Making Me Some Lippy, From Lippies.

So the other day whilst re organising my dressing table I was arranging my lipsticks and came across this

That's my fave lipstick. How the sun managed to make it SPLIT is beyond me. I also found another lipstick with a clear lid that had been bleached...though I preferred the bleached colour with that one so I wasn't so devastated about that.

ANYWAY... I needed to make it usable till I re-purchased it, so I'd read about people melting lippies down and I had a few empty Lily Lolo sample pots lying around soooo...

Got me some of these, Did a bit of this,

Did a bit more.

Then I got a bit addicted and thought 'this is easy let's lop off some lipsticks and make me own!'

So my second lip pot consisted of these,

See that second from left? My twice worn Illamasqua lipstick! True, the shade was too matte and lilac toned to suit me, but it still breaks my heart a little when I see it all chopped down and sad looking...damn my over-excitement at making lip colours in pots. I also added a squeeze of Palmers Lip Butter to counteract the drying effects of some of the lipsticks.

After my experiments I ended up with these,

The Barry M colour - worn as a more muted stain. Though melting it down did seem to make it a little less pigmented anyway.

The random mixture, it's alright, who'd of thought four shades of pink would make...another pink.

Maybe I didn't think that one through properly. Though it was pretty fun.

What do you think?

Lauren x

I'm Back...For Now....

Hey,

So I've been mega busy lately, trying to sort out a mortgage so me and the boyf can buy our first house, working ridiculous hours at work and on top of all that I bought a new face powder (on a bit of a budget....ok a lot of a budget) and my skin literally freaked out!! So any makeup I've been wearing lately has had the lone purpose of saving the public from the horrifying state of my skin. Thankfully (due to a few product swaps and a lot of patience) my skin is finally getting back to normal. I've also discovered some loooooovely products along the way.

Upcoming blogs (when I find my bloody camera lead) include my review on the Cargo Lash Activator Extreme (taken a while I know) My thoughts on my new Korres products - and what I am now lusting after from the range. And my mini ELF haul. I'm also trying out a new moisturiser and a few more bath and body products that'll keep me going for a while.

Enough chat, I have a few unshown/unused photos on my computer for the blog so I thought I might show you how I'm currently organising (I use that word loosely) my make up, I had a maaaassive clear out and got rid off all the products I bought on a whim (cheap and cheerful often turned out to be rough and rashy...) So hopefully everything looks a bit more streamlined and tidy.

I use Muji drawers to store my makeup, though I'm fast running out of space and plan to order a few more for my ever increasing collection.

Blusher drawer - With the odd Bronzer that I can squeeze in.

All my concealers and highlighters. I think of this as the draw of magic, everything to hide and enhance. lol. The crap I can't fit in the drawers above.

I have two tumblers of mascaras, This one is the new and favourite one. The other is filled mainly with No.7 Mascaras I insisted on buying and hated them all. Tshh.

A mixture of good and absolutely shite makeup brushes that I keep as I'm also losing my brushes for days at a time.

I rarely wear eyeliner, preferring to line my eyes with eye shadows so I don't know how I ended up with this lot. Do love my Urban Decay 27/7 Glides though.

Most of my singular eye shadows, I store large eye palettes on top of these drawers.

Loose eye shadows, I wear these way more then any pressed eye shadows. I love my NYX Loose Pearl Shadows and am now in the process of re-potting them so they're actually usable.

Small palettes/big eyeshadow. The LA Girl trios are gorgeous at a glance, not very pigmented to use but that didn't stop me from buying about 8 colour combos.

My lip gloss drawers. It's very pink I know. I loves me a pink pout.

My Lipsticks (that aren't in the bottom of various handbags) lots of NYX again. I've only recently got into lipsticks again but am gradually building my collection (to my boyfriends dismay).

How do you store yours? I cant believe a couple of years ago I'd have all my makeup jumbled up in a giant fruit bowl, I couldn't bear that now!!!

