Giveaway Winner!

Yes, it's time to announce the winner of my giveaway!

So I used excel to enter everyone into a spreadsheet, then went on random.org and got this number...

..which turned out to be...

Joy from All Made Up! Congratulations, I've sent you an email and thank you to everyone else who entered :)

Clubbing in Tokyo FOTD

I know, I know, I should have posted (and done the look) ages ago, but I forgot about it for a couple of days...eventually leading to forgetting about it for several weeks, I'm really sorry!

In a way I wasn't looking forward to doing this FOTD as I'd tried using the palette [review and swatches here] and although it looks pigmented when swatched, it's incredibly difficult to get decent payoff on your eyes.

yeah...stupid non smiley facial expression but yesterday was just a meh day in general.



So here you can see the eye colours a little bit more and well..they look okay like this but if I shut my eyes...


WITH UDPP, they look like they're creasing a bit already and as well, they're all so sheer! You would think I'd only used the light colours, but I actually used loads of the darker ones as well.
The blusher didn't really show up on my skintone either, and I'm not that keen on the lipglosses, so I might give this palette a bit of a miss...



So that's all for the Sephora palette and a little note that my giveaway ends in a few hours! But I won't be able to announce the winner as soon as possible as I have school and everything and could be a little tricky getting on the pic as I've got a lot lined up this week (maybe even going to see Elton John live!) but I will try and then also send the prize out as soon as I possible can!

Blog Makeover!

Please excuse the pun, I just couldn't resist.

Anyway, I've completely overhauled my blog as I was tired of the previous layout and the incredibly dull header. So with my incredibly rusty Photoshop skills, I edited the background by making a vector out of a Barry M lipstick and then for the header, I hunted down some wonderful brushes (view the credits gadget on the left sidebar if you're interested where I got them from ) and then followed Kevin and Amanda's tutorial for customizing fonts, although I went and used an old favourite, Violation. I'd love to hear all your thoughts about the layout and whether you like and as a final note, I'm going to ask that you ignore the little glitch where the header blocks the lipstick at first glance until you scroll down.

Under construction

As you can tell, my blog layout is undergoing construction and I'm oging to bed now so if it's not looking all matching, it's cause I'm not finished yet.
xxxxxxx

My lipgloss collection

Finally! I managed to get all my pictures on photobucket after all, as Picasa turned out to be fully incompetent and turns out it wasn't Photobucket itself that wasn't working, but the ads weren't and cause they've changed the layout, I thought the ads were the uploader and there we have it.


So this is my entire lipgloss collection, barring the squeezy tubes. Rather pitiful, isn't it? Although now that I'm looking at it, I just realised I forgot my Boots No7 lipgloss, which was probably only forgotten as I have my makeup box colour coordinated and all the pinks and reds are together and this one happens to be neutral, so it got forgotten, whoops!

So from l-r we have Rimmel Twist and Shine Lip Polish in 070 Twist Up, p2 Hawaiian Spirit Lip Gloss in 020 Exotic Blossom (LE), Barry M Lip Gloss Wand in Bubblegum Pink, Sephora Gloss Repulpant and two unknown glosses.


So starting with the Rimmel Twist and Shine lip polish, I bought this a couple of years ago in Poundland for...well, guess the price. I think it's probably the darkest lip colour I have and when I bought this, I wore it quite often and here's an (old) pic where you can see me wearing it. As it's a lip polish and not really a gloss, it's very pigmented, although still quite sticky.





So the applicator on thsi is kind of funny. You twist it (...duh, nat) and then the gloss comes out of little holes in the applicator so you have to be careful that you don't twist too much.



Next up is the p2 Hawaiian Spirit Hula lipgloss in Exotic Blossom. Now I don't believe p2 is well known in the UK, as it's a German brand, and available in German drugstores (as well as luxembourgish ones!). It's qutie a cheap brand, which is good but I find that not all the products are great, which is to be expected. I even believe that p2 have an equivalent to Barry M's Nail Effects, except also in white, so I may have to investigate that.


