Pre-emptive Spring time

So pretty much everyone in the UK is currently getting pissed off at our dismal weather, even me and I usually love winter! But there's too much of a good thing and now I'm bored of being cold and wet and walking through mud and there being no spring flowers! 

Anyway I tried to cheer myself up by dressing in my most Spring-ish outfit and then Claire and I went to Westfields and I ate too much food.

 

  

Milkshake in Butlers Chocolate Cafe (my home from home)

  

I got photobombed eating my lunch!

Here's a close up of my necklace which is amazing: 

 

Wearing:

Dress: Bernie Dexter

Tights: Asos

Shoes: Clarks

Necklace: Les Nereides

Makeup:

Face: Illamasqua Skin Base foundation in 01, Sleek blush by 3 Pumpkin in Squash

Eyes: MUA Heaven and Earth Palette, Sugarpill eyeshadow in Mochi, Illamasqua Precision Ink in Abyss, Illamasqua Medium pencil in Vow, Black mascara

Lips: OCC Lip Tar in Narcissus

I absolutely love my dress, the print is amazing, it fitted beautifully and I loved that it showed up my super sloping shoulders. The company, Bernie Dexter has a bunch of absolutely beautiful clothes. Unfortunately they've just gone and discontinued all plus sizes. No idea why, they just decided not to make them anymore. So obviously I won't be giving them any more of my fat money! >:(

Ich Liebe Dich

For Valentines Day I was given a necklace I've wanted for ages, this gigantic Tatty Devine Gingerbread heart. I'm a very lucky girl and wearing it felt like a Bavarian Flava Flav.

Wearing:

Necklace: Tatty Devine

Dress: Topshop

Tights: Can't remember, been in my room for ages

Boots: Old Doctor Martens (They're falling apart. I need a new pair!)

Claire said I looked kind of punky which was not what I planned but oh well. Takes me back to my teenage years.

My huge necklace isn't available anymore but there  is this smaller version here :)

Face: Homemade Conjurers Cosmetics powder foundation, No 7 Ballerina Beauty blush

Eyes: No7 stay precise eyeliner, some colours from the MUA Heaven and Earth palette, black mascara

Lips: Mac Strong Woman lipstick

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!

Paradox

 It's my 600th post! WOOO!

To celebrate behold this amazing giant bourbon biscuit from Costa:

You have no idea how delicious it was.

Right now onto the proper post!

Back in the early summer my jewellery company Callooh and Callay launched a new collection based around impossible/paradox images. Because we're a tiny company we can't afford fancy stuff like models so I had to pretend to be one myself. We wanted a sort of New Wave look and I did my best!

 

 

Do you think I succeeded?

I used  Illamasqua Skin Base in 02 in several layers to give me heavy coverage. I wanted my skin to look as flawless as possible to give a mask-like appearance. I highlighted the bridge of my nose, cheekbones and cupids bow with Tiara Chromalust by Sugarpill. To make the angular cheeks I just cut a triangle out of paper and used it as a stencil with Sugarpill Love + eyeshadow. Finally for the lips I mixed Sugarpill Chromalust in Goldilux (the best gold eyeshadow EVER!) with ELF Studio Makeup lock and Seal. I knew I was going to be wearing big 80s style sunglasses so I didn't bother with any eye makeup. When I took the glasses off the look was... strange:

 

Here's a close up of the lips. The colour was amazing but it felt very dry.

So that was my 600th post. It may have been underwhelming but at least I only just realised so there wasn't a big build up to it!

Plug Plug Plug

Ok this is my last shameless self promotional post for a little while.

On monday our Halloween collection is coming out

 

Ghosts and bats and witches and pumpkins oh my!

And we have a blog,  a twitter and a facebook page please add us if you'd like to. No pressure mind :P

Thank you so much to all the people who have ordered so far, it's really been amazing!  Our UK orders have started arriving and people seem to like their goodies so far, which is a big relief!

