How not to do a 60’s Twiggy Makeup Look

My pain in the bum friend, Charlotte from Lipglossiping.com has been invited to a cool party tomorrow. The theme is ‘Aussome 60’s’ and she wanted to do a makeup look inspired from the 60’s. One thing led to another, I was bribed started to look for 60’s makeup look tutorials on YouTube and somehow, ended up practising on myself. My hooded eyelids by nature going against me, I ended up with this drag version of Twiggy with a crease so high, it could mistaken for another pair of brows. I thought I’d post it for fun.

Charlotte: This is how NOT to do a Twiggy Look.












To thank you for having stayed with me so far, on this post, and make your time on here not totally wasted, here are 3 of my favourite 60’s makeup tutorials on YouTube. 

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Alliglittor Eyes – Green Glitter Party Eyes

When my twitter friend Thomcat decided to do a makeup contest based on the theme of ‘glitter’, I hesitated about a nano second. I just had to enter. I love glitter Nothing screams more party and fun to me, than glitter in a makeup look or hairdo. I have so many glitter eye products in my makeup collection it’s ridiculous. Ironically it’s the very glitter liner I didn't own from my little stash of the collection 2000 glitter liners that I wanted to use: the glittery black one.


 





For this look, I mainly used 2 colours from the Sleek Makeup Acid Palette: The Green over a black base (sleek ink pot gel liner in ‘dominatrix’ black ) and the purple on the lower lashline. The piece de resistance was my little pot of  loose glitter (from eBay – I used the purple lid one) which I applied over my splash proof sealer.





The rest is boring and I used my traditional white eyeliner pen from Revlon for the waterline, and the nyx trio palette in white/grey/black for deepening the crease and for highlighting. Lips was a mixture of MAC Hello Kitty ‘Fashion Mews’ and sleekmakeup amethyst.





Do you like glitter? You got some crazy glitter you never have the chance to use?
Join me and enter thom_cat’s contest on youtube. It ends on 1st July.

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Quick and Easy 'Football' Inspired Eye Makeup

Do I even need to introduce the context? The Football World Cup has started and I wanted to do have fun and do some makeup this time, instead of just wearing a French top. So what happens when your French football t-shirt has shrunk in the wash and you only have 15 minutes to do a makeup to support your team? You wear a plain white t-shirt and you do this makeup…

I used mainly plain matte colours:  1 white, 2 blue, and 1 red with some dark purple to darken the crease of both the blue and the red eye. Looking at it now, it looks like the purple had some shimmer in it. Oops. Oh and no time to do anything with the lashline.






I got the red from the 88 ebay matte palette and the blue from my W7 neon palette. The white is from my trusted nyx trio palette, which is always knocking about. I then used some vanilla from mac to do some quick blending. I didn't even have to do blush or anything. Oh and some false lashes for good measure of course. I am amazed they did not blow in the wind, as the application was super rushed.

Tomorrow, (well later on today) I got to do a England Inspired Makeup Look. Any ideas girlies?  ^_^
xx

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Golden Rusty Walnuts from Nyx

I'm not sure whether this is because we can't easily get them in England but I've always been attracted by Nyx eyeshadows. One day, I discovered this post from lipglossiping and fell in love with 'golden' and 'rust' individual shadows from Nyx. So when I stumbled on UK based beauty blog sale (thank you bickyyy!) selling a nyx trio eyeshadow set (TS12), having both those colours in, I just had to buy it: too gorgeous for words, and too brilliant an opportunity.





I've used the golden many times but done yet a look using all the 3 colours at the same time. In the meantime, here are some swatches. I am very impressed by the pigmentation and these are swatches without any kind of primer.
From left to right: golden, rust and walnut bronze.





They are soft and very easy to blend. It's actually this little palette which led to many more purchases from nyx.

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Fuchsia Falls – Makeup Look

Who would have thought that a budget eyeshadow trio could have made me so happy? I recently bought three ‘Color Intense Trio Eyeshadows’  from Collection 2000 and I would like to share you with a ‘quick look’ I’ve made with Fuchsia Falls. I’d love to confess it took me only 5 minutes to do, but it took me ages to do, as per usual, even if the look is not at all elaborate. 






I used all the colours of the fuchsia falls trio but I added a bit of silver grey from my nyx trio eyeshadow TS01 to add a bit ooomph to the look, as I found the grey to be a bit flat. Other than that, I added my usual highlighter (vanilla or blanc type from Mac, to help with the blending). On the waterline, I used some revlon matte white pencil and the lovely purpley grey from the trio, on the lower lashline.  Excuse the unblended concealer on top of the brow. oops x



 






 

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Color Intense Trios from Collection 2000

I resisted about 5 seconds when I saw these new ‘Color Intense Trio’ Eyeshadow from Collection 2000. I just had to have them: They looked like little stripes of colours suspended in air in a little icecube. On special introductory offer at Superdrug, why resist? 










