Shopping!!!!

Our friends from my old college came round for the night on Sunday, and on Monday mourning we walked them into town.
I don't know why, but every new season I seem to having nothing to wear, particular winter. It's not that I'm trend conscious or anything, I just hate being cold and no matter how much I buy, it never seems to be warm enough...
They missed their bus so we went into Primark whilst we waited for the next one. Now I don't really like shopping at Primark for the simple fact that it's always packed on weekends or school holidays because it's cheap enough for the little kids/girls going clubbing while still looking fairly nice.

A few things that happened while we were in there:

• Dan was waiting outside the changing rooms for me and over heard some tweens talking about him: "You should go out with him" 'No waaaay, he looks much too serious!!'... When he told me this I laughed so hard, I've never met someone less serious ;)
• A woman literally shoved me out of the way to get the last pair of light blue jeggings in her size. Scary.
• Girl that smelled of weed and her equally weed-smelling boyfriend attempt to rob £13 jumpers to sell off o.O

• I was blanked by a girl in my class, though I do have an idea why :/

We also spend a long time in there after our friends had gone as 1) I insist on trying everything on (for good reason, I normally end up putting half of it back) and 2) my mum appeared and offered us a lift home, but she spend around 45 minutes looking around. However this was good, as I ended up putting back lots of things that I thought I'd wanted and saved myself money for Clothes show!

I have to be honest and say that I find most the their jewelry horrible. Though good for my mums dance performances, I don't want gold earring the size of my palm.
These however are nice and very much my style. I favour sliver over gold and I love the little details on them.

£2 three rings

These are also nice, though they're quite girly I'm glad they're not HUGE like a lot rings now which I personally don't like.

£1.50 for three

Bling me up (and no, I wouldn't wear them like this ;)

I couldn't get photo of this that shows the true colour, but it's a really pretty deep torques. I have two slightly bigger flowers like this from last year, this one has a pin and a elastic tie on the back so you can pin in to clothing or put it in your hair.

Flower £1

I was surprised at the price of these alice bands and they might just snap after a few uses, but I though that I could put bows/flowers or anything else on some of them to make them more unique

Headbands £1 for 5

A long sleeved top and the jammie bottoms while I love! Because I have to get a 32"/33" leg it's hard to find PJs with long trousers that don't sit half way up my leg, but there are perfect and I love hanging around the house in them ;)

Top £3, trousers £4

Lastly we have a Hendrix tee. I saw these a while back when Dan went shopping for new shirts but thought they were a little expensive at £6. They were reduced to £3 this time and I could resist, being a music fan. I like men's tees for than women's because 1) they normally have cool things on them and 2) they don't ride up my hips and make my back cold. I will have to cut out the neck so it doesn't give me a mans frame (I have broad shoulders) but then I'd have to do that with a women's one too ;)

Top £3

It seems like not much for the time a spend in there, but I'm happy to save my money for clothes show live because last year I didn't have much and I wished I had more!

Thanks for reading
xx

Shoreditch from Eyeko!

Today I received a little surprise in the post. It was my free gift from Eyeko for my first sale, which in all honesty I'd forgotten about!

This is one of their new(ish) lip gloss tubes, which I've not tried before, so I was exited about it.
I'm not going to bore you with details, this is just going to be my first thoughts on the product. I'm not really a huge gloss fan, so please bare that in mind ;)

+ The colour is Shoreditch and I like it. It's what I would call an earthy pink. It's not too blue based nor is it very bright. Wearable :)

+ It's fairly long wearing for a gloss

+ I like the finish: not overly glossy, although this comes at the cost of it being sticky, but I'll get to that in a minute...

+ It smells goooood! Or at least I think so... smells are very subjective of course, and I'm terrible at describing them, but this smells very sweet, kind of like a fake strawberry smell.

+ The packaging is adorable!

- I find the formulation sticky. Now I remember I said that I'm not a gloss person - before this year and Gloss Out 2010 I wouldn't wear gloss at all. It feels quite heavy on my lips, but this is part of what makes it long wearing and in the cold weather I guess I would feel that my lips were protected...

- It's not as opaque as it should be. This sounds stupid, it isn't hugely sheer, but from how it feels on the lips I think they could have made it more pigmented.

Would I repurchase?
If I ever get through the mound of lip gloss I've got then probably yes! I love the colour of this one, I've been looking for a colour like this that was inexpensive for a while and this is near enough perfect for me :)

They're £6.50 from Eyeko and if you enter my code E11416 at the checkout then you'll get a free gift :)




Yes, Eyeko did send me this product, but the opinions are my own. I will always say what I think, if I didn't like something I would say regardless ;)

xxx

Day six: most creative thing I can do with makeup!

