Pictures Of My New Storage

Okay, here are the pictures of my new storage to give you some ideas if you're in the market. I combined the individual pictures to make two collages of sorts. Hopefully it's clear enough to not need much explanation, but I'll add a few comments regardless.

Okay, as you can (maybe) see, my space for this is in my wardrobe on a shelf. This is great because not only is it all hidden away behind the door, but it's very close to my full length mirror. So I can basically roll my desk chair up to this lot in a morning and do my face in comfort. The only thing that's not so good about this is the lighting, as in there is none. Pain in the butt. Twisting my chair sometimes does the trick.

I keep other products here too, such as my bag of "spare" make-up (basically everything I don't use daily) and other things. I don't bother with make-up remover wipes, instead opting for Simple Baby Wipes (get a 4 x 80 wipes pack from Bodycare for £3.99 - absolute bargain!), which are great for me.

Also if you have combination skin I cannot recommend Garnier Pure A Serum enough. It's moisturising enough to eliminate dry spots, but not so moisturising it makes my skin oily. This product is also good as a make-up base. Perfect, right?

By-the-by, I wouldn't recommend this product for Oily Skin and if you have sensitive skin I cannot advise you as to whether or not this will be irritating for you as I don't have sensitive skin myself, so proceed with caution.

As for the draws, the top draw fits pretty much all the face products I need except blush , which are in the bottom draw with my essential lip colours. I tend to vary my lipstick from day to day, mostly switching between Benefit Silky Finish Lipstick in Jing-A-Ling and Gosh Darling. Both lovely, must have colours.

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

~Laura

Updates

Hey there,

So I know I said I would review the rest of my Topshop haul, but when it came to it lots of other things simply took over and I found I didn't have time. I took all the pictures and swatched everything in preparation. but by the time I got around to typing I thought it was much too late to retain any semblance of interest it may have once held, since the line was launched so long ago. I will say this, though. After a month or so of use I LOVE the highlighter, cream blushes and the eye crayon in Sun Shower (nothing moves that bad boy once it's on).

The crayon in jackblack however, was atrocious. It smelt terrible, had zero staying power and was far too creamy to do anything with, which did my head in because usually creamy = good, but this just fades to almost nothing but glitter. One touch and it looks like someone punched you then threw glitter at you. Not good.

As for my lip-plumper trial - the Dior Collagen Activ had little to no long lasting effects. My lips felt fuller for two hours or so post-app but then the effect faded. I did love the glossiness and colour of the product though, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Lately I've found myself considering alternative make-up storage after having found that I was spending a lot of time in a morning simply FINDING my products in my bag and putting them back, so I purchased these from Rymans: http://www.ryman.co.uk/0902336010/Osco-3-Drawer-Chest-Mini/Product.

These drawers are the perfect size to fit everything I ever use on a daily basis in them plus a few alternative products if I ever feel like changing it up. I split the draws into face products at the top (so I have my foundation, powder, highlighter, bronzer, concealer in that draw), eye products in the middle, including two Sleek Palettes (in the Sunset and Storm palettes - cannot recommend these enough, I'm hoping to do a product rave on these soon), mac blacktrack, a smashbox trio, mascaras, kohl peencils, basically everything I'll need.

The bottom draw contains pretty much anything else I use; so there're blushes, a dual sharpener, a nailpolish, lipsticks.

The whole set-up has made my make-up "space" (a shelf in my wardrobe) so much tidier, and it was a pretty cheap solution too. So if you were thinking of alternative storage for your cosmetics I would definitely recommend these drawers. Of course, I'm sure there are lots of draws like this out there so choose what you fancy, but I liked these metal ones in particular because they're easy to keep clean and glide in and out so smoothly. You can also see through the draws so you have an idea of what's in each draw, in case you forget (I did), which is handy.

I'm pretty chuffed with the set-up quite frankly *cheesy grin*, it makes me feel all organised.

