Shopaholic–New Goodies!

I’m sure I’m not the only one that finds when times get tough consolation comes in the form of shopping…? It used to be clothes, then makeup, now makeup and clothes!

I’ve been stressing about the new job and moving and everything. Even though it is what I’ve wanted for a long time it’s still scary when it’s really happening….so I buy lipstick and I feel better.

That’s the long and short of it.

I’ve picked up a few things in a few shopping trips over the last 2 nearly 3 weeks. I am NOT MEANT TO BE SPENDING ANY MONEY so spreading it over three weeks makes me feel (marginally) less guilty.

*Apologies in advance for the weird lighting, it is a disgustingly dull Yorkshire day and while what I’m looking at in real life looks ok, on camera it looks sh#t plus the photos are a mish mash of what I took at home and taken here*

I’m on a lip product binge again. It flits between blusher and lipstick with the odd splash of bronzer or highlighter thrown in for good measure.

First up was Revlon in Superdrug – there was an offer of 2 lip products for £9.99, I swatched one of the new shades of Liquid Lipstick when I picked up a new Grow Luscious the other week and the colour would not budge off my hand so when I saw it on offer I grabbed…

Prime Pink is the ColorStay Ultimate Liquid Lipstick and on the right is a Super Lustrous Lipstick in Pink In The Afternoon.

From first impressions I can’t argue with the longevity claims but I did find this drying as hell. Not surprising though. The shade is a little frosty/pearly for me personally but it could work topped with a bit of gloss I suppose.

On me this is a bright corally-pink. Not bright crazy bright but a nice pop. I think this would be nice if you are a little scared of bright lip colours as a little introduction. This feels creamy on and isn’t drying as lipsticks go. I really like this an anticipate a lot of wear.

Next stop on this same trip was Boots where I had a perusal at 17’s offerings…

The Photo Flawless mascara is a repurchase – I used it previously along with my Grow Luscious and really liked the effect. Seeing as I am using Grow Luscious again I thought I’d grab this one too along with one of the new Metallic Eyes cream/mousse shadows! I love both of these! There was a GWP offer too of buy two products get a little purse with it containing

I haven’t used any of these but I don’t have a cream black in my collection so that’s handy!

Once my flat hunting had finished last weekend my parents and I went to shopping centre in the city where I’ll be moving where there is a CCO!!!! And it’s less than a mile away from the flat!!!! Obviously I couldn’t resist…..

Of Royalty is a cremesheen formula from the Fabulous Felines collection, I had wanted this at the time but it was sold out. Then there’s a Pro Longwear Lipcreme in Overtime. This is still available on the MAC website. I got both of these for £19!

This is in a similar vein to the first Viva Glam Gaga. It looks severe here but when I have makeup on it looks nice, the only thing is it shows up flaws and settles into fine lines after a bit. Nothing a quick smoosh can’t rectify but still, it looks a bit mental if you don’t catch yourself in the mirror.

I love this. It is a little drying as it is also a long-wear but not uncomfortably so. I wore this to my work’s xmas lunch the other day, it stayed on for four hours before we ate then it began to look a little dry so I popped some gloss on and it stayed on for three courses! There was a little bit of a ring around my mouth but not hideously so. I expect to get a lot of wear out of both of these.

Lastly, my Mum and I went for a spot of xmas shopping at the beginning of the week and in John Lewis I spotted that several counters were discounting products, maybe by 20%? I am looking for a new moisturiser anyway and ended up coming away with

I have heard good things about the concealer and it isn’t badly priced anyway (showing as £13 on their website) and the lady gave me a sample of the ‘A Perfect World SPF25’ moisturiser.

A few swatches…

L-R Prime Pink, Pink In The Afternoon, Photo Flawless Mascara Green Black, Metallic Eyes Wild Nude, Quick, Hide! concealer in 01 Light, Of Royalty, Overtime

Well done if you made it this far! If you want any in depth reviews or to see more pictures of anything just leave it in the comments!

Have you tried any of these? What did you think?

Do you have any recommendations for a moisturiser for combo/normal/oily chin skin?? I’ve no idea where to look!

