Social Icons

Thursday 29 September 2011

OOTD: Dinner Lady

According to my Dad, anyway. Thanks Dad. I wore this last weekend when I went to visit the folks.

dinnerlady1
dinnerlady2

Clothing:
Dress: Tups Vintage on eBay
Cardigan: Primark
Narwhal necklace, aka Neville: Callooh and Callay
Pumps: Primark


pinup


Face:
Eyes: Shadows from Sleek Bohemian
Cheeks: Almay blush in 130 peach
Lips: Morgana Cryptoria Vegan Lipstick in Twinkling Rubies (thanks Rach!)

The dress is 70's, but the shape and the collar does give it a bit of a wartime feel. I very rarely wear red because of my hair, but I thought this dress called for it so I went and raided Primarni to find a cardi. I'd check the shop I bought the dress from out if you're in the UK and in to vintage as she's got some lovely bits and bobs up there - this was only £18! Alright, still quite expensive for something that someone probably died in, but whatever.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Callooh and Callay: Amazing new indie jewellery company!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Lillian and her partner Claire recently opened a fabulous jewellery store featuring amazingly quirky acrylic pieces .From cute animals to Punch and Judy pieces, they've got some wicked stuff. I sat watching the clock until the store opened last Monday and snapped up my two favourite pieces.

Let's have a look...


calloohcallay1


Isn't the packaging lovely? It’s like old sweet shop bags! And I'm a sucker for stickers.

calloohcallay2

OK, the suspense is killing me now! *rips everything open*

jareth


....WHAT BABE?!
This beautiful creation is Labyrinth inspired. If I need to tell you more than that, then I'm not sure we can be friends any more. Sorry. My housemate at uni had an amazing Jareth necklace and I was so jealous of it. Now I have one of my own, hooray! More Labyrinth, please, Callooh and Callay!



neville 



And look what else I snapped up! Who doesn't need a narwhal with a beret on? (My fiance say it looks like a Cherry Bakewell but that's just as good in my opinion!) I've called him Neville, because alliteration is always acceptable. If you like cute, they have a beautiful ermine brooch and some lovely regal bunnies!
Lillian is a  friend of mine, so it's very hard for me not to be biased when reviewing her crafts becasue I'm very proud of her venture and want to pimp Callooh and Callay out to everyone I know! However, I can honestly say these pieces are great quality and you can tell a lot of work has been put in to them. The branding is really strong - the packaging perfectly matches the website and the business cards and little stickers are well done and are lovely touches. I know Lillian and Claire have supported indie companies for a long time and you can tell they know that the little touches really count when you're buying something online. I can't wait to see what else the girls come up with in the future and I know I'll be buying bits and bobs from them again soon.

                                                                                                                
Alright, I say soon, but I've already got this witch coming my way! Who are your favourite indie accessory companies? Any to recommend me?

Monday 26 September 2011

Disney Collaboration with Fierce Nerditude: Pinocchio inspired look

I'm not going to lie, this film scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. If you drink, you turn into a donkey?! What the hell?! Terrifying! At least Pinocchio himself is cute.




                                                                                                         
                                                                                                               Don't I look fucking stoked?


Eyes: All shadows from Sleek Bohemian, red liner Inglot matte gel liner in, blue liner Ulta in Ink.
Lips: Hardy Candy Glossaholic in Lush
Face: Benefit 10

Man, mascara smudges. My bad. I think I got the colours totally wrong... I wanted the focus on the yellow, for his hat, add some brown, because, you know, made of wood and all that jazz, and keep the colours in the liner but I think I went too dark with the blue and should have added some of the lighter blue and white. However, I think this was a fun look without being too in-your-face - I wore this to work!

I gave Vijaya Minnie Mouse to do this week so go and check out her look!

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Darling Girl Swatcheroo!

