Something Bright and Colourful!

Now that the weather is transitioning from Summer to Autumn, I'm getting more and more excited for my big coat and thick woolly jumpers. However, I before I dig all of those out I really wanted to do one last festival/ summer inspired makeup look. I thpught id go all out for this one, and this was the result!

The products used for this are
Base
Estee Lauder Double Wear (not pictured)
Collection Lasting Perfection concealer (not pictured)
RCMA No Colour Powder (not pictured)
MUA Matte Bronzer
Revolution Skin Kiss Highlighter
Revolution Sports Fx setting spray

Eyes
Plouise Palette- shade Queen used
Nyx Ultimate Brights palette- Purple Shades
The Witches Lab Loose Glitter 
Illamasqua Presicion Gel Eyeliner- Infinity
Lashes- EBay
Barry M Glitter Glue
Bourjoius Volume Clubber Mascara

Lips
Maybelline Superstay Matte Ink- Seductress 

Face
The Gypsy Shrine All in One Face Jewels 

My fitness journey

(I was so proud when  I lifted this)

So it's been a really long time since I blogged about my lifestyle and my health, and over the last few months I've realised more and more how important it is to not only discuss the good things in our life, but to include the bad things as well. I decided it was about time to start talking more about how for far too many years I've allowed my own perception of myself be shaped by the world around me.

So as I'm typing this, I'm currently classed as being overweight. While I'm not going to include specific numbers on my blog, I can tell you that whilst I've never been considered 'underweight' I've suffered from disordered eating in the past and am still battling with it today.

In my very early teens, my weight dropped considerably as I became more focused on what I ate, or rather how little I ate. Part of this came from the belief I was fat, whilst the other part came naturally through me being a fussy eater. My teenage life was spent with me locked into a cycle of obsessively watching what I ate and going through phases of only eating certain foods. Sometimes these foods would be calorie dense, meaning I would gain weight, whilst others had minimal calories, meaning I lost weight. Throughout this period I was also very active, meaning I burnt more calories through exercise. 

Turning 16 bought on some massive changes for me however. First of all, I'd been with my current partner for a few months then, and I'd started to see that he didn't care what size I was so maybe that meant it didn't matter. I also began eating more homemade foods and expanding the variety of foods I ate, which made it harder to track calories. Because of this I slowly stopped tracking calories and began to relax a little. Finally, I started the combined pill (which I was later taken off and swapped onto the mini pill due to adverse side effects). This combination meant I was starting to gain weight, but I didn't care about it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'd become overweight. I was incredibly unhappy in myself and was desperate for a quick solution. In come the influx of fad diets which included overly restrictive calories, slimfast and the 5:2 diet amongst others. I didn't realise it at the time but all this was doing was allowing me to continue the cycle of starve/binge and I ultimately gained all the weight back and more. Even at the beginning of me creating this blog, what I believed to be a healthy relationship with food and exercise was far from it. This culminated last year in me not eating at all throughout the day, and then going massively overboard in the evenings. 

All of this was masked however by the fact that the nature of my jobs means you have to be relatively fit. This allowed me to believe it wasn't that bad and I just masked my unhappiness by wearing baggy clothes and a cheesy grin. While I haven't got a trigger photo like some people have, I do have a series of photos that I look back on now and think bloody hell, what was I doing to myself?

Fast forward to a few months ago, I decided it was time to switch gyms to one with better facilities and redownload the myfitnesspal app. I've spent the past few months educating myself on Nutrition and exercises that strengthen the body, not just burn calories. I've learnt about maintaining a suitable calories deficit that includes a little big of everything, which is by far a much more sustainable way to live as opposed to fad diets. More than this, I've learnt to stop punishing myself if I have a slip up. Along the way I've got my partner to keep me grounded when it seems like I'm getting too obsessive.

It's not a smooth road. I'm currently undergoing tests to see if I have a bowel disease amongst other things, and sometimes the last thing I want to do is focus on tracking macros when my stomach is tearing itself in two. Sometimes in life we really do need to eat a shitnload of food and feel good about it. I just know now that I'm steadily loosing weight and learning to love my body for All the amazing things it can do, which is something I thought I'd never say.

If you made it this far, I just want to say a huge thank you for reading and please feel free to share your stories too xxxx

I took a break (again)

Oh how I've missed blogging. When I first started this blog, I had dreams of always being able to produce really good content, of having the most beautiful Instagram layout ever and always having good photos. The reality of it is, my camera skills are dodgy at best, this takes a lot of work and the Instagram algorithiam means my content hardly gets viewed.

