The birthday hauls. Part One - Beauty and nails!

As you may well know it was my 21st birthday on April 2nd and many a shopping was done! So I thought in true blogger spirit I would show you all the wonderous things that I purchased that day, but as a lot was bought I've decided to split it in to segments just to make it a little easier. First up is part one, beauty and nails. I may have gone a bit excessive on the nail varnish and not as wild as I expected on the beauty, which is really not me. However when you see I think you'll understand.

First up, the nails!
I may have gone a little mad on the Barry M's and bought five of them, but hey they're all such wonderful colours and are so pretty for the spring!
I bought three of the gelly hi shine polishes in true spring/summer colours. From left to right we have Peach Melba, Dragon and Prickly Pear. I have wanted peach melba for well over a year now but it seemed that every time I went to pick it up it was out of stock so when I saw it on my birthday I knew I had to buy it then else I never would. It is such a perfect pretty colour and I truly love it. I saw a girl on Instagram wearing Dragon and that's when I fell for it. It looked to be the ideal every day pink polish and I adore that, as sometimes in the spring some pinks can be a bit too much. Whereas this is exactly the right shade, not too deep and not too vibrant or in your face. I know that I will get so much use out of this, as I will prickly pear. I've never seen this before but as I love pastels anyway I knew I needed this gorgeous lilac in my collection. God forbid I was going to be without this! The formula's to the gelly hi shine nail products is excellent. You need about 2/3 coats of each to get a pure pigment but they dry so fast and last for so long that they're just superb, I honestly can't get enough of them.

   

I also picked up two of the new aquarium collection polishes that I thought were absolutely divine looking! First is Mediterranean and the beautiful glitter one is named Treasure Chest. Both of these are awesome and just make me envision mermaids and tropical fish and what not. My Dad is obsessed with Treasure chest and wants me to wear it all the time as he justifiably thinks it's the coolest thing ever, being made up of a clear base and gold flecks of glitter. Oh its lovely really, and as it has a clear base it makes it ideal for layering. I have found that with 3/4 coats you can achieve a completely opaque glitter look, however this makes for a longer drying time but its so worth it. I also love Mediterranean as it's the only two toned polish that I own. It's made of gold and burgundy glitter polishes and greatest this beautiful look on the nail, that I think actually looks pretty sophisticated after about 3 coats. Both of these are wonderful however if you pick up treasure chest I would recommend getting yourself a good top coat as some of the glitter bits, being quite large, can be quite sharp if they stick up. Safety first kids!

  

Finally I bought three Rimmel London polishs as I just adore the formula for all of these. I picked up one from the new Rita Ora collection named Lose Your Lingerie, frisky. A regular from the 60 seconds line called Round And Round In Circles, and a lasting finish in Cute As A Kitten Heel. You may think that the two yellow ones look very similar but I think that's just due to the artificial lighting, in actual fact round and round in circles is a beautiful pale pastel yellow where as cute as a kitten heel is neon yellow, stupidly bright! I have been obsessed with using yellows in nail art recently and they're also a wicked colour in the spring time! I know that with any rimmel nail varnish I can't go wrong even with a scary colour choice like yellow. The Rita Ora one is so cute it's unreal. I wouldn't call it a sexy colour so I think the name is a bit off haha, however it is a gorgeous colour regardless. It is such a pale pink shiny pink that in some lights it is very close to white. I absolutely love colours like this as they give the illusion that you're more tanned than you maybe really are. Which for me (Caspar) is a clear winner!   

         


Now for the beauty side of things!


I did pick up quite a few base products, including two primers. The first of which is this. Yes it's Maybelline's baby skin instant pore eraser. I know I said I would never buy this due to the tester feeling really greasy but when I went into a different boots and tested it, it felt perfect and I thought I may as well give it a shot. So I did, and I am SO glad I took the plunge! This primer leaves the skin feeling like silk and looking so near perfect that I get almost tempted to not wear foundation! Almost.. However foundation applies so freaking beautifully over this I can barely believe it! This is ideal for when you're in a hurry too as it sets in to the skin so quickly, without leaving you with that crazy white residue that some other primers have. I feel like this is going to be very long lasting due to needing the smallest smallest amount to cover the face, so at £8 and seemingly quite long lasting I think that it's an absolute bargain product!

The second primer is this by MUA (make up academy) and is the Undress Your Skin flawless skin primer. This costs £5 so is one of the higher priced products from MUA, but it is completely worth every penny. Starting with the packaging this has so much quality to it that other, more expensive brands miss out on. Yes, it's not much to look at as basically all the MUA products have a kind of basic look to them however the materials are excellent. First off it's a glass bottle, and not one of my other primers is in a glass bottle. As a matter of fact I think most of my foundations in glass bottles have been well over £8 even from the drug store, so to get that while paying only £5 you really cant complain. And the second thing I wanted to mention about the packaging is the pump which has a control stop function to it. Basically if you twist the pump to the right it locks up so you can't press any product out meaning there is no waste of product. As for the product itself I have been left extremely impressed by this. It is a transparent unscented gel that glides across the skin leaving your face feeling like silk. I wouldn't say this does a great deal for the appearance of redness but in terms of the pores I do definitely notice a great difference. My make up applies perfectly and seamlessly over this too so to make a big statement here, this is by far my favourite primer, ever!

