Guest Post: Beauty Bird

We have our second guest post here for you today!

Today we have Beauty Bird from Ramblings of a Beauty Bird, hope you enjoy!

First of all thank you so much to the girls at CSI Beauty Blog for asking me to guest post! I’m a regular reader of their blog, so it’s an honour to write for them. This is also my first ever guest post, so pretty exciting! 

In the past few months I seem to have had so much to pay for; my car tax and MOT fall in the same month and me and my boyfriend finally decided to go ahead and get a puppy! So I've needed to cut down in other areas and when it comes to beauty products I've set myself a "go cheaper" challenge. Basically the essence of the challenge is to replace any of my used up products with a dupe, or very similar product, that is cheaper. I've not set myself really strict rules on this otherwise I know I'll never stick to them! Especially as there's a few products that I just love too much to replace with something different. I wish I could do a spending ban but I know it would never happen!!

Here's what I've come up with for my go cheaper challenge! I've primarily shopped around online, with the aim of picking up some discounts here. Where I have found a product online cheaper than RRP, I've made a note of the website afterwards.

Dry Shampoo

Original Product: Batiste Dry Shampoo - £2.99 for 200ml

Go Cheaper Product: Girlz Only Dry Shampoo - £1.50 for 150ml

Saving: Overall £1.49 / £0.50p per 50ml

Concealer

Original  Product: Clinique Airbrush Concealer - £17.00

Go Cheaper Product: Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection Concealer - £4.19

Saving: £12.81

Primer

Original Product: Benefit POREfessional - £23.50 (technically I only have the sample size, but I want the full size!)

Go Cheaper Product: bareMinerals Prime Time Foundation Primer - £16.50 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £7.00

Blusher

Original Product: Jane Iredale Pure Pressed Mineral Blusher in Parfait - £17.35 (www.mineralbeauty.co.uk)

Go Cheaper Product: Youngblood Cosmetics Pressed Mineral Blush in Petal - £13.50 (uk.strawberrynet.com)

Saving: £3.85

Foundation

Original Product: Cover FX Natural FX Water Based Liquid Foundation - £37.00

Go Cheaper Product: Vichy Dermablend Dermasmooth Corrective Foundation - £13.18 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £23.82

Exfoliator

Original Product: Dermalogica Skin Prep Scrub - £19.55 (www.jerseybeautycompany.co.uk)

Go Cheaper Product: Vichy Purete Thermale Detoxifying Exfoliating Cream - £9.35 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £10.20

Have you set yourself any beauty challenges recently? Do you try and "go cheaper" where you can?

Beauty Bird xx

We're really enjoying having different people post on our blog and were so excited when this one came through, think we'll be racing you to the shops for these products!

If you're interested in writing us a guest post, get in touch via twitter or email :)

First FOTD

Hey all

Today I thought I do a FOTD for you I took these photos a while back but haven't braved putting them on here yet. Hope you like this post, let me know. Personally I like seeing these posts as I like to see the products people use regularly and how they look on.

So here is the make up I used. This day was a cheap face make up day and a lazy one, no priming, eyeliner or contouring!

Rimmel Wake Me Up Foundation in True Ivory - £5.99

17 blush in shade in Nude - £3.49

Natural Collection pressed powder in Cool - £1.99

MAC MSF in Soft and Gentle - £21.50

Accesorise brushes (part of a set at Christmas)

MAC 168 Large Contour Brush - £26.00

Real Techniques Stippling Brush - £11.99

Eylure Shape and Shade Brow Kit - £10.99

Soap and Glory Thick and Fast Mascara - £10.00

17 Peep Show Mascara - £6.29

MUA Heaven and Earth Palette - £4.00

MAC Fanfare Lipstick - £14.00

No7 Lipliner Shade Nude - £6.75 or £1.75 with voucher

Nivea Lip Balm - £1.65

First I apply my eyeshadow. 9 times out of 10 I will do my eyes before my foundation so if I get any fall out from foundation I don't have to re do my foundation. I also apply lip balm so my lips are ready for lipstick.

First I apply the 4th eyeshadow on the top row all over the eyelid. Next I define the crease of my eye with the 5th shadow on the bottom and lastly with eye shadow I do a V on the outer corner of my eye with the 5th shadow on the top row.

Next comes mascara. I always wear two different mascaras. I use two different ones usually depends on what two I grab out of my bag first. I apply thick and fast first to define and separate my lashes. I then use peep show to add some volume to my lashes.

I apply some of the lightest eyeshadow to the inner corner of my eye to make it look wider.

Next is foundation and Blush.

I apply Rimmel Wake Me Up all over using my stippling brush to get a nice even finish.

Then whilst doing the suck the cheeks in face I put the blusher on the apples of my cheeks and add a sweep of MAC MSF over my cheek bones and a sweep down my nose and under my brows.

Finally filling in my brows and wiping of my lip balm I line my lips to help the lipstick last.

This is such a gorgeous natural lip shade and one that gets plenty of wear.

So after all that my face looks like this!!

And in natural sunlight you can see the effect of the mineralize skin finish. This is the best highlighter I have used and I use it almost every day!!

