Gotta catch 'em aaaaaaaaaaaaaall!

I used to LOVE Pokemon. I discovered it on some obscure cable channel before it hit big in the UK, and I felt like the shit for like, two years because I discovered it first. I had a truckload of cards, including loads of Japanese ones, books, toys, posters, and I would watch it religiously.

So, I decided to do pokemon nails.(I can almost guarantee explaining myself 10,000 over the next couple days.) Really simple pokeballs on most of the nails- I used a crappy, gooey old black instead of my newer one and the only red I have is from those striper/pen polishes and its not very opaque. So they suck. But look at my Pikachu! Yaaaaaaay! Ok, the cuticle area is a bit screwed up, but my white is also gooey and gross. Mostly I wanted to show this to you guys because I bought some nail brushes from eBay and the postman popped them through my door today. They were super cheap and so far, I'm loving them. I got fifteen for 99p and £1.99 shipping.







I was expecting them to be super cheap and nasty. And yeah, they are cheap, but they're not nasty. I know £3 seems like nothing, but really, I'd rather spend ten times that amount on a good product than waste my money on a shitty one. They come in a pouch and they all have a plastic tube over them to protect them, except the fan ones, which is great as all my nail stuff currently lives in a cardboard Disney box on my living room floor.

So you get a couple striper brushes, a dotting tool, two fan brushes (wtf do you use these for?) some angled brushes.... really everything you can think of. I'm not sure how long they'll last, but they were £3! I've been using the pens on my pen/striper polishes (which I got as a gift but you can get them really cheap on ebay too) but I want to use more colours, and the polish does seep out of the pens which is a pain in the ass. And unlike the striper pens, there aren't any stray hairs on these brushes to mess up your lines. One con is that the ones I've used are stained already, but this doesn't bother me personally.

I've never used nail brushes before, so I don't know what I'm really looking for specifically, or why they should be any different to regular paint brushed. But I am liking these and hopefully I can show you all some pretty nail art once I get the hang of them. Though my boyfriend wants me to do velociraptors next... :S

Love and kisses,
Robyn xxx

Late to the Party

So I FINALLY saw Avatar last night at the IMAX cinema at Waterloo. It was amazing! The CGI looked so amazing, it was like looking at the future - can you imagine when all films are that good? I was amazed at how realistic it was. If you haven't gone to see it yet, then do. It basically *is* Pocahontas, but even though the story has been done before, its still a good tale.

Even though the IMAX was brilliant, getting home at half past five in the morning from the cinema and having to get up five hours later for a ten hour shift means that doing Avatar inspired makeup is probably not the best idea:





I think it turned out a bit poopy, although my boss said she liked it! Nothing on Anastasia from Lipstick and Lightsabers Avatar look. I really should have spent some time on it, rather than trying to take pictures of it and also get out of the door. Also, Note To Self: Put mascara on before you take photos.


Anyway, I just used the blues from Sleek Sunset and Original,(whoever said people with blue eyes can't wear blue eyeshadow, you are clearly a very silly person) with Barry M white kohl eyepencil for the dots. I wish I had some white pigment, as this would have looked soooo much neater. The pencil made it very blobby and I didn't have time to clean it up. My mascara is Loreal Telescopic, which I don't think I'll be purchasing again. I am not blessed in the lash department, and I need a bit more oomph. The light blue 'wiggles'' which I realise now should probably be darker, were done with a super cheap metallic eyeliner from Primark! I got this blue colour and a gold, and they were 50p each! 50p! The brush on them is terrible, but for 50p, the product is very good indeed. For higlight I used one of those white eyeshadows that turns a sheer blue, which is a loose pigment from NYC. It was £2 and is very pretty if not that pigmented.


I also did Na'avi nails! Again, I should clean up my mess before taking pictures, but they look pretty good, and quite subtle in my opinion:




You only get one nail because they were messy, and I could not take a good photo!There's a lot more difference in the blue tones in real life. I did a white base coat, and painted the outer edges of my nails with a navy blue. I then sponged a light blue colour over the dark colour, leaving the white coming through in the middle. (These three colours were Barry M Nail Paints.)I then painted a shimmery blue colour over the top, and used striper pens for the dots and stripes.



