Birthday presents - Benefit Boi-ing Concealer

Part two of the presents from my godmother is the Benefit Boi-ing Concealer! I've been needing a good concealer lately so I decided to get this as I've heard many good things about it .

I adore Benefit's packaging. It just jumps straight out at you and makes you want to buy everything they have although then you get a look at the prices and jump straight back.

I love their little blurbs!

I bought shade 2, which looked a bit too dark on my wrist, but fits my face very well, thankfully! 

It's a decently sized concealer,  I'm thinking it will last me long enough as you really don't need that much, even for dark circles! I also like the way the lid unscrews, it's not held together by some flimsy clasp so you don't need to worry about that breaking (unlike my Sephora eyeshadows).

too dark, as you can see.

before

after

So as you can see, it's a teeny bit cakey, but it doesn't settle into my fine lines (at the moment!) and it does the job. It works really well for concealing spots as well, so I'm very pleased. I'm curious as to see how it'll fare combined with my Collection 2000 concealer, hopefully very well, so I'll let you all know as soon as I've tried that!

Birthday presents - Clinique Travel Set

Today's present is from my best friend who bought this with the reasoning 'I know her mum will refuse to buy her makeup so she won't be getting that much so I'll buy her makeup'. She was right, my mum refused to get me anything *sob*.

So this is one of Clinique's many travel sets which includes:

• 1x Take The Day Off Makeup Remover 30ml/1oz
• 2x All About Eyes 7ml/0.21oz
• 1x High Impact Mascara 7ml/0.28oz ( #01 Black )
• 1x Bag ( Pink )

 So there are four products are all samples except the mascara. I actually have the mascara as a sample as well courtesy of Glamour a few months ago.

First up is the Take The Day Off makeup remover. First of all, I like the name of this, it reminds me a bit of Benefit's way of naming products. This makeup remover's quite good, it works well enough, but as there isn't an extraordinary amount of it, I'm just using it to dip a cotton bud in to remove any mistakes I may have made as I have a tendency of pouring out too much makeup remover.

Next up are the All About Eyes de-puffing eye massage serum. I've used this once but I can't really tell if it makes much of a difference as my eyes aren't really that puffy. It has a tiny bit of a sticky feel to it, which isn't really that much a big deal as it fades away after about five minutes (the feeling, that is).

Finally, we have the High Impact mascara. Although it does nothing to curl my lashes (but then again, what mascara does?), it does add volume, so I think I'll use this for night outs rather than during the day, as it can get a bit too much if I'm not careful (which I'm not during the morning before school) and I don't usually have time to start again before school.

That's it for this post, I shall be finished with my tests this week at the time that this is posted so if I don't get a lot of homework, I may have another update which isn't scheduled! (Although the next one is anyway.)

EDIT: My post scheduling thing is a little funny, it didn't post my previous post at the time I wanted to so I thought I'd just post this one today anyway.

Birthday presents - MAC Lipstick in 'Speak Louder'

[So I managed to take new pictures and that's why I am not scheduling this post for tomorrow!]

Another of my few makeup related presents on Tuesday was something that I've actually had since the beginning of June, but was forbidden to touch and wear until my birthday.

Me and Dani have now decided that we shall make it a tradition to get each other MAC products for our birthdays (I think we have?). She got Impassioned from me and I got Speak Louder.

My first MAC product. Ever! First of all, I adore the smell of these lipsticks. Second of all, I like how the packaging doesn't seem to get covered in marks whenever you touch it (talking to you, Sleek iDivine palette!) and (well duh) how professional it looks.

The lipstick itself looks really dark which for a moment made me wonder whether I'd asked for a colour that was far too similar to lipsticks that I already own, but thankfully it's a lot lighter on the skin.

 Excuse me looking a bit scruffy/tired/meh in the last foto, I'm makeupless except for the lipstick and my hair is unwashed.

So the lipstick is really nice and not too bright, which is good, because I think I have enough of those. Otherwise, it lasts a few hours, although I can't say that with absolute certainty as I wore it to the cinema and I spent those two hours munching on crisps and drinking, so it did wear off a bit.