This tied in nicely with the contest I wanted to enter, which is why it took so long!
I started doing all these organic, swirly shapes and thought abouot nature. Heance Mother Nature!








If you want to see the video go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95HkR0VCVCw
And tell me if you want a tutorial one something like this because I really enjoy doing things like this!!

Keeping my spirits up!

I HATE winter! So to keep me from going mad I though I'd compile two lists (because I'm a Virgo & I love lists!), one for things I don't like and one from things I do. Undoubtedly the 'bad' list will be longer, but hey-ho!

Bad

• I hate being cold. Infact I feel cold even when other people are warm, I think it's something to do with the fact that bad cerculation runs in the family. And plus even if my body is warm, if my hands or nose are cold then I feel cold all over D: Being cold is the main reason that I live for summer so much.
  
• The weather is bad, making it harder to do everything. I don't know if you've ever had to walk for 45 minutes in the pooring rain, but my advice would be not to both making yoursef look nice before you leave the house. And hanging around with your friends? Not a chance ;)
  
• I really detest getting out of bed to a freezing house and having to get dressed in it :(
• It gets darker earlier. I don't really mind the darkness... at night. Trying to wakeup when it's still dark out is just terrable, and you can forget being able to do makeup knowing what colour your skin is :(
• In this contury, onnce it gets to mid/late September you can almost garentee that you won't see the sky till Feburary, and even the it won't be often.
• I never seem to having ANYTHING warm to wear that looks nice. Nevermind the amount I bought last year to keep myself from freezing, it's all just got up and walked! >:(
• Putting on weight after Christmas. Nuff said.

Good

• Chrismas. I can't say that I like the day itself, but I love the run up! I love buying things for people, wrapping presents and writing cards. It reminds me of being a kid and I just love love love that! I like that people are friendly and just generally in a better mood (for the most part) during the run up to Christmas. I love the crappy/random TV and eating lots of chocolate!!
• It's also the party season :D Though dispite the fact that I'm now 18, I don't seem to go out and party as much as I'd like :( But even if I'm in the house for New Years, I'll still have a drink with Dan ;)
• I like buying new clothes and shoes :)
• I love scarfs and you just can't wear one in the summer
• I like the layered look which suits Aurtum so well and you can't do that in summer (though you can do it in spring and it's still warmer!)

•  You feel all cosy indoors... or at least sometimes. My mum likes to save money, and no one else in my house has my "if it's not boiling I'm cold" complex, so the heating is used to a minimun :(
  
  
  And that about concludes this! Ok, I though of one more bad things than good, but it wouldn't have mettered anyway, my passionate hate of being cold outweighs anything good about winter. Yes, even Christmas!
  

Rimmel Lash Accelerator review

I got this on my birthday on the over a month ago and I must have used it for about 30 days now.
I did a post when I got it with before shots too, but I thought I'd put them in this post too so that you can see the difference (if there is any)...

Before


After


Before

After

The focus on my camera was being an ass for this one!

Call me crazy, but I don't think it worked in terms of growing my lashes! :p It might have grown a little bit, I an see some difference in the open eye pictures :)
As you can see form the pictures, it doesn't seem to have done much in the way of growing my lashes longer, or making them much thicker. If anything my lashes look longer in the before photos because I still had tiny traces of mascara on them. I have however noticed less of my lashes falling out, particularly when I take off my makeup. I've always careful when removing makeup from around my eyes, but however genitally I rub some lashes always come out, but since I've been using Lash Accelerator this hasn't bee happening as often, defiantly not every night.


As a mascara it's good and I like it; it's got just the right amount of length for me without going clumpy (you would think it would as it's a little on a wet side) and the brush is good - a nice size, tapered toward the end so you can get to all the lashes with ease. I find it quite... buildable, if you like, you can add quite a few coats without it going extremal clumpy like other lengthening mascaras I've tried. One layer is quite natural and the more you put on the longer and more dramatic they get, it's the main reason I liked it. However I did find that you could leave the house with long dramatic lashes but through the day the kind of dull down a bit, I don't touch/rub my eyes a lot so my only conclusion is that it must somehow fall off during the day :s
The price is ok? I would probably buy it at full price - I don't normally with mascaras because if I hate it I've wasted quite a lot of money - because I know it works well for me. But I do think that part of the price is due to the fact that it's meant to grow your lashes and make them stronger and if they marketed it without that line then it would be maybe £2 or £3 cheaper.