Now, this is quite pigmented and the scent is quite vanilla-esque, which makes it smell lovely. Unfortunately it was limited edition when I bought it last year, which is a shame. It's not got much, if any sparkles in it which ticks my boxes!


Here's a picture from October last year with me wearing it and as you can say, although it looks quite warm in the tube, the actualy colour is more of a pink with blue undertones.

Next up is the Barry M Lip gloss wand in Bubblegum Pink.

Now, I believe this, most of the UK readers will have heard of, although the shade 'Toffee' is more popular, from the various reviews I've read. You can see by looking at the tube that this has sparkles, but with this one I don't really mind (it's really more the Claire's lipglosses that annoy me!)


So this is pigmented, but not as pigmented as you would be lead to believe, looking at it in the tube. It's quite sheer, but not too sheer, even though that sounds confusing to imagine. You'll all see in the swatches :) The scent is...three guesses...bubblegum, which I don't mind but I've read that quite a few people aren't keen on that.



So...Sephora's plumping lip gloss. I bought this is 2008 at the braderie sale in town (last time I saw Sephora have a sale like that:( ) but I didn't realise it was a plumping lip gloss until I tried it on at home, resulting to a scene that had me shouting something along the lines of: "ARGH! My lips They're stinging, what's happening????!!!" and my best friend laughing her head off after investigating the gloss and concluding that it was a plumping gloss.


Now I don't think this has any particular scent different from the standard lip gloss scent and it's quite sheer, this. Your lips will tingle a lot when you first apply it but it wears off a bit afterwards, but the colour itself is incredibly sheer which is a little bit of a shame, as it looks so lovely in the tube.


So the final two are samples of an unknown brand that I found lying round the house and decided to put in my makeup box( cause no one else seemed to want them haha happens with a lot of the makeup in my house!)



Oh yeah, that pale pink is pigmented, although not very consistent. The other one is rather see through, which you wouldnt' expect, judging on the pinker one and the tube itself.
And now, finally on to the swatches!


So, they're in the order that I listed them, but I'll do it again just in case you girls can't be bothered to read the whole post again ( I know I sometimes don't feel like it).
From l-r: Rimmel Twist and Shine Lip Polish in 070 Twist Up, p2 Hawaiian Spirit Lip Gloss in 020 Exotic Blossom (LE), Barry M Lip Gloss Wand in Bubblegum Pink, Sephora Gloss Repulpant and two unknown glosses.
It's also funny because they look like they go from the most pigmented to the least pigmented, barring the last one, which was entirely coincidental!
Hope you all liked this and don't forget to enter my giveaway, if you haven't already, as it ends tomorrow night xxxx

FOTD from last Friday

I'm so sorry I didn't post last weekend! I had every intention of doing so but Photobucket has completely changed and isn't working for me so I had to go around finding other methods and I finally stumbled upon Picasa. Anyway, moving on, this is my FOTD from last friday when I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, which was amazing!

I think I used pretty much the usual stuff, except I used a white Maybelline lipstick on my lips and then my MUA Shade 11, which made it closer to my lip colour, so it's sort of a my lips but better colour, but not completely. As for my eyes, I used two eyeshadows from a nameless palette I got for Christmas.





Also, doing this FOTD reminded me that I have yet to finish off my Colorplay 5 in 1 palette FOTDs, I will try and do that tomorrow, I promise!

xxx

Apologies

Hi everyone,

this is just an apology for the rather mediocre post over the weekend. I know I would usually post something at the weekend, but as it happens, I've been sick since Wednesday and to be blunt, I look like death warmed over. Blotchy nose, puffy eyes, I don't think my foundation's up to par with making me look healthy at the moment! And then to make matters worse, because of the strain of coughing so much, the skin around my eyes has somehow developed a slight rash which from afar would look like freckles, which I suppose is better than being completely obvious, so that's why EOTDs and FOTDs have been out.



