NOTD - Pretty Pastels

Today my nails didn't end up exactly how I wanted them to, but I wanted to put up a NOTD so they'll have to do! (This is me being lazy and not wanting to redo them..)
I love my new shaped nail stickers though, can you tell?

L'Oreal Color Riche in Marie Antoinette and French Riviera, Essie nail varnish in Mint Candy Apple and Shine of the Times

For this look I used two of the new L'Oreal Color Riche shades: French Riviera and Marie Antoinette as well as my new Essie buys: Mint Candy Apple and Shine of the Times which gives a flecked, opal appearance to your nails.


Maybe I should do something with less pastel colours next time, but they're just so pretty!
What would you like to see?

Shopping Trip!

Yesterday was my boyfriend, Raj's last day staying with me. It was hard to see him go. We've been together pretty much constantly since Valentine's day whether it was in my student house, at his family's home or at mine but now we're actually separated with no plans yet as to when we'll be seeing each other again.

So our last day together we took the bus to the nearest big town and spent the day shopping.

I couldn't stop myself from going into Superdrug. Initially I was only going to look for a cheap eyelash curler to tide me over until Shu Uemuras came up on Buyapowa... but I ended up filling both hands with bargain products that I just couldn't leave without! 

Also the Shu Uemura eyelash curlers ended up on sale the same day! What a waste of £4. If you want to get one whilst the sale's still up. Get them for cheap here: 

http://www.buyapowa.com/deal/1050 

 In the end I bought all of these products (minus the Essie nail varnishes which I had ordered online and arrived that morning). I was so excited to try a couple of the new L'Oreal Color Riche nail varnishes from the Candy Girl collection. All of the colours look beautiful and I managed to pick up French Riviera (a very pale, baby blue with some iridescent shimmer) and Marie Antoinette (a light peachy pink).

French Riviera, Marie Antoinette

The nail varnishes need 3 coats to become opaque but they look very pretty on. Perfect pastel colours. They're £4.99 each which isn't that cheap for 5ml bottles but Superdrug currently have a 3 for 2 offer on L'Oreal Paris products so I also bought a grey colour (which I forgot to photograph!) and £10 for 3 probably isn't too bad.

I also managed to pick up a couple of MUA shadow singles. For some reason I hadn't bought some when I previously ordered some products from them. They're very pigmented and beautifully shimmery. I chose the blue/green (shade 8) and Raj persuaded me to also buy Shade 9; a pretty deep purple. Purple isn't really my colour but I think he wants me to wear it for him, haha! They're also only £1. Ridiculously cheap!

I also found the Look Beauty brand which I hadn't seen before. I picked up a matte orange eyeshadow single from them for £2 which I thought was amazing. I think they are currently reduced in price, so I may try and pick a few more up whilst they're this cheap. The colour that I bought is called Sorbet.

MUA Shade 8, MUA Shade 9, LOOK Beauty Sorbet

Here is a swatch of all three eyeshadows. I've only been using my Naked 2 palette recently for barely-there eyeshadow with bold liner and bright lips. I guess I'll have to change my look now and then to fit these pretty shades in.

Here's a very basic look that I created with MUA's shade 8 and Look Beauty's Sorbet. I also used the orange colour “Carrot” from my Front Cover Rainbow Eyes palette and BootyCall from my Naked 2 palette.

Not something I'd wear during the day but I love the colour of Sorbet! It makes me want to pair orange/peach eyes with similar coloured lips. But maybe that's a little much, haha!

Look Beauty also have some very pretty lip glosses called Lip Slick. I bought their orange-coral shade named Fruit Punch. It's a warm coral with the tiniest little gold flecks throughout. Wearing it is incredibly comfortable. It isn't at all sticky and I barely realise that I have it on. It is very pigmented but still lets the pink of your lips through.

LOOK Beauty Lip Slick in Fruit Punch

Here's a lip swatch. I love this colour! I'll definitely buy this again. For £3 it's an absolute bargain.

Spent a long time looking for shoes after this as Raj decided that he wanted to buy me some shoes that wouldn't rub my feet. Even my flats do! I don't understand it!

But after an unsuccessful attempt at finding anything suitable, we ended the day having lunch in Chiquito (which was incredibly tasty!)

I had bbq pulled pork quesadillas which were pretty good, and Raj had the hottest Chiq chiq chicken that they sell- which was tasty but not something that I could really eat!

So now he's gone and I'm all alone. Such a weird feeling to not have him to talk to constantly when I've really taken that for granted recently... but I guess there's more space in my single bed!

Recent Buys - June

I've bought quite a lot recently, but I thought I'd make a post containing a few things that I've bought and loved.

