NYX Kush Eyeshadow and Tropical Green Slide on Eye Pencil

Hey All

A few weeks ago L and I headed to an event at the NYX counter in Boots. I'd been in a few times prior to the event as I'm addicted to the lip lingeries (which I still need to share on the blog, if you're following my 100daysofmakeup on instagram you'll see they're firm favourites!). I picked up a few new bits so will be sharing those. I love green on the eyes and have featured a few FOTDs on here with greens so when I saw Kush eyeshadow I fell in love. I decided I probably didn't need it as I was buying the tropical green liner so was very happy when I was able to pick it for my goody bag.

The extreme shine liner in tropical green fell into my shopping bag without a question of a doubt on weather I need it. These liners are amazing. They glide so easily onto the eyes, blend out and last. Texture wise they remind me of the Urban Decay liners which are the bees knees!

Tropical green is an amazing emerald green shade and I've been loving sweeping it under the lower lashes for a pop of colour. As it's a deeper green it's easy to wear everyday! At £5 they're definitely worth picking up!

I'm a fan of colour on the eyelids and sway towards green and purple shadows easily. Kush caught my gaze straight away, along with enchanted which I will be going back for. They are a bargain £3.50 and even cheaper in pan form. As you can see from the swatch below they are super pigmented too and blend amazingly.

As you can see from the swatches of the both they are pigmented. They also last really well. I'll definitely be grabbing more of the eyeliners and eyeshadows! Even better than the price is that NYX are a cruelty free brand so one I can easily pick up. 

Here are both products on together! I really love the combination of the two!

I'm going to grab a foundation next, any recommendations?

Love M

xxx

Miss Patisserie: Lemon Tea Bath Ball

Good morning!

Last week I was a total rebel and had my completely irregular 'Sunday night bath' on a Monday. Ooh err.

I've saved this bath ball from Miss Patisserie for weeks because it looked so pretty in my bathroom, but it was time to give it a whirl and I was glad I did!

The Lemon Tea bath ball combines green tea and citrus lemongrass scents for a foamy bath.

I've said many times that citrus is my favourite scent and is the main reason I picked this bath ball up, but the colour matches my bathroom too and the flower is just a pretty addition!

As usual I filled the bath and then spun the bath ball into the water to make sure it fizzed and whirled whilst it dissolved.

The flower fell off straight away which was maybe a bit disappointing, I was hoping it would spin nicely whilst upright with the flower still in tact...but maybe that's just taking blogger problems a bit far!

However the bath ball didn't disappoint at all, it fizzed for ages and the bath was a lovely aqua colour quite quickly. The bath ball took quite a while to totally dissolve so it was still going long after I'd sunk into the water and got very comfy!

Look how pretty the water is! It's so foamy and I love the aqua colour. The scent was amazing and filled the bathroom with the subtle citrus and tea fragrance.

I still can't stay in baths longer than half an hour but am definitely getting into the whole 'relaxing in a bath with a candle and some music/Netflix on my phone' routine. I still can't do it every week either but at least once a month is good enough for me!

The Lemon Tea Bath Ball costs £3.49, and smells really really lovely!

I'm definitely going to get it again as my bathroom looks much duller without it. I can't wait for another spree in Miss Patisserie as I've got my eye on the Safari and Ziggy bath balls too!

Maybe there will also be some Christmas themed ones coming out soon....I'd really love that if you're reading this Charlotte!!!! :)


What are your favourite products from Miss Patisserie?? I have many especially the more I try, but I'm currently loving the new Coconut Face Soap!

L xxx

Weekend Trip: Amsterdam

Good morning!

Today's post is jam packed with photos! I've just got back from a weekend trip to Amsterdam and had such a lovely time. We were only there for two days but managed to see and do so much.

Here's a few snaps from wandering around:

The canals are just beautiful, so many of them but each have their own highlights. Some have bikes chained all over, some have flower baskets, others have houses straight on the water and some have roads in between.

The buildings are beautiful, I couldn't stop staring at them especially those with huge windows and absolutely massive entrance halls. Trust me, the home decor here is outstanding!

With all the walking around (20k steps a day!) we obviously ate and drank well too!

We went to Bagels and Beans for one lunch and I have a chicken chutney filling on a sesame bagel which was amazing, with an Assam loose leaf tea. I'd definitely recommend visiting here as the food choices were great and very tasty! 

