Sunday 16 December 2012

What I Got up to this Weekend

My friends and I do love getting dressed up and stopping over at each other’s houses for a spot of afternoon tea. Here I have to confess that we were indulging in a spot of gossip when we were caught in the act by an unexpected visitor entering our drawing room…

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Only joking :) This is a shot of me and my friend dressed up as Victorian ladies at the History Studios in the Trocadero, Piccadilly Circus. This is actually the second time we’ve been there for a photoshoot because we found it so much fun the first time when we dressed up as Tudor ladies. (I don’t have any scanned images from that shoot unfortunately). It’s a fantastic treat if you love the idea of dressing up and having a professional take your photos. The staff are all very friendly and helpful so I definitely recommend the experience.

Victorian ladies generally didn’t wear much if any make-up as it was somewhat frowned on at the time. What they lacked in cosmetics though they definitely made up for with their wonderful accessories and elaborate clothing. My friend and I both loved the hats and I definitely think it’s a shame that they’ve fallen so much out of fashion these days. You don’t really need to wear any make-up for these shoots as the images are light and colour corrected afterwards but we decided to wear a teeny bit of pink lipstick in our photos. I think it matched our outfits perfectly.

Thursday 13 December 2012

Illamasqua Intense Lipgloss in Liason

Even though I had the day off work on Friday I had to stay in most of the day waiting on deliveries. The present that I’d bought for myself was the last item to arrive but it was worth waiting for. Allow me to introduce Illamasqua intense lipgloss in Liason, a creamy concrete grey.

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This is going to be my weekend staple lip colour this winter. Weirdly enough it’s super flattering and I think adds a touch of cool sophistication to a look.

The packaging is a squeezy plastic tube with a hard tipped plastic applicator. I find it quite hard to get an even application with straight from the tube and because the colour is so intense and shows up any uneveness I like to apply it with a lip brush. After I have the shape painted on, top-ups from the tube aren’t a problem.

Here I have some pics of me wearing Liason with a couple of different subtle shimmery eye looks. (Unfortunately all my pictures look quite blue at the moment because I need to adjust the white-balance on my camera.)

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I love the “ice-queen” look that you can achieve instantly with this gloss. So cool!

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Purple Smoky Eye with Vintage Bourjois

I picked up several Bourjois vintage items in TKMaxx a few months back. There were a selection of eyeshadows and blushers produced with limited edition packaging back in 2010 so I know the stock must have been a couple of years old when I bought it, but I’m not too worried about using older eyeshadows and I was a sucker for the cute packaging which features vintage style illustrations of scenes from Paris.

I’m not the biggest fan of Bourjois eyeshadows as I find them a bit sheer and chalky but sheer eyeshadows can have their advantages too. I don’t always want pure intense colour on my eyes and sometimes prefer to build intensity up by layering sheerer colours rather than having to blend out super-dense ones.

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I just went for a classic 3-colour smoky eye here, using silver as my lightest base colour all over the lid then layering a mid tone and dark shade at the edges of my lids and along my lashline to build depth. I really like this combination of colours – it’s slightly unexpected, and also a good way of avoiding black eyeshadow, which I try not to use if I can avoid it (I just think that with my pale skin and dark hair and brows black eyeshadow is very difficult for me to pull off without looking like a vampire…)

Here are the actual products that I used – three eyeshadows and one rosey toned blush.

The shades clockwise from top are: 72 Violet Absolut; 25 Argent; 95 Rose de Jaspe (blusher); 04 Noir Precieux (a blackened purple). I’m not sure if the actual shades themselves were limited edition or not.

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Since I’m such a fan of this packaging, I really could just customise more of the make-up I already own by sticking stickers on it. If I ever get round to trying that out I’ll post some pics!

Sunday 9 December 2012

Flowers on the Beach

Today I have a slightly different kind of post, which is filled with photos that I took in Scotland when I was back there for a few days this summer. I’m mostly inspired by the colours that I see around me, so I thought I’d share a few of the flowers that I spotted when I went to the beach for a bit of inspiration and relaxation. A bit of colour is always nice in the middle of winter. Enjoy!

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Saturday 8 December 2012

First Christmas Make-up of 2012

I was invited to a tree-trimming evening last week at a friend’s and I figured that I might as well do some party make-up. I like to take advantage of any excuse to whack excessive glitter all over my face :)

As a disclaimer, the lousy winter light has been killing my photos lately. Here I had to take photos under artificial lighting with a flash so they’re quite orange and shiny. Just the kind of flattering finish I love lol.

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I used eyeshadows from my Accessorize You are Everything palette (silver and purple on the upper lid) and the turquoise from my MUA Dusk till Dawn palette on my lower lash line. Incidentally I’m not wearing any mascara in these photos – my eyes tend to water when I go out in the cold and I didn’t want to end up with mascara running all down my face by the time I got to my friend’s, but I don’t think this look misses mascara too much because I’m wearing so much eyeliner that the lashline stands out anyway.

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Both of these palettes are fantastic for creating simple but striking looks as they contain a really good range of well-pigmented colours. Oh and did I mention that you can pick up both of these from selected Superdrugs and go home with change from £15? Definitely worth checking out if you like your bargain eyeshadows.

From the Archives

I haven’t posted anything for almost a month, mostly because it’s been so dark here in London now that winter’s coming that all my photos look really crummy lol, so I thought that I’d post a picture taken a few months back when it was a bit more bright and summery.

Here I’m modelling yet another pair of cat’s ears (I have four now, I get a kick out of collecting them for some reason – these particular ones were Halloween specials from Accessorize) and some peach and green eyeshadow, probably Snatch and Grafitti by Urban Decay.

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Stay tuned for some wintery posts coming up this week!