Chilled Pink Grapefruit

Sunday, 3 July 2011

Face painting: Venetian Mask

My friend hired a face painter for her birthday party this weekend so I just wanted to share the amazing Venetian mask inspired design that she came up with on me.

It almost makes me want to take up face painting, but I don’t think I could get away with wearing this look out most nights – maybe it’s best saved for birthdays after all.

Saturday, 2 July 2011

When I was in Superdrug this week I saw that there were two new eyeshadow palettes on the Sleek stand, Au Naturel and Oh So Special. Au Naturel is a palette full of browns, which aren’t really my style so I gave it a miss, but I picked up Oh So Special (I paid £6.49) which contains a selection of peaches, browns and plums that make an interesting mix for everyday make-up looks so I just wanted to post a quick introduction to the palette today.

The palette comes with a plastic film overlay with the names of the shadows printed on it, but I tend to just chuck them away as I find they get in my way and don’t offer any protection for the shadows anyway. Anyhow here are the names for reference:

From left to right:

top row		bottom row
bow	matte	pamper	matte
organza	metallic	gateau	metallic
ribbon	matte	the mail	matte
gift basket	metallic	boxed	matte
glitz	metallic	wrapped up	matte
celebrate	metallic	noir	matte

As you can see there are a mix of matte and metallic finishes. Here are the swatches on my arm – as ever I think pretty much all of the colours are very well pigmented and appear on the skin true to the colour in the pan. Bow (top left) is very light and makes a good option for a highlight on the brow bone.

The colours are similar to many others from Sleek palettes that I already own, and I would say that it’s most similar to the Paraguaya palette from the recent Avoir la Peche collection. However, I think that all of these colours are so useable that I’m quite happy to have them all in one palette for easy access.

Monday, 27 June 2011

Sale Jewellery Summer 2011

Q: Hmm, what’s to be found in my two newest shopping bags?

A: A big pile of costume jewellery (mostly) picked up at half price in the summer sales. Scroll down for my close-ups!

woodland creatures stud earrings, £3.99 full price, H&M.
I actually picked these up full price in Feb this year but I thought they were so cute I’d post some pics. My favourites are the hares and stags. The hares are even both different – you can see that one has a bent ear.

lime-threaded dangle earrings, £6.25 half price, Topshop

ballerina & rose stud earrings, £2.50 at half price, Topshop

turquoise robot necklace, £4.25 at half-price, Topshop
I actually had the same pendant in a different colour and length before which I bought several months ago. I can’t resist a piece of cute robot paraphernalia though so I went ahead and bought this second one too.

top: orange & metal earrings, £3.25 at half-price, Topshop
bottom: raven claw & turquoise earrings, £2.50 at half-price, Topshop

stag head necklace, £5 at half-price, Topshop

clockwise from left:
cube necklace, £8.50 at half-price, East
freshwater pearl earrings, £3 at half-price, East
blue wooden earrings, £3 at half-price, East
East is a great place to check out at sale time if you like jewellery made from natural materials such as wood, shell, stone and pearl. They have a great selection marked down to half-price.

Monday, 20 June 2011

Sleek Mediterranean Eye Look - Light Blue

Just a quick post for a quick look that I created using my new Sleek Monaco eye shadow palette. I used the four shades at the left of the palette.

Here’s what I came up with.

I used my new Accessorize blush in Quiver on my cheeks which is a really pretty light pink - hopefully you can see the colour in the pic below.

I thought that the brown shade “Sand Walker” looked quite “meh” and bland in the pan, but once it was on my eyes I thought it was the perfect base colour to contrast with the blues. I also like the way it reminds me of a stone, or a twig.

I was really pleased with this look and I think it’s a quick and easy way to wear a little colour to quite dramatic effect.

Saturday, 18 June 2011

Accessorize Haul for Summer 2011

Accessorize is my current favourite make-up brand. I bought loads of items from their collection over the winter of 2010 so imagine my delight when I discovered on a routine trip to Superdrug that they’ve just brought out a whole new range for summer 2011!

In the end it was £33 worth of delight! Here’s an overview of what I picked up.

The mascara was the first item that caught my eye as it has the cutest packaging ever – a pink background with a patchwork union jack on top with a liberal sprinkling of flowers for good measure. It’s called “Collagen Mascara” and I bought the shade Ultra Black. I’ve worn it twice now and both times it’s proven to be a nice every day mascara – adding good, but not overwhelming definition and lasting well all day. The wand is a quite large typical wire brush with quite densely packed bristles that worked well on my sparse lashes.

I love pretty much everything about the Accessorize eyeshadows – the shades, the pigmentation, the packaging and the price. This time I picked up a baked trio in 5 - Astonishment (greens) and a baked duo in 15 – Zoria (blue and gold). All the shades are shimmery and the pigmentation is good to great. Zoria has in fact become an instant favourite with me!

I don’t usually wear bronzer but the shades of the baked bronzer duo in Bondi 4 looked like they would be light enough for even someone as pale as me to get away with. The lighter shade is a gorgeous highlighting gold and the darker shade also has veins of very light gold running through it and I think you can actually see the effect in the swatch.

Now although I love most of the Accessorize range I think the item that I love the most are their Merged Blushes. I bought two of the three that came out last autumn/winter so I was super-excited (yes, I am easily excited Smile

) to discover that they’re launched a whole new range of shades. I had to grab shades 7 – Wowzer (what a great name!) which is a bright pink and 8 – Quiver which is a fawny-light pink mix that is best described by the word “cute”.

left to right: 8 – Quiver; 7 – Wowzer

Here’s a comparison with the Accessorize blushes I bought last year:

clockwise from top:
7 – Wowzer; 2 – Starlet; 3 – Pretty Pink; 8 – Quiver

You can see that Wowzer and Starlet are quite similar, but Wowzer has veins of purple running through it and Starlet has veins of gold and I do think the effect is noticeable in the swatches below.

