Tuesday 23 October 2012

The Need For Something New



Now, I don't know about you, but I constantly crave new products. Even when I'm happy with what I'm using I always want new. I always think there must be better out there! So here's my list of what I'm lusting after right now



REN Glycolactic Radiance Renewal Mask
My skin, although is often now free of blemishes, always seems clogged and bumpy, with a  horrible texture that never seems to go away and it looks horrible! I've heard this mask mentioned a few times and for the price of £30, it may soon be mine! I've heard great things about REN, so I really want to give this a go.


Illamasqua Powder Blush in 'Katie'
This was actually one of my first ever Illamasqua purchases, I think I got this for Christmas in 2010. I used it almost every time I wore make up, until I hit pan, the remaining product then crumbled and I couldn't use it anymore, but since we parted ways earlier this year I really miss it! nothing quite gives me that glow and lasts as long as this does. It costs £18 (Does anyone else remember when Illamasqua blushes were £15!)

Hydraluron 
Hydraluron needs no introduction. After hearing Caroline Hirons rave about this product back in August, I've wanted it! My skin is chronically dehydrated and I don't know why, but this product promises to help! I'm up for anything that could improve the texture of my skin, and more hydration can hardly hurt can it? this is priced at a reasonable £24.99



Chantecaille Just Skin 
This tinted moisturiser has nothing but rave reviews, it promises good coverage and a light feel, I've looked at it and felt the texture many times in SpaceNK but I'm yet to try it out, partly because I'm scared I'll love it, and at a whopping £57 it may just be way to much money for me to ever justify, even to myself! Maybe a Christmas present...

Kerastase Ciment Thermique
After running out of my beloved Necter Thermique in July, I've struggled on with different products but none are quite as good, nor seem to be as good for my hair, as my hair is starting to get much longer, and I have plans to change the colour in December (I know, I plan ahead!) I need to look after my hair much better than I am now. This is supposed to strengthen your hair from the inside out and protect it from heat styling, while making it smooth and soft to the touch, which all sounds pretty good to me! This costs around the £18 mark.



So that's what I'm currently wishing for, what are you currently after?



Sunday 21 October 2012

Clarins Gentle Foaming Cleanser with Tamarind



Back in April, I decided to change up my skincare. I had unhappily using Liz Earle for a few months with no results, and wanted my skin to look great for my trip to the Netherlands with my Mum that month, so I decided to try Clarins.
First, my skin. My skin is combination, I can get a teeny bit of shine during the day but that's it, I'm also acne prone and I get horrible clogged pores. My skin is also dehydrated even though I drink a shedload of water.

Clarins is a brand I had never really been a big fan of, I thought they were a bit boring and outdated on the make up side so I never really had a good look at them, but my Mum suggested to me that we have a look and I could see if there was anything I'd like. The first thing I loved was that they gave out samples! I've wasted so much money on loads of products that didn't work for me or made my skin worse, so I was so happy to get samples of the products. 
The sample of this cleanser lasted me about 4 days and honestly, using the products together made a huge difference to my skin! it was amazing, my skin looked brighter and clearer almost straight away, I've tried different things since and this is definitely what keeps my skin clear.

The cleanser is a thick cream consistency, it also has these little blue beads that 'pop' when you rub it into your skin, they're not at all exfoliating. I just rub the cleanser onto my dry face until the beads have popped, then add a little water to allow it to foam up, and remove it with a flannel or muslin cloth (whichever, I don't mind!). After my face feels super clean and all make up is removed, although I do always cleanse twice, this tube has lasted me since April and is starting to get super hard to get it out of the tube! It's amazing and makes such a difference to my skin, my skin is clear 80% of the time now, when I always used to have at least one or more spots. I've tried another cleanser since and my skin started to break out again, I'm so sure that it's this product that keeps my skin nice.

The only thing that it doesn't do, is help with my horrible congested pores, but I'm yet to find anything that does, so if you have any recommendation for a product that helps, let me know!

This cleanser costs £17.50 in store, but I found it online for £15.75 

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Boring Haul of Boringness




After an extremely long and boring UCAS talk a college, I went to check my bank balance and buy some textbooks (why do textbooks cost stupid amounts of money?) for college and found I had more money than expected, so on friday I decided to haul some essentials I had been after for a while. 


