What my lips are loving: pearls and pink champagne!

Who can resist pearls and bubbles? If you can, you're a stronger woman than me. With the changing seasons and the winter chill setting in, I've started thinking about looking after my poor lips, which like to get all yucky and dry in winter. In order to keep them soft and pretty, I've been stockpiling goodies! Two of my latest favourites are my new lippie from the MAC cremesheen and pearl collection, and a limited edition Vaseline. Vaseline you say? Yes but not just any Vaseline :)

First up, Shanghai Spice from MAC.

 

I've blown this up so you can see how pretty the sheen is on this. The pearl in the lipstick is very delicate, not as obvious as I would have expected, but feminine and lovely. The shade itself is a delicate rose nude shade, it's a very grown up shade for me! 

This lipstick feels gorgeous on, very classy and Kate Middleton. I'm thinking nude heels and a navy dress (preferably with champers in hand). Talking of champers...

Look at that! Sorry I just had to put it in a glass, for the record I did polish it beforehand but it seems to have my grubby pawprints all over it lol. I saw this in the supermarket the other day and let out a little squeal of delight!

At the end of the day, it's just another Vaseline but it's so much more luxurious to carry about with you than plain old Vaseline. On reading the back, it actually does have alcohol and wine extract in it, and you can smell it in the balm.

The scent is rose based I'd say, but with a tingly sweet scent that definitely smells like champagne, it's lovely and lasts when you have it on. The tin claims that it tints your lips slightly, as you can see above the product is very light in colour, it makes no difference whatsoever lookswise once on. It does however feel lovely, smell delicious and the tin is super girly and decadent. On an aside, this looks great over Benefit's Cha Cha tint on your lips!

Well there you go, lovelies. Pearls and champagne for the weekend. It's Friday so pouts at the ready, if you want to give your lips a VIP upgrade, I'd recommend these products.

8/10 for the MAC as it could be more pigmented and 10/10 for the Vaseline as a favourite staple

Post Holiday Blues

Hello you lot, have you missed me? I've missed you. I got back from France last night, and am currently in limbo all out of sync with the weather and holiday frame of mind. Sigh. We had an amazing time, and a week wasn't enough. I nearly cried like a small child when we arrived in Edinburgh to see people bundled up in coats and the rain drizzling around us. But I did get some amazing French goodies, so I will apologise in advance for the onslaught of reviews that is heading your way. First up though, a picture of some patisseries, just because.

YUM. Every second street has a patisserie or boulangerie that puts our bakeries to shame. They are like works of art, and taste amazing. I'm making myself want to go back just looking at this picture. So lets move on. As I'm sure you will be surprised to hear, I managed to control myself at Duty Free and only bought from the MAC counter. I was trying not to spend a fortune before even getting on the plane, so decided to just buy a lipstick...then an eyeshadow blending brush.

So I figured, everyone bangs on about Mac Angel, I really need to see what the fuss is all about. It's a Frost Finish, which I didn't know as it's always portrayed as a perfect nude shade. Also Kim K's favourite (YAWN). As a beauty blogger of sorts, I really should own some of these cult shades to see what I think about them, contrary to following the hype I tend to want to disprove it, maybe my little inner rebel coming out!

As I'm unable to keep things for long without using them, I only waited to get on the plane before taking pics of this. You can only image what I'm like on Christmas Day. Yep, I'm basically an overgrown child. In the bullet this looks like a dusky rose pink with brown undertones. I wouldn't say that the frost finish is very obvious for this shade at all, you really have to peer at the bullet to see the shimmer and it isn't obvious at all on.

This is pretty heavily swatched as I found that it wasn't very highly pigmented on the skin.

Am I blown away by this? No, not really. It's a pretty colour, very wearable but doesn't pack enough of a punch for me. It's a bit too...vanilla. But I'll add it to the collection and I'm sure it will get used at some point. The brush I bought was another Pixiwoo inspired purchase, those girls are no good for my bank balance. A lot of my eyebrow brushes are from various sets, and tend to be smaller in size. I had seen this brush being used by Sam in a couple of smokey eye videos and liked how it softened out the look.