Ok now there will be makeup on this blog again, I promise! :P

We're open!

Wooooo!!! *throws confetti*

 www.calloohandcallay.com

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my last few posts, your support means so much! I hope you like what we've got on sale :) If you happen to see any bugs with the site please tell me.

Edit: the prices are in dollars because of the way Storenvy (which is hosting our store) is set up. We ship from the UK to anywhere in the world :)

Sneaky Peek

Sooo yes, now it's been revealed that our little business is selling jewellery I thought I'd show you just a few pieces before our launch tomorrow :)

Everything has been designed by either me or Claire or both of us together. It's taken a lot of time and effort to get to this stage, months of sampling pieces, making small changes and sampling again, finding good places for findings, building the website etc etc and it is so SO exciting to finally be ready to launch!

Our jewellery is all made of acrylic plastic with a whimsical, fun and quirky feel.

So here are a few pieces! 

We sell laser cut and engraved acrylic. Like this:

   

Or this:

 

And also printed acrylic.

Like this:

 

Or this:

 

I hope you'll all take a little look at our shop, if for no other reason than to see my hilarious 'modelling' :P Sadly we can't afford to hire proper models so it's just Claire and I for now. It was fun anyway!

We'll be launching tomorrow at 12 noon GMT keep an eye on my blog for the address :)

Callooh and Callay!

So I know I've been quite a bad blogger recently and I apologise but I had good reasons!

Finally, finally, the project Claire and I have been working on since the beginning of the year is ready to be shared with the public!

So may I present to you Callooh and Callay - purveyors of fine acrylic jewellery

 

All the fun of the fair for you to wear!

We're just adding the final touches to the website and our grand opening will be on monday. 

I'll be updating today or tomorrow with some sneak peeks so stay tuned :)

Thank you all for your support.

Cookie Monster!

Last week I went to a friends Birthday meal. It was at a really fancy restaurant where sadly there wasn't really anything I could eat (being both vegetarian and very very picky). Also while I knew the majority of people there were a couple of people I'd only met once or twice before, so I basically said nothing all night :P Still Philly (birthday girl) had a great time and it was nice to see everyone.

I wore a new dress:

 

The best place to take photos is in our utility room (has the best light) but it is horribly squalid! That's my sister's dig Pippa lurking around behind. We were looking after her for a few weeks.

I LOVE it! I look like the above mentioned muppet :D It's a fantastic bright cobalt blue and completely covered in little loops of fabric. It's from Asos you can see it here :)

I also wore my new (possibly) favourite necklace. It was from my Mum for Christmas:

 

It's Peter and the Wolf! So cool.

And here's my face:

 

I was wearing Black eyeliner with Barry M Black glittery liquid eyeliner and Mac Kanga-Rouge lipstick. Can't remember my cheeks or face.

Also if you haven't seen, I've added a little poll on my sidebar :)

Haul!!

Ok like i said in my last post i've been very very naughty recently.
Firstly i got some bits from Asos:




Models own lip glosses in blackberry, fuschia and red.

The Asos/Ciate nail paints were only £1.50 each! I got all 3, Mary Kate which is A black with gold sparkles, pixie which is a sort of racing green colour (it looks much lighter and brighter in the pot than when you swatch it) and Agyness which is a sparkly purple. I realised Agyness is basically exactly the same as my Barry M vivid purple, so if anyone would like this i'll sell it for £2 including shipping in the UK (i've only swatched it once. On asos it would be £3.50 including postage).
I also got some gorgeous tights that were in the sale (they're gold and black and sort of a houndstooth design). I also got 3 Models Own lipgloss and nail polish sets in red, fuscia and red/black (you can see the red/black set is in it's case) which also included a nail buffer thing and were £4 each. The red and fuschia lipglosses are gorgeously opaque but the blackberry one is sheer, also the red/black polish is a dupe of my Barry M red/black colour so again if anyone would like this set it's yours for £5 including shipping (and also i'll be donating 10% of anything i sell for a while to Haiti). Finally the only thing that wasn't in the sale was the Urban Decay lip primer potion, but even then i got a discount as there is an Asos 20% code :) Haven't tried this yet but will keep you posted.

