My Top 14 Makeup Products Of 2014‏

Here is a run down of my favourite makeup products of 2014. Not all products listed were released last year, but they're the ones I kept reaching for & enjoyed the most

1. Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz - A total game changer for my brows. This tiny little pencil is so perfect for creating fine hair like strokes to fill in the most scarcest of brows. (full review here)

2. Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder - Gives the skin such a natural healthy glow, NOTHING else can compare! Can be used as a natural looking highlight on the cheek bones or as a light setting powder for all over the face. (Full review here)

3. Milani Baked Powder Blush 'Luminoso' - Perfect light peachy coral shade with slight shimmer, that gives the cheeks a beautiful glow. (Full review here)

4. Too Faced perfect Flush Blush 'Candy Glow' - First off this blusher has THE cutest packaging ever! but also the product inside is just as great! The heart shaped blusher has three stripes of different blush shades, when swirled together they give a pretty healthy pink glow to the cheek. 

5. Makeup Geek Eyshadows - All of their shadows are great quality & are definitely worth a try. The shade 'creme brûlée' is my holy grail crease colour & I rarely go a day without using it. (Full review here) 

6. Maybelline Age Rewind Concealer - Holy grail concealer that I use every single day without fail. It hides dark under eye circles & once set it does not budge. I use the shade 'light'.(full review here)

7. Wet n Wild lipstick 'Fergie Daily' - After years of searching in 2014 I finally found my perfect nude lipstick and even better it's a bargain high street brand, although. Wet n wild is hard to come by here in the UK but I have found a website that sells them for a great price. (Here is a link to the full review & shop to purchase.)

8. Benefit Gimme Brow -  An amazing product for setting your brow hairs into place with a tint of colour. On lazy days when I don't fancy filling in my brows a swipe of this does the trick of making them look more presentable.

9. Maybelline Color Elixers Lipgloss - By far my favourite lipgloss released this year. With its smooth application, great colour pay off, yummy scent & wide colour range what's not to love. (Full review here)

10. Nars Translucent Crystal Powder - A god send for setting my under eyes & preventing my concealer fading or creasing. (Full review here)

11. Lorac Pro Palette - Every shadow you could wish for to create a beautiful day or night look is in this one palette. The mix of shimmer & matte shades is perfect & the pigmentation is crazy! (Full Review Here)

12. Jordana Easy Lip Liner 'Rock n Rose' - I'm sure you'll agree that 2014 was the year of the lipliner. As much as I love my mac liners I mostly reached for Jordana Easy Lip Liner in the shade 'Rock n Rose'. It's goes amazingly well with all of my favourite nude & light pink lipies & it can be found for a bargain price on beautyjoint.com.

13. Rimmel Apocalips Matte Lip Lacquer 'Meteoric Matte' - I bought this lipie later on last year. For a darker berry shade it has a super long wear time so it quickly became my fave berry red shade of the year.(Full Review here)

14. The Balm Mary Lou Manizer - In 2014 The Balm cosmetics became more readily available here in the U.K. The Mary Lou Manizer highlighter was my first purchase from the brand. The finely milled highlighter has a beautiful champagne shade that really compliments my skin tone & leaves a beautiful 

What where your favourite makeup goodies of 2014?

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Collection Privée Lipstick By Cheryl Cole

Picking a nude lipstick out from the drugstore can be a bit of a hard task, so L'oreals new collection of purely nude lipies is quite an exciting concept. 

L'oreal teamed up with six of their celebrity spokespersons to create a nude lipstick to suit each individual woman, taking into consideration their skin & hair colouring etc & created the 'Collection Privée' line. The idea of this collection is that with the help of the celebrity spokespersons representing each shade, it will help women to find their perfect nude lipstick.

As my colouring is closest to Cheryl's nude 'Barely Greige nb4' I picked that one up.

It's a light dusky pinky beige shade, that happens to be the exact same colour as my lips. The formula is quite sheer, which for a lipstick in the higher price bracket of the high street (£8.19) isn't great. On the other hand you don't need a mirror to apply & it does feel quite moisturising on the lip. 