This is the MAC 217 Blending brush, the Pixiwoo girls always seem to keep theirs very clean but looking at these bristles I don't see myself managing to keep this clean at all. In France the weather was so warm that all my eyeshadow and other makeup seemed to slide down my face so I ended up wearing just BB cream and mascara, so I will need to try this out and get back to you on it!

Speaking of the weather, I had a couple of little sun tan lotions to try out while I was away, so just wanted to mention these briefly.

We have Hawaiian Tropic Silk Hydration and Green People sun lotion with tan accelerator. These are both SPF 15, which is what I would normally use. The Hawaiian Tropic has "ribbons" of hydration throughout the product. The packaging is lovely and you can see the swirled effect through the plastic. It smells delicious, as do all their products, although this is floral rather than fruity. Your skin is indeed left soft and protected but I got rather annoyed at this products as it separated if you didn't use it for over 6 hours or so, meaning that you squirted out a sort of yellow oil and the cream separately. It was fine if you just shook it back together but I wasn't a fan overall. This is £14.99 for 180ml.

The Green People's packaging is dull as ditchwater, but the product is 98% natural in origin and smells of essential oils. It was just a bog standard white cream but certainly did the job. I put this on my legs to attempt to get them to change colour at all as they are very stubborn, and did see a slight difference, but nothing major. If you are into natural products I would definitely recommend this product. It is £17.95 for 200ml.

Anyway guys, it's good to be back, you will be hearing about France for the next couple of posts then I promise to shut up about it! If you want to know, I was in the Limousin region near Limoges :)
xx

Inglot futuristic lips

Hello you lot, today I'm reviewing an item I bought way back in March but had totally forgotten about. When I was up in Aberdeen for work I found the Inglot stall in the new shopping mall next to the train station. I was instantly curious, as I had not heard of the brand but could tell straight away that the colours were highly pigmented and the products good quality. I've since lost the box but the packaging is all a sleek black with white writing, simplistic and classy.

How stunning is that? As you can see I have shade 545, but at the time there were about 6 shades of this AMC lipgloss to choose between. They all had this vaguely scary petrol-effect going on and I was a bit worried they would look ridiculous on, but after swatching I settled for this one. They are all £9.00 I believe, which is a very reasonable price. I spoke to the MUA and she explained she had worked for various high end brands (MAC etc) and she considered these products to be just as good, and that they had been created by a Polish chemist who had worked in the cosmetics industry.

This still looks a little OTT doesn't it! Well fear not as it doesn't look too bad on. This shade makes me feel very futuristic, it's quite a robotic, toxic looking colour which I love. I could imagine pairing this with Illamasqua makeup, and this is cheaper.

Sorry, I don't have any other makeup on here so my skin looks a little bleurgh, but this is the lipgloss on its on, lightly layered. The petrol-effect is mimised and it turns into a lovely peachy-orange colour which is very wearable.

If you want to use this to full effect, layer it over a lipstick. This is it over Mac Viva Glam Nicki. This picture doesn't do the neon brightness of this look full justice so here are a couple more!

I could have sworn I paid £9.00 for this but I've just checked their site and its £12.00. Ah well. It's still worth that I'd say. It's a lighter gloss, not thick and sticky, I'm guessing it must be water-based. This is great as it is very moisturising but I do think this formulation will make you want to reapply more often. However no hair getting stuck to it in the wind! I love the look of this layered over a base colour but I don't think the effect is strong enough when just used on its own. It also smells lovely.

There are some other stunning shades from this range, you can find them here. I'd love to see 546 layered over Mac St Germain, can you think of any nice combos?

9/10 and will most likely get one of the other colours!

I hate duty free

I don't really, I LOVE duty free, but I hate the way it sucks me in magnetically. I don't think I've ever not bought anything in duty free. I nearly had a heart attack in Florida when I realised our terminal didn't have a proper duty free (no MAC, Bobbi Brown, Chanel or anything). I just get so excited, I love a bargain and you get the chance to wander, usually not being too harassed by sales staff like you are in a department store. The lights, the deals and being surrounded by gorgeous products all in one place. It's like I've died and gone to heaven! So I think you know where this is leading...