You know how it is. I buy stuff, I swatch it, I put it on t’internet. Today let’s have a butchers at some lovely Darling Girl goodies. Click to embiggen, please! Swatches are over bare skin on the top of the photo and over Pixie Epoxy in the bottom half. I figured I ought to do my swatches more consistently, because they're a mess right now. So if you see me *not* doing this, hit me.

newdgone1

newdgone2

L-R: Danceteria, Dark Heart , Jeweled Taupe, Keroppi. Both photos natural light.LOOK at Dark Heart. Are you looking at it? I mean… LOOK AT IT. I also got very excited when I saw all the glitter in Jeweled Taupe and Dancerteria. If you like Fyrinnae Dinosaur Plushie, you’re going to love Danceteria - it's in the same sort of family (I'll compare at some point - they don't look alike at all, but the level of sparkle is on the same level!) Jeweled Taupe is something very special. I didn’t realise it had quite so much glitter in it! Keroppi is a colour that’s been on my list to try to ages and looking at this swatch I think it’s going to get paired with Dark Heart pretty soon!

newdgtwo1

newdgtwo2
Peacemaker, Dream Scream, Faren Hite , Midnight Sea.

Midnight Sea is AMAZING. A beautiful blue-purple, I can’t wait to wear this. Dream Scream and Faren Hite were my free samples and Peacemaker was the GWP -  Dream Scream is part of the 2011 Hallowe’en line and is super cool. It’s a bright white with lots of red glitter and I think it’ll look really creepy packed on as an inner corner highlight! It calls to mind a mineralize shadow that was part of the very ill-fated Rodarte for MAC collection. Faren Hite is a wonderful bronzed pink which I don’t have anything quite like.

darlinggirlaudrey

Colour Shifting Liquid Kiss in Audrey.

Click to biggify, the green shift to this is beautiful!
darlinggirlraspberryberet

Holo Gloss in Raspberry Beret.

Damn Prince with your catchy tunes! This has pink and copper glitters in it and it’s sooo pretty. Very subtle but still funky.

darlinggirljaded

Holo Gloss in Jaded.

Hnnnnnng, it’s GREEN, you guys! It looks a little odd on it’s own, I'll admit, although maybe I would wear it with a smokey black, punched-in-the-eye-with-enormous-lashes look for a night out. I mostly got this for layering over reds and oranges. It’s pretty cool!

Well, that’s all for me for now, hopefully I can get some looks done with these soon. I was rollercoastering and filming videos and doing collaboration posts so I didn’t have time to do ‘normal’ makeup this weekend! How psyched are you for the Darling Girl Hallowe’en goodies! I AM SUPER PSYCHED. I'm also going to try and get my hands on some of the teeny-weeny lotions, because they just sound so adorable!

Monday 19 September 2011

Cookin' up some grub: Monday Risotto

My favourite thing to cook, ever, is risotto. It's so yummy and easy and it's one of those meals - in my opinion - that you can chuck all your leftover veg, etc, in and it'll still be amazing. I call this a Monday risotto because all the prep to make it yummy is done the day before when you do your Sunday Roast.

Ingredients:

-250g Risotto Rice
-Glug of good white wine
- Glug of extra virgin olive oil
- I large onion
-1ltr Stock *
-3-4 roasted garlic cloves *
-Big handful chopped chicken thighs *
-A few rashers of bacon*
-Your favourite veg - in this case I used peppers and courgettes because that's what I had lying around.
- A good grating of fresh parmesan/good quality mature cheddar

Serves 2 on it's own, or four with bread and salad.

*All these items are the left overs from your Sunday roast. When you cook your chicken, cut slits in the breast skin and pop a fat garlic clove in each one. Then chuck a few more cloves in the pan. Sit the chicken on top of a quartered onion. Bung some olive oil all over the poor little pollo, rub in some pepper and mixed herbs and cover it with bacon until the last half an hour of cooking to stop the skin burning. This is all going to give you fucking bitching stock - especially if you carve the chicken in the roasting pan and you'll get little meaty flakes in your stock. Use half the juices for your gravy for the roast and save the rest for your risotto the next day - add a veggie stock cube and some hot water and you're set.

Chuck the roasted cloves from the chicken breasts in your mash for your roast (I did celeriac and potato mash - nom!) and save the ones from the pan for the risotto/

We normally just have a chicken between 2 people, which means there is lots of meat left over the next day, so we used breast meat for this, but thigh meat - which normally gets left - is actually tastier and takes to re-heating much better. If you're in the same boat as us, we'll take the chicken legs, potatoes, carrots and onions we had left from the roast and make a soup on the Tuesday. Or we'll chuck it in a curry.

