Mac Blankety and Mac Pink Lemonade
This is my first scheduled post, so hopefully it works! I had a few pictures I’d taken awhile ago sat waiting to be put up so thought this would be a good time. Because this is scheduled, I wonder what I’m doing now. I’m most likely slumped over a book, probably swearing and wishing this week away! Poor me! Oh well, I’ll be fine when I go and buy myself some treats for making it through exam time. I’ve already bought myself a Deborah Lippmann nail polish for finishing my literature review :p
Anyway on to my lovely Mac goodies! I’ve become a bit of a Mac fan lately, it’s a shame I cannot afford such a hobby! Wonderful blog sales however come to my rescue. I bought two Mac products from a blog sale over at Vivianna Does Makeup . I picked up Mac Blankety lipstick and Mac Pink Lemonade Lipglass.
Mac Blankety – Mac Pink Lemonade
First is Blankety. It is quite similar to The Faerie Glen (which I love), but with an amplified finish. It goes on really nicely and has a neutral/polished look. It lasts quite well and it isn’t at all drying.
Next is Pink Lemonade. This is my first lipglass from Mac. I have avoided them as I don’t really like sticky lip glosses, but I really don’t mind this one. It is sticky, but it doesn’t feel bad, it just sticks to the lips so it won’t come off. I may be swearing about the stickiness if I get my hair blown in my face when outside though! :P I think it looks quite pretty on, again it is a neutral/sheer shade, but it just adds a little extra peachy colour and lots of shininess!
What about you, do you love blog sales? I know I do! :)
Mac Cham-Pale Goodies
I ordered a couple of things from the Mac Cham-Pale collection and the arrived yesterday. It is so impressive how quickly Mac can deliver orders. I ordered Quiet, Please lipstick (lustre), I Get No Kick eye kohl and Soirée nail polish.
I was quite pleased with the eye kohl. I haven’t been using my usual black eye liner lately as it’s a bit harsh and makes me look more tired than I am. I wrecked my sleeping patterns over my holiday and I feel/look like crap going back to getting up early. I have been using Benefit Eye Bright instead of black eye liner. I like Eye Bright, but it is very pale and quite noticeable, like I am just wearing white eye liner. I wanted something to brighten my eyes that was a more skin coloured shade, just to tone down my red eyes. I really like I Get No Kick. It’s a pleasure to apply and it leaves behind a pearly skin tone colour. It makes my eyes look bright and less tired. Also the pencil is really long! It’s my first Mac pencil and I think it’s going to least years!
Swatch of Quiet, Please (top) and I Get No Kick (bottom)
I also bought Quiet, Please lipstick. It is a pale lipstick and very sheer, with a nice shimmer to it. This won’t be everyone cup of tea. I liked it because I wanted a sheer shimmery colour, but I know a lot of people will think it’s a bit pointless. I love it though! It is great to just put on everyday and Mac are one of the only lipsticks I get alone with. The swatch below is a bit crappy and out of focus, but I was running out of light. At least it shows the light reflecting shimmer!
Finally, the Soirée nail polish! I really wanted this when I saw it. I wanted a rosy gold colour for ages to match my engagement ring. I saw that Nicole by OPI are releasing a rose gold too soon. I want to try that too, it looks a tad more rosy than Soirée. I can’t wait to try it out, it looks lovely in the bottle. I haven’t tried Soirée yet though due to a boo boo. Look at my middle finger nail! I had to get into uni for 9am yesterday for 3 hours of training…groan! Afterwards I had to wait around and I decided to take a nap. I positioned two chairs to nap across and as I go comfy I cracked my hand off the chair and snapped my nails. The first time I leave the house without polish on for months and I managed to break a nail :( I’d just got them to a length I liked as well! Oh, well I guess I would have cut them down next week for exams anyway, I can’t write with long nails. In good news, my nails don’t look as nasty and yellow as I thought they would be without polish. I use Models Own 3 in 1 polish as base coat, just because I hated it as a top coat and wanted to get rid of it, but in all honesty it’s not a bad base coat.