MAC Bombshell! It's my first frost finish and I knew I'd probably buy a lipstick so I wanted something different. I didn't count on Studio Sculpt winding its way into my basket also (oooops). I really don't need any more foundation at the moment, which beauty blogger does really? But I tried it in Harvey Nichols a couple of weeks ago and it wormed its pretty little way into my heart. But that's for another review :)

The first pictures were taken in my hotel in Camden on my Blackberry so sorry for the rubbish quality! I wanted to wear it for work the day after I bought it so wanted pics of the untainted bullet. I've always thought of frost finishes in a very 80's old-fashioned way, like blue eyeshadow and pink cheeks. However, as always MAC have hit the nail on the head. This shade is a dusky rose colour with the faintest metallic gold sheen to it, if I was to describe the formulation I would say it's more moisturising that either my satin or amplified creme lipsticks. It lasts well, doesn't feather and feels great on. It fades evenly, which my amplified lipsticks don't.

I love love love this colour. You really need to see it on in the sun to see the depth of colour and sheen. It's a deeply feminine colour that would match neutral eyes and a flushed cheek, great for shopping, work or a romantic dinner. It's not a POW in your face colour like some of my favourites, but I feel very womanly with this on. I don't think this is a well known shade either so I'm giving it a shout-out.

My lips feel very moisturised and plumped up, I hope you can see the golden sheen to this colour. It's like they've taken all the duller versions of this type of shade made by every cosmetics company under the sun, and perfected it. Let me know what you think, but I'm very happy with this.

Oh and incase you were wondering why I was in duty free in the first place, I was down in London for work. As it turns out I am far too old to shop in the city centre (Topshop was a massively stressful experience) and much preferred trawling through Camden market and haggling with the stall owners! I bought a pretty navy dress and found an Aldo sale shop so got some gorgeous sandals:

It was so warm that I HAD to buy these, honest...and then I wore them back to Scotland, and it was raining when I got off the plane so looked like a right plonker. Fabulous. As part of my job, we got taken to lunch to a lovely sushi/noodle place called Bento in Camden, look at my gorgeous flowering jasmine tea! I have to get some of this for the flat.

All in all a successful trip! I also managed to fall in love with Estee Lauder Double Wear light in the airport on the way back but managed to avoid buying any but I go away again next month so we'll see what happens then!!! Oddly I'm NC20 in Mac but the lightest shade in Estee. I'm never sure if it's the light in airports but I always seem to change shade. Oh and smell this the next time you're in Boots, it's beautiful and on my wishlist:

Anyway lovely readers, that's my little update, back in a day or so with my next review. Hope you're well and thanks for reading, as always :) xxx

MAC Nail Varnish- Screening Room (LE)

I have been buying from MAC for around ten years now, and have considered buying their nail varnishes before but somehow never quite got round to it. As you may know, I had a little shopping trip yesterday and ended up in Harvey Nichols as I had a £5 voucher off ESPA products which I got when I purchased my SpaFresh Toner. However as always, the MAC counter exerted it's unnatural force over me and I ended up there first. Speaking to the MUA I found out that there is going to be a full permanent collection of nail varnishes coming out very soon which we both got rather excited about! As I'm trying to be good and not spend much, I just bought a nail varnish from the Reel Sexy collection.

Let me introduce you to Screening Room:

I am always drawn to teal or turquoise colours, they remind me of the sea! I somehow don't have any nail varnishes in this specific colour, and I know how highly pigmented MAC's eyeshadows and lippies are so had great faith in this being good quality too. The Hey Sailor! Collection has a white nail varnish that I was tempted by for nail art but then I thought surely I'll be able to find a cheaper dupe somewhere (these are £9.00 each)

That's our park in the background, what a horrible day! This is a very creamy nail varnish, it only takes two coats to be fully ready to go but you could get away with one. It dries so quickly, I would say under two minutes to be completely dry and has a really glossy rich finish. It really is fabulous quality. On day two and no tip wear so far.

Please excuse the shabby application, but look how SHINY it is! There was only one small gripe, the brush is a little stiff at first so all my first coats were quite patchy if I pressed the brush a little harder than usual and then had to fill in the gaps. Saying that, when you top up some varnishes there is a visible overlap whereas this just melt into the varnish already there.

