Hello my lovelies!
I managed to make it to the Bourjois pop up shop (or Boutique) on it's last day yesterday and thought I'd share my experience with you.

The event was held at the Beach Blanket Babylon restaurant in Shoreditch (which has such pretty décor by the way!).

At first I wasn't that interested as Bourjois is a drugstore brand that I haven't used since college (Delice De Poudre Bronzer smelled so yum back then, I was addicted!), but as some of the other blogger friends planned on going I thought it'd be a nice girly day.

I reached the destination and as aforementioned it was very pretty indeed. The Bourjois Boutique was very pink and girly with glass jars of glitter, coloured powder and cosmetics, making it feel like a sweet shop.. a very girly one! I loved the whole idea, as you may know by now I'm a very girly girl!

Cute & colourful pick-up area!

"Frenching it up" with pink Eiffel's

An eyeshadow display - swatches galore!

Unfortunately I missed out on the "first 50 goodie bags" so I went on to swatch products and have a nose around. There were various activities going on whilst I did so; makeovers, manicures, body art and a corner with the T4 filming crew setting up.

Despite being drawn to the colourful eyeshadow display, I found they weren't as pigmented or smooth as I'd like so I skipped them, but found a lovely dusky rose lipstick that caught my eye (I've been attracted to this kind of colour a lot lately for the lips!). It was number 81 (Rose Folk) and the most pigmented pink there.
I mentally noted it down but then found a nice felt tip liner (I'm a fan of felt tips rather than thin brushes) and decided to start writing down items I liked on the little shopping cards.
I then saw a body painter at work and wondered aloud to Numera if she was doing it on people other than models to which she turned around and offered to do my hand as I wanted.. yay!

Using the Bourjois eyeshadows wet!

The lady used the felt tip liner (Liner Feutre) that I was going to get and filled in with Bourjois shadows using a wet brush.. It looked very pretty and water-colour-like and was a great way to use the shadows.
I then thought I'd have a look and see if I liked anything else as it would work out more bargainous to buy more and I found a double ended pencil liner (khol and contour shadow and light) in various colours, so I chose the brown and golden one.

I ummed and ahhed over the foundations; I'm not usually a drugstore brand kind of girl for foundations (no I'm not a snob!). It's just that I've worked in department stores and the higher end brands have been more accessible to me and also I find drugstore brands' to be more peach toned and therefore geared towards more "white" skin tone than my own very yellow one. Also, drugstore brands rely on trying foundations yourselves whilst standing and snobby or not, I prefer to sit down and have a consultation.. that's just me! 

However, I was pleasantly surprised looking at the "Healthy Mix Serum Foundation"; it felt very lovely and smooth on my hand (albeit thicker than my usual foundation preference) but after walking up to the windows to try and see which would suit best, I decided on shade 55 with the thought: if it doesn't suit me at least I can add it to my kit! (That's my fail-safe excuse as a MUA haha!)
I'm not usually an everyday foundation wearer, however if I'm going out for occasions or basically anywhere that photos will bound to end up somewhere online, I may whip out a bit (usually as natural as possible i.e. Bare Minerals). This "Healthy Mix" did sound somewhat promising though, so I thought I'd give it a go.

Taking my list up to the front "pickup" area, a lady filled my bag with the products that where then paid for. 

My goodies (eyeshadow courtesy of the lovely Aalia!)

I browsed around the rest of the floor; there was an ominous stand of clothes and a table of jewellery that was actually on sale for half price:

If I wasn't on a spending budget I would have at least bought two items from this rack, the brand was "Never Fully Dressed" and they had a great t-shirt and maxi dress that I loved!

At this point I was a bit peckish and right on cue some pretty petit macarons appeared on a table:

And after having a bite of a vanilla macaron (literally!) I spotted a very familiar looking stunning lady past the neon T4 sign. It was T4's Jameela Jamil, who I've always thought is absolutely gorgeous and really is in real life.
She spotted us trying to take a picture which looked quite odd so we came forward trying to convince her we weren't groupies and managed to get some pics with her:

Me posing with my tattoo and Jameela clearly in love with Numera's hair haha!

After this, we decided to go Nando's to eat and have a look at purchases and goodie bags.

L-R: Asmaa, Numera, Aalia, Me, Saman

Do click the names for their blogs, they're great girls!