First I took a trip to MAC, I never really shop at MAC anymore as their collections bore me as it's all the same thing over and over again, and it's no longer exciting, but I do still love a lot of things in their regular line. 



Blanc Type Eyeshadow 




Blanc Type is the most boring eyeshadow ever. it's a creamy white-beige with a matte2 finish, it's really smooth, buttery and soft and really opaque, I've tried many other eyeshadows of this type but they're all must sheerer than this one is. I use it as the base for just about every make up look.


Select Cover Up Concealer in NW15 




This is a great concealer, it's light and sheer in texture but has great coverage and a skin like finish, it goes great over blemishes and under the eyes even though it's a pink toned colour. I don't like dry concealers like Studio Finish or Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage , and I hated the collection 2000 one everyone loves, I like a creamy liquid, if that makes any sense.


MAC Bulk Wipes




Oh I'm bad. I will admit that when I have evening classes, I get home, get into my jarmies, tie back my hair and wipe my make up off with a wipe. Yes a wipe. I'm awful, I know. I am really fussy with wipes though, they have to have a plastic lid and they have to be really wet feeling. My favourites are the No.7 ones, or the Soap and Glory ones, I used to like the age perfect ones from L'oreal, but they've changed the packaging. The reason I decided to get the MAC ones, was because they are my favourite and I think they remove make up best, but also because of the price. Per wipe the Soap and Glory wipes are 18p per wipe so 100 of them would cost you £18, the No.7 ones are 23p per wipe, so would cost you £23 for  100, the MAC ones are £19 for 100, and I feel they remove make up much better than either of the other brands mentioned, so to me, they're 100% worth the money. Plus the packaging counts to towards Back 2 Mac
On the subject of Back 2 MAC, I had been hoping to return my empties for Rebel Lipstick, but they were out of stock! as it was the one I really wanted, I've decided to wait and get it when it comes back into stock rather than pick an alternative.

I then took a trip to Boots and I got;



Smashbox Photofinish Primer







I decided to get a Primer as I have really dehydrated skin, foundation skins in and looks awful on my skin, so I decided to try to see if it helps keep my make up on for longer, and create a bit of a barrier to stop my skin looking so crap with make up on! when I wore it later that day my make up looked nice and it felt nicer than when I wasn't wearing it, it also kept my make up on better and stopped me from having that feeling of wanting to wash my make up off the second I am no longer in a public place.



Rimmel Stay Matte Powder





I bought this after trying to hunt down the Maybelline Dream Matte powder (Love that packaging) but couldn't, so I decided to go for this one instead. it's a fairly boring product, it works, stops me looking oily but isn't super matte and is quite finely milled and feels nice on the skin.



Real Techniques Blush Brush




I bought this is as powder brush cause it's massive! it's really soft and not super densely packed like my eco tools blush brush (Great to blend, crap to apply) so dusts powder all over the face lightly, I think it is way to big for blush though, but I may try it.


I also bought some metal cuticle nippers, but they're REALLY boring so I won't show you those, they do look like a torture implement though.


So that's my haul, I still have a few bits and bobs to get to be really happy with my make up (Ive condensed down a lot of what I did have) and feel like I have everything I need...one of them is a foundation! I did like the new one from YSL but the colour isn't perfect for me (BR10 is too pink, B10 is too yellow and dark) one day, I'll get one that works for me!

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Macadamia Natural Oil Deep Repair Masque


This week, I finally decided to use my Macadamia Natural Oil Deep Repair Masque (gosh, that's a mouthful!) sample I received in a Beauty Box back in February! Yep, you read that right, February! Soon after, I cancelled all my Beauty Box Subscriptions as I found I got more shower gel than anything, I've got an actual reserve of them so if there's every a zombie apocalypse and we run out of shower gel, I'm your girl, but I did get a couple of little gems in them (Although far and few between) and this feels like one of them!

So first a little bit about my hair, my hair is fairly long, hitting the top of my bust now and I've been growing it out for around 4 years now, after my brilliant idea to go blonde aged 14 (all photo evidence of this time as been destroyed) I had to have most of my length cut off and my layers cut short as I'd damaged it so much by trying to do it myself, A word of warning, please go to a professional for a drastic colour change I used to be a dye hard home hair dye girl but I am no longer! I rocked the look of a huge side fringe like the emo teen I was, and me and that fringe finally parted ways in June. I have fine hair but I have far more than my fair share, it's naturally quite wavy but not a nice wave and is naturally quite dry, but due to it's texture I use more heat on it than I'd like too to try and keep it looking decent! 


