Getting Out Of The Rut Days 3, 4 and 5

I know I've disappeared for a bit, but it doesn't mean I wasn't keeping up with the challenge. It just means I didn't have much time to post. The past 4 days though I have been slacking a bit, so no photos of that, but I did incorporate a few products in my make up that I'd not used for a while, mainly blushes and lipsglosses/lipsticks. Anyway, here are the photos of the days I did make an effort:

Products used (other than my staples): Mac Crushed Metallic Pigments in Moss Garden, Spruced and Silk Stocking, Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner pencil in Covet, Laura Geller Baked Blush in Bora Bora and Mac Lipgelee in Lush & Bright.

See 2 more looks after the jump!

Getting Out Of The Rut Day 2

Here's another look I've done with products that had been sitting unloved in my make up drawers. Products used (other than my staples which I will do a separate post about) were Mac Surf Baby! Cheek Powder in My Paradise, Barry M Dazzle Dust no. 26, Mac pigment in Spiritualize, Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencil in Vacancy and Mac Kissable Lipcolour in Exxxhibitionist.

 Here are the products I used:

I'm really enjoying this and will continue to post pictures. Hope you like them.

Getting Out Of The Rut Day 1

So today is the first day of me using some make up that's been sitting in my drawers unused. In this look I used (among my staples like foundation, powder, mascara and brow set gel which I have no need to mix up) Sephora Moonshadow Trio in Dusk Till Dawn, Urban Decay 24/7 eyepencil in Rockstar, Accessorize Merged Baked Blusher in Wowzer and Mac Dazzleglass Creme in If It's Pink.

Feel free to let me know what you think, but please go easy on me, I haven't done this in a long time.

So that's day one ticked. Onto day two, the adventure continues!

Stuck in a Rut

I don't expect many people to read this post since this blog has been inactive for so long, so I guess I'm mostly just writing this to myself. But if you do read it, feel free to let me know in the comments.

So it's been a long time since I wrote much on here and even then it was mostly about nail polish. That's the only part of my beauty routine that I'm actually varying at all. I do a new mani at least 3 times a week and I've been buying soooo much nail polish, it's shameful. Make up, not so much, although I have bough the odd blush or lipstick, even foundation, I haven't really been keenly following the new releases. I guess it's partly because I have a massive stash already and most of the new releases look similar to what I already have, and I simply don't need any more. Not that I need more nail polish, but that's another matter. Anyway...

Despite owning a massive amount of make up, I have only been using a very small portion of it. Why? Mostly due to lack of time in the morning, partly due to how my make up is stored. So I tend to just use about 5 different blushes and maybe 10 different lipsticks, hardly get around to wearing eyeshadows, and things like highlighters - what's that? This evening I was looking for a couple of old Mac face products as I was reminded of the summer collection from 5 years ago by a blogger and in the process I decided to look through my 6 drawer chest that contains most of my Mac blushes, MSFs, lots of other blushes and a whole drawer full of again, mostly Mac lipglosses. I don't think I'd opened that drawer for a good year if not longer. This gave me an idea.

From now on, starting tomorrow, I'm going to try and use as much of my make up as possible. Instead of frantically trying to find something in the morning, giving up and settling for the same blush I use most days, I will pull out a few products the night before and actually plan my look in advance. I will also document what I wear on here (might not be photos of my face, maybe just the products for starters) as well as keep note of it on a spreadsheet (which I'm yet to put together). Why? Because I need to get out of the rut and realise just how many wonderful products I own and need to use. I will also aim to post pictures of my manis and nail polish purchases which I will also try to finally curb, but that's another matter.

So here we go, first step out of the beauty rut and onto a journey to rediscover my stash. Who's coming with me?

Haul Pictures

I am so happy we can finally get Essence in the UK! In case you didn't know, Essence is now being sold in Wilkinson. My small local branch only has a small display, but I popped into a bigger one that had a much bigger one. Today I want to show you what I picked up as well as a couple of other bits from Topshop, Superdrug and Boots.