All in all, I'm very pleased with it and shall be wearing it out ,perhaps Wednesday, it's the grand-duke's birthday (not really, it's more the national day of luxembourg) on Thursday (so it's another bank holiday!) so there'll be fireworks in town and everyone generally goes out on wednesday night and I am as well, so that's probably where I'll wear it!

Birthday presents - Benefit Cha Cha Tint

It seems I have been MIA - again. There's lots to do at school lately as our last term is so short so we have lots of tests after another, the week of the 27th is especially going to be ugly, I can already tell you guys that.

I DO have a few reviews planned as I got some makeup products for my birthday. I would start in chronological order, but I have just realised that the one camera I used for those pictures is awful and I don't like the pictures. So I'm not showing them *stubborn perfectionist*.

These ones, however aren't that bad, so that's why I'm posting them first.

So....Cha Cha Tint. I am a humongous lover of all things coral and when I first saw this in a Benefit leaflet I got on the ferry back to la France and my first thought was 'I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE.' And then I thought 'Oh wait, Benefit is extraordinarily out of your budget, girl.' So I had to settle for looking at lovely swatches on the internet.

BUT THEN I went shopping with my lovely godmother who wanted me to choose a birthday present and she generously bought me two Benefit products (the other I shall review once I have taken better pictures.).Luckily, we managed to get the last one they had so I'm very pelased about that. I'm not sure how much it costs in England, but in Europe, it costs 32€. Yes, that is quite pricey, but I've heard that the little tints you get in sets like Finding Mr Bright or with the Glamour magazine last forever so these will last longer than forever!

I love the look of these tints. The jar is nice and pretty but unlike Benetint, I believe, you can't see how much is in the jar, which is a shame, as I'd like to know when I'm close to running out. Otherwise, it's quite good. The actual packaging is a teeny bit misleading as it makes the jar look HUGE, but it's not as big as the packaging, which isn't all that bad as it's still quite an impressive size.

On to the actual product, it hasn't got the same watery consistency as Benetint, rather it's more creamy like Posietint, which is good as I always swatch Posietint instead of Benetint whenever I'm in Sephora. As per usual with tints, you need to be quick in blending them. The first time I tried this, I ended up having orange fingers, so it is quite messy. 

not a very sharp picture, but one of the best from the batch. may have to take one again

Seeing this in the bottle, one might be put off, thinking it's far too bright. As with many other blusher, it's quite sublte on application, as long as you do it lighthandedly.I think to start off, apply two dots and then blend. Benefit suggest three strokes, but I think that may be too much. Start with less and apply more if you're not satisfied, is my motto ;)

Here we have my bare lips and then my lips with Cha Cha Tint on it. You can't see the difference very well as I'm not too experienced with lips close ups -and it was rather sloppily applied- , but I plan on taking a FOTD when I wear this next (and that way, you'll see what it looks like on the cheeks as well:) )

I'm definitely going to pack this for Paris and use it a lot during the summer as coral is such a summer colour and will look great with a tan (if I ever get one!)

That's all for today, I'll see if I can update anytime soon, if not I'll try and write another post (with crappy photos) and schedule it.

an important blurb

It's ten to midnight on the eve of my birthday and I am quickly blogging about something that's close to my heart. I don't know how many of you follow my sister dani's blog, but I thoroughly advise that, at the very least, you go read this post.

Following the massive twitter shout out concerning Alice Pyne, Dani wrote a blogspot as the issue of cancer, especially the cancer Alice has, really hit home to Dani. You see, Dani had the same cancer Alice has at 17. As someone who is turning 17 very soon, I can't begin to imagine how it feels like. Yes, I've battled my own demons aged 13, but not like that. Fortunately Dan is healed now but it's still something that pops up in conversations or what not.

Anyway,I saw my big sister go through this and it affected me as well. Mostly it made me admire and love her even more than I possibly thought I could.

The point of this post is that dani is doing the Race for Life next year and I'm going to join her, as are my mother and sister and others. Yes, I may live in a different country, but screw it, these things are important. As I said before, I really recommend you all read her post as it is raising awareness for cancer and written by someone young who's lived through it, it may just make it easier for people to emphasise.