Now that my skin is healing and I have discovered my favourite base combination (NEVER thought I'd find that) I'll start doing FOTDs to hopefully bring a bit more range to my blog.

Let me know if you have any ideas!

Lauren x

6 Favourite Lipglosses

So these are my most worn, most loved glosses. They range from new lusts (hello NYX) to some long term lip gloss loving (Freeze 24-7 you lovely labeless thing.)

I have abandoned my glosses the past few months for lots of lipsticks but I'm now sharing my attention, and as summer truly kicks in I'll probably forget all about them stick things....

From top - NYX Megashine Pinkfrost. Too Faced Mirror Mirror I'm Perfect. Revlon Pink Pop. Barry M Pastel Pink. Freeze 24-7 Plump Lips/Ice Sticks Brr Berry. Loreal Glamshine Candy Juice. This lip gloss tastes like sherbet!! So tasty! Very pale and shimmery - I don't usually do shimmery lips but I make certain exceptions. Thick creamy kinda gloss. slightly sticky (and totally lickable) so therefore doesn't last too long on me. But it probably could do. This was about $3.75 from Cherry Culture I believe.

This nude in the tube coloured gloss is basically clear on me. Really quite sticky but long lasting because of this and REALLY shiny. I've had people comment on how shiny my lips look with this on. Plus it has a slight bananary taste. Yum. I got this in an ASOS sale for about a fiver. I think they're usually priced around £10 from places like Boots but can probably be found cheaper online.

My first Revlon gloss. Bought because of all the hype. I do love the colour. A sheer bright pink, very clean with no shimmer. Also a sticky one which I do find a pain. but the lovely colour makes it worth it. No flavour though. Boo. £6.49 from Boots.

A creamy gloss with slight frost and shimmer and quite an opaque finish for quite a thin-ish loss. I find patting it on to sheer it out a little suits me better, the super pale shade looks rather weird on me. Overpowering scent and flavour of strawberry yogurt which is a bizarre flavour but fun all the same. I got this on a 3 for 2 deal at Boots (only time I purchase Barry M is when there is deals) £4.25 usually.

This is my most used gloss, not as shiny as it looks in the photo. A more dewy rosy colour with a satiny sheen. Really gorgeous feeling gloss, light and balmy. I really love it. It doesn't burn or make your lips swell and turn deep red like some more intense plumping glosses. However my lips tend to look rounder and softer after using this, like the creases and gaps have been gently pushed out. I bought this gloss ages ago on ASOS for £14 I think it was supposed to be something ridiculous like £27.50?? For a gloss that doesn't look much (and the bloody label rubbed off after a week) the luxury feel of the product makes it worth it for me. I wasn't going to put this on here, until I noticed it was clearly the most used gloss after my Freeze 24-7. This is a glossy coral-ly pink shade that didn't show up at all in the photo. Nothing amazing just a real easy go to gloss. not to sticky, not to quick to disappear, not to sheer and not to bright. I wear this a lot at work and with a lot of makeup when I'm not feeling the pale lip. The Glamshine glosses all have little sub-groups however this is the only gloss in the Candy range. It differs from the rest due to the complete lack of glitter and shimmer. £6.99 though I just noticed Boots has a 2 for £10 for the Glamshines at the moment.

Hope that was vaguely helpful/interesting. It meant I missed the entire England match...oh shame.

XxX

Pop Lip Lusts

So to finish my Popathon (like marathon but with pop yeh?...no sorry I'm a bit ill and my brains gone to auto-idiot) What was I saying? Yes Lip lusts, I bought Petal Pink (loving my baby pink shades) and Flirty Fuschia (as a panic buy...I have plenty of bright pinks and just dropped it in the basket in case I lost all 8 of them I guess..?)

