Pale English Rose

It's finally heading into spring here in England, although you'd hardly believe it, with the freezing cold nights, chilly days and the thunderstorm with lightning that we had only yesterday. But spring is officially arriving, the daffodils are out, the first green leaves are coming out on the trees and very soon the whole of England will be lush and green. Even though I have seen a lot of places in the world, I cannot help but think England can be one of the most beautiful places on earth when summer is in full swing.

As anyone that is makeup-mad like me will know that spring colours are IN right now, but I have never been one to conforming to seasonal colours. I like to head my own way and do my own thing. Also I happen to be an Urban Decay eyeshadow addict, and their colours are hardly neutral, but still... Today I decided to do a pale, English Rose look:

As y'all know, I have a pale-as-milk complexion, and this look is really easy to pull off. I used my Estée Lauder Double Wear Foundation in 1C1 Shell, all over my face. It is really full coverage foundation, and even though I kept the foundation use to a minimum, I still used a tad too much... Oh well, nevermind...

Agh! Super strange weird closeup! My eye looks cross-eyed... Hmmm... *Ahem* As you can see, I've filled in my eyebrows to make them much thicker than they really are to help give a more *cough* youthful appearance. I'm wearing my Max Factor Blusher in Classic Rose to help give me a nice colour on my cheeks after wearing such heavy foundation. My lips have almost no colour, which is very embarrassing; to get the achieved colour here I had Benetint stain on my lips, followed by Lancome's Le Rouge Absolu in Pink Diamond, followed by the tiniest touch of Nivea's Glamorous Gloss in Pink Sugar, for extra hydration as my lips have been super dry recently...

 

Ok, so for my eyes I used my Too Faced Shadow Insurance, and then applied two basic Urban Decay eyeshadows for a neutral, understated look; Sellout over the entire lid and over the entire lower lash line, with a dusting of Mushroom on the outer corners to add depth. I tightlined and carefully lined my upper lash line in Urban Decay's 24/7 liner in Zero to make my lashes appear fuller. My Asian-inherited eyelashes are straight, so needed lots of curling with my eyelash curler and two coats of L'Oreal False Lash Telescopic mascara. Finally I finished off my look, lining my waterline with a white khol eyeliner pencil by NYC.

So there you have it; a pale English Rose makeup look that's perfect for spring and can be worn anywhere, any place, any time! Have fun guys x

My tips and tricks of using Highlighters

I love highlighters. I have two; a liquid highlighter called "High Beam" by Benefit:

                               And I have a powder highlighter called "Light 01" by Bourjois:

Highlighters are simply fabulous. You don't have to use them all the time, but they are so useful that I find myself reaching for one or both of them every time I put my makeup on. If my skin is looking dull or fatigued and I want a quick pick me up, then I mix a few drops of High Beam in with my foundation. It gives my skin a healthy glow and makes me feel like a million dollars:

                                  LOL at my face powder in my hair, making my hair look grey!
Ahem... Anyway... To make my eyes look brighter, fresher and more awake (without the use of eye drops, because even though I LOVE them, they're not particularly good for your eyes), I use the bright, Bourjois highlighter in the inner corners of my eyes, around the tear ducts and blend down into the lower lashes for instantly brighter, less-tired-looking eyes:

I also like to use the powder OR liquid highlighter on the top of my cupid's bow on my lips because my top lip is teeny tiny. Apparently it can make your lips appear fuller, but I don't think it makes much difference to my lips *sigh*:

 I'm wearing lip gloss here to help make my lips appear fuller, which does a much better job - at least that's what I think.

So there are the joys of wearing highlighters on your face and how they can help you look or feel better when your skin is letting you down. Big Hugs x

The Day After the Day Before

So, it was my 27th Birthday yesterday. Getting closer to 30 every day. For the moment, I'm still ok - perhaps I'll panic about being 30 when I turn 29... I'll let you know...

