Beauty Advent Calendar’s 2017

Okay so before you guys say anything, I know we’re only in the first week of November but I absolutely love Christmas and you need an advent calendar at the start of December right? So, I thought this post would be okay 😉. I’ll admit, I’ve never had a beauty advent calendar before because I’ve always thought that they were too expensive but this year, I have found some amazing ones for a reasonable price so I thought I would show you guys because lets face it, as much as we want a Jo Malone advent calendar, we can’t spare £300 for one!

 

 

Makeup Revolution Advent Calendar – £30

This calendar I have actually ordered myself as I love Revolution makeup and I just thought it was an absolute bargain as I know that I am going to use every single product. The advent calendar was £50 but it’s been reduced to £30 so get it whilst you can! It’s from Superdrug and you can find it here.

The calendar has 25 doors which makes it an even better bargain as some only have 12 days. In the calendar you get: 3x Baked Highlighters, 1x Bronzer, 6x Lipsticks, 4x Makeup Brushes, 1x Eye-shadow Primer, 1x Liquid Highlighter, 1x Travel Mirror, 2x Pressed Highlighters, 2x Strobe Balms and 1x Full Size Eye-shadow Palette.

 

Makeup Revolution Christmas Tree – £70

This Revolution advent calendar is a little more expensive but I had to add it to the list as it’s such a good makeup brand and it is sooo worth it. The Christmas Tree was £120 but it has been reduced to £70. This calendar is also from Superdrug and you can find it here.

The Christmas Tree has 25 doors and you get: 1x Bronzing Palette, 1x Brow Enhancing Stick, 5x Redemption Eye-shadow Palettes, 1x Blush Stick, 2x Ultra Strobe Balms, 3x Lip Euphoria Lip Glosses, 1x Ultra Bronzer Powder, 1x Amazing Curl Mascara, 1x Euphoria Eye-shadow and Contouring Palette, 1x Makeup Blending Sponge, 1x Bronze Stick, 2x Salvation Palettes, 1x Brush Cleaning Tool, 1x Blush Palette, 1x Bronze Shimmer Highlight Powder, 1x Highlight Stick, 3x Give Me More Lip Powder Lipsticks, 1x Due Face Sculpt Powder and 2x Salvation Intense Lip Lacqueres.

 

Tanya Burr 12 Sweet Days Beauty Calendar – £20

As you can tell from the name, this beauty calendar has 12 doors. The 12 Sweet Days Beauty Calendar was originally £30 but it has been reduced to £20. You can get this from Superdrug and you can find it here. The beauty calendar includes: Eye Shimmer Pots, Glitter Liners, Lip Glosses and Nail Polish. I personally have never used the Tanya Burr range but it has good reviews and for the price, it’s a steal!

 

Essie Nail Polish Advent Calendar 24 Day Christmas Countdown – £50

This beauty advent calendar has 24 doors. It was originally £80 but it has been reduced to £50. You can also get this calendar from Superdrug and you can find it here.

In the calendar, you get: 7x Nail Polish, 13x Mini Nail Polish, 1x Mini Polish Remover, 3x Essie Mani Surprises. This calendar also has 5 shades exclusive to the calendar. Even more reason to get it, right?

 

Lush 12 Days of Christmas – £67.50

I know for a fact that this advent calendar is going to be very popular, even at the steep price! As said in the name, the calendar has 12 doors and you can buy it from the Lush website here. The calendar includes: 1x Bubbly Shower Gel, 1x Never Mind the Ballistics Bath Bomb, 1x Golden Wonder Bath Bomb, 1x Plum Snow Bubble Bar, 1x Christmas Eve Bubble Bar, 1x Snow Fairy Shower Gel, 1x Christmas Cracker Bubble Bar, 1x Baked Maska Soap, 1x Christmas Sweater Bath Bomb, 1x Bucks Fizz Body Conditioner, 1x Sherbet Dip Bath Bomb, 1x Shoot for the Stars Bath Bomb.

