No7 'Fanomenal' Mascara Review!

Yes, it's another mascara! No7's new mascara 'Fanomenal' promises a fuller fan lash, with a unique 'star' brush which supposedly allows better control with the wand. I would be inclined to agree with this.

At first when I pulled out the brush, I was like "Oh great! What good is this gonna do?!" but after using it, I think it's a really nifty little brush. It doesn't deposit too much mascara onto your lashes which allows you to build up the volume without clumping. It's not great for curling, but I use my eyelash curlers anyway and it holds in this curl just fine. It gives amazing length, my eyelashes look huge with this mascara and it definitely gives a fuller 'fan' effect. Some people have mentioned about this being quite a 'wet' mascara, meaning it can transfer to your eye-lids when applying to the bottom lashes. I haven't especially noticed it with this mascara any more than any other mascara, and hadn't even thought about it until seeing it mentioned in a few reviews.

Overall, I really like this mascara. It doesn't beat No7 Exquisite Curl which is one of my all time favourite mascaras but I have been using it every day for the past few weeks and I do really, really like it. This mascara retails for £12.50 but I managed to get it half-price. I'm not entirely convinced I would repay the full price to buy it but if I had one of the £5 off No7 voucher that Boot's always give out, I probably would.

Review: Revlon Photoready 3D Volume Mascara - A Benefit Dupe?!

Revlon Photoready 3D Mascara is part of their new 'Photoready' range. I have reviewed the blushers in this range which I was very impressed by and you can check that out here. Firstly, the packaging. It's similar to the very annoying plastic NARS style packaging that unfortunately gets dirty very easily. You can see in the photos how dirty mine is and I have only had this a week and a half! Other than that, the packaging is nice and sleek, albeit a tad plain. The brush is quite big, with long comb style bristles to separate and lengthen each lash. It actually reminds me of Benefit's 'They're Real' as it as the very snazzy little ball on the end of the wand to pick apart any clumped lashes, and to get to the very small lashes in the corner of your eye. The mascara in general is actually very similar to Benefit's 'They're Real' so if you were looking for a slightly cheaper alternative to that mascara, I would give this one a try.

 

In terms of the mascara itself, I wouldn't call it anything spectacular. It does a nice job of coating your lashes and does give a lot of volume, but it's not the effect I tend to like in lashes and it is definitely more of a 'night' mascara. Especially while I'm on placement, the effect is way too much as I need to be having the more natural look. It doesn't flake during a 12 hour day, nor does clump or look bad - it's just not anything special. 

I will keep this and probably use it in the evening, but I can't see myself replacing it. In fact I have already bought a new mascara since buying this one, because I wasn't a huge fan of this one.  I bought this mascara for £10.99 on offer in Boots, where if you buy any Revlon Mascara, you get a Revlon ColourStay Smoky Shadow Stick for free! I'd been wanting to try these so I decided to give them a try. A review of the Shadow Stick is coming once I have tried it and have enough to report back to you on.

Aldi...make-up?! | Intro & Review

Yeah, you read it right! Today I'm going to be talking about a few make-up items I picked up from Aldi. No, I've not gone insane. In general, own make products - like M&S, Boots, Superdrug, Tesco, Co-op and Aldi - are cruelty free. Lacura is also a well established brand, who sell premium products at crazy low prices. So I thought as the products were fairly cheap, I would check them out. I have five items to talk about so lets crack on!

1) Lacura Shimmering Day Cream:

I'll just start by saying that I LOVE this cream. I picked this up a few months ago for £3.49 and I've used it religiously every day since then. Like the name suggests, it has shimmer in it so the minute you put it on, your skin looks radiant and glowing. It comes with a pump, which I love (I hate digging into pots to get cream!) and half a pump is enough to cover your whole face. I would definitely recommend this to anyone.

2) Lacura Q10 Moisturing Night Cream:

This is actually one my Mum uses, which I have used a few times so I thought I would include it on this review. The reason I don't use it, is I find it a little bit heavy for my younger skin - but I know my Mum loves it. I just asked her and she described it as "rich and moisturising". The name is obviously a play on Nivea Q10. This retails for £1.99 I believe.

3) Lacura Waterproof Mascara: 

The first thing to notice about this is that it has a very chemical smell to it. The tube is small and doesn't appear to come in a larger size but the wand is a decent size and quality. The formula itself is ok, it provides a fair amount of lift and volume. It's not very curling, and I always need mascara to curl my lashes. For the price of £2.39, it is very good. It doesn't flake or smudge on me and is suitable for sensitive eyes.

4) Lacura Compact Powder:

This powder comes in a very sleek case, with a mirror and applicator puff. It's of average quality - if you didn't suffer from oily skin or problem area's, this would be great. If you did, I would recommend a better quality one. This seems comparable in quality to the Collection 2000 Lasting Finish Powder, which I've used for a while and is a similar price. You can pick this up for £1.99

5) Lacura Duo Eyeshadow in 'Olive':

Now, these aren't shades I would normally pick up for my eye colour (a blue/grey) but I thought for £1.99 I might jump on the olive eyeshadow trend. These actually give really great colour pay-off considering the price and blend reasonably well. This compact includes two matt shades - an olive green and a lighter cream. I was a little disappointed when I got this home to discover that the green is very light, I wouldn't call it Olive personally but it is still a very pretty colour. The lighter cream shade is much more wearable and is light enough to use as a brow highlighter, if needed.

