MUA Extreme Volume Mascara | Review

Hi there!

I recently went into Superdrug and had a little look around the MUA stand, my local Superdrug is not all too big however I'm glad they have some products from MUA. I intended to buy a mascara and a concealer and that is exactly what I did, both from MUA! There will be a blog review on the concealer soon too, so keep your eyes peeled! I was actually surprised I didn't end up buying more as I know I could spend all my money on that one stand!

At only £2 I really wasn't expecting a lot, but MUA lived up to their standards as usual.

I think what surprised me the most was the size of the brush, I certainly didn't expect it to be able to carry this much mascara. After seeing this I then suspected that it might produce a little bit of a clumpy look, again... I was proved wrong (why do I doubt you MUA?)

Applying the mascara with the wand was easy and super quick. A lot of mascaras I've used in the past have needed endless coats, this was done in about 2-3 which I think is great.

I absolutely love this mascara and remember trying another one from MUA, it was in a silver tube and claimed to curl your eyelashes at the same time due to the shape of the wand. I decided to try a different one purely because I like to try something new. If I was to pick which out of the two from MUA I would choose to buy again, it would be this one.

Extreme is certainly a word you could use to describe the look it can give you, however I decided that today I wanted something not so bold, which is why I applied less that I could have done. I obviously purchased the extreme black shade however they also do have a brown/black shade if you prefer to use that.

Collection Lipstick | Review

Hi there!

Today I've decided to blog about a product which I use daily and absolutely love! Collection have some amazing products and their prices are so cheap compared to a lot of other brands these days that most of my makeup collection is from Collection!

They have many lipstick shades and I have a few of them but Shade 6 Bubblegum is 100% my top lipstick. It took me a while before buying this to actually try out any lipsticks as I always felt a bit silly wearing them, thinking they didn't suit me. However when I did decide I wanted to buy one and make it work, I thought 'hey why not go as bright as you can', so that's what I did!

Excuse the many facial expressions, I was bored of the normal 'look at my lipstick' pose

At £2.99 this is a must have in your makeup collection! I know a lot of people may look and say 'oh no, too bright for me!' but it really doesn't feel like you're wearing a neon/bright pink lipstick, its such a pretty shade! I've left a link at the bottom of where you can buy it (I usually go with Superdrug as I have one of their Beauty Cards haha!)

Not only does it last all day but it also has SPF15 which is a great little bonus!

I'd say if you're not too sure about it at first then just take the plunge and give it a go, if you do decide its too bright then just apply less, its a win-win situation!

http://www.superdrug.com/collection-2000/collection-2000-lasting-colour-lip-stick-shade-6/invt/207507

Don't forget to go check out my other blog posts!

July 2013 | Favorites

Hi there!

I've seen a lot of beauty bloggers and youtubers do these kinds of posts and I absolutely love reading and watching them; so guess what... I'm going to give it a go!

So here are my July Favorites

So here's something you might recognise, the MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED', I did a review which can be found here and also posted some ideas to create which can be found here. I absolutely love this! I'm not usually the type of person to wear a lot of eyeshadows and tend to go for eyeliner instead, however this has certainly changed my mind. The shades here are so summery and each tone blends with any other in the palette so well. 100% a favorite this month!

Here is another that you might recognise, the Barry M Eyeshadow Brush. I bought this at the same time as the MUA palette as I don't own a lot of brushes; but knew if I wanted to create a neat design a brush would be necessary. I have also done a review on this which can be found here. It's high quality and a fantastic price!

Now onto some things that haven't featured in my blog. This Nivea Hydro Care lip balm is absolutely brilliant! I know a lot of people might think that during the winter your lips tend to dry out but I love using this all year round and this month its become one of my favorite products. It puts a smooth protective layer onto your lips which i tend to do at the start of applying any make-up, that way when I apply any lipstick it goes on a treat.

Excuse the fancy editing for this one, as you can probably tell I have pink bedroom walls and the bright orange colour of this nail vanish didn't show up well with it. The summery weather has made me pick this nail vanish a lot more recently and I love it so much. I have a lot of Barry M nail vanishes and this was the first Rimmel one I've tried and believe me it wont be the last. Its such a bright colour, it drys super quick which is a really big bonus seeing as waiting for your nails to dry is so boring (don't you agree?) and it lasts so long! You only need 1 or 2 coats and your nails look summer ready in no time!