I like the fact that the colour in the bottle matches the dried colour on the nails also, and if anything the polish is MORE shiny than the liquid version. Very happy with this. Also like the matt lid of the bottle, is there anything MAC can get wrong?

10/10 and would recommend you ladies get your mitts on one of these soon!

FOTD- Everyday shopping look

So yesterday I had a day off and was meant to be going to meet one of my best buds but she had a bit of a family emergency so we had to call it off (poor thing :() but I had to go into town anyway so I thought I may as well make a day of it. I don't like girls who wander round town in heels and hair extensions, but it's nice to feel a bit more done up than normal isn't it? This is my everyday makeup with lashes thrown in and a bolder lip:

Hello nose!!! Lol gotta love our imperfections eh? So for this look, I used:

• The Porefessional by Benefit
• Loreal Nude Magique BB Cream
• Mac Mineralize Blush in Dainty
• Benefit "They're Real" Mascara
• Bobbi Brown Long Wear Cream Eyeshadow in Velvet Plum
• Mac Shroom eyeshadow
• Mac Trax eyeshadow
• Bobbi Brown Long Wear Gel Eyeliner in Black Ink
• The Vintage Cosmetics Company Fake Eyelashes in Gracie
• Mac Satin Lipstick in Rebel.
• Brown infill powder (not sure where it's from)

Generally unless I have loads of spots, I like to keep my makeup light and opt for a light foundation or BB cream rather than a full coverage. I like to prime if I know I'm going to be out or working all day so my makeup doesn't shift, and the Porefessional is good for this. A bit of blush to warm up the cheeks (this blush actually doesn't photograph as bright as it is on). 

Then onto the eyes. I wanted a neutral eye as I was going for a bold lip, and this is my go-to eyeshadow. I love the formulation of the Bobbi Brown long-wear cream eyeshadow and really want another one, if only they weren't so expensive! As you can see my eyes are very deep set so I like to put a slightly shimmery/pearlescent shade on to open up my eyes, or for nights out loads of eyeliner to accentuate the almond shape. I have such tiny lids that most eyeshadow seems to vanish!!

It's more of a browny gold colour, which goes well with shroom which is a great highlighter colour for under your brow.  The glitter is obvious in real in life and I have had a lot of people comment on it. I love this eyeshadow it's so easy to chuck on day to day and blends well but does dry quickly. The lashes are the ones I got with my SheSaid beauty box last month and I love them! I use the eyeliner to blend the lashes in as my lash glue dries black so it covers any messy bits when my eyes are open.

I wore this floaty blouse with jeans, little ballet pumps and a tweed jacket with elbow patches, and used my hair donut to put my hair up in a more-or-less perfect bun. If you're busy, or if it's raining and you don't want to risk an afro, I always think putting your hair up is a nice alternative. This hair donut is a foam ring to help you create a nice bun, it came from Primark and was only a pound! I love it, it takes less than 5 mins, a foam ring and a bunch of kirby grips.

So that's my first face of the day post, let me know what you think and if you would like to see any more of these! xxx

MAC goodies!!

So you may have seen my Tuesday treats posts about the Debenhams sale and the sneaky order I placed for a couple of lipsticks. Well they arrived the morning after! How is that for service? I was so impressed. They also included a couple of samples, neither of which I was that fussed for but hey any free samples are great!

I need to take a minute, as I think my all-consuming obsession with makeup is getting to me, I nearly burst when I heard the package drop through the letterbox. Is this normal? I seriously hope not, or our world is full of women distracted by pretty colours and other people's nails...Anyway onto the GOODIES!!

Ladies, I present to you Rebel and Impassioned. *Cue dramatic music* Aren't they pretty? I am so chuffed I ordered them now, they are such gorgeous colours. Rebel is my first satin finish MAC lipstick and I really enjoy the consistency. Here's a little swatch of both of them on my arm:

Impassioned (L), Rebel (R)

I got a bit overexcited with my Impassioned swatch didn't I? Now I have them, I think they are definitely night-time shades which I will have to play around with. They are both so highly pigmented, bold colours, I would be straying into drag queen territory if I wore them with a dark eye I think. I also reckon a little tan or bronzer will be necessary to avoid Addams family comparisons. I'm ready for my close-up...

