FOTD/A Mini Review

Hello!

So I meant to do a review of the BellaPierre Shimmer Powder in Champagne from the last She Said Beauty box a few weeks ago but as I have been busy with work and have been in a bit of a tumble with regards to my personal life, I've not really had the time to do a full face of make-up, let alone write up a review. However, today I'm feeling a little bit motivated so I thought I should take the opportunity to get a quick review in!

Now then, I mentioned in my SSB review that as soon as I saw the words "Shimmer Powder" I was a little disappointed but as soon as I did a swatch of it I instantly changed my mind! It was such a beautiful colour and can be worn during the day or at night (I'm not going to lie, the look I've done is more of a night look....what can I say, why not go all out right?!) I feel like I should pre-warn you that the photos were taken quite quickly as I needed to tidy my room but also the clothes I'm wearing are very "I've got a Saturday off and I'm not getting super dressed up to chill" and not at all to match my night out make-up!

So here is my generic "try not to look too ridiculous when taking pictures of myself..." pose. I did do a really light dusting of the shimmer powder over my blusher but you can't really see it in this photo I don't think. I have paired the shimmer powder with a simple flick of eyeliner and a red lipstick for a fairly classic look. I did have a bit of a debate over the lipstick colour choice, I do think a deep pink or even a bright pink would have worked really nicely with this. I'm not going to lie.....I got a little compliment on this photo from Mr "Who Knows?" (review from him coming up shortly on the Men Are Useless box) and frankly, it made me do a little smile and then inflated my ego way too much! Haha!

Ah! Wonky eyeliner! Always a winner. I hate that I can get it so nice on one side and not on the other! Anyway, you can clearly see the shimmer powder on my eyelids. It's such a beautiful colour and I really love how little you need to use for such great pay off. Like most shimmer powders it's a little difficult to use as it has a tendency to want to go everywhere, but as long as you use a good brush it's not that bad. I really like that this is a subtle colour, so I can (and have) used it during the day for a simple bit of extra oomph to my day look. I will be using this on many nights out I think as I absolutely LOVE how this looks with a tiny bit of eyeliner and I really really love how easy this look is to do! I did this at about 1pm today and even after some activities *ahem* this eye make-up is still going strong and looking almost exactly as it did when I first put it on! (it's now almost 10pm) I've just taken it all off and, unlike some shimmer powders, this was incredibly easy to remove without any trace left (no shimmery face for me tonight!) Overall I'm very impressed with this product and would definitely think about treating myself to one or more of the other colours on their website. They cost £12.99 and I've been so impressed with this product that it meant that the box was paid for already with this one!

Bonus Review! - The mascara I'm wearing is the 17 Va Va Voom one and I just thought I should give you a little bit of a review on it. I've been using it for a while now (I got it about 3/4 weeks ago with my Boots voucher) and I've had a few compliments on it. Today however, after using it with my ELF Mascara Primer, my Mum actually used the words "Are you wearing false eyelashes with that look?" and when I said no she said ".....are you sure?! Your eyelashes look amazing!" I've never had someone say that about a mascara! I do think this mascara looks amazing after putting it on top of the primer but I think it still looks pretty great without the primer. I've literally worn this everyday since buying it and I would definitely repurchase it once it runs out.

Products used:

• Tropic Skin Revive Firming Nourishing Cream (From my Joliebox - I'll review this box soon)
• No7 BB Cream in Fair (sample....I think I'll be purchasing this come payday!)
• 17 Pressed Powder in Nicely Natural.
• 17 Instant Glow Bronzer and Highlighter.
• Natural Collection Blush in Pink Cloud.
• No7 Beautiful Brows Pencil in 10 Brown/Black (My new favourite pencil for filling in my patchy growing out brows!)
• MUA Eyebrow Pencil in Brunette (I use this very lightly over my eyebrows after the No7 one. I find that this one alone was too dark but the No7 one is a bit too light!)
• Natural Collection Mascara in Clear (for setting my brows)
• Naked Palette 1 in Virgin (for a base colour on my eyelids)
• BellaPierre Cosmetics Shimmer Powder in Champagne.
• Eyeko Graffiti Eyeliner Pen in Black.
• Rimmel Soft Kohl Eyeliner in Jet Black.
• ELF Mascara Primer.
• 17 Va Va Voom Mascara in Black.
• Studio Makeup Lipstick in Really Red.

That's a pretty long list of products for a really simple night out look! Haha! So what do you guys think? Have any of you got this shimmer powder or any like it? Any looks you can recommend at all?

Hope your all well!

Until next time,

xoxo

Blow Art Style NOTD!

Hello!