So from Essence I got these cute nail stickers for when I'm too lazy to do some stamping, and a nail polish called Laser Show which is a glitter topper with silver microshimmer and black glitter. From Topshop I picked up two glitter polishes called Dreamlike and Myth.

Also from Essence, I got their Blush Up powder blush that bears a very strong resemblance to Mac's blush ombres. It's very pigmented, just great for summer. I also got the new Sleek palette, Rio Rio and Chanel Illusion D'Ombre in New Moon, one of the new summer shades. I have another shade to show you, which I'll be writing a full review on very soon.

Have you been buying any make up or nail polish lately?

My Current Favourites - Part 1 : Make Up

As it's been a long time since I last blogged frequently, I thought I'd put together a couple of posts about the products I currently use the most. I'm starting off with make up and will also show you some of my nail related favourites.

First up is Chantecaille White Tiger powder which is just possibly the most luxurious face powder you can find. In the picture below it looks a little sad as the gorgeous picture's almost completely disappeared, but you can see a picture of how it used to look here (need to scroll down a little). I love this powder, it's really nice, well, I guess it had better be anyway since it cost £88! It appears to have been discontinued now, which is a shame, but luckily I have a few back ups of it.

While still on the subject of face powder, my favourite brush to apply it with has been the Guerlain Meteorites brush. This particular one is an older, limited edition one, but they're pretty much all the same except for their colour.

See what else I've been loving lately after the jump!

Update On My No-Buy

You might remember this post about me going on a lipstick, lipgloss and nail polish no-buy a month ago, so I thought I'd do a little update on how I've been getting on.

I'll start with the good bit. I have only bought 4 lipsticks over the last month and those were all on my wishlist, so that's all good. I have now reached my 400 limit, so now I have to be very strong and not buy any more. I can still buy 4 lipglosses until I reach my limit of 600, I have only bought the 3 Mac By Request ones lately. I've not been tempted by any, so hopefully I'll be able to resist beyond the 4 I'm allowed.

Now onto the bad bit. I am embarassed to say that I have totally and utterly failed when it comes to not buying nail polish. The bag in the picture above contains over 70 polishes and I bought most of them in the past month. This is now a serious addiction I have to address. I think the problem with nail polish is that there are always so many new colours, glitters, holos, it's very hard to resist, whereas once you have 10 red lipsticks, you're pretty much set.

So I have decided I really must stop buying them now. There are a few I absolutely must buy (Echanted Polish Magical Mystery Tour and I Am A Walrus for example), but after that I will write a wish list for every nail polish I see and think "ooh, I must have this" and then only allow myself a few (5?) every month. That way I really will only buy the ones I really really want and hopefully think twice about whether I actually need a certain shade.

For now I have on my wishlist: Color Club Halo Hues polishes (x6), Gift Of Sparkle, Fame And Fortune, Zoya Aurora, Blaze, Electra, OPI Polka.com (Spring 2013), Butter London Scuppered and Shambolic.

Wish me luck! I will update again in a month's time.

I'm going on a no-buy!

Okay, first of all can I just say how much I hate the new Blogger layout? The older one was so much easier to use and I can see this is going to take me a lot of time to get used to. Meh.

Anyway I have decided that due to the number of products in my stash I have to go on a no-buy*. I have been addicted to buying make up all the time for the past 4 years or so and have accumulated a crazy amount. The worst areas are lipsticks, lipglosses and nail polish. I now have nearly 1000 lip products (over half of them are lipglosses) and over 500 nail polishes. There is just no way I can even make a dent in them let alone use most of them up in the next year or two. So I have decided it has to stop. (*I've just re-read my post and want to clarify that the no-buy only relates to lipsticks, lipglosses and nail polish, just in case you all think I'm going to give up buying make up altogether!)

