A (late) September Favourites!

Hey! Many apologies for a bit of a lull on the blogging front, I've just started back up at Uni for 2nd year and there's been so much going on with (re)freshers and my course loads and society duties but I should be back on track from now. Today I'm going to share with you some things I've been loving in September.

Quite a small amount of products this month, I've found a really good lot of products which I've been using everyday for the past few months and I've also been living on a tight budget so I haven't been buying as many new things as I usually do - hopefully should be getting something sorted and having a look around soon for some new buys though!

Origins Zero Oil Moisture Lotion: My skin has been a bit of a big oily mess recently so I decided it was time to do something about it! I picked this up after hearing a few good recommendations about Origins skincare and decided to give this ago. It's really, really great and I'm going to be doing a full review on this next week so keep an eye out for that.

Bourjois Healthy Mix foundation: I love, love, LOVE this foundation. It is seriously so good, I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a light, natural coverage. Read my full review of this here.

Naked Rescue Intensive Care Conditioner: It's always been so hard to find a cruelty-free conditioner for a budget price tag, but this is a new range that has appeared in Boots in the past few months. I've also tried one of their shampoos, which just smelt divine but this conditioner is the one I'm really impressed by and have been using alternately with my LUSH 'Retread'. 

Benefit Hoola Bronzer: It's getting into the autumn months and the nights are getting darker already! I've definitely been needing to crack out the bronzer to give my face some degree of colour. I love Hoola but it is getting a bit too dark for me. Any good recommendations for me guys?

No7 Amazing Eyes Pencil in '10 Brown: I've really been using this a lot recently. Black kohl can be quite harsh and dramatic sometimes, especially when you want quite a natural look as I often do. This one is really great as it's quite soft and easy to apply. 

MAC Eyeshadow in 'Jest': I've been reaching for this beauty so much recently, I did a post on this eyeshadow paired with MAC's wedge which I will link here. This is such a pretty and easy look to do in the morning, and one of my favourite combinations to use.

Rimmel Kate Collection in shade 01: This is a classic true red colour, and I've had this in my bag nearly all of this month. It's so great to whip out and make any make-up look appear more dramatic immediately. The formulation is great for a drugstore lipstick and I really, really like this.

Revlon Nail Enamel in 'Lilac Pastelle': The bottle on this is horrendously worn down because I bought it in a market for £1 (unopened). It's a beautiful light purple colour and really cute to wear.

China Glaze Nail Lacquer in 'For Audrey': I was saving this little gem for me to purchase when I finished placement and was finally allowed to wear nail polish again! It had been in my amazon basket for weeks and I finally ordered it this month. It's one of China Glaze's most famous colours and I can see why. I'm wearing it on my nails right now and I've been alternating between this shade and the Revlon 'Lilac Pastelle' all of this month. Love it!

That's it for this month folks! Next post should be up this week :)

August Favourites!

I know, a very late August favourites but these are the products I have been really enjoying this month. I've been going for a very natural look this month as I've been on placement for nearly all of it and so, while I am allowed to use make-up, it's not necessarily been appropriate to wear a lot of it. 

Soap and Glory 'Hand Food': This has been such a life-saver this month! If anyone works in a hospital or has spent a lot of time in hospital, then you'll know about the spirogel that needs to be applied before entering or leaving a ward. This has been completely destroying the skin on my hands and this doesn't make it completely relieved, but is definitely helping to protect my skin and make it feel nice and soft. The smell is so nice too! I'm going to be doing a full review on this soon.

Real Techniques 'Blush Brush': I got this brush for my birthday and I've used it every day since to apply my blusher. It's tapered and so the precision is great, it doesn't deposit too much product on your face and is great for blending. It's so soft and doesn't have any fallout either. I love it.

Focus Dailies One-Day Contacts: This is a weird one, I know! I don't normally wear contacts as my eyesight is not that bad but I decided to get some for placement as if I am trying to see things such as ward signs from far away and I don't have my glasses on then it would give me a headache and I just generally thought it would be easier for placement. These contacts are so easy to use and I can wear them for so long without my eyes getting irritated or dry. 

No7 'Fanomenal Lashes' Mascara: I've done a review on this mascara already so you can check that out here, but I generally love this mascara and I've been using it everyday for the past few weeks.

Revlon ColourStay 'Smoky Shadow Stick': When I first got this, I really didn't like it. I just didn't think much of it and I didn't think it was gonna do much. Nothing particularly against the product, but I just didn't really see the point of it almost? But I've tried it a few times and eventually found a great way to wear it, and I can blend this in so well to wear in the day. I don't think it gives a smokey eye as such, but it does have a lovely effect and I have been wearing it a lot. 

MAC* 'Well Dressed' Blusher: This is such a great natural blush that I think everyone should have it their make-up bag. It's the perfect light pearly pink shade that is so buildable and beautiful to wear every day.

NARS* 'Alhambra' Eyeshadow Duo: I featured this in a haul a few months ago, and since then I've been wearing it so much! It is really, really stunning and NARS eyeshadows are one of the best on the market. Their quality is incredible and all the colours are beautiful. I have been wearing the peachy-pink shade of this duo the most and this looks lush with blue eyes!

MAC* Paintpot in 'Painterly' (not pictured above): This is a great natural beige shade that can be used as either a base for shadow or on it's own as a very neutral your-skin-but-better shade. Love it!