I did buy another base product from MUA which is the Undress Your Skin Illuminating Foundation in 'porcelain', which was the tiny price of £3. Now as far as packaging goes with this product we're right back down to a 1 star rating haha! The colours are not pretty, the plastic tube is really bendy and feels really low quality and the colour name is actually a sticker that is partially peeling off. However in typical MUA tradition it is what lies beneath the packaging that outstands me. This foundation is absolutely lush, it feels more like a BB cream on the skin as it is so thin and light whilst staying just thick enough to give you amazing coverage. It feels very powdery once applied and not at all tacky or sticky so there is not much need at all for a setting powder. Personally I have quite good skin, so I don't get spots or bad blemishes, just a tiny bit of controllable dry skin and redness in the cheeks and nose. After playing around with this I noticed that it is very buildable and if I add a tiny bit more to my redness it disappears completely and my skin is left looking beautiful and glowing. I would highly recommend picking this up if you want an affordable every day foundation. This is definitely a staple piece in my make up bag now!

The only other foundation I picked up is the Rimmel London Lasting Finish Foundation in 010 light porcelain. This offers so many different things that I couldn't resit putting it to the test. It apparently gives up to 25 hours wear, is transfer proof and gives a hydrating and lightweight feel. It is long lasting, I won't deny it of that and it does feel extremely hydrating on the skin. However if you ask my boyfriend's black shirts if it is transfer proof you'll get a resounding 'no' and if 'lightweight' means really thick and creamy then of course it's lightweight. I have extremely mixed feelings about this foundation and I feel that it is just far too heavy for my skin to be worn on a regular basis, however the colour match is beautiful and I do really like how moisturising it feels so I may make this somewhat of my summer foundation. I won't say I am disappointed with this but it isn't a product I would rush out to repurchase when it was half empty. I think I will give it a bit of time and see how it pans out in the different humidity levels, you never know, it may be a keeper after all.

I picked up another of the Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer in 'fair 1'. I picked this up as a repurchase after my first one finally ran out and I accidently picked up the wrong but right shade. I used to own this in 'light 2' and now comparing the two I cannot believe how orange it was, whereas my new one is the perfect shade for my ghost like face. Now we like this don't we, as beauty bloggers and such this is just the must have concealer and while I can't lie and say that it's not all it's cracked up to be but I just can't help but love the Seventeen's Phwoar Paint just a little bit more. However this is a great product and very reasonably priced for something that literally will last you years and so I picked one up just for the sake of having it as a brilliant every day, long lasting, perfectly colour matching concealer that really does brighten up the eyes so very very well. This is just another excellent product from Collection who seemingly cannot go wrong at the moment, especially for the money they ask of us.

The final base product I bought was Elizabeth Arden's Advanced Eye - Fix Primer. This was £10 from TK Maxx and was reduced from £16. After buying the Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream  I really wanted to try out some more of her products particularly some of her make up range. This comes in a 7.5ml bottle and you may think that that is quite a rip off for the price of it but when you think about how little of the product you have to use and how long it will last, it's actually quite bargainous. I use about a pin head sized dot of this, and that covers both of my eyes completely up to the brow bone. Now this looks gorgeous on it's own as it looks like the perfect nude eye shadow colour and is beautiful in the spring, but it's also an amazing base for eyeshadow. The consistency of this reminds me of my Avon eye primer but it so much better. You see this comes out quite thick but when you work it into the skin it seems to just melt perfectly and become part of your foundation/base. I just love the effect this gives to the eyes and I am so glad that I picked this up.

Sticking with the eyes I finally bought this after months and months and more months of consideration. This is Loreal paris' Super Liner Blackbuster eyeliner  and is really similar to the thick ACB eye liner I picked up from Tesco a while back. I love pretty much everything about this eye liner from the black and gold packaging which is sophisticated and gorgeous, to the super soft tip that feels like air against the skin. I can't get enough of this as it creates the most perfect winged look with next to no effort being involved at all. Oh and the actual product is just mindblowing too, this is completely transfer and smudge proof. You could rub at your eyes for hours and this wouldn't budge an inch, I'm hoping that there's a waterproof version of this and if there is I will definitely be picking it up. The only thing about it that is slightly less that brilliant is that it's not the most pigmented liner I've ever seen, however it's easily buildable and extremely fast drying so there is always a way around it. Perfect product? Maybe. Maybe.

