Eau Thermale Avène Review

So for my birthday I got a few of the Avène products. I am very happy with them and will definitely be buying them in the future when I run out of my current stock. They are a bit on the pricey side, but if you have sensitive skin like me, they are perfect. I have to be careful in electing face care products as I can get eczema on my lips, so I need very natural products. The Avène range has given me no problems at all and it leaves my skin feeling very soft and it feels very light on the skin as opposed to other creams that leave your skin feeling greasy. I believe you can buy the range at 'Boots' in the UK, but I am not sure how to get hold of them/where to buy them anywhere else.

To conclude, I would definitely recommend buying this range if your skin is very sensitive like mine.

Amy X

media by mac

Just a quick post to tide you over....

Media By MAC

This is a really lovely lipstick, it has the typical MAC vanilla cupcake smell, its a really beautiful wine colour, and definitely one of my favourite lipstick colours EVER.

You can wear it lightly for a 

berry stain

or build it up for a 

beautiful deep wine colour

A beautiful colour that's a perfect introduction to darker lip colours

Lauren xo

MUA Lipsticks

Ok, i know i have part two of my late haul still to come, I'm just waiting on one more parcel and some light so that i can photograph everything, the snow is very pretty but it means our conservatory is covered in snow so the natural light doesnt get in. So that will have to wait a while. Meanwhile i have this delightful post on four MUA lipsticks i purchased from Superdrug that arrived this morning, another lovely little parcel to wake up to! 

So here goes, first, the deets. MUA lipsticks are by the brand Make Up Academy (i.e MUA), their lipsticks are £1 each, which is such a good price, and to be honest i would say that the formulas are comparable to MAC ones.

I bought four shades, 3,6,11 & 16, all pink shades because that is something that i am lacking in my lipstick collection, i usually always go for muted tones mainly taupe based ones such as Mink by Topshop and Faux by MAC, which, dont get me wrong i absolutely love, however a brighter lip is always nice. And being at £1 each i thought they would be worth a try. I am so glad i did try them out because they are so lovely, such amazing texture, smooth application and they smell lovely too, slightly vanilla scented. 

Lets get on to the photos!

A breakdown of the colours:

Shade 3

Shade three is a bright, hot pink, incredibly pigmented with a great staying power, this shade reminds me a lot of Ritual's 'Smart' however it is less blue toned and more red/pink. 

Shade 16

This shade is a bright neon apricot colour, alot brighter on than it looks in the tube. It looks fantastic in the centre of your lips paired with shade 11 on the outer sides blended in, creates a beautiful coral pink. 

Shade 6 (sorry i got the labels wrong this is actually Shade 11)

This one is a lovely deep berry pink, quite an understated pink and great for everyday wear, its similar to Mink by Topshop or Faux by MAC but pink based rather than taupe based.

Shade 11 (actually shade 6, sorry for the wrong labels, they're all pink!)

This is such a beautiful colour, if it was a MAC lipstick it would be a frost colour, however as you will see in the swatch below, it is very subtle and a much more modern finish than that 90's lipstick you're thinking of (Posh Spice anyone?)

Here are the swatches:

This photo actually captured the lipsticks really well, as this is pretty much exactly what they are like in real life, some of the other photos, the camera darkened them quite a bit. The only thing i would say is that Shade 16 is a lot brighter in person.

I love the fact that the shades are visible at the bottom, and that they unscrew with a small pot for when you're on the go! However unless you have the shortest nails in the world then putting your finger in them will result in most of it getting stuck under your nail!

A quick note on the packaging before i forget, i really like the packaging, it is plastic - but what else would you expect for a £1 lipstick? I have to say i have no criticisms for these lipsticks, and the price is just the icing on the cake. There are 16 shades in total, and for just £16 you can buy them all! Only £2 more than one MAC lipstick, i think that really goes to show just what great value they are, and the quality between these and MAC isn'd dissimilar.

The lipsticks worn:

Shades 16 and 11 are my personal favourites, which are yours?

Hope that was helpful to anyone on the hunt for a new lipstick,

Buy them online here, but if possible i would recommend you to buy them in store because the colours on the website aren't a good indicator of the actual shade you will get as i discovered with shade 11(it looked much lighter online)

Lauren xoxo

MAC Freckletone

So this morning i was greeted by the postman with a lovely little parcel from Debenhams, Mac's Freckletone lipstick. It's so nice waking up to a lovely little parcel, if only that happened everyday eh? 