The scent of the lipie is quite strong like all L'oreal lipsticks, I think it smells of very floral sweets like Parma Violets!? Or as I've heard others call it 'the granny smell'. So if you have an aversion to strong scented lipies it's probably best to give these the sniff test before you buy.

Swatcehed heavily 10+ times to get the colour pay off on the right.

The standard Loreal golden lipstick packaging has had a spruce up for this collection. It has a matte black casing that feels very reminiscent of Nars blushes packaging, this is unfortunately a magnet for finger prints.  

Each lipstick has the chosen spokespersons signature which I think is a nice touch.

One thing I must mention is that I've heard that in America or Canada you can not buy 'Cheryl's

Nude'. In those countries it is replace by 'J-Lo's nude (I'm so jealous, I do love me some J-Lo)  . But I'm sure you can find plenty of Cheryls shade online on ebay etc.

So to sum up - Good concept, pretty packaging, but very sheer colour pay off.

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My Perfume Collection

Yesterday I was having a tidy through my room & my perfume collection had a little revamp, now being displayed on a cute Cath Kidston cake display. So I thought this would be a perfect time to share with you my perfume collection.

Jimmy Choo - I'm going to start off with one of my favourite perfumes of the bunch Jimmy Choo Perfume. It is a very unique & feminine scent, sweet but not overpoweringly so as it has a rich woody depth to it. This perfume is glamour in a bottle. Perfect for day or night.

Flash By Jimmy Choo - It would seem that I love Jimmy Choo perfumes because my second most reached for perfume is 'Flash' by Jimmy Choo. A deeper scent than the original Jimmy Choo perfume but just as sensual. It has a crisp clean scent that again has a very woody depth to it. The professionals say the fragrance comprises of a bouquet of white lily, tuberose and jasmine, which sits upon base notes of heliotrope and blonde wood, for a rich and sensual body.

See By Chloe - A warm floral scent with a slight sweetness to it. This is the type of scent I wouldn't pick out for myself but luckily it was gifted to me to try out & I actually do really like it & reach for it quite often as it is such a light & easy fragrance to wear.  it is a warm floral scent & with a slight sweetness to it.

Oriental By Zara - I did not know perfume dupes existed until I smelt 'Oriental' by Zara Woman. Narciso Rodriguez for her is my all all allllll time favourite perfume & I used to fork out £70 a bottle for it, not any more though. Oriental is an exact dupe, neither of the perfumes have great staying power but I just love the scent. A sensual musk in its centre, surrounded by amber & woody notes with hints of vanilla & a slight fruity floral kick. If I could live & die in one scent this would be it.

Miss Dior By Dior - This is a very strong scented perfume, at one point I really did love it but now it's a bit to overpowering for me.  A fresh floral & fruity scent with a hint of citrus & musk. The staying power of this perfume is amazing, it will last me nearly all day.

Belle d`Opium By Yves Saint Laurent - This is the scent all women should have, subtle yet seductive It smells of pure luxury. At first it's quite musky & then settles into a deep fruity scent. This is probably the hardest scent to describe but trust me when I say you need to try this perfume out. The staying power is amazing & purple oriental influenced bottle is stunning. This perfume in one word, luxurious.

Coco Mademoiselle By Chanel - as you can tell from the bottle, this is a much loved perfume. A strong sensual deep floral jasmine-rose accord, perfect scent for the evening but for me to strong to wear in the day time. As you would expect from any Chanel fragrance the staying power is brilliant. The amber peach shade bottle is beautiful & as you can see mine has nearly run out so I will be sad to see this bottle go.

Amber Romance By Victoria Secret - Lastly my perfect handbag eau de toilette. As you may have been able to tell from the rest of my perfume collection I do love a musky scent & Amber Romance is no exception. A strong scent of crème anglaise with a hint of vanilla and the tiniest note of musk, definitely a more mature scent. This is a small 30ml bottle that is perfect for my handbag.

What are your favorite perfumes? 

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Maybelline The Rockets VS The Falsies

Back in the Summer when the rocket was first released I was quick to snap it up & it soon became one of my all time fave mascaras.