 Pinky pout! It's such a rich pink, both classy and bold at the same time. LOVE.

This colour just cannot be ignored. I actually feel more sexy with it on! Even with the spots that have suddenly sprung up on my face over the past week (naughty skin) I still feel like Dita Von Teese or a pinup girl. Might wear this everywhere just because I can. I can totally rock this in Asda...

10/10 and these are both fabulous

Tuesday's Treats!

Today I'm loving...Debenhams 10% off all beauty including MAC and Bobbi Brown! If you go through Quidco cashback site you can get 5% more off at the checkout and 5% cashback too! Really, it would be rude not to! Also FREE shipping. So with all these little nudges, I have been scouring their site, I was planing on branching out and getting some Too Faced or Bare Minerals for the first time, but ended up back at the MAC page, drooling over all the lipsticks I had seen at the counter in Selfridges.

Not exactly being a wallflower, I hesitated over all the gorgeous nudes and daytime colours like Angel, Hue and Creme de Nude. Then ignored them and headed straight to the bright colours I knew I would end up with anyway. What a little peacock I am! So...I sortof ended up getting two shades, Rebel and Impassioned! I don't own any purpley shades and wasn't quite brave enough to go for a dark purple so ended up with Rebel. I have stolen these pictures through google and will do a full review once they both arrive, but these will give you a good idea.

Mac Rebel

Mac Impassioned

As far as unnecessary purchases go, this is right up there. But I cannot wait for them to arrive! After losing my MAC Viva Glam Nicki after only three days use, I was desperate to fill the void and I think these will do just that. Have you had any Tuesday Treats? xxx

Back to reality!

How rubbish is coming back from holiday?? We were only away four days but it felt like so much longer which was lovely :) I was in Manchester with my boyfriend Richard, we went to see Jerry Seinfeld one night and Paul Merton the next so made it into a little trip. I've only been to Manchester for work before so it was really nice to go for pleasure and we got amazing weather, it was sunny 80% of the time, if a little windy, I even had to go buy flip flops as I had "cleverly" packed light and just taken Uggs for the day time! Much delicious food was consumed and a *ahem* few cocktails also. Mangotini anyone??

Richard is good at researching places before we visit, so we went to Mr Toms Victorian Chophouse for food, The Room and the Alchemist for cocktails and a couple of other nice little places like Jack Spratt's for lunch. We also discovered Barburrito which is the most amazing chilled-out Mexican food, come to Edinburgh Barburrito!! Here's a gratuitous pic of the two of us in the Alchemist with our test-tubey shots. Everything is done like a chemistry experiment and one of my cocktails was wood-smoked with a bunsen burner in front of me!

Obviously, there are loads of shops and shopping centres in Manchester, so I managed to sneak in some purchases, including the much longed-for Indian Ocean by Models Own woohoo! The Harvey Nichols in Manchester was a little disappointing compared to ours in Edinburgh, but the Selfridges is AMAZING! Richard had to leave me alone at the MAC dept, chatting away to the MUA as I tend to get a little engrossed haha. But anyway, we did experience some culture at the war museum, which was amazing but sad and thought provoking (understandably). We both turned into quivering wrecks when we decided to visit the viewing platform as the lift was very shaky and seemed like it was going to drop at any minute! Here is me looking small in a big cartoon room and Richard trying to look manly next to a tank LOL.

Enough culture, onto the haul! I was pretty restrained actually for me, only one Mac purchase which was good (sort of). So we have two candles which smelled yummy, Morange Mac Lipstick, Models Own Lilac Dream and Indian Ocean, pretty good huh? 

Ooh pretty things! I also got a couple of Primark items, but nothing else really jumped out at me, which is typical but good for my bank balance. I wore the Mac lipstick in our night out so see the top pics, but here are a couple of close-ups for a better idea. Now I don't need to tell you how good Mac lipsticks are, how creamy they are and how nice they smell, but I can tell you this is such a gorgeous yet wearable colour!! If you want to get brave and branch out, I seriously recommend this shade.

Well, that's my wee update sorry for being quiet while I've been away and this very pic-heavy post!! Glad to be home safe and sound but can't wait to go away again! Are any of you away on a city break soon? xx