So I drove down into Cornwall to see my family yesterday, and I was treated like a princess and was spoiled rotten, I even had lunch made for me and everything - it was a fabulous day! I was bought a lovely bracelet by my hubby:

Blue is my favourite colour and he chose all of the beads himself; I am a very proud wife indeed :) xx

I was given a red packet from my Poh-Poh (Grandma) with money for my birthday:

I was given a bottle of Lancome Hypnose eau de parfum by my little sister. It is one of my favourite perfumes ever, and I was so chuffed that she forked out that kind of money for it, as it is quite expensive :)

I was also given money by my mother and father in-law, which was very generous of them, and here's what I bought with their money:

This is some curl creme for hair. I'm always on the lookout for something that'll define my thick, wavy-almost-curly hair. I'll let you know how it goes.

This is the Bamboo buffing brush from Boots. Apparently it's for loose or compressed powders and it should be buffed into the skin, but I was going to see what happened if I used it with liquid foundation, which has always been my foundation of choice.

This is my first ever stippling brush. It's by Samantha Chapman. I have always wanted one, because so many makeup guru's on YouTube go on and on about how flawless a stippling brush can make your skin look. I mainly use my fingers to blend foundation, so this will hopefully be a nice change :)

My eyes are starting to look dull and tired at the moment, which shows a lot when I am doing my makeup tutorials on YouTube, so I want my eyes to be brighter and whiter, and this seems like a pretty good way to go. Of course I shan't be using this everyday as it's very bad for eyes with long term use.

Ok, so this last one has NOTHING to do with beauty, but I have recently lost 14lbs and I thought I'd treat myself to something delicious. I can't find decent Turkish Delight anywhere where I live, so it's a treat I buy when I visit Truro. I have been in the Weight Watchers programme for the past 5 weeks, and have discovered to my dismay that Turkish Delight is high in points, so I will only eat a square a day to make it last and to make sure I don't use up too many points.

So there you have it my lovelies; a list of products that I bought and was given for my birthday. I hope you're all having fun and taking good care of yourselves

It's been a long time...

It has been a long time since my last Blog - just over 6 months, in fact. Without trying to be negative, no one reads my blog, so I stopped adding to it, but then I thought "Hell, why not just carry on?", so here I am...

My last blog was about my first ever YouTube video. Since then I have uploaded another 16 videos, so I have 17 all in all and I think they're getting better. They're definitely much better quality than the first one and I've learned to edit a bit better now, but my laptop can't deal with the video editor that came with it (thanks for nothing Windows Live Movie Maker), so I do my best.

The picture above was the finished look of a how to wear red liptsick like a pro video...

This one was a gothic style makeup tutorial that my friend's fiancé asked me to do and this was the end look...

This was a cute, kitch and glittery look, so retro and cute. It's one of my fave looks because it's so easy and bright...

This was a picture of a green eyeshadow tutorial I did. It was the first time I tried to do a voice over and failed miserably, but we live and learn...

And this one was a simple vampire makeup tutorial.

I haven't been slacking; editing videos for YouTube is a much harder job than blogging. It requires hours of painstaking editing, saving, captioning, saving again and then uploading to YouTube. But on YouTube, some of my videos have been watched hundreds of times, people have commented and asked me questions. I never recieved that kind of praise or was even acknowledged as a lowly Blogger... I don't expect to be seen or heard even as I type these letters to anyone that cares to read them, but know this: My makeup addiction is still going strong. I love makeup, I have done all my life, with no real end in sight. But that's ok.

                                                   I'm Still Here...

My first ever YouTube video :D

I have always wanted to buy a camcorder, and I finally did it :). Today I made a makeup tutorial for people that wear blue contact lenses. As ya'll know, I love blue contact lenses, so it's kind of befitting that that video is my first.
It took only 20 minutes to film myself putting on the makeup, and the best part of 6hrs to edit the video, add music, narrate, only to find that the music I had chosen and saved on the video was simply too loud to be narrated over *sigh*. It took hours to save and hours to upload to YouTube, but I finally did it. I can't upload it from YouTube, as I cannot find it on YouTube haha! But here is the link if anone wants to check it out:

                                             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zgju9EE7y4

The camcorder has no auto focus and no optical zoom so it's a bit limited as to what it can do, hence my blurry face when I sit more than a foot away from the camcorder. I hope you enjoy it.