 

Soap & Glory It’s a Calendar, girls! – £40

First of all, I love the name of this calendar – I’m easily pleased lol. You can get this calendar from Boots however, it’s all sold out!! You can find the calendar here for when it comes back in stock (hopefully). The calendar includes: 6x Body Wash Pods, 1x Body Buffer, 1x Hand Cream, 1x Foot Cream, 1x Primer, 1x Mascara, 2x Gloss Sticks, 1x Matte Stick, 4x Crazy Sexy Kohl, 3x Pillow Plumps and a pair of tweezers.

 

Sleek Makeup A Gift A Day Advent Calendar – £35

This calendar hasn’t got a lot of good reviews but I personally love Sleek makeup and I have a lot of their matte liquid lipsticks which are included in this advent calendar. This calendar has 25 doors and it’s from Boots. You can find the calendar here. The calendar includes: 1x Powder Brush, 4x Matte Me Lipsticks, 7x Twist Up Eye Pencils, 1x Mascara, 1x Dip It Eyeliner, 1x Glitter Eyeliner, 1x Blush, 3x i-Divine Eye-shadow Palettes, 1x Lip VIP Lipstick, 4x Matte Nail Varnish, 1x Eye-shadow Brush, 1x Angled Eye-shadow brush.

 

House of Fraser Beauty Advent Calendar – £20

This advent calendar was originally £25 but has been reduced to £20. You can buy the calendar from House of Fraser and can find it here. The calendar has 24 doors and includes: 1x Colour Couture Mascara, 1x Black Liquid Liner, 1x Red Lipstick, 1x Nude Lipstick, 1x Eyebrow Pencil, 1x Gold Glitter Liquid Eyeliner, 1x Silver Eye Crayon, 1x Champagne Eye Crayon, 1x Trio Eye-shadow, 3x Nail Polish, 1x Blusher, 2x Eye-shadow Dust, 2x Lip Glosses, 1x Nail File, 1x Funnel, 1x Kabuki Brush, star and sequin nail art and 2x Nail Stickers.

 

Let me know what ones are your fav or if you’ve got one that I haven’t mentioned!

 

Makeup/Beauty Tips – Part 1

I love love love learning new makeup and beauty hacks so I thought that I would share with you guys some of them. I’ll never claim that I’m a specialist and I understand that some of the hacks may not work for yourself but it’s worth a try, right? I’m just here to help some of you guys out and hopefully you can teach me some hacks that I didn’t know as well.. Team work makes the dream work haha! 

Rule number 1 which is the most important – NEVER sleep in makeup!! I’ll admit, sometimes it is the easier option when you’re tired but you’ll regret it a few days down the line when you start getting a breakout 😓.

2. Do your makeup before you do your hair. Make sure that you blend your foundation into your hair line so there’s no white patches visible when you style your hair.

3. Most people know this little tip but I thought that I would add it anyway – make sure your beauty blender is wet before you use it. This makes blending foundation easier!

4. Makeup has an ‘expiry date’ and this is shown on the back of the product. You should see a symbol of an open tub with a number inside – this indicates how long the product should be used for once it is open. For example, you may see 6M which means 6 months.

5. After putting your foundation on, get a thin sheet of tissue and put it over the area where you have just put makeup and gently blot over the tissue with powder. This helps to stop excess oil. This little tip also helps with lipstick to help it stay on a little longer.

6. If you can’t afford to keep splashing out on makeup, you can buy an eyeshadow palette that can be multi-purpose. You can use eyeshadow for your eyes, your eyebrows, blusher and contour for example.

7. To make your eyeliner and eyebrows more fleeky and neat, you can line them out with foundation and a concealer brush. This is handy incase you make a mistake when doing your eyeliner and eyebrows for example which saves you from washing it off!

8. To make your eyeshadow more pigmented, spray your eyeshadow brush with rose water or setting spray before you put your eyeshadow on.

9. If you got mascara on your face (e.g. on top of your eyelids or on your nose), wait for it to dry instead of wiping it off straight away and then scrape it off with a clean mascara wand or spoolie.

10. To reduce the amount of mascara that goes on your face by accident, place a small bit of card behind your eyelashes when you apply mascara or a plastic spoon underneath your under eyelashes.