A friend gave me a movie to watch with weekend and a bottle of Russian vodka for Christmas, so I’m a happy bunny. So tonight I can watch the movie, get drunk and try to not file my nails all lopsided! The rest of the weekend I am finishing my lit review. :/ Did anyone else get anything from the new Mac collections? Has anyone else planned a fun weekend? :) xxxx
Mac Lipstick The Faerie Glen from the Tarten Tales collection
I have had this post as a draft for months. I finally remembered to post it and realised I’d have to change loads of the text. I was yabbering on about it starting to get cold. Since then we’ve all been snowed in and I’ve been living with the heating on all the time for weeks! I think the last week has been a bit warmer so maybe my new start to this post should be, it’s starting to get warmer…I hope. :P
Anyway, I have a thing for lipsticks at the moment. I don’t own that many due to a family trait of thin lips… thanks for that genes! But I’m starting to see what I can wear on my lips without looking foolish.
I started by getting a few tinted balms when it started to get colder and now I’m grabbing all the lipsticks I like the look of! I think I was mostly put off before after trying some lipsticks my sisters gave me and they were really drying, I wrote off lipsticks as ‘not for me’. I decided to try Mac and this was the lipstick I bought. I went for quite a safe colour first in case I looked ridiculous.
When the Tarten Tales collection was released I picked up The Faerie Glen. I’d seen it swatched a few times on different blogs and it seemed like a nice everyday colour. The colour looks quite brown/beige in the tube and when I swatched it on my arm I was convinced it was going to be horrible on! It looked (as you can see above) quite brown/orange and I couldn’t imagine it looking good on my lips. :/
However…lucky for me, it is much nicer when I put it on and I wear this constantly now. It’s a Lustre finish so is quite sheer, but buildable. It’s weird I didn’t realise how pink my lips were! You can definitely see I’m wearing lipstick, but it’s quite natural/neutral and I quite like it. :) It is really moisturising and feels quite nice on my lips and lasts a few hours before needing to reapply. It’s definitely one of my favourite make up items at the moment!
I just went on the Mac website to check if the new collections (Cham Pale/Stylishly Yours) had been released and they have! So my bank account just took a beating and I ordered a couple of things. I didn’t go to the sales so I’m allowed :P
Back to work this week :( Just as I was starting to relax! I have my lit review to finish up today and then much revision must be accomplished. I can’t wait for these two weeks to be over, exam time is not fun! My condolences to all those people back to work/uni this week, I share your pain. My posting may be sporadic the next few weeks, but I have some drafts I can fix up, hopefully I’ll remember. I hope you are have a lovely week! xxxx
elf Beauty Encyclopedia Lip Edition Palette
Here are the much delayed swatches of the elf Beauty Encyclopedia Lip Edition Palette that was sent to me by Christina from Christina Marie says… from her giveaway. Thanks again!
The first picture is of the palette and I’ve numbered them. I haven’t swatched the two glosses because you can’t really see them, but they are glossy. You also get a lip liner and a lip brush.
Below are the swatches following the numbering from the above picture. The first line is the lip liner that comes with the book. These swatches are all just one finger swipes of the colours so they have quite a good colour pay off.
The tips on how to use them in the book are quite good too. They feel quite nice on the lips, not sticky or drying and they last really well. I love this palette, I was surprised at how nice they felt and the colour pay off! I look forward to trying all of them, it might take me awhile! :) At first I found it a bit strange painting my lips with a brush as I wouldn’t normally use a brush. I normally put it on from the tube or with fingers, but I quite liked it and the colour lasted for ages, whether that was due to the brush application,the tips inside the books of dabbing and reapplying the colour in layers or the colours themselves. I’m quite impressed all the same! Oooh and they taste quite nice…not that I’m eating them, but they smell and taste quite fruity. Nom nom!
Weirdly as the weather has got colder I’m now using more lipsticks and glosses, which is probably the opposite to what I should be doing. I think it’s because I am looking after my lips because of all the cold weather so I might as well use all my nice lip things while my lips are in good shape. Also wearing more lipstick/glosses has stopped my nervous habit of biting my lips, unless I want to cover my teeth in goo and then have to reapply anything! :)
Thanks again to Christina for sending me this, I love it! :)
Mini haul!
