17 Get Bronzed GWP

In my haul in my last post I showed that I'd got a 'Get Bronzed' gift with purchase, and I wanted to cover in a bit more datils what was in the kit and whether I think it's worth having.

In the kit is an Ultmate Volume lipgloss in shade In the Nude, a cream blush in Bronze, and an eyeshadow in Statuesque.

The lipgloss is pretty, but not really my colour. I think it would look amazing on black skintones, and would certainly work for medium white skintones, just not my extremely pale one! This is a plumping lipgloss and it does get quite tingly, which personally I don't mind, but if you do, this might not be one for you

The cream blush isn't really a blush at all. It's a very very shimmery, greasy orange cream. The texturereminds me of those garishly coloured 'makeup' sets you would get when you were about five, which were esentially washable greasepaints. Even making the hand swatch for this took a lot of effort to make it show up!

Top-Bottom - Statuesque, Bronzed, In the Nude

The eyeshadow is lovely. It's a very wearable colour and I think it would flatter most skintones. It doesn't require too much effort to get decent colour payoff, and it lasts well.

My overall impression of this set is that if you were going to spend £5.99 on 17 cosmetics anyway, then go for it, but otherwise, I wouldn't go rushing to get it. The lipgloss and eyeshadow are worth having, but the cream blush is terrible.

Back to Britain Haul!

Since getting back to blighty on friday, there have been things that I have needed desperately, either because I took them to Uganda with me and left them behind, or because I finished the up before I left. Yesterday was the first time I had been able to get to the shops just for general shopping, and there were quite a few things that caught my eye, so I thought I'd do a haul!

The first place I stopped was Superdrug, where I picked up some oh-so-interesting tweezers, makeup wipes, and eyelash curlers. The eyelash curlers I'm ulikely to even use, I love my NYC eyelash curlers, but when the little rubber pads get worn out I generally just go and buy a cheap new one, whichever comes with the most spare pads! this one comes with 3, so thats why I chose it. The wipes are my usual Kleenex Eye Makeup Remover wipes, which are really soft and don't scratch my eyes like other brands seem to.

Next I headed over to boots, where I spotted 17 Colour Switch nail polish, which I was really intrigued by, so naturally I had to buy one! I also saw that Barry M seems to be doing a version of this too, but I chose the 17 one mainly because I liked the colour (Imaginitively named Silver) better. 17 had one of their free gift pack offers on too, if you spent over £5.99. I wasn't planning on doing so, but then I remembered that I could do with a plain boring clear lipgloss. I picked up what I THOUGHT was a lipgloss, but when I got home it turned out I picked up lash and brow gel instead! D'oh!

Although I wasn't tempted by Barry M's Chameleon polish, I DID notice that they had a couple of new glitters, which I was very interested in! I got Silver Multi Glitter and Aqua Glitter, which are both gorgeous!

Because I spent over £5.99 on 17 cosmetics, I also got a Get Bronzed set, containing In the Nude lipgloss, Statuesque eyeshadow, and Creamy Bronzed cream blush.

Lastly I skipped off to The Body Shop, mainly because I needed shower gel and moisturizer, which was sold out all over the country and online just before I left for Uganda.

I actually got some really good deals, I got my shower gel at buy one get one half price, the had the moisturizer in stock (winner, even if i didn't save any money!)  and as my Love Your Body membership had run out while I was away, meaning that I also missed my birhday gift voucher worth £5, the lady behind the counter was really lovely, renewing it for free, and then giving me a £5 voucher because I had enough stamps on my old card.

The RRPs of each item are; Hemp hand protector, £5. Seaweed Mattifying Day Cream, £9, Shower gel/cream, £4. so with all of that and my new love your body card it should have come to £27, but with all the deductions it only came to £13! bargain!

Boots 17 Miracle Matte

Hey guys! I'm back from Uganda and back to blogging with a vengance. I had an amazing trip with lots of highs and a few lows, which all of you will know about if you've been reading my travel blog, and if you haven't then i ssume you're not interested so i won't go into it here!

One of the best things about having been living on The Equator for nearly 3 months is that I've actually got a bit of a tan! I don't normally tan AT ALL, so this is something of a miracle. It does mean, however, that I can finally wear some of the foundations that I have bought on the high street but that were all previously too dark for me. For example, 17 Miracle Matte in Porcelain.

I bought this quite a while ago now, before I got my beloved MAC Studio Fix Powder Plus, but although i bought the palest shade availible, it was too dark for my very fair skin. now though, my usual foundation is too light for my skin (a phenomenon I have never experienced before!) and this is a perfect match for me! I also have been enjoying a less 'made up' makeup look since I got back; almost 3 months without makeup has changed me! This gives low to medium coverage, though you could probably build it up for a fuller coverage, it might feel a bit heavy on the skin.