I am going to allow myself 4 more lipsticks and 8 more lipglosses until I reach the magic 1000, and then I will stop buying them. I have given myself a very few exceptions, like limited edition Guerlain Rouge G lipsticks (I love those too much) and Mac Dazzleglasses, possibly Lip Gelees. Do you know what? It's actually been quite liberating to not be able to go out and buy lots of lipsticks, I've been carefully planning what to do with my last few remaining choices, and have only bought 3 lipsticks in the last 3 months. I still have one choice left after buying lipsticks from the Mac By Request collection and I don't know what it's going to be yet. It's almost exciting!

Nail polishes as well, I have bought so many over the past couple of years, it would take me 1.5 years to use them all if I painted my nails every day. Which I don't do. So let's make it 3 years, and that's only using them once each. Yes, it is that crazy.

So I guess what I'm saying here is that you won't be seeing many reviews on lipsticks and lipglosses in the future,  but on the other hand you will be seeing lots more nail polish posts and I will maybe continue with the "Swatching my stash" posts because that way I can also be reminded what lipsticks I already own and not be sad about not being able to buy a new one.

How long will the no-buy last, I don't know. Initially I'm thinking a year. Then we'll see. Right now even that sounds thoroughly scary, but I just have to be strong. I will no doubt continue to buy other type of make up, so that should help too. It's not like I actually need any more make up for a year (or ten!), but I can't go cold turkey. Make up is my hobby, my passion, so it would be like giving up a small part of me and that would certainly not be nice.

Right, enough waffling. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you've ever done a no-buy and how it went.

My Sales Bargains Video

Just a quick video I did showing you what goodies I got in the after Christmas sales. :)

Finished! The November Edition

I managed to finish a lot of products this month, so I'm pretty pleased with that. Of course most of them are skincare products as usual, but I did finish two pieces of make up, so it's alright.

First up is the most expensive face cream I've ever owned, it's Guerlain Orchidee Imperiale Exceptional Complete Care Cream. This is a 50 ml size and it currently retails for £255. No, I've not gone mad, or maybe I have! I didn't pay nowhere near as much as this was actually a tester that I bought on eBay and the lid actually looks pretty worn, although don't know why because the cream inside was untouched. I've had this for quite a while, especially as I tended not to use it in the summer as it doesn't have any SPF. Also you really only need a tiny bit, so it does last forever. It's really lovely, but I don't know if it's 25 times better than my Nivea face cream that I've also finished. So I won't be repurchasing this for now, although I do actually have about 15 samples of it as well for travelling, so I'm okay for now anyway.  

See what other products I've finished after the jump!

FrontCover Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette Review and Swatches

Every year with Christimas comes a new bunch of limited edition FrontCover sets and I usually can't resist and end up buying a few, despite already owning a good number of them (you can check out my collection in this post). As there's usually a 3 for 2 offer in Boots, I often end up with 3 of these sets at a time. This year, among others I purchased the Eye Popping Eyeshadow Palette which I'm going to show you today.

Housed in a plastic two-tier compact you find 18 eyeshadows in pretty much every colour of the rainbow. They are all quite frosty, so if you like your matte eyeshadows, then this is not the palette for you. A couple of them also have small glitter in them, although it's not too obvious, especially as those are the darkest shades. The top tier contains 12 eyeshadows in blues, purples, greens and a couple of highlighter colours, and the bottom tier contains 6 pink/peach/brown shades arranged in a slightly different format like a shimmer brick. You get a double ended brush and a small face/blush brush as well, plus there's a nice large mirror in the lid.

The fact that there's a face brush next to the 6 pink/peach/brown shadows made me think they're also intended to be worn as blush, swirled together as the strips are too narrow to be used alone, but to be honest, they are way too frosty for that. I did try to recreate the look on the cover and used the bottom 6 as blush, but it did not look very good. And they're too dark for highlighter, so I would stick with them as eyeshadows.

