Zooo!

Way back in the summer it was my friend Xenia's birthday and we went to one of London Zoo's special late nights to celebrate. Here is my zoo-face:

Face: Illamasqua Skin Base in SB 02, NYX cream blush in orange

Eyes: 2 shades (sandy coloured and pale yellow) from the Sleek matte V2 palette (I lost the sheet that says the names), Sugarpill Buttercupcake, Illamasqua Cane medium pencil, black mascara, Illamasqua precision ink liquid eyeliner in Abyss. There's something on my eyebrows but I can't remember what. Possibly a brown from the same Sleek palette.

Lips: I'm not certain but I think it was Amped by Sleek.

And below the cut are some photos of sweet animals and me making funny faces :) 

Rabbits!

 A while back now I went to Brighton and wore this very rabbity outfit. I looove the playsuit so much! I have no photos of my face as I was running late and ended up doing my makeup on the train.

 

 

  

Cardigan: Topshop

Playsuit and belt: Primark

Tights: Topshop (they've got little metal studs allover)

Shoes: Clarks

My necklace is a rabbit from Callooh and Callay

if you like it we have 25% off everything until the end of tonight with the code 'thankyou' :) 

Unfortunately this day ended up being much much sunnier than I anticipated and I got horribly sunburned. Hey kids don't be a fool like your Aunty Lillian, wear sunscreen!

Dancing times with Zoe!

 Now my computer is up and running I have some very old looks to post, for most of these I can't remember most of what I was wearing because it was just too long ago but I have guessed things which should at least give a similar look.

This post is from sometime in early summer when I went out with one of my best friends, Zoe. I don't think I've mentioned Zoe before here but she is absolutely awesome and beautiful and knows everything there is to know about Lush products.

Anyway here's my face:

  

pulling faces:

 

I assume I'm wearing my usual foundation which is Illamasqua Skin Base in o2. My blush looks orangey and I would guess it's one of the colours from Sleeks Pumpkin Blush by 3 palette. The blue eyeshadow is matte so it could be from one of the Sleek matte eye palettes and I'm wearing a white eyeliner pencil, Illamasqua Precision Ink liquid eyeliner in Wisdom and some black mascara. My lipstick is a homemade one which is bright red with glitter that you can only really see in the closeup.

Here are me and Zoe being silly and slightly tipsy. There is no good lighting in my house!

 

I wanna go dancing now!

Colour B4 Extra Strength

Hello! Pinky the computer is up and running again and I didn't lose any of my documents. Thank you Dell Datasafe restore or whatever you're called!

So today I have a review for Colour B4 Extra Strength hair dye remover.

You've probably seen reviews for this or similar products on other blogs, these products really became well known within the last year. It's a great idea, if you dye your hair and don't like the result, or get bored of it, or whatever other reason, you apply this stuff and it takes you back to your original colour...In theory. 

 I'm not going to go into all of the science behind it as I am not smart enough and can't be bothered to read into it properly but it seems the basic idea is that this somehow shrinks the hair dye molecules which releases them from your hair follicles, then when you rinse it away it also rinses off the molecules taking your hair back to it's previous colour. Or something...

Anyway does it work?

Well it had a challenge with my hair. It hasn't been my natural colour (except for the roots) for over 11 years. The closest the poor hair came to a break was when I was about 17 and shaved my head. Since then it's been (that I can remember) bright red, blonde, light pink, ginger, dark red and black so I was not expecting the Colour B4 to perform miracles and get me back to blonde, I just wanted to get rid of enough black to enable me to get back to ginger.

So here I am before applying:

 

You can see my hair is a sort of washed out black with lighter brown tips 

 You apply it like any regular hair dye, it comes in a bottle with a spout that you mix the various components in then just apply it to your hair as usual (I am useless on my own so always get someone else to put it on me). Then you just leave it awhile (60 minutes for the extra strength). For it to work you need a warm environment so I wrapped my head in clingfilm, which has the added bonus of stopping clumsy people like me getting it everywhere.

 

I'm beautiful I know.

After you've given it time to do it's thing it's time to wash it off. Unfortunately this is where it differs from hair dye as unfortunately you can't just rinse until the water runs clear, no, instead you need to rinse for at the very least 5 minutes, with the longer the better basically. When that is done you apply a 'buffer' which I think is like a sort of conditioner to bring your hair back to a normal condition, live it for a minute then rinse it off for at least another 5 minutes. Then you apply the buffer again and rinse it off just like a normal shampoo. Annnnd you're finally done! Phew!

And here are the results:

 

  

So you can see it worked quite well! It got rid of all the black leaving me with a slightly darker version of the ginger that was there previously. 

However it has one big major con, the smell. This stuff smells absolutely evil. People have said it smells like rotten eggs, I've never smelt one, but to me it smells of stink bombs which I've heard are based on rotten eggs. It's a horrible sulfurous smell and it's strong. To make things worse for the next month or so after using this every time I washed my hair the smell would come back. Something to do with wetting the hair reignites the power of the stench!

Also the rinsing thing was a major hassle for me as we don't have a proper shower, just a shower -head. Which means I couldn't just stand and let the shower rinse it away, instead I had to crouch uncomfortably in my bath holding the shower-head over me for about 20 minutes in total. This left me with a very stiff neck. But if you have a proper shower I'm sure it's a lot easier.

But even with the irritance of the rinsing and the evil smell I would still recommend this. It does work!

There are various other brands of hair dye remover such as Color Oops and a superdrug own brand one (which is meant to be cheaper but I picked up the Colour B4 when it was on a special) and I assume they're the same thing and work the same. It cost me about £9 which is quite expensive but as it's not something you'll need to use regularly it's not that bad.

Has anyone else tried this, or one of the other brands? Did it work for you? How did you cope with having hair of eternal stench?