So that's my first FOTD for the blog, hope you like it.

Love M

xxx

Review: Lush Dream Cream

My boyfriend always goes into lush for my Birthday and Christmas present and will get me a few bits from there. When I opened this at Christmas I was so excited to see it as in lush they always rave about it but with my love for body butters I never wanted to part with the cash for it. It comes in at £10.95 for a pot this size.

It's taken me a while to use it as I keep reaching for my body butters but as I'm fast running out of them I decided it was time to give this a chance.

The list of ingredients sounded promising lots of moisturising ingredients such as cocoa butter and natural oils. It does contain parabens though which didn't thrill me to see.

As you can see it's a cream coloured lotion. It's quite thick and sunk into the skin easily. Though I felt like I needed a lot and my skin didn't feel as moisturised as when I use a body butter. I also felt like I was using it up quite quickly. 

For me this was just ok. And definitely not worth the money. Although the product is vegan friendly it still contained nasties such as parabens that L and I try to avoid in new products we are buying.

I'm a huge lush fan but unfortunately this just didn't wow me!

Love M

xxx

Recent Purchases

If you've been reading this blog for a while then you'll know that I've been jobless and therefore a little bit poor for quite a while now.

But obviously writing this and also being the spendaholic that I am I end up buying items that I mostly could live without.

Obviously I broke my spending ban again by going on a few little shopping trips and surfing eBay at home!

My first trip was into town and I ended up in Internacionale where I picked up a number of bracelets which were on offer, buy one get one half price.

For the past year I've mostly been obsessed wth make up, skin care and various other related products but my focus seems to have shifted recently to clothes, bags, shoes and jewellery!

I couldn't resist these bracelets, they look good together and with other items in my collection that can be added to any outfit to dress up/dress down

I loooooooove how shiny and sparkly they looked in the sun!
Definitely can't wait to be rocking these for the rest of the year, I love spikes and skulls and these were made for me.

They're currently all available in Internacionale and because of their deal (think its buy one get one half price) costs me about £8....bargain!

My next trip was to Matalan.

Between me and M we'd heard about their peplum tops somewhere along the grape vine and my mum promised she'd take me if I finished a part of my work. Incentives work ya know!

So I hastily typed my way to finishing the section of my diss and she took me there.
Funnily enough I text M whilst there to send her a picture of the peplums, where she replied saying she was also in Matalan but at home (which is a few hundred miles away!).

This was just too funny, not even spoken to each other all day yet happen to be in the same shop!

So here are Matalan's peplum tops.

I ended up buying the black and the white, though I wanted the maroon coloured one also in my store and the blue one M found in her store!

I was surprised as although they're less than half the price of the Topshop ones (coming in at £12 I think!) they're actually pretty good and fit really well.

I was also surprised that I liked the white one so much as I normally avoid lighter colours and expected it to be a bit see through but it wasn't at all.

In fact I forgot I took this photo in the changing room and here's what the white looked like on!

I think they're an absolute bargain and cannot wait to go out wearing them.

I also picked up some new leggings with zips on the hips (ooh!)

These are really thick and good quality, I only had to throw out my old ones as they went a bit grey after 2 years of hard core wearing so would definitely recommend these (£12 Papaya make in Matalan)

Also as if it was my lucky day these bags were right at the front of the store:

There were a few different colour combos but I picked up the navy and black one as I was instantly drawn to it whilst my mum struggled to choose between the camel and black, bottle green and black and the plum and black.

To be honest at the time these were down from £12 to £5 so I told her to pick up 2 and I can't even remember which one she actually picked up!

Definitely worth a trip down there if you're passing as there's some really good stuff there at the moment!

And last but not least my latest product buys (inevitably they exist too!)

I'm sure you're aware but both me and M have been struggling with our skin recently and having read much about Alpha H Liquid Gold we were both looking forward to trying it, but obviously skint students don't have much of a fund to use!

Eventually though the angry scars left on my face got to me and I found an ebay seller who had it for £25 with free postage so I instantly snapped it up.

After one use I've seen a difference and hopefully it will continue to improve (will be doing a full post on it!)

For those who don't know what it is, basically you use it as you would a toner after cleansing.

Pour some onto a cotton pad and swipe it over your face avoiding eyes and lips.

Then to let it work most effectively do NOT apply moisturiser, just eye cream if you want.

The main active ingredient in this is glycolic acid which helps to ward off any blemishes, heal scars and fight ageing, I was instantly won over by these multi tasking properties!

A full review will be up in a few weeks with pictures of the offending marks for you to decide if it was worth it or not.

Because of the acid effects, using SPF is a complete must so I purchased Avene high protection SPF for intolerant skin.

I've been meaning to get into using SPF and some of my moisturisers have it and others don't, so eventually I just bought this to be done with it and am hoping it doesn't cause me to break out having an extra layer on my face all day.

For £3 I couldn't help but want to see what the fuss was all about with the thermal spring water.

Me and M have had many conversations about it and whether it actually works and in a moment of weakness I snapped up a mini canister to try out whilst working at home on my dissertation. 

I'm looking forward to wearing and using these products asap!!

What have you been buying recently? Have you picked up any bargains?

L xxx