Tuesday, 13 August 2013

Babyliss Boutique Soft Waves Review


I purchased this from John Lewis (of course, Mama Sin has discount as she works there). Originally for £15 then it became around £13 after discount. Shops elsewhere sells this for £20, £25 - I reckon John Lewis has a pricing error = me in luck! This barrel is 1.3 inches or 34mm, I normally curl my hair using the Remington Pearl Straighter but I find it never gives anything uniform for my liking. I also know that StyleSuzi has done a tutorial using this! So I extra wanted to purchase this! As the name says it gives 'Soft Waves', I've never been a fan of Barbie curls and I've always liked the loose wave look :) 
 
Not gonna lie this curling wand looks a bit like an Adult Toy, only because its clipless! The iron heats up to 210 degrees and does it very fast! It also comes with a heat mat and gloves. It apparently has an automatic turn off after a while so you don't set the house on fire. 

This is the box that it comes with :)

I still need a bit more practice with it, and despite the protective glove I have burnt my hands already and I've only used it twice :( The good side is that I can use this very quick in comparison to using straighteners to doing soft waves - probably around 10 minutes!  


Monday, 12 August 2013

Whats in my make up bag*?



*All of this doesn't ACTUALLY fit in my make up bag (there's so much that it overflows), my brushes and utensils go in a Costa Coffee cooler cup :D

1) Sleek iDivine Storm Make Up Palette - my first ever eyeshadow palette, this was purchased primary for the neutral colours, the dark red, dark green, dark blue never has and will be touched.
2) MUA Undress Me Too Palette - previously blogged about, it is the dupe for the Naked 2 palette by Urban Decay!
2b) MUA Undressed Palette - the dupe for the Naked 1 Palette!
3) False Eyelash Applicator - this has no named and no brand, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen this in Poundland, eBay and Amazon for very cheap! This makes putting on false eyelashes such an ease as it goes on in one go! As opposed to using tweezers you would normally place it on the centre of your eye, then take time to make it stick around the edges of your eye! This tool is basically a ginormous eyelash tweezer!
4) Carmex - my holy grail lip balm, I believe I've probably gone through about 8 of these in my life time, they either get lost or I've had it for so long that I think its gone 'off'. Vaseline never does the trick for me! Carmex will forever win!
5) Rimmel Stay Matte Powder - This is quite a recent purchase, just to replace my MUA powder that I've finished :) And if the weather isn't ridiculously humid and hot, it works pretty well to keep my face from going shiny!
6) Benefit Porefessional - I bought this 2 days ago at John Lewis (mum gets staff discount woo!) and the size is double the original for £5 more, it is apparently exclusive to JL? This makes my face feel SO. SOFT. before putting on my foundation. In terms of reducing the look of pores I think it does a pretty good job too! However, the main ingredient is silicone and I'm scared that sooner or later I'll break out. I've gone a WHOLE month without producing a spot! I think it might be due to my new skincare regime ^.^
7) Missha Perfect Cover BB Cream - this is my second bottle! I like that it smells like babies and evens my complexion very nicely whilst providing my skin with SPF 42 and other skin benefits. In terms of BB creams I could never try the western ones, I don't trust them to get the formula right!
8) Canmake Shading Powder - I bought this after watching Style Suzi's "How to Contour Face Tutorial". I use this to sometimes shade around my nose area to give myself a higher nose bridge, or on my cheek bones to make them look like I don't have a flat face! :D
9) Cosmopolitan Makeup Sponge - reading on the internet everyone raves about the Beauty Blender make up sponge. But I refuse to pay that price for a sponge. Instead I bought this from amazon! After Gossmakeupartist said that its pretty much the same! I normally wet the sponge first before I use it.
10) Bobbi Brown Eyebrow Gel - my aunt gave this to me as a handing down. I don't regularly grab this but usually on the days when I noticed that my eyebrow hairs are too long and my eyebrow trimmers are not in sight.
11) Majorca Majolica Mascara - this was from Hong Kong, and the clever Japanese people that made this has put fiber into the formula, it pretty much is like lots of hairs in the mascara formula, so you are painting on physical length! This works like a dream!
12) Kate 1 Day Tattoo Eyeliner - This still isn't the best eyeliner I've come across, but I believe it was quite dear when I purchased it. The applicator is very nice and fine, but the formula is lacking intensity in the colour.
13) Avon Super Extend Mascara - My boyfriend's mum actually gave this to me. This is the only mascara that doesn't smudge and form panda eyes on my bottom eyelashes. I couldn't find it on the Avon website, but there is a tonne on eBay!
14) Angled Brush - this is a Poundland purchase, with the packaging saying Revlon? I just use this for my eyebrows.
15) Eyeshadow brush 1 - this was from John Lewis
16) Eyeshadow brush 2 - this was from Poundland (no laughing! it does the job!)
17) Elf Smudge Brush - I normally use this on my lower lash line
18) (Skipped out 18 on the photograph, very unprofessional of me indeed) 
19)  Shiseido Foundation Brush - now my mum purchased me this brush when she was in Japan with my Auntie, and due to how my Auntie bought 3 of these brushes, mum thought she'd get me one too thinking that its a very good product and that I'd like it too. Its not bad, I mostly use this to blend out concealer. I didn't use this much until I stumbled upon it on eBay selling for £19.99, very expensive!
20) Elf Studio Powder Brush - a dream to use with liquid and cream foundations! I've had it for 2 years now!
21) Elf Studio Complexion Brush - just a powder brush :) very soft and does the job
22) Eyelure Lash Adhesive - obviously used for using false lashes, but I wasn't born with both eyes being double eyelids, and on the rare occasion the eyes need evening out. Mostly due to crying, allergies, lack of sleep :)
23) Krazy Girl Eyebrow Powder - this is an amazon purchase for about £3, I mainly use the first shade but I've dropped it multiple times that its smashed that I might need to buy another one to replace it T^T
24) Eyelash Curlers - I believe its by a brand called QVC? I can't be bothered to reach across to find out at the moment hehe
25) Benefit Erase Paste - this is my second pot in shade 1! The first time I got this was due to my friend Emily's recommendation. Good for brightening the eye area :) But I think next time I'm going to try the Benefit Boi-ing, the lady at the counter said its got more coverage than the erase paste!
26) ELF Eyelid Primer - because I don't want to fork out £15 for the Urban Decay Primer Potion just yet hehe