We also went to an Italian restaurant where I had a Gorgonzola pizza which was amazing, I've never had gorgonzola on a pizza before but it was very good - 100% recommended!

Our other lunch on the second day was a random cafe we stopped at whilst walking around. Here I ordered a goat's cheese and walnut sandwich, this was also amazing. I've never had a sandwich with this filling before but boy oh boy was it good! I'm sad I didn't note down where this was because it was lovely but there are so many places to stop for lunch you are spoilt for choice.

We moved on to the infamous tulip market, and this did not disappoint. It's an instagrammers heaven!

There are rows and rows of so many different types of flowers, but particularly tulips which seem to be the favourite!

The selection bags are clearly this biggest and best sellers and you can see why. With this much variety I'm not surprised, there are hundreds of them dotted around with every colour imaginable.

My favourite part in particular was the ceiling of the shops, the photos of this are below so I don't need to explain why:





I also loved the range of cacti that were available - they were so interesting looking and crazy colours. so weird!

On our final morning we went to the Van Gogh museum, this was really interesting too but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
There were many painting from Van Gogh but also many many other artists that he was friends with, so this was a little misleading. I also disappointed that there wasn't any photography allowed in the museum....I mean I fully understand that flash photography can affect the paintings and I wouldn't use the flash in this situation but to not be allowed to take any photos at all just felt restrictive and essentially forced you to buy postcards etc from their shop.

I obviously rebelled and took some on my phone when no one was looking!

The Sunflowers painting is infamous and it was good to see it in person as well as the Irises, but this museum was a little underwhelming for me.

After this we wandered around Vondel Park before being picked up for the airport. It was a lovely walk and we spent a lot of the time dodging bikes, it's a lot like Roath Park if you're from Cardiff as there are lakes dotted through it also and its a similar size.

We also had a walk through the red light district which was interesting. We went quite early in the night (9pm ish) so there weren't many actual 'customers' around, just tourists walking through and a few girls available at the windows to view.

It wasn't as seedy as I thought it would be but was interesting none the less, the girls seemed to be happy to be in the windows so I guess that's all that matters!

All in all it was a great weekend, definitely a whirlwind trip but we packed in as much as we could, mostly by walking in a certain direction each time and seeing as much as possible on the way.

I'd definitely go back to see more as there were still a variety of things we missed, but this was a great trip for seeing the essentials associated with Amsterdam.

Have you been to Amsterdam? What did you see and do?

What did you think of the Van Gogh museum and Vondel Park?


If you have any questions about Amsterdam feel free to tweet me!


L xxx

Zoeva Complete Eye Brush Set Review

Hey All

A few months ago it was my birthday and one of the things I asked for was the Zoeva Complete Eye Brush set. I'd wanted it for ages but parting with £60 at one time was something I couldn't face doing. I thought I'd review them as since I've got them I absolutely love them and reach for them over all my other eye brushes! One thing to note is although Zoeva don't test their products on animals this isn't a vegan suitable set as the brushes are a mixture of natural and synthetic bristles. They do do a range of vegan brushes though so in future I would only get these ones.

The set itself contains 12 brushes (I'm missing one in my photographs as I'd lost it at the time!) and comes in a good quality make up bag. So even though they are pricey for the set it only works out at £5 a brush. For the brushes singularly they vary from between £8-£9 ish! I'll definitely be purchasing more Zoeva brushes!

For me there are two amazing brushes I reach for daily. They're the brow line brush (I never knew I needed this until I had it. It's amazing for concealer to makes your brows look really sharp!) and the Luxe defined crease. This brush wasn't one I expected to love as it's not densly packed with bristles but it just makes blending a dream!

The brush not pictured is the fine liner brush. I love this, it makes winged liner with eyeshadow so easy as it's bent and very precise. I've been using it with shadows so I can experiment with different coloured winged liner. 

For me I use most of the brushes daily. They may eyemake up looks so easy! The pencil is perfect for getting that inner corner liner, the smudger makes it easy to put eyeshadow under the lower lashes. All of the crease brushes make blending a dream and allow me to really focus colour on certain areas! I'm pretty sure they've made my make up application better. I haven't really used three brushes from the set yet, these are the wing liner brush (I don't currently have gel liner so think I'd use it if I had one) the detail shader and the concealer brush!

I've listed below what categories the brushes fall into. Zoeva do sell crease and blend brushes that are synthetic! I would grab these next time. 