On that note, I'm going to bed now. Oh wait, Happy Birthday to me!

nekkid

Yes, I FINALLY own it. The highly revered Naked palette by Urban Decay.

Last week when I was on the ferry from Calais to Dover, I saw this in the shop there. I didn't buy it cause I thought that it might not be that much cheaper than in the UK itself so I abstained. On my way back after confirming it costs £32 in England, I bought it on the ferry for £26.50. Not especially bargain but for me, every pound counts. So if you're going on the ferry for whatever reason and don't own it, I would suggest buying it there, as you'll save a fiver, which all in all, isn't that bad, is it?

I was practically skipping back to my seat with excitement (which was difficult as the boat was quite rocky and that my best friend and I had just had a tiny spat over me being so bossy and impatient when I'm stressed). I must admit, the plastic is really annoying, as it looks so untidy and I wanted it to look perfect, but details, details.

sorry for the sudden change in colour, I didn't quite have the right white balance for these!

The palette comes with a Primer Potion, which is great cause I was needing an original primer potion, sometimes Eden doesn't work that well with some colours.

I won't really go into much detail about the palette as you've all surely seen it a thousand times, all I will say is that I adore it and it's the only thing I've been using lately. I might consider doing a comparison post with Too Faced's Natural Eye palette, but I'll see if there are enough similarities to do so.

But I AM going to post swatches, as I've seen so many posts saying 'You've already seen enough swatches so I won't bother.' Well I like swatches and wanted to swatch the shadows anyway, so I thought 'Why not?!'

Without primer, naturally. God, aren't they pigmented? Of course, there a few, such as Virgin and Naked, that were tricky to get to show up (also on my eye, I find), but I suppose you need to work a bit at them, and it's always the mattes that aren't so pigmented!

Anyway, I'ma be a little busy these next few days as it's my birthday on Tuesday, and naturally, I shall be celebrating. xxxx

You wanna buy pretty clothes?

Now this is advertising of sorts, but not the kind I'm getting paid for. I have a friend (well, technically she is my sister's future sister in law/my future brother in law's sister so according to wikipedia -yes i just checked because it confuses me - she is apparantly my future co-sister in law? something like that. Anyway very good friend of my sister who I have befriended as well) who has lovely clothes, which she is selling.

She is a fan of all things retro so you may find some nice retro inspired clothes here!

Here are a few examples of the clothes she is selling!

Black & White Floral Prom Dress 50s style

Unfortunately my computer is being annoying at the mo so it won't upload the second picture, but she has got lots of other lovely stuff such as a Black Marilyn Monroe inspired Dress and straight leg jeans and some gorgeous sparkly tops!

now I would bid, but I have no money left. *sob*

STEPHIE'S EBAY!

Colour blocking of sorts

Whilst I was in England (and more importantly, in Primark) I was buying a few bright shirts so I could try my hand at colour blocking as I have always been someone who just does not get the concept of clashing (I don't see the problem with pink and red, if I'm honest), although I have toned it down a bit these last few years. Anyway, I had my eye on some gorgeous pastel shorts from Primark, but decided not to get them in the end, as they could be veering on the 'so short might be unflattering on my non twig body' side.

So what kind of alternative does that leave me with? Clashing my makeup and clothes. I didn't even notice I was doing it until I took the pictures and thought 'I actually quite like the clash of the lipstick and the shirt.' I didn't actually wear the makeup out as I didn't leave the house (which I blame on the art project I had to finish with my best mate) but rest assured, I think I know what I'll be wearing next time I go out!

I bought two variations of that shirt, the other one is hot pink and I adore them! £10 from Primark, they're quite the bargain and really versatile as well! The cobalt blue one is just so gorgeous and I definitely want to wear it as much as possible, although it is a tad seethrough, so would have to wear a top underneath (or find a blue bra...which is tricky as most of my bras are pink *girly*).

The lipstick is one of the much-blogged about Sleek True Colour lipsticks and this is Coral Reef. I shall do an individual post about it, but my camera's currently being a pain so bear with me on that.

And here we have my eye makeup, which admittedly wasn't blended out very well, but I was just so excited to use the new product that I got :D I shan't say what it is (I like being mysterious, me!) but it will be getting its own blogpost soon, watch this space!