TAG: My Make Up Story

I saw this on another blog and thought it was really interesting. If you haven't done this yet, I tag you!

1. How old were you when you first started wearing makeup?
I think I was around year 9 so I would have been about 14. It was just a bit of concealer for my dark circles and then later got onto a teeny layer of mascara. I used to sneekily apply my make up because we weren't supposed to wear it to school and I thought my Mum would tell me off! Gradually I started wearing eye liner after seeing an Asian girl putting it on in the girls toilets and watching her to learn how to do it.

2. How did you get into makeup?
At first I just wanted to disguise my dark circles and blemishes. I just wanted to enhance my eyes a little and feel a bit prettier (I got picked on a lot at school about my looks and was always self conscious). I wore basic make up until I was in the 6th Form and reading a thread on the Lush International Forum about make up inspired me to get a bit more experimental so purchased the Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol II. It has gone from there really.

3. What are your favourite brands?
MAC is probably my favourite. I also really love Chanel recently, I love the quality of them. Illamasqua and Bobbi Brown are other brands I like to dabble in.

4. What does makeup mean to you?
I feel more alive, more like me. I feel healthier and it perks my mood up. It allows me to play around with colours and be creative. I just love make up shopping and playing with different products. I don't wear make up every day but if I go out, even to walk the boyfriend's dog, I like to put some on just because of how it makes me feel. It also helps me be more confident and daring which are things that I am always trying to get better at.

5. If you could only wear 4 products on your face what would they be?
Concealer, eye liner, mascara and blush. They are my basics.

6. What is your favourite thing about makeup?
The creativity of it. You can make yourself/someone else look so different. Whether it be every day looks to wild crazy stage/film make up. Then when you don't want to look like that any more, you just take it off. Nothing is permanent so it makes it fun to play, just like small children like face paints, it is like grown up face paint!

7. What do you think of drugstore makeup vs high end?
I have tried so many drugstore things in the past and often been disappointed. BUT there are some absolute gems out there too. Sleek and Barry M do some really good budget make up and Collection 2000 have some good bits too. I think it is just as important to read reviews on your drugstore purchases, just like you would do for high end things so you don't end up wasting your money. The thing I cannot stand about drugstore make up is the testers, ugh! They are often just so disgusting that I wont even touch them which ultimately means I wont buy the product.

8. What is one tip of advice you would give to a beginner?
Start at the basics, mascara and neutral toned gloss/balm is a good place to get started. Spread out into neutral tones as they are harder to mess up and go for palettes with a good colour selection such as Urban Decay Book of Shadows if you want to use colours as a lot of them will work well together and they are very good quality. Go buy some decent brushes, they don't need to be expensive but rubbish brushes which shed and don't pick up colour will be hard to use. When buying a foundation/concealer, get yourself colour matched if possible and then walk outside into natural light to check for yourself, store lighting is not good to make sure it is the right shade. Read reviews/watch Youtube and be selective, try not to get overwhelmed.

9. What is one makeup trend you never understood?
Too much fake tan. I love the bronzed look but there is no need to go overboard. Pick a bronzer that compliments your skin tone without being too dark or orange and apply it lightly!

10. What do you think of the beauty blogging community?
I love it, I've learnt so much through reading blogs and watching Youtube. I really enjoy blogging too, I'd been lacking creativity since leaving school even though I work in a creative job but since starting my own blog I feel spurred on to get more creative. There are bloggers that I find so inspirational and really look up to and respect.


- Jennifer

Les Fleurs D'Ete De Chanel Summer 2011 Collection - Mimosa & Morning Rose Review

Hiya! I hope everyone in the UK is enjoying their start to the Bank Holiday weekend, sucks if you are working though :( Thankfully I am staying at my boyfriend's house which is nice to have a little break from London for a few days.

L-R: Morning Rose, Mimosa

L-R: Morning Rose, Mimosa

Today I have a review of two of the Chanel Summer nail polish colours, the highly anticipated Mimosa and beautiful Morning Rose. There was also another shade released called Beige Petale but that didn't appeal to me at all, I loves my bright colours! As soon as I saw the press releases for these I just loved the yellow shade. I only had one yellow polish, Barry M yellow - do not recommend unless you want to have finger that look like they've been dipped in a pot of American mustard... bleugh, not a good look and I was actually told by somebody else that is what my nails looked like :( Chanel's offering looked much more flattering.