On another note, the MUG Lady Gaga challenge? I'm all over that like Marmite on my toast. I have a killer idea, and need to go to Camden to get some lashes and maybe contacts. I just don't think I have the skill to execute it. But I'm going to try anyway!

Thats enough from me, I have a burrito to finish.


Love and Kisses,

Robyn xxx

P.S: Look out in Superdrug for cheap Gosh stuff! In a couple of my local Superdrug shops there's been stuff for £1! I got a white shimmery single eyeshadow, and two Effect Powders (in Pineapple, which is a pineapple-y yellow and.... er, another one in a taupe shade) and a few nail polishes to boot. I'm such a cheapskate, I will buy ANYTHING for a quid.

Sleek Divine Eyeshadow Palettes: A very long and boring review and swatch post

If you haven't heard the buzz about these, you probably don't live in the UK. Sleek is a UK based drugstore brand that (originally) caters for darker skinned ladies. Their 'iDivine Mineral Based Eyeshadows Palettes' come with twelve pressed eyeshadow palettes each and cost a few pence less than £5, and each eyeshadow is about the size of a 20p coin. I will admit, I have no idea what mineral-based means. Are they mineral or not? Personally, I don't care if something is mineral or not, I care if it is pretty or not.

There are four Palettes permanently in the collection, and these are Storm, The Original and Sunset, all of which I own, and Acid, which I don't. I think Chaos may be permanent too, but I can't usually find it in Superdrug. They usually have a limited one, currenty this is the Bohemian palette, (which comes in a white case as opposed to the matte black) which I will be buying soon. Maybe I'll pop along and get it today :D Other discontinued ones are Safari and Curious. As I mentioned, they're available at Superdrug, sleekmakeup.com and some hair and beauty stores.

All the below pics are without flash, and all the swatches are on bare skin, though I always wear them over Urban Decay Primer Potion. I just did a couple of swipes with each shadow, as I didn't want to pack them on and make them seem more amazing than they are. Hence, the pics do not do justice.

The Original:



L-R, Top-Bottom, you have: Matte Black, shimmery purple. shimmery navy, shimmery blue, shimmery aqua, shimmery khaki-ish green, shimmery light gold, shimmery pink, shimmery pink-bronze, shimmery copper, shimmery bronze, and shimmery olive.





Pretty! I really think that this palette has something for everyone. The blues and green are so beautiful in this palette, particularly the bright blue. If you're normally a natural kind of girl, and want to try a bit of colour without going too crazy and spending a lot of money on something a bit more adventurous, this is a perfect palette for you.

As you can probably tell, apart from the black, all the colours in this palette are shimmery. Most of them have a lovely smooth texture, but the light gold has a very odd, slightly chunky sort of texture. This is a shame because that means this palette doesn't have a great highlight colour. Its not horrendous though, and its certainly workable. Its just that I'm lazy - I normally apply my highlight colours last, and can't be bothered working at a shadow when I've done the majority of my face already.


Storm:


L-R, Top-Bottom you've got shimmery light brown, shimmery vanilla, matte latte sort of colour, shimmery gold, shimmery bronzey peach colour, shimmery plum-bronze, dark shimmery brown, shimmery gun-metal blue, shimmery dark blue-green, shimmery dark navy, matte dark brown and matte black.





As you can see, this is the more neutral palette that Sleek produce. If you can't wear crazy colours because of work or school, this is a great palette. I've made some lovely darker looks with this, however - the three blue shades together look amazing - so don't write it off as boring. I nearly didn't buy it because of this, and I'm so glad I did.

When I first got this palette, I thought the darkest blue and the peachy colour were the same as the dark blue and the pale pink from The Original. They're not! They are a little similar, but I think this is actually a good thing. If you have a couple of these palettes, you have more choice, more colours that go together, more colours to use to blend, etc.

I don't have a problem with the texture of any of these, and the second colour in the top row makes a lovely highlight. You can see from the lower row of swatches though, that they're quite soft, and with the darker colours you can get a lot of fall out. I don't really care, you might. They're not glittery, and if I do get fallout, it wipes off quickly with a baby wipe and doesn't leave any shimmer behind. The matte colours, particularly the light one, are a little hard to work with, though the quality of the black is great. As with all of these palettes, its nice and pigmented and blends well over/under the other colours.