Synthetic Brushes in the Set (vegan)

• Smudger Brush
• Fine Liner Brush
• Wing Linger Brush
• Browline Brush (my absolute favourite!!)
• Concealer and Buffer Brush

Natural haired brushes

• Luxe Defined Crease Brush
• Soft Definer Brush
• Pencil Brush
• Petit Crease Brush
• Smokey Shader Brush
• Detail Shader Brush
• Crease Brush

After trying these I feel like I need the face set now too! Maybe one for the Christmas list!! Have you tried the Zoeva brushes? They're definitely worth the hype for me.

My mum got me these from Beauty bay and one brush was a little damaged but they were so quick to replace it for me I just thought I'd mention as I think great customer service deserves recognition!

Love M

xxx

Organic Beauty Week

Hello everyone!

If you didn't know, September is Organic Month. This basically means I have given myself every justification for buying the lovely expensive organic produce from my local Tesco....but also has been refreshing my memory of all of the wonderful organic beauty products that I have tried previously and that are still on offer.

In particular there is an Organic Beauty Week which is next week, the 19th to the 25th of September.

I think it is great to bring organic produce to more people's attention, especially beauty products. They are a lot more available than they ever used to be before, and I have tried a few in the past that were really good.

So in light of this I thought I would talk about two of my favourite organic beauty products that I have tried, and hopefully you can give me some recommendations too!

My first favourite product is the Antipodes Divine Face Oil*. 

Antipodes is a brand I came across a few years, remember that exclusive Selfridge's beauty box that was released when they opened up their Beauty Department? (there's a post here if you need a reminder but the giveaway is obviously over now!)

This was my first organic product and also the first oil I put on my face, and in true blogger style I have not forgotten it. I have in fact repurchased it a number of times but due to buying a house last year my budget has been restricted....Antipodes were kind enough to send me another recently to refresh my memory. 

It is still absolutely my favourite facial oil that I have ever tried. I remember this was when the realisation of 'I can put oil onto my oily skin and it won't break me out?!' days. This was a revolutionary product for me and I'm so happy to have it back in my life, so is my skin as it has definitely shown in the last few days of usage.

I'd recommend it for any skin type as wen my skin was oily it never broke out when I used this, plus now that my skin is drier it works like a charm at hydrating it so I think it works for all skin types.

Why should you try it?

The Divine Oil contains premium avocado oil as the main ingredient along with rosehip oil, jojoba oil, jasmine oil plus pure plant fragrances such as Sandalwood and Ylang Ylang.

The organic avocado oil however is the star of the show, it is high in essential fatty acids (EFAs) including Omega 3 and 9 to help with regeneration, restructuring, moisturising and film forming. It also has lutein which helps to protect against the sun with its natural UVA sun-screening properties and antioxidants to help against the damage that free radicals can cause to the skin resulting in ageing.

So the promise is there...and the science backs it up. After some studies Antipodes have found the it stimulates collagen in human skin cells by up to 51%.,,,, Can we bathe in it?!

The Divine Face Oil costs £19.99 for 30ml and can be purchased directly from the Antipodes website but also Look Fantastic, Beauty Expert, Naturisimo and Feel Unique.

My second favourite organic product that I've tried is from Neal's Yard Remedies.

We attended an event from them two years ago now when they released their infamous Wild Rose Beauty Balm* in the beautiful new packaging to celebrate 10 years of the product.

Isn't it beautiful???

This is a wonder product, and my original post on this product (click here) lists the ideas other users have come up with but my favourite use is as a deep cleansing mask, hydrating mask, lip balm and general salve for any burns, sun burn etc that my skin has. 

It comes with a muslin cloth that I use to remove the product and this also helps with exfoliation. 

This balm also contains rosehip oil along with starflower, patchouli and geranium so it smells wonderful as well as providing a whole host of benefits for hydration, smoothing and soothing.

This one even has the Soil Association rating of 99% organic which is obviously really hard to achieve and hard to prove. It's impressive that this rating can be achieved but proves it is possible, i think more brands should aim to achieve these badges of honour!

The Wild rose Beauty  Balm can be purchased for £38 for 50g, and can be purchased from the many individual stores and their website, as well as John Lewis and Waitrose.

As the Soil Association is a UK registered charity this is probably why Antipodes don't have the same rating (they come from New Zealand). It would be great if they were more easily compared in terms of organic ratings but to be perfectly honest this isn't something that would stop me from buying a product from either reputable brand.