All in all, I actually enjoyed the Bourjois event and certainly meeting up with the girls so I look forward to the next meetup!

Kiko Palette and Swatches

I managed to swatch my recent Kiko light impulse eyeshadow palette (01 Pure Colour Extravaganza) at the same time as the Tarte palette but thought I'd split the two posts before going onto makeup looks created by them. You can refer to this post if you'd like to see swatches of the eyeshadows I may use in future EOTDs/FOTDs.

The colours in this palette are quite pigmented, although they aren't super soft, so blendability-wise they take more time to blend.
On to the swatches then:

 

 

 

I swatched them so that the true colour can be seen, some swatched more than once or twice. All in all, the colours are pretty nice and bright, I've already done two makeup looks (requests) so hopefully they'll be up soon.
If anyone has any other colour combination requests, please do comment below!


<3

Tarte purchase (and swatches galore!)

[picture heavy post!]

Last week I received a lovely order in the post from Beauty Emporium after I spotted Rachel of A Pretty Obsession with a Tarte palette - We Wish You Wealth. It looked amazing and seemed to have a lot in it, so I thought I'd treat myself and for €20 (£16.82) it was hard not to!

I also saw that she bought an EOS lipbalm from them too so I also bought one for myself aswell as I'd heard and seen a lot of these balms around; Summer Fruits wasn't in stock so I bought Sweet Mint for €5.75 (£4.84), which gives a lovely tingling sensation:

The palette itself is my favourite colour (purple) and in a cushioned case that swings out to three layers of products; 16 eyeshadows, 16 lipglosses, 4 cheek stains, 4 gel eyeliners, 3 lipsticks, a eyelid primer and a "luminizer" (which is their highlighter).

The eyeshadows are nice and soft.. pigmentation-wise, some are better than others (namely the shimmery ones are better than the matte), but there are some really nice unique shades in the palette too, like the peachy colour at the top and the bronze-gold and forest green. The swatches are corresponding to the four rows of eyeshadows:

 

 The first two in the above picture are of the same colour; except that the swatch on the left is over the tarte eyelid primer. There isn't much difference if I'm honest with you, except that it looks slightly pink-er (as the primer is a pinkish shade).

 

 

The second layer showcases the 16 lipglosses, here they are split into two:

 

I love the pink-peach colour at the bottom right corner, it's so gorgeous! Again, some were more sheer than others. Here are the swatches:

 

 

 

The next layer has a mixture of the eyeliners, cheek stains, lipsticks, primer and luminizer.

Cheek stain swatches:

 And slightly blended; they still leave a bit of sheen which I'm not too fond of:

The gel liners were quite disappointing as I expected them to be a bit more pigmented and really had to dig in with the included liner brush:

The luminizer however, was a lovely golden highlight colour, which I think would be suitable for tanned to dark skin.. I wouldn't really recommend for paler skin tones!

On the left is the luminizer more blended in, but still visible, on the right just a normal swatch.

Finally, the lipsticks were nice and pigmented, although all had a sheen to it (no matte colours). I do think the palette would have been better with more lip colours than lipglosses, but never mind!

All in all, I'm happy with my purchase, I've got almost every UD palette now and needed to find some new brands with decent soft colours and pigmentation and Tarte is a new favourite I think. I do need to get my hands on some more though, hopefully they become more available here in the UK!

<3

Monday mini haul

For those of you following me on Instagram or Twitter, you may have already seen me getting excited over my mini Kiko cosmetics haul on Monday.
I thought I'd post some swatches and a short review on what I think of the products here, so those of you who've never tried the brand can see.

I only bought a blush palette (£21.90) and lipgloss (£3) and a single eyeshadow (£3) this time, but I'm eyeing up the eyeshadow palettes especially the bright coloured one.. maybe next time I go to a Westfield I'll buy it!
So here are the products:

 

I have to say the packaging for the face palette is nice and plush, reminds me of the newer UD Mariposa palette, except this ones better as it comes in a velvety pouch and the outer packaging is nice and two-toned purple. There's also a full sized mirror inside the lid, which is great.

And a closeup of the face palette; it consists of a nice matte bronzer, similar to my current favourite bronzer (UD Toasted). The top right has a nice shimmery highlighter (albeit a bit too chunky with the sparkles) and the blusher trio are lovely to wear singularly or altogether for a golden peachy pink glow:

The eyeshadow I chose was a white shadow with sparkle as it's a unique colour; the only ones I have similar would be UD's Polyester Bride or Uzi.. but Polyester Bride is more of an offwhite colour and Uzi has much more chunkier silver glitter.