What make-up I took to Rome!

Hi everyone! So I thought I would do this post on what make-up I took to Rome because I thought it'd be quite interesting for you all to read. The reason for this being, I only went for three nights and decided not to pay the extortionate fee of £25 to check a bag in and instead, to just take hand luggage. This is all very well and good, except there is a limit to the liquids and therefore, the amount of make-up you can take with you. For those who don't know, you can only take a maximum of 1L, and each individual item cannot be more than 100ml and they must all fit comfortably into one 20x20cm plastic bag! For a beauty lover such as myself, it's a bit of a nightmare! But I managed to do it! My mother (who I went with) and I spent ages sorting out what we would take, what we could share - for example, I took most of the make-up and she took most of the skincare, because she has about a million samples already - and what we would have to do without.

So I thought it would make quite an interesting blog post, a sort of 'beauty-essentials' as you will because I took all these and genuinely didn't find myself wanting for more or wishing I had brought something different. I've split this post up into what I took in my little plastic bag, and then into what I brought in solid form to go with them.

LIQUIDS:

So first things first, we have my Chanel Vitalumiere foundation in shade B10. Of course I took this, I couldn't not! It's my absolute favourite foundation at the moment and it's just perfect for a holiday. It's super light and feels like you're wearing nothing at all, and lasts all day - even through a day of running around Rome sightseeing in 35 degree heat!

Next I took two concealers - Clinique Airbrush Concealer in 01 Fair and MAC Studio Fix in NW20. In all honestly, I had only planned to take the Clinique one but popped the MAC one in last minute, simply because I had a bit of room in my plastic bag! I used both of them, although I had to be careful to keep the MAC one out of the sun as it did start to go very melty in the heat, although in reality, this is quite a chalky concealer so it didn't really do much harm!

I also brought Benefit BROWzings in shade Light. For me, this was a no-brainer, although it is slightly annoying that this had to go in my bag as it is mainly a powder, but the coloured wax counts as liquid and I didn't want to take any chances and have to see any of my make-up thrown away at Security. I don't think I could have emotionally coped with that!

I also had to bring this mini bottle of suncream. This is just from Boots - it's the Soltan Factor 50 Spray Suncream. Yeah, not much to say about this really! 

I decided, after much deliberation, to bring my MAC Paint Pot in Painterly. I absolutely LOVE these, and I also have Indianwood, which I wanted to bring but decided that as Painterly is that lovely nude, 'your skin but better' shade, that I would use it more as a neutral colour in the day, and also as a base for other eyeshadows.

Sorry for terrible quality!

For mascara, I had no choice but to bring my favourite mascara of the moment which is the No7 Exquisite Curl Mascara. No7 in general doesn't really do it for me and I think this mascara is the first thing I have bought from them in quite a while but I do enjoy it very much. If you have quite straight lashes like myself, this works wonders!

On to the lipsticks! This was by far the hardest decision, as anyone who knows me will tell you that lipsticks are my biggest weakness - I'm forever buying them! I'm having to stop myself buying the Revlon Lip Stains at the moment even though I want them SO MUCH but I don't need them and I can't afford them. Sob! Back on track, I whittled my choice down to three in the end and one lipbalm. The three I chose to take were MAC 'Snob', MAC 'Impassioned' and Revlon Lip Butter in 'Rasberry Pie'. Of course, I also took my trusty Burts Bee's with me as well.

SOLID PRODUCTS:

Everything else I took had to compliment my liquid products. First on the list was to choose a blusher and I decided on Benefit Sugarbomb, because it's a brilliant summer blush - it gives a lovely flush on the cheeks and can also be used all over the face to bronze it up a bit. 

For the eyes, I took my MUA Heaven and Earth Palette. I've been absolutely loving this recently, and have really been enjoying creating lots of different looks with it. It's really versatile and can be used in the day, just to add a bit of definition or in the evening to create a smokey eye. I also took MAC Eyeshadow in 'Mythology' but I can't find this at the moment to take a picture of!

I just took a cheap powder, this Collection 2000 Pressed Powder. My reasoning for this was that I was going to get nice and shiny anyway so I didn't want to take a more expensive one, in case it broke or I left it in the hotel. I do quite like this powder, especially for the incredibly cheap price and I have more than one, so if something happened to it, it wouldn't be the worst thing ever. 

Make-up tooks wise, I took my trusty MAC Brush Kit as it has all your essentials really! I also took my eyelash curlers which are the Models Own ones from Boots. These only cost me £6 and I really think they are excellent! Please excuse the gumminess of mine, they need a good wipe!

And that's it guys! I also took my LUSH Therapy Massage Bar and Seanik Shampoo Bar and my mum took a lot of samples from Clarins for cleanser and creams. 

Thanks for reading xx