Finally I picked up three little lip products. The first of which being Rimmel London's Rita Ora Collection Lasting Finish Colour Rush Balm in '110 Make Me Blush'.  This smells like cake. Enough said.... haha. Seriously though this smells so good and applies beautifully too. It is very similar to the Ted Baker crayons that I got for Christmas in that it leaves you with a real pop of glossy colour however this is much more long lasting that the TB ones. If you're not too fond of the glossy feel you can just blot it out and it becomes much more matte, but personally I love it. The colour is perfect for spring/summer, the picture doesn't do it justice but it is a real Barbie pink colour that is so girly and vibrantly fun. I know I will probably over use this in a few weeks when it gets a bit brighter and warmer. I can't wait!

Of course I had to pick up another of the Maybelline BabyLips Lip Balms and this time I got peach kiss. Oooh this is just lovely. We all know that Babylips are a great moisturising lip balm anyway so I wont go into the formulation side of things too much. The colour of this is gorgeous and makes for a really nice nude style colour so it's great worn alone. However after a little experimenting I found that this looks amazing on top of the colour rush lip balm shown above. The two together create a gorgeous light dusky rose colour that is perfect for every day and I'd like to think that even being on top of another product you're still getting all that lovely moisture. There is such a wide variety of babylips lip balms and they're so reasonably priced that there's got to be one out there for everyone. As a matter of fact I do know quite a few people that actually collect them!

My final product for this blog is quite possibly my favourite product of them all. This is a Max Factor Lipstick in Rosewood. There's a bit of a story behind this lipstick. A few weeks before my birthday I saw the new Clarins' lipsticks and one was called Rosewood and I instantly fell in love with the colour of it. Then on my birthday when I went to pick it up, I first swatched it and it was the wettest lipstick I had ever seen, honestly it was more of a gloss stick that a lipstick so I did leave it which I was pretty bummed out about. But then I came across this lipstick which is a total dupe to the colour of the Clarins one. They are literally identical in colour however this is so much more solid and durable that the other. I love this lipstick so much as it suits me perfectly, is a beautiful velvet like look on the lips and is about half the price of the Clarins one. I have already seen another two of these lipsticks that I HAVE to buy and they are in 'Raisin' and 'English Rose' and are beautiful shade. Since I haven't had this off my lips since buying it I really do have to say how happy I am with it! And come on, look at that gold packaging. Aren't you already craving it?
So there we go, that's part one all done and dusted. Part two should be up next week and will probably be around the skincare side of things, so keep your eye on my facebook page for the link if you're interested in that wont you?
Much Love, G x














 

March Favourties!

Here we are again, a week in to the new month and I'm only just getting round to posting my monthly favourites post. I do hope you don't expect any more of me, as even now when I'm on holiday from work I just find so so so much to do! As I mentioned previously, March usually drags for me what with it being my Birthday at the beginning of April. Oh but not this year, in the blink of an eye March was gone and I was like fandangled about what to write about. However I did pick up a few things in March that I absolutely fell in love with, meaning that all (if not most) of the items in this favourites post are also unseen by yourselves so we can also call this a little haul to, eh? I'm just going to think of it as killing two birds with one stone!
First up is the Vaseline 'spray & go' moisturiser. After using this for the first time it left me thinking "Where the hell has this been all my life?!". I absolutely am in love with this stuff, deeply. I bought the cocoa radiant scent and let me tell you, this stuff smells sooooo goooooood. Usually I moisturise after I have a shower and have found myself taking more morning showers simply because this scent will last all day long. I find if I use it after an evening shower I can't smell it as well after I've been in bed, probably due to rubbing against pj's and sheets and what not. So I've been using this mostly in the mornings religiously. The functionality of this is also a dream. This is advertised as being 'non-greasy' and I was a little curious if not sceptical about that but it actually is! When you spray this on you are covered in a mist of product which you have to quickly rub in when it then sinks in to the skin and dries SO fast. There's nothing I hate more than being left feeling sticky while waiting for moisturiser to set in so this is a perfect product for me. Also this works just as well if you're a little damp which is great for when you're in a hurry! I do think these are a little over priced at around £5 each, although if you hunt around you can usually find these on an offer of around £3-£4. I'm really intrigued to see how long this is going to last and see if I get my moneys worth!


On to nails now and a product that has become my holy grail of sparkles! This is Maybelline New York's color show crystallize nail varnish in '232 rose chic'. This is the most beautiful glitter polish I probably own and is a light dusky pink colour and just packed with glitter. What's even better is that one coat is plenty enough as it is completely opaque. I have two other color show varnish's and just like those, this dries really quickly, within a few minutes. Unlike those however this seems to be almost completely chip resistant and one application of this lasted me about 4 days before looking anything near shabby, by then though I just fancied a change. Something I wont ever get bored of though is the texture, as this has glittery particles in it, once dried it has a really cool grainy feel to it which is something I just can't get enough of. This for me is the ultimate girly girl colour nail varnish and I have a feeling that this will run out fast due to overuse! Top marks Maybelline!