1. Dice your onion and roasted garlic and cook until the onion starts to go soft in a large non-stick saucepan.
2. Add your risotto rice and fry with the onion for about a minute.
3. Add a good glug of wine, enough to cover the rice. Drink some of the wine - this is very important. When the rice has absorbed all the wine, slowly start adding your stock, about a ladleful at a time.

Yeah. Check out that bad boy.

4. While your rice is ricing, fry up your bacon. If you don't like salty food... well, either skip the bacon or cook something else because your stock is really salty as well! Depending on what veg you're using and how crunchy you want it to be, fry up your veg as well. I like my peppers quite crunchy, so I fried them off just to heat them through.

Pictured: Pan of awesome.

5. Keep adding your stock. The key to a creamy risotto is to keep on giving it a bloody good stir - this supposedly knocks the starch out of the rice and makes it nice and gooey.
6. When you've used about 2/3 of your stock, throw in your veg that you want to be nice and soft. Keep on adding your awesome stock.
7. Your rice is done when it's al dente and it looks creamy. If you need to use more stock than what you've got prepared, you can make up some more with just a stock cube.
8. Throw in your meat and any pre-cooked veg
9. Divide it up into bowls, and grate your cheese over the top. I know it's sacreligious to put cheddar in a risotto, but I really don't care, it's yummy. Just make sure it's the good quality, crumbly kind.
10. Eat the crap out of that mofo!


I ate the crap out of this mofo.

If it's just the two of you, you're going to be full. If there's four, get in some lovely ciabatta bread and serve with a nice juicy salad. My other favourite flavours are  prawn, pea and chorizo risotto, or mushrooms with red pesto (sub the white wine for red).

Do you plan your cooking so you can get more than one meal out of your ingredients? Do you mind a random cooking post now and then? How the hell do you take pictures of food while you're cooking without the lens steaming up?!

Sunday 18 September 2011

Disney Collaboration with Fierce Nerditude: Rajah from Aladdin!

I’ve said before that I love Disney sidekicks, so I was pleased as punch to get Rajah as my character this week. If I had to have an extremely dangerous animal as a pet, I’d certainly have a massive fucking tiger. I gave Vijaya Yzama from The Emperors New Groove this week, which in my opinion is a very underrated and hilarious movie.

 




rajah1
rajah2
rajah3
rajah4


Eyes: Mac Gesso, orange and yellow from Sleek Circus, orange from Sleek sunset, metallic rusty colour from Sleek sunset. Lashes from eBay.
Cheeks: Bronzer side of Benefit 10
Lips: Morgana Cryptoria Bee’s Knees, Inglot Sleeks Cream in 93.


Apologies for my eyebrows… how did I manage to pencil them in without noticing how unruly they were? Time to buy some brow gel, methinks! I didn’t want to go to obviously stripey with this look but I couldn’t see how to get it to look tiger-y without doing so until I found these spiky lashes in my stash! I thought they’d do well enough to represent tiger’s stripes. They were being a right bugger, though, and just wouldn’t sit on my left eye. Ah well. I always like to do an orange look and though I wish I tried Arabic style liner I think it came out well.

Go check out Viyaja’s look now, thankyouplease!

Saturday 17 September 2011

Lip Mathematics: Back to School

Lip Maths inadvertently took a Summer Holiday! Sorry! But I’ve got new shoes (which aren’t as cool as the ones that I chose), a brand-new pencil case (with gel pens, thankyouverymuch) and I’m ready to get adding.

 

First up, let’s see if we can remember what we learnt last term. What does one awesome thing + another awesome thing equal?


nyx1


Nyx Lipliner in Pumpkin + Darling Girl Holo Gloss in Jaded =

nyx2

One awesome thing + another awesome thing = a really awesome thing.

A* for me!

