Wednesday 30 March 2011

Strictly Fabulous 'Salsa Palette' FOTD


Hiya everyone!

A while ago, I promised that I would do FOTDs using my Strictly Fabulous Cosmetic Case. As I already did the Ballroom FOTD a while ago, I'd do the Salsa Palette one now.

I was looking forward to this one because of the brigh matte shades and I wanted to try something à la Liloo who blends all her eyeshadows together fantastically. Whilst I didn't achieve something fantastic like she does, it did end up pretty decent so I took some snaps.



 The thing is, with my eyeshape, the eyeshadows are always hidden unless I have my eyes wide shut, so the full face pictures never show them well.
I tried a few eye shots but they were a bit tricky to do. Speaking of which, how do you all do your eye close ups? If anyone has any tips they'd be willing to share, it'd be much appreciated!


I barely ever post lip close ups cause of my upper lip hair, please ignore it!

It's a shame that my camera sort of muted the colours as this really was a lot brighter in reality. After a while though, the colours sort of blended together and didn't look as bright anymore and just like a mish mash of blues and greens.


And finally, my Crown & Glory rust bobby pin flower thing. I adore this, the colour is just stunning and really makes your hairdo look a lot more interesting!

I'll try and post soon but could be rather difficult as I'm going to my teacher's play tomorrow and getting up at 5.15 on Friday for a reallllyyy exciting trip to Paris. Not even real paris, so it'll be boring as hell!




Sunday 27 March 2011

Bloglovin Bandwagon

Follow my blog with bloglovin
Hey everyone, I've decided to join the bloglovin bandwagon, so if you want to follow me on there, click the link above!

Saturday 26 March 2011

Cinema FOTD

Hello everyone!
I'm going to the cinema later on with Martine and as it's officially Spring now, thought I would bypass the nude eyeshadows and go for a little colour, namely the pastel blue and teal from my Strictly palette.



I did have to toy around with these photos in photoshop and use selective colouring as they looked far too yellow when I took them, probably due to my white balance. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with this look and the products that I used are:

 Strictly Fabulous Palette :Ballroom Palette
Maybelline Define-A-Line Liquid Eyeliner
Maybelline Colossal Volume Mascara
Clinique High Impact Mascara

L'Oreal Blush (not sure which one, will check later!)
Garnier Tinted Eye Roll On
Sephora Concealer

Maybelline Colour Sensational Lip Tint in In The Buff

silly pose face, I had to include it!



Oh and the GORGEOUS flower in my hair is Crown & Glory, the Mellow Yellow bobby pin from the Pic n Mix set!

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Crown & Glory Runner Up Prize

As some of you may or may not know, I was the runner up in Crown & Glory's giveaway and I received my prize, a pair of Russian Dull Button Bobby Pins. I got the package yesterday, I think. I'm not sure as my granddad forgot to check the post for the last few days so it may as well have been earlier, but last night, I went and checked the postbox and there it was!


So it arrived wrapped in the blue paper (used as background here) then in the striped paper bag, enclosed with a little note. I have to say, I adore how everything's so colour co-ordinated and matching with C&G labels everywhere, it just looks so adorable!


Sophie asked if I had a colour preference and me being me, I asked for pink and I love the colour! They're just so cute and I just love everything from that shop so these could be my least favourite colour but I'd still like them.







Here we have a selection of pictures of me wearing them. I had a bit of difficulty photographing them what with nobody being there to be able to photograph them and my hair being particularily big today. I tried to do an updo there, but I need to practice with the pins and everything.

Basically, these are really lovely and so simple to spruce up your hairdo! I also ordered the Pic & Mix bobby pin set as I adore all the flower bobby pins and was having difficulty choosing which I would like to order when these came out and it being a selection of three gorgeous colours, I couldn't resist!

I'll be posting about them once I get them, so watch this space! And as a little random thing, I created the poster for my drama class' play, if anyone wants to see it, I'd be glad to put it up, I'm actually quite proud!

