Illamasqua Lipstick | Summer Shades - Favs!

Like most girls, I am a total sucker for lipsticks! Every colour, shape, finish ..you name it I'll wear it!

My latest lipstick venture was to find the perfect spring/summer lipsticks ..something that would last all day, would be easy to apply on the go and would go with everything!

I trawled through the cosmetics isles in Superdrug and Boots purchasing a range of different branded lipsticks but found almost all of them dried my lips out (not what you need with English weather!), didn't last for more than 20 minutes or would smudge easily.

Completely unsatisfied with what I had found so far I decided to search online. I adore MAC's Velvet Teddy lipstick but found it difficult to get hold of and when buying online you can never be too sure you're buying something authentic so I decided to look for an alternative from a high end brand.

I have a little collection of Illamasqua lipsticks and have always had such good experiences with these products. I purchased Vampette and Shard to match my winter wardrobe and always found the lipsticks would last for hours and kept my lips hydrated even in the harsh winter weather while keeping the bold colour all day.

Illamasqua have a range of nude shades, my favourites being Bare, Climax and Obey. I decided to go for Bare as it's a slightly darker nude shade with a hint of pink (I LOVE pink!)

As well as a nude shade I also wanted a quirky pink shade to match wardrobe which is mainly dominated by pastel pink! I chose Liv as it can be applied lightly with gloss for a soft pink shade or on it's own for a luscious pastel glow.

Btw - Both of these shades are matte finish, I'm loving matte over a shiny/satin finish right now!

After waiting patiently for a long 3 days for them to arrive I practically threw myself at the postman to get the package from him and broke a nail trying to get into the box (cry!)

Both lipsticks were even better than I expected. Both the nude shade (Bare) and the pastel pink shade (Liv) is perfect for both every day and evening wear. (I have marked in the pics which shade is which to get an idea of how bold the colours are, each are only one stroke!)

I would definitely recommend the brand to any girls looking to try something new in the high end market. Although they appear to be a little on the pricey side, the high quality is well worth the extra expense.

Both lipsticks came from the official Illamasqua online store - www.illamasqua.com

The Blusher Addict Tag!

The blush addict tag

So I was kindly nominated for the blush addict tag by Charlotte (withlove,Lottie)

Now I must say I am partial to a good blusher and have been through my fair share over the years! And of course I love pink so I jump at the chance to add anything pink to my make up routine!

So here goes...

What colour blush suits you most? 

I would say subtle pinks as I tend to wear a lot of pink. I usually don't like anything to bright as I feel like I look like a clown where I'm relatively pale!

Pressed, cream or loose blush?

Definitely pressed blush. Loose is to easy to make a mess with and I have never actually used cream blush! They say old habits die hard...

Favourite shimmery blush? 

100% NYX Baked Blush in Wanderlust. It's the perfect mix of pink shimmer with a touch of bronzer.

Favourite matte blush? 

Essence Blush Up! In Heat Wave. Although it looks super bright it actually applies with such a nice soft colour, perfect for summer! And it looks sooooo pretty!

Favourite cream blush? 

Pass!

 Favourite drugstore blush?

Between Essence Blush Up! And Sleek blush in Pixie Pink.

Favourite high end blush?

The NYX Baked Blush. It has such a nice, soft finish once applied and goes on so easily! It also comes in a range of gorgeous shades!

Biggest blush disappointment? 

By far the Bourjous little round pot blush. First of all the brush it comes with is basically useless! And second of all it's rock solid so even if you did want to use it with your own blush brush you can't get any powder out of it without destroying your brush! Booooo!

Best blush packaging?

I would say the NYX Baked Blush as it looks so cute and classy and even has a little bow for a clasp! How cute!

What's on your blush wishlist? 

I have a few on my wishlist actually.. I would love to try out some of the MAC blushes after hearing such good reviews and also Benefit Dandelion blush!

Holy Grail blush?

I know I've mentioned it 10000 times but NYX Baked Blush in Wanderlust!

I hope you enjoyed my Blusher Addict Tag post!

Xxx

My Bandage Dress Favs! | OOTD

Hello dolls!

Just a quick one today to share one of my new favourite brands with you all!

Sometimes I find it can be hard to find flattering, figure hugging dresses/outfits that don't accentuate all the wrong places. Even though I may not be the biggest girl I'm not the smallest either ..I was blessed (cursed?) with big boobs, hips and bum so tight clothing can sometimes look quite unflattering on me which makes me sad as I'm a sucker for bandage/bodycon dresses and co-ords.

After almost giving up hope in finding a bandage outfit I felt made me look good, I came across My Bandage Dress on Instagram. After reading good reviews from happy customers I paid their website a visit.

I found the My Bandage Dress website to have a wide variety of styles and colours so I felt spoiled for choice. I finally settled on a white Bianca skirt even though I could have happily ordered one of everything from the site!