Saturday, 27 July 2013

2true Cheek 'n' Lip Tint Review



 Hello everyone! So today I went to Superdrug with the purpose of 1) Checking to see if there is an MUA Undressed eyeshadow palette (which there wasn't) and 2) The 2 True Cheek 'n' Lip Tint! Which apparently is a dupe Benefit's Benetint which never would I buy as its £24.50 for essentially some coloured water... So Idid some research and people have said that the Technic Cheek Tint and the one that 2True one is the same! I bought the 2True one for £1.99 and I can tell that it would last forever.

My verdict is I absolutely love it! It gives me a very natural rosy look on my cheeks and is very buildable! The only word of warning would be that you need to blend it in the moment you apply it, otherwise you would end up having streaks on your face eek! In the picture of myself below I applied it on my lips and cheeks! It always smells very nice!



I give this product 4.5/5 ! the 0.5 is knocked off due to how if you spill it on your hands by accident which I did earlier... it *@£$ing stains your hands like crazy. Its so hard to wash off! But I guess that is good in that it'll stay on your face right? xD

Thursday, 25 July 2013

MUA Undress me too Eyeshadow - DUPE FOR NAKED PALETTE 2?


I myself, do not like spending money on expensive, high end makeup products! They are ridiculously overpriced and I always believe in finding a good highstreet/drugstore alternative. Since I've started watching many "Youtube Makeup Gurus" a product that has cropped up a lot is the Urban Decay Naked Palette. The moment that I googled and found out how much this little box costed, I thought to myself NO. WAY. I refused to pay £36 for this box that people title it as their holy grail product. 

  The Urban Decay Naked Palette 2 does look amazing but I am a major cheap skate.

So, I went on another google mission to find some 'dupes'. And to my surprise there is apparently a lot of good dupes out there and I think I need to spread the word! The dupe is the MUA Undress Me Too eyeshadow palette, retailing at:

£4, at your Superdrug or the MUA website.

And I researched further more into it, and there are a tonne and tonne of blog entries and videos about it. All concluding pretty much the same thing, the colours of the 2 palettes are EXACTLY the same. Even the order that the eyeshadows are placed! I am not gonna post pictures of my own 'swatches' or whatever because there are so many out there already! 

Above photograph from: http://niicolea.wordpress.com

And as you can see, the MUA palettes is 95% a bang on dupe of the Naked 2 palette. I've enjoyed using my MUA palette very much, I've never been an eyeshadow person until this! This is all I need in my makeup bag! I'll never wear bold colours anyways. 

I rate this 5/5! 
 However, my tip is that if you want to buy these palettes, get them online. 95% of the time, SUPERDRUG will not stock. Me and my boyfriend went into town 3 days in a row to check the local superdrug. They didn't even have the MUA Undress me too OR the MUA Undressed (The Naked 1 Dupe). I bought mine on ebay for £3.95 which is below the retailing price - but now I look on ebay it is around £6 - £7, due to how sellers have hooked on the idea that it is a hot buy! 

Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Hello everyone! It feels kind of weird at the moment because I haven't blogged since the 11th of July 2011! Reasons as to why I stopped includes, 1) Eczema - I've never had it as a child and nor have I ever had dry skin, but for some reason 60% of my body became inflamed of it, this included my face. 2)Summer of 2011 was quite a happy summer for me, I started chatting to someone called Chris on Facebook/Skype/BBM as we had mutual friends. So on the 23rd of August 2011 we 'officially' started a relationship! 3) The academic year of 2011/2012 was a bit of a battle as it consisted of a) Personal statement writing b) UCAS application c) University open days d) EXAMS. And for those that followed my old blog milysin88.blogspot.com I achieved A*BB in my A-Levels in Business, Economics and Product Design.

My old blog URL is milysin88.blogspot.com if you would like to check it out, I believe if you look through the entire thing it would date back to 2009? :O 

So why do I want to start a blog again? I just miss it so much! I don't know whether I will get up to the point of my 234 followers but I hope I can!

I have just finished my first year at Aston University doing Business and Management, my results will be out in 2 days! 11th of July! So I'll definitely blog about that. I'm enjoying my summer holidays at the moment doing some hours at my part time job to earn some money and I'll be off to live in my new flat at the beginning of September!

Things that I will write about will include beauty, skin care related stuff, University stuff and general life rants will be a definite.