I did have a few reviews lined up such as my lipgloss collection (it's not big, trust me) but again, my internet is acting up and won't work from my computer with all my pics on and stuff so I'm using an old laptop at the moment. To compensate for that matter, I'll upload a pic that I did manage to get on to photobucket, so I guess it's a little preview.

I don't know when I'll next be able to update before the weekend as this week is just a nightmare as far as tests go. English, German (this will not go over well, I can tell you that already), Maths and Physics. The last two are on the same day so wish me luck! I'm a little nervous with physics because it's our first year doing it and our first test and I dunno if I understand it enough to pass the test (add to that that we do most of our subjects in French -> ten times harder) so yeah, fingers crossed it will go well!

Normally I would say I don't have much to worry about concerning the English test but stupid me left the book we had to read for the test at school so whether I can remember all the small details from when I finished it a couple of weeks ago we'll find out tomorrow, unless I can borrow my friend's book on the bus tomorrow and read the chapters we have to read in time.

So this has gone a bit off topic but I just felt I owed you all an explanation as to why I haven't posted much xxxx

Beauty's Bad Habit's Giveaway!

Hey everyone, this is just a quick post to let you know that Lily at Beauty's Bad Habit (one of my absolute all time favourite bloggers) is having an amazing giveaway here where you can win these prizes!

What are you waiting for, go enter!

(although don't forget to enter MY giveaway either ;) here )

My Perfect Imperfections Tag

So I saw Beauty Ambitions do this tag, so I decided to do it as well, as I think it's a really fun tag :)





The tag is to list three imperfections about yourself that make you YOU and then list three things you like about yourself. I'm just gonna go ahead and tag all of my 50 followers (thank you so much !!!!:D) because I hate limiting these things.

Things I don't like about myself
-My eyebrows. I have a thing about eyebrows, especially mine, as for years I've hated them for being too bushy and too unibrow like. If I see just the smallest hair between my eyebrows, I'll go nuts, cause I feel the shadow of the hairs growing back combined with my glasses makes it look as if I have a unibrow and I just could.not.stand.it if I had a unibrow.

-My hair on my upper lip and chin. I have PCOS which basically under other things gives me excessive male hormone, which means excessive body hair, most apparant on my chin and upper lip. I've tried bleaching and waxing strips, hair removal creams and so far the waxing strips were best, but still didn't last long. This really gets me down as I know it's apparant and a lot of people can see it and I've had comments in the past (aged 13, a boy from my class said: hey, you have a moustache! hahahaha) and my self confidence goes down by a mile every time I glance at my chin in the mirror. It also makes me self conscious for pictures as mostly I only like pictures taken at a higher angle as you can't see the hair. Added to this is my sister always saying I have perfect skin when I know I don't because this hair is in the way.

-My hair. Frizzball BIG TIME. I love my curls, I really do but I just wish I could have some nice hair without the frizz. I feel that whatever hair product I try so far, nothing makes the frizz go away, which upsets me as I'm surrounded by girls with perfect hair (straightish wavy, non frizzy and long. The Luxembourgers just have it all, don't they?). I have read that Tigi does great anti frizz products but being a student, not really in my budget.

All my imperfections are hair related, funny eh?

Things I like about myself

-My smile. ok, sometimes I have weird smiles in picture but mostly it's not bad. I loved my smile back when I was little and I think I might still have it, as the above pictures show :P But anyway I just love smiling so yeah that is one thing I do like about myself

-My hips. Wait, what?! Someone actually LIKES their hips?!!!! So I don't like my tummy, but I'm pretty content with my hips. They're a bit big but not too big and I like the way they make my body shape look :)

-My cheeks. Yeah they're chipmunk cheeks (apparantly cheekbones, yet I just see cheekbones :P) but yeah they give me the young factor as sometimes I'd just like to look my age as well instead of a little older so smiling and getting the chipmunk cheeks works :)

So I hope you all liked this, I thought it fun and hope you all do it :) If you do, do comment and tell me!xxxxxxxxx

Beret FOTD

So yesterday I finally escaped my house (being stuck at home due to a combination of depressing weather and far too much homework) and my best friend and I went to our local *cough thirty minutes by bus far away* shopping center to go shopping.