Silk Naturals Fall Eyeshadow Swatches and Looks

Silk Naturals have a bunch of new stuff for Fall which I was lucky enough to try out. Today I’ve got a bunch of the new eyeshadow swatches to show y’all, and some looks I’ve done with them as well. All swatches are done over bare skin on the top and over NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk on the bottom of the photo. Let’s get crackin’!

silknaturalsgreens1
silknaturalsgreens2

Left to right, Kingfisher, Magpie, Nebula.

I find it funny that Kingfisher didn’t get named Magpie as it’s the exact colour of the sheen of magpie’s feathers! Kingfisher is a lovely light green-blue witha  gold shift – quite similar to Hi-Fi’s Slime and Snails, but with a more subtle shift. Very pretty. Nebula is an iridescent teal colour – very shimmery and pretty.

silknaturalsgreen2

silknaturalsgreen1

Here I’ve got Nebula on the lid, with Magpie in the inner corner, Nebula on the upper lashline and Peacock Cream liner (will do a quickie review soon!) on the lower lashline. I wish I’d done this over P.E or something stickier than UDPP, but if you enlarge you can see the lovely sheen to Nebula.

silknaturalsmisc1

silknaturalsmisc2

L-R: Roque, Swift, Checkered.

Rogue is described as a blackened teal that’s similar to Nebula with more of a golden gleam. I don’t see a whole lot of gold, though it is there and the finish is less iridescent than Nebula. I think this would make for a gorgeous green smokey eye with a black and purple! Swift is a medium, almost mossy green and is my favourite out of the three. I think it would look great as a liner with Chequered, which is a soft yellow gold that is really nice in a Fall collection. I don’t have a gold/yellow like that in my collection so I’m pretty happy with it!


silknaturals
silknaturals2
Swift on the lid, with Rogue in the crease and Checkered in the inner corner. Peacock Cream liner as a base on the outer upper lid. Loving Swift longtime.
silknaturalswarm1

silknaturalswarm2

L-R: Heat, Glory, Fusion, Hairpin.

I think immediately of autumn when I look at Heat. It’s a beautiful soft coppery orange which I can see being very flatting with my eye colour. Glory is possibly my favourite out of the bunch – it’s super glittery in real life and I probably ought to have swatched it over something much stickier. Fusion is described as a ‘dirty copper plum’ – it’s in the same family as Glory, for sure, but slightly cooler and obviously not as woah, sparkly. It goes wonderfully  with Hairpin (cute name!), a dirty sort of bronze (I’m so bad at colour descriptions!)

silknaturalstaupe1
silknaturalstaupe2

Glory on the lid, Heat in the crease with Fusion in the ‘upper’ crease, and Hairpin on the lower lashline. Not captured: Glory’s awesomeness.
All in all, I’m quite pleased with these shadows! For a Fall collection, I think the colours are perfect and there are some stunners in here – Kingfisher, Glory and Swift I can see myself getting a lot of use out of in particular. For those of you who know more about SN than I do, what do I need to try from them shadow-wise?

Thursday 15 September 2011

Quickie Review: Silk Naturals Cream Blush

Some indie cream blushes for you all today! Silk Naturals very kindly sent me some of thier cream blushes which I believe are new for Fall. (In England, we call it "autumn." We're very tricksy, us Brits.)


silknaturalscreamblushes

Interestingly, these come in a tube like a lip balm. At first my mind went 'weird!,' and then I thought... why is that weird? It actually works out quite well as you can just dab it directly where you need it, which is quite nice for on-the-go.  Fingers (clean!) are the best brush sometimes, I don't care what anyone says! If I'm off on a night out I do like to touch up my make-up and a teeny-tiny handbag sized blush is a wicked addition to my arsenal.

silknaturalscreamblushes2

Tickled on the right, Avalanche on the left.

silknaturalscreamblushes

Tickled blended out, Avalanche blended out.

Candy Apple on the right, Entice on the left.

silknaturalscreamblushes4

Candy Apply blended on the right, Entice blended on the left.

Tickled and Avalanche have a more creamy texture and finish, though Avalanche blends out more chunkily.  I'll be trying Tickled as a lippy soon! Candy Apple and Entice are more glossy - when you apply them on the skin, you get a more natural look. All of these apart from Avalanche left a very slight stain on my arm which came off when washing. I don't notice a stain on my face.