Sunday 20 March 2011

Where Are My Knees? Pledge

And another post! So if you're part of the British blogosphere, you've probably heard of Where Are My Knees?.
 
Gemma, Charlene, Sarah, Sarah V and Lucy are five bloggers who've decided to collaborate and create this blog to show their individual dieting and healthy eating methods.
 
Coincidentally, this started the same week that I decided that I want to start being a little healthier (the idea being born when my best friends and I were drinking hot chocolate and claimed we needed to lose weight. Course, they don't, I do).
 
 
The thing is, this is my first 'diet' thing. I've tried to be a bit healthier in the past, but it's never really worked, but lately I've decided that I want to slim down so I can stop feeling like a fatty and just be comfortable with myself. I'm a size 16 at the moment and I don't want to be the same size as my age. So going into details about this, I weigh 81.5kg and in the last year or so, I've lost about 3 kg. Lately whenever I lose weight, it's always about 1-1 &1/2 kgs and stays there. So to talk about that, I guess my PCOS needs to come into the game and because of that (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, for those who didn't know), I'm not only hairy but have also had difficulties to budge my weigh.
 
 
Of course, I won't use that as an excuse, I know my diet's been unhealthy and now I want to change that. Another factor that plays a part is that in Luxembourg, about 80% of the girls here are skinny. I'm probably the largest girl in my class and sometimes, it feels awful. A scene that I'll always remember is when my 'friends' were moaning about how fat they were and basically wanting someone to say 'No, you're not! You're a perfect size!'. Me being me, I said that then jokily said 'Besides, I'm the fatty here.' I'll confess, I was hoping someone would say I wasn't, but all I got was an awkward silence and a subject change. Lovely, isn't it? Honestly, it hurt and since then (a few years ago) I've been really conscious about my weight.
Lately I've improved a bit and accepted my body, but I still feel I need to lose weight.
 
 
So how to go about it? Well, I am a fussy eater, so I can't replace my food with salads and stuff, so I've decided I need to compromise. My plan was to write down what I eat each day and at the end of the week, see what I can leave out. So far this week, I have been bad: I've had quite a lot of crisps. Crisps are my downfall as I love them and always have done. Another difficulty is that in all the places to go for lunch near my school, hardly any are healthy so I've had some not so healthy stuff this week as well.
BUT:I have made progress : Usually for breakfast, I would eat cereal and sometimes that cereal isn't really that healthy.En plus, I'd get hungry by the time the morning break came along, so I'd buy some chocolate from the vending machine. Well, to rectify that, I've started eating a banana for breakfast and sometimes taking an apple to school. The reason I say sometimes is because usually my school has free apples so I'll sometimes get one from there.
Going on the apple overload, I've also decided for lunch I'll buy an apple from the supermarket near my school, so when I do that, I think I may alternate the fruit in the morning and maybe eat a clementine or something like that.
 
 
Another obstacle would be water. I don't generally drink water, which is bad. I've just not liked the taste, but I need to adapt to it, so I'm starting with flavoured water for now and cutting out fizzies during school, which is the easiest thing to get in our vending machines. That's actually appalling in itself as they should encourage us to be healthy.
 
 
As for sport, I'm undecided on that as of yet. I've never really been a sporty person, but my parents have an exercise bike so hopefully I will find the motivation to get on that more often.
 
 
This is just a little (long) post talking about my attempt to get healthier and fingers crossed it'll work this time!
 
 
Oh and for anyone interested in pledging for WAMK, they've done a nifty button which you can find on their site  and which looks like this:
 

Where Are My Knees?



Peacocks dress

Hello!
So this is the second post in a row concerning an outfit of mine, never fear, I won't be changing the blog name to ohlalafashion, because I'm just not a fashionista nor do I really wear that many creative outfits.