My skin with just Miracle Matte is evened out, and almost matte. I'm glad it doesnt give a completely matte finish, as I think it would look a bit odd, especially as it still allows my freckles (which have been made 1,988,394,948,237 times darker by being in the sun!) to show through.

The packaging for this is actually really nice. Its a nice hygenic pump, though I'm not sure what it'll be like towards the end of the bottle, an dhow much wastage there will be. The packaging is clear matte plastic, so you can get a really good idea of the true shade, and you can see how much you've got left. The pump and lid are hot pink.

The finished look using Maybelline Colour Tattoo in Permanent Taupe, Max factor Max Effect Mascara in Black, MAC Mineralize Skinfinish in Lightscapade (inner corners), MAC Eyeshadow in Omega (brows), MAC Blush in Fleur Power, Kate Moss for Rimmel lipstick in 03, and ELF Studio HD powder.

Overall, I rate this. For the price (a mere £5.99, here) its shine control properties are good, it lasts as well as any other foundation does on my oily skin, it's oil free, which is always a plus for me, and it has SPF 15, which is also important to me.  

Thinking of getting gel nails?

hey lovlies, today i come to you with something of a rant.

a few weeks ago now, while i was off blogging because i was settling into uni, one of my first wednesday adventrues with my flatmate danni was to go and get our nails done before going shopping at the new westfield stratford city.

we found a nail bar near to westfield (not naming any names here)and went in to look at their treatment list. i had already decided i wanted to get gels, bacause i'd had acrylics in the past and they had ruined my nails. gels have a reputation for being less damaging and slightly more versatile.

when i entered the salon it seemed fine, offering mainly nail treatments but also waxing and massage in a slightly dodgy looking back room. as i was there for my nails though, i wasn't too bothered. i asked for gels (which were listed in their treatments, and were about £7 more than acrylics) and she whipped out a pot of powder. straight away i smelled a rat, gels should surely be a GEL right? i said 'isnt that acrylic?' and she replied in her limited english that it was a new thing, 'powdered gel'. i have never had gels before so i went along with it. how was i to know that it wasnt a new thing? she also got out a glass dappen dish and filled it with familliar looking purple liquid. after some drilling (!) she stuck on some nail tips and then she applied the substance (as i will be calling it from now) with apparent expertise, and when she had finished she instructed me to hold my hand in front of a mini fan mounted on the desk to dry it. this is when i started to get more suspicious. i texted danni who was sitting next to me that i was SURE she was applying acrylics to my nails, but i really wasn't sure what i could do about it now that i was in the chair with the stuff already on me!

the reason i was so suspicious was because there was no UV light used to cure the 'gel', and it smelled exactly like the acrylics i have had in the past. when she had finished i paid my money and left, unsure what else i could do. when i got home i did some googling, and found out that lots of people have been conned by this sort of thing, and i did indeed get acrylics. i was and am so angry about this, and it has put me off ever getting treatments done again.

the fact that she used a nail drill which will have done untold damage to my natural nails and was pysically painful at the time; she wasnt very carful with where she was putting it, and caught my skin several times. and also that i'm not going to have to go to another salon to get them removed ( i would do it myself but she told me they were file off; i dont believe her but i dont want to damage my nails any further by soaking in acetone unnescesarily).

i dont really know what the purpose of this rant was other than to warn people. if you go to get gels, make sure you look up the salon beforehand and if you think it's not what ou asked for, get up and leave!!

the offending talons (re-shaped and re-painted by me with 17 Magnetized nail polish, 'the green one')

Lucy on a schedule?! (and NOTD)

hey ladies!! i'm so sorry i've been so scatty recently, but i am back on the straight and narrow now and will be blogging on a scedule! i don't have lectures on mondays, wednesdays or fridays, so basically, i will be posting at least twice a week on two of those days.

i was going to designate it to mondays and fridays as wednesday is when me and my flatmate danni are both off uni and go on a wednesday adventure, into the streets of london. thing is, i thought i might actually want to blog about that! and seeing as our wednesday adventures quite often end up as days out shopping, they could make a good feature!

i was also going to say i would do one particular type of post on a particular day, eg a makeup tutorial on a monday but i thought that could end up a bit clinical. what do you think?

as this post is a little un-beauty related, i thought i'd leave you with a snap of my futuristic nails!

these were done using boots 17 magnetized nail polish (£5.99, but currently on promotion at £4.99) in the green shade. as far as i can tell they dont have shade names (dont they realise we hate that?!), so its just 'the green one'

hope y'all liked! have you tried magnetic nails??

Love, Lucy xx