Sticking with the summer weather products, fake tan! I know the picture is a little bit, well... not the best, its just the packaging seemed to reflect every bit of light around, sorry about that! Anyway, back to the product, I've used Solait fake tan wipes for a while now, I used to use the spray however that didn't seem to last as long and wipes were just a lot easier. I know this will be a bit hit and miss with people cause some people prefer a natural tan but trust me, this gives you a natural looking tan! It is completely up to you whether you want a light tan finish or want it a bit darker, just apply a bit at a time, wait for the colour to come out and apply more if you feel you want your tan a bit darker. The reason I bought these was because I generally don't really tan that much and of course being out in the sun is unhealthy for you too, so I thought why not try these and I'm glad I did! During July I have absolutely loved them, the sun has come out and so have my summer clothes and a tan tops it all off!

These face masks have been such a regularly used product this month. I'll be honest, I probably don't moisturise and use things like face masks as much as I should but I've been trying to a lot more recently. Superdrug do some really great products and these are definitely some brilliant examples. Both mud masks leave my skin feeling really soft and smooth, I use them at night time before bed and in the morning I wake up with skin so soft and refreshed that I debate whether to even use any make up like foundation or powder. The exfoliating one also has a really lovely smell to it, fruity smells are probably one of my favorite smells so this really does make me love it even more!

So there you have it, my first ever July Favorites! I really hope you've enjoyed this and please tell me what you've enjoyed this month as I would love to have a nose through the comments at your favorite products or maybe some other things that you've loved!

Barry M Gelly Nails | Review

Hi there!

I finally did it, I went out and bought myself a Barry M Gelly Nail Paint. I've been wanting one of these for ages and to be honest just never got round to actually buying one. I was out shopping in London yesterday with some friends and went into Topshop and saw the Barry M stand they have and just couldnt resist, so here it it... Barry M Gelly Nail Paint!

I really couldn't decide on the colour as I have a lot of Barry M Nail Vanishes already so wanted something a little different so I got it in the colour 325 Greenberry.

I'll be honest I didn't really expect much difference between the Gelly Nail Paint and just the normal Nail Paint despite the great reviews from everyone but don't worry, I was certainly proved wrong! I love how shiny and glossy the finish is and how easy it is to apply. I was expecting gloopy, sticky paint which took forever to dry but it went on so smoothly and effortlessly! Barry M defintely lived up to the expectations, well... when don't they?

Barry M Eyeshadow Brush | Review

Hi there!

It's review time again and this post is all about the fabulous Barry M Eyeshadow brush!

I'll be honest with you, I don't have a wide variety of brushes for make-up as I tend to not really stick to the make-up rules and use my fingers for foundation and concealer. However after purchasing the MUA Eyeshadow Palette whose review can be found here and ideas for this palette can be found here, I decided that I needed to look into brushes to help create a more professional look and Barry M was the one!

I'll be honest, the reason I picked the Barry M brand was down to the fact that I absolutely LOVE their nail vanishes. Now I know that nail vanishes and brushes will be different within each brand and the quality will vary however I still went with it and I'm glad I did!

Another reason I went with this eyeshadow brush was down to the fantastic price, at only £2.99 it was an absolute bargain!

Overall I am extremely impressed with this brush, I love how soft and smooth the bristles are and how well they blend together power eyeshadow. I would definitely recommend you go for this brush!

MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED' | Ideas

Hi there!

So I posted a review of the MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED' which can be found here and promised that I would then blog again about the looks I created and share some ideas. Well I've had a little practice and after a while of trying different creations I've got together a few ideas that hopefully you'll enjoy! 

These were all created using the MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED'

01

So this one is a little bit of a smokey but at the same time subtle look (if that's possible?) which I enjoyed wearing as it gave a glow to my eyes. I have shade 2 as a base coat and then blended shade 8 onto the outer half of my eyelid. I then took shade 10 and blended that into the crease area and then into shade 8 too. Finally I highlighted my smokey effect with shade 1. I do also have a small amount of Avon SuperShock Gel Eyeliner which I've previously reviewed and can be found here.

02

This look is much more natural then look 01 and feels and looks really summery. It's a real mixture between a sparkly girly look but also brings in the natural colors to showcase a more festival look? For this I used shade 3 as a base and then shade 9 for the outer half of my eye. I blended this into the base coat a little. I then used shade 10 to add on top of shade 9 slightly (this shade didn't cover half but more of a third) and bought it into the crease line where I again blended. For the tear duct area I added shade 6 gently and then bought it also onto the bottom eye line for the outer third. To finish off I added shade 1 again for a highlighting effect. For this look I am not wearing any eyeliner but just mascara.