Until next time :)

MIA

Sorry guys I have been absent for a bit, I’m stressing about new job and moving and money etc

Here’s what the weeks have been filled with…

My little Fluffer on our hideous kitchen floor. Incidentally, it is incredible hard to spot rabbit wee with the naked eye on this flooring. If you can’t smell it you’ll never find it. Gross. Anyway, she looks like she’s swimming. Brownie just looks adorable, you can’t really see how furry her paws are here, they are ACE!

I don’t mean to look so mardy, I was trying to be a badman. And I have a CRAZY HUGE spot on my nose here, that has also been gwaning this week. I haven’t had a spot on my nose since my first one when I was like 11!!!!!!!!!!!! Annoying beyond words. Still the hat is boom, £5 from the kids section at Tesco. To be honest I’m glad I can fit in anything in the children’s section regardless if its a hat and doesn’t really count.

And last but not least…

It looks wrong but tasted so right. This is ‘creamy cajun chicken pasta’ made following a recipe on the Big Oven app. I was talking to my sister while sprinkling parmesan on top so you can see it is EVERYWHERE.

When flat hunting had adjourned my parents and I went to a restaurant called Fire and Stone, they do mainly pizzas with crazy toppings! I had the New York which is topped with smoked bacon, garlic and rosemary potatoes, onion jam, sour cream and paprika. It sounds SO odd but it was really nice!

One of the Olympic mascot Wispa-esque things. I didn’t crop Fluff out, she looks thoughtful. Either masterminding her escape or capture of food.

Hm. Considering I don’t even buy Cadbury’s myself (Krafty bastards) I seem to have eaten a lot of it. My sister got these for a party at school she didn’t end up going to so I took it upon myself to save them from waste….. I love Animal biscuits

So there you have it. A lot of rabbits, food and headwear mixed in with a hefty amount of stress and impending grey hair. Brilliant!

I’m at the boys this weekend and he is working a bit so I will get some blogging done! If there is any light to take pictures with that is…….

I hope your all well :)

Nom

This is a test
I wanted to see how this Blogger app shenanigans works on my phone
And I'm eating a Wispa Gold

High….Eights?–Lipsticks

Happy Tuesday ladies!

I hope your having a good week and Monday wasn’t too punishing! I’ve got a long week at work, part of me is grateful because I need the money but part of me wants to hide in the foetal position and wake up on the 3rd of January when I start my new job with a flat all sorted! I hate that when I get stressed I want to run away…need to work on that fo sho.

Onto more interesting matters….I am trying to cover my favourites in my makeup collection and as I’m sure you have gathered lipsticks are one of my favourite items of makeup! I have waaay too many really but I can’t stop buying regardless. Here are the shades I perhaps don’t reach for every day but when I do I love it.

These pictures are taken on my phone as it picks up some colours better than my camera…

From L-R – Topshop Ooh La La, 17 Shine On Peace, Collection 2000 Lasting Colour Sweet Tart, Illamasqua Brink, Illamasqua Obey, MAC Viva Glam Gaga, MAC Pink Plaid, MAC Creme Cup

Ummm so my arm looks weird because it’s upside down, I swatched them backwards so left it like this to match…..

Same order as above…..

I would say my absolute favourite out of these is MAC’s Creme Cup. It’s a cremesheen formula so glides on really well and isn’t drying. It literally goes with EVERYTHING. Basically if in doubt wear Creme Cup. A close second is Ooh La La, I wasn’t sure what to expect from a clothes shop make up line but this is great! Again, another if in doubt use this colour. These are also probably the easiest to wear in terms of colour and formula.

There are a few others missing I do love, MAC’s Lustering and Chatterbox are brilliant but I haven’t worn them in a few weeks. Time to crack out a ‘lip a day’ scheme I think!

Are any of these your favourites? Or do you have any recommendations?

