Showing posts with label Beauty. Show all posts

During my little camping trip a couple of weeks ago, I discovered packing for camping might even be more of a brain-buster than the hand-luggage challenge that we all know a little too well. When you're sleeping in a tent, the last thing you want is a ton of beauty products cramping up the place. I found the best thing to rectify the problem: be one with nature and minimalise your beauty bag, and these are the products that got me through the week.

Origins Vitazing SPF15 moisturiser is an absolute must-have in any summer beauty kit. I've had this for a while but never used it much. I found it wasn't very moisturising when I used it under a foundation, which made it kind of useless. However, I have found it gives a beautiful, glowy finish when I use it over my usual moisturiser. Perfect for complimenting a tan when you want some super light coverage. I've actually swapped out my usual foundation in place of this since I returned from my camping trip. Second up, the YSL Touche Eclat concealer. I think pretty much everyone has this little magic wand in their daily makeup bag by now, and I made sure I took mine for under eyes and blemishes. It's super creamy, blends so well and - most importantly - hides everything. Thirdly: eye makeup. Even Queen Bey has been quoted that she never leaves the house without mascara on, so let's not get ahead of ourselves on this one. The Shu Uemura eyelash curler and Diorshow Iconic Overcurl mascara are pretty impressive products on their own, so I combine them for a fully-awake, Ive-not-been-sleeping-in-a-tent look.

I really feel like I had the perfect travel makeup bag with me and I'm looking forward to utilising it again next week when I head off to Greece for a week (YES!). Maybe I'll add a few lightweight additions, though. x

No7 Pore Vacuum Mask, £14 - Boots

Hen weekends usually consist of large groups of drunk and disorderly women living it large with tacky pink handcuffs waving willy-shaped paraphernalia around. Although I can't rule out the latter, my first Hen experience at the weekend was quite different. I had a deliciously relaxing and totally zen weekend spent at a beautiful spa. Oil based pampering, facials, full body massages and steam treatments were all on the menu - and I've come back rejuvenated and totally inspired to carry on looking after my skin. I thought I'd share a few of my favourite new skin products over the next couple of weeks. First up, the No7 Beautiful Skin Pore Vacuum Mask.

Oily t-zones and problem pores beware; I really think I'm onto a good'un here. This 50ml tube contains a thick, clay-like substance which, when spread evenly over the nose and/or forehead, dries hard and peels off to reveal soft, smooth skin. This stuff is brilliant for cleaning out pores and helping reduce the oiliness which causes spots. I tend to limit my use of this to once a week as part of my weekly intensive skincare regime before applying a nice, thick night moituriser. It does say on the box (it comes in a box) that if you suffer from particularly dry skin, then you're better leaving this one out, but I'd say it's a great treatment for anyone with oil/oily-combination skin or anyone who suffers with clogged pores or spots in those areas.

Do you have any must-have skin saviours?

Bumble and Bumble Thickening Hairspray - £21.50

Everyone, I have found my soul-mate. He's seven inches tall and comes lightly fragranced. Over the last four weeks I have been indulging in the Bumble and Bumble Thickening Hairspray and I am totally in love; he knows what he's supposed to do and he does it very well. Honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure. I have thin, very straight hair which, when left to dry naturally (which I rarely allow), looks flat/lank/a bit crap. For years I have trialled pretty much every volumising product going and, until recently, I was convinced the only way to add volume to my hair was by using a mousse, which left my hair very stiff at the roots and quickly made it look greasy. The BB Thickening spray is 250ml of pure heaven for thin hair, really. I usually spray a generous amount all in the roots and lengths of my hair before blow-drying upwards with a round brush. The result: a seriously volumed barnet which leaves hair feeling natural and non-producty. It's so refreshing to buy a hair product which actually does what it says it's going to do. Although, for £21.50, it's definitely on the pricier end of the hair product spectrum, but I've been using it for four weeks (washing my hair 2-3 times a week) and the line is down to the top of the 'Bb', which I suppose is about a quarter of the bottle, so I expect this to last a good two more months at least. I really can't recommend this product enough!