Candy Apple on the cheek. Hellllooo, pores and acne marks!

I was pretty impressed when I wore Candy Apple - it lasted from when I applied it around 8.00 and was still on and going strong when I looked at 3.00 that afternoon. I had powdered over it with my face powder, but I thought that was still pretty good for a cream blush nonetheless. My Inglot ones certainly don't last that long without fading noticeably anyway.


I've not worn Avalanche on my cheeks yet as I prefer something warmer normally, but here I've worn it as a brow highlight and think that will become it'll be regularly used as as it blends out to a nice sparkle - click to embiggen and see. I used to use Benefit Mr Frosty a lot for highlighting, which is ridiculously priced for what it is, and is in a big chunky pencil so you lose a lot when you sharpen it. Silk Naturals say this can be used over lipstick so I'll have to try that,

I've only used Entice under a powder blush but I will update once I've worn it on it's own. (I've not worn Tickled yet either, so likewise.) Before I applied the powder blush, I did note that I didn't look like I'd been punched in the cheek which is what quite often happens if I wear anything vaguely purple on my face. I still think this would be a lovely shade for darker skin tones, though.

What are y'alls favourite cream blushes?

I don't have to do a disclaimer, cos I iz English, but, Silk Naturals sent me these for review. If they were awful or I didn't like them, you'd still be hearing about it.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Inglot Freedom Palette– More Neutrals! Looks and swatches

I’ve been gorging myself on Inglot lately, not going to lie. Really good value - although not cheap - and lots of beautiful products to choose from… what’s not to love? (Apart from an awful website with little/no product information, and only one store in the UK...)

Last time, I went for a cooler neutral palette, with lots of mattes, this time I went for some warmer colours and a little more sparkle. You can read my thoughts on the shadows and Freedom System in more depth here.

inglotwarmneutralpalette

inglotwarm1

L-R: Matte 534 (light, slightly dusky pink), AMC Shine 20 (warm white-gold), Matte 368 (orange-leaning matte peach), DS 460 (sparkly grey-taupe), AMC Shine 37 (deep shimmery chocolate.)
inglotwarm2

L-R: Matte 330 (matte skin tone), AMC Shine 07 (warm sparkly gold) , Matte 337 (light matte cocoa), Pearl 405 (metallic bronxe) Pearl 402 (metallic taupe brown).

DS 460 is the mutts nuts, I’ve been wearing it a LOT a lot. It's a sparkly grey-taupe and it's beautiful. Matte 368 has been getting a lot of love as well - a lovely bright matte peach and it looks pretty good with my blue eyes, if I do say so myself.

I’ll run through the Inglot finishes quickly as I've not seen too much about them: Matte is what it says on the tin, no sparkle or shimmer. (Inglot mattes are excellent – pigmented and not chalky). ‘DS’ stands for Double Sparkle and is a matte base with lots of sparkle (though it’s very fine, not glittery. I only have one of these but I really like it.) Pearl is a metallic-like finish, but with no shimmer particles and AMC Shine is a more metallic finish with sparkle through it. There’s also plain old AMC,  which are a matte base with sparkles – less than with the DS, and perhaps they are larger particles but don’t hold me to that. ‘AMC’ stands for Advanced Makeup Component, and according to the store MUA I asked it just means it’s more pigmented, though I’m not sure than what, because the pigmentation across the range is very impressive and pretty  damn consistent compared to other brands. I’m sure each of these finished has a MAC equivalent, so if anyone could fill me in on that I will love you longtime.

Anyway, less yakky, more facey? K.

inglotpeach2


upsidedownafterwards

Want to know more aboot this looook and check out our super-dee-dooper new YouTube channel? Of course you do! Clicky!

inglotbrown

goldinglot

I’m sure I’ll end up with more Inglot shadows at some point but I think I’m set for neutrals now! Perhaps I need a blue and purple palette next? *ignores precariously stacked tower of Sleek palettes*

Have you tried Inglot yet? Do you like using palettes or do you prefer singles/loose eyeshadow?