My London Wish List

First of all I should mention that I'm not endorsed by boohoo for this post I merely decided to head to their website first and fell in love with everything! 

I am super lucky this summer to be in London twice. Once in May for my friends 25th and then in July for a whole week to celebrate my 23rd with my sister and the other half of my family. 

Just focusing on my trip in May, the weather will no doubt still be quite chilly at times and I've been meaning to update my wardrobe for the longest time so this months wage is going to be spent updating a few things and getting some nice new stuff to wear on my trip down there. 

I like my style to be very simplistic, it's a muted palette of blacks, grey, whites, cream and beige and I love a baggy jumper. I have a total pet peeve of any slogan t-shirts or anything glittery so the items had to be chic, maybe the odd flash of colour but really laid back and ideal to paid with some boots or flats for cutting about the city in. 

Below are some of my finds on the boohoo website, I like layering so there's some sleeveless blazers and coats but I'm also keen to buy into these flared trousers. Not all of the items below are in the colours I want, the coat comes in a beige as well but you can get the idea about how I'm wanting the outfits to look, very simple and laid back. 

I apologise for how badly I've put the photos together, total newbie to this and the background on the boohoo site is grey but bear with me it'll get better with time! 

OLIVIA AZTEC PRINT WIDE LEG TROUSERS-£15

REINA WOVEN CREPE WIDE LEGTROUSERS-£25

ELLIE OVERSIZED JUMPER-£18

JASMIN BASIC OVERSIZED TEE-£8

ALEXA CROCHET TRIM KIMONO SLEEVE BLOUSE-£20

BROOKE EYELASH LACE CROSS OVER CAMI-£14

ANNABELLE LONGLINE WAISTCOAT-£15

CAROL STRIPED WOVEN WIDE LEG TROUSERS-£20

ANNIE AZTEC PRINT WIDE LEG BEACH TROUSERS-£12

LEAH GREY HIGH WAISTED SLINKY PALAZZO TROUSERS-£15

PAMELA SIDE SPLIT STEP HEM V NECK JUMPER-£12

DANIELLA LONGLINE TAILORED COAT-£45

TOTAL=£219

All photos courtesy of http://www.boohoo.com/

Payday Pickings!

Ah Payday!

As a typical 22 year old female I am guilty of living payday like a queen and spending the following 30 days in complete squalor but I think everybody my age feels that when the wages come in they really deserve a little splurge on themselves and as of late I have not splurged. 

So last payday I was going through to Hamilton for a night out and was with my friend Melissa when she decided to go to Superdrug and get her eyebrows tinted for the occasion. 

Naturally whilst she was doing that I ended up browsing and came back laden down with a whole load of stuff but for this post I'm going to focus predominantly on what I got from Make Up Revolution.  

Personally I love Make Up Revolution, I know there's a lot of debate about the number of products they produce that are similar to those by other brands, for example they have their own version of the too faced chocolate palette, but for the price I really like the quality of what you're getting.

I know there are many people out there who seem to almost...frown upon really cheap make up but I see no reason why I cant spend £19 on a high end concealer and then £8 on a whole palette of concealers as long as they do the job and I feel great about myself wearing them.

So I got a few things for myself, some MUA, some Rimmel but the Make Up Revolution products definitely made up the bulk of my purchase so lets concentrate on that. 

I got the blush palette seen in the photo above at Christmas time but had to get another, both of these palettes were £8 in total and I'll admit right away that I freaking LOVE the packaging. It's very sleek and thin which is what I want from my products really because I like to store them all upright and this makes it so much easier. 

The concealer palette is creamy and quite thick, my only gripe is that I wish the colour range was a tad more diverse, I like to have a darker colour to aid in cream contouring but overall for £8 this is an awesome product. 

Same goes for the blush palette, I love that it has some matte shades and some more shinier shades along with a highlight colour. Again for the price you pay it's £1 a blush/concealer which is awesome, I can't complain. 

I also picked up the Benefit Roller Lash Mascara which debuted in my store the day before Payday, it felt good to be one of the early birds buying a new product for once. The review of this product is also in my MARCH posts so go and check that out. This mascara was my biggest purchase of the day and is a great product. 