What are your volumising must-haves?

Maybelline Dream Touch Blush - £6.49

I'm not really one to smother my face in make up on a daily basis. Here's a fun fact: during the last few months of my degree, I ventured to the library everyday completely make up free. Oh yeah. To be fair, I had a few more important things to be worrying about at the time, such as the impending 10,000 word dissertation but the less said about that, the better. Even now I don't like to wear too much make up unless I have to, so when I do, I like to keep things nice and natural looking. In my opinion, a light, dewy base is imperative for natural-looking make up - my latest addition to which is this perfectly pretty little blusher. The Maybelline Dream Touch Blush in 06 is a lovely mousse consistency in a beautiful shimmery pink/coral shade. I usually dot it along my cheeks then blend it in using the MAC 109. It creates a beautiful warm glow perfect for a natural looking base and because it's a mousse, you have control of the intensity of the colour and the shimmer depending on how much you blend it.

Overall, it's a nice little edition to my make up bag and at only £6.49, you can't really go wrong. What are your favourite products for a natural looking base?

As far as my boyfriend is concerned, eyebrows are just handy strips of hair to stop sweat getting into his eyes when he's at the gym, but oh my gosh aren't they just SO much more than that?! I never exercise, so any sweat-barrier ideas Mother Nature had when she designed eyebrows are completely lost on me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go all Miley Cyrus on you and get rid of them. Actually, I'm more likely to go out and buy a shit ton of eyebrow products and make them more obvious than ever, which is exactly what I've done.

After all those adolescent years plucking and preening our brows, we now want them thick and natural looking again a la Cara Delevigne. I've used my fair share of brow products in the past, from Benefit to Bourjois, from creams to pencils, but I think I may have finally found a combination that actually works. My latest eyebrow must-have is the new Brow Drama Sculpting Brow Mascara by Maybelline.

I've been using this wonderful little wand for the past week or so and I really like it. My eyebrows are kind of bushy at the beginning (?) and then neaten out towards the end, which is fine, but sometimes they have a mind of their own and the hairs don't point in the direction I want them to. The stresses of disobedient brows, you do not understand! Just brush this mascara through to style them, then when it dries, they stay put. Huzzah! It's not too thick, there's no clumps and it looks natural. Job done.

This product doesn't do much in the way of filling any gaps though, so I tend to rely on my trusty Rimmel eyebrow pencil for that. If you have disobedient, bushy brows like mine, then this is just the ticket at a very reasonable price, but if your brows are already pretty neat, well then this probably won't do much for you.

What are your brow must-haves?

What does one do when any hope of getting into London for work is completely severed by the not-so-apocolyptic (as it turns out) STORM2K13? You might rejoice in your almost unheard of Monday morning luck, you might stay in bed past midday savouring every second of the God-sent extra day off, or, like me, you might get up at 7am with every intention of catching the first train of the day, fail miserably, then spend the entire morning sorting through your makeup bag. You might laugh, but when you've timed your early morning routine to a T to maximise sleep time, nothing can delay you more than a messy makeup bag. So many unneeded products slowing you down, so little time. A good sort out was well overdue.

One thing I quickly noticed was how many lip balms I have. I've always had really dry lips and from time to time they can get really sore and red (poor me). I've tried drinking two litres(ish) of water a day. Didn't work. Healthy skin vitamins? Nope. The only thing that helps is a good moisturising lip balm. So, as you can imagine, I've built up quite the collection. Here are my top three.

1. Dr. Lipp Original Nipple Balm for Lips
A heavy-duty, multi-use barrier cream originally used for...er...sore nipples, as the name suggests. It's super thick so one application lasts for ages. The nail painting obsessive in me rejoiced to hear it can also be used for dry cuticles. At £11.50 for 15ml, this one is popular among millionaires.

2. Carmex
A fail-safe old fave with retro packaging to match - as you can tell, mine is well loved. This is pretty much the only thing I used on my lips the whole way through uni, and every time I lost it, I had to make a panic trip to Boots to buy another. I now have about five. Purse friendly at £2.69.