My sample came packaged like this and is 30ml in size.

 This is how the masque was packaged, please excuse the tear from when I opened it.



 I took one look at it and it's size, and went "hell no! that won't be enough for my hair!" as I do have tones of it, I go through Shampoo & Conditioner like water as I have SO much hair, and find it very hard to spread through my hair, but this surprised me as not only did I not need all of it, I only needed around half the sachet! this amazed me as I tend not to be able to get away with so little product! 


This is obviously not the amount of product I used, but this shows the thick cream texture of the masque.

I left the masque on for around half an hour, the packet recommended 7 minutes (Very exact!) but I had some things I needed to get done so I left it on an went about my business before washing it out. As I washed it out I noticed my hair felt very smooth and soft, but sort of naturally soft, rather than a silicone smooth I often feel from cheaper conditioners, it definitely felt different than it normally did as I washed out my conditioner. 
When I dried my hair and I just sprayed in some heat protectant and dried my hair smooth with a paddle brush, my hair felt soft but not unmanageable and looked very shiny, my hair fell really well as well, so I had that good hair day feeling. It also made my super dry ends feel great and seemed to mask my split ends. My hair was a little frizzy, but as I skipped my regular products to see the true effect this masque had on my hair, I didn't really expect it be frizz free. I ran some of my regular smoothing product through my hair, popped on a little make up and ran off to college without paying much attention to my hair since noticing how it looked at first when I dried my hair, and when I got home from college at 9pm, I did some work then jumped into bed, without tying my hair back or bothering to do much other than run my fingers through to ease out the tangles.




I'm really sort about the lighting in this photo as it was starting to get dark and the rain had set it, but you can really tell how shiny my hair is in this photo, especially at the front.

The next day, I had a very long meeting at the Bank with my parents as we're all switching accounts. This meeting, unknown to me before I agreed, took 3 hours! during the first sort of 2 hours which I wasn't needed for I was trying to keep myself entertained and that's when I noticed how super shiny and soft my hair still was! I'd also just ran a brush through my hair and left the house that morning and each time I caught a glimpse of myself, I was happy to see that my good hair day from the night before had lasted, and I looked human with minimal effort!

The masque is sold in two sizes, a 250ml option at £23.95, and a 500ml option for £36.75, but both are available online for a lower price, I found the 250ml size for £19.15 & 500ml size for £24.08, both with free delivery. 

Overall I found this masque to be really nice to use, and based on the amount I had to use, I think pot would last me for quite a long time, making it pretty good value for money and I would definitely recommend it to a friend as I'm really impressed with how it made my hair look and feel.

Monday 24 September 2012

So...Hi!


Hello and Welcome to my brand new little blog!

My Name is Simone, I'm at 18 year old college student from the North East of England and I've finally decided to start blogging (sort of again) as I really love reading other blogs and watching YouTube videos so I thought I may as well finally start my own. I love everything Hair & Beauty related and spend way more money on it than I should.  I watch way to much trashy TV and I like Lipstick, and  have long hair, hence the title of my blog!
Here's a photo of me, not to be vain, but because 
I always like to put a name to a face

My Mum and I also volunteer for Guide Dogs as Puppy Walkers, but currently board for others rather than have one puppy for a full year as it's hard to give them back! we currently have a semi-permanent resident called Gabby, she's a 14 month old Labrador-Retriver Cross, who was withdrawn from the Guide Dogs program for being a Diva who may instead become a Police dog, if she can be bothered! if not she's going to become a pet, but due to her nature she may end up having to stay with us, and I'll be honest, I won't complain, she's  beautiful! When she decided she wants attention she 'sings' at us! We've now had 11 dogs and each one is amazing and special in their own way.
Gabby, she's not really supposed to be on the sofa,
but she cares not, and just ignores anything said otherwise.

At college, I study an HEFC diploma program which is a university recognised qualification equivalent to A Levels which is ran by Northumbria University, I study History, Psychology and Sociology and plan to study Psychology at University next year.

So I guess that's pretty much me in short, hopefully I'll be able to get some good posts up that people will enjoy, and maybe a video or two?