So yesterday I came across this youtube video by DandyNails (the link goes to the giveaway that she's having! Look at those polishes!) I always enjoy trying out new techniques and this one looked like so much fun! I don't know about you but I always liked using blow pens when I was younger (even though when I think back, they were a lot of work for not much pay off!) so when I saw this technique I knew I had to try it! This post is picture heavy by the way... (Btw, I will totally be trying out the Blood Splatter ones for Halloween!! Amazing!)

Basecoat used: Sally Hansen Miracle Cure. Top coat used: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri.

Firstly I painted my nails with ELF's nail polish in White. It takes about 3 coats to really give full coverage I usually find but I do love all of ELF's polishes and I've found this one to be a really nice pure white with a lovely finish to it. (You can see in this picture how messy I am when I paint my nails though!)

The second step is to put tape round your nails so it's an easier clean up later (this technique does get messy!) I'm fairly impatient so I did both my hands at once...I can tell you that it's pretty difficult to tape your other hand once your first one is all taped up...fun though!

Two essential items...kitchen towel (so you don't get polish everywhere...I still got a tiny bit on my laptop screen though!) and a post it note to keep your puddles of nail polish on.

Obviously straws are also essential but for some reason I forgot to put them in the last photo... So this is a photo of my little kit after I'd done my nails. You can see where I've put little puddles of the polish on the post it and then I've used the straws to pick some up and then blown through the straws onto your nails for the "blow pen" effect. I decided to go with lots of neon colours but in hindsight I think one or two colours would've been better....even though I still kind of liked the effect it gave... Obviously this technique does waste a bit of polish but I've got so many that I think I can spare a little bit to try new things!

You can see from this picture how messy my fingers would've gotten with five colours worth of blown nail polish on them! (I feel like I should point out that the 13 year old side of me is having a little chuckle every time I use the words "blow" or "blown"....I'm so immature sometimes, I apologise for this!) Still not sure how that bit of pink nail polish got on the underside of my hand though....

So this is the finished look on my left hand. After taking the tape off there was only a little bit of clean up to do but I'm quite impressed with my first attempt. You can see that the green went a little extreme on my ring finger, which is a little annoying.

This is the effect on my right hand. I like how each nail is different (much like with water marbling) They remind me of a Jawbreaker Gumball that I had once as a kid. I always loved the colours on it! The problem I had with these is that I clearly used too many colours. I ended up denting a couple of them a few hours later, which was really annoying! Plus with the amount of polish on my nails, once they started drying properly the polish actually shrunk a little on my nail. That meant that my actual nail was exposed and I get really annoyed with that! In hind sight I would probably leave the white to dry over night or maybe only use 2 colours on each nail (so for this one I would mix and match two of the colours on each nail.)

The colours I used were: Rimmel Lasting Finish 270 Hot Shot, MUA Shade 9, No7 Stay Perfect 220 Tangy, Rimmel Lasting Finish 180 Purple Pulse and Rimmel Lasting Finish 236 Green Grass.

So, as I dented a lot of my nails, I went a little OCD and had to take them off. I really liked this technique though and wanted to try it out with different colours. I chose blue, yellow and purple because I am wearing my comic book inspired socks and those are the colours on them! They look so awesome that I was inspired! This time round I didn't bother to tape my fingers though so you can see that the clean up will be a little more extreme this time. Instead of painting all my nails the same colour I decided to vary them up a little bit. I also found that if I used the nail polish brush to paint the end of the straw I had a little more control on the amount of polish blown onto my nail. (You can see that this wasn't a completely controlled thing...just look at my ring finger! The blue kind of went everywhere!)

You can see that I did opposite base colours on my other hand. I like this because it's not super noticeable straight away. I think this hand turned out a little better to my right hand...I just prefer it for some reason! I used a toothpick to take the excess nail polish off round my nail so that it didn't dry super thick and mess up the design when I cleaned my nails up.

After clean up! It didn't actually take that long as I only used 2 colours. I think if I'd not used tape with my first attempt with 5 colours I'd have been there all day cleaning my fingers! I know some people don't like using nail polish remover on their hands so the tape would be perfect for them, but I'm not really that fussed about nail polish remover being on my hands....also I'm lazy, so there's that too! I really love the effect on my little finger on this hand!

My right hand after the clean up! My ring finger still kind of bothers me a little but that's the risk you take with this technique! I really like my thumb on this hand.

The colours I used were: Rimmel Lasting Finish 180 Purple Pulse, 17 Lasting Fix Seabreeze and Rimmel Lasting Finish 280 Sunshine. I love the fact that I had an excuse to use the yellow one because I really do love this colour! It's so bright and cheery! I'm also going to need to repurchase the 17 one. I'm running really low and just LOVE this colour!

So there's my NOTD technique! What do you think? Are you tempted to try it? What colours would you use? As always, I love reading all your comments so let me know what you think (even if you don't like the effect!)

Until next time,

xoxo