03

This is my last look for this post, it has a lovely blue tone to it. I didn't use a base coat for this as I was using darker colours and didn't see the need to clog my eyelids up with eyeshadow when it wasn't going to make much of a difference; so I went straight to shade 11 and covered the outer half of my eye with this. I  then added shade 2 (a lot lighter shade) onto the inner half of my eye and blended this into the outer blue shade. I used shade 8 for the crease area and then smudged this up to the edge of my browbone too, creating the smokey effect. To finish off I once again added shade 1 to highlight.

As you can tell from these three looks you do tend to use the same shades for the same area. For example I used shade 1 for all of the highlighting in every look.

I hope you've enjoyed having a peak at some of the ideas that can be created using just the MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED' and if you decide to blog on this too then do leave the link in a comment and I'll take a look!

MUA Eyeshadow Palette 'UNDRESSED' | Review

Hi there!

I'm absolutely loving the weather at the moment and its inspired me to go out and purchase some make-up which was something a little different for me. My daily eye make-up usually consists of having black eyeliner on my top lid, black eyeliner on the bottom and mascara; I've worn this look for pretty much as long as I've been wearing make-up so I thought it was about time to mix it up a bit!

I think heavy eye make-up for myself it a bit too much when the weather is like it is now and the sun is out shining, eye-liner seems to smudge a lot easier and it looks a bit heavy. With that in my mind I went out and purchased a lovely MUA eye palette called 'Undressed', it has 12 subtle shades which really compliment the glowing skin that the sunny weather gives us this time of the year.

The 12 pretty shades include colours which can be used for base coats, crease area work and then also smudged into a smokey effect. There is also a lighter shade which can be used for a highlighting below the brow bone.

 And to top it all off there's even a little Mini Master-Class on how to apply some of the shades to your eyes to create that smudged/smokey look.

I absolutely love how all the shades work well with each other and how they blend well together. And just to make you want to go out and buy yourself one, it is seriously on budget at only £4, amazing!

I've only had this for 2 days now so am still practicing at getting the effect. I've been wearing no eye-liner on my top or bottom lid as the eye-shadow looks so pretty on its own, however a bit of mascara just tops the look off.

I'll be posting some of the looks that I've created using this palette over the next few weeks but if I were you, I'd go out and buy one of these now!

Avon SuperShock Gel Eyeliner | Review

Hi there!

Here's another review for you all and this one is the amazing Avon SuperShock Gel Eyeliner! I've never tried a gel liner before this one so was curious to how it would compare to a felt liner and there's one thing for certain, I will for definite continue to use gel eyeliners, I love them! And if I'm continuing to use gel eyeliners then I will most probably continue to use this one; Avon have some great products and this is for certain one of them!

I preferably don't usually wear my eyeliner this thick and if I choose to wear a winged effect then I would only wear it thinly, however for the purpose of this review I decided to use the gel liner to its full potential!

I absolutely love this product, its so easy to use, it glides along the eyelid smoothly and is extremely long lasting.

Oh and guess what? It's on sale now! So go, go, go!

If you feel like giving it a go then let me know in the comments and maybe leave a link if you have tried it yourself and have also wrote a review.



L'Oreal Paris Wild Ombrés | Review

Hi there!

Here's a little blog post about one of the recent products I used: L'Oreal Paris Wild Ombrés! I LOVE IT!

I used this Ombrés kit a while ago when I had much longer hair, it was the first time I had ever dyed my hair so I was nervous to how it would turn out, however it looked great. Before I dyed my hair I did have split ends (but who doesn't?) and the dye I must admit did make it worse, as expected. I kept my hair long with the Ombrés for a long time and then decided I needed a bit of a chop, so off went half my hair!

My hair before I used the Ombrés kit

As you can see my hair is quite dark and the first time I used the kit I wasn't sure whether it was going to take well however it still did, as the photos below show.

As you can see, the dye took well and I now have Ombrés hair!



These photos show the colour well however it can be seen in some lights as a more 'golden brown' tone and not so much a blonde

I used the kit which was for light brown to dark brown hair. The kit includes all the necessary dyes and shampoos and also a comb which can be used to easily apply the dye and to create an even coverage. This is very handy however I did tend to use my hands at the start to get a good amount of the dye on my hair to begin with and then used the comb to make sure every strand of hair was covered.