Sunset:



L-R, Top-Bottom, matte black, shimmery red, shimmery reddish-orange shade, shimmery orange, shimmery gold, shimmery bright blue, shimmery plum, another shimmery reddish-prange, shimmery copper, shimmery lgiht bronze, shimmery light brown, shimmery lgiht pink.





OMFGILOVETHISPALETTE. Not for the faint of heart, huh? These pictures do not do the colours justice. The red and orange are so, so, so beautiful. WOWZA. I mean, the red is freaking amazeballs, and when I hit pan on it I am literally going to weep.


Two of the colours in here are reeeeeeeeally similar though, the colour on the right and the colour underneath the red only have a subtle difference. This doesn't bother me particularly, though I wish they'd scrapped one for another higlight colour. The pink is nice if you wear the red, but if you've got a lot of the orange or blue on, I think a light gold woud have been nicer.

Again, I thought there were some duplicate colours in this palette. The top right hand colour in the Storm Palette and the bottom left hand of Sunset are VERY similar indeed, but they're not the same colours. The Storm is darker. I also thought the blue from Original was the same as the blue in Sunset, but the one from sunset is much brighter. This might piss some people off, and yeah, perhaps I would like some more original shades. But you get twelve in a palette, so a couple of almost-dupes is a small price to pay.

The chunky texture crops up again in the Sunset palette:



See what I mean? The texture of the two colours on the right are kind of wierd. Again, its not the worst, but it always seems to be the lighter colours. Its just these two colours though, and luckily they seem to be the ones I use least!

Why I don't own Acid:

Acid, as the name suggests, has acid-bright colours.




Pretty huh? Unfortunatley, there are a lot of mattes in this palette. And the mattes are the bright, acid colours. And the mattes SUCK. They're really hard to work with. if I had a white, creamy base (which I will soon!) maybe they'll be good. But I don't want to spend the money on it yet. There is a silver and some lovely blues which are shimmery, so I do want this palette. I just don't want to get it yet. I also bought a while ago (and threw away) the Chaos palette, which I picked up by mistake.



(Pics are from www.sleekmakeup.com.) This was also mostly mattes. I don't know if they were less pigmented, or if it was the fact mattes in general are a bit crap and I was even worse at make-up then than I am now. The white and yellow made me really sad. Still, with a better base maybe...

A Look!

Phew. Are you still with me? This post is taking me about a decade!






Thats a little look with the red shades from the Sunset palette. (Note to self: clean fallout before taking photos.) It looks prettier on, but I suck at taking pictures. If you want to see more Sleek looks, go on YouTube. Or if YOU have sleek looks, leave a comment with a link, I wanna see!

And finally...

Pros:

-Price: Less than a fiver. AMAZING.
-Pigmentation is AMAZING.
-The range of colours in each palette is great, so you can get a lot of looks with each one.
-Lots of complimentary colours across the palettes
-Each palette comes with matte black, which is super-useful
-The palettes are nice and slim, so they fit in a make-up bag eaily, and look and feel more high-end than they are.
-We get to have them, and America gets to pay horrible shipping charges if they want to have them >:D Tee hee.
-They come with a nice, big mirror. I normally do my make-up using these mirrors, even when I'm not using these shadows.

Cons:

-Eyeshadows are very soft. None of mine have broken, but they do make the mirror a bit messy, which can be a pain in the arse.
-Some of the eyeshadows have an odd, chunky texture
-The mattes are a bit crap.
-Majority of palettes are mostly shimmery colours.
-Often there is no good highlight colour
-Applicator that comes with it is useless. I hate sponge applicators, and these soak up a lot of the product.
-Some colours are very similar indeed


Would I repurchase?

Hell yes! They are amazing value. If you're a make-up beginner and feeling a bit lost, go and buy these, now. Go on. Off you pop. Actually, just go and get them anyway.

Love and Kisses,

Robyn xxx


P.S. I suppose I should say I bought these with my own money, bla bla bla, but really. I have seven followers. Who the hell is sending me free stuff?