When it arrived I couldn't get it on quick enough! And to my surprise it fit PERFECTLY! Of course then I had to purchase the matching Milly crop top to complete the outfit which also fit beautifully!

The sizing can be a tad confusing as it's in XS/S/M/L rather than numbers. Just for reference I ordered S in both the skirt and top as I'm normally an 8 and these both fit fine.

I really cannot recommend MBD enough. So much so I've already ordered a second Bianca skirt!

Bianca skirt in white S £24.99
Milly crop top in white S £21.99

Both from www.mybandagedress.com

xxx

Oxford Street Lush Haul!

So after a morning of excitement at the My Chocolate Bloggers event myself, Charlotte (with love, Lottie) Hannah (hannahtalks) and Hayley (the Glasgow Girl) decided to brave a London bus to Oxford Street and the newly opened Lush store!

I am a total sucker for anything Lush so you can understand why I would be so excited to go to the worlds biggest Lush store!

Like most Lush stores you can smell them before you see them and Oxford Street was no exception!
The new store features 3 floors of dreamy Lush products, some of which are exclusive to the Oxford Store and there's even a spa in the basement! What more could a girl ask for?

I decided to treat myself to some old favourites and some new beauties.

My fav picks were:

Think Pink - my trusty favourite and a gorgeous smelling bath bomb!

A French Kiss Bubble Bar - I love anything that is lavender scented and I hadn't discovered this one until my recent Lush trip ..I was so on love I bought 2! Lavender is perfect for when you're feeling a little stressed or finding it hard to sleep, it really is my go to for all of those long days!

Sunny Side Bubble Bar - this little beauty caught my eye is it's COVERED in gold glitter!! It also smells amazingly fruity making it perfect for summer!

MMMelting Marshmallow Moment Bubble Bar - this is also one of my favs I previously bought at the Lakeside store so I couldn't resist this little pink bar of floral bubbly-ness!

Now all that's left to decide ..is which to use first!

#mychocbloggers + my first blogger event!

Welcome back dolls!

So, yesterday I attended my first ever bloggers event and to make it even more exciting it revolved around chocolate!

As soon as I received the email invite to the #mychocbloggers event back in March I knew it was right up my street and HAD to go! Plus the event was being held in London and I love any excuse to be a tourist!

The chocolate workshop event was arranged by the lovely Lauren from the @LDNmeetup Twitter group and hosted by the My Chocolate Company - it's safe to say it exceeded my high expectations!

The day started early getting the train into London at 8:30 (this is early for me at least!) with my new found blogger pals Charlotte and Hannah, to arrive at the event venue in Islington for 10:30. While we planning the journey before hand this seemed like an easy task and we had even made time for a tea stop but we couldn't have been more wrong! We arrived in Islington at 9:30 thinking we had plenty of time to make the short walk to the venue only to end up lost for an hour! After scaling the canal for a good half hour, realising we were on the wrong side and having to find a way to cross that didn't involve swimming we finally reached our destination - a beautiful all glass building facing out onto the canal. Luckily we weren't the only lost ones...

The venue was set out with wooden tables covered in different chocolate samples, marshmallows, a tray full of yummy toppings and utensils. Once we were all seated and had donned our aprons we got an introduction from the owner of My Chocolate explaining how a small idea had grown into such a magical company and was introduced to our instructor Davis.

First he gave us an insight into telling the difference between high and low quality chocolate by having us taste two different chocolate buttons (that's what they looked like anyway!) one of which was high quality Belgian chocolate and the other was a low quality chocolate. He taught us how determine between to the two and what ingredients were used making a chocolate either high or low quality. Davis then got us to try the two different shards of chocolate we had each been given on the table ..one was white covered in seeds and the other was a dark chocolate. We each tried the two shards and tried to guess what flavours had been used. The white shard was a sweet mix of lemon and poppy seed which was lovely! The dark shard was a mix of ginger, cardamon and cinnamon ..honestly I hate any thing that even tastes of cinnamon so this piece wasn't for me! Chocolate opinions aside was a great little test to see what flavours everyone was picking up. Us bloggers may not be chocolate connoisseurs yet but we do know a thing or two about good chocolate now!

Next Davis showed us how to make chocolate Ganache in order to make little chocolate truffles. He made it look super easy mixing the cream and melted chocolate together and piping the mixture into little drops but it wasn't as easy as we had hoped! After making a bit of a mess we were shown how to roll the drops into truffles and how to dip and decorate them - this was the fun part! Within minutes there were giant bowls of milk and dark melted chocolate on every table and chocolate, toppings and marshmallows flying everywhere! By the end of the 20 minutes we were given we were all covered in chocolate and coco powder but it was so worth it!

Finally we got to package everything we had made into little gold boxes and cellophane bags tied with colourful ribbons to take home in cute little paper bags!