Will I repurchase?
WELL... I was going to, just because I like the mascara itself (and that's so rare!), but I recently discovered that Rimmel still use animal testing (if you want to know more my post was earlier this month :) so I won't be buying this, or any other Rimmel product until the stop testing on animals. I've also now lost the mascara because my jar where I keep all my mascara fell on the floor this morning, sending makeup flying everywhere! I found most of it but my eyebrow pencil and the Rimmel mascara are no where to be seen, we think they're under the bed somewhere!

I am now eager to try the Revlon Grow Luscious and compare the two. I didn't even I know about the Revlon one till the other day and I'm pretty sure it's been out longer than this one, or maybe that was just in the US?

Edit: I was contacted by a representative of Rimmel who informed me that Rimmel do not test on animals. She send me a copy of their official statement on the matter which confirms that Rimmel no longer use animal testing on their finished product or any of the ingredients.
This is true however Rimmel is owned by Coty, who are a HUGE user of animal testing, I think they may even own labs for it but I can't be sure of that. So by buying Rimmel who do not test on animals you are feeding their parent company who do.
I will let you make up your own mind on how you feel about this, but I myself will still not be buying from Rimmel.

Day five: my favourite makeup....

I don't really have a favourite in terms of colour or style, but if I had to choose something I really like it would be bright, colourful eyes!
I've loved the eyes since I was a kid (I really don't have a cule as to why) and I love colour. There was a fase I went through for about a year - when I was 15 and proborly started wearing makeup for everyday - when all I would really wear was some eyeliner in the waterline and mascara. But when I started college I started to do something that I'd done a bit before: stripey eyes!
Then I discovered youtube the following summer and started to understand more about contoring, shading and using the different parts of the eye.
So here we have it, I still do stripy eyes, but this is also a way to use more than one colour eyeshadow on my eyes.





I took these after I went to see The Other Guys because I forgot to take a picture right after I did my makeup... Brain FAIL!

Eyeko ambassador :)

I know that these are popping up everywhere at the moment, but hey, I thought way not get myself an Ambassador code. At the end of the day I do really like Eyeko and want to tell people about it. It's up to you whether you want to use my code or someone elses ;)
However if you are feeling like you'd like to get a free gift from Eyeko and use my code then please do go ahead :)
E11416

MAC Holiday collection 2010

I must admit that I'm not normally very fased by new MAC collections. I'll have a look and see what there is but never really see something that I need in my collection.
Take Venomous Villains for example. I like the look of the Bite of an Apple, but thinking about what I already have, I've got a blush that's almost the same colour which was around £3 online. I don't have a lot of money, I get around £30 a week when I'm in college but I'm jobless and I want to learn to drive so half of that goes into my ''saving for a car'' fund. Then you add in the fact that Christmas iscomthing up...
Anyway - ramble over - you get the fact that I can't really justify buying expencive makeup just becasue I like the look of it.
However, these eyeshadows intrigue me....

I've seen pictures of more colours then this but they were tiny, these seem to be more consistent.
These - among other things - are apperently coming out sometime next month, in a collection called A Tartan Tale. I'm nither for, nor against tartan. I don't love it, but I wouldn't mind wearing it, but that's not really the point. The point is that according to what I've read the pattern you see gose all the way through the pan. Now that's something that I can't find in the drugstore!
It just seems interesting to me, and although it maybe be just a gimic and I doubt that the pattern effects the colour you get, I still love it!
I've asked my boyfriend not to get me any makeup for Christmas. He did last year and I feel guilty that I don't use what he got me more. It's not that fact that I don't like it, I just have so much and I don't really need anymore... but I may be asking him to get me the purple one of these. It would make it more special too :)

Let me know you thoughts on MAC collections ;)

Day Four (FINALLY!)

So here's my excuse; I was really busy at college, I did a look but forgot to take a picture n the morning & when I got back from college after a 9 hour day it looked horrable, my camera battery died and finally it wouldn't upload through photobucket - which has turned on me, just like Youtube! - so I had to do it through TimyPic ;)

But anyway, this is the look I did very quickly using the Front Cover palette that I got in the xmas sales last year.
It's not what you'd typlcally think of as a smoky eye, but the way I see it, if it fades out around the edges then it'll do.