You may have noticed the slightly funkyness in the Flirty Fuschia bullet, honestly I was too fussed that it nearly toppled out the tube when I tried to apply it, after all it wasn't the colour I was excited about, just an off hand back up of all my other similar shades. Then I swatched the colours. Texture of both is lovely, very soft light and balmy. But I was gutted. Petal pink is so so so sheer. Barely a pink sheen in most lights. Flirty Fuschia on the other hand, that lovely just bitten pink, sheer enough to let your natural be the base shade but with a much pinker fresher tone. Of course that's the broken one. Sods law.

I may melt it down (been having fun with that lately) and whack it in a pot. Such a shame cuz I love the cute packaging of the lipsticks.

On to the swatches.

Bare lip -bare face actually but let's try to ignore that.

Pink Petal

Flirty Fuschia - slightly washed out by the camera. Typical.

I have realised I have included no prices during the Pop posts so here's a quick run down if you're interested.

Deluxe Dusts - £1.99

Lip Lusts - £1.99

Belle Palettes - £5.99

Pop Up - £3.99

Eye Pen - £1.99

You may have noticed the Bee Stung lip gloss in the original photo and the fact I haven't reviewed it. I honestly can't be bothered. It's just blah. Cute to look at but gritty texture and garish naff colours. If you really must try it however they're also £1.99.

xXx

Pop...

Here's the bits I bought from Pop via Direct Cosmetics - Which by the way impressed me muchly, I ordered, next morning I got an email saying my parcel had been dispatched, and the morning after that the post man came a'knocking! Happy days.

Anyway on to the products...

So this time round I'd only ordered the bottom two, but that's all down to previously ordering the top one. They're basically palettes of 8 shades of highlighter, blush and bronzer in a variety of opacity, shade and finish. Yum. Let's look inside.

Pretty sweet huh? In like a tasty icecreamy kind of way... swatches?? Top L-R White-gold highlight, True gold glow, Nudy-peach glow, Pale pink all over radiance.

Bottom L-R Cream glimmer highlighter, Peach lustre, Lavender brightener, Warm nudy-pink illuminator.

Tasty no?

As the names suggest, they have a variety of finishes, however most have more of a glowy sheen then actual shimmer in them which I find much more wearable and flattering.

This palette is probably one of my favourite products at the moment. The range of cool and warm tones gives me a lot of room to play and adapt to the makeup I've chosen (and whether or not I'm having a pasty faced day) The powders in all three are very soft and blendable.

So let's look at the rest!

Top L-R Pale pink, Baby pink, Mauve, Copper-rose

Bottom L-R Fresh rose, Hot pink, Nude-rose glow, Bronze-rose

Sorry my photos are so awful. I was in a rush and well I'm not much good with a camera at the best of times. Anyway you can see how some colours are sheerer (real word?) then others. These sheer ones create a more of a wash of blush/highlighter. which mixes nicely with the more intense colours. Ok the bronze pallette doesn't have names for the colours, but you get a range of matt browns, shimmery olds and peaches, and a variety of gleamy looking bronzes, some with a dash of shimmer. Something for everyone really.

I'll be honest I'm not sure I get the Pop Up Glow stick in 'Sunny'. For one thing it's frikkin' big. No chance of a quick slick straight from the stick. (Did you like that?) Then when I did apply it I got all confused with the texture. Greasy? A little. Powdery? Well yes actually. Nice? Kind of but I'm yet to test out how well it wears on an average day so we shall see if it can sneak into my drawer of fave highlighters. So I also bought eye-pen (which is actually a pencil) in ocean. It's blue. See? Tolds ya. Blue. Ocean blue. Anything else? I quite like it. Yes I do. I'm running out of (typing) breath now so I'll finish on these for the moment. Deluxe Dusts. Pretty nice. Pigmented, smooth, blendable. However the packaging is as annoying as the NYX tiny bottles of pigment.

What the hell am I supposed to do with them stupid little holes? Pain in the arse and a half. Luckily a little colour goes far so I can just about outweigh the stupid holes, with the prettiness and quality of the eye shadows.

