Glowing crazy

I am obsessed with highlighters, anything that glows or is sparkly I like it. So thankfully more drug store brands have been coming out with highlighters. The first on I have is quite new to Rimmel – Good to Glow in the colour 001 Notting Hill Glow

The product is pink toned and has a pearly finish. It does have some specks of glitter but it is very easy to blend so it is less in your face on the skin. It can be worn on top of foundation can be blended into foundation to sheer out the product and give healthy and summery look to the skin. It is quite similar to Nars highlighter Copacabana although I have tested that in shops and it seems to be a chunkier highlighter also it £23 whereas the Good to Glow highlighter is £4.99. Also they give you a lot of product and a very little goes a long way! The product is available in 2 other colours getting darker in colour.

The other highlighter I have is from Sleek it is the highlighting palette in Precious Metals, there are 4 colours, two of which are quite wearable the other two are very intense and glittery highlights which I like but might be too much if you like a subtle glow.

The colours are called platinum, royal gold, renaissance gold and antique bronze. Antique bronze is a powder glittery bronzer which works well on the cheeks and forehead, the colour renaissance gold is the most wearable shade as it doesn’t have big glitter particles, it works nicely on the bridge of the nose and on the top of the cheek bones. Royal Gold is the most over the top shade and has a lot of glitter, I like it for the top of my cheeks if I am going out at night otherwise it isn’t the most subtle. The white shade is only works for the inner corner highlight as it is white and pearly and is very pigmented. The 3 cream shades blend and set well and the power shade blends well. It is £9.99 and comes with a brush which was the worst part about the product as whole, all the products work well blended with your fingers. I like the packaging as it fits with the precious metals look and is sturdy it also has a good sized mirror.

Hope this was helpful! Thank you for reading

Bestival madness

Posted by Grace

I know it has been a while since the last post… But I was in France without internet for a month and then getting back from France I almost straight away went off to Bestival – a festival on the Isle of White. I went with two of my best friends and because we were lucky we were in the artists camping area.

The journey was long and not particularly glamorous. We took an over ground train; an underground train; a coach; a ferry and 2 shuttle buses! We should have taken a bus to the ferry but because we were very disorganised and we walked a great distance with all of our bags and a helium balloon!

Finally when we got to the camp site (we arrived on the Friday and left on the Sunday) we put up the tent – which took longer then expected given that it was a very small tent – we got our glitter on and raced down to see Sam Smith on the main stage.

Our tent did look like a very sad animal, but it fit 3 of us and our stuff almost comfortably in.

Anyway, Sam Smith was AMAZING! I am a big fan so may be a little biased but I mean you can’t not like him! Then we saw Disclosure who were also amazing, made even more amazing because they brought Sam Smith on to sing Latch – yep as I said a big fan :L

The Friday night was great, we went to the Port to watch a DJ and went to the Bollywood tent we also ate some rather over price chicken nuggets. The only mishap of the night was when we tried to find our tent but thankfully and in the traditional festival way we made some friends who helped us find the sad tent!

(not my can) on the second day I wore a rather colourful outfit, I didn’t bring dress up but tried to compensate with colour! I wore Adidas leggings which I got from Urban Outfitters the top was from Urban Outfitters also – but the vintage renewal section – no longer available. The bag I used from the weekend and the cardigan I wore SOOO soft!! On the first day I wore wellies but on the second day I wore gold Superga shoes –

We saw London Grammar and Foals who were both very good and we went into many different tents and saw a lot of up and coming artists also a very exciting moment in my life happened when walking past the Vlogger Caspar Lee who I sort of stared at and he told me he loved my pants to which I timidly said thank you and walked off very happy!

I had a great time at Bestival it was a friendly and fun festival with so many things to see and do I really want to go back next year it is a perfect end of summer party the only painful part was the way home!

Thank you for reading xxxx

Stratford Upon Avon

Posted by Grace
A very different post today, about my weekend trip to Stratford upon Avon. Two teachers and 16 of us students went on an English trip. We explored the town and our English teacher told us many stories about Shakespeare and were he lived and stories about theatre companies having druken punch ups! For anyone unsure Stratford upon Avon was were Shakespeare lived and was born and the whole town is like a theme park dedicated to him and his plays.

We visited the church were he is buried and saw the model of him which as our English teacher rightly said it didn’t capture the romantic Shakespeare look but looked more like captain Mannering!

The first play we went to see was Henry IV part 1

The play was performed well by all the actors, it was funny and everything about it was well done – the staging, the costume, the direct address to the audience. The play is about a king who is in denial about the dethroning of the previous king (Richard II, also a side note I saw Richard II at the Barbican theatre earlier this year with David Tenant playing him) Richard promises the throne to his cousin Harry, him and his father are angry and want revenge against Henry, Henry has a son – Hal, or Harry he doesn’t take responsibilities as a prince and spends his days in brothels and pubs pick pocketing with his friends and with the protagonist and funniest character Faulstaff, a large, drunk old man who makes up great long stories to make him look like a brave and honourable man – a Shakespearean Rooster Byron! I didn’t enjoy Richard II because I didn’t engage with the characters and thought the plot was too heavy for my liking but Henry IV was a mix of heavy and serious moments with many funny and comical moments, the actors were able to adapt the Shakespearean comedy and make it funny to a modern day audience. As we all agreed on when coming out of the theatre, being able to spot and laugh at the jokes in the play made us feel very intelligent! Faulstaff’s direct address with the audience meant that throughout the play, although he wasn’t always loyal to Hal who was a likeable and good character throughout, meant we had a connection and had his trust as we knew the dramatic irony from his on stage actions. The actor playing Harry played him with moments of madness however he did have too many moments where he became too much of a likeable character I thought and the moments of madness should have been more continuous. Over all I really enjoyed the play and thought although the play is a long one it engaged everyone throughout and it left me wanting to see part 2!