I bought this lipstick because I'm on the hunt for the perfect nude, to me the perfect nude is a colour that  ever so slightly lightens the colour of my lips (mine are quite pigmented so i do like to tone them down a bit on casual days) but still looks incredibly natural. I own Mac's Myth, now when i first bought this product i hated it, and i mean hated it. I bought it a few years back and only last year (late last year, so only really a few months ago) did i  realise my love for it. It is hugely pale, and i cannot just swipe it on and go (i look like a corpse), i have to lightly dab it on and then pat it with my fingers to blend it slightly. I only ever use a tiny amount of Myth because i dont like that ihavenolipsbecauseicoveredtheminfoundationandconcealer look... wow that was a mouthful. 

Freckletone is a warmer version of Myth, maybe two shades darker? When you look at the bullets side by side (for some reason i didnt photograph this comparison....) there is hardly any difference between the two aside from the two being different warmths, myth is significantly cooler, whereas Freckletone is much warmer and therefore works with a much wider variety of skin tones.

I tried to take a photo to get the colour as similar as possible, but my camera just didnt want to co-operate and made it look significantly darker. If you know what colour Myth is, then Freckletone is basically a warm version of that (to give you an idea of what the lipstick bullet looks like colour-wise)

It's more beige/yellow toned irl

The lipstick is in a lustre finish, so it has a lovely natural finish, a slight glossy finish and on your lips it feels like a lip balm. The application of the lipstick is very smooth, it doesnt drag at all, but glides on smoothly. Because it is a lustre it is slightly less pigmented than say a matte or amplified finish lipstick, but this does mean that you can build it up quite nicely. I really do like this lipstick, but because my lips are quite pigmented it doesnt really lighten them that much, instead it works with my lip colour to create a beautiful orange/peachy colour. 

Swatched

And on the lips, im sorry the quality isn't very good, my camera ran out of battery so i had to use the crappy ipad camera, which is such bad quality... also the angle makes me look like a lollipop - my giant head.

This lipstick smells lovely as well, as with all mac lipsticks, however i had never really noticed it before, and then of course when i did notice that this one smelt and thought 'hmm this must be a new thing' i did indeed go around sniffing all my mac lipsticks. Turns out, no, it is not new.... Just me being hugely unaware. Of everything.

Anyway i hope that was useful for anybody who is thinking of getting this lipstick!

Ciao, 

Lauren xoxo

NYX Blush in Taupe

Highlighter

Heyy guys, i realise i have been posting TONS tonight! Blogging seems much more interesting than uni work right now...

I've been looking for a really good highlighter recently and after watching Lisa Eldridge's top drugstore products, i wanted to sample the No7 Skin Illuminator, and with a £5 boots voucher and £5 No7 voucher it only cost me £1! I got the pink one, not the peach one, the pink one seemed to highlight my skin better, the peach one seemed to act more bronzy rather than glowy....

After reading a few reviews on the boots website i learnt to remove the brush in order to expose the squeezy nib, which apparently means you get a lot more product for your money, as the brush seems to suck up a lot of it..

Pull off the bristles and you get a much more precise tip! Also love the twisty locking lid so you don't squeeze some out accidentally in your makeup bag!

Lightly spread over my hand

Rubbed into my skin, very highlighting, but doesn't look glittery which is great.

Also how cute is this little ceramic bird my mum bought me!?

XO Lauren

Lipsticks

The first lipstick is actually one that i won from Special K! Its a red lipstick from MaxFactor and its in the shade Ruby Tuesday. Its a bright red, but its a more wearable shade than most, i believe it retails for around £7.99 i believe?

This is the packaging:

A nice golden tube, also i like how you can see the colour at the bottom :)
HOWEVER, it does feel rather cheap, but very light so good for travel.

please excuse the 'used-ness' of this photo :P

On my lips - I'm not entirely sure why my lips look so big in this photo!? They don't look so large IRL....

The next lipstick is by YSL, i thought i would treat myself to a little birthday present (you know 'To Me, From Me x')

Also, i had £10 worth of points on my Debenhams Beauty Card so this lipstick was £13.50 instead of £23.50 still pricey though! I do, however, absolutely LOVE this lipstick, but there is one downer, it tastes vile! I would expect for a £23 lipstick it to taste at least a little better!!! Come on YSL, work on it!

The shade is Blond Ingenu 24, I actually heard about this in an interview Grazia did with Lana Del Ray, I've always been a fan of her makeup and when she mentioned this i thought i would look into it. To be honest, if i hadn't had the £10 on my card I'm not sure i would have bought it, there are many other brands that match the quality for much less money!

This is the packaging, its absolutely lovely, nice and heavy, feels like good quality, and you can use the lid as a mirror if you're applying it on the go!

Wearing Blond Ingenu 

A swatch of both lipsticks for comparison, the YSL one is a much more sheer lipstick.

The packaging is really lovely 

Again sorry for the used lippy! haha

xo Lauren