Then I went into town to get something secret for my Goomba's valentine gift and ended up getting far too much for me!

Firstly i went a bit mad for nail polish in superdrug. I've gotten really into nail varnish at the moment, i'm absolutely desperate for some China Glaze and color club, but as i cant afford the shipping from the US at the moment i thought i'd stock up on some cheap drugstore brands. The collection 2000 polishes were under £2 each and go on really nice and opaque. I also discovered a secret clearance stash of old Urban Decay polishes (they must have been hidden in the stock room, i don't even remember when my superdrug sold UD!) so i got 3 of them for £1.99 each. I also picked up a collection 2000 base coat/ridge filler that isn't pictured.


From left to right the colours are:
collection 2000 Hot Looks: Wham (a light grey), hoola hoop (a sort of bubblegum pink), minx (a pinky-purple glitter), vixen (a fuschia glitter), BMX bandit (a kind of cornflower blue, love the name!), button moon (a very pale blue with a slight green tinge. Again wonderful name!).
Urban Decay: Trip (a bright fuschia pink with slight blue pearl), X (a sort of brown/purple/gold duochrome) and finally Freakshow (which is purple with green and blue duochrome).

and here are swatches of all the polishes, including the ones from Asos. A lot of them look awful, they're gorgeous in real life. Annoyingly the 2 i'm hoping to sell don't look anything like they do in real life so if you're interested please tell me and i'll try and take a better photo!:



Models own red/black, red alert and foxy fuschia, Asos/ciate paints in pixie, agyness (looks dark grey here, actually a metallic purple) and mary kate (which has gold shimmer in real life you can't see at all here), Urban decay in X, trip and freakshow, collection 2000 hot looks in minx, wham, bmx bandit, hoola hoop, button moon and vixen.
Then i got this gorgeous pearl necklace from Accessorize. I've always wanted a necklace with just giant pearls (a bit like Frank n Furters :P) and while this one isn't my perfect version it's pretty close:



And lastly, Lush. Now i know, i know, i have already got enough toilletries to last a year or so, but i couldn't help but grab some of the valentines range and some others of their new products. I was also really really brave and it payed off! I love the sound of their new Turkish Delight shower smoothie but as it's £15 i couldn't possibly buy it without trying it out, so i asked for a sample. Now this might sound like nothing but because of my disability i was literally shaking and on the brink of tears thinking about asking because i was just so scared. But i managed to find the courage and asked and as a reward for my bravery (though of course the lovely guy at the checkout didn't know it was a reward, he was just being nice :P) not only did i get a sample of Turkish Delight, but he gave me a little pack they'd put together which includes their new Creme Anglaise body lotion, Sexy Peel Soap, American cream conditioner and Smitten hand cream. I left feeling really proud of myself :)



Anyway i picked up Love Soap (and of course i had to get it in the gorgeous heart shaped box even though i'm keeping it for myself!), magic mushroom bubble bar, space girl bath ballistic and Happy blooming bath melt and my sample pack :)

So that's all the shopping i'm allowed to do for myself for at least a month! (though internet shopping doesn't count :P) I'll be reviewing most of the things anyway, but if there's something specific you want to know about just leave me a comment :)

Shopping!!!

So as you may have seen from my previous posts, i've been shopping something fierce recently!