We left at ten past 5 and it was already getting dark and by the time we got there, it was dark which was definitely weird to me, yet sort of made it more fun as I just LOVE shopping at night time (ok, this time evening. But when I was visiting my grandparents i nengland in April, we went shopping in Tesco's at 10 pm. IT WAS SO COOL!:P ok...geek naty is leaving now)

So on to makeup, I decided to use my sistah as inspiration and did my usual liner but with gold eyeshadow to spruce it up :) Of course, when I say gold eyeshadow, I mean Urban Decay's Half-Baked as that is the best gold eyeshadow I have.

Eyes:
-Urban Decay Primer Potion (original)
-Urban Decay Half Baked
-Sleek Gel Liner
-Rimmel Glam Eyes Lash Flirt mascara
-Maybelline Collossal Volume mascara
-Benefit Brow Zings in Medium
-Rimmel Professional Eyebrow Pencil in Brown Black

Face:
-L'Oreal True Match Minerals in Golden Ivory
-Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder in Transparent
-N.Y.C. Colour Wheel in Mocha Glow
-MeMeMe Poppy Tint

Lips:
-MUA Lipstick in shade 11

Wow, for once I remembered every product that I used yesterday! It's not often that I write a list of what I used but if you prefer it, let me know in the comments :) I'd also like to add that I ADORE the small of the MUA lipstick, it just smells lovely and it's so creamy!

I also used this excursion as an opportunity to wear my new red beret from H*M which I LOVE as well. I really hope I can hang on to this hat as the last two hats that I've had have both been carelessly left on the bus/school and therefore, have vanished :(

It was relatively simple, without proper blending and stuff, but I felt it didn't need anything extra :)

xxxxxxx BTW enter my giveaway ;) *shameless plug*

30 Followers Giveaway! *CLOSED*

Oh yes, the time has come for...a giveaway! I've been buying the little pieces gradually and then yesterday I went and made the final purchase so here it is. I'm really happy and thankful to all my followers now that I've hit 34 and so here's the reward and I hope you all like it. I apologise that it's not a huge giveaway with big prizes and a lot of choice, but bear in mind I'm only 16 and babysitting pays only so much :P




Here we have, broken down...

-Thierry Mugler Angel shower gel sample
-Estee Lauder Idealist Pore Minimizing Skin Refinisher sample
-Three Givenchy Eau de Toilette samples
-Sephora Instant Moisturizer sample

-MNY Nail Polish in shade 549
-MNY Eyeshadow in shade 721

-Sephora long-lasting liquid eye liner in blue (although it is more of a violet colour)

and last but definitely not least...

-Lancome Hypnose Mascara in Noir Hypnotic

Now the only reason I took it out of the packet was to show you girls that it is a mascara and not just show the packet, cause I myself prefer looking at pics where you can see the mascara :)

Onto the rules now...

Rules:
-Giveaway will end on the 28th of November 2010 at Midnight GMT+1 (although I won't announce the winner exactly then, chances are, I'll be in bed :P
-You MUST be a follower via Google Friend Connect as an obligatory entry
-Is open to international readers
-When commenting, please tell me what your favourite part of my blog is (reviews, FOTDs, NOTDs,...)
-No people with accounts just for giveaways, I will be checking muahahaha
-Please include your email adresse when you comment

Now for optional extra entries, you can either post about my giveaway on your blog, including the first picture or you can put a link with the picture in your sidebar. If you do either of these, add your blog link to the comment.