I also keep the brushes I use daily in this now: http://www.ryman.co.uk/0901106020/Osco-Pen-Pot-Acrylic/Product. It's really sturdy, costs about £2 and the low front means I can put my kabuki brush in it and still have reasonable access to it. It's so much cheaper than getting an actual "brush holder". I mean, E.L.F are usually super cheap, right? So imagine my surprise when they wanted £5 for something around this size, which would have done exactly the same job. Psssh, not bloody likely sunshine, take a hike.

I'll post a picture of this set-up so you can see.

So, hopefully up-coming:

• Pictures of my new make-up storage set-up with labels to give anyone who sees some ideas, it never hurts.
• A product rave/ review of Sleek Make-ups £5.99, 10 colour palettes.
• A blog discussing my latest brush purchases including M-A-C and Louise Young.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this ^_^

~Laura

Topshop Makeup Review, Part One: Nail Polish and Cream Blush

Okay, so when I was ordering my Topshop cosmetics from the website I forgot to order these two, so they arrived separate from the others (and earlier, weirdly). Since today is Saturday I just wanted to write another post to get the Blog's progress rolling (no pun intended).

So here goes... The items that arrived today were the Cream Blush in Neon Rose and a nail polish in Nice 'n' Nude. I'll post pictures of the packaging and examples of the product.

Neon Rose Cream Blush, £6:

My first impression of this product when I opened the little box the blush came in was "pretty". Since I like pretty things I give a thumbs up to Topshop for the packaging, especially for the mirror that's on the inside. However, the mirror would be of little use if I didn't like the product; luckily I do.
The product is cream to powder formulation and has a matte finish, which means no glitter, pearlescence, shimmer or frostiness once on the skin (if you didn't know). It is highly pigmented but the shade name is much more fitting for the product when off the skin since the colour looks much more neon in the container than out, which is a good thing unless you want to look like an over excited raver. However as you can see from the swatch photograph the blush's lovely formula makes for a soft ladylike wash of rosy colour to the cheeks (not the garish orange it seems to be) and whilst the blush can be very sheer if you apply gingerly, the colour is build-able which is good for darker skin tones (it doesn't show up as much as I'd like on my tan skin, but when I'm back to my pale self it will be perfect).

Personally, I've always found that after my makeup is done my blush is one of the first things to go as the day/ night wears on so the fact that this product is in a little compact with a mirror, (upon which you are actually instructed to "dab on cheeks and blend") is certainly a huge plus for me. A blush with such a soft finish that I can just dab on and blend using only my fingertips is perfect, and it has good staying power, the only problem is that once you've blended it, it won't budge from your fingertips!

Another plus point is the versatility of this product. Depending on the shade that you buy you can use it on your lips either as a colour stain or to nude them out; you can even team with lip gloss and go. Also, though personally I wouldn't use a pink on my lids, I have a good feeling that the shade "Butterscotch" would be great as a lid colour/ base for your eyeshadow due to the high pigmentation of the product and it's consistency, which would just set right in and create a nice base like using a powder or a foundation. You could also probably use Butterscotch in some contouring, depending on your skin tone. It should be arriving at my house on Monday so I look forward to testing out that theory.

One of the few negatives of the product is that when I used a brush it took a good while before I was satisfied with the colour pay-off, since I didn't want to obliterate the product with a brush. So if you're in a rush you're just gonna have to get your hands dirty. So really there's only this and the fact that it doesn't show up too much on my skin as it is at the moment to moan about.

All in all I really like this product, it's good value for money so whereas MAC have their blushcreme to which these are comparable, you are saving £10.50 when you chose this product over theirs. The consistency and pigmentation of the blush is very good, and the versatility is excellent. It's just a shame I need to wait until my tan goes and carry hand gel-wash around with me, but I got so much more than I expected from this product and while I can't speak for the other shades, if Neon rose is anything to go by it's no wonder these blushes are the statement product of the Topshop line.

I give this product 4/5.

Nice 'n' Neutral Nail Polish - £5:

So as you can see, this "Nice 'n' Neutral" nail polish is neutral and quite nice, though I'm going to go ahead and just say that I think Topshop have been very bold to the point of cheeky by entering an area of the market that is already covered very well by brands like BarryM and Rimmel with a product that costs nearly twice as much as theirs. Maybe it's because I feel I could get similar results using Revlon shade 998 bought for £2.99 from http://www.cosmeticsforless.com/ (http://www.cosmetics4less.net/acatalog/info_5203.html, I am not working for them, this is just an example to prove my point).