Exit Interviews: Concealers

Happy weekend ladies! How are your Saturdays? I had an early night last night reading, an early morning swim this morning and now I can barely move my arms or legs! A trip to Matalan may be in order this afternoon as I have my eye on some beautiful shoes but I should really be spending my money on presents or not be spending it at all and saving for a deposit on the flat I am going to need to rent by the end of the month for my new job! Who can resist pretty shoes though? Surely it’s not just me!

Anyway, as part of my not spending any money drive I have been using products I have at home, even if I have used them and didn’t like them. By using them in different ways or combining them with other products I’ve managed to finish two products this last week.

Concealer is one of the mainstays of my routine. I cannot (ok I can but I don’t like it) go with out. I have tried just about everything to try and hide my dark circles from a number of brands and here are two I’ve finished….

This is Bobbi Brown’s Creamy Concealer in Porcelain with White powder and Clinique’s Airbrush Concealer in 04 Neutral Fair.

I don’t know if the packaging has changed on this as this is around a year old but it has two layers, a concealer on top and powder to set it on the bottom. I got this after receiving my student loan and deciding to finally sort out my complexion products once and for all. I marched to the Bobbi Brown counter at my local John Lewis and came away with the Skin Foundation, Corrector and Concealer. If you have hideously dark circles like me you are supposed to apply the corrector then concealer then set. I did this for aggges as it was ‘what I’m supposed to do’, ignoring the fact that it was cakey as hell on me and didn’t cover sh*t, so eventually I stopped bothering and moved on to something else.

This time, to make it work for me I applied my eye cream only a few minutes rather then leaving it to sink in fully. I then used this mixed on the back of my hand with a little of Collection 2000’s Lasting Perfection concealer, patted it on with a brush then blended with my fingers. The powder ran out ages ago so I set it with whatever loose powder I have in front of me. The shade of the Bobbi Brown concealer alone is a little off on me so mixing it gave it a more peachy tone to cover my circles better as well as blending more with my skin tone. I actually liked the combination and would have used it daily for a while if it hadn’t of run out. However for the price (£17 on the Bobbi Brown website) it really should be able to do the job on it’s own.

Conclusion: No repurchase

This concealer is also from ages ago! It’s Clinique’s Airbrush Concealer as far as I can remember, though it is now showing in different coloured packaging on their website where it retails for £16.

Again when using this previously I had trouble with coverage both alone and over Bobbi Brown’s corrector. I have used just about every concealer in this bloody pen form on the market and NONE of them have been worth the excessive geld they retail for (YSL, Dior, looking at you!).

This time around I mixed it with GOSH’s Touch Up Concealer which is sadly discontinued. I’ll be gutted when it runs out. The colour of the Clinique concealer is a little dark for me especially now winter is setting in and I am returning to my ghost-like form. The GOSH concealer lightened it a little and again once it was powdered it lasted all day. As the coverage is light I used it over MAC’s Select Moisturecover in NW20 which covers the bluey purple of my circles though I didn’t bother doing this for work as the coverage was fine for my colleagues, they are used to my crazy face.

Conclusion: No repurchase. Despite both of these concealers costing a fair whack I still prefer my GOSH mixed with Collection 2000, the combined price of which was around £8!

I went to my local shopping centre last night and picked up a few things I need to play with before reporting back, expect a post in the week!

This is the book I’m reading…

My sister is reading it for AS English but she doesn’t ‘do’ reading as a rule (why do English then?!?!?!?) and was meant to read it over the summer but got as far as page 15 or something so YOINK! Bedtime reading for moi!

Can you recommend any books? I love Agatha Christie and murder mystery kind of things. Not just in books either, I am probably the only person that watches Diagnosis Murder at least 3 times a week. When my Dad was home from work and sat on the sofa all day it used to drive me wild being separated from Dr Mark Sloan and Jessica Fletcher for a whole two months!

Also what do you think to the concealers, have you used them?? Do you have any recommendations? Let me know!

Catsuit Nails

Sooooo following on from my earlier post on Look Magazine’s new Beauty range I have the polish that originally caught my eye and made me end up buying a couple more items from the brand.

It was fairly hard to photograph and the entire colour looks more turquoise then it appears in these pictures but the turquoise is sometimes reflected in the glitter… confusions I know.