Anyway, I saw this dress on peacocks' site and just could not resist. There was a slight kerfuffle in that my grandparents had to order it (and then my granddad nearly ordered it 11 times!!!) as I don't live in England and bring it over, which they did when they arrived here on Tuesday and luckily, it met ALL expectations.

It looked HUGE on the hanger but fit perfectly (that must say something about my size..)


So lovely posey mirror pictures aside (I have yet to find someone to take pictures of me), you can see the dress here, but not quite as well as I would like, so I'll try and get someone to take a picture next time I wear it.

Also these pictures mute the colour so I took a picture with half of my face cropped off so you could see it better.

(where'd the forehead go?!)

So it's got a lovely pattern and is really comfortable and flattering. Another bonus point is that it isn't too tight over the chest area, which is fantastic, as that's one of the worst things that can happen as a larger-chested girl when you try on a dress!

I think this is the first dress from Peacocks that I've tried but I've generally been very pleased with the other clothes I've bought, so I really can't recommend this dress enough!

I've been browsing their site and here are few other things I want that I probably won't get as I need to save. Gah.

Ladies Belted Dress -£20


Ladies Tea Dress -£20

Ladies Belted Chinos - £18

With these Chinos, it's more that I'm intrigued to see whether they suit me or not, cause I've been seeing them a lot and think they look quite nice.

Well that's it for now. As always, sorry for my absence, I've been having a bit of a difficult week (finding out your crush is most likely not single isn't really ideal, is it?) and have had two of my hardest tests for which I had to study a lot, so hopefully I should be on more frequently. Next time, with makeup I hope!

Although to add a bit of relevance to the post, I'll just show what my makeup routine has been lately -
VERY plain, as you can tell. I've just been using lip balm, concealer and mascara as I've been too lazy to do anything else!

Monday 14 March 2011

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

Ok, so the Lionel Richie post is a little nod to my absence and how people must be surprised that I've actually updated, although unfortunately, it's not really a real makeup post per se, rather a makeup-new jacket-jumble post.




A) These pics are good yet bad because they were taken on my best friend's canon camera but facebook screwed them up so meh.B) My eyes aren't shut, I'm just looking down
So this is my New Look parka ('look deep into the parka!') and I love it! It may be a bit parky (no pun intended) but I'm still going to wear it, unless it's pissing down, in which case, I'll pass. Another interesting fact about this photo is that I am actually wearing jeans. No, not jeggings, but jeans. Real jeans. This hasn't happened in about two years.









So my best friend then papped me quickly applying my lipstain and vaseline (life saver, that is) and these pictures look weird cause I had to resize them and the ratio may be off.



I used my Strictly palette, the same gold that I raved about just cause it was a lovely day and I wanted a bit of colour.




Awful pose on the first one, but it was funny. Anyway, just a small post which I hope makes up for my lack of posting lately, I'll try and get on this weekend!


Monday 7 March 2011

feeling a bit down in the dumps

hey everyone, sorry this isn't a real post, per se, but I just need to talk about my feelings a bit (people always groan or so when I start talking about my feelings - sorry!).

I'm feeling so stressed at the moment due to multiple things but I won't talk about everything, as I know some people I know read this blog and I don't feel like divulging everything to them. That's why I never talk about my crush as I'm scared it would get back to him and I'd just feel like an absolute knob then. So, as most of my issues concern, it's school again. My first issue is that I need enough points to get an average of 38/60 in all languages put together. So to give you an example of my points, I have about 30 in german, 34 in french and 56 in english. It's enough, but I don't feel it's fair as the english is the reason it's so high and it's an unfair advantage as I am english. Now in french I got 14/30 in this written part due to not respecting the fact that we had to write 200-250 words (OH, I am SO sorry I wrote so much!) and the top of the class guy also wrote too much yet DIDN'T get points taken off. So I went to my teacher and apparently I got them taken off cause my style's not good and too many grammatical mistakes.

