Bright Lips For a Dull Day

One of my goals or resolutions if you will for this year was to start rocking bright lips more often and though I absolutely love my nude shades from day to night, it's been a lot of fun pulling out a few old favourites of mine that have been far too neglected for far too long. For bright shades, it's all about Mac for me. They have such a wide range of colours in all different finishes that it's so easy to find something for everyone. Recently though I have been venturing into brighter liquid lipsticks, purely for their staying power, pigmentation and matte finish. (This girl loves a matte).

Anastasia Beverly Hills Stick Foundation | Review

This year I've made it one of my missions to experiment more with different foundation brands and formulas, having stuck pretty religiously to the Makeup Forever Ultra HD for quite some time now. (Don't worry, you'll always be bae.) And one of the most exciting and possibly different types of foundation for me to try, is the stick foundation. For me it was a toss up between trying the stick version of Ultra HD or this, the Anastasia Beverly Hills stick foundation, I actually had quite a lengthy chat with a lovely girl who worked in Sephora about which she would recommend before I made my purchase. I decided to go with ABH, mainly because it's slightly more difficult to get ahold of over here and it didn't work out any cheaper to buy the MUFE over in America, (boo you exchange rates). So now I've had a good month or so to trial this, I'm going to share my thoughts with you, all the pros and all the cons.

Anastasia Beverly Hills Liquid Lips | Review

*sighs* Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how dreamy the Anastasia Liquid Lipsticks are? They're just so pretty to look at and photograph. I recently picked up these beauties while on holiday in Florida, as up until recently they've been pretty difficult to get ahold of in the UK without forking out ridiculous custom fees. (Anastasia do now have their own UK site, so getting these should now be far easier!) And now I've had enough time to road test the shades, I wanted to share my thoughts with anyone who may be considering ordering a few.

US Beauty Haul | First Impressions

Y'all know that the first thing on my mind when I landed in Florida in December was "oh my days imagine all the things I can buy in Sephora and Ulta" swiftly followed by the idea pancakes and maple bacon.  The black and white stripes were calling my name. Unfortunately due to a poor exchange rate, it actually didn't work out much cheaper to buy certain products abroad like it has in previous years so I tried to stick to things we can't necessarily get over here, haven't been released yet or are a little harder to access. This post will be a quick run down of everything with a few initial impressions, the real juicy stuff will come in the reviews to follow over the next few weeks. Ooooh the anticipation.

Latest Beauty Favourites

It's been a while since I've shared a few of the products I've been loving recently, in fact, I can't even remember if I ever had done a monthly favourites post. So here you go! I've been making it my mission recently to not only try some new bits and pieces but to also start looking into my stash and using things that have been a little bit unloved for a while. You'd be surprised at just how much neglected makeup I have, especially things like bronzer, blush and eyeshadow that take a lot longer to use up compared to foundations and mascaras.

Send Me Nudes

Let's face it, for some of us, these are the only kinds of nudes we really want to be receiving. From pale peachy pinks, to dark dusty mauves, browns and everything in between, there's a shade for everyone, even if you wouldn't necessarily deem it a nude. For this post I've rounded up pretty much every remotely close to nude shade that I could find in all sorts of formulas and finishes, to really give you an idea of just what options you have and this isn't even a fraction of what's out there. For me, a nude lip is an absolute staple in my makeup collection. It's a look that can take you from subtle daytime to a sultry night look when paired with something like an intense smoky eye and long lashes. They're understated, chic and subtle or slightly more bold, whatever takes your fancy.

Christmas Face Of The Day

I don't know about you but I've had my Christmas Day makeup planned for at least two weeks now. What can I say... I'm organised (or just mad, I'll let you decide). This will be the first year that I'm going all out with my makeup, normally you'll find me bare faced in my pyjamas but since we're having lots of family and friends round and possibly off visiting others, I thought I'd make a special effort. I wanted something that was going to give me a flawless finish, last all day and still be massively festive. So a gold eye and red lips was the obvious choice for me!

Glow Getters

First things first, a warning. This is going to be a very image heavy as I wanted to include swatches of every product as well as photographs of each and let's face it, highlighters are too pretty to not take pictures of them. I've included all the highlighters I own in this post (excluding illuminating primers or anything along those lines) and I'm going to talk you through each, as well as telling you which are my favourites and why.

Anastasia Beverly Hills | So Hollywood | Review

Firstly I am blaming this purchase entirely on Emily from British Beauty Addict. After seeing these highlighters absolutely everywhere on beauty blogs and instagram I knew I had to get my hands on them, it was only after reading Emily's review that I finally plucked up the courage and decided to click buy. I bought mine in the shade So Hollywood as I felt this colour would work best with my skin tone but there are four shades in total, each aimed at those with different skin tones. You can get your hands on these on Cult Beauty if you're interested!

Anastasia Liquid Lips | First Impressions

I've never been so excited to hear a van pull up outside in my entire life. In all honesty I didn't think these would be arriving for at least a week but they arrived within 4 days direct from the Anastasia website, so that automatically gets a thumbs up from me. I did have to pay extra for freight and customs which is slightly annoying but I didn't mind this too much considering the exchange rate meant the lipsticks themselves worked out relatively cheap.