OOTD Red Lace Dress

Another OOTD today. I'm really loving doing these at the moment! Hopefully I'll persuade my other half to take some photos for me soon. (He's decided he wants to write a post on here, we will see if he does, he thinks living with a girl is so hard, apparently not being allowed his stuff in our bedroom isn't nice ;-)!! I need clothes space!)

Finding a red dress that's nice is always a bit of a challenge! First off it's colour, finding the perfect red shade that isn't tacky but classy, that goes for fabric too! When I factored in lace I didn't expect to find a suitable one. Near where my parents live is Clarks Village full of factory discount shops including Yumi! I picked this up from there a while back and it's now back on there website here. It retails for £28 and comes with a plain brown belt.

I used my usual Butterfly for Matthew Williamson Bag (Currently on offer here) It's the perfect size for just what I need. The leopard print heels are from Dorothy Perkins. I can find them online now. I like these as they are a softer shade of leopard print and a slightly lower heel makes them comfortable to wear all day.

The bracelet is from New Look It's £4.99 here. It's something I can reach for quickly. I picked this up in this spending ban update which I also got the necklace featured below!

The necklace is from River Island. I love this necklace, I used to own it about 4 years ago so I'm glad to have it back. You can pick one up here for £6. I love how it brightens up an outfit. The fake leather jacket is from primark! I love it bit I can't see it lasting long as I've already broken the lining.

I was all about the statement jewellery it would seem! The ring is from Boots range of jewellery. They have some great pieces in there and they are regularly on offer.

The belt is off another dress. I paired it with opaque tights so I could wear this too work. For me the length is perfect. It sits comfortable on me without being too short. The lace is a good quality and hangs really well. I also like that it has sleeves

.

It has a small keyhole at the back of the dress with a button at the top, I like all the little details this dress has and I've worn it loads. Even better it doesn't need ironing which is always a bonus as loads of my work dresses do!

I really like Yumi Dresses. They tend to be a bit different! I'm definitely coming around to red dresses too.

Love M

xxx

Review: Avon Glimmerstick Cosmic Eye Liner Twilight

After L had her make up done in Mac for her birthday I've been loving coloured eye liners. The Cosmic Glimmersticks from Avon. This range has a variety of colours and each of the colours hold multi colour glitter giving a gorgeous shimmer effect on the eye. Currently Half price at £3 here (I personally didn't like silver eclipse it lacked the glitter effect in my opinion)

The Glimmerstick range of eye liners from Avon don't require sharpening and have a twist action. The packaging has a secure lid (no worrying about this coming off in your handbag) and a colour coordinated bottom so it makes it easy to spot in your make up bag.

The pencil itself is soft but not too soft, meaning it's not going to drag along the eye but rather glide nicely.

This picture shows some of the different shades of glitter. It's really hard to pick up on camera. It looks flattering on the eye and not primary school disco as some glittery products can look.

I love this for easy make up days, a quick wash of neutral base and a line around the eyes and I'm done. It's such a pretty colour. Purple looks great on most eye colours as well.

I really love everything about this eye liner, the shade is perfect, not too bright and not too dull you can barely tell it's purple as I find happens with some eye liners. ( I was lucky enough to get the smashbox set for Christmas but I find the colours aren't bright enough to look great on the eyes) It lasts all day and can easily be blended out to make a great purple base for a night out. Applied all over and smudged with a bit of black in the outer V would look great.

What's your thoughts on coloured liners? I love them!

Love M

xxx

 

Lipstick Lucky Dip

Today is a bit of a random post! This is how I pick a lipstick when I'm in a rush.

Lipstick Lucky Dip started pretty soon after L and I got addictions to lipstick. We were both finding pretty quickly our handbags became lipstick storage, is that just us? It's not unusual for my handbag to have between 5-10 lipsticks!!

Whenever I pick a lipstick from my storage it gets thrown in the handbag where it seems to stay! The lazy person in me doesn't sort my bag out very often and lipsticks accumulate quickly! This does come in handy though.