Last month my rocket was coming to an end & instead of repurchasing I remembered I had heard a lot of great things about maybelline the falsies, so I decided to pick one up to make a comparison & see if I had been missing out all this time.

So here's a short run down of each mascara;

The Rocket has a very thick round plastic applicator covered in tiny plastic bristles & comes to a flat end. The Rocket gives me slight volume & instant length without having to put much work into it. The applicator really does the job for you, two layers & you achieve the perfect set of long clump free lashes. One down side to the mascara is that the applicator comes to a flat end, meaning it doesn't reach those little outer lashes.

The Falsies has a C shaped curved applicator, with long bristles surrounding & covering the tip of the applicator, the wand has a slight ridge in it making the applicator bend & glide with each application.

The curved applicator really hugs the lashes and gets to those little outer lashes, but it hugs my lashes so much so that they end up easily looking clumpy. I've worked out that the best way to apply this mascara is lots of very light thin coats, giving me nice volume & average length.

For me the falsies is a very time consuming mascara you really have to reapply & reapply in very thin layers to avoid clumpy lashes, I like the volume it gives but for me there's not enough length & it's too time consuming giving my lashes an effect I'm just not overly impressed with.

The rocket is a quick & easy mascara that gives instant effect, I love the length it gives my lashes. For me the rocket is the outstanding winner.

Have you tried either of these mascaras?

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NYX Doll Eye Mascara And Love In Florence Palette

It's no secret that I absolutely love NYX cosmetics, I'm constantly reviewing & raving about there products. I love the affordable price, the great quality & the fact that all there products are cruelty free.

So I can not explain to you how excited I was when NYX contacted me telling me I am there chosen 'blogger of the month' for October eeeek. NYX kindly sent me some products to review, so let's get stuck in

NYX have recently released three new eyeshadow palette collections 'Love in Paris' 'Love in Rio' & 'Love In Florence'. I received a palette from the 'Love in Florance' collection called 'Eat, love, be fab' containing five shadows created exclusively for this collection.

• Intense golden shimmer shadow with slight golden glitter reflect.
• Coral shade with a slight sheen to it, also containing a little golden glitter reflect.
• Matte brown shadow (that is lighter than it appears in the pallet) great for blending into the crease.
• Emerald green shimmery shadow (absolutely goooorgeous)
• Matte dark brown shadow with golden glitter reflects.

All five shades are beautifully smooth & rich in pigment. The one down side is that after an hour or so the colour does start to fade & isn't as intense, but this can easily be fixed by using a shadow primer.

To finish off the look I also received a Lengthening mascara from the Doll Eye range. All mascara's from this range contain a blend of natural oils, Vitamin E and  nylon fibers.

The thin hourglass wand is covered in natural bristles, and can really get to the root of the lash & reach those little lashes at the corner of the eye.

 When the wand is removed from the tube you can clearly see the wand covered in fibers, but when applied to the lashes I can't see any fibers at all so unfortunately they don't enhance the length of my lashes.

The consistency of the mascara is unusually dry, maybe this is because of the fibers. So you do have to layer the mascara, coating the back & the front of the lash.

Even though I don't see the fibers helping with lengthening my lashes, the hourglass shaped wand seems to create the lengthening effect itself.

Doll Lash Mascara - £7 
 Love In Florence Palettes - £8 
Both available from nyxcosmetics.co.uk

What do you think of these products?

Whats your fave NYX product? 

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NYX Butter Gloss Review & Swatches

The NYX Butter Glosses have been out in the U.S for quite some time now, & me being the impatient girl that I am needed to try them pronto so I ordered them from the U.S only for them to be released in the U.K two weeks after haha just my luck.

The Butter Gloss is a new gloss formula from NYX, providing a silky smooth application wih absolutely no stickiness & buttery soft gloss.

The scent of these glosses is SO yummy! A sugary vanilla scent, that does translate onto the lip but only lasts on the lips for about five minutes.

Both shades I picked up are nicely pigmented & give sheer to medium coverage, that is very buildable.