P.P.S For those of you that follow me, thankyou! I wasn't expecting to get any followers for a looooong time, so it means a lot :)

LOTD: Pink and Grey

Ok, so this is yesterdays look. Today I'm wearing orange with brown in the crease and a purple glitter cat-eye liner, but it didn't turn out quite how I wanted it, so no picture for you. Anyway, yesterdays look was inspired by this MAC face chart:



It's Lady Gagas look from the latest Viva Glam campaign. I LOVE the pink brows and next time I go clubbing or dancing I'm going to try this, coloured brows are so fun, and you can keep the rest of your make-up simple. I normally just mix pigments with water, colour in my brows, and add a lick of clear mascara, but I have bum-fluff blonde eyebrows, so its not difficult for me.

I wanted just to do the pink and grey, which I think is a gorgeous colour combination. I'm trying to make an effort to use my 120 palette a lot more than I have, but I'm finding it difficult as the colours seem really hard to blend. I tried to blend the pink and grey together with a brown, but it felt like the brown just wouldn't apply. Its really hard to layer these shadows and I had to use a black from one of my Sleek palettes in my outer V as the crappy black from the 120 just wouldn't co-operate. (Fear not, I sent it to bed with no dinner.) The matte colours in the palette are reeeeeally hard to work with, and I hope I get better payoff when my NYX pencils come. I still think the palette is great value, and I love the shimmers. Anyway, the look....








I suck at taking photos of my make-up! Flash or no flash? It's never representative. Still, you get to see me in my jim-jams, so I think thats a fair trade, no? I had to scrap the pink lips and brows because I was going to work but I think its come across very soft and pretty. I just did a nude lip with my Barry M lip paint in Golden Bronze, and a swoosh of Benefit 10 to give me a bit of a glow.


Theres two pics of my face because one is a (dorky) attempt to show you my nails. Zebra striped nails are so bloody easy to do, and look great. The pink nail polish is No 272, Shocking Pink, by Barry M, which I totally adore and is much more vibrant than my camera wants to pick up. Barry M nail polishes are a bargain, if you haven't checked them out before. They're only £3 each and the range of colours is fantastic. Its mainly creme colours, but they have some shimmers and glitters and the range is pretty consistent, apart from the yellow colour they have which takes about 59202847401 coats to become opaque. (I grounded it, and it shan't be watching any television.)

Thats enough yapping from me, swatches soon I promise!

Love and kisses,

Robyn xxx

Barry M Lip Paints

So for those of you who don't know (and where the hell have you been?! Leave the house once in a while!) Barry M is a UK brand who call themselves the "most colourful name in cosmetics." I'm in love with thier Dazzle Dusts, the loose pigments, but recentley I've bought a few of thier Lip Paints. I remember having the black colour back in my (bad) goth days, and a black Dazzle Dust. Needless to say I couldn't apply make-up to save my life back then - so much so that my DAD would adjust it for me before I left the house!

Anyway, Barry M has about thirty colours of lipsticks, or Lip Paints as they call them, though sadly most of them are not available in shops. Barry M is carried in Boots and Superdrug and normally they have around 10-15 shades, ranging from oranges, pinks, nudes and reds. I got all these in Superdrug for £4.25 each, but Boots nearly always has Barry M on three for two. Barry M ships worldwide, but the shipping is pretty expensive at £8.00 for countries outside Europe.

So anywhoo, here are the colours I have...

-No. 117 Orange: This colour is a bright orange/tangerine colour. I bought it for St. Patricks day where I paired it with green eyebrows and am trying to be brave enough to wear it out on a normal day!



Thats the website photo, and here it is on my lips:




I totally recommend a balm under this lipstick. As you can tell from the lovely skin flakes on my lips, its not the best for lips that are feeling a bit sorry for themselves. The forumla of this one is slightly dry, but as I hope you can tell, its pretty pigmented so I will forgive it. It takes a few swoops to become opaque, and it stains a teeny, tiny bit. But its orange, guys! I think it looks pretty fab. Also, I don't have it, but Barry M make a lip gloss in this colour, which would be fab on top or great for those who want to do orange but aren't this brave. I shall be purchasing it on pay day, it's amazing. :)

-No 136 Golden Bronze: This is a bronzed nude with what I think is a slight golden- rose undertone to it.