Burts Bees Lipbalm: This is a favourite every month really as it is my absolute, all time favourite lipbalm but this month I could not have lived without it! My lips have been so dry, the wards are so so hot and humid and this has been an absolute saviour. 

Topshop 'Whimsical' Lipstick: This is a really pretty peach-pink shade lipstick which is great for summer. Topshop have a great formula for their lipsticks and this is one of my favourite shades of theirs. They've brought out a few new shades which I shall have to go and check out!

Revlon Lip Butter in 'Strawberry Shortcake': When these first came out, I was obsessed with the Rasberry Pie shade of the lip butters but more recently I've been wearing this really cute pearly pink shade. There's not much I can say about the lip butters that you probably haven't already heard, but they are so so great. Definitely check them out!

Tangle Teezer: I've written a full review on this which I will link here, but I generally have been obsessed with this recently. It's great if you have thick hair that does get tangled easily like mine. 

Thats all from me! I will see you soon.

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.

Weekend Wishlist! August Bank Holiday

These are a few things I was looking to buy this weekend. Unfortunately, I was a complete and utter idiot, and forgot my rail card on a journey from Cambridge to London and had to fork out just short of £100 in fines and new tickets! WHOOPS! I'm going to see about claiming some of it back, but until then, I am reduced to dreaming about these lovely products and crying a little about what a fool I am!

Picture from Debenhams.com

This is something I have seen around a few blogs and channels, the Clarins Colour Accents Face & Blush Powder. I got a chance to swatch this yesterday, as our local Boots has a Clarins counter. This looks so good online and to my dismay, it's even more lovely in real life! The colour payoff is great and it swatches so soft and blendable on my hand. Sob.

Picture from Debenhams.com

The other product I was looking at is the Urban Decay 'Smoked' Palette. We all know that when it comes to eyeshadow palettes, Urban Decay is the top dog and this new one looks set to continue that. I saw a great review of this on FleurDeForce's blog so be sure to check that out for all the swatches.


A few reviews to come next week guys so make sure to subscribe. I'm in a high street phase at the moment so I've got a few Revlon and Bourjois products to tell you all about :)

NOTD & Review | Revlon 'Grapefuit Fizz'

Since it's actually be nice weather for the past few days, I thought I should take a brief hiatus from the dark colours I normally sport and I've been wearing this shade from Revlon. It's called 'Grapefruit Fizz' and comes in a range with a few other 'Fizz' shades. It's one of those 'smells fruity when dry' polishes, but it really just smells strongly of Grapefruit constantly. If you're not a fan of strong smells, definitely avoid this one, as it fills the room when you're applying it and it lasts for at least 2/3 days around your nails.

In general, I'm not a fan of this nail polish. I bought it a few months ago and have only worn it a couple of times since then. It's really sheer so you need to build it up using 3 or 4 coats to make it opaque, or layer it over another colour. You can see from how much I've used in the bottle, this annoys me as this nail polish cost £6.49 and I've used nearly a 1/5 of the bottle for only wearing it 2 or 3 times! 

I usually layer it up in 3 coats and, as you can see, it's still quite sheer. I also find the smell too strong, as I mentioned. Another thing (that is probably the main thing putting me off it) is that it makes the end of my nails look really yellow. I'm not sure if this is due to a yellow undertone in the polish, or due to the fact that it's not getting colour to the ends of my nails so they look yellow in comparison? Either way, I don't like it. 

You can see in this picture that my nails look really weird! Not pretty is it?! It's a shame because I think I would really like a watermelon pink colour that this seems to suggest. 

Next post: Everyday make-up look or best tanning products?! Let me know!

Review: Revlon Photo Ready Cream Blush

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Today I'll be reviewing another product from Revlon, their new Photo Ready Cream Blushers. These are available in three shades: Flushed, Pinched and Coral Reef. Being a beauty junkie, I'd heard about these before they hit the UK from American bloggers.

I'm generally not the biggest fan of cream blushers, but I am a fan of Revlon so I was both anticipating their release and ready to pick one up when they hit the stores. The shade I have for you is Pinched, which is  a very natural, peach shade with an ever so slight shimmer. All three products swatched effortlessly in the store, but I decided to pick up the most natural one as I don't use cream blush regularly, so I thought it best to not risk walking around with unblended blusher. Imagine the horror!

As you can see in the swatch, the colour is fairly sheer, and easily blends into the skin. The texture is probably one of the creamiest I've seen in a cream blush and as it's not an overly thick product, you won't run that risk of applying too much. This is certainly starting to change my mind on cream blushers, and I may have to make a cheeky trip to Boots to pick up one of the other colours before the offer runs out!

These are available in Boots and Superdrug for £5.99 currently, with the intent of going up to £7.99, along with the Balm Stains so I would definitely pick either up now if you were thinking about it.

Sian Wants!

Ever since watching a review of this on Amarixe's blog, which you can read here, I have been majorly lusting after this foundation. Well, the entire Revlon Summer collection in general if I'm honest! The Revlon PhotoReady Collection has just hit the Boots and Superdrug in the UK so hopefully this foundation will be soon to follow. 

When the new Colourstay Collection is finally available here for me, I'll be off like a shot to pick up this foundation, having heard such good things about it. I might also pick up a cheeky Colourstay Smoky Stick while I'm at it. The Torch shade in particular looks gorgeous!

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