3. Burt's Bees Revitalising Lip Balm
I got a few samples of these during an internship placement a while ago and I LOVE them. Nourishing, moisturising and available in a mouthwatering array of scents/flavours(?). This one is Blueberry and Dark Chocolate. Mmmm.

Do you have any lip life-saving products?

No7 Stay Perfect Mascara - £12.95, Boots

In the past I've not been too fussy about which mascara I use. My choice generally relies on how much money I happen to have at the time: I won't quibble over the quality of a 17 mascara if it's only going to set me back £3.99, but if I'm browsing on payday (or my boyfriend has offered to pay)...well, that's a different story.

However, about a year ago No7 launched their Fanomenal Lashes mascara, which proved to be so popular they developed a lash serum under the same name. Fanomenal Lashes quickly became my favourite ever mascara and the only mascara I've ever liked enough to repurchased. Although I'm still an avid user of Fanomenal, I couldn't turn down the opportunity to try No7's newest launch, which is part of their Stay Perfect range. I'm happy to say that I'm pretty impressed with No7's latest offering; it certainly delivers on its promise of 'long lasting volume' as it elegantly lengthens lashes without thickening them too much. It's unique selling point is that it doesn't come off easily - completely water and smudge-proof and will not budge unless you use clean it off with warm water. It certainly delivers on this as it's almost impossible to completely remove the product with a mere makeup wipe. This mascara is great for long lasting wear that lengthens lashes. Personally I prefer the more full-on look that Fanomenal offers, but Stay Perfect is a nice alternative and I think I'll let it live in my 'regular use' makeup bag for a little while.

All in all, this is a nice mascara, but I don't know whether I'd pay £12.95 for it. Luckily, Boots will be issuing the '£3 off No7 makeup' vouchers when the mascara becomes availible in store on Wednesday - so if you fancy trying it then make sure you take advantage of the offer to get it for less than a tenner! x

| Clinque Instant Lift for Brows - £15 |

If you know me in real life, or have been reading my blog for a while, then you'll probably know I have some pretty chronic issues with my eyebrows (see the full chronicles here). They're better now than what they once were, but I still rely on eyebrow fillers to make them look the way I like. It seems ridiculous to grumble about those two random strips of hair above our eyes, but I'm going to nonetheless! *grumble grumble*

The last eyebrow kit I bought was from ELF. It was cute, compact, convenient...and it was £3.50. And from there it pretty much all went downhill. Being so cheap, it was never going to be a miracle product that would forever solve my eyebrow woes but...it's just a bit rubbish. At first I thought the kit was OK, but now I've used the entire product and I've found the angled brush makes by brows look too harsh and sometimes 'drawn on' (greeeeaat) plus the staying power is rubbish and rubs off half way through the day.

I decided on this Clinique pencil because it's not an angled brush (can you tell?), it has great reviews and claims to last all day. I bought it in duty free last month so I got it a little bit cheaper but I don't think £15 is too bad anyway. The only drawback is the highlighter; I don't use it, not because it's bad (although it's not amazing) but just because I already have a highlighter I'm happy with. It is annoying that half the length of the pencil is taken up by the highlighter which I'm not going to use. I originally wanted to try the Superfine Liner which doesn't have a highlighter and is a bit cheaper, but they didn't have any in stock and both had good reviews so I just went for this one.

Overall, it is good; it stays put and gives a natural looking result, but I think the highlighter is a bit of a waste of space for me. Next time I'm going to try the Superfine Liner.
What are your favourite brow products? x

If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen me frantically tweeting in excitement about a certain hair styler last week; the now famous Encode Totem Styler from Enrapture went on HALF PRICE at Boots. I've wanted one of these babies for months, MONTHS I tell you! But the £75 price tag was ever so slightly off-putting. Better still, last week was the annual Double Discount days for Boots employees (most anticipated time of the year) so I got a further 25% off, AND I had a giftcard. All in all I paid just £22, and at that price it doesn't even matter if I don't like it.