I recently did a post on OPI's Fiercely Fiona which is a really pretty yellow but Mimosa is quite different, it is brighter and is shot through with a pretty golden shimmer which gives the colour some depth so it doesn't look flat. Chanel are very good at putting trendy colours out there but making them flattering.

Morning Rose is a jellyish colour and again shot through with gold shimmer although bigger particles in this shade. I wouldn't say it was a proper jelly because it is quite opaque but you can see the shimmer floating within the polish just like in a jelly finish. I found capturing the glitter difficult for both of these colours because the sun refused to come out and it has been horrible in London for the past few days so I couldn't re shoot the photos unfortunately. The pink is a nice flattering shade, it is a medium pink and has slight peach tones in it. Both of these colours are perfect for Summer.

Application was smooth on both, Mimosa needed a third coat to get true bottle colour and I used a third coat of Morning Rose because I didn't paint the second coat very well but I think a third coat gives it a bit more depth with the extra shimmer going through it. The polishes retail at £17 so they are expensive but Chanel often bring out really unique shades which you can't get elsewhere. The bottles hold 13ml/0.4fl oz of lacquer.

Here are a few pictures at different angles, hopefully the shimmer is visible in some of them. Mimosa isn't quite as bright in real life, I'd say one shade lighter but Morning Rose is pretty accurate on my screen.

L-R: Mimosa, Morning Rose

L-R: Mimosa, Morning Rose

L-R: Mimosa, Morning Rose

Mimosa

Morning Rose

I think they are sold out online now which is a shame so if you would like these colours I would call/visit your local Chanel counter to see if they have it there.

- Jennifer

Oooops! A few extra MAC Surf Baby bits...

I said I wasn't going to buy them in the first place, they just didn't appeal to me... but then came the swatches... Oh dear, well I completely changed my mind.

Whilst I was in Tumbridge Wells with my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago, I saw that they had My Paradise in stock. I'd seen numerous bloggers and Youtubers swatching this and it just looked really pretty, not how I'd imagined it. I told myself to stick to not buying it because it has an overspray but then I found out that it was quite thick and when it runs out that Gold Deposit MSF would do as a substitute to put over the blush colour - more about that later. I swatched it on my hand in store and bought it.

My Paradise

My Paradise

My Paradise

It is a very pretty colour, when mixed with the gold overspray it turns into a gorgeous shimmery golden peach. The blush colour itself is very coral and matte/satin - I'm not sure but there doesn't appear to be shimmer in there. It would be a great colour for Summer skin (well duh, it is a Summer collection lol) and is surprisingly wearable. I've seen it work nicely on fair skin too but it would be worth checking in person. It is sold out online but you might come across it in store. Temptalia has some dupes listed on her site, NARS Luster appears very close to the mixed blush.

My Paradise: L-R Base blush colour, overspray colour, mixed, mixed blended

Then I noticed that Debenhams had 10% off beauty. I'd seen swatches of Short Shorts (frost) and Saffron (Satin) and thought they were nice. Whilst at the MAC counter I noticed that the MAs were wearing Sun Blonde with Saffron and I loved it but they didn't have it on display. When I saw the Debenhams sale I ordered them both along with my concealer and correcter which I was running out of.

L-R: Short Shorts, Saffron

L-R: Short Shorts, Saffron

I'm really glad I did because they are beautiful. I can't get over how pigmented the eye shadows in this collection are, they are amazing. I really hope that MAC continue to make them like this from now on. I didn't have a terracotta shade before and I was a bit scared of how it would look on my eyes but it is actually very flattering and versatile. I've used it with Sun Blonde so far which makes a lovely yellow-orange-terracotta gradient. I'd also use it with neutrals, pinks and browns and I think it would be fun to try with blues and greens.

Short Shorts

Saffron

L-R: Short Shorts, Saffron

So like I said, I read that you could dupe the gold overspray of My Paradise with Gold Deposit MSF, well I'm not sure. My Gold Deposit hasn't got much veining in it, it is mainly a deep gold copper colour with very little gold in it. I did swatch the gold area against the overspray of My Paradise and they are very very close. If this is what you want to do, I would suggest going to MAC and picking out your own Gold Deposit with the most gold veining and then swatching it against My Paradise to check how it looks. I'm not going to buy another one to use over this blush but the one I have would still look good over it although a little different. You might even be able to find an eye shadow in the same colour to use over the blush instead. Or you could just accept, like me, that once the overspray has gone, it is gone. I might go to buy NARS Luster at a later stage to replace the mixed My Paradise colour and then use My Paradise as just the base colour.

