Very rarely do I get a product which completely changes up my make-up routine, but this is exactly what the Charlotte Tilbury Instant Look in a Pallet in Beauty Glow did. I received it as a birthday present from my sister in July and since then it has become part of my every day routine in one way or another.

What I had found is that my routine had become a bit stagnant, I used the same products day in, day out without much variation even going so far as to use the same two shades out of my Urban Decay naked pallet every day (Half Baked and Darkhorse I’m looking at you!).

This pallet is meant to be a ‘5 minuet face on the go’ and it definitely does what it says on the tin. If I am going out or staying overnight somewhere it has dramatically reduced the amount of makeup I need to take with me! This pallet covers most areas, from eyes to face and blush, this pallet creates a whole look!

1 – Brighten 

This is a shade I haven’t used too much, for me I would have loved to see it a little lighter, but that is just personal preference. Instead of using this to brighten I have been using as a nice light shade to put on as my base eye colour If I am going for more of a natural no make-up make-up look.

2 – Enhance

Now I have had to get to grips with this colour and I think it is my least used part of the pallet. The reason for this is originally  was finding it hard to get any real pop of colour from the shade, which I found strange as this was not the case with all of the other aspects of the pallet. I found that when I changed my eyeshadow primer back to my old favourite (urban decay you god send) I managed to get much better pigmentation and colour from the shadow. I still battle with this shade and find I sometimes have to build it up to get a good colour, but I am learning to love it. Once I get it working for me it is beautiful coppery colour

3 – Smoke

I love this shade it is a lovely matte medium to dark brown. I am a real fan of a darker brown shadow on the outer edge of my eyelid and this one is a perfect shade for a natural look. You can build it up for a more dramatic look or put a sweep over the eye for a bit of definition.

4 – Face, Bronze

The formulation of this powder is lovely and I really do find that it stays on my face all day. Which for me is a rare occurrence as my skin can get so oily sometimes it is like an oil slick! This shade on me is a great natural bronzer, it doesn’t create a very strong look but instead just gives my skin a healthy - I’ve been in the sun this weekend and have just caught it on the sides of my face - look. I think I would personally like it to be slightly darker but I think its current shade would suite a wider variety of skin tones.

5 – Cheek swish

At the start, I didn’t quite know what to do with this shade, but now I love it. This powder is almost the most versatile in the whole pallet and like number 4 it has great staying power! It can be used as more of a contour in the hollow of your cheeks to define those cheek bones or ‘swished’ across the apples of your cheeks for a darker bronzed look.

6- Cheek, pop

And pop it does, this shade adds a lovely touch of colour to your cheeks. Much like the enhance eyeshadow shade, I find that to get the best results the colour needs to be built up in a couple of layers. This isn’t a bad thing when it comes to blush though as by building it up you are then left with a beautiful shade on your cheeks.

7- Face, Highlighter

In a highlighter, I am not going to lie I do usually like to see more of a shine on my face, but that is probably as until this highlighter I didn’t tend to use one in my every day make up routine. Well that changed, I think this highlighter really finishes off the pallet nicely adding that final glow to the make-up look.

Overall the formulation of these products is great, they all sit nicely on the skin and I don’t get that horrible cakey feeling from them! The enhance eyeshadow is probably my least favourite part of the pallet as it has taken me a while to get used it! I love to mix different parts of this pallet with other products and I find that it has really mixed up my make-up routine! It is great that I can pick this up in a hurry and have basically a whole look in one pallet! It has become one of my go-to products and I will definitely be repurchasing when it runs out!

Have you tried any Charlotte Tilbury products? If so what do you recommend I try from their range next?  

Hello all of you lovely people, Todays post is all about my top three favourite lipsticks. Now as everyone knows ranking ones favourite lipsticks can be an impossible task although for me there are three certain ones that jump out at me.

Surprisingly enough my favourite three come from all areas of the financial scale, the first being a MAC lipstick called Angel which cost £15 (even though it did not cost that when I brought it!). 

Now I do know that this lipstick either looks lovely on or makes you look sickly, this lipstick is definitely a winter shade for me as I have recently discovered this summer that while I have a tan it is not a flattering colour.

This lipstick is meant to be a frost finish which according to MAC means that it has ‘an excellent colour payoff with medium to high frosted shimmer-and-shine finish’. Although this is the category which MAC has placed Angel, it does not have a dramatic frost finish I would say that it has a slight pearly finish instead of being frosty.