I decided to do this after receiving quite a large amount of MUA cosmetics that I ordered from their site. If I remember correctly, all of these items cost around £13... pretty cheap really considering that I bought 8 items with that money!

I was really impressed with some of the things that I ordered. The brow and eye pencil in particular are really pigmented and just soft enough. They are amazing at £1 each! I'm usually not too fond of spending a lot on pencil liners so I'm super happy with these – the white liner even comes with its own sharpener and the brow pencil comes with a brush to groom your unruly eyebrows, too!

I got the clear mascara because it's cheap and works to keep my eyebrows in place. Maybe another time I should try one of their black mascaras and see how it holds up.

The other items I haven't managed to try properly yet, but I did think lipstick formulas felt particularly non-drying. I'll probably review all of these products at some point!

Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer Kit in Porcelain

This is the Creamy Concealer Kit by Bobbi Brown in the porcelain shade- which is the lightest.

I'd previously bought the corrector which comes in a slightly paler colour and thought that this was too dark when I first tried it. But combined with the white powder that accompanies the concealer it really is incredibly good. Maybe at one point I'll reorder my corrector too as they're meant to work amazing together.

The Body Shop Vitamin E moisturizer and scrub

Next are my current favourite moisturising duo! I've been using The Body Shop's Vitamin E Intense Moisture Cream and Nourishing Night Cream for about a year now and so far I haven't wanted to try anything else! I suffer from mostly normal skin, but now and then dry patches appear on my cheeks or between my eyebrows and these amazing moisturizers clear that right up. I'm always worried when I use new face products in case they'll make me break out in spots, but I have only good things to say about these two.

The Cream exfoliator I bought because Body Shop currently had a 3 for 2 offer on skin care. It's okay; I'm sure I'll use it if I get dry patches again. It's incredibly gentle though and I prefer to feel like my dead skin cells are coming off when I exfoliate, so I think I'll stick to my St Ive's apricot scrub. 

Bio-Oil

Recently on Buyapowa I bought two 125ml bottles of Bio-Oil for £11.50, that's £19 less than RRP!

I've been looking at Bio-Oil for a while now because I have stretch marks from when I lost some weight fairly quickly a couple of years ago.

If you haven't heard of Bio-Oil; it's said to help minimise scarring, stretch marks, uneven skin tone, and help aging and dehydrated skin.

I've heard good things but I'm not expecting miracles; but with two good sized bottles at least I have enough to see if it'll work for me!

Last but not least are these incredibly cute heart earrings that I bought from the River Island Boutique store in Cambridge.

I didn't even know that this shop existed, but now that I know I'm sure that I'll be spending more money there! They sell my favourite parts of River Island: the shoes, bags and accessories!

What are your recent must-have purchases?

NOTD - Nearly Nude

Supermodel, Peppermint

Yesterday I met with a good friend of mine and went to Cambridge for shopping and Yo!Sushi. The weather was terrible but I still spent ages doing my hair (only to be rained on). But the slightly colder weather meant that I also got to wear my huuuge legwarmers which I adore.

I was going to do a Look Of The Day post but ended up not having enough time and having no one to take the picture for me. We also have the village fare,

I had decided that I needed to buy a total of two things when I was out. A new compact mirror, because my last smashed on my journey to my boyfriend's house, and a nude or muted brown colour nail varnish to match with some pretty pastel tips.

Of course I forgot about this entirely once I was out and bought nothing that I'd decided on beforehand.

But just before leaving for home in the late afternoon, I spotted Bazaar magazine had Leighton Denny nail varnish freebies and snapped one up for about £4. I though that this was rather reasonable considering that the varnish retails for £11; and the colour that I chose was Supermodel. A lovely dull brown that was perfect for what I wanted (it's also far more muted than my photo makes it seem!

So today I painted my nails with Supermodel for the base and Rimmel's Peppermint colour, from my previous NOTD post, for the tips.

I love this look and think that I'll try it again with different colours.

This is the first Leighton Denny nail varnish that I've tried and it's wonderful. I only needed one coat for full coverage on my nails which definitely saves a little time when I have to wait for it to dry completely before painting the tips.

Coloured french tips are almost definitely overdone by now, but I still love them.

What about you?

NOTD - Summer Shimmer

I am a sucker for anything in green or blue shades. Particularly nail varnish so this simple look has my gazing at my nails during the day -it's quite distracting!

I bought the Models' Own nail varnish Indian Ocean after reading a blog about it and falling in love with the almost opalescent appearance that it gives to any nail varnish that you layer it over.