Those are my top 10 tips – I will be doing another post with more if you guys enjoyed it!

Revolution Haul 💋

 

Surprise surprise, I was shopping again the other day and I just happened to accidentally stumble into the makeup section.. That’s what I told my boyfriend anyway 😉. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of your blog posts about the makeup brand, Revolution and many of you love the brand so I thought that I would try some of their products out as a I never have before!

I’ve been looking for a concealer for a while now that has a wand stick (is that what it’s called? lol) and for £2 in many drug stores like Superdrug, I thought that I would give it a go. The product comes in 6 shades but I wanted a light shade so I could hopefully use it as part of my contouring process and because of this, I was looking for a product that was easy to blend – which it was. The only down fall I would say about this product is that you have to do a few coats for it to come out thick and to cover your dark circles.. Well, mine anyway; I don’t get much sleep these days haha! But for the price of the product, I can’t really moan 😊.

I am a big big big fan of lip-kits purely because you get a lip liner and lipstick which matches and we all know how hard it is to find a matching liner and lipstick which compliment each other, right? I normally go for matte lipsticks so I thought that I would mix it up and go for a lipgloss and I ended up loving it! I went for the shade ‘original’ but there are plenty of others to choose from including matte lipsticks and metallic lipsticks. The lip-kits cost £6 which is a reasonable, especially in comparison to Kylie Jenner’s lip-kits. Even though I love this product, the gloss and liner didn’t stay in place for long but I don’t know if that’s because I ate a messy burger 😉.

Highlighters are my fav as it gives you unicorn vibes so I thought that I would add to my collection and buy Revolutions strobe highlighter which costs £3 – bargain! This highlighter has so much pigmentation in it that you only need a little bit on your brush which means it lasts for longer, right? 😉. I highly recommend this product.. Seriously!

Glitter GLAM

Who likes unicorn, magical vibes? ME! Who likes glitter? ME! Who likes festivals? ME!

As I’m sure you’re all aware, glitter has become the summer, festival trend this year and as you can tell.. I LOVE it. I really hope that this trend doesn’t fade out because glitter just makes you feel fabulous. Mind you, I can’t imagine everyone wearing glitter whilst eating their Christmas dinner but hey, we’re trend setters right? I’ll take one for the team 😄.

If you’re from the UK like me, you might be familiar with a show called Love Island (and if you’re also like me, you will definitely be suffering from Love Island blues lol). During the show, the cast got glammed up by The Gypsy Shrine for a glitter party and I had glitter envy towards everyone – they all just looked so fabulous!! So I thought that I would do a little post showing you guys how to get the Love Island girls look.

 

(photo credit: www.instagram.com/thegypsyshrine/)

Above is a photo of Montana and Amber at the Love Island glitter party and just look at them, they look amazing!

Montana’s look:

SHR x Unicorn Crown Face Jewel £10.00
Iridescent Candy Kiss Face Jewel £10.00
Rainbow Pink Glitter £5.50 (which comes in a 10g pot)
All in One Chest Piece £15.00
Silver Chunky Glitter £5.50  (which comes in a 7g bag, 10g pot or 100g pot)

 

Amber’s look:

Mix n Match Face Jewels £10.00
Gold Chunky Glitter £5.50 (which comes in a 7g bag and 10g pot)
All in One Chest Piece £15.50

 

As stated above, the glitter comes in 7g bags which is perfect for when you go to festivals and also in 10g and 100g pots which is perfect for your makeup sets! The glitter can go on your body like the girls above have worn it but it can also go in your hair parting to make you look extra fleeky 😉.

The Gyspy Shrine has an AMAZING selection of jewels and glitter and to be honest, I want to order it all 😍 .  Go and have a look at their website: http://www.thegypsyshrine.com/ as it shows tutorials on how to apply the glitter and jewels and advice on what to pair up together 😄.

