Product Rave: Model's Own Nail Varnish in Nude Beige

Okay, so it's not the best picture in the world but this is my go-to-most-favourite-nailvarnish ever! Model's Own Nail Polish in the colour Nude Beige Number NP075

Doesn't look much in the bottle but it is the most beautiful, understated, delicate colour on the nails.
Dries fast.
Long lasting.

Get a bottle now! It costs £5 at Boots, bargain!

Oopsie!

...may have made a cheeky Illamasqua order by accident whilst looking for Birthday presents for a friend. Everything was in the sale though so that's alright, yeah?

Hot & Not - 20/01/12

What's been hot and what's not this week? Whether it be a nice new purchase or something that made me smile, I'm going to start writing down what has been good and what has been bad about my week. Hope you enjoy.

What's been hot:

1. Free stuff! I ordered my FREE (completely free, to my surprise...no P&P charges or anything!) facebook/moo collaborative business cards. If you have Facebook Timeline, you can get your free 50 business cards by following these instructions on the Moo website HERE. They came within about 3 days as well, which was good! I didn't particularly need them...but they were free!

2. Harry Potter DVD Box Set. I'm onto Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince next. I've been enjoying watching them, too.

3. Putting my newly learnt crocheting skills into action. My mum taught me how to crochet a granny square over Christmas and it has just been getting bigger and bigger. Think I'm going to either make it into a cushion cover or a throw.

4. Liz Earle Hot Cloth Cleanser. The best makeup remover I have ever used, hands down. 

5. Getting a new lip balm and getting 50p off with a voucher. Yay!

What's not:

1. Getting to work after walking for half an hour and finding a pair of used false eyelashes stuck to my scarf.

2. Finding a hole in my favourite duvet cover.

3. Researching house prices; bills, rent, mortgage etc and seeing how much it actually costs to live.

Project "Use-Up-All-The-Crap-I-Have-Before-Buying-Any-More!"

Welcome to my new project. 

I named it.. 

Project "Use-Up-All-The-Crap-I-Have-Before-Buying-Any-More!"

I have piles of unused cosmetics sitting round my room ranging from makeup, hair spray, face wash, cleansers, dry shampoos, leave in conditioners and more. It's getting to the point where I just look at it and think, maybe I should use these up before going to the shop and buying another product that does exactly the same thing. 

So that's what I've decided to do. I'm going to try and get down to one product per need...because, let's face it, I don't need three dry shampoos, three hairsprays, countless concealers and mascaras, numerous face washes and cleansers and god knows what else stashed away in my drawers.

These are a few of the items I'm going to be actively using to use them up and de-clog my room. (I can't just throw them away! That's just out of the question!)

This is what's on my list so far...are you sitting comfortably?:

Tigi 'Let It Be' Cherry Almond Leave-In Conditioner - 90% Full

Toni & Guy Rapid Response Leave-In Conditioner. - 50% Full

Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser. - 30% Full

Glamour Dry Shampoo Original. - 30% Full

Mess Head Dry Shampoo. - 30% Full

Batiste Dry Shampoo Original. - 95% Full

Tresemme Ultimate Hold Hairspray. - 60% Full

Got2b 2 Sexy Collagen Lift Effect Big Volume Hairspray. - 40% Full

Tigi 'Free Ur Mind' Cherry Almond Firm Hold Hairspray. - 60% Full

Simple Moisturising Facial Wash. - 50% Full

Clean & Clear Blackhead Clearing Daily Scrub. - 30% Full

Clean & Clear Deep Action Refreshing Gel Cleanser. - 30% Full

Stila Sheer Color Tinted Moisturizer. - 90% Full

Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector BB Cream. - 85% Full

MAC Studio Finish Concealer NW25. - Pretty much full

MAC Cream Colour Base in Shell. - Pretty much full

No7 Eye Base. - Half full

Bourjois Illuminating Touch Rose Universel. - Full

Benefit Boi-ing Concealer in 02. - 10% Full

Benefit Lemon Aid Colour Correcting Eye Primer. - Half full

Benefit It Stick Concealer. - Pretty much full

Soap & Glory Trick and Treatment Under Eye Concealer. - 90% Full

Benefit Bad Gal Lash Plum. Getting there!

Rimmel Sexy Curves Mascara. - Full

Collection 2000 Illuminating Touch Light Diffusing Concealer. - Guessing half full.

Bourjois Coupe de Theatre 2 in 1 Mascara. - Brand new.

