Trier Haul!

So yesterday I was asked if I fancied tagging along to Trier with my best friend yesterday and I jumped at the chance, because the german drugstores are just so much better than the only one that exists in Luxembourg.

Also Trier has a Claire's Accessories and I've been wanting to try out their false eyelashes for a while now.



So basically all I got was the Claire's eyelashes and then some MNY stuff (despite not being a big lover of the pale eyeshadows, I decided to give them another chance. and those nail varnishes looked cute)

As you can see, I have two varnishes of the same shade and that's because I liked the look of it and decided I'll add it to my giveaway (of course that won't be the main focus of it, it's just a little random something)

left: 308A and right:549

So here we have a nice metallic red from their Limited Edition I am a jungle chick collection. Honestly, the whole I am a ______ line is really annoying, as they've been doing it with every LE collection, but I'm more interested in the products than the names, so I'll just let that slide. The nail varnishes cost 1.95€ each which is quite a decent price and I think these are quite good quality from various german blogs that I've read.



Next up are two eyeshadows, neither of which are limited edition and these too cost 1.95€. I haven't opened them yet as I'm debating whether or not to include one of them in the giveaway as well, so unfortunately no swatches.





Here we have the eyelashes from Claire's that cost £5.00 in the UK and 6.95€ here in Europe. These weren't even the biggest ones there and I got these because I've been wanting to experiment with falsies for a while now and the ones in Schlecker here cost about 10 euros yet look a lot worse than the Claire's ones.





There you have two very messy and quick nail swatches of the two colours done, I'll try and do a NOTD for them at some point during the week.



And here we have a quick look with the falsies, which you can see are a bit long for my lashes. The eyeshadow and eyebrow are quite messy as I did this last minute at night so I could show you guys what they look like xx :)

Review: Claire's Accessories Natural Tutorial Booklet

A post! That can mean only one thing...Naty's still poorly. Bad for me as I can't tan and have to stay inside but good for all my followers! Anyway, on to the product I'm reviewing. I do know that Claire's aimed more to tweens/early teens, but I'm always open-minded to finding a little gem in otherwise not incredibly substantial makeup, so I bought it.

So with this little booklet, costing 9.95€, you get instructions for the specific makeup look in every language from English to German, Dutch, French, Italian...it goes on and on.

So as you can see, the instructions are pretty sparse once you take away all the foreign language, ech step is about one sentence. Now, I tried doing the steps the other day with their brush and it wasn't all that great. I would post the end result, but I look pretty abysmal at the moment and being on holiday, I didn't pack my foundation, which I don't use, and I think I would need that to help cover up my now blotchy skin.

Included in this little book/box is an eyeshadow base, four shimmery eyeshadows, an eyepencil, a two-in-one spongetip applicator and a brush, a mini mascara and finally a lipgloss. Not bad for 10 Euros, I guess.

(from l-r: eyeshadow base scenic view, sandy beach, pinky swear, naturalista and semi sweet)

So the base is quite shimmery and glittery, but actually quite good. All the other shadows are applied over it and as you can see, they're quite pigmented, contrary to what they look like without a base. As for the colour selection, in the pan 'pinky swear' looks a lot pinker than it is actually on skin, where it just looks white with a tiny shade's difference from 'sandy beach'. 'Semi sweet' is a lovely metallic looking colour which looks quite similar to Too Faced's Push-Up from their Natural Eye palette. All in all, quite impressive for Claire's, which is basically a tween brand.

This time, I've added the liner and the lipgloss to my hand as well and I suppose they're pretty decent as well. I'll go over them with more details individually.

The eyeliner is really not bad, but rather bland and basic. It has that really hard pencil feel to it, which I'm not very keen on, as I prefer the softer feel of the Urban Decay 24/7 Liners. As far as pigmentation goes, also quite good, but then again nothing special.

The two-in-one brush and sponge applicator, as I said before, aren't great either. The brush bit is basically useless and you're supposed to use it for blending, although how you can mange that and get a good result, I don't know. Sponge isn't that bad, I just prefer using brushes to pat the shadows on my eyelids anyway, so these won't be getting any use out of me.

The mascara is well....basically like a freebie you get in Mizz or Shout, so again, aimed at younger people, which is what I expected, so basically, this does nothing to your lashes at all, except make them blacker.

In typical Claire's fashion, the lipgloss is glittery with a very subtle pink tone to it. And by glittery, I mean REALLY glittery. I'm not all that keen on glitter on my lips, so I might give this a miss as well.

All in all, the palette's not actually that bad, I'm quite pleased with the eyeshadows and especially with the base, I'm not sure how long lasting it is, so I'll have to test that out, but if you're starting out with makeup and want a natural look, this is pretty decent.

Ok, so excuse any typos or less than stellar descriptions, I'm off to make myself another drink and drown myself in melancholy whilst my siblings get browner by the minute. Haha just kidding about the drowning part ;)

nat xx