So there you go... a little bit of naughty extra shopping :P hehe!

- Jennifer

Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess Island Oasis Eyeshadow Palette Review

Outer packaging.

Hiya! I bought this palette from the Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess Collection about a month ago-ish. It contains six shades plus an applicator and a mirror in the top. It retails for £31 but Debenhams have a sale on at the moment so you can grab it for £27.90.

Actual palette

The description for the palette is:
Shades of paradise.
Highlight, define and dramatize your eyes with the shimmering metallics and sunlit satin shadows of summer.
Luxurious compact contains 6 complementary shades to wear alone or together–the possibilities are endless

The shades in the palette are a blackened olive with bronze/gold shimmer, a yellow gold, a bright turquoise blue, a pink golden bronze, a copper and a greyed blue silver. The colours have different finishes, mostly shimmers apart from the blue which is matte and the silver which is frosty. All colours are well pigmented and the shade range work well together. I particularly like the yellow with the olive shade on my green eyes. The pink bronze seems like it has a subtle duochrome effect as it appears to change colour from a pink bronze to a gold pink in different angles according to how the light hits it. It is a very pretty colour. I think this palette is universally flattering on all skintones and ages and it is perfect for Summer. You can use it for subtle looks of brighter and more dramatic looks so is a good all rounder.

  

The packaging is nice, it is sleek and sophisticated, classic like all Estee Lauder products. It should appeal to all ages. The outer is made of a faux leather feeling material in a coppery orange shade, and embossed in gold. The applicator is useless to me, as all applicators are. If you do like the applicators in palettes, this one has a little brush on the other end for blending.

Value wise, I think it is worth it, you get six colours for £31 so that is just over £5 per shade. Considering that they are well pigmented and I have got a lot of use out of it, I am glad I bought it.

- Jennifer

OPI Fiercely Fiona

This has been on my want list for a while, it is from the OPI Shrek Forever After Collection which came out last Summer. I have a few of the other colours and love the formula so decided to get this one too as I didn't own a good yellow. I got mine from ASOS on sale £7.35. I love it. The formula is just how I'd hoped it would be, the same consitency as the other Shrek polishes I own - all two coats. It doesn't streak at all and applies evenly and levels itself out. The colour really appeals to me, I think it works well on my skintone and isn't too yellow, instead being more of a primrose yellow, making it more wearable. I've taken it off today and I miss it so I think this is going to become a favorite for me. Yellow is also a trend colour for this Summer with Chanel bringing out their yellow Mimosa nail polish soon.

So do you like yellow nail polish?

- Jennifer

Marie Claire Magazine June 2011 - The Body Shop Body Butter Free!

Hiya everyone :) I just wanted to let you all know that in the June issue of Marie Claire has a free Body Shop Body Butter in the choice of three fragrances. Shea, Mango and Dreams Unlimited. I picked Shea as I don't like heavy frangraces on my skin and I love shea butter.

The body butter is nice, really thick and absorbs quickly, however, I don't like the smell. I'm not sure if Shea actually smells like it does in the tub, I normally buy L'Occitane's Shea Handcream which smells really good. This one smells quite florally, not horrible but the reason I don't like it is sometimes florals give me such a headache. I wish I'd picked a different one now but nevermind, it is a great deal as they usually retail at £5 in store for a travel size and the magazine is £3.60.

- Jennifer 

Surf Baby FOTD

I played with some of my new Surf Baby products today, I was quite happy with how it came out. I also really like yellow on my eyes, this was the first time I'd tried it.

What I used:

MAC Studio Sculpt Foundation

Bobbi Brown Corrector and Concealer with powder.

Collection 2000 translucent powder through t-zone.

MAC Lush-Light Bronze Studio Careblend Powder on cheeks, into hairline, up to temples.

Urban Decay Primer Potion

MAC Sun Blonde Eye shadow all over lid

MAC Surf USA Eye shadow through crease, blended into the yellow and then blended upwards to get the true colour. Also along lower lashes.

Urban Decay Virgin Eye shadow under brow bone and blended into Surf USA.

MAC Spiked brow pencil

Bobbi Brown Longwear Gel Liner in Black Ink

Chanel Imitable Intense Mascara

MAC Hibiscus Lipstick

I felt very summery today :)

- Jennifer