If you have me on Instagram you may have seen this picture I uploaded a few weeks into March of some nail art I did. And LOVED! I don't think of myself as being any good at nail art in the slightest however I think this worked super well and was a lovely way of edging into spring! I used Revlon's 310 'timeless' as a base colour, Barry M's 'papaya' for the petals, an unnamed miss sporty polish for the centres and Rimmel London's 'round and round the garden' for the stems'. I used a dotting tool from Avon which has a small ball on one end and a precision detailing brush on the other end for the stems, making this the easiest nail look ever. I find that with dotting tools you don't need any shred of talent to pull of a beautiful look as it's practically all done for you! The response I got on Instagram to this really shocked me, due to my lack of ability and I was just over joyed that so many people liked it!

Moving on to cosmetics now and starting with the starting product, primer! I picked up Rimmel London's Stay Matte primer in Tesco at the end of March as I was in desperate need of a new one and I had seen a lot of people recommending this on social networking sites. This is one of those weird products, good weird, but still weird. For starters this looks, smells and feels like a facial cream. I'm used to primers being transparent where as this one is completely white. When applying this I found it feels a little thick (like a face cream) compared to other primers and is quite difficult to rub into the skin. You may ask yourself how this has made it into my favourites if it has all these faults. That is because of the end result. This leaves your skin feeling so soft and makes your foundation apply seamlessly and flawlessly and that for me, makes all those little odd bits completely worth it! I have since bought some other primers but you'll just have to wait and see for them!

I know that there's this massive rave about Collection's lasting perfection concealer which yes is by far the best concealer out there in the drug store. Oh, but wait, is it really? Has no one else picked this up and been as utterly amazed as me? This is Seventeen's Phwoar Paint in 'fair' and is now, my ultimate favourite concealer EVER! When I use this all my dark spots and undereye circles disappear and any blemishes are completely concealed. This melts into the skin and foundation alike and is the most perfect colour match for me. On the back of this packaging there is a typical little blurb from Seventeen saying "The One. The hard core concealer to wage wars on under eye circles. Put this creamy formulation under eyes to blend in. Get concealed. Get gorgeous". So many words in there strike themselves out as being true to me such as hard core and creamy! This formula is so thick and pigmented that you need the very smallest amount to achieve a fully concealed look. I think that this product is the one that has stood out and made an impact on me, making me the most impressed in a very long time!

Also on the eyes is the Rimmel London Sexy Curves full body mascara that I mentioned in my previous post, thus meaning I won't go into too much detail. However I have just been loving the naturally separated look this gives me. As I said before it's crap for giving you a look of curled/curved lashes, but it is so great for adding length and volume while keeping your lashes separated and looking beautifully natural. As we're headed into spring/summer now I like to keep my eye make up a little less dark than in the Autumn/Winter and so natural lashes for me are a must, especially if I wear no eyeshadow at all. It's such a shame that this isn't available in stores now (to my knowledge) as I'd probably pick one up every time I went in! However this is available on many websites for such a few little pennies that it'd be silly not to invest!


My final beauty product for the monthly favourites is Rimmel London's lasting finish lipstick in '058 drop of sherry'. When I bought this lipstick I then wore it every day for weeks! I just adore it and I feel that the colour of it suits my skin tone perfectly. It is a sheeny deep pink colour that has brown and red undertones to it making it not so 'in your face' as other pink lipsticks. For some reason brown undertoned lipsticks are ideal for me and so this is no exception. I love the formulation of this too. Not only does it smell beautiful but it applies fantastically. As I said this has somewhat of a sheen to it, however if you don't fancy a sheen on a particular day you can just blot it out with your finger and it reduces most of the shine into a matte look, without losing any of the colour. I can't quite remember how much this cost but being a drug store lippy it was well under £10 and worth every penny! This also looks amazing with a brown eye look which I also loveeee.

The final thing I have to speak about is fashion related. You may have noticed the extreme background in each of the pictures above. Yes that is Bambi and Thumper. I have been adoring Primark's patterned T-shirts. I bought the grey icecream on first which was only £5, followed by the Bambi one at £6. I also got a Marvel one at £6 but that's in the wash! haha! These t-shirts are so comfortable it's unreal. They're a beautifully soft material with capped sleeves and I think I will be buying a lot more of these for the spring time! Good old Primark!







So that's it for March, and my March favourites. Expect multiple birthday related posts coming up in the next week as I turned 21 and money was certainly well spent! I hope you all had an excellent March and that April is just as good for you!
Much love, G x