I'll choose the winner with random.org by entering all the entry names in a spreadsheet and then, well you know the rest xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

FunnyFace Beauty Dare to Wear Challenge #3

YAY MY FIRST DARE TO WEAR :D

First of all, Dare to Wear Challenges are the monthly, I believe, challenges that Alicia over at FunnyFace Beauty , where she challenges her readers to come up with looks based on certain images she gives. The Dare to Wear challenge #3 that she published today is ten times more important than that as this time, it's for charity. i'll just quote Alicia's post so you understand how the charity part works.

From October 19th (world AIDS day) to December 1st, the Stephen Lewis foundation has a campaign to raise money called 'A Dare to Remember'. People are encouraged to come up with a dare (for themselves, for others, etc) that will help raise money.

I have decided to use my 'Dare to Wear' challenge to dare all of you to help raise money for this important charity. For every person who takes my dare to wear challenge, I will donate $1 to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. BUT WAIT, it gets better than that, for the first 10 people who take my challenge, my parents will match my $1, for the next ten people (20 people total), my parents will donate $2, for the next ten people (30 people total) my parents will donate an extra $3, and so on.

Isn't that just amazing? I only quoted the parts concerning how the charity ties in with her challenge, so if you want to read the whole post and also participate (which I really hope you all do!) click HERE .

So now, to the more personal bit, I attempted to recreate this look, which is just amazing and beautiful and I don't want this to become full of corn to describe how stunning I find the makeup and the model on this picture.


Of course, in typical Naty fashion, there has to be ONE screw up. I ended up messing up the sides, basically so that the makeup that's on the left is on the right and vice-versa. Of course I'm going to have to beg for your fogiveness as my look itself is quite messy and also not exactly like the picture as I'm not a professional makeup artist. But it's still an attempt and it's for charity so if I look stupid, who cares!

I also tried my hand at face painting but with my limited resources, I ended up using foundation/ UD PP without blending it, then letting it dry and then putting the colour on top. And then, obviously some improvisation of the colours as I don't have exact matches to all colours on the picture.


See the messy dots above my eyebrow? Yeah...I've never been a neat artist...just ask all my art teachers!


Now, a bit of a close up...the gold lips somehow weren't as apparant in my pictures as in real life.


OH WOW IS THAT A SMILE??!!! At first I tried the same non smiling pose that the model had but I just look grumpy without a smile.



And finally, a close up with my eyes shut so you can see everything more detailled.

Again, don't forget to visit Alicia's link HERE and to take part, and if not that, then to ADVERTISE, as this is an amazingly creative idea and FUN :) xxx

My hair over the years!

Ok, a more correct name for this would be My hair since 2008 as that was when I started caring about my appearance more...before, I was adamant that I would not become a girly girl, that is to say, someone who spent every day doing her hair and makeup. Oh how I've changed. From one side of the spectrum to the other. Although the hair thing still needs work on as mostly nowadays, I just leave it as it is, without brushing it to the horror of one of my best friends. (She doesn't get that my curls will vanish and I'll have a frizzy mass of HORROR on my head instead. attractive)

I suppose the purpose of this post is to go through my mistakes and successes so that you can all learn from them and hopefully, never do the ones I comitted.

So in January 2008, I wanted to do something a little bit more exciting with my hair (Me:Pink! I want bright pink highlights! My mum:No, you can only have blonde! Me:Fine then...)

The result? Oh look, a bumblebee!


Oh yes, Nathalie, you are hiding your face with good reason. Never.Again. Now I thought the highlights would be a bit like all my friends' highlights...I was just forgetting they had brown hair and the bleach did not make their hair YELLOW! In fact, at school a few people were saying behind my back how I looked like 'Biene Maja', which was a german children's show about a bee.

So then I had to wait a bit for these to fade, but then I managed to sway my mum. Not completely, mind you, I didn't get my beloved bright pink, but I did get something close..




This picture was actually the day I got a haircut and it was about a month or so after I dyed my hair dark purple in May 2008, courtesy of Schwarzkopf. I LOVED the colour and just couldn't stop staring at my hair sometimes, but as all good things have to end, it was starting to fade as it was only semi-permanent.