 

☼ City Break Essentials ☼

Afternoon my lovely followers and hello to the new readers.. Welcome to my blog 😉

Now tell me, how many times do you go on holiday and say the dreaded words: ”I’ve left … at home” or ”I’ve forgot to pack…” – I know that I say it almost every holiday or trip that I go on 😌. So, I thought that I would help a pal out and do a little post on the essential items you need to take with you on a city break (well, I think they’re essential anyway 😃)

 

Backpack or bumbag

I’m sure all of us girls can agree that there’s nothing worse than having a big bag that gets in everyone’s way, right? Yet we ALWAYS insist to carry a bag no matter how annoying it is haha. Plus, our boyfriends have to have somewhere to put their stuff, right? 😃. I’ve recently just come back from Rome which is notorious for pick-pocketing like most cities so with that in mind, a bag which is hard for people to get their hands in is ideal 😉 and because of that, I think a bumbag is perfect! The name doesn’t sound too glamorous, I’ll admit but look at this beautiful silver holographic bum bag from New Look for £12.99. I also think that backpacks are so cute and fashionable so I’ve chose the Rose Gold Sequin Mini Backpack again from New Look for £15.99

 

Sunglasses

Hopefully you’ve chose a city that is sunny (if so, please bring back the sun with you 😃) so of course you need some super glam sunnies! A pair of glam sunglasses can finish off an outfit so it’s important to get it right but of course, they have to suit your face shape aswell as your outfit which is a challenge to me but hey, challenge accepted! I’ve chose a round pair of sunglasses from Missguided for £12 and a pair of oversized glasses from River Island for £16.

P.s. It was a coincidence that I picked two pink pairs of sunglasses but hey, at least they match the backpack 😉

 

Trainers

If you’re like me and LOVE sight seeing,  you need comfy footwear and even though I love buying cute espadrilles and sandals, they’re not suitable for a lot of walking but you know what are.. Trainers! (I’m getting excited just writing this, I LOVE shopping for trainers!). I am still obsessed with trainers with side detail on so I’ve chose a white trainer with bird embroidery on from New Look for £20 in the sale (bargain!) and some black trainers with bird embroidery on also from Topshop for £30.

 

Makeup

 

Some people don’t like wearing makeup in hot weather and to be honest, I don’t blame them but I’ve picked two of my fav makeup products which will make wearing makeup in hot weather more bearable  😉. Rimmel Lasting Finish foundation is my GO TO, I absolutely love it and won’t look twice at another foundation. This foundation just always makes my skin look flawless and don’t forget it, it’s got SPF in it too! I’ve also picked the Revolution Setting Spray which helps set your makeup. You can get both makeup products from any beauty store but in Superdrug, the foundation is £7.99 and the setting spray £5.00.

Now correct me if I’m wrong but I suspect that most of you guys take your lovely selfies on your phone? So what better accessory would you need than a selfie stick! I’m pretty sure most of you will own a selfie stick as it was all the craze a few years ago but how else are you going to get the BEST selfie with the Eiffel tower or the Coliseum in the background? You can get a selfie stick from pretty much anywhere these days. I’m even sure that there will be someone selling them on the side of the street on your holiday but save the hassle and buy/pack one before you jet off.. Trust me, they’re worth it! Whilst we’re on the ‘electronic’ topic, do not forget your portable phone charger!! There is nothing worse than looking on fleek and having a beautiful setting and then your phone dies.. What a let down 😞.

Ta-dahhhhh, you are now ready for your city break. Enjoy!! Take lots of photos and eat great food 😃.

Silicone Beauty Blender

I’ve been seeing these silicone beauty blenders all over social media and in beauty shops and as someone who LOVES a sponge beauty blender, I didn’t think they would be worth the hype. However, I decided to buy some to try them out and they proved me wrong!! (..that’s the first and last time you’ll hear me say that 😉 😜).

I decided to buy a pack of three purely for the shape of the blenders. I felt like if I was going to use them, I had to use them properly and not use additional brushes or sponges to get to the tricky areas like the side of your nose. These blenders have structure to them but they are easy to move around your face and get to the tricky bits.