Having said that I do think that this product is good; I just think it was cheeky to introduce it at this price. I feel that, as with the clothes, we are paying a premium for a product that we wouldn't pay if we could get exactly the same elsewhere, but, since we do really like the product, we begrudgingly pay the price. If it wasn't for the price I would have bought Parma Violet, Bee's Knees and Big Smoke - all beautiful shades that are simply too pricey for me to justify buying. You lost trade there Topshop.

Financial grumblings aside; I do rather like this product, but I don't love it. The polish is matte in it's finish with no glitters, opalescence, pearlescence or translucency when two coats are applied, just the standard polish shine. The formulation is rather thin, but it is pigmented so a little goes a long way. On a negative note I did find that if you scraped off too much excess on the brush before applying the polish that halfway through painting the nail it became kind of claggy and strange and I had to dip the applicator in the bottle again. Just something I noticed; it's a problem that can be over come by putting up with having a lot of product on your brush but you unavoidably and invariably end up with the polish on the skin at the sides of your nail. Nail polish remover pads are a must.

On the up side I thought that the colour was simply lovely and Topshop have got it completely on trend, as usual. I can't decide whether it's a beige-nude with pink tones or pink-nude with beige tones. In any case it looks more tan-nude in some lights and pink-nude in others. I would say it swatches more pink than it looks in the bottle, which was fine for me but someone looking for a beige may feel misled.
The polish also seems pretty "sturdy", didn't chip even after gardening wearing no gloves and only one coat of polish on my nails, which is always good and rather rare.

All in all I will definitely use this product now that I've bought it. It's very wearable and, as I've said, on trend. The fact that the product doesn't chip and will probably last a long time does ease my disquiet at paying £5 for a line's first stab at a range of nail polishes.

I give this product 3/5.

Step one: admitting that you have a problem.

You know that feeling, when you walk past that new mascara in Selfridges and you're dying to buy it, but KNOW you have plenty mascara left in your current tube at home. It's £25, but you still buy it after convincing yourself that you need it for when your already almost-full mascara runs out. Then you take it home and start using it right away anyway, leaving your old mascara forgotten at the bottom of your make-up bag until you unearth it six months later and think "crap, I forgot about this one!".

Yeah, this is me.

My name is Laura and I'm a Cosmetaholic.

I'm 19 and live in the UK where I study at the University of Nottingham. Unlike most students I don't spend most of my money on fast food and alcohol, but on make-up and cosmetics. Of course I don't really need to join some kind of support group because this obsession doesn't get me into trouble (I live within my means thus I pay no penance for my passion), but everyone has to have a passion of some kind and this just happens to be mine. Therefore, after watching countless Youtube haul videos, tutorials and reviews from many of the loquacious bloggers in the 'sphere, I decided to have a go at it.

On this blog I will be reviewing products that I like and have hauled as well as posting tutorial blogs using still shots and writing out instructions. I am NOT a trained make-up artist, so you don't have to take me on at all, but I won't give any advice that I haven't tried and tested. I will be blogging about what products I use, how I use them and what for; that is not to say that you should be doing them if you don't want to.

Everyone is different so please take this blog at face value.

I am currently testing Diors Collagen Activ lip plumper; the "treatment" lasts for 15 days after which time my lips should feel, quote, "rehydrated and restructured. lip contour is refined day after day." So I'll report back on my experience of the product in 13 days.

As well as that I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Topshop make-up.
Since I have spent the last two weeks in Greece and my local stores don't have the line, I've only just managed to purchase them. I have bought a nail polish, an eye crayon, a cream blush and the limited edition powder highlighter. I'm rather excited about the arrival of the products, since, after my holiday, I am rather tanned and wanted to try something new that would emphasise that fact (I am rather pale normally thus never get to flaunt a nice summer glow).

My order should arrive in a few days so I'll post a review and swatches shortly after that time.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this,
Laura.