The second play we went to see was called the Arden Of Faversham by anonymous

The Arden of Faversham is about a woman called Alice who is married to a man named Arden, Alice falls in love with another man, this other man tells Arden that whilst he is alive he will never be with Alice so Alice decides she must kill him so she hires someone who hires someone else to kill him, every time there is an opener unity to kill him the two hit men mess up and end up injuring themselves. The play is a dark comedy with lots and lots of blood! The adaptation I saw was set in the modern day, the set was full of lucky cats and everything was colourful but a complete vision of madness. I found the play very funny manly it’s shocking moments, there was one moment when Arden is finally killed and is suspended in a cardboard box hanging from the ceiling (I know madness) when his blood starts to drip onto the stage and one of the actors accidentally kicked it into the laps of two audience members! another moment was still when the blood was dripping onto the stage and Alice’s love tries to distract everyone by going to cheers and hold up his glass of champagne and a drop of blood falls in! The play was very dark and the twisted colourful and happy setting juxtaposed with the gruesome and tragic story made the production very effective, dark and very very funny!

Face of the day

Posted by Grace

Wearing: benefit boi-ing concealer
Benefit brow zings
Urban decay naked 3 palette Nooner
Benefit they’re real mascara (on the top lashes)
L’oreal miss manga mascara in turquoise (on the lower lashes)
Estée Lauder lipstick in berry fizz
Look lip slick

Suprisingly wearable Festival Forest Flower Fairy FOTD

This is what you call low-budget sfx. As in, so low-budget it was created in a moment of inspiration while waiting for noodles to cook. Nevertheless, I’ve been wanting to try something like this for a while and I’m pretty happy with my first attempt.

I absolutely adore coloured contour looks, and this gave me an appreciation of how much product it actually takes to appear on camera. I put on what I felt was a respectable amount of greeniness (I wanted it to be striking and freaky but not Grinchish) but it was completely invisible on in the photos. I had to absolutely shovel on the green eyeshadow to get it to look good here.

This look is easy to replicate and I think it’s really flattering and could easily be worn to a festival or party. I want to try this using different flowers for inspiration (mine was loosely based on a rose) to create my colourscheme, but also with different skintones.

This was all created using normal cosmetics brands, no sfx.

My MAC lipsticks

Posted by Grace

I own 3 MAC lipsticks and I must say I do love them! All of them were gifts and as sentimental and cheesy as it may sound each one has a memory attached!

This is my newest MAC lipstick it is called Saigon Summer and is a crenels sheen the colour is a goldy orange tangerine shade which is quite sheer so perfect for every day but very buildable. The formula is smooth and creamy and doesn’t dry my lips out. It is a great summer staple! I am such an ib student trying to focus on the lipstick using a copy of my George Orwell essays!!!

This is the shade hibiscus, I got given this by my god father who got it free when he worked for the magazine Esquire, the colour is a pinky coral and wears well on the lips it is very versatile. Because the colour was limited edition the closest dupe I have found I the Rimmel lasting finish by Kate Moss in the colour 110

The MAC one is on the left and the Rimmel lipstick on the right. They are different in texture as the Rimmel lipstick is matte but they very similar in colour.

Morange is my brightest MAC lipstick, it is an amplified, it is very long lasting and a great alternative for people who don’t like reds or want a bright staple for summer and festivals. The texture is quite thick but very moisturising on the lips it is my most pigmented lipstick as well just make sure you haven’t got any on your teeth!

This is the second part of a series on MAC lipsticks

MAC new release hype!

Posted by Juliette

Beauty giant MAC is releasing two new collections with unique and gorgeous packaging:

The Alluring Aquatics collection, international store release May 2014

The Disney Maleficent collection, international release June 2014

The beauty blog Temptalia, an excellent source for reviews and swatches, has already posted swatches of the lipsticks, which you can see here. They’re limited edition and I’ve definitely got my eye on Mystical and Enchanted One; they are priced at £16.50 so only a marginal increase from their normal lipstick range. Enchanted One in particular is a beautiful rich day rose in Cremesheen, which is MAC’s most easygoing and wearable formula, it could easily be incorporated into a lazy daily look! There are also a couple of shimmer bronzers, which I’ll have to take a look at before I commit myself to Too-Faced Milk Chocolate Soleil.

More information about the Aquatics UK can be found here and here.

There’s always huge demand for MAC’s Limited Editions (especially the Disney ones!) so if you see anything you like you’ll want to hit the shops early 😉

(This is the first part of a series on MAC lipsticks)