Garnier Eye Roll-on. - 80% Full

Weeeeeouw, that's a lot! Going through it like that and seeing how much product I've actually used and how many I've bought makes it even worse. Definitely going to try and use up some of my stash in the next few months, perhaps even re-discover some of my beauty must-haves.

Wish me luck! I've tried this before, last year or so, and did manage to use some stuff up, so anyone who wants to join me in this project then good luck to you, too! (Not doubting for a second that any of you are makeup hoarders like me!)

See you soon!

x

O.O.T.D - 17/01/12 & Allsaints Spitalfields Bargain

Good evening lovely followers! Just a quick post to show you the outfit and makeup that I wore today. I've been feeling very Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen ever since watching an old Pixiwoo makeup video last night. See HERE for the video that I watched which inspired my makeup for the day.

I decided to go for all black with my outfit - how adventurous! 

I wore the following:

Black leggings: Topshop

Camisole top: Primark

Slubby sheer fine knit jumper: Topshop

Rocco studded bag: Alexander Wang

Tundra leather boots: Ash

I've been longing to wear this top for months and months. I bought it last year (or maybe even the year before!) in Topshop sale but have never been able to pair it with anything that I found to look nice. Finally just decided to wear it plain and simple, thrown over a pair of leggings... and think it looked pretty cool, does it? Who knows?

I wore my hair in a centre parting for a change and ran my straighteners through to make some loose waves.

My watch is from Guess and the necklace is from an Etsy shop, I can't remember which but you can most likely just search "Sideways cross necklace" or something of that nature and you'll find something!

This is how my makeup turned out today anyway, my loose interpretation of the Pixiwoo makeup video.

I used Bobbi Brown Long Wear Cream Shadow in Burnished across the lids as a base and on top of that I applied Snakebite and Tease from the Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette. Along the lash line I used Darkhorse from the Urban Decay Naked 1 Palette.

The eyeliner in my waterline and on the lash line is in Corrupt by Urban Decay.

I then used my usual, Benefit Bad Gal Lash mascara in black.

Foundation is Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum in 52 Vanilla.

Concealer used was Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection in 2 Light.

Contour/blush colour is MAC Blush in Harmony.

On my lips I used a mix of Rimmel Nude Delight and Revlon Nude Attitude lipstick.

I was so excited to wear my two new rings today from FASHIONOLOGY. (The silver rings on my index finger and ring finger). I've been looking for this type of ring for years and they arrived yesterday, much to my delight, after ordering them earlier this month.

For sizing reference, in Topshop rings I wear Small on my index and middle fingers. Topshop rings are too big for my ring fingers, so I would class that as meaning my ring finger is an XS. The Fashionology rings I ordered are in a size XS (ring finger) and S (index finger), although M would fit my middle finger as S is too small.

Anyway, it was super cold today and I was going to meet up with the other half so I popped on my teddybear hat from Topshop (you can't really see but it's just a black knit hat with two purply-black pom poms as ears on the sides), my new gorilla jacket from Topshop featured in my HAUL post from the other day and my Kurt Geiger Isla Mittens to keep my fingers toasty!

While out and about with the boyf, I popped into TK Maxx for a wander (and to escape the cold) and couldn't help but notice these lonely shorts hanging on the Final Clearance rail. Much to my surprise, they were not only from Allsaints Spitalfields but also A FIVER. Absolute bargain. They are the Lourdes Kari WPK556 Boy's Short in Indigo and were originally £50 marked down to £14.99 and marked down further to £5. Day made.

Now that I know that TK Maxx sell Allsaints stuff, I will definitely be having a mooch through the clothing section next time I go in. I never give the clothing a second look in that place because I can rarely be bothered scouring through their heap system looking through endless isles of clothes. I normally head to the shoe, makeup or home departments to pick up some bargains, but I think I may have been converted now and will have to keep my eye open in future!

Hair today, gone tomorrow!

It has been a year pretty much to the day that I decided to take the plunge and chop all of my hair off into a short do'. My hair had been annoying me for months and I was sick of it. I never thought I'd ever have short hair in my life but last January I booked an appointment and went for it. (Much to the dread of my boyf!) I went from this boob length number...


...to this short crop, the shortest I've ever had my hair. I absolutely loved it at the time and enjoyed playing around with the new style. However after a month or two I just began to get annoyed with the fact that I couldn't put it up into a bobble and couldn't go two days without washing it as I had no choice but to wear it down every day.


So I decided to grow it back. Short lived but I change my mind a lot! So, now a year on and about 3 trims later I'm at this stage. Still super short compared to what I long for now, but I'm pretty impressed with the rate of growth for a year, especially as I've had cuts in between.