I will do the next challenge, probably on Monday as I don't think I'll be going out over the weekend ;)

xxx

Animal testing

(Sorry for that lack of challenges, I've been really busy with college)

I've been seeing videos pop up in my subscription box recently about animal testing. Now stupid as it sounds of me, but I kind of thought that no one reallt tested on animals anymore - why would they need to? - it sounds even more rubbish when you take in to consideration that fact that I've been a vegetarian for 3 years!

I wasn't so surprised to find out that drugstore brands such as Rimmel and Maybellne animal test, but them something horrable was revealed - Benefit still test on animals!... Now I love Benefit, I own more of their products than I do Mac and I love everything about them (apart from maybe the price tag ;) but to find out that I'd been paying all that money for animal tested products sickened me!

So, in ture Britsh style I wrote a letter... Now you may not think that one letter will do much, but if other people send them then Benefit might take notice and do something in the long term. I'm sorry this post isn't very detailed, but it's nearly 12 in the morning and Dan has to go to bed so I'm in a hurry, but I expect that by the time you read this I will have done a video in detail anyway :)
Here's the letter/email I sent them, I know it's probably not the best and there's no doubt some spelling errors (I'm dyslexic) but I've sure you can understand it ;)

Hello, I've been a fan of Benefit products for a few years, so you can imagin how upset I was when I recently discovered that your company tests on animals. I realise that the finished product isn't animal tested, but as far as I'm concerned no part of the production should have been! I'm used to drugstore companies using animals to test on, but I was so shocked that a high end brand such as yourselfs would do so, when others like Mac and Bobbi Brown do not. What's different about your products that they need to be animal tested? I will be posting on my blog and youtube about this to get other peoples reactions, but from the people I have already talked about this to I am not the only one who was horrified. Needless to say I will not be purchasing any of your products untill you are cruelty free, but I look farward to that day as I do really like your products! Yours, Indigo

We now take a breif interlude in the post for a picture of my cat laying in the unkept grass...

______________________________________________________________________

Useful links:
This site seems to have a pretty good list of companies that are cruelty free
http://www.mymakeupmirror.com/MakeupWithoutCruelty.php

Another good refrence if you want to know if something is animal tested
http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx

This site may seem like it's overracting but from other things I've read and seen years ago I know that they're not. Loreal are one of the biggest cosmetic companies in the world and it's sad that they still use animal testing
http://www.liberation-mag.org.uk/loreal2.htm

And google is a useful tool if you want to know about a spasific brand :)
I will be updating with moer links as and when I find them :)

________________________________________________________________________

So this is what I've found out about my favourite brands. The ones listed are companies that DON'T test on animals, unless I stated otherwise ;)


Barry M
Superdrug are apparently against animal testing so any of the brands only sold there are cruelty free Sleek, MeMeMe, Gosh, and MUA
Natural collections
Collection 2000
Elf
Mac. I think I will be saving up and buy from them more. It also stops me from buying so much because I can't afford that much from Mac. As part of the Estee lauder company, Macs animal testing policy is a little too vague for my liking, and has some areas which would suggest that they do still test on animals.
Johnson and Johnson, yey I can still use my favourite face wash from Clean and Clear! :) My info on that was wrong, I thought it was on the list of companies that don't animal test on the PETA website, but I guess it was just wishful thinking :( Now I have no brands that I can use D:
John Freida don't, but Aussie DO which pisses me off because I love Aussie.
And my Jergens Naturals of course, becasue they make a big thing of it on my packaging



Obviously there are loads more than this that don't test on animals (see the link/s I posted or just google it) but I thought I'd list them anyway just because I'm happy about that fact that not all me favourite makeup is off limits :)
At the end of the day the companies that don't test on animals far outweigh those that still do, but it's still sad that in this day and age, with all this amazing technology around us some companies still feel the need to use a practice that dates back posibily hudreds (or even thousands) of years.

Day three!! :)

This is much more what I've used to seeing on my face: lots of bold colour, espechally blue, all be it a little more toned down for everyday wear (even I'm not that daring normally). My picture quality isn't great today because Dan's gone to a games expo, taken my EOS with him and I have no idea when he'll be back so I used my camcorder, which also takes apporling stills (in my opinion) for todays pictures. Weird blinkly eye! Apologies but I really can't remembeer eveyrthing I used, the purple glitter liner is from MUA, as is the purple/blue eyeshadow and I think there's a navy from sleek in there too :) As for the blue glitter, I have no idea! I got it online and it was no labeling what-so-ever so I can't tell you, but you can get glitters like this quite readly around xmas time ;)