I love wearing them alone for a more natural coloured glossy lip. Wearing them over a lipstick really gives an extra pop to the look & I like to apply an extra amount of gloss to the centre on the lip to give some extra pout.

Peaches & Cream - Deep bubblegum pink.
Maple Blondie - Light coral pink , but not as coral as you would expect looking at the packaging (the packaging is supposed to match the gloss).

Left - Maple Blondie
Right - Peaches & Cream 

A down point for this product is the lack of staying power. On my lips the colour only lasts about half an hour /forty minutes tops before it fades & then leaves my lips with a subtle gloss, which is a shame. I don't mind reapplying lip products so its not a biggie for me, but this really would be the perfect gloss if it had longer staying power.

£5 from NYX website.

 NYX products are only available online in the U.K

nyxcosmetics.co.uk

Although I purchased mine from beautyjoint.com

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One Direction 'Little Things' Lipstick Collection

On the 31st of July, One Direction released a small makeup line with the cosmetic brand MUA called 'little things'.

 Now I'm not a One Direction fan but when MUA leaked some pics of the new collection including lipsticks, I knew I had to have the lipies purely for the fact that I love MUA lipstick & the new shades looked gorgeous. 

1D are onto a good money maker...the majority of there fans are young girls...young girls love make up = £ Cha Ching for the 1D boys.

All 5 shades are the same smooth formula as the standard MUA lipsticks, & just as long lasting. The only difference is the new cute packaging. Shaped like a certain well know makeup brand with its rounded bullet like lid, it has a red bottom & on the silver twist up is each of the boys signature.
The lipstick itself is covered with indentations of x & o (hugs & kisses naww) , and on the tip is the 1D logo.

Each of the Lipsticks are named after a One Direction song -

1.Liam - I Wish - A bright barbie pink.

2.Zayn - I Want - A true bright orangey red, very pigmented.

3.Harry - Be Mine - A very deep blue based red.

4.Nial - Moments - A light dusky natural pink that has a pearlescent sheen to it when on the lip.

5.Louis - Rock Me - A deep pinky lilac.

The two deeper red colours are defo the most pigmented.

All 5 shades are true to how they look as the stick when on the lip.

I was most excited by Nials 'Moments' as it looked like a beautiful pinky nude; which it is but the pearly sheen put me off slightly, so my favourite out of the 5 shades has to be Louis 'Rock Me' a wearable pinky lilac; gorgeous.

Each lipstick is £3 each totalling to £15 for the set, which is the same price as one mac lipstick. So although the price of the lipstick is £2 more than a standard MUA lipstick, it's still a total bargain.

Each Lipstick has one of the boys signature
Only available in store at Superdrug.


What shade do you have your eye on?

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Vivo Innocence Eyeshadow Pallet Review

Vivo is a new affordable makeup line which has recently launched in Tesco stores. With a large range of lipsticks, blushers, eyeshadows, concealers etc. 

On my latest trip to my local Tesco I had a little mooch at the new line & was drawn In by the eyeshadows so for £2.50 I decided to pick up a Trio Eyeshadow palette in Innocence to give it a try. 

The Innocence pallets contains three colours perfect for a brown smokey eye. A shimmery cream shade, light golden brown (I really do like this shade) & a dark brown all having a slight shimmer to them. The powder is very smooth & creamy, yet slightly chalkey & not very pigmented. So because of this I decided to use an eyeshadow primer with this palette (although I always tend to wear a primer as colour doesn't last on my lids). The shadows go on smoothly & are easily blended, but again because the lack of pigment I found that I really needed to pack the powder on.

The palette comes with a double ended foam tip applicator & a little mirror on the reverse of the lid, so great for on the go.   



I liked the end result (but I am a sucker for a brown smokey eye) & with a primer the shadow did last me. 
This pallet isn't my fave, but for the price it was what I expected.  



I would like to give the Vivo baked blushes & bronzes a go as they look a great dupe for Mac mineralised skin finish powders. 

Have you girls tried any of the new Vivo Line?