 The swatches of all:

 The face palette swatches close up:

 And the lipgloss (129) and eyeshadow (169):

The lipgloss was a lovely pink toned red with golden sparkle in it, the colour caught my eye so I thought I'd buy it.. for £3 why not?! 
I do have to say that the wand does feel a tad weak, like it will break off if you use it too hard on your lips, so that's a downside to it. Other than that, it gives a great pop of colour to the lips, but I'd suggest wearing it over a lip tint/stain or lipstick for more impact.

The eyeshadow has great pigmentation, these swatches were without any primer on underneath (as usual) and you can see that the colour payoff is great. The shadow seemed more sparkly in store but I guess the tester was well used there, so I need to dig a little deeper for more sparkle! But for £3 again, the colour payoff you get for that price is amazing. My next purchase from Kiko will most probably be their bright eyeshadow palette!

I also popped into Lush on Monday, re-purchasing my favourite lip scrub in bubblegum flavour:

This scrub smells and tastes gorgeous (although I wouldn't recommend eating it!) and it's also vegan too. If bubblegum isn't your thing, they had a new green apple flavour one as well as their Sweet Lips and Mint Julips scrub.
The only downside to this scrub is you have to get your fingers in the tub, and if you like me scrub lips whilst washing the face, getting water in the tub melts down the sugar a bit so its not as effective =(
Other than that though, scrubbing lips is a joy with this fun and tasty lip scrub and I'd definitely recommend it.

<3

MAC winter collection haul

Hello my lovelies!!

If you've been following me on twitter (or instagram) you'd have probably seen me excitedly post up pictures of my MAC winter collection haul, which consisted of three things:

> Make It Perfect Special Edition Brush Kit
> Glitter & Ice lipstick in Such Flare
> Ice Parade: Warm Snowglobe Eyeshadow palette

Make It Perfect SE Brush Kit: 
I bought this kit as I have never actually owned any MAC brushes but always heard that the 217 is a great blending brush so I figured I'd buy this set as it was good value (and limited edition, which always is a plus!)

This special edition is described as: 

"a chic collectible. With their glittering clear-as-ice handles and see-through snowglobe-inspired bag, this set of the 167 SE, 168 SE, 239 SE, 217 SE and the all-white 212 SE is a must for your wish list!"

This set is quite cute, great to carry around with you or to take on short trips/holidays as they are travel sized. I'll be tweeting or possibly posting a review on how I got along with these brushes as I haven't yet used them!
As for the bag they come with.. it's a bit cheap looking but hey ho, its a set and at a semi-decent price so I can't expect better quality I guess!

Glitter & Ice lipstick in Such Flare:

This red lipstick is a matte, although as you can see from the swatch it has slight shine to it. It's described as a "true red" but has strong blue undertones to it.

Warm Snowglobe eyeshadow palette:
From the Ice Parade section of the winter collection.

 The Snowglobe on top of the palette:

 

The snowglobe's glitter settling after being opened:

I bought this palette after seeing swatches on Temptalia.com as I've been disappointed before by eyeshadow pigmentation from MAC collections. The pigmentation looked decent enough from the swatches for this palette, whilst the others looked fairly meh. In fact I wanted to get the Sultry palette but seeing the swatches on Temptalia made me quickly change my mind.
I have to say that these palettes remind me of Clinique bonus time freebies so I'm a bit dissapointed at the size of the shadows as they are just about the size of my index finger (and I have small fingers!).
Pigmentation wise, I had to rub my fingers back and forth a bit to get a bit of real colour to swatch with, which was a bit disappointing, especially as I am used to the soft and very pigmented UD eyeshadows I've been using a lot of lately.
Here are the swatches of the eyeshadows, with their names:

My favourite shade has to be the Gaelic Gold; it reminds me a lot of UD deluxe shadow in Honey but with a slight rustiness to it.
Winterscape has to be the least pigmented shadow from this palette as I had to swipe a good few more times to get a swatch, more than the others.

I'll be sure to post a makeup look very soon, I know I've been a bit awful lately but I'll defo get my makeup pictures up even if it means no written tutorial!

Did you get anything from the MAC winter collection? If so, which other products would you recommend?

<3