 
















I bought 3 trios, from the 8 available in the range
from left to right: lemon tropic, fuchsia falls and night jewels





Starting off by the one which caught my eye the first, was lemon tropics and I could not wait to swatch it properly and wear it on my eyes. What a lovely colour combination. I was a bit apprehensive about the yellow, as I am extremely fussy with my yellows (none of the 7 yellows available yellows in my ebay 120 palette impressed me) And I was right: it is the right shade but not pigmented enough for my taste. Here are some swatches without any kind of primer on the skin.  The other colours in the lemon tropics trio are much more pigmented but I would still use them with a white base.  I can’t hide the fact that I am a bit disappointed by this palette. The yellow really let me down.


 



 


Night Jewels is a hit for me and I can’t wait to wear these. Super value for money, and I can’t believe this is just £2.50!  Again this is without any primer or white base.






And finally the piece de resistance: Fuchsia Falls. No only do I love this colour combination, but I am super super excited about the fuchsia in there mainly because this is the colour I have hit the pan in my 120 palette and I am going to be stuck when it’s finished. The grey is a bit flat and too matte for my liking but this is compensated by a mile, with  the third colour:  a gorgeous purpley grey. Love it. It’s one of those colours that I can myself using again and again.  Click here to see the look I’ve done with the fuchsia falls. (Anybody else got problems remembering the spelling of fuchsia by the way?)






I am debating whether I should buy candy shop (the third one below) 
Have you got any?

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Me, Myself and Alli

If you have missed my previous post, I have started to take the highly controversial diet tablet called 'Alli'. It is controversial for 2 reasons: it has severe secondary undesirable effects and it's strictly reserved for individuals with a BMI over 28 and my BMI is lower. So before I go any further, I would like to stress to anybody under a BMI of 28 NOT to try this at home. It's been a week now and I wanted to post a little update. And what a week it’s been!



 

First half of the week: (Sunday to Wednesday) was like honeymoon. Came Thursday, I feared I ruined it and I had major doubts actually but I carried on and I am quite proud of myself. The idea is that you need to use Alli  with a low fat diet and have a good eye on your fat intake. This week was a major eye opener for me. Before I would only look at the overall calorie content on food labels. So, this week, it felt like it was like discovery channel in HD and I feel I’ve learnt so much. For example: I’ve found a nice soup which stinks when you heat it in the microwave but has so little fat content. Woohoo!

I am still not sure on how much fat I can eat, but I blindly based myself from a guideline I got from a friend:
-  no more than 20g of fat per day (which I discovered is not a lot at all!!!, that’s like 5 chocolate digestives)
-  fat intake should be nicely spread out over the day
-  and not more than 10g of fat per meal.

So when on Thursday, I misread my label, and realised I consumed double the fat than I wanted to, I really panicked. In the end, everything went fine and I didn’t have any problems. I later found from some website that people should not take more than 15g of fat per meal, and that I overdid it by 1g. I can’t rely on this source as these figures are based on people who have a BMI over 28 after all. It’s all complicated and gave me a headache.

Did I lose any weight after all that? Did I have any of the common ‘toilet problems’ associated with it?

There's no so much difference on the scale (I've lost 2 pounds) and no, nothing bad/gross happened to me. Not even the slightest bit of difference in the ‘toilet department’. Maybe the need to stock more on Glade Air Freshners… Frankly, how could I have something bad happening to me, with only 20g of fat maximum a day!!! (apart from Thursday that is). I am glad nothing bad happened to me, but rather mift I didn’t lose more because this week involved a lot of effort.

What effects did Alli have on me?

Not much and a massive amount of difference at the same time.
I have lost those 2 pounds not thanks to Alli, I've lost those 2 pounds because I was ate less, and because I consumed less fat in the process.

Will I carry on taking Alli for another week?

Hell yeah, I will! I have a tendency to food binge a lot and while I keep this under control most of the time, there are times when it goes all haywire. A bit like I need some extra help from a friend shouting at me to stop eating for three for food is available and ready to eat. This is where Alli comes in and its psychological power on me, like I expected, is just phenomenal. All my life, I have been craving for some control over what I eat and Alli just does that. Its psychological power on me is amazing, and went beyond my expectations: Because I am so scared of the gross undesirable effects (and because I am proud and don't want to fail this, now that I've started to blog about it, lol) I eat less food, and I eat less fat. Alli to me is some kind of big brother person, who is there all the time watching you. You cheat and karma, in the form of diarrhoea will happen to you. What stronger incentive do you need?

For how long will I take this?

Maybe till the end of June, we'll see. We'll see how it goes.




The obvious  drawback on this, as I see it, is that, in the long run, on some weaker or vulnerable people, it could trigger even more yo yo dieting. Pigging out for a while, and going onto Alli. Fortunately, this drug is expensive, not easy to get, so this should prevent me doing that. It should anyway...