Its obvious that you need to care for your hair a bit more than normally after using this, the kit does include a shampoo which is fantastic and made my hair really soft but not flat (because I have thick hair it often means that when I use a shampoo/conditioner that is very moisturising it tends to leave my hair feeling flat and almost impossible to do anything with). I then also use got2be heat protection which is also a really great product.

Overall I absolutely love this hair dye, as I said its the only one I've ever used and the only reason I used it twice was down to me having a hair cut which cut all the dyed hair off. The colour lasted much longer than I expected and didn't seem to fade much which is great as it means I can now just leave it.

If you're thinking about using this then my advice would be to give it a go, my thoughts when using it was 'well, if it goes wrong then I'll just have to have another hair cut'. If you have any questions/want any more information then please ask and if you decide to give it a go then leave me a comment/photo on how it went!

Collection Make-Up | Review

Hi there!

Another girly blog post for you all, this time on one of my favourite make-up brands, the fantastic Collection! They were once known as Collection 2000 but renamed to just Collection, they still have the same amazing products though!

I thought I'd do a post on what my everyday make-up includes, I use a lot of Collection branded items mainly down to their brilliant prices. Everything is on budget but still feels great when you apply it.

This everyday make-up routine includes:

* Collection Lasting Perfection Ultimate Wear Foundation

* Collection Lasting Perfection Ultimate Wear Powder

* Collection Extreme 24 Hour Felt Tip Liner

* Collection Lasting Colour Bubblegum Lipstick

* I cant seem to find the mascara shown here however I have bought a new one which is Collection Colour Lash Black 1 which is just as good

For a rough estimate I would say that all of these products would have cost me no more than £20 which I think is a real bargain! Collection have some amazing products at really cheap prices.

The foundation quoted here is long-lasting and has great coverage, as does the powder. Their mascara is also very good, it doesn't wear off easily and only needs applying once throughout the day. This is the same for the felt liner, it was the first felt liner I had tried and it will certainly be something that I will carry on using, its so easy to apply and once you get the hang of applying it you can produce a fantastic result. Finally their lipsticks, well, what can I say? I LOVE them! They are really pigmented and last a long time too, another important factor is that they don't dry your lips out. I never used to wear anything on my lips because I could never find a colour/brand that I liked, however I found this one and love it and am starting to build up my collection of Collection lipsticks!

Again if you have any questions about these products or how I achieved this look then please feel free to contact me. Any feedback would also be really appreciated as I am totally new to this and would love some comments on how to improve or what seems to be going well!

Barry M Nail Art | Ideas

Hi there!

Well this is my first blog post and I thought I'd start of with something I really love - nail art! Nail art has been something that I have been doing for a few years now and I admit I'm not the best at it but you don't have to be to enjoy it! Here are some of the ones I have created myself...

This is one of my favourite designs and for many reasons, one being its so easy to do, you just paint a base colour and then paint on some simple heart shapes. It's also one of my favourites because its a deigns that you can experiment with a lot, you can mix and match colours and use a lot of variety. The colours I used here were 'Barry M Matt White 66' for the base, 'Barry M Blueberry 306' and 'Barry M Berry I/C 308'. Its a great simple design to start of with if you want a quick and easy look.

This again is one of my favourite designs, I love the sparkle and glitzy look that they give. Again its an easy design to achieve with just two Barry M nail vanishes, for this I used 'Barry M Magenta Glitter 336' and 'Barry M Aqua Glitter 340'. I love these glitter polishes however I do think they are easier to use if you just want a sparkly top layer and not a full glitter nail, this way they take a longer time to dry and can smudge quite easily, all in all though they are still a great nail vanish!

This again is a really simple design that takes no time at all. Its a good way to jazz up your nails without a lot of effort. Again its also nice because you can pick a lot of different colours to create many different looks. For this I used 'Barry M Bright Pink 279', 'Barry M Matt White 66' and 'Barry M Spring Green 290'.

This is the final design for this post and I thought I'd end it with a bit of a more adventurous kind of look? This (I know I've probably said this for all of them) is one of my absolute favourites, I love the different textures and colours and I think again its quite an easy look to achieve. For the I used 'Barry M Matt White 66', 'Barry M Nail Effects 311' and 'Barry M Magenta Glitter 336'.

I really hope that you've enjoyed my first attempt at this and hopefully there is going to be loads more to come. As you have probably guessed I am a bit of a Barry M fan, I absolutely LOVE their nail vanishes, they have amazing colour choices and they are at a fab price! If you have any questions on how some of the designs were actually made and want me to go over them in a bit more detail then feel free to comment or contact me through twitter and I'll have a go!