Nice, huh? This is a good nude for me. As its slightly metallic with that bronzey-rose undertone, its not too cool. The second photo is paired with Barry M lipgloss (ha, I totally typde lip glodd) in No. 2, which has a yummy chocolate scent, fyi. I have no problems with the application of this colour whatsoever, it is much creamier than the orange shade.

-No 129 Palest Lavender: A pale lavender! Shocking! You may have noticed that the colours on the Barry M website are not really representative. This one looks like its a pink shade:



But it ain't:



Waaaa :( I really, really wanted to love this colour. I had so many smokey purple eye looks in my brain ready for this. But it so hard to work with, and out of the five colours I have, its definitely the worst forumla. Its really sheer, hard to layer up, and as you can see, it goes on all streaky. Still, its only £4.25 and so its much cheaper than other lippies I know this has been comapared with, such as Mac Lilac Whip and Lime Crime Airbourne Unicorn. I *can* get this to look nice with a lot of patience and blotting, but not truly opaque. Serves me right for buying stupid lipstick shades because Lady Gaga wore one.

-No 141 Royal Raspberry. I LOVE this colour, and my boyfriend really likes it as well, so this has become my go-to 'sexy' lippy.






In reality, this is more of a berry colour, its a little darker than shows here, and a more definite blue undertone. It lasts pretty well on me, and reds usually don't for some reason. I think it's totally gorgeous, and because it has that metallic look to it, its really nice for giving a slightly modern twist on the classic 50's pin up look.

-Touch of Magic Lip Paint:



'TIS GREEN! Ha, its not really green, although they do carry a green lipstick. Its a balmy lipstick that turns a different shade of pink according to the alkali levels on your lips. Now, I'm always sceptical of this sort of claim - I think the alkali thing is a big load of bollocks, and that balmy, sheer colours will turn a different colour because people... wait for it... have different colour lips! However, whether this is cobblers or not is irrelevant because I love this product!



Thats right after putting it on. It looks like I have the rose Vaseline on. I don't have a comparison shot of my lips with nothing on them, but trust me, they are not very pink at all. And now once its 'developed':




It doesn't look like the biggest difference from the first picture, but my lips are a bright pink rose colour. Barry M promises that this lippy lasts for eight hours, and it does, but it's because it dries from a balm to a stain. Personally, I love it because I can pop it on and not have to retouch while I'm working. I don't find it drying like some stains and long-lasting lipcolours, but because its balmy at first, I do like to re-apply balm over the top as that feeling wears away fairly quickly. Basically, this is all I wanted Benetint to be .(Benetint, in case you don't know, is a cult best-selling rose coloured lip and cheek stain. In my opinion, it is total crapola. It's really runny and you don't get a great colour, also it's about £18, and you can get a dupe from MEMEME for like, a fiver. I love Benefit, but Benetint = bleh.)

So anyway.... to summarise:

Pros:

-A great range of colours. Some more out there shades for the cray-cray girls but some nice neutral and classic colours too.
-The price. £4.25 is pretty darn reasonable.
-The majority go on nicely, aren't difficult to make look nice and last fairly well.
-Don't have a strong smell, which is nice.
-Packaging is nice if fairly standard; matte, squared off tubes with the logo in gold.

Cons:
-The range is no consistent, but then, no large range of colour is.
-They're not all available in stores, so if you wanted something really mad like the blue or green, maybe £4.25 is a bit much to gamble on.
-The orange stains a little, so I bet some of the other colours like the bright pink stain a little too. I think this is a con, you may see it as a plus.
-Each tube only has the number, not the colour on it (apart from the Touch Of Magic.) If you're not very organized, have a terrible memory and/or a lot of lipsticks, this can be a pain in the bum. I have five of these and I don't know which is which.


Would I repurchase: 100% yes. I'll be getting the black, a peach and a bright pink in the very near future.