Now I am a huge eye product fan. In my make up stand the mascara and eyeliner box is the second most jam packed after lipstick and recently I had been loving this Maybeline felt tip liner that could draw really thin lines and then be dragged to make thicker and this liner is similar. 

At either end is a thick felt tip and a thin felt tip and oh my gosh it's my new go-to! Don't be fooled, the eyeliner is very durable and also pigmented. It also goes on like an absolute dream and from now on it will probably be one of my staples. One advantage this has over the Maybeline is that the felt tips are finer whereas the other had a very boxy shape. 

Highlighters weren't products I reached for very often but this one is so pretty. 

Being a girl with a greasy complexion I like most of my face products to be in powder form if possible to help fight shininess and so this is a fantastic product. 

It's very pigmented and very highlighting. My Urban Decay highlighters are probably just a little bit more reflective but again for the price it is a fantastic product.

Finally the matte bronzer, You can't tell from the picture but this is quite a big product which is brilliant for getting your bronzing brush into (I hate it with Hoola when you try and get the brush in and it's bending off the side because the packaging is tiny.) 

Again, this product is a powder and so is great for my skin and I have no complaints about it. If applied properly you get this stunning glow, it's more brown in tone instead of some of the horrible orange bronzers you can come across from the cheaper drug store brands. 

I don't know if I'll stay loyal to the bronzer from this brand purely because with things like bronzers/finishing powders they're so cheap and there's so many you can have access to that I like to have loads of different ones but for now this is what I'm applying in the morning and I really like the bronze glow it gives me. 

After trying all of these products I was starting to wonder why people weren't going mental for the brand. The packaging isn't what I would refer to as cheap or anything either and the only products I would really not buy as the eyeshadow palettes because I don't like the colour combinations and love my Urban Decay Naked palettes. 

I'm not sure if it is because people are so loyal to the higher end brands that they avoid these because they are at some points blatantly copying other brands but I see no reason why they can't try to create more affordable dupes that are more accessible to the mass market.

Judging purely off what I bought this day I will 100% be buying from this brand again, especially the bronzers and blushes it has to offer. I also haven't tried any lip products or mascaras from the brand so next time these will be at the top of my list. 

Get the Look - My Night in Hamilton

So last weekend I went out with a friend to Hamilton which is just outside Glasgow to let my hair down because I haven't actually had a proper night out since the staff Christmas night (Last year!) Honestly I've no idea how that happened, usually I'm out at least once a month. 

So I went all out, me and my friend Melly left work and-because it was payday-ran straight for the shops, I got myself a whole host of new drugstore makeup which I used to create this evening look, there's also some of my trusted higher end products thrown in (to see some of the stuff I bought look at the post in my MARCH folder.)

 It took me 2 hours to do my makeup because I was so keen to look awesome for my first night out of the year and it's been so long since I've done a full face of contouring and all the rest of it. Since I loved this look so much I've decided to share with you what I used to create it. 

Now all of these products are available in the UK and the newer drugstore products I bought were all from Superdrug because Melly decided to go in and get her brows done which lead to me browsing the shelves and ultimately a lot of unplanned purchases.

So here we go! 

First of all I primed my skin with Maybelline 8-in-1 BB cream. I love this primer, it's for oily skin which is great, it stops my skin getting shiny and is really durable plus it doesn't feel cakey. 

My holy grail foundation, honestly the staple to my evening looks, again, super durable and non, cakey on my face. Couldn't rave about this enough so for this sake of keeping this blog post short I'll stop. 

Urban Decay Powder, I like this powder but it's nothing I can't get from a drugstore brand. It keeps my face matte and the only reason I had this particular powder instead of any others is because I like the size of the mirror in it for when I'm out and want to check my make up without having to get up and go to the bathroom. 

My freshly bought Make Up Revolution baked highlighter. One of the best highlighters I own, totally affordable and really pretty on the sin when applied right. Packaging is also tough so I won't need to worry about this smashing on a night out. In the photo I've applied it just under the brows and on the upper cheeks. 

New Make Up Revolution Bronzer. This has been applied all over the face bar under my eyes because I like that area to be paler and more contoured. I didn't use this bronzer to contour my forehead and cheeks though, just as an overall cover to make me look that little bit darker because my double wear is quite a pale shade. 