Luckily I do like it, very much so! I'm sure this particular product has done the rounds on the blogs enough times by now for you all to know the general jist, but just incase you've been living under a rock: this totem styler has three heat zones which you can set from 1-3 and each different combination creates a different style from bohemian curls, soft waves or tight ringlets. And there I was thinking there was just curly or straight hair! My hair is straight. Like, straightstraightstraight. So I set mine to a very adventurous 3-3-3 for maximum curlage.

I really liked the result (even if this picture does make me look like I only have one eyebrow - I have two, promise), but it fell out within a couple of hours so I'm definitely going to have to invest in some curling products - any recommendations? Have you purchased an Enrapture totem styler yet? What's your favourite combination? x

Clinque Perfectly Real Foundation shades 24(G) and 14(N) | Fanomenal Lash Mascara | Rimmel Exaggerate Eye Liner | No 7 Sunkissed Bronzing Pearls | MAC Mineralize Skin Finish Natural in Medium Plus | MAC Mineralize Skin Finish in Soft and Gentle | YSL Touche Éclat in 3 | Real Techniques Powder Brush | Real Techniques Stippling Brush | MAC Small Contour Brush 109 | | ELF Eyebrow Kit
There was a time when I would not buy makeup that wasn't from the self-selection in Boots. Mainly because I didn't really know much about makeup and I didn't fancy forking out £25 for a foundation simply to experiment with. Cheap and cheerful, that was my makeup bag! However, having gathered my makeup all together (usually strewn accross my room) I've noticed that I have succumbed to a kind of 'makeup snobbery'. I blame the blogs; reading about the 'holy grail' products of other bloggers has definitely influenced me to spend more on makeup than what my mother might approve of. That and of course my best friend Freya is ABSOLUTELY addcited to makeup it's scary (she convinced me to blow £20 on the Touche Éclat on a whim in duty free - although I did need a new concealer and it is AMAZING). Although I do still use my old favourites from NO.7 and Rimmel!

My absolute favourite products here are Real Technique brushes (if you haven't already invested in these then you must!), the MAC Skin Finish Natural which is perfect for setting foundation, and the Touche Éclat.

The one product I won't be repurchasing is the ELF Eyebrow Kit - can anyone PLEASE recommend me a really good product for eyebrows? (You can read about my eyebrow angst here) x

PS. They seem to have discontinued the Benefit Eyeliner I use (how long have I HAD it?!) but I guess this is pretty much the same.

When it comes to false eyelashes, I will put my hands up and admit that I am absolutely useless. I've done it time and time again: paid £6.50 for a pair of eyelures or 'Cheryl' lashes, spent half an hour of my precious 'getting ready time' (of which there is rarely enough of anyway) attempting to stick them to my face only to get really frustrated and throw them in the bin. The last time I wore false lashes was on my 21st birthday back in December, and that was only with the assistance from my very patient mother. Plus I think I look like a drag queen when I wear them anyway.

There has been a massive hype amongst bloggers for these eyelash curlers from Japanese brand Shu Uemura. The award winning eyelash curlers claim to provide 'the perfect curl' and reviews from fellow bloggers have even professed that these curlers, paired with a decent mascara, eliminate the need for false eyelashes. That pretty much sold it for me.

I dithered over the price for a while (£20 is a bit of a step up from my £3 curlers from Boots), but when I saw them on BuyaPowa I joined the co-buy straight away. Within 24 hours all 100 pairs had sold out and everyone got them for the 'best price' of £14.50 - very pleased! I'd never used BuyaPowa before, but now I think it's great. So good for getting a bargain and it's really exciting tracking the item and watching the price go down (or maybe that's just me)! These pictures aren't the best and the mascara I used (No7 Fanomenal Lashes) is running out so I think it would look even better with a new mascara, but I can't even say how pleased I am with these curlers. They truly make your eyelashes look amazing even without mascara.