So unfortunately my computer appears to be poorly. I got a virus and though I seem to have got rid of it my computer is slow and just doesn't do things I want it to. I've got my documents off and hopefully can fix it by rebooting but unfortunately Dell don't supply a Windows installation CD with their computers. Gragh! Anyway I apologise that at the moment my blog is mainly excuses about why I haven't been blogging!

holiday nature

Helloooo! Sorry I've been away, I was on holiday (California!) until last week and since then I've either still jet lagged somehow or I'm poorly. Someone needs to kick my arse into shape!

Here is my last set of photos from my short holiday in somerset, showing some scenes from a beautiful work I took. And first my final holiday face:

 

Wearing:

Face: some nameless pressed powder, Illamasqua Sophie blusher

Eyes: Mac eyebrow pencil in Fling on brows, various colours from MUA Heaven and Earth palette, Illamasqua Abyss and Alchemy liquid ink eyeliners.

Lips: Illamasqua Opulent lip gloss

  

Tonnes of photos of waterfalls and greenery below the cut.

Holiday house and Weston-Super-Mare

 Hey everyone, it's time for part two of my Somerset holiday adventure! But first a face:

 

Wearing:

Face: Avon Magix face perfector, Sleek blush in Squash (from Pumpkin Blush by 3)

Eyes: Illamasqua Illuminator in Fondle, Illamasqua Precision Ink in Abyss, black mascara, Mac Fling on my eyebrows

Lips: Mac Pink Nouveau

Beneath the cut are some photos from Weston-Super-Mare and from our amazing holiday house.

Wookey Hole Witch

 Here's a look I made on my holiday, not the most exciting but I thought it was quite pretty and my Mum said I looked a bit like Kate Bush in the photos so I thought I'd share :)

 

Wearing:

Face: Illamasqua Skin Base foundation in 02, some unnamed No 7 pressed powder, Darling Girl Sweet Cheeks cream blush in Just Bitten

Eyes: I made the eyeshadows, Illamasqua Precision Ink eyeliner in Abyss, Collection 2000 glitter eyeliner in Rock Chick

Lips: Mac Kanga-Rouge, Illamasqua Opulent

I thought I'd share some photos from my family holiday to Somerset, first up is our trip to Wookey Hole, home of the famous caves and witch. There's tonnes of pics so I've put them under the cut :)

Lipglossiping Paris competition entries

The beautiful Charlotte from Lipglossiping is having a competition (sponsored by Vaseline) where the prize is a holiday to Paris! It ends at midnight tonight and I only discovered it yesterday so spent the afternoon hastily making entries because of course I'd really like to go to Paris! Here are my entries

1. Gargoyle

This was based on the gorgeous gargoyles that sit atop Notre Dame. Notre Dame is an absolutely gorgeous building but the gargoyles are my favourite bit because I just love them and their plaintive faces. This is a relief sculpture made from fake nails and then painted with nail polish in various shades of grey (and black and white) I used China Glaze, Barry M and Models Own polishes and the nails are off a generic unbranded nail wheel:

 

And here's a couple of work in progress shots because it looked really cool before I painted it too

 

2. Another gargoyle!
Yeah I really like the Notre Dame gargoyles. This time I carved his little face from an old lipstick. It was basically impossible to get a photo showing all the detail but I hope you can see some of it at least!

 

 

3. Mona Lisa Face

So while the painting is of course not Parisian it is probably the most famous painting displayed in the Louvre which is in so to me the painting always reminds me of Paris. This was made by rubbing various eyeshadows (mostly Barry M Dazzle Dusts) onto paper with cotton wool balls and buds. Then I added some detail using Illamasqua medium pencils in Sophie (black) and Vow (creamish). I just did the face as it's the most iconic part (and if I'd done the whole thing it would have taken forever!)

4. Pontilist Eiffel

And finally a more simple entry, an Eiffel tower. I used the French pontilism technique (tonnes of tiny dots) with colours inspired by fauvism and just covered a piece of paper, then I cut out the shape of the tower and stuck it on some plain white paper. The dots are all nail polish (various brands and colours)

I hope you like them all! Even if I don't win it was really fun to play around and got the old artistic juices flowing :)

Simply Be coat

Recently the lovely people at Simply Be got in touch with me and offered to send me a piece of clothing of my choice. I'd heard of Simply Be and bought some underwear from them but had always assumed their actual clothing ranges would be a bit middle-of-the-road and boring. However when I looked I found lots of items I really liked! I couldn't actually decide what I liked best so gave them a few options and they surprised me with this beautiful coat!

  

 

 As you can see it's a brilliant bright pink with black accents but it's also available in navy. It does up with toggles and has a hood with pompoms on strings to tighten it. It's really adorable!

Here it is with the hood up:

 

  

It's a short length and not very thick so probably wouldn't do for the chilliest winter days but it's a perfect Autumn coat. It's made of polyester but it's really soft and feels like woolen felt. I got it in a size 18 (I'm generally a 16/18 up top) and it fits well but is slightly roomy, which personally I really like in outerwear so I can wear cardis/jumpers underneath and it's really cold. 

Anyway I really like the coat, it's soft and warm and I absolutely love the colour. I did have one slight little problem though, when it arrived the pockets were stitched up and it says not to remove the stitching until you're certain you don't want to return it. Well I didn't so I opened the stitching but then found that there was a hole in the lining of one of the pockets. Well it's no problem for me, I can easily fix it, but I would hope it would still be returnable for someone who can't sew.

Well I'm really impressed with the range of different clothes Simply Be have available, and that most of their clothes are available in sizes 12-32 which is great! They also sell plus size lingerie and swimwear and then footwear, accessories and lots of other bits and pieces! Thanks Simply Be, I can't wait to pair my new coat with lots of different outfits.