At the end of the workshop we got to have a chat with the owner of My Chocolate who told us about the new workshop kits they now sell online as a branch company called the Chocolate Hedgehog. The kits are for 4 people or the larger kit is for 8-12 and contains everything needed to hold your own little chocolate workshop at home! Safe to say I will be buying one of these for my next night in with the girls!

The workshop event was a fab experience getting to know bloggers from around the country and making dreamy chocolate treats to take home with us.

For anyone interested in the My Chocolate company I've added the link to their website ..it even includes delicious recipes and tips in the blog section! - http://www.mychocolate.co.uk

Mermaid stencil nails

Recently I seem to have developed an uncontrollable love for all things mermaid!

Mermaid hair, mermaid nails ..literally everything!

I had seen some really pretty mermaid nails on Instagram and decided to have a go myself.

I chose to use stencils from a company called Nail Mail rather than try and paint on the scales myself with a metallic gold base coat and different shades of purples (including some glitter of course.

I painted my nails with one coat of the metallic gold (Barry M) the painted a clear coat over the top then left to dry for 15 minutes - this step is essential to stop the stencil pulling off the base coat later on.

I then applied the stencil to all nails on one hand (it helps if you have quite narrow nails to cute the stencil in half that way you have less waste meaning you have stencil left over for next time!) I decided to leave a feature nail plain gold.

I used 4 different purple shades over the stencils - Barry M purple glitter, China glaze in a dark pink shade and lilac shade and OPI in Significant Other Colour. I used a small sponge and tweezers to dab on each colour to give a slight mottled effect rather than just using on solid colour.

I found it is better to do one nail at a time then peel the stencil off straight away while the paint it is still wet to avoid the paint drying and the stencil pulling off some of the paint potentially ruining the effect.

Finish with a nice shiny clear top coat and voila ..perfect mermaid nails!

You can use literally any combination of colours to create this effect, the possibilities really are endless!

Stencils - £3.95 from Nail Mail
Midi rings - £3 for set of 3 Primark

Younique 3D fibre mascara - does it actually work?

Does the Younique 3D fibre mascara actually work? That is the question everyone is asking - I have shared my experience with the product to help answer this question and any other questions you may have....

Anyone that has read my Trich post from a few months back will know that getting amazingly long and thick lashes is a bit of a challenge for me.

I'm happy to say that over the past month or so my Trich has died down and allowed me to grow my eyelashes back but they are still short and a long way off the huge, fluttering eyelashes I would love.

So I did some research on different mascaras/serums that would give me the results I longed for but many of them were pricey with no proven results. I started wearing false eyelashes every day in hopes that my eyelashes would look normal again but let's be honest putting fake eyelashes on every morning for work when you're still half asleep is no easy task so one day when I was scrolling though twitter I had seen the Younique 3D fibrelash mascara and thought I would give it a go!

At first I found it hard to get find honest reviews of the product as everyone who was posting reviews turned out to be a Younique presenter! So I thought to help other girls out there like me or just anyone wanting to try the product in general I would write an honest review.

The product features two different tubes in a cute little case - one is the tiny black fibres used to add length to lashes and black glue used for sticking fibres to the lashes.
First of all can I just make it clear that at first creating amazingly long lashes is not as easy as it's made out to be, this really is a case of practice makes perfect but doesn't mean it can't be done!
The black glue applicator looks like and can be applied like a normal mascara then the little fluffy fibres are brushed onto the glued lashes - here are some useful tips for getting perfect luscious lashes:

- The glue dries extremely quickly so ensure you have the fibres tube already unscrewed and ready to use as soon as you have applied glue, this also helps avoid clumps.

- Trying to glue/brush on fibres to your all of your lashes on one eye can be messy and create clumpy lashes that are stuck together. Work on a few eyelashes at a time to keep lashes separated and looking longer.

- Once a row on lashes has been glued and the fibres added apply a layer of mascara, even if you're planning on adding another layer, to prevent rogue fibres falling into your eyes - they are extremely irritating and almost impossible to get out!

- When applying mascara wait at least 2 minutes to make sure the glue and fibres are dry to stop the mascara pulling the fibres back off. Apply mascara lightly to ensure fibres aren't pulled off or moved.

- Use tweezers to delicately separate any lashes stuck together. Do this while the glue is still relatively wet.

- When filling in areas with shorter lashes (I have to do this a lot) focus on those areas first until they reach the length of the normal lashes then start to apply the glue/fibres in sections as normal.

- To achieve the best results I personally use at least 2/3 coats of glue/fibres/mascara (in that order) for beautifully long lashes. I find any more that this can cause lashes to touch under my brows and cause the lashes to bend.

- Have patience! It may seem a tad difficult at first but it does get easier with every use!

Over all once I had practised the art if applying the 3D mascara I am happy to say it's not an over hyped product that fails to deliver and that it REALLY DOES WORK! I will definitely continue to use this product in the future and would recommend to any girl looking to achieve long, natural looking lashes.

I hope I have been able to answer your questions about the 3D mascara but if you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask :)

Thanks for reading xx