On all my fingers bar the ring finger I used 2 coats of OPI’s OPI Ink as a base, topped by two coats of Catsuit. On the ring finger I used 3 coats of Catsuit alone.

This was 4 days in….it started chipping after 1 day and got bigger to this…

The turquoise of the glitter here is more like the overall colour of the polish, a combination of this turquoise and the colour of the whole nail in the picture above.

This last picture best represents the difference between the colour of 3 coats of Catsuit (leftmost nail) in comparison to the colour with 2 coats of OPI Ink and 2 coats of Catsuit.

Although I got this free in an offer at Superdrug, it would have been £5 had I bought it at full price. I would probably try one of these in another formula as there are a few nice cream polishes in the range. If that has the same slow drying time then I might not be bothered with any other shades unless they are really special. This was, as anticipated, an absolute PITA to remove.

When I get home I may swatch this against China Glaze’s Skyscraper to see the differences. If I have the patience to handle more glitter after this one’s removal.

To make up for lack of substance, have some bunny prawn…

Yellow as hell picture! Fluff and Brownie are not this jaundiced in real life.

Fluff is really laid back so you can often catch her flat out asleep like this. The minging floor is from where they have eaten it. Its horrendous. And please excuse the rabbit crap.

Have you tried any Look polishes and loved them?!

Look Beauty

Good evening ladies! I hope you have had a good weekend! I’m at the boys at the mo, had a lazy weekend and just finished watching the Brazilian Grand Prix. Creamy tomato pasta for tea and Mars ice cream for pudding, bliss!

In the week I went to my local shopping centre in the pursuit of some Christmas presents. That didn’t happen, but on perusal of Superdrug I saw they had replaced a few stands with the Fashionista and Look Beauty brands. Some things on the Fashionista stand did catch my eye but when I got to the Look Beauty stand and saw the nail polishes I was sold. I haven’t bought anything in ages due to lack of funds but Wednesday was a good day for me as I GOT A JOB!! So I thought treatage was well in order. I looked at the Look lipsticks and liked a few, looked at the blushers and I liked a few. Then I saw if you spent so much or bought 2 items of Look Beauty then you got a free polish! DONE!

I nailed it down to one lipstick, Shade 2 Tangerine Dream and one blusher, Shade 2 Flush, chosen by my brother. The packaging is cute, the colour is pretty and the pattern is adorable, it definitely adds interest into what could have been a bit bland and cheap looking with the text.

If you live in the UK you’ll know the light has been appalling lately, the sun doesn’t rise at all I swear! I tried to snatch a bit of sunlight earlier to take these, hence the hardcore shadows.

The lipstick is a little washed out here but you can get the jist. It isn’t as orange as I thought it would be from the name, it’s a pretty coral orange pink. I’m awful with shades. It is a wearable orangey pink…? I love the colour, it brightens up my face. I wish that I loved every aspect of this as much as the colour. Sadly I find a few things with this nag at me and make it less likely this will be a lipstick I reach for without thinking.

Firstly, the smell. To me this smells of cheap plastic. I’m not sensitive to smells and in the majority of cases they dissipate quickly but this lingers and I don’t like it.

Secondly, it’s a bit of a bitch to apply. On me even if I do exfoliate my lips with my Lush scrub and apply balm this still finds a way to go on patchy and sink into nooks and crannies I weren’t even aware existed. If I tap it with my finger and smudge it about a bit or blot and put gloss over it isn’t so bad but still, it makes it a lot less likely for this to be one of my handbag lipsticks.

The final nail in this lipsticks handbag residency’s coffin is the packaging. It looks gorgeous, having the pattern continued from the box. It has a magnetic closure which normally I would love the ingenuity of, however this closure is not strong enough for me to chuck it in my bag without it’s outer box. It’s not that I won’t wear this, it’s just that if it takes longer than a slap on to apply then it’s pretty much relegated to night out only makeup as I’m always in a rush of a morning.

I did like some of the other shades in the range, Baby Doll for one, but I will be sure to pay bettwe attention to the formula when swatching in store before purchase.