There are many PROS to the silicone beauty blenders but the PRO that over rules them all, is that you do not waste any foundation.. Perfect!! If you have a sponge beauty blender, the sponge tends to absorb some of the foundation but with these blenders, no makeup is wasted. Another PRO is that it is soooo easy to clean which saves a lot of time and hassle 😃.. Gives us girls more time to take selfies that way, right? 😉. Because the product is so easy to clean, it is more hygienic lets say.

The silicone beauty blender can be used for all types of foundation and BB cream but it works the best with liquid foundation.

I bought my blenders on Amazon for about £3 altogether but there are many beauty shops around that sell them also. Different places also sell different shapes of these blenders so it’s best to have a little shop around before you buy.

Much love, Erin x

KKW X KYLIE

The Kardashians are no strangers to us all and we all know how much of a success Kylie’s makeup brand is. Kylie started up ‘Kylie Cosmetics‘ with her lipkits in 2015 and they sold out in the first minute of being online and her success hasn’t stopped!

Kylie works alongside her sisters often and the most recent collab is Kylie and Kim! The collab consists of 4 nude lipkits:

Kiki: Pinky Nude
Kim: Peachy Nude
Kimmie: Deep Nude
Kimberly: True Nude

The lipkits have a new creme liquid formula and they launch on Tuesday 25th April, 3pm PST only on kyliecosmetics.com

I absolutely LOVE the makeup on Kylie Cosmetics so no doubt, Kim’s line is going to be a success 🔥 especially as it’s a nude lipkit which is essential for every girls makeup bag, right? 😉

Much love, Erin x

*photos from Kim and Kylie’s Instagram*

Brush Egg!

So, I am not a makeup artist (unfortunately 😞) but I am obsessed with buying it and accessories to go with it! After hoarding owning hundreds of makeup brushes (.. I wish that was an exaggeration lol!), I was getting fed up with filling my sink up constantly to let my makeup brushes ‘soak’ and then rubbing them in my hand, so I had to find an alternative. Fortunately for me, someone had thought of an alternative before and created this little egg shaped beauty. This little egg shaped beauty is called… wait for it.. a brush egg!! Ha, easy to remember! The Brush Egg is open at the bottom which allows you to put your fingers inside it so you can hold it easily. The makeup cleaner has different types of ‘bobbly bits’ on it which helps get all of the excess makeup off of your brushes and are handy if you have different brush types or sizes! The Brush Egg itself is very easy to clean which is a bonus.. especially if you’ve been standing there for a while cleaning your brushes lol 😄. This lovely invention comes in different shapes, sizes and colours – You can even get one in a shape of a heart which is cute!

I bought this item from Amazon but it is available on other online sites and in beauty shops also!

If you love your makeup and your brushes, I would highly recommend getting this product! All you need is product, a bit of shampoo or brush cleaner, water and you’re good to go!

Much love, Erin x

Eyebrow’s on SLEEK!

I have been obsessed with the makeup company ‘Sleek‘ for a long time now and if you haven’t got an item from them yet, I really suggest you do 😉

I can’t be the only one who finds it hard to find the perfect eyebrow product, right? I’ve tried many products through-out the years and I have found some fab items at a reasonable price! So on my weekly shopping trip to Superdrug (other makeup retailers available.. of course 😉), I couldn’t help but stumble to the ‘Sleek Makeup’ counter.. oops. I have bought many products from Sleek but never an eyebrow product so why not?? Turns out, it definitely was the right thing to do! So, I bought the ‘Eyebrow Stylist‘ (imaginative name, sweet and simple 😉) in the shade ‘Dark’. The ‘Eyebrow Stylist‘ is double ended – one end being an angled tip pencil and the other end being a blending brush.. Two in one, great! Having a pencil with an angled tip is fab as you can use the thin side to sculpt and the thick side to shade. I’ve had this product on now for 13 hours and it hasn’t faded and doesn’t feel waxy either which I feel most eyebrow products do.

Overall, I would give this product a solid 9 out of 10 👌

Note:- The product comes in three colours: Light, Medium and Dark (sweet and simple again) and is priced at £6.49 in UK retailers.

 

Much love, Erin x