Oh one point, see that lovely golden toned white third from the left? It's really very pretty. That's Antique Gold. And see that super frosty almost silver toned white at the end? Yeh that's White Gold...apparently. Tsh. Anyway last swatch before bed.

What do you think? I'll show you the rest soon.

Night XxX

Pop goes my shopping ban!

Oh god, I've been really bad, just ordered a whole loada Pop makeup from Direct Cosmetics.

In all fairness I have some Pop producs I luuurve which kind of makes this a trustworthy (as well as cheapy cheap) haul...

I'm just ignoring the products from Pop I havn't like in the past... Lalalalala....

Watch this space for reviews and photos. I'm sadly very excited about the packaging arriving,

maybe sitting under the letter box is a step to far though....?

xxx

Oh I do love a trip to Boots...

So with Boots having it's 3 for 2 offer on all things lovely, and me needing a few...essentials (ish) I took up the chance to get a few new goodies as well.

Lee Stafford Treatment For Hair That Never Grows

So the first product is a repeat buy, I love this stuff, it's a conditioning treatment to use between your shampoo and conditioner. It really soothes my scalp, helps minimise breakage from my hair dryer etc, and I'm pretty sure its accelerated the growth of my annoying baby hairs around my hairline make them a lot more...hairy (in a good way!)Lee Stafford Double Blow Volumizing Mousse & Bling Hair Rehab Detox Shampoo

As part of the 3 for 2 hair offer, I decided to stick with Lee Stafford as I totally trust the brand after using many of the products with happy results. I've been using these for a week or two now and am not really sure what I think of them. Nothing bad just nothing great. The jury's still out at the moment so I'll review these when I have formed a more interesting and helpful opinion.

Soap & Glory The Fab Pore Intensive Action Pore Refining Facial Peel

Ok this wasn't part of the 3 for 2 deal, but after the nightmare Loreal Secrets Resurfacing Primer did to my skin (dry flakes and blocked pores galore...ew) I remembered using this last year and being pleased with the results, they seemed to have changed the product slightly - In a good way. Previously after rinsing of this exfoliating mask my skin felt like it still had product and would have to be followed by a face wash. It now washes away cleanly and is able to be followed by moisturiser straight after. My skin is definitely looking better and I've only used it 3 times so far. The blue beads kind of shmush up (I know beads usually pop but these kind of melt instead) as you massage it into your skin. Left on my T-Zone for 10 minutes my skins look cleaner and smoother straight away. Happy days.

Too Faced Absolutely Flawless Therapeutic Herbal Eye Base And Concealer

I can't resist trying new concealers, I'm not really prone to spots however the purple circles under my eyes are nothing short of horrendous, I've tried every eye cream of every price range under the sun and nothing has made enough of a difference to allow me to skip concealer (I dream of those days) Absolutely Flawless (I think the shade I bought is called london lights) is a peachy toned concealer, very creamy and blendable, which I love as I have a tendency to shove it under my eyes and not blend it till I've done all my eye makeup (in my head it'll allow my skin to absorb the colour....weird and pointless I know but it's become a habit) even after sitting in a blob on my skin for 10 minutes it can still be smoothed out and blended. Not a holy grail concealer (if not set properly it can crease, and sometimes highlights them little dots that create the texture of your under eye skin - do you have these?) But for now I'm happy using it over any of my others.

Too Faced Shadow Insurance

Ok ok I know we all love a bit of UDPP, I'm right there with you, when it comes down to performance I think Urban Decay and Too Faced both square up to each other pretty damn well, I just find the tube of the Shadow Insurance so much more practical, I don't want to have to slice open and pot to get out half the primer a wand won't reach to double its usage. I like to squeeeeze it all out and snip off the end of a tube before the last go. Any way I love this product, and I will re-buy it (occasionally switching to UDPP as always when i grow tired of turquoise) for as long as I wear eye makeup.

The last product I bought was Cargo's Lash Activator Extreme, However I'm gunna do a whole review and I'm pretty tired so that ones for next time folks.

XxX