Pigmentation-wise the shadows are pretty good, some better than other, but the bright ones really do pop and the dark more matte (well with glitter) ones aren't too chalky either. Over UDPP they didn't crease or fade at all. There was some fallout during application but not while worn, so I was pretty impressed. All in all you get 23 g which is massive for £16. The case is rather heavy, so that makes it less travel friendly, but it's not bulky and you get so many shades that you really don't need much else. The brushes provided are pretty naff, but that's normal with sets like this I think. What's great about FrontCover sets is that you get useful hints and tips on how to create certain looks. I have tried to recreate the cover look and will be posting my FOTD pictures soon. The cover is pretty cool actually with the image changing from open to closed eyes depending on the angle you look at it, I can't for the life of me remember what it's called, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

There are lots of pictures including swatches after the jump!

My London Make Up Haul Video

I went to London yesterday and decided to make a quick video about my findings. Enjoy!

Topshop Sandstorm Make Up Collection Haul

On a recent shopping trip I wondered into Topshop and had a look at their make up (I don't actually like Topshop clothes, must be the only only person in the country who doesn't, but anyway) and ended up coming away with a few things. I am actually pretty impressed by everything I bought, so I thought I'd show them to you.

I believe these products are from the Sandstorm collection which isn't their latest, and I can't actually find everything on their website, but hopefully some of this is still available, should you be interested. I bough a baked eyeshadow duo called Solar Cell, an eyeshadow mousse in Tundra, and two eyeshadow crayons in Zephyr and Equinox. They cost between £8 and £8.50 each, so not too bad. My favourites are the eyeshadow crayons, they are really soft and smooth, and make very good bases. Of course you can wear them on their own if you wish. I did wear Equinox alone (over UDPP) in this picture and it held out fine all day. In fact one of these products creased on me all day, all of them were applied over UDPP and I wore Zephyr as a base for some loose powders (which I will tell you about later). The eyeshadow duo I loved so much when I swatched in the shop with my fingers, but swatched with a brush I felt quite disappointed, however, I was happy to see that applied over primer on my lids I could achieve the same intensity I did with my fingers. It did wear well though and didn't crease at all, and maybe it could benefit even more from being worn wet, I haven't tried that yet.

So there you go, that's my mini Topshop make up haul. Do you own any Topshop make up? Let me know in the comments!

See lots of pictures after the jump!

Finished! The August Edition

Another month has gone by and I've managed to finish a few more products. Mostly skincare, but there are a couple of mascaras in there too. Let's start with the one thing I don't have a photo for, that's because I took it with me on holiday and managed to leave it behind. It was nearly finished, and since I don't have it any more, I'll consider it finished. What I'm talking about it a sample of Clinique's 7 Day Scrub Cream. It's an okay scrub, but not too special. Certainly not £17 per 100 ml special, so I will not be repurchasing it.

Onto the next Clinique product, I also had a sample of Take The Day Off make up remover. I did like this one very much, it's very effective at removing make up, and I will definitely buy a full sized one once my current Estee Lauder make up remover runs out. The full size (125 ml) costs £14.50, it's not cheap, but it is certainly a very good make up remover.

Read about all the other products I've finished this month and see more pictures!

Simple Kind To Eyes Eye Make Up Corrector Pen

Having worn make up for the last 20 years or so, I am now pretty good at applying it. However, I still make mistakes, especially when applying mascara, so on a recent shopping trip I picked up Simple Kind To Eyes Eye Make Up Corrector Pen. Up until then I either used a cotton wool bud to tidy up my mistake, or my Avon make up remover pencil (not sure if those are still available at all). But at £4.99 I thought I didn't have much to lose should the Simple pen not work out. Fortunately it did. I like it that it has such a fine tip, it's very easy to get under my lower lashes (which is where the mistakes often are), and also that it really is gentle to my skin with no alcohol or perfume.

I'm not entirely sure that it's that much better than my trusty cotton wool buds (dipped into make up remover if necessary), but I guess it would come in very handy when travelling or needing to tidy up smudged make up on the go. There is one thing I'm not too keen on though and it's this:

This is what the tip looks like after using it to remove some mascara. It is recommended that you clean the tip with make up remover wipes, but I do feel that having to do that suddenly makes it less of a portable option. Besides, might as well use a wipe to clean off the smudged mascara then, no?

