of messing up my bedsheets and enduring the smell of DHA penetrating layers of my skin for a night. This is difficult to achieve on skin which naturally has a transparent white to bluish tone. Seriously, you can't get any paler than this. Which is why, dear friends, I wear fake tan EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE. No exceptions. - plus it makes you look skinnier. Which is all important.

So on Monday night I applied a layer of the above lotion. The stuff itself does smell lovely, like some sort of delicious summer dessert. As all tanning fans will know, that's pretty damn hard to achieve. St Tropez tried it with their promising "Aromaguard" technology, but sadly all they managed was to make the cream smell more like a bottle of Veet Hair Removal than a tanning lotion. Unfortunate. The colour of the bronzer in the Make Believe stuff is very nice it has to be said, and creates a good colour straight away. The problem occurs the next morning. So I wake up, admire my glow with the bronzer and hop in the shower. I get out, pat myself dry and take a glance at my gorgeous tanned self. Not a bit of it. There is literally no change. My skin is still no darker than my (white) bathroom tiles. You can imagine how upsetting this was for me. In fact, the effect was so negligible, I was forced to wear a long sleeved top, as I couldn't bear my pale arms to the glare of the general public.

Not to be deterred by a minor setback (I'd also heard good reviews on other blogs about the same product, AND it did come with a fairly hefty price tag - albeit with a third off in Boots!) I decided that perhaps due to the unnaturally pale colour of my limbs, it needed another application. And so I went through the same process last night. I awoke this morning full of hopes and dreams of brown arms. These were dashed when the same problem occurred. There is perhaps a mild colour difference between an un-fake-tanned bit and a Make Believe-ed bit. But not much. Certainly not enough when you consider that the tan was working on what can only be described as the blankest of canvases. Disappointment indeed.

As I'm going out tonight I'm going to have to resort to desperate measures and rub on a bit of the old faithful Sally Hansen. It has never let me down. And in the meantime, it'll be back to Fake Bake. Although my beauty PR friend has handed me a bottle of Rodial's Brazilian Tan Dark - the very darkest fake tan on the market.

Do I dare?