Next up, I managed to convince my mum to let me dye it again, this time permanent and I believe a shade brighter? I'm not sure exactly when that was, but I believe it was July 2008.


So here we have my hair with just the fringe straightened, so quite a bit thicker than in the previous picture, where it was straightened. Now the colour was really intense and again, I adored it! At 14, I was just a sucker for everything bright and I didn't care whether it clashes, so this colour was definitely in for me.

So then for school, my hair still pink, but by October it was fading and had turned browny-red and bored with my hair, my sister cut my fringe for me, which in hindsight, was probably not very wise as it turned out wonky.

See it going up in the middle? Again, I got a lot of criticism from my classmates (nice bunch aren't they?) Annoying was the fact that I had to straighten the fringe EVERY DAY (I am quite lazy with straightening, I know, I just think it's a pain in the arse)

And here's another picture of me for Halloween, where you can tell what's happened to the colour.

Definitely not pink anymore.

So then I had to go through the tedious process of growing out the fringe so that I could walk through the school's corridors without having critical eyes fixed on my fringe (not that that's changed - this time it's always my boots, but I've learnt not to give a crap what the snobs think!)


Hello gormless, how are you? I honestly ask myself what was up with my facial expressions back then haha. I have to note though, I didn't have huge eyebags in that picture, wish it was still like that. So, here I've managed to grow out my fringe enough for me to make it be a side fringe, which is back in my comfort zone! As for hair colour, it's slowly making the transition from purple/pink to browny orange and unfortunately, at this point, I could really tell how the bleacjh affected my hair's texture as it was dry as hell and incredibly frizzy.

Now for a pic from early January 2009.



Here the orangeness is really showing as are my black roots, so my hair was really annoying me at this stage as I wanted my black hair back because I vainly loved being one of the few girls (maybe even only girl?) in my school with natural black hair and blue eyes. So I decided to help my hair a little and dyed it black in February 2009...



Ok, not very natural, but I was just happy to give it a little helping hand. By now the texture was completely effed up so it was frizzy, dry and full of split ends, so at this point, unwisely, I decided to start straightening it most days with which I got this.


To be fair, this was probably an exception as I'd straightened it very carefully (I believe this was May 2009) and mostly it would look like this, especially as it was growing and getting thicker.


Not very carefully straightened, but enough that it wasn't just a frizzy mass of curls. This was in October 2009 and by now, I think my natural hair colour was back, of course, not as black as my hair was before the whole dyeing and highlighting (but I don't have any pictures of my hair back then, as I just looked too horrible for words), which I suppose was due to the excessive dyeing over the last year.

Then throughout Christmas and in January this year, I guess I finally accepted my curls and just left my hair curly and as it was getting quite long at this stage, they were actually halfway decent curls, like so...


This is probably my favourite picture of me, hairwise. The curls were just great, they seemed sleek, not all over the place and THEN what do I do?! A few weeks afterwards, I stupidly go for the chop, which is a big regret of mine as it ended up looking awful unless straightened, so here's a picture of me before my school concert, so obviously I had it straightened as I wanted to look nice..



I'm not gonna post a picture of it curly as I just can't find a decent one, but rest assured, if you have a face shape like mine and curly, unruly hair, do not cut it in a bob unless you are prepared to straighten it. A lot.

Then here's a pic of my hair in July where I was experimenting with having a few (straightened) bits of my fringe falling down on my face which didn't lead anywhere.




Finally, after having it grown out to shoulderlenght now, I'm on my way to getting it as long as it was last winter which I will hopefully get and then I will definitely NOT cut it short. So hope that was interesting for you all and just a little side note, I have bought another not-so-small part for my giveaway and if I go out this week, I will get the main interesting prize. I've been doing it individually cause a stingy naty likes getting 10% off sephora purchases and she has that now ;) xxxxxxx