Have you tried either of my favourites? Do you think Organic Beauty Week is a good idea?

What's your favourite organic beauty product or brand?

L xxx

*Both products in this post were given to me for review by the respective brands directly, however this has not affected my opinion of either product. This post is not sponsored by the Soil Association either, I just think it's a great idea :)

Antipodes Saviour Skin Balm

Hey All

Lack of posts from me the last week as I'm totally swamped in work atm and doing extra hours to fit everything in. Organic Beauty Week is coming up soon so a few weeks ago Antipodes got in touch to see if we fancied trying any bits from the range! L and I are massive fans so of course we said Yes. L will be sharing her's soon.

I'm off on holiday next month so the Saviour skin balm stood out to me straight away. This is an amazing multi use product that I couldn't wait to try it out. I'm naturally really pale and will inevitably burn on holiday so thought this would be great to put on my sun burn. It's also great for the skin post flight and seen as I'll be on planes for over 14 hours I'm going to need a treat for my skin.

The Saviour skin balm is also antibacterial, antifungal and antimicrobial and is great for cuts, bruises and rashes as well as many more. I've been putting this on spots to help calm them down and it's been amazing at softening the skin on my feel.

The balm has an amazing texture and is super soft. It melts on the touch and soaks into the skin easily. I've been recently putting it on stretch marks too and can't wait to see the difference it makes. Due to the echinacea and grape seeds it really helps cell and skin repair. I can't wait to see the improvement this makes to my skin!

I really love all purpose balms that are a one pot does all. This is perfect for holidays as I don't have to take as much with me. It's perfect for chapped lips and dry skin so will definitely be a saviour on holiday!

Are you testing out any new products for Organic Beauty week? I think I need to order myself the SPF from antipodes ready for holiday!

Love M

xxx

Street Food Circus

Hey there!

This weekend has been about catching up with things, I've caught up on the boring house things like cleaning and washing and also blog photos and painting my nails.

I caught up with some friends on Friday night at the Street Food Circus, luckily I went to the gym straight from work so not only was I super hungry but felt like I was justified in my huge binge of food....right?

We shared a few different meals to maximise our feast, we shared a burger from Got Beef (already a huge fan of theirs and this was a great burger!) and then we went straight to Meat and Greek. I haven't ever had any food from them before but I've heard amazing things and it did not disappoint. We shared the chicken souvlaki with halloumi and it was bloody good!

Next up we shared the cod bites from Big Fish Little Fish, the fish was amazing and the chips were covered in salt and rosemary....yum! The peas and tartare sauce were also great but I did think that this was overall a bit too salty for my liking - still great though!





I finished off my feast the only way i know how. Science Cream!

It has long been a favourite of mine, and the flavours were still the same as those from when I went the week before. With the gym as a justification I ordered the big guns - the Freakshake containing peanut butter ice cream, 'jelly' sauce, marshmallow and caramel brownie.

I made the mistake in assuming it was a milkshake with some marshmallows, berry sauce and bits of brownie sprinkled on top.....it wasn't. It was a beasty milkshake with a huge amount of berry sauce at the bottom, a brownie the size of a normal dessert and where you would normally have whipped cream on a frappe, homemade veggie marshmallow!



I was really impressed with the marshmallow, I've never had anything like it and tucked into it without hesitation. The shake itself was also great and I love PB so it was a favourite, but the berry sauce and the brownie was too much overkill for me. The berry overpowered the PB flavour and the brownie was quite stodgy. In my opinion, peanut butter goes with berries, salted caramel, brownie and marshmallow....but not all at the same time!



This was all from this weeks offering, but I have also been a few weeks ago and had the ribs from Hangfire Smokehouse - utterly wonderful but definitely worth sharing unless you don't fancy eating much else! The two ribs I had were both a similar size, and that was similar to the size of my forearm. My arms aren't huge, but imagine them as ribs and that's the amount of meat I had to get through!

After this I managed to share half a pizza covered with chorizo and honey - yes that's right HONEY! It was really good and now I might just put a swirl of honey on any meat pizza I eat in future, it was yum!

The Street Food Circus is definitely worth visiting though it does make me sad that it wasn't on for longer. There are only two more weekends left for eating your body weight in delicious food so I'd recommend going asap!


L xxx