But it is convenient and all in all works well, so I will forgive it for that small issue. Do you own this or have you tried it? Let me know in the comments!

Finished! The June edition

I'm afraid I only have 3 products to show you this month, although there are another 5 or so products that literally only have 4-5 uses left in them, so expect a bigger turnout next month.

First up is Lancome Genifique, an absolutely fantastic skincare product. I have reviewed this here already, so won't repeat myself, but I still love it and have now purchased a 30 ml size version (this was a gift with purchase). I find that I use approx. 1 ml a week (I only use this at night), so although it's pricey, 30 ml should last a long time.

See what other products I have finished this month!

Who says make up isn't ART?

I've come across this fantasticly talented young make up artist the other day and I thought I'd share her work with you. Usually when you hear the word make up artist, you think about people applying make up onto others more or less in the traditional way, but this lady is very different. She literally paints scenes onto her eyes and lips, sometimes her whole face. Outer space, Disney film scenes, sunsets, anything. I mean just look at the pictures below! Absolutely amazing!

Obviously not something you'd wear in public, okay, maybe at Halloweeen, but it is certainly amazing to look at. You can find out more about Katie on her DeviantArt website and her facebook page. For now I'll leave you with a few more of my favourite pictures. Which one is your favourite?

Finished! The March edition

I had quite a successful month as I managed to finish 7 products. First up is Avon Shimmer Swirls Face Illuminator. I actually finished 2 of these as I had one upstairs and one downstairs with not much left in either. This has long been discontinued, but I wouldn't repurchase anyway because it's not that good. There was a time when I thought it was great and bought tons of it, but back then I didn't even wear foundation just used this, however, this isn't even a good base, let alone good illuminator. Doesn't blend very well and ends up quite patchy, plus it's quite drying on my skin. I have since managed to flog my remaining stock on eBay, I was surprised how many people still wanted them and they soldat quite a good price. Originally I think they cost £10, I sold mine for £5-6 which isn't too bad. 

This is what they looked like when full(ish):

Find out what else I managed to finish after the jump!

Sleek Make Up Paraguaya Eyeshadow Palette Review

I really like Sleek Make Up eyeshadow palettes (see my video review here) and when I saw there was a new limited edition palette out, I bought it immediately. It's called Paraguaya and it's part of Sleek's spring collection called Avoir le Peche that also includes a blush and pout polish.

As usual, the palette comes in a cardboard sleeve which is really pretty with pink/peach flowers and letters. Inside the palette is the usual black sleek palette with the words Sleek Make Up written across it. Inside you get 12 eyeshadows, a double ended applicator and a full sized mirror. The palette costs £6.49 and is available from Superdrug and Sleek's website.

Read more of my review and see lots more pictures and swatches after the jump!

Finished! The January edition

You might recall that I started this series last month when I managed to finish several beauty products (which doesn't happen very often, I'm telling you!) and to my surprise I'm back with another post of yet more finished products. I don't want to include basics like shampoo, conditioner and shower gel in this as I always go through those, will just stick to skincare, make up and fragrances.

First up are my beauty basics:

Mac Brow Set in Show Off is the only thing I use on my brows as I don't like brow pencils (too harsh) or powders (too obvious). This is a brown shade that just gives a bit more definition to my brows and holds them in place. I came across this product when Blonde, Brunette, Redhead collection came out in 2009 and I have loved it ever since! I actually think this was my original one, so it lasted me over a year, although I did move it to my downstairs cloakroom a while ago as it was running low (that's where I keep my emergency make up items for day when I have no time to apply my make up in my bedroom), so I guess I hadn't been using it so regularly lately ( have a new one in my bedroom). It never dried up though, just ran out. I love this stuff and have already repurchased it and will continue to do so. £11.50 from maccosmetics.co.uk.

Continue reading to see what other products I've finished last month!