It looks blue in the bottle but I've tried it over all kids of pastel shades and love it over everything (next I should try it over dark colours... but I feel far too summery at the moment!)

Indian Ocean, Peppermint

This is my current favourite combination; a pretty mint green (here I used Rimmel London Lycra PRO in Peppermint) and just one layer of Indian Ocean.

I also use OPI Nail Envy as a base coat because I suffer from terrible flaky nails.

I think I'll be wearing this a lot this summer, it's just too pretty!

What are your go to summer shades?

Dainty Doll Review – In His Kiss, Baby Love and It's A Kind Of Magic

I was never a fan of Girls Aloud and so never really knew much about Nicola Roberts. But I heard about her range of make up aimed at pale skin tones around a year ago and it sounded perfect for me!

With incredibly pale, almost translucent skin I figure that I must be one of the girls that her range is aimed at.

If you're pale too you'll know just how hard it is to find foundation and cover-up that doesn't look glaringly orange on our porcelain complexions.

So I was browsing the Boots website recently and I came across Nicola Robert's concealer pen and ordered it in the colour “very light”. I'm used to ordering the palest shade there is so even though this was supposedly aimed at fair skin, I wasn't taking any chances.

Seeing as Boots had a 3 for 2 offer on and I'm a sucker for new lip products I also ordered two of her lipsticks in In His Kiss (a pale pink) and Baby Love (A very warm nude colour).

The boxes that the products came in are pretty cute. Plain black boxes with an image of a skinny woman with orange hair (who I presume is supposed to be Nicola).

The lipstick tubes are metal and feel cold in the hand whereas the concealer tube is plastic and rather cheap looking. For £12.50 I expected it to be metal also. It looks a little like it's going to open up and be a cheap felt tip pen!

I tried the concealer first because that was what I was most interested in. At £12.50 I was hoping for a cheaper version of my Touche Éclat that would be more suited for my skin colour (hey, a girl can dream!).

The design is similar to the Touche Eclat. It has a button on the bottom that you have to pump about 40 times on your first use to push the product up to the brush end.

It's A Kind Of Magic in Very Light

I swiped some of the excess on my arm and was a little disappointed by how it looked. It was very much as pale as promised but looked almost like it had the texture of cottage cheese..

A bit of a turn off.

Determined that I should give it a try anyway I added some to my hand and tried to blend it into my skin to see what the coverage was like.. and there really wasn't any!

I've tried to take photos to explain but my camera just won't pick it up. I tried to use my fingertips to gently blend the product into the skin on the back of my hand but this just made it look incredibly splotchy. In trying to get rid of this the product almost completely disappeared from the surface of my skin and forced itself into the tiny lines on my hands.

Not impressed.

I've tried it on my face after this but the uneven coverage just makes me look like I have some sort of weird skin disease. I don't think that this concealer could conceal anything.

I also tried mixing it with my Touche Éclat for a better colour but it doesn't take on its lovely consistency.

I honestly don't know who tested this and thought that it worked as a concealer..

They also sell a cream concealer in a compact; perhaps that's a little better.

Anyway onto the lipsticks.

In His Kiss, Baby Love

In His Kiss, Baby Love

In His Kiss is a very pretty pink with gold shimmer that I wasn't expecting. Baby Love is the warm nude that was promised but after swatching I was fairly certain that it wouldn't suit my skin colour.

In this swatch you can't see In His Kiss very well, but that's as opaque as I could make it! It has very little coverage.

In His Kiss

Here's In His Kiss on the lips. I think that this photo actually makes it look nicer than it is. It's quite a pretty colour but I'm not sure that I like shimmer in lipsticks. It tends to put all faults on show!

I think I put at least three layers on for this photo so it takes a while to build up but it feels like it would last a while on the lips.

Baby Love

Baby Love is terribly unflattering on me. The bullet feels softer than In His Kiss and it's far more opaque but it looks streaky on the lip and doesn't stay in one place. I tend to find that with matte lipsticks it's fairly important that they give equal coverage or you look a little ill, so I don't think that I'll be wearing this.

In all I'm fairly disappointed with my purchases. I may have just chosen the wrong shades for me when it comes to the lipstick so I will have another go with different colours if I see them in store. But I think that I won't buy before trying when it comes to Dainty Doll again!

Glossybox review - June 2012

This morning I was lucky enough to receive three packages. A very cheap (1p!) Maybelline New York lip gloss bargain from Half Price Perfumes, a beautiful Paprika peplum dress from New Look and my beautiful new Glossybox.

