The Budget Series: 17 Miracle Matte Skin Primer

Hello! I'm starting a new mini quest that I'm calling The Budget Series. I'm getting to a stage where my postgrad fees are going to cost me a small fortune so I really need to tone down my spendage on my make-up. So I'm going to be buying all budget items for a while from now on - and I thought I'd share them all with you! I'm a firm believer in a lot of cheaper makeup being just as good as the luxury brand items (not all of it mind) and think its just a case of finding them amongst all the rubbish items.

For reference - budget in my opinion is an item that is £10 or under. I generally don't run out of all my makeup all at the same time - I think at most its normally two items at once so I think this is reasonable. But for the moment, the cheaper the better!

 17 Mircale Matte Skin Primer

So I was in boots yesterday and noticed that matt face makeup is really the in thing at the moment - there are tons of them, from foundation to face powders. 17 have recently released a new line of matt makeup, with a primer, foundation and face powder in the mix. They are all on offer currently (at the time of writing) for £1 off, so as I am running out of primer I thought I'd try theirs. Full price it is £4.99 but on offer for £3.99 I am coming to the end of my No7 Airbrush Away primer, which comes up at a whopping £19.50. Its not my favourite primer so if the 17 one can beat it I think I will be really happy.

(please excuse my camera phone pictures - I have lost the charger for my usual blogging camera..)

The initial differences are the size of the tube. My No7 one is 30ml whilst the 17 one is only 15ml. But for the price you can still get the same amount of product for cheaper, so not a huge worry at the moment. I really like the packaging of the 17 primer, its quite simple and in an easy squeeze tube with a screw cap lid, which makes application soo easy. I was initially worried that the primer would be flesh coloured as the tube is, but its not.

The primer is quite thick in consistency but I didn't need huge amounts of it and it was easy to blend. You can feel it working on the skin to remove all the excess oil and it leaves your skin feeling very smooth afterwards.

I noticed however that it didn't make foundation easier to blend, in fact on my chin (typical oily area for me) it seemed to clog my pores a bit and therefore made my foundation do the same. It didn't do this anywhere else on my face however. Maybe I just put too much on..

17 Miracle Matte skin primer promises 22 hour shine control with an oil free formula. Can't say I've ever worn makeup for 22 hours solid, but for my entire day, how did it hold up?

After an entire day (a particularly humid sticky day) I was still a little oily, but nowhere near as bad as I usually am (sometimes I have to put powder on throughout the day) so I am quite impressed that it did remove a fair amount of excess oil throughout the day. It kept my foundation on a little longer too.

Overall I don't think this is a bad primer for the price. It didn't make me completely matte throughout the day, but did so for most of it. Apart from making my foundation clog my pores a bit on my chin, I think it worked really well. If you have problems with super oily skin I would recommend this as its a lot cheaper than some that promise to do the same, but if you don't have any problems with excess oil I would say steer clear of matte products as they could do the opposite and give you dry skin problems.

I'm going to give this a 3 out of 5! It is good value for money, keeps the majority of excess oil at bay, and comes in an easy use tube.

What's your favourite primer? Do you suffer from an oily t-zone, and if so, what do you use to combat it?