What I love about it is that it is a lovely baby pink shade which can be worn everyday adding to a natural look, I find that it just finishes off my makeup nicely.

The next lipstick on my list is the Rimmel lasting finish by Kate Moss in shade 01, now when I brought this lipstick is was more of a spur of the moment decision as this deep red shade was definitely out of my comfort zone!

I find reds quite hard to wear as I have to make sure that they contain blue undertones, as red/orange undertones just look weird on me. When I saw this I decided to try it out as let’s face it £5.49 will not break the bank if I decide that I don’t like it.

I would say that this lipstick is more of a cherry red colour with a sheen finish to it, the formula is quite pigmented and leaves a slight stain on the lips. It also has a sweet scent to it initially which then disperses once you apply it.

I really love this lipstick as it is a gorgeous shade which is good for people that might have a hard time finding reds to suite them, I would recommend this as a good starter red.

My final favourite is a real bargain and if you haven’t tried one of these then I strongly suggest that you do as it only cost £1, and you can’t go wrong with a pound. 

It is the MUA (Makeup Academy) lipstick in shade 3 which has a lovely creamy texture to it and glides across the lips effortlessly.

It results in a semi- matte finish and is highly pigmented leaving a slight stain to the lips. One down side to this lipstick is that it does cling to dry patches so I advise that you should exfoliate them top avoid this and moisturize before applying this lipstick as the formula is slightly drying.

This lipstick has great staying power and I find that it once applied , it lasts through lots of eating and drinking which is great is you plan on going out with it on your lips J

I hope that you liked seeing my top three lipsticks. What I want to know is what are yours? Are any of yours similar to mine? 

Hello my lovely’s how are we all today? I am so sorry for the delay between my last post and this one unfortunately I have been ill and therefore have had little motivation.

All of a sudden September finished and October started, how has that happened! Time goes by so quickly yet this morning shockingly we had hail, I was surprised to say the least and made a mad dash inside. So much for the good weather then L.

This post is about a new product that I have recently brought. It is by MUA (Make-up Academy), now I have not brought many of their products before yet they are such a good price and everyone is raving about them so I thought why not, what have I got to loose.

Therefore when I noticed the other day that Superdrug had their 3 for 2 deal on for all of their make-up products, I took the plunge.

The product that I brought was the Bronzed Perfection and I brought it at the price of £3 for 15g which I thought was an extremely good price for the amount that you get.

Now it does only come in one shade which is a shame for people with darker or lighter skin, thankfully it is the right shade for me.  With this bronzer I was more interested in using it for contouring than using it as a normal bronzer as I think that it is a really good shade for it.

This product has now sneaked its way into my everyday make up routine. I pair it with the Max Factor Flawless Perfection Blush in 221 Classic Pink and another new purchase of mine from MUA the Undress Your Skin Shimmer Highlighter (I will post a review on this soon). The combination of the three together look great on the skin.

Have you tried any of MUA’s products? If so which ones and what do you think? 

A couple of weeks ago I went into boots and what do you know it was 3 for 2 on everything needless to say I couldn’t resist. Recently I realised that I desperately needed some new make-up brushes, therefore I have been looking at many reviews on the many brushes that are available.

 One make that caught my attention was Real Technique by Samantha Chapman, these have very good reviews and are reasonably priced which is one of the main factors that I was looking for.

I needed desperately needed a new powder brush and a blusher brush therefore I got to pick another brush to have it as my free one. I have never tried a stippling brush to apply my foundation, only ever using the traditional foundation brush (which I think does a decent job) so I brought the stippling brush as my third brush.

 Due to the various reviews that I had read about these brushes I had high hopes and luckily I have not been disappointed they give me the flawless finish that has been promised on the packet.

The stippling brush was also a good buy as once trying it I can honestly tell you that I won’t go back to a normal foundation brush. The stippling brush gives my foundation a much better and more natural looking coverage and it makes my skin look great.

I also love the look of the brushes, each category has a different colour, so the gold represents the base brushes, purple if for the eyes and the pink is for finish. These brushes also stand up on their own making them easy to store either in a case or standing up on the side.

I would defiantly recommend these brushes to others and I can’t wait to expand on my collection.