So, as I've mentioned previously, I've been toying with the idea of ombré hair. Ombré is a transition from one colour to another, most commonly seen now with darker roots and bleached tips. I really don't want to damage my hair too much and also don't want to look like I've dipped my ends into a bowl of bleach and I've been scouring the net for the perfect style that I want. Unfortunately almost all ombré hair is on long styles which look lovely, but I want to incorporate it into my style of hair. I picked up this magazine yesterday for a bit of a browse through and was immediately drawn to Alexa Chung on the front cover. Alexa was one of the main people I'd been looking at for ombré hair inspiration and this cover photo is pretty much exactly what I want.





Her ombré is toned down and works its ay quite high up through her layers. I also like the colour pay off as it isn't too blonde and stark against her natural hair colour.


I'm going to go to my hair dressers in a few weeks to see what he can do for me. It's been a while since I've played with bleaching my hair and I think it's time for me to get creative with my hair again as this 'growing out' stage is so boring! This image below is the image I found a few months ago showing one of the nicest (in my opinion) pictures of Alexa's toned down ombré hairstyle.


What do you guys think? I'm a bit scared to attempt DIY ombré in case it ends up in disaster. Has anyone else tried out this style? Did you like it? On a quick side note, just LOOK at this amazing breakfast in bed I woke up to this morning thanks to the boyf! A glass of fresh orange juice and blueberry and banana pancakes topped with grated apple, blueberries, banana, strawberries and a sprinkle of sugar. Yum yum!

O.O.T.D and Topshop Sale Haul

So here's the finished result of dying over my stripped hair. I know it pretty much looks the same as before I even stripped it now but I can tell the difference. The tone is very much brown as opposed to the previous purple. Check out my previous posts to read a review of the colour corrector that I used to strip my hair. I then dyed over it with a Garnier Nutrisse dye this morning.











The makeup I'm wearing (not that you can particularly see) is from the Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette which I received in the post a couple of days ago. I absolutely love it. If you have the Naked 1 palette you don't necessarily need the Naked 2, however, I'd definitely recommend it to those who don't...and those who do! I have on Clinique Brush On Cream Liner and bucket loads of Benefit Bad Gal Lash black, as well.







Here's a quick Outfit Of The Day from today.



I'm wearing black leggings from Topshop, grey zip up hoodie from House Of Holland, denim and shearling jacket from Topshop, scarf from Dorothy Perkins, bag from Alexander Wang, boots from Ash.



I went to have a look at the Topshop sales I'm my local Topshop as I hadn't had chance to go in since before Christmas. I picked up a load of goodies which I wasn't expecting to find! First and foremost my favourite item that I picked up was this faux leather and fur bomber jacket which was £35 reduced from £78. It looks quite gorilla chic on the hanger but I absolutely love it on. Think I will be wearing this every day for the rest of my life...



The second item I snagged off the sale rail was this faux fur stole. I've been after one of these for months but never really found one that I really liked. This was the only one on the rail and is super luxurious. I'll be wearing it with a simple black outfit I think, I can't wait to wear it. This was £20 reduced from £60ish. (The original price in £ has come off but it says €68 and $90)



The third item I grabbed was this faux fur, bottle green jacket. I've been looking at this for a while, too when it was full price but couldn't justify spending £85 on it. The fur is short and, again, luxurious feeling. My mum loves this one too so we will be sharing this one, I think! I paid £40 reduced from £85.



Lastly I picked up some bargain skinny jeans and another pair of the thick leggings that I bought the other day in Liverpool, but in navy instead of black. The skinny jeans are the Leigh Super Soft Skinny jeans in a dark navy/indigo. They were £20 reduced from £38. Super essential basic jeans are a must if you see them in the sale and these fit like a glove, I love them! The navy thick leggings were reduced to £10 from £18.



So, that's everything I purchased. I also spent 25% less than the prices listed as I work for Arcadia, so that's another bonus! I'm very happy with my goodies and wasn't expecting to go out and find so many quality things in the sales, especially this late on. Make sure you go out and have another look in your local Topshop because I'm guessing that they've added new lines to their sale, some of which yu may have had your eye on, like me! I hope you all find some bargains if you decide to go looking! Right, definitely not spending any more!....definitely!.....uh....maybe. Haha. Have a lovely weekend, followers. Is anyone up to anything interesting? Neeny x

Yay I'm half way there to ombre hair. And my head doesn't smell like scrambled eggs any more! (thanks a lot colour b4!)



Have a nice day lovelies! X