I hope everyone’s Christmas shopping is going well! I am yet to do any, as I’ve had lots of assignments due in and I haven’t really felt Christmasy with all the deadlines looming. I handed in my last assignment due before Christmas today and felt fantastic! Not during the last hour of panic trying to get it finished I didn’t, but after it was gone I felt good! I have only 2 minutes to spare before the deadline and my file was so large it took ages to upload and I was convinced I would miss the deadline and loose marks. Thankfully it went through ok and I’m glad it’s over! 6000 words on attentional blink and peripheral visual cues in aviation…groan! So now it the time for Christmas shopping and after the uni breaks up next week I probably won’t know what to do with all my free time! I can’t wait! :D I know I will be drinking plenty more of the below after my mum gave me my annual Christmas gift package of sweeties, consisting of lots of mint chocolate (after dinner mints, matchmakers, etc), Smarties (which I’ve loved since I was really small, I dread to thin how many thousands I’ve eaten) and marshmellows! Yum yum!
I have been cheeky and selfish and nipped into town for a pre-christmas shopping mini haul. I don’t like going into town when it is busy on my own, I’m quite jumpy so I am a bit ‘ARGH’ when over-stimulating! I had to go into town to get visitor parking permits and then had to wait around for the OH so we could go food shopping. I decided to mull around town and it was scarily busy, I can’t believe the Christmas shopping rush is here already! There is a Christmas market in Southampton at the moment so the high street smells lovely of mince pies and mulled wine. It took me about 20 minutes to wander around Boots grabbing goodies, but after a lot of dodging and diving out of peoples way I got myself a nice little haul! Boots have a 3 for 2 on make up at the moment, which is great!
I picked up a lovely Revlon purple nail varnish called Plum Seduction, a 17 Mirror Shine lipstick in Peace and the rather disturbing green Barry M Touch of Magic Lip Paint. I’d seen it recently on another blog and wanted to have a go, especially as I’ve heard it stains and I like lip stains especially in winter where I want to put balm on constantly. I bought some cute butterfly hair clips from the kiddies hair section on Boots, they are so sweet! Much nicer than the boring stuff in the adult ‘normal’ section. :P I have far too many kiddie hair clips, but they are too cute not to buy them and they were only £3.
I also grabbed some new earrings from a jewellers, a pair for my mum (stars) and a pair for me (butterflies)! :P I like them, they are quite plain and I can sleep in them without worrying about them falling out or hurting my ears. I’m too lazy to change my earrings before bed every night. Are you meant to do that? I dunno now I think about it. I never take my earring out unless to change them to something else. Although I have multiple close ball rings (cbr) which I can’t physically remove without pliers, so they aren’t going anywhere!
I had a wander around other shops, but nothing caught my eye, but I was quite proud I’d survived a busy town trip and was quite enjoying not having to turn round and see the sad, trailing site of my OH wishing he had not agreed to go shopping! It was quite fun as everyone I spoke to was really happy and chatty, maybe the Christmas spirit is in the air! :D I’ll review all these soon, but I can say that I love the Revlon purple nail polish, I’ve had it on all week, my new favourite. :)
When does everyone else break up for Christmas? Are you all looking forward to the Christmas break or is that a silly question?! :D
No7 Sheer Temptation in Tempt
Owwww, the pain of the 9am Monday morning lecture. I kept myself going all day, even when I was almost asleep on my keyboard. Now it’s 1am and I’m not tired! I don’t have to be in till 1pm tomorrow, so at least I don’t have to get up early. It was really dark when I got up this morning, winter is definitely here and my computer says it’s -1°C outside here tonight, eek, more blankets on the bed time! I have a couple of nail posts to sort out, but the lighting is rubbish, these dark-dreary days are no good for my bad quality phone camera. I might have to start taking pictures at uni where the light is better, though that might be a bit strange if anyone sees me! :P Anyway, here is a No7 lipstick review. I’ve been using this a few weeks and I really like it.
With my last Boots No7 voucher I bought one of the Sheer Temptation lipsticks in Tempt. It’s more of a tinted lip balm kinda lipstick really, but some days that is good as it means you don’t need to worry about finding a mirror to re-apply lipstick. It’s a nice cherry red and for a sheer colour it isn’t a bad colour pay off. It is really moisturising which is great for the colder months! As for staying power, it lasts an average amount of time. It doesn’t last through drinking/eating, but in general it won’t disappear quickly. 
The swatch is pretty much what it looks like on lips, it’s quite glossy too without being all greasy and sticky. I really like this range. I bought it because I had a voucher just to see what it’s like, but I’m definitely going to grab a few more colours. However, I think I’ll grab them when the vouchers are back as they are £9.50 each!