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My April Favourites

Maybelline Colour Sensational Vivid Lipstick In 'Shocking Coral'- Since I bought this beauty at the start of the month I have not stopped wearing it. A beautiful bright pinky coral shade, that is super smooth & long lasting.

Maybelline The Rocket Volum' Express Mascara In Black - See review here maybelline rocket mascara review

Superdrug Dry Shampoo In Chocolate Brownie 150ml - For 99p this is a good dry shampoo for dark hair as it has a brown dye to it. I used this on my roots when I was in need of a hair dye touch up & this covered my roots up brilliantly.

Collection 2000 Lasting Perfect Concealer in 'Light' - This month was the first time I have tried this concealer. I honestly don't know how I lived without this for so long. Great coverage & Long lasting. 

ELF Baked Blush In 'Pinktastic' - Although this is a blush I find it way to light to use it for this purpose, so I have been using it as a highlighter. Pinktastic has a lovely light pink shimmer so perfect for highlighting. On top of my cheek bones, on my cupids bow, under the arch of my eyebrow. It's a good dupe for Mac mineralized skinfinish.

Maybelline Stay Matte Powder In 'Translucent' - See review here rimmel stay matte powder review.

Bourjois Blush In 'Golden Rose' - I am obsessed with this blusher, a gorgeous pink tone with the perfect amount of golden shimmer, for the perfect subtle glow. I will be reviewing this very soon.

Ebay Beauty Blender Dupe - Although the original beauty blender has so much hype around it I just cant bring my self to pay £16+ on a little sponge (call me scrooge). Whilst browsing on ebay I stumbled across a beauty blender for 99p, it looked like the real thing & for 99p I thought, what's to lose. To me this feels just like the real thing, & the finish of my foundation after using this is flawless. I've tried beauty blender dupes before & this by far is THE best I have come across. I'm definitely going to buy some more & stock up. Here's the link if your interested Ebay Beauty Blender. Since I bought this last month they have since put the price up to £1.25, but still a great bargain. 

Sinful Colors Nail Polish in 'Frenzy' & 'Easy Going' - See review here Sinful Colors Review

Top - Bourjois  Blush In 'Golden Rose'

Middle - ELF Baked Blush In 'Pinktastic'

Bottom - Maybelline Colour Sensational Vivid Lipstick In 'Shocking Coral'

What are your April Favourites ?

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Manicure Monday with Sinful Colors | Nail Art

After much anticipation Sinful colors nail polish has arrived in the U.K!! Sinful Colors has been popular in the U.S.A for years now, with a range of 70 shades in every finish - creams, pearls, glitter, shimmer and matte, all for the affordable price of just £1.99. Now being stocked In Boots.

I am bit of a nail polish snob, preferring to use O.P.I, china glaze & Essie.With the hype around Sinful Colors & the price of just £1.99 I just had to see what these polishes were like for myself. 








Here are the colours I picked up -

Frenzy, Easy Going, Soul Mate.

'Easy Going' - which Is a very light baby pink. With this shade I used 3 light coats. Even with my years of nail polish snobbery I have never come across such an opaque light pink shade.  

'Soul Mate' - A coral peach shade. Two coats gave perfect coverage.

'Frenzy' - Purple, pink & blue glitter. One coat is sheer so could be used over a solid colour polish, for extra sparkle. Two coats was nearly opaque & three coats was just as it looks in the bottle. 

For the purpose of testing these polishes out I didn't wear any base or top coat & these polishes lasted three days until they started to chip. 

Personally I really love these polishes. Opaque, long lasting, wide variety of colours and finishes for £1.99, amazing. 

Easy Going & Soul Mate

Here is another easy D.I.Y nail design. Love Hearts. Using two of the sinful color polishes.

1. Using a doting tool or the end of a bobby pin, dot two small hearts next to each other.

2.Place another small dot underneath. Making a triangle shape of three dots.

3. Again using the dotting tool join the dots together to make a little heart.

4. Apply a top coat & cuticle oil if desired.   

I hope you like this nail art design.

Have you tried sinful colors yet?

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