12 Days of Christmas - Day 1: Tan

For those of you who still struggling to find the perfect Christmas gifts, this is for you! Everyday from now until Christmas Eve I will be posting some of my favourite picks for this year's Christmas presents - all beauty related of course! - with a different theme each day.

Day 1: Tan

Stocking filler: NYC have a great range of cheap and cheerful (and generally damn good for the price too!) cosmetics - lately I've been drooling over their Color Wheels, a gorgeous collection of mosaic powders to bronze, brighten and highlight. The bronze shades are perfect for those who want a bit of colour, but don't have time to tan.

NYC Color Wheel Face Mosaic is available in 6 shades (shown here is Bronze Glow) from Superdrug for £3.99.

On a budget: Lauren's Way is the famous TOWIE tan - I've been hearing so much buzz about this lately! Apparantly this gradual tan can give you a dark bronze with one application. Great for your tantastic friends (we all have one)! Pair it with a couple other bits and bobs from the range and you'll have a DIY gift set.

Lauren's Way Gradual Tan (250ml) is available from the Lauren's Way website for £13.95.

Blow the budget: Fake Bake Original is a modern classic - it gives a great, flawless, professional looking tan. This set includes a bottle of the Original lotion (with applicator gloves) plus their amazing Passion Fruit Body Scrub and Skin Smoothie, a luxurious, sweet scented, dry oil spray. I have to admit, I don't tan very often, but I love Fake Bake's scrub and smoothie, and I think anyone would love to see this under their tree on Christmas day!

Fake Bake Original Self-Tanner Kit is available for £44.10 from FeelUnique.com and select salons (mine included!).

Let me know if you have any other suggestions! And keep your eyes peeled tomorrow for Day 2!

All opinions expressed are my own and I have not been paid to promote these items.

MeMeMe Beat The Blues Sunbeam - more Benefit dupes!

MeMeMe’s Beat The Blues illuminators are another of their infamous Benefit dupes. MeMeMe’s Moonbeam is a dupe of Benefit’s High Beam and MeMeMe’s Sunbeam is a dupe of Benefit’s Moonbeam. Confused? So was I – and I ended up ordering the wrong one!

For a while I’ve been searching for a cheap alternative to High Beam, a gorgeous pearly pink highlighter. When I heard some murmurings about Beat The Blues I immediately got onto Superdrug and ordered a bottle. Thinking that MeMeMe’s Moonbeam MUST be the dupe of Benefit’s Moonbeam, I ordered a bottle of Sunbeam – oops. So instead of my pink highlighter, I got this:

Left: Sunbeam blended. Right: dabbed straight on, unblended. Click for bigger picture.

I really wish I had someone with a good tan around to model this for me, because it just does not work with my pale skin! Sunbeam is a very shimmery, golden shade and I’m sure it would look much better as a highlighter for more tanned skin tones. On me…not so great.

There’s not much I can really say about this product. It seems to be good quality, with my favourite nail polish bottle style packaging and applicator, like the Benefit originals and MeMeMe's Poppytint, however the brush was already a little mangled when it arrived and has been in an utter state since. Sunbeam is very shimmery, so if you’re not into your glitter, stay away! And, sorry to repeat myself, but again, this is not for pale skin tones!

MeMeMe Beat The Blues illuminators are available from Superdrug for £5.25, and on the MeMeMe website.

PS: I've dropped some heavy hints that I'd quite like the High Beam dupe for Christmas, so expect a review of that in the New Year!

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and all products were purchased by myself.

NYX Doll Eye Mascara Review

The nevernding search for my HG mascara continues! This time, I think I've gotten pretty close. I recently bought NYX Doll Eye Mascara in Extreme Black Waterproof, and here are the results:




Doll Eye Mascara provided my lashes with some extreme length - in the last week I've had 3 clients ask if I'm wearing extensions! I was expecting, as the name suggests, more of a 'doll' look - very long and seperated - but I do find you have to be careful when applying this as it does seem prone to clumping, giving your lashes that nasty spidery look.

But the big selling point for me is the staying power. This mascara lasts all day, it does not budge. On Tuesdays my make up is applied at 4am, just before I leave the house. I got home at 10pm this Tuesday and my mascara was flawless, looking freshly applied, despite having absolutely no touch ups throughout the day!

Doll Eye Mascara is available from the NYX online store for £8.00. Let me know if you try it!

Edit 30/11: NOT waterproof! Not one bit, I am so disappointed. They seriously should not even be allowed to claim this is waterproof. Still pretty when it's dry, but don't waste your time getting the waterproof version.


All opinions expressed in this review are my own and all products were purchased by myself.

MeMeMe Poppy Tint - Benefit Posietint dupe!

MeMeMe are relatively well known for their Benefit dupes and recently I got to try them out for myself. I purchased Beat The Blues in Sunbeam (which I promise to post about soon!) and Poppy Tint - a dead ringer for Benefit's Posietint.

Poppy Tint is a cute petal pink lip and cheek tint. The packaging is very similair to it's Benefit counterpart - a nail polish-like bottle and applicator brush. This won Poppy Tint major points for me as I find this kind of applicator so much more effective with a tint. You get 10ml of tint with MeMeMe and 12.5ml with Benefit, but 10ml goes so far you really won't notice the difference.

The colour looks to me almost identical, both are dolly pink shades, great for brightening up fair skin tones like mine! Benefit's is a slightly lighter, bubblegum pink. Now, I've tried to take pictures of Poppy Tint and Posietint swatched on my arm but webcam & bad lighting = horrible pictures, so I apologize for the bad quality! Here they are:

Left: MeMeMe Poppy Tint
Right: Benefit Posietint

I tried and failed to get a decent picture of the two swatches blended but I did get a picture of me wearing Poppy Tint on my cheeks and lips:Poppy Tint seems to me to be slightly more watery and light so you may need to layer it if you want the colour to really pop (in the picture above, I am only wearing one quick layer). Also, as with any stain, you do need to blend it as soon as you apply, otherwise you end up with glaringly obvious streaky cheeks! This lasted all day on my cheeks (hallelujah! I can never get blush to last) though I needed to re-apply it to my lips halfway through the day.

This is one of my new faves, I wasn't looking forward to shelling out £24.50 for another bottle of Posietint and now I don't have to! Poppy Tint retails at £5.25 - bargain! - at Superdrug and on the MeMeMe website.

All opinions expressed in this review are my own and all products were purchased by myself.

Halloween pumpkin nail art

Okay so work/college/real life is totally taking over right now, I am so bad at updating! Until I have time for something better, I leave you with my freshly painted Halloween nails (apologies for the quickie webcam photos!):




For this I used

• 1 coat Sally Hansen Miracle Nail Thickener base coat (lifesaver for weak nails like mine!)
• 3 coats Barry M Nail Paint in Block Orange
• 1 coat 17 Glitter Top Coat
• Pumpkin faces on the thumbs were done with a basic black nail art polish (the kind that come with the extra thin brush)
• 1 coat Sally Hansen Nail Shine Miracle top coat

Anyone else doing themed nails this Halloween? Any excuse to break out the polish!