Love and kisses,

Robyn xxx

First swatches: BeautyUK Metallic Sparks Eyeshadow Pencils

These bad boys are metallic cream eyeshadow pencils are by BeautyUk, a budget beauty brand that is stocked in Superdrug (they don't seem to be on the website). I've never tried any of these products before as they looked too cheap to be any good. But, I was killing some time and was intrigued by these pencils as I wanted some bases for shimmery eyeshadow. I've ordered some NYX Jumbo pencils, but they are coming all the way from the States, and God only knows when they will arrive. So obviously I grabbed four of them. Each pencil costs £2.50 and has a little gem on the end to show you the colour of the product:





Cute, huh? And yes, I do have pacman nails :D So I picked up the copper/bronze, gold, silver/grey and dark purple colours, just because I thought they were pretty, but there are green and blue versions too. Also there were no testers (Why, oh, why is Superdrug so consistently rubbish?) so I was naughty and opened some. Anyway, here's what the pencils look like:





And now for the swatches! This is my first swatch picture EVAR, my light was way too bright! The pencil itself is on the left, and on the right are metallic colours from my 120 palette swatched over the corresponding colour, with the same eyeshadow swatched underneath to show you the difference:






The purple looks very taupey here, but in reality, its much more of a dark aubergine colour. The grey looks a little darker in real life, and the gold a little lighter.

Now, I have to say, the quality of these is amazing FOR THE PRICE and they are great as BASES. As you can see, they're nicely pigmented and all the eyeshadows look much, much more intense, apart from perhaps the gold, which out of the four is definitely the worst. The bronzey is the my favourite of the bunch as its so pretty, but peformance wise, the copper, grey and purple are equal. The gold kind of sucks, though. It creased on my lids after a couple of hours (although I have only worn it under the gold from my Sleek Original palette, which foils anyway and that may have contributed) and it definitely made the least amount of difference to the shadows I swatched, but that could just be the choice of shadow. The gold also has glitter in it, which I'm really not looking for in a base. But one out of four ain't bad, and the bronze would probably show up gold colours fairly well. All the colours blend well, don't drag on the eye too much, and apart from the gold, when used over a primer and set with an eyeshadow, they've stood up pretty damn well to a hot, busy waitressing shift!

Heres a super super quick look I created with the purple on the top lid and the silver underneath. The eyeshadows on the top lid are from the 120 palette and the bottom colours are from the Sleek Storm Palette. My skin is terrible so that's why these are mega cropped. I like the finish the pencils give though, I didn't have to work at the shadows from the 120 palette much at all, and they can be a bitch to work with.








Pros:
-Really cheap at £2.50 each.
-Give a really nice sticky base for colour to cling to
-Blend well
-Nice and pigmented
-Cute packaging

Cons:
-Inconsistent. Some colours are better than the others. The gold colour did not last well on my lids whereas the others did, and its much thinner in consistency.
-The pencil tips break quite easily
-Pretty sure these are marketed as an eyeshadow. No way in hell would I wear these alone. They need to be set.
-No testers in store.
-The gems are really loosely glued on - pretty sure they'll fall off soon.

Would I repurchase?: Possibly, we'll have to wait and see until my NYX order gets here, and then I can compare the two. But for £2.50 they are definitley worth the cash. They're not stocked on all BeautyUK stands but I found them here: http://beautyscenttoyou.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=40&products_id=5193

Love and kisses,

Robyn xxx

Jumpin' on the bandwagon!

Everyone and thier dog seems to have a make-up and/or beauty blog these days, ,yet I felt I should get one too...I only want to write down what I muse about all day anyway!

I want this blog to be for girls like me. We love make-up, but perhaps we're just getting started. Maybe we can't afford high end stuff and want to know how to get the best for our cash. Maybe we want to know that no, we are not the only girl in the world who overplucks thier eyebrows and can't blend for crap.

So I'm going to try and swatch and review lots of budget brands to get the best for your money. I'll have a lot coming from Barry M, NYC, NYX, BeautyUK, 120 palette, etc. Also I really want to show looks from YouTube tutorials because it can get really frustrating watching a video and seeing a really skilled guru with lots of high-end goodies and feeling you'll never get anywhere before you've even started!

Love and kisses,

Robyn xxx