The other product I picked up, chosen by my helpful and ever patient brother who often accompanies on makeup hunting sprees when the boy is otherwise engaged…

The first picture pulls a little bronze as opposed to the second which shows the orange it is in real life. You can see the shimmer in it, it looks a little glittery here but it does pull shimmery. Some particles are larger than others but on the face it does look ‘glowy’ rather than ‘LOOK AT THIS SHIMMER’. Again the packaging is OK, it looks a bit plastic and again I don’t like the text. Magnetic closure again, again not very strong so something I am unlikely to let float around my handbag.

That is the only real negative I can thing of with this one though. The shimmer may be too much for some so swatch before you buy but for me it means I can go without an accompanying highlighter. It lasts pretty well on my normal/combo skin with a little powdering over it, I can definitely still see it after a work day.

The swatches are pretty colour accurate…

You can see what I mean about the lipsticks colour and the blushers ‘glowyness’.

I did have my eye on another blusher in the collection that was displayed at my local Superdrug, (which didn’t look massive in comparison to the look of it in the posts from the bloggers that went to the launch event?) and at least 1 other lipstick so a repeat trip may well be in order but I will definitely take better care in the swatching next time!

For completeness, a small FOTD, this is from the other day and it was 7am, I am semi-conscious (and look it!) so please be kind.

I used Bourjois Healty Mix in 51, a mixture of Bobbi Brown Concealer and Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection in 2 Light, Stila Kitten on lids and Revlon Grow Luscious mascara, along with the blusher and lipstick.

If you have made it this far, well done. You may have noticed I haven’t talked about the polish, you can look forward to that next time!

The lipstick was £7 and the blusher was £8, the expensive side of chemist prices.

Have you tried anything from the Look range? Have you any recommendations?

P.S. I have now finished the pasta and it was awesome.

High Fives - Blushers

Happy Saturday! I've been a total lazza lately due to work and keine geld hence why I am inside on a Saturday with greasy hair watching How It Works. Have you watched this shizzle?! I'm fascinated. I am a total geek mind, I like to think I'm useful to have around in the instance of a pub quiz.

I have been making an effort to 'shop my stash' this last week, the lack of money has meant no new purchases and it's likely I won't buy anything until xmas now (sob!) so I've been trying to use what I have in the hope of finding some new favourites. In the case of blusher however, it's only made me realise how much I love my favourites!

I did try and select my top five but the number slowly crept up until I had eight. Four powder and four cream mind, I don't think that's too bad especially considering blusher is one of my top faves. Also a warning, I took these pictures on my phone as it seems to capture some colours better than my camera and my Dad's camera inhales batteries every 6 seconds, so some pictures aren't brilliant but hopefully you get the gist.

Top L-R Benefit Coralista, 17 First Flush, Models Own Warm Glow, Nars Deep Throat

Bottom L-R Illamasqua Rude, NYX glow, Topshop Neon Rose, Topshop Head Over Heels

Argh nightmare picture, best of about 8000!

It depends what mood/rush I'm in as to whether I use cream or powder formula. I do prefer cream, if you use it sparingly you can achieve a natural-ish finish even if you are using a colour that doesn't look natural, if you get me. What I'm trying to say is I can wear more outlandish colours without looking like a clowny knob. Powders are better for a slap-on-and-go scenario, with the exception of 17's First Flush, wear this one at your peril! It is easy to go a little wild and over apply this one as I've found. If I'm on a night out and need my makeup to last longer/last through dancefloor clammy-ness I will use a cream then a powder. My current go to combo that seems to go with anything is Topshop's Head Over Heels topped by Nars' Deep Throat.

I don't think I can pick a clear favourite out of any of these! Another blusher that deserves a honourable mention is MAC's Ladyblush, a cream blush in the old formula that is now discontinued. It would have probably made this up to nine favourite's if it was in my blusher box as it was supposed to be....another sister related theft on my hands I bet.

So do you agree with these picks? Do you own any of these or have any to recommend? I'm always on the hunt for a new blusher!!