MUA lipstick

Since everyone has been banging on about MUA, I decided I needed to give it a try. I saw a swatch of this lippy on another blog (sorry I cant remember where it was) and I thought it looked just up my street, so off I popped to Superdrug.

This is MUA lipstick from the regular range in shade 7. My only real complaint about this lipstick is the shades just being named by number, I much prefer each colour to have a name.
The colour is a red/coral with a slight shimmer.
The formula is lovely and hydrating, and really really impressive for a lippy costing only £1. Not too matte like other cheaper lip sticks *cough* Barry M *cough* but gives a really good pigment.

I'm not 100% about the slight frosting, but that's a personal thing from years of wearing silver frosted lipstick in my teens haha! All round a great range for people looking to try new colours.

Sleek Aruba

I'm not going to tell you about the Curacao palette, becasuse the world and his wife has swatched it and obviously I'm going to love it so bla bla bla. But I am going to show you some piccys of another item from the collection that people aren't so sure about.... The Aruba blusher.

I really like the formula of these blushes, they are powder, but not overly talcy, and they have the most insane pigment, a little goes such a long way. Now I've seen alot of people descibe this as "coral".... come on folks, I know that coral is a little bit more 'pretty' explanation but this blusher is down right ORANGE and lets not kid ourselves.

This swatch is applied heavily on the bottom and blended slightly on the top.

And here is what it looks like on me...

Really love this.... you do have to be careful in the application, a little too much and it can look like face paint/ oom pa lumpa skin.... but coral is the new pink and now orange is definitely the new coral!

I do love abit of scandal

So on the very last day of my holiday I managed to finally find a Sephora in Hawaii. I waited out side for 15mins for it to open very patiently and ran in (not an exaggeration) when the doors opened. After all that it turned out ALL the things I had selected online for WEEKS before my holiday were out of stock.....NOT....BEST...PLEASED!

To be honest, I'm not mad, Sephora can actually do no wrong in my eyes. Its what heaven will look like in my eyes. I especially love that they have their "Sephora loves..." sections on the ends of aisles, and that is where I found the new member of my mascara draw.

Look at this packaging, it might as well have "Liv buy me" written on the front. This is 'Fairy drops' mascara called Scandal Queen, and it was described as best for Doll like lashes, well how could I resist.

Here's what its says

"This do-it-all mascara is blended with fiber to give you lush, doll-like lashes. The unique brush catches even the tiniest lashes, defines, lengthens, and provides all-day curl."

It also contains 5 kinds of treatment for lashes, Squalane, Jojoba seed oil, Panthenol, Hydrolyzed Collagen and Sodium Hyaluronate.

I am really impressed, I bought it really because I thought the brush looked really interesting, it looks slightly similar to the Dior show Extase. My lashes really do feel nourished after wearing it, the curl and length it gives is amazing (the photo below, is with no curling) and its stays all day. The colour doesn't flake or rub under my eyes through the day but its easy to get of with make up remover.
Its quite a tacky formula, which is taking abit of getting used to, sometimes it clumps up abit (like it did below) sometimes its really fanned out. The colours also great, jet black!
Overall if you have short or straight lashes I would really recommend this and although it was quite expensive ($24) the way the curl and length stays put all day is unrivalled in mascaras I've tried.

NYX purchases

When I was in Hawaii I had to check out NYX after I had seen a few bits on Adrienne Adore's . Here are the bits I bought. The jumbo lip pencil in 'Coffee' and this flat face brush. Although the brush is meant to be for foundation I have been using it as a counter powder brush, for which it works really nicely. The lip pencil is actually really really nice for saying it was some crazy cheap price. Its very creamy, and almost like a balm in texture, the colour is strong, but not so opaque that it looks like foundation.

The name 'coffee' is really misleading, its actually a light baby pink, with a slight peach colour.
Here is is on, I think it would look better if I was wearing heavy eye make up, because it is a very wash out colour.If you ever do a USA swap I would really recommend picking out one of these pencils, they had a HUGE range of colours.

We had been in the airport for five minutes ...

...and I already had these beauties in my duty free bag :-)

I got the Mac lipsticks in Shy Girl (left) and Vegas Volt (right). These are actually the first Mac lipsticks I have bought and I'm really impressed, although I'm not 100% sure I like the vanilla scent. Shy Girl is a brown based nude, with a slight peachy hint and Vegas Volt is a warm coral with a slight red hint.

Here is Shy Girl on me, I'm not sure what is wrong with me but I think I'm actually addicted to buying this colour lipstick, thankfully this one has enough peach in for me to like it on me.And Vegas Volt on me, it seems to look more red on me than other people but I really, really like this colour and I'm sure I'll wear it to death!

Sleek obsession continues

I'm a little late posting about these but I picked up the Monaco and Oh so special palette before I went on holiday and didn't get a chance to photograph them. So if you need one last convincing to buy them then here are my swatches (they are still available on the website).

Monaco:

And although its an awful drunken photo, and my best friend will probably never speak to me again, here is a look I did with Sand walker, Aqua Marine and Magenta madness from the palette.

I actually restrained from buying the rest of the collections, I'm a peach girl, not a pink... and definitely not a fushia

Oh so special:

I don't even need to rave about these palettes, I love every single one. I do agree with other people when they say that the quality of the matte powders isn't quite as good as the shimmers though.

And finally with a quote from my boyfriend.... "Surely there isn't any more colour left to make".... I go off to buy the Caribbean collection...

N('s)OTD, new essie colours

Here is the start of the bits that I bought on holiday! Two Essie nail varnishes in Trophy wife (left) and merino cool (right). I've never tried Essie varnishes before, but one of my fav bloggers Vivianna always raves about them so I thought I'd give them a try.

Trophy wife, is a pearl aqua greeny blue. Its not really the kind of colour I normal go for, TBH I actually don't think I even own a nail varnish with shimmer in so its quite a change for me, but I love it. I took a piccy while we were on a black sand beach in Hawaii!

And Merino cool is a mushroom brown/grey with a purple tone. The colour looks more true in the picture below than the top one!

Back to real life...

If you know me or follow me on twitter you will know that for the last two weeks I have been sunning it up in Hawaii with my family! and I thought before I talk about the RIDICULOUS amount of stuff that I bought while I was there I'd talk about the things I took with me.

Because of connecting flights etc I actually took all my luggage as carry on.... can you believe it!!!..... This meant that the horrible 'under 100ml' rule became my worst enemy, and I had to pack super light! Here are all the cosmetics that I took:

Now, I buy new products basically every single day so I think this packing actually showed me how little I actually use and what are my favourites!

For skin care I used Simple eye make up remover, Clarin's Gentle foaming cleanser and Benefit You rebel tinted moisturiser. To be honest I didn't really like the eye make up remover and the cleanser but they were the only things I had in miniature. The eye make up remover just isn't as good as others like Botanics or benefit and the cleanser wasn't really for my skin type!

I fell in love with my Chanel blusher/bronzer all over again! perfect amount of pink vs bronzer, perfect amount of shimmer vs matte, really worth the silly price tag!

I barely used mascara or concealer but I took Bourjois volume clubbing mascara and Mac pro longwear concealer in NW20.

Benefit bad gal waterproof liner, best waterproof pencil liner I've ever used and Benefit speed brow.

For the lips obviously the classic Carmex and YSL rouge pur couture, the lipstick I'm desperately trying to finish because I have never been so close to finishing a lipstick in my life!

And finally the only two things I need for my hair (considering I bought shampoo and conditioner while I was there) Frizz ease serum and Batiste!

What are your holiday must haves?