Have you tried the Shu Uemura eyelash curlers yet? What's your 'holy grail' eyelash product? x

No7 Fanomenal Lash £12.95

When I was younger, I used to think that where makeup was concerned, the only difference between one person and another was the colour of the foundation they used; light, medium, or dark. Those were the days when I used my fingers to apply patchy foundation, eyeshadow (that completely wasn't my colour) with a cotton bud, and wear lipgloss from an old issue of Sabrina's Secrets. Basically, I didn't have a clue. And why would I? Nobody ever teaches you this stuff! I've never needed to use algebra since the day I left school, yet makeup is something that I use every single day (and probably will continue to for many years) and I've been left completely to my own devices with it. Perhaps if there was more concentration on makeup application in schools, then we'd have a lot less people waltzing around looking as though they've just stepped off the set of TOWIE. But that's besides the point. Since then, I've learnt there are millions of things that affect our choice of makeup other than the tone of our skin. Makeup is very personal to the individual; what works for one person may not work for another. And that applies to mascara. Some people have long lashes, some people have thick lashes, some people have short lashes, some people have spaced out lashes. Not only do eyelashes vary from person to person, I'm pretty convinced even my own two sets of eyelashes are completely different from eachother! My point is, this review is based on my experience with this mascara, so please don't shout at me if you buy it and it doesn't look the same!


So this is the No7 Fanomenal Lash mascara, dubbed No7's biggest mascara launch of the year (bit rich if you ask me considering they only release one mascara a year). I couldn't take a picture of the brush because my camera wouldn't focus on it, but basically it looks like a fan , or in my opinion, a helter-skelter. I know what you're thinking - oh No7 you absolute jokers with your clever and witty play on words! Har-har! When you go into Boots and open it up to look at the brush, you are going to think 'wtf' because, quite honestly, it looks disgusting. The brush is way overloaded with product and it looks like a caterpillar coated in...black gooey stuff. HOWEVER! This mascara is my favourite ever that I've ever used! Fanomenal lash aims to lengthen lashes, rather than add volume and I can confirm it certainly does that. The unique fan brush helps to seperate the lashes too. After you've used it a few times you'll find the brush isn't quite as gooey and it's easier to use.

Fanomenal Lash retails at £12.95, but with the No7 £5 vouchers you can get it for £7.95. Boots are doing the vouchers at the moment and they're valid until the 15th July. I work in Boots, so I got this one for free but I've since used my voucher to buy another one, I really like this mascara!

Have you tried Fanomenal Lash? What are your thoughts? If not, then what's your favourite mascara? x

When I was younger I fell victim to the awful fashion that, I think, many girls (and perhaps some boys...) fall victim to in their mid-teens: over-plucked eyebrows. I remember picking up a pair of tweezers one day and just plucking the heck out of my brows. It gets worse: I had that god-awful 'box' bit with a tail. I plucked one of my eyebrow's 'tail' so thin that it began to resemble a sperm ('sperm-brow', if you will). A little digging around on Bebo (remember that?!) perfectly demonstrates the severity of my situation: Here I am on my sixteenth birthday sporting the 'constantly surprised' look (FYI, I'm the non-pregnant one), and here the sperm-brow can be observed in its natural habitat: posing in front of the camera.

Thankfully I decided to grow them out when I was 17, but my left eyebrow never fully recovered from the ordeal. I once read that eyebrows should not be exactly identical like twins, but like sisters; just similar. Well my eyebrows are more like cousins twice removed, and I hate my left eyebrow.

Thankfully such a thing as makeup exists and thus no one need know about my sperm-brow, unless they read this of course. I have previously used Benefit's Brows A-Go-Go; a brow shaping kit containing the essential powder brow filler, and the wax too. Saying that I love this product is most definitely an understatement, but I certainly don't love the £26.50 price tag - especially as a student. So I decided to give the ELF Eyebrow Kit a try. At £3.75 it's a huge improvement price wise and although the kit doesn't contain as many products, it does the job! It took a little while to get used to the gel consistency after mainly only using the power before, but it's pretty good considering the price and comes neatly packaged in a little palette complete with a mirror, angled brush and a...er, not angled brush. It comes in a range of colours (I chose medium) and, although my eyebrows will probably never be sisters, this eyebrow kit has at least helped to make them brother and sister.

What are your favourite brow products? x