For a while I let this really get me down. I would compare myself to others and think that to become more popular, I would need to post just like them. Then when that didn't work, I just had a break from it all. For a while I didn't wear any makeup, I didn't purchase any makeup and I quite frankly couldn't be arsed. I felt like I had no makeup skills and there was no point continuing my blog.

However, one random trip into town meant I ended up picking up the I Heart Revolution Multisticks. This was a complete impulse buy, at that point I couldn't remember the last time I'd worn makeup. There was just something really cite about the multi-function pens that screamed to me. I bought the silver one and the nude one and started to play with makeup again. 

I quickly fell back in love with creating makeup looks again, and decided to slowly start posting more IG looks. While it's painfully slow to be recognised in there, I'm slowly getting more followers so that gave me more motivation.

I decided that I would make my blog my own, I would stop trying to be like others and focus more on what I would want from blog. So, here we go all over again! And if you're reading this and remembering my previous posts, thank you so much for sticking around xxxxx

(Quick little self reminder that a year makes all the difference)

Maybelline Superstay 24H Foundation Review

I think I've mentioned before on my blog that I'm always on the hunt for the perfect foundation to suit my skin type. For reference, I have mainly oily skin that can sometimes be prone to dry patches. Because of this, I find that foundation can simply just slide off my face throughout the day and it separates in really weird, unattractive patches.

As you can imagine, I was then very excited to hear about Maybelline's Superstay Full Coverage 24H Foundation (Boots, £9.99). Boots website claims that this foundation "completely corrects visible flaws and imperfections making it the perfect base for a hi-impact make-up look", and that it is suitable for all skin types, and dries down to a 'soft matte' finish.

It seemed like this was the foundation to answer all my prayers. I love matte foundations, and with the claims for it to last 24 hours I thought it would be a perfect all round foundation that I could also wear to work. I checked a few shade whilst I was in Boots and with Ollie's help I chose the shade 10-Ivory. My usual method of application is to use a flat foundation brush to spread it around my face, and then a sponge to blur out any brush strokes/ patchiness that may be left behind. On really lazy days, I will just use a damp beauty sponge to apply this all over.

My first impression of this foundation was that it was full coverage. I get quite red, patchy blotches on my cheek and this foundation covered them perfectly, without looking too heavy or cakey on my face. It lasted really well the whole time I was at work without breaking up or separating and with minimal shine at the end of the day. Initially, I thought this foundation was absolutely perfect for me.  

However, as with most products, there's always a but. The main problem I've discovered with the foundation is that it oxidises really badly. The shade match at the beginning of the day is spot on for me. However, shortly after application I've found that its actually a completely different colour to what first went on my face. The worst example of this is actually when even Ollie noticed that my face was pretty much orange. I've found that when I use fake tan it's fine and matches my neck, but without tan I just end up with that beautiful tide line that nobody wants.

Not the best photos, but you ca see the first photo shows when it's first applied, and the second photo shows how once its blended out the edges are already changing shades. This was within a few minutes. 

My skin has also been a lot more oily than usual recently (I so need to up my water intake) and because of this I've noticed the foundation does tend to break up more on my skin and it starts to look claggy and separated after a few hours or wear, compared to when I first started wearing it. This isn't purely the foundations fault though, as my ski has definitely altered over the course of my using this foundation.

My overall thoughts on this product is that I still really enjoy using it. It's such a full coverage foundation for a really reasonable price that does last for a really long time (bar oily skin probs). However, I would definitely recommend buying a shade lighter than what you need unless you regularly use fake tan to offset the oxidisation. I do still continue to use this product on a near daily basis. 

I'd be really interested to see if anyone else has experienced the same issues I have with oxidisation! Feel free to leave a comment below whether you have or not xx

London Haul

So as you may have seen, I recently went on a trip to London for my 22nd Birthday. While I was there I just had to check out Oxford street as I've heard so many good things about the shops there, especially Oxford Circus Topshop.

I can tell you now I was not disappointed. Never before have I been into a Topshop that has a beauty bar, a cafe or a milkshake bar. Topman even had a barbers inside.It truly is a crazy place to be inside, and I'm so glad we got Topshop out of the way before it started getting too busy in there. From Topshop I brought a gorgeous brush roll from Skinnydip (£15), and a pair of Freedom earrings (£6.50). 

After this we worked our way over to Carnaby Street, to find a Dr Martens store for Ollie. It goes without saying that I couldn't go to Carnaby Street without having a look at the makeup shops such as Too Faced, Urban Decay and Mac and most definitely Irregular choice. I have made it my life goal to have a pair of Irregular Choice shoes now as I've fallen in love. Although I was surrounded by lots of amazing makeup, I restrained myself and only brought a travel sized version of the Urban Decay All-Nighter (£10), as I've been dying to try this for ages.