My Beautiful brows palette. My Go-to eyebrow powder, used this everyday since I got it about a year ago, As you can see after a years use I still have loads left and it comes with stencils that I no longer use and it's own highlighter and application brush. 

Make Up Revolution gel pen liner. Loved using this on my eyes for this occasion, got a really precise line thats to its double end with a thick and thin nib for applying the product to my face. I had a really similar product from Maybelline but this is cheaper and much better to use. 

Roller Lash Mascara by Benefit. There's a review of this on the blog in my MARCH folder so go see that and you'll see why I love this. This particular night was my first ever time wearing it although in the above photo I've applied lashes over them. 

For my eyeshadow I used 3 palettes, the chocolate palette was used for my base, crease. I've lost the sheet that tells you what the colours are so I'll just say top row big eyeshadow for base. Second row 1st shadow for my crease blended upwards and the 1st row, 3rd eyeshadow to deepen the crease. 

My self-made Urban Decay Moondust palette 

The first shadow in the palette was used to take my eye look to a more nighttime look. This was applied all over the lid. 

Urban Decay Lip Liner

My Urban Decay lipstick in Shame which is my go-to lippy for a more vampy/autumnal look 

I ended up taking the black shadow from this palette and using it to deepen the outer V of my eyes after the moondust had been applied 

Finally I contoured my forehead and under my cheeks using this sleek palette which is super cheap but my absolute favourite contouring palette at the moment, as you can see it's been used an absolute tonne. 

So that's how I got the look for my night out in Hamilton, if this is the sort of thing you'd like to see more of let me know. I might even look into filming one of these because its a lot easier than just photographing the photos and telling you what I done, it'd be easier to just show you! 

IKEA Purchases

My room hasn't been properly finished for years, partly due to me being at Uni and therefore only in the house on evenings but since graduation I've been more and more keen to ditch all my miss matched furniture and do the place up so it looks like a fashion student actually lives there. 

Until this weekend my room has vibrant plastic drawers on one side which held all my make up, the other side had a broken set on wide drawers that were missing a front and therefore showed off all my clothes to people who came over AND due to the crazy amount of stuff I brought home from Uni when I left, I had storage boxes on top of pretty much every surface. It was a grim looking room.

With my first full-time paycheck I bought a hardwood closet from my work at a totally bargain price which was a stroke of luck and I'll take that with me when I eventually move out but that solved a lot of storage problems in my room.

Last month I got a new bed for myself which was all white and had a spare single bed-frame underneath for guests but right now is also used as a storage rack for the plastic boxes I have in my room. 

This weekend I got rid of all my broken furniture, my bright plastic drawers and went to IKEA so sort out my life and I got some lovely new white furniture.

A bedroom is your personal space so you want it to reflect you as a person and in the recent months I've craved simplicity and straight lines so I got myself a nice new make up drawer set and some new bookshelves to get everything off my floor and up onto the walls. 

Above is the top of my new make up vanity drawers. This is the MALM 6 drawer set and it is gorgeous! It has a stunning top that lifts up with a mirror on it and is ideal for doing my make up in the morning before work. 

This picture and the one below are actually to show off that I finally got myself the stunning vanilla candles IKEA sell, honestly invest in these if you love candles they smell AMAZING! I also really wanted some artificial flowers for my room because sadly I have bad hayfever and can't tolerate real ones. So I found these lovely lily flower and a sleek vase to display them in.

Below are the 6 KALLAX shelving units I own. I love these, they're literally so easy to throw together and you can stack them on top of eachother and they are the favourite part of my bedroom. I have an amazon addiction and love buying books so these units mean I get to see everything plus I have an obsession with looking like I have a library in my room. 

And finally here's the full view of my new make up unit. I'm going to do a post soon where I go into my make up collection and show you what I have and these drawers make it so much easier to store my make up so that'll be up later on the month. 

So that was my IKEA haul! My room definitely feels a lot more cleaner now with all the white units and crisp lines plus it all fits in with the shape and colour of my new bed. Best part of it all is I paid for it so when I move out my parents it's all coming with me!!