Here's all i got (except for some christmas presents) from the Carnaby street sale:

Firstly i got this dress:



Which i have wanted for ages, but as it's Bettie Page Clothing (one of my favourite clothing companies) it was too expensive for me to usually even thing of buying. However... 20% off! The sizing in Bettie Page clothing are odd. On anything that is made of stretch material I can be anything from a medium to X-large and there really only seems to be the tiniest bit of difference between them, but with things without stretch i can't fit into anything less that an XX-large because otherwise my boobs get all squashed :P At the moment the size in stretch fabrics (this dress is stretchy) that fits me best is X-large, but the one i bought was just a large. It's a tiny bit too tight but really so little i figured it was worth it. They didn't have x-large in the black but said they could order it in, but that would take several months. I tried it in another colour in the X-large and to me it looked and felt exactly the same as the Large. It was a tiny bit tight, but such a small amount i figured it was worth it anyway. Also i'm hoping to lose a bit of weight :)

Shoes!





These were love at first sight. In a way they sort of reminf me of a funky-punky Margaret Thatcher :P These are by Poetic License, i got them in the Irregular Choice shop, so i guess they're some kind of sub-brand. And again, 20% off!

Some jewellery:



The heart bracelet was from Lazy Oaf. I really like it because i have disproportionately skinny wrists and generally hard bracelets like this don't fit me (i have the most beautiful giant see-through blue crystal heart one and it just slips off my constantly so i cant wear it :( ). The goldfish necklace and earrings are from Octopus. I had to get them because i have a very old painting somewhere of a girl with a (real) goldfish in a bowl for an earring, and they just reminded me of that. Also compared to the majority of my jewellery which is plastic and neon and gaudy these seem quite elegant and classy!


MAC:



Like i said, MAC was so full and busy i couldn't do any browsing, and thus no impulse buying, but i got a few bits that had been on my wishlist. So i got:
Prep and Prime Face SPF 50. I got this for the summer, so it will stay unopened until then!
Dazzleglass in Funtabulous. Have been wearing this a lot already. I love it's blue and purple pearl.
Violetta Lipstick. Just great and fun!
Lip Pencil in Magenta. To make up for the one i bought ages back that turned out to be just an empty box :(

Then today my girlfriend and i went to the cinema (we saw Up in 3D. It was wonderful. I cried and cried) and afterwards i had a little shop while i was in town. I bought the prize for my upcoming giveaway (just 3 more followers left!) and some bits for myself.



revlon lipstick in wild orchid and cherries in the snow. Wild orchid is a fuschia with a blueish pearl and slight shimmery finish. Cherries in the snow is a brilliant very pinky blue based red. This was one of the first lipsticks i had (stolen from my Mum at around age 12) and i just fancied getting it again because i like it and don't have anything that similar.

Sleek Wonderlast lip colour. This looks more bubblegum-ish in the photo than it is really. In real life it is one of the brightest, best neons i've ever seen. It's also ever so slightly shimmery, which is great as most neons are matte and one of those super long-lasting liquid lipsticks (I've never seen one this colour before!). I can't wait to try it out on my lips.

Collection 2000 Glam Crystals eyeliner in Dancing queen (the pink) and Pow! (the blue). These are, i think, the best glitter eyeliners i've tried. They're so full of glitter that one swipe is probably enough! And some of the colours (including the 2 i got) have holographic glitter in them, which i've never seen before!

Also i meant to pick up Revlons Matte Real Red (or whatever it is actually called) but somehad had put the wrong lipstick in the place, so i got 'Love that Red'. Of course i didn't check until i had got it home, opened it and swatched it, so i can't take it back. It's very nice, but just not what i wanted, and because i'm poor i can't really afford to keep it.
So if anyone wants it it's yours for £5.50 (including postage in the UK, £7 for international). It's only been swatched once (though if anyone wants to see it i'll swatch it once more :) and retails for £7.45. Here it is:



I am now incredibly poor :( I'm praying i get paid very soon!

If anyone wants to see a swatch of anything i've posted just ask, though i'm sure i'll be posting some FOTD's featuring these products really soon! :D

Oh and i apologise for the awful state of my carpet! On monday we're having some building work done, so we just keep going 'no point in hoovering until afterwards'. So it is foul!