It was then on to the craziest Primark I have ever been to. We chose to go to the Primark near Marble Arch (I think there's more than one on Oxford Street) as it looked huge, and my god we were not dissapointed. If I ever go again I'm definitely going to this Primark first, as everything was a battle to get close to. I did however manage to pick up four nice vest tops (£4.00 each- in anticipation for the sun we never get) a slogan tee(£8.00) from the mens section and a gorgeous new rucksack (£12.00).  

We finished our shopping day by heading over to Five Guys for the first ever time. I was so excited to try Five Guys and a Burger is one of my favourite things in life, however (unpopular opinion) I really don't think that Five Guys is all it's hyped up to be. I felt it was over priced for what you get, and the only plus I found was that the drinks are refillable. 

London was definitley one of the craziest, but best experiences of my life and I'm already making plans for my next visit!

Revolution Re-Loaded Iconic Division Palette Review

For a while now I've sat back and stared dreamily at swatches and photos taken using the Anastasia Beverly Hills Subculture palette. It seemed like in a world full of warm, red and orange tones this would be the slightly cooler, grungier answer to our prayers (I will admit the colours also scared me a little bit). However, at £43.00 (Beauty Bay) this palette was waaaay out of my price range.

However, along came Make-up Revolution with another dupe to save the day! Revolution Re-Loaded Iconic Division (£4.00, Superdrug) is a 15- pan eyeshadow ranging from more neutral transition shades, to deeper greens and purples. It also contains two shimmer shades- one being golden and the other one with a  more greeny-gold reflect.

As mentioned, I don't own the Subculture palette so cannot personally speak of the likeness of the two, especially on how they swatch. However, from looking at pictures I personally feel that the two palettes are very similar, and I've seen reviews that say the two are very similar. I'll leave images of the two side by side below for comparison.

My own image on the left of the Revolution Palette- An image of the Subculture taken from Google Images on the right.

Out of all the shades, the top two left shades were definitely the hardest to swatch. The peachy shade looks lovely on the eye, but just seemed to merge with my skin tone on my arm too much to see decent colour pay-off, and in general I find the white toned shade looks very chalky, although the pink reflect is beautiful. Arm swatches are taken in the evening, using a Nikon Coolpix with flash on.

Overall, I find that this palette has been a welcome addition to my collection, bringing me shades I didn't previously own and I've really enjoyed experimenting with different looks. While the pigmentation may not be as good as the high-end equivalent (and I'm only speculating here as I don't own the Subculture palette) it comes at a fraction of the price, and without the enormous bad press that came with the release of the ABH palette. 

A recent look created using the Iconic Division Palette below.

Nyx Ultimate Brights Palette Review

I'm a bit of a bore when it comes to eyeshadow, and for years have only ever worn browns and neutrals shades. It's only been within the last year or so I branched out into including more reds and oranges in my looks as they become more popular across the make-up world. However, around Christmas time 2017 I decided I needed to step my game up a bit and venture out into using brighter eye shadows- stand forward Nyx Ultimate Brights!

Nyx can be found in some Boots stores throughout the UK, and online. I've always liked the look of their products, but I'd never really got round to buying anything more than a liquid lip or glitter pigments. However, when I was given a gift card for Christmas, I decided to spend it on some Nyx products that has been winking at me every time I walked past. By using some clever coupon-ing skills when buying these products, I racked up enough points for me to purchase the Nyx Ultimate Brights Palette (Boots, £16.00) using only points (Yay for freebies).

Straight away I fell in love with this palette. It has 16 very bright shades, which includes both matte and shimmer shades.Visually, this pallette is very pleasing to look at  as the colours are all laid out nicely in similar colour groups, which makes me far happier than it should. 

When swatched, it is definitely the orange shade that comes across as being most pigmented and the red toned shades seem to fade on the skin. However, I've found that when used on the eyes all the colours I've used are really pigmented and show up well. These shadows have really good lasting power to them as well- I did a pink eye look at around 10am, and was receiving compliments about it at around 8pm which really did make my day. Arm swatches are taken during the evening with a Nikon Coolpix with flash on.

It's safe to say I'm truly in love with this palette. I'm trying really hard to step out of my comfort zone more and more, and this palette is definitely helping me achieve that. Whilst I am in no way, shape or form a make-up artist, I really do enjoy playing around with new products and this palette is really helping me step up my makeup game!

Below are two of the looks I've created using this palette. As I've said, I'm not a makeup artist so my skills are lacking compared to other peoples but I do try my best! Also, the bottom photo is taken using an iPhone 6s+, whereas the top is using a Nikon Coolpix which accounts for the differences in quality.