It could also trigger some anorexic alike behaviour, when you’re obsessing about labels and freak out at the sign of fat. Sadly, I do not have this tendency, and I could just feed myself from domino’s pizza all the time (medium sizzler with extra cheese, with roast chicken instead of tandoori chicken, mushrooms instead of onions, £8.99 on collection special deal) it would be heaven. *sigh*

Overall, I feel that, if anybody over the BMI of 28 ate what I ate this week, they would have definitely lost 4 to 6 pounds this week, without a doubt. It’s not having this effect on me as I would have liked to. But nothing has EVER kept me on my toes as drastically as alli did this week. I just cannot get over that fact. And I shall continue, for a bit more, and keep you updated…

Now, If only they sold convincing alli lookalike sweets…



Disclaimer:
I am not affiliated with the company and if I were, I would be the least eligible character to try this: For one, I am not suitable for it, my BMI is not high enough. Also this drug is non recommended for people who have 'complex relationships with food' aka eating disorder. I believe I have a mild form of an eating disorder, similar to bulimia but without the purging: it's just called binge eating.  Also unlike the typical bulimic, I manage to keep my condition under control at most times: I tend not to keep yummie ready to eat food in the house, and I try to just eat at meals times and nothing in between, as I feel it would increase/encourage my appetite if I did, and, oh boy, I really don't need any encouragement in that department!

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Lucky encounter with a ped egg

I was super excited when I won a ped egg on a blog giveaway. I have a fair amount of dry skin mainly on the balls of the feet area which I have been dealing with a callus shaver (it looks like a potato peeler).  So, I could not wait to try this little number and compare the two.





When It arrived in the post, it looked even more like a metallic cheese grater for feet that I expected and I was a bit scared frankly. So scared, that my first attempt was very pathetic. I could not see any difference at all, and I was not putting enough pressure and it was not doing anything.


I put a bit more pressure, in the hope of collecting some parmesan coppers (to photograph for you, aren’t you lucky!) like in the advert, but all I was collecting was a pathetic little foam and it was going everywhere, but not in the lid, where I was supposed to go.

 


I kept at it, (after all, who cares if it goes everywhere, i can dust it off afterwards, right?) and put a bit more pressure. I found the result to be pretty uneven: in parts, I felt it removed too much skin, in some others, it was like it needed more.


I am convinced I will get better results if i practise more and once i get the hang of it, it will be all right, but the overall feeling is that I can't get past this metallic grater feeling and it makes me uncomfortable. Oh I am such a wuss…

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Crush on Bellbottom Blues - My Face Cosmetics

I actually never really paid attention to the ‘MyFace Cosmetics’ stand at Boots as I have always been put off the price but this time, my eyes got caught by a little gem from their ‘Bling Tone’  eyeshadows.





Meet the stunning ‘BellBottom Blues’ an ultra shimmery blue eyeshadow.  I keep on wanting to call it 'belly button blue'. Now for the not so shimmery news about it: It costs £9.78. I mean I know it’s a revolutionary formula, packed with crushed pearls, but £10 for a shadow. What’s so special about it?




I resisted long and hard and left the shop with a swatch which I kept on looking at for the rest of the day. I still fancy buying a lot, but I don’t think I should. Or should I?  Do you own of these high bling shadows (or maybe some other item from the brand? Are they worth it?

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Who needs Mac Carbon & Gesso?

Ever since, I got into makeup, I have been wanting to buy Mac Carbon, acclaimed to be the blackest black eyeshadow around and Mac Gesso. I resisted long and hard and instead, I went on buying endless black shadows and being disappointed all the time. If only I had opted for Mac in the first place, it would have been cheaper for me in the long run. But somehow, I couldn’t justify spending £11 in a boring black and white shadow, however crucial those shadows are. So I gave it one last shot, before making the Mac plunge and purchased this Nyx Eyeshadow Trio in white/gray/black (TS01) from eBay.





The palette comes in a black elegant and sturdy case and is about 9 cm in length (that’s about 3 inches and a half for your with the imperial system) and a mirror, and the obligatory sponge applicator. One swatch of the black and I knew I had made the right choice: super pigmented and most definitely the blackest matte I have ever swatched: smooth, velvety, black. What more could anyone want?

Is it deeper and blacker than Mac Carbon? I got no idea. Carbon was just a myth and I actually never swatched it. I don’t even want to buy it anymore and I fully satisfied with this one and I am at rest.





These are swatched straight onto the skin with no primer and I am in love with the black.
The white is good, much better than some of the matte white I have in my collection but I find it a bit chalky. As a matter of fact, I find all my matte whites chalky, so no surprises there. I don’t even know if Mac Gesso is whiter but I don’t fancy it anymore. I reckon if I use a white base, it will perfom well. I found the grey very good and not too shimmery. I am not sure when I am not going to use it, but for £2.94 (without postage and packing, which amounted to £2 proportionally? – I placed a big £40 order)  for this palette from ebay, new, this is by far the best buy of the year for me.






I use white and black nearly everytime in my looks, and this palette is super handy. The size makes it also handy for carrying around, and it has become one of my must haves.  I am thrilled. *Woop* In the same order, I bought some other gems from NYX, so keep your eyes peeled, I have only just started :)

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