Left to right:
Quiver, Wowzer, Pretty Pink, Starlet

I love these blushes because they’re so easy to wear and also versatile. The texture is just right – hard enough that they’re not crumbly, but soft enough that you get enough colour pay off when applying them with soft blusher brushes. The colours are strong but not too strong so you can build up from something quite sheer to bright pops of colour on your cheeks. They’re all shimmery so they can also be used high on the cheekbones as a highlight. Basically – love, love, love!

Here are the prices I paid – but please note that prices may be subject to change and should only be viewed as an approximate guide.

collagen mascara	£6.50
eyeshadow trio	£6.00
eyeshadow duo	£4.50
bronzer duo	£6.00
merged blush	£5.00

Body Shop Summer Sale 2011 Make-Up

I haven’t bought anything from The Body Shop for ages but I happened to be wandering around Euston train station the other night and popped into the tiny store on the concourse and ended up picking up a couple of pieces of make-up that were reduced in their summer sale.

Their Spring 2011 eyeshadow palette 01 Boho Beauty is currently reduced from £15 to £7.50. I don’t usually go in for nude shades but I have to admit that I think this palette is just so beautiful I had to succumb.

The cover was designed by students at the University of the Arts London College of Fashion, but actually I’m not that interested in the design – it’s the make-up inside that caught my eye! The eyeshadows are buttery soft and super blendable, with three matte shades and one shimmer (the nude in the top left). The darkest brown in the bottom right-hand corner is also a great colour for me to use for defining as it has plum undertones and offsets the lilacs and purples that I like wearing perfectly.

The palette is made of sturdy plastic and also houses a large mirror in the lid, and the kit also contains a mini eye definer in 02 Rich Brown and a mini eyeshadow brush. The brush is actually pretty good quality – I can see myself getting some good use out of it. The eye pencil is quite hard and takes a bit of warming up before it delivers good colour pay off, but once it was actually on my skin it did stay put well.

left to right:

eye definer 02 rich brown; eye colour New Nude; eye colour Vintage Apricot; eye colour boho brown; eye colour haute chocolate.

The palette contains 2.5g of each shadow which is very generous. That’s similar or more than many brands’ single eyeshadows, so overall I think that £7.50 is an excellent price to get this palette for.

I also bought a somewhat more impractical tiny pot of pink Star Dust which is basically 1.5g of glitter. I have to admit that I’m a bit of a glitter bug and at £3 I thought why not.

The colour is a dark fuschia that I actually think looks quite sophisticated. The glitter particles are flat and round and therefore sit well on the skin. Just be careful when you tip some out of the container though, as my first attempt ended in this:

I only wanted to tip out a tiny sprinkling - whoops! Anyway while I had a big heaped pile of glitter on my hand I thought I might as well take a nice close up shot.

You can see the way the particles sit more clearly on my finger tip which I used to spread the glitter on my hand out a bit.

I love how sparkly the glitter looks in these photos – usually it’s difficult to convey the real texture of glitters and shimmers in photos. This is how the glitter spread out just on my bare skin, but normally I’d wearing it on top of a creamy primer from my Sleek Primer Palette or a creamy eyeshadow stick to get it to stick exactly where I want and hopefully last all night.

Sleek Mediterranean Collection

Sleek released their summer 2011 limited edition Mediterranean collection last week which consists of the Monaco eyeshadow palette (£6.90), Monte Carlo pout polish (£4.29), and Santorini blush (£4.29). I purchased mine from a Superdrug store and online prices may vary.

I really love the print they’ve chosen for the packaging - it makes me think of films starring Cary Grant or James Bond. While the print appears on the blush and pout polish it’s unfortunately only on the cardboard box for the eyeshadow palette, which is the same standard black plastic as most other Sleek palettes. It does however have the name of the palette printed at the bottom right to help distinguish it from the other palettes.

The packaging of my pout polish was sealed with an impressive amount of sellotape:

Well, at least there was no danger there of ending up with a product that had already been fingered in the shop!

The pout polish and blush both look like fantastically bright pink in the pans, but the pout polish is actually very sheer. The blush, however, is as pigmented as an eyeshadow and is best applied with a light touch.

Although I love the colour of the blush, I have to say that I won’t actually be using it because mine has a really really weird smell that I can’t quite put my finger on – like a strong antisceptic or something similar – could it be potassium permanganate?! The smell is so strong that it’s even noticeable from picking up a tiny amount of colour on a blusher brush. None of my other blushes have ever smelt like this including my other Sleek blush, Pan Tao. Has anybody else had the same problem with their Santorini blush? I’m actually not sure what I should do with my blush now though I am considering taking it back to Superdrug as a faulty product.

I do like the Monaco eyeshadow palette though. I could actually see myself wearing every single shade in the palette, and the shadows themselves are very pigmented. As with all Sleek eyeshadow palettes though the shadows are very soft so it does need to be handled carefully to avoid breakages and therefore despite its neat, slim size it’s not best suited to travelling.

The palette comes with a clear plastic overlay with the shade names printed on them and the shadows are a mixture of metallic, shimmery and matte. I had already had a play around with this palette when I took these photos as you can see from the squished surface of the metallic lilac shade Lotus Flower!