Most mornings I end up being short on time ( I'm a fan of the snooze button and my bed!!) lipstick I've usually forgotten about until I'm on the bus!! Here is where me and L regularly do our lipstick lucky dip. Most days my lipstick is chosen by whichever shade I pick out of my handbag first!!

This is the simple way! No hard decisions! I always have a range of colours! In the picture is a small over the shoulder bag. In work I was grabbing a lipstick! To my surprise a small bag (which is filled by my purse basically) contained 8 different lip colours, not including the two lip balms!

Does your bag seem to accumulate lipsticks?

Love M

xxx

The Skin Regime and International Giveaway

Skincare is something L and I are both big on and both fully believe (and hope) prevention is better than cure. You're never to young to start taking care of your skin. An interesting fact I read the other day from a study by Escentual.com was that the average French lady starts their skincare at age 15 and the average Britain at 25. The survey found as the French aged they looked younger!!

I'm paranoid about getting bad skin and will do what I can now to start. Over the past year I've started to notice huge changes in my skin (I'm thinking this is partially due to stress from starting back at university!!) it's now sometimes drier than it used to be, something I'm really not used too, and I'm starting to see fine lines appear in my forehead!!

When Dana got in touch to see if we fancied reading her book The Skin Regime and trying a sample of a chemical peel it was something we were both very interested in! Dana takes things back to basics and uses a few simple products, and it's very obvious from the photos she has amazing skin. Fingers crossed I'll look like that. In this picture she is 49 and only wearing eye make up: her skin is clearly glowing!

You can read our peel review here

L and I wrote about how much we love the AHA/BHA exfoliating cleanser from Murad here and the components of this product are found in peels, but in higher concentrations. We love this exfoliating cleanser as it really works so a peel for us would be the next step.

Chemical peels are something I've been very interested in. Dana's book goes into detail about the correct types of peels you can do at home and how to ensure you take care of your skin.

Dana makes some excellent really interesting points throughout the book that really make you think about the money you are spending on skincare. The book is well written and made me laugh at some points. At the moment my skin (and body) in general is really playing up. I'm hoping once my exams are over it'll get better.  At the moment I'm going back to basics and starting to pick up the bits so I can start the peel programme properly once my exams are over. It's pretty simple over 6-8 weeks you use a peel between 7-14 days apart and simply moisturise in between. This process removes all the bad layers of skin. Anyone with scarring and dark spots this is also great for and on her website you can see some great before and after photos! 

I'm really excited to start this new regime. I'm willing to try anything to improve my skin and if the photos on the website are anything to go by I can't wait.

With the chemical peels it's important to do them early evening and not before a big event. As it's a chemical peel it's likely to leave the skin looking a bit read (it is removing a layer of skin after all) think of it like when you get your eyebrows waxed, they stay red for a while!!

I'll be doing a full post on the chemical peels once I've tried it properly. The book is really interesting and I'd recommend it to anyone to read. It's great to make you really think about skincare! You can see her website http://www.theskinregime.com/ for more information, photos and even features Tanning Mom!

M xxx

After reading this book and laughing a lot at Dana's straight forward attitude to skincare, I am reeeeeeeeally excited to try out the first peel and hopefully get skin as gorgeous and glowing as hers at my current age of 25, let alone 49!

Using acids is a great way to exfoliate your skin to a deeper level and I'm personally hoping the tiny lines that are appearing on my forehead (thanks uni stress!) and scars/red marks from the wonderful acne I've been dealing with the past year will hopefully fade away. 

Looking at the pictures on the website lots of people have had great results with improved tone to their skin and decreased lines and I cannot wait!

We'll be posting about our experience with the peels asap :)

L xxx

Dana has allowed us to host an international  giveaway where one of our lovely followers can also win her book and a sample of a low strength chemical peel! Woohoooo! 

We are so pleased we can share this with you!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As always with giveaways there are mandatory and optional choices, but it should be explanatory which are which.

The prize is a copy of The Skin Regime book and a sample peel which will be sent straight to you from Dana herself.

We can't wait to start our boot camps, what do you think of doing your own glycolic peel?? This is an international giveaway.

L and M xxx