Well, you know what? It feels as if my teacher is just trying to make things so much harder for me, despite knowing I need to get the points. She knows I'll do anything I can to improve, I'm going to Paris for two weeks in the summer for an intensive summer course because literature is the only thing I like and I can't imagine doing anything else at school. This is making me really upset cause I hate it when teachers try and motivate you through reverse psychology by saying you're shit, basically. So this is a lot of stress for me especially as I'm currently failing German (although, my german teacher believes in me and seems to really want me to do languages. She even told me I've managed to pass my lit history test, although not by how much, but it's an improvement.) and I can't handle the added stress from french.

So why not just do other subjects? The other ones are maths, biology and sciences, economics, art or general. I can't do any of those and could never imagining doing them. Keeping my options open, I went to a lecture thing about sciences after school and it was just not my thing.

On top of this, I have a bio test tomorrow and I can't remember anything. I even wrote everything down from the book and it's just going in one ear and out the other. So I'm gonna fail, and then if I compensate it with marks from other subjects, most likely english as that is my best subject, and then I won't have as many points for the languages and it just feels as if everything is going wrong now.

I know this is nothing compared to other people on the blogosphere's problems, but to me they're pretty big and I just can't stand the idea of being a failure and I feel I need to live up to what my sis was like at school. On top of that, I have no idea whether my crush likes me or not, most likely not, I just feel so inferior to him and just wish so much he would like me back and am just so stressed about it all.

Sorry about all the rambling but I just needed to get it off my chest.


Thursday 3 March 2011

Strictly Fabulous Cosmetics Case 'Ballroom Palette' FOTD

So I'm actually writing this on Sunday, although publishing it on Thursday, as I figured I won't have much time this week and want to give my lovely readers something to read this week.
In reverse order, my first FOTD is with the Ballroom palette, as I couldn't resist those gorgeous golds.

Excuse the pouty expression, this was actually the best of the lot.

I'm squinting a bit in this picture as I took it without flash standing at the window and the sun was blinding me. I used the four golden eyeshadows and the second lipgloss for this look and blending the eyeshadows was a dream, they blended together beautifully.



Haven't really got much else to say, just hope you all like this and if you have any requests for the next look concerning the palettes, let me know!

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Strictly Fabulous Cosmetics Case 'Ballroom Palette'

And concluding our Strictly Fabulous Cosmetics Case posts, I have the Ballroom Palette here.
So out of the three palettes, I think this is the one which is most accessible for daytime. These colours could be pulled off without looking too dramatic, and on the left side, you could say that they're the nudeish colours.

Here we have the most BEAUTIFUL gold I have every since which is very velvety and even brighter than Urban Decay's Baked (which is the holy grail for golds for me), I think I may do some comparison swatches to show to you girls what it's like. Then you have a darker, coppery sort of colour which goes beautifully with the gold, a shimmery cream which would be ideal as a highlight and then a light pink/brown colour that also goes well with these. As for glosses, you have a see through sparkly colour, then a pink/gold duochromey colour with LOTS of gold sparkles.

Out of all three blushers/bronzers, this is the darkest. Again, it's shimmery but not that noticeable once on your face. When you apply it, it actually looks a bit redder than in the pan, so I'm thinking this is a blusher bronzer hybrid.

With the exception of the dark purple, all these eyeshadows are pastels, whether it's violet, blue or green/blue. The first gloss is a pale nude colour with lots of shimmer and the second is a darker red with shimmer, but not as dark as the one in the first palette.



The first four eyeshadows are again insanely pigmented (check out that gold!!!!) and don't let the palette down. However, the last four are rather chalky and a bit weaker than the others. It's like the makers got tired at this point and decided not to make them as magnificent as the others. It's no big problem, as they still are not bad without primer and I'm sure you can build them up.

So there you have it for the Strictly Fabulous palette. I'm definitely happy I got this for Christmas and I will enjoy using it!