Have fun guys x


 

Coloured Contact Lenses Part Two

It's been a while since my last blog and I've been feeling a bit down recently, so I thought I'd cheer myself up by blogging about some more contact lenses. The lovely Kate from  www.eyesbright.com (please click link to go straight to the website) very graciously sent me a pair of lenses of my own choosing to review on my blog. I chose Big Eyes 15mm in Beautiful Blue.
When they first turned up I was blown away by not only the colour, but by the size - they're larger than the normal contact lenses I normally purchase so I was a bit worried that they would be hard to put in or be uncomfortable once they were in. Well, I needn't have worried, they were just as easy to pop into my eyes and they are actually more comfortable than normal lenses to wear.  Here is a closeup of my eyes with them in:

As you can see here, these are large lenses (again I cannot stress how comfy they are to wear). The pupil hole is also quite large so some of my iris and my pupils can be seen, but I don't really care. Isn't the colour quite striking? I have been wearing coloured contact lenses for just over a year now and I actually got comments from people on my eyes wearing these. Most people loved them, and one guy said my eyes looked like Doll's eyes and it freaked him out, but that's the look I was going for anyway haha!


I decided to wear a small amount of foundation to even out my skin and set it with powder and applied a generous amount of blusher on my cheeks to give myself a Doll-like look. I am wearing Urban Decay's eyeshadow in Midnight Cowboy, because it is a nude colour with sparkles which I love, and two coats of mascara to make my lashes thicker. I tried to flick my eyelashes outwards to give an innocent, wide-eyed look. I decided not to colour in my eyebrows as I normally do, but I did use a Lancome lipstick to set the whole look off. Here are the resulting photos:

                                            Ta-daaahhhh! Big Eyes 15mm in Beautiful Blue!

The makeup I used for this blog is as follows:
Contact Lenses were Big Eyes 15mm in Beautiful Blue from www.eyesbright.com
Foundation used was Clinique Anti-Blemish Solutions in Fresh Alabaster
Powder to set was Revlon PhotoReady compact powder in shade 010 Fair/Light
Blusher was Lily Lolo's Mineral Blusher in Cherry Blossom
Macara was Revlon Double Twist in shade 01 Blackest Black
Lipstick used was Lancome's L'absolu Nu in shade 202 Ojab

I just want to give a Special Thank You to Kate from Eyesbright for letting me review these lenses on my blog, you have been wonderful, kind and generous x

Makeup Remover

I blog about putting makeup on but as of yet have to say what I use to take it all off again. Up until the last year I have been fairly fond of face wipes as my go-to remover, but let's face it, not all of them are up to the task of taking off your makeup, even if they claim on the packet that they can. I have used many different brands of makeup wipes, ranging from £6 per packet to just 28p, and to be completely honest they all do the same job. I also find that makeup wipes dry quickly once taken out of the packet, which means sometimes you have to scrub your skin a bit harder than you should.
After using different types of makeup remover wipes, creams, etc, I discovered  Garnier Skin Naturals Simply Essentials 2 in 1 Makeup Remover a few months ago and it looks like this:

It's contains and blue and clear liquid (as you can well see). The blue liquid is an oil and the clear stuff is (I think) basically water. Here's a closeup of the bottom of the bottle:

I like the fact that it has no perfume and no alcohol, and that it is suitable for sensitive skin. I personally don't think I have sensitive skin, but I like to treat my skin like it is. This makeup remover reminds me of a cheap version of Lancome's Bi Facil makeup remover, which also has and oil/water combination, which is amazing at removing makeup but I can't afford the £18-22 price tag it carries:

I have used the above makeup remover, and I can definitely recommend it if you have the money - Lancome's products are top-notch, and I have been in love with their stuff since I got my grubby mitts on my first Hypnose mascara but I'm on a budget so can only buy their makeup etc as a rare treat. Anyway, back to my product:

 You can click on this picture so you should be able to read what most of the bottle says up close. All I can say is that it dissolves makeup really quickly and smooths it off your face without harsh rubbing or pulling. It is safe to use over your eyes too, so there's no real need to buy/use a separate eye makeup remover. You just shake the bottle 'til the whole contents of the bottle has turned light blue, quickly squeeze some onto a cotton pad and them smooth over your face and eyes - done! It leaves a very slight oily feel to your face, but a little toner will get rid of that. It only costs about £3, so well worth the money. Try it, I reckon you won't be disappointed. What kind of makeup remover do you use? Would you recommend it too? Let me know! Have fun x