 Upon opening my box I actually said out loud “Wow, that's big”; referring to the Clean Start 3-step kit by Dermalogica that sat at the top of my box. This set has three parts to it:

A foaming wash that is said to “clean deep and wipe out dirt and breakouts”

A purifying toner in the form of a spray mist that they say “helps control shine and keep breakouts away”

An spf15 moisturizer that is lightweight and shouldn't block pores.

Foaming wash, Purifying Toner, SPF Moisturizer

I was pretty excited by this set. The card that came with my box says that it has a value of £12 which is practically the price of my box by itself and I'm always looking for new face products. I don't suffer from breakouts but I do get terrible blackheads on my nose so maybe this set will be good for not clogging my pores.

Although I haven't used this set yet (it arrived too late and I'd already finished my morning routine and put on my make up!) I thought I'd open it to feel the consistency of the products.

Foaming Wash

For some reason I thought that the foaming wash would have a creamy formula; probably because of all of my moisturising washes that I have to banish my dry skin on my cheeks. It doesn't smell unpleasant, maybe a little medicinal though.

The mist toner feels lovely on my skin. I sprayed it a little on my neck and it felt very cooling on my skin. I'm not sure if it stops breakouts but it did leave a matte finish once it had dried although I'm not sure how it would fare on oily skin. It also feels amazing on hot days like today!

SPF Moisturizer

The moisturising lotion is lightweight, as promised. It takes a little bit of rubbing to get it to absorb into the skin but seeing as it's a very thin lotion is seems like a little will go a long way.

I think I'll be trying this whole set out starting from tonight.

Next was a 1g pot of Summer Warmth Bronzer by BM Beauty. This little pot is worth around £2 and for a sample it's very full!

Summer Warmth Bronzer

  

In the box was also a natural goat hair blush brush with Glossybox written on it (which matches our compact mirrors from their birthday box!) and a mini Yves Rocher France Ultra-volume Sexy Pulp mascara.

  

The brush is made of natural goat hair and is said to give supersoft make-up application. It had quite a few loose hairs but does feel quite soft. Apparently it retails for £15 but I'm not sure I would have paid that; a very nice addition to the box though. I'll be trying it tomorrow with my blush.

The mascara I haven't been able to test yet because I already have some on. I'm looking forward to trying it though as the brush seems to come out with very little excess product on it. Even if I don't buy the larger version of this I think I'll keep it in my handbag as it's such a useful size. I don't know who thought the word “pulp” sounded sexy though!

  

Last are a collection of 6 shades of Dermablend Ultra-Corrective Foundation Cream Stick by Vichy. It is said to be good for correcting minor to severe skin flaws. Inside the packet it shows before and after images of models covering their flawed skin -including one male model which I thought was quite nice. I've known quite a few men who were embarrassed by their blemishes, it's nice that Vichy aren't just targeting women with this product- men should feel confident in own skin too!

Left to right: Porcelain, Opal, Light, Nude, Sand, Bronze

Here are swatches of all 6 tones. They seem very creamy and I can imagine that they'd be good at covering blemishes. As always they don't really suit my skin, but if there was one that did I'm sure that I'd buy it. The foundation sticks are fragrance free, hypoallergenic and have spf50 as well as being resistant to water and persiration.

This isn't going to be the kind of product that wears off after an hour or so. I've washed my arm twice rather brutally after these swatches and I still have shadows of all 6 shades!

Overall I'm very pleased with this months box. I think it's better than ones that I've received in previous months and I believe that I'll use nearly all of these products.

I was wondering about cancelling Glossybox and sticking just with Joliebox but it seems I'll be sticking with them a while longer.

What do you think about this month's Glossybox? Did you love the products as much as I did? I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else got.

Chanel Lèvres Scintillantes Glossimer Review – Calypso

A couple of weeks ago, whilst I was staying with my boyfriend, I managed to persuade him to go shopping with me in the Bull Ring in Birmingham (after bribing him with the promise of Yo!Sushi!)

I have to say... I failed phenomenally at shopping. I'd meant to be buying summer clothes, but instead ended up only buying beauty products for my face! I think that the boyfriend was secretly happy that he didn't have to sit around whilst I tried on clothes, but I almost felt like it was a wasted trip until I went further into the beauty department of Selfridges and met my new beautiful Glossimer!

I've heard mixed things about Chanel Glossimers. Mostly I hadn't been too tempted because most of the colours are incredibly sheer; and for over £20 a pop I really couldn't justify spending the money on them.

But this summer they've brought out Calypso; a beautiful warm orange shade with tiny specks of gold shimmer running all the way through. And I've fallen head over heels with it!

