The IMATS Experience

Hey girls!

I went to IMATS yesterday and had the most amazing time, and i have so much to tell you all that i'm splitting the IMATS London posts into two, this one will be only about the actual experiene, and the other will be a huge haul of all the stuff i bought!

the event itsself is held over 2 days, and i chose to go on the saturday, which is the first day. i would reccomend going on a saturday for a few reasons, but mainly because lots of stalls were sold out of the best deals by the middle of saturday, and had no plans to re-stock, so i imagine that sunday shopping would be slim pickings! it was held int he grand hall in Alexandra Palace in north london, which is a beautiful building and had more than enough space to fit everything in.

When i first arrived i was completely overawed, and kind of nervous of even looking at stalls because there were so many people who all seemed very driven and knew what they wanted, whereas i just felt a bit lost!

i spent some time just looking around, and soon got used to competing for space at stalls. i sadly didn't get too many pictures of the actual makeup and stalls, i was far to distracted by the amazing demos happening all around me!

the event itsself was so much fun, which i kind of didn't expect it to be. i thought it would be quite fasat paced, stressful, driven shopping for bargains, but i found that i was actually going at a reasonably slow pace and taking time to really look at and appreciate everything. there were a couple of things i knew i wanted to get, mainly a compressor, and looking for that was a bit stressful but i bought one early on (and left it at the stall to be collected later) and then i was so pleased to just be able to shop for things that simply caught my eye, and of course some new airbase makeup to go with my compressor!

the nyx stall was SOOO tempting but the queue was HUGE. another tip is to check out what you want and then come back nearer to closing time. i returned to nyx later on and there wa no line at all, because the show was due to close in half an hour.

i would advise keeping your phone to hand too, especially if it has a web browser. maybe i'm just a bit cynical but i wanted to price check everything, and i found that some things were being advertised as 50% off when in reality they werent reduced at all. even if it doesn't have internet keep it close at hand even for the calculator, to keep your budget in check and to make sure that you're getting a good deal. on one stall (i wont say which) they had a deal on airbrush stuff where if you paid £200 you got the compressor and 2 mini sets of makeup, but if you paid £250 you got 4 mini sets with it. what they didn't tell you was that separately the mini sets were only £15, so if you bought the £200 set plus the other 2 minis separately, it would only have cost £230!
overall i had a great day, spent far too much money and got some great deals, i throughly reccomend it to everyone!

i'll leave you with some more photos of the amazing demos!

warwick davis was there having goblin makeup from harry potter being re-created on him. his kids were there too, and seemed to be having a wicked time playing with presthetics and wounds!

the wonderful EnKore at the crown brush stand creating and awsome airbrush look to be viewed with 3D glasses!