Boots say - Our glossiest-ever sheer lipstick, the new Sheer Temptation formulation is deliciously soft and creamy. Enriched with natural waxes and Theobroma oil (which you’ll find in chocolate!) to care for your lips, and Maxilip to help hydrate the lips. Colour glides easily over the lips, creating a shiny lipgloss effect without any stickiness.
I think that’s a pretty accurate description! It is like wearing a tinted lip balm, but with the convenience of a lipstick applicator (I’m awful at using pots of lip balm! :s) and with quite a good range of colours, but definitely grab them when the vouchers are on. Nice as they are, I’m not sure they are worth their high price, but they are great for £4.50! :D
Bournemouth Mac Haul
Edit: I realised I still have un-tried polishes to go through and I’ve bought another new polish, but how could I resist Bad Fairy?! :)
I had an awesome time in Bournemouth. I didn’t really do much while I was there apart from a bit of shopping and seeing the in laws. I spent quite awhile in Segapark or leisure-whatever-it’s-called-now. It’s an arcade. I was completely thrashed on both Time Crisis and Dance, Dance Revolution. It was a close battle I swear! I also popped into Metal Fatigue to get one piercing removed and get another one, so I have some lovely bruises now. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to approach me with something sharp, I highly recommend Sarge at Metal Fatigue if anyone is in the south of England and wants any piercings. He is awesome.
While I was in Bournemouth I made my first trip to a Mac counter, which was fun. I picked up a couple of things from the Venomous Villains collection. Bad Fairy nail polish and Dark Deed lipstick, both from the Maleficent collection. I love dark lipstick and I can get away with it more now my hair is darker.
The lipstick is lovely, it is definitely not drying, which is my main annoyance with most lipsticks and the colour is very pigmented and lasts pretty well. It can be worn either as an ordinary lipstick, which is quite dark and shiny, or applied lightly it looks good as a dark, berry stain. I will do a post on Bad Fairy when I’ve tried it out. My nails suffered on the train, so I now need to cut them all down after my thumb fell in the battle between arm rest and thumbnail. :( Did anyone else have a look at the Venomous Villains in Mac?
Bad Fairy nail polish and Dark Deed lipstick
I also picked up the new Barry M black crackle nail polish which I’ll cover in another post. It’s is quite cool to watch it crackle! I wasn’t sure if I’d like the random crackle effects as they are unpredictable what they will look like and you might have some good and some awful nails, but I quite like the effect. I think I have the knack of it now and it seems dependent on how much polish is on the brush. I shall put a post together soon.
I have lots of work to do this weekend. One week back at uni and I have loads of work to do already! I’m hoping to get it all done tomorrow and spend Sunday relaxing. I spent last weekend watching all 3 Lord of the Rings films, I forgot how awesome the LOTR films were. I really wanted to see Art Goblins and Mr Solo play in London this weekend, but I just couldn’t afford it. I wish I had learnt to drive so I could go to London without staying in a hotel over night. Does everyone drive? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford the cost of starting the learn – lessons/car/petrol/insurance etc.
Relvon Cherries in the Snow Lipstick
Before I go into lipstick…omg part one of Doctor Who finale The Pandorica Opens! I had unfortunately seen some concept art of what was in the Pandorica so I wasn’t that surprised at the end (I really have to watch out for spoiler posts!), but it was still awesome! All the little extra bits and how stuff seems to be tying together now, I can’t wait to see part two next week. The cracks seemed like a cheesy build up, trying to get the rush everyone got from “Bad Wolf“, but now I think it was perfect! Anyway…
I was very pleased to find Revlon Super Lustrous Lipstick in Cherries in the Snow without to much hassle. I normally avoid lipsticks as ones I used as a ickle teenager made my lips really dry, wore off quickly and I have thin lips anyway, so I wrote lipstick off early. I saw this one on a blog somewhere awhile ago and loved the colour and thought I’d give lipstick another go!
I am totally happy with it! It stays on, even after drinking etc. The colour is great, one coat colour and it applies easily, there nothing really wrong with it at all! Best of all it isn’t even remotely drying, if I wasn’t such a wimp I’d wear this all the time rather than at home, sat watching tv, or making dinner!
About me
My name is Gem and I am a psychology graduate in the south of England. I like shiny and sparkly things, but I am also a total nerd. ^.^
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