Have you tried the Real Techniques brushes? And if yes then what do you think of them? 

I have finally come to the realisation that you need to pay a little bit more on certain products in order to have healthy, good looking skin. I feel that foundation is one of these products as you wear it every day, I have previously been using No7 Beautifully Matte Foundation from boots and I am greatly disappointed with it one of the main things with this foundation that I was unhappy with was that it has warm undertones so while essentially the primary colours within the foundation matched my skin tone my skin always ended up with a reddish tint to it and the coverage did not last all day.

One of the places that I tried was MAC, I have previously had many MAC makeovers and loved the end result especially the coverage of the base products. At first the MAC counter was quite busy so I went to the foundation section to look at the selection, it was not long before I was asked if I needed any help.

 I am not afraid to say that apart from the research I have don’t online I am a little but clueless when it comes to the many varieties of MAC foundations, due to having been a long buyer of pharmacy (or drugstore if you are American) foundations but I explained what I wanted from my foundation to the sales assistant in a vague way. She sat me down an explained what in her opinion would be the best match for me and my skin type, what really reassured me way that right away she noted the cool undertones in my skin and steered me towards the cooler colours.

The first foundation applied we both agreed that it was slightly too dark, now some of the make-up counters that I have been to previously tried one foundation on me and then proceeded to insist that it was ‘the prefect’ shade for my skin tone and gone in for the hard sell, but at MAC they did not do this so we tried a second shade which we both agreed was a really good match for my skin.  She applied the foundation to my skin and I then went away to see how it would wear during the day.

Here are some tips when buying foundation:

I am really pleased with the service that I got from mac and I will defiantly be going back to get the foundation.

What has your experiences with MAC been? And what foundations do you recommend? 

Hello one and all, firstly I have to apologise as I recently I have been a bit MIA. This is due to starting university again, for any that go to uni or have started you will know how busy the first few weeks are just until things start to settle down again!

I have just started my second year and have been bogged down already with work, applying for placements which I will hopefully be doing next year and seeing all of my friends again who I have not seen since summer started.

Now one thing that I think is very important to join while at uni are Societies. Unfortunately due to various circumstances last year I did not join any. This set the tone for what became a very lonely year for me, so one thing you must do is JOIN, JOIN, JOIN anything you can.

One society I have joined is the dance society, with this I have been talking a number of dance classes which are beginner ballet, modern, theatre and street dance. Another aspect of a society is that we have weekly socials the first week we were animals and this week we dressed up to the theme of 80's fashion.

So this is what I want to share with you this week the outfit I came up with when faced with the challenge of 80's fashion.

For my look I took quite a bit of inspiration from early Madonna and fame (as I just love that movie). During the 80s they were really into patterns, bright colours and big hair which were all areas I focused on.

The Outfit:

For my hair I tried to stay true to the big hair of the time. To create this look I applied  L’OREAL Elvive Styliste curl control defining mousse to my hair, everyone needs different amounts of this but I used just slightly less than a palms worth, then scrunched it into my hair. 

Next I flipped my hair upside down and used a diffuser on the cool setting, as if I apply heat to my hair it tends to go very frizzy which was not the look I was going for. When it was halfway dry I applied a little bit more mousse scrunching it in again, and then I continued to dry my hair upside down with a diffuser.

My makeup look was quite simple as I was going for a neutral eye look. From Urban Decays Naked pallet, for the inner corner I used sin mixed with a tiny but of sidecar, for the lid I used toasted and for the crease I used Hustle.

I went on to use Maybelline’s Gel Eyeliner in the colour Black/Gold on the top on my eyelids to define my eye. I applied this using a real techniques brow brush as I find it gives you lots of control, I also applied a little bit of Rimmels soft kohl in jet black to my water line before I applied my Maybelline Falsies mascara.

Two areas which were important when It comes to 80's makeup were bright lips and bright cheeks. So I applied Kate Moss by Rimmel In shade 01 to my lips to give a red lip effect and Max Factor Flawless perfection Blush is shade 221 classic pink. What you have to remember with the blush is to apply it heavily taking it up to the temple as well as applying to your cheek bones.

I hope this helps you to create a 80's style look have you dressed up in this style before if so how did you achieve the look ?

Also do you enjoy this type of post as it is a first for me and I would love some feedback