The packaging is of course incredibly simple and classy. A transparent tube which holds the beautiful gloss within topped with a band of gold and a plain black lid with, of course, the Chanel Cs. It feels really nice in my hand... but I think that's just me being weird.

This image shows a little better the beautiful warm gold shimmer in the gloss. I'm a sucker for orange and coral shades at the moment so this Glossimer just called out to me. Although the colour looks almost scarily bright in the tube, as a gloss it has just the right amount of pigment in my opinion. It lets the colour of your lips come through so it looks very warm and beautiful on.

Here's a swatch on my arm. You can really see the gold in this. It also looks a little more pink here than it does in the bottle which makes it a little more wearable.

Here it is on the lips. It's doesn't seem to want to apply evenly always and It does leave gold flecks on your lips once it has faded away which is a little annoying, but it looks really pretty on. A perfect summer shade.

I wore it the other day for an afternoon out in town with my boyfriend (Excuse the terrible roots! I hadn't managed to re-dye my hair yet).

I very nearly bought the Rouge Coco Shine lipstick that Chanel bought out in a similar colour “En Vogue” but the glitter in the gloss won me out. Perhaps I should buy it before the summer's up.

What do you think about Chanel's summer range of pretty nudes and cute corals?

L'Oreal Rouge Caresse Review - Dating Coral and Rebel Red

I heard great things about L'Oreal's attempt at a balm/lipstick hybrid (as I'm sure everyone in the blog circuit has!). I read review after review online trying to work out which colours to purchase for myself; and finally decided on the popular Dating Coral and Rebel Red. Neither of which seemed easy to get my hands on as they have been constantly selling out on the Boots website.

Even going in to my local store didn't help me. The whole display was empty of these lipsticks in any colour whatsoever!

And so I waited; checking the Boots website every day or so until about two weeks ago I finally managed to add both colours to my bag online and check out; trying not to get too excited as I did so.

Does anyone else get unnaturally happy when they have new beauty products on the way? I always get so hyped up about it; waiting for the post excitedly every day and wanting to throw all of my new make up on my face at once as soon as I have it.

It's perfectly healthy, I'm sure.

The first package that I unwrapped was my lipstick in Rebel Red. The casing is transparent plastic with and inner gold tube that holds the bullet. It has the words "L'Oreal Paris" writton on the side in gold and the top of the casing is shiny and red (when I first saw this I thought it corresponded to the colour of the lipstick but my lipstick in Dating Coral has the same colour).

Left to right: Dating Coral, Rebel Red

The packaging is fairly nice for a drugstore product. It looks quite fancy really. The tubes are a lot harder to open than any of my other lipsticks -I have to give it a fairly hard tug to get the lid off- but I guess that just means that I don't have to worry about loose lipstick lids rolling around in my hand bag!

Left to right:  Dating Coral, Rebel Red

Upon first inspection Dating Coral looking a lot less vibrant than I expected. It made me think of a dusky rose colour when I saw it with a hint of coral. A little disappointing after how bright some of the Revlon lip butters are (I'll review those later). In comparison, Rebel Red is a very bright, almost primary red that I wanted to apply as soon as I saw it.

Both colours have a slight hint of shimmer to them but I don't think that this shows on the lips, and Dating Coral has a far creamier consistancy to Rebel Red (I think it is also a little more opaque due to this).

 Dating Coral, Rebel Red

In this photo they both look pretty bright but I think that Dating Coral is a lot less orange in real life than it is in this photo. Rebel Red comes out as a very pretty and sheer blue-based red.

Dating Coral, Rebel Red

Here on the lips Dating Coral is a very pretty, wearable shade. Not the statement lip that I thought it would be, but suitable for looks where you want to play up your eyes. I like the consistancy. It's quite creamy and doesn't show many of the flaws in my lips.

Rebel Red doesn't apply to the lips as evenly but it is a beautiful colour. A very wearable red that is suitable for those that want some colour on their lips but aren't ready for opaque lipsticks. I've worn this colour quite a lot since buying it but it needs to be reapplied quite often.

Rebel Red leaves a stain once it has faded which looks quite nice and you possibly don't need a mirror to apply it unless you have super pale skin like me where every flaw looks terrible. I think because of this I'll be leaving this lipstick for short trips rather than day-long shopping sprees but I think it will definitely be a new addition to my handbag.

The jury isn't out on Dating Coral yet. I think that I need to wear it some more to decide whether I'll be using it much or not.

Both colours feel quite moisturising on the lips. Obviously not as good as a lip balm but not drying like some lipsticks can be.

What do you think of L'oreal's Rouge Caresse lipsticks? What colours have you tried and are they something that you wear often or do you find them a little high maintenance with their short wear time?