Friday, April 28, 2017

Review // L'Oreal Colorista ~ Rose Blonde

Hey guys!

I thought I’d write a review today hopefully you’ll find it helpful!

My hair has been pretty pale blonde for a while now, which I’ve been really liking I went silver/grey for a while a few months back, but it was only temporary and soon faded back into blonde. I used to dye my hair bright colours quite a lot, so I found myself missing the colours a bit now, but not wanting to completely give up the blonde as my hair is naturally really dark brown, it’s been a long process trying to get my hair blonde, so I don’t really want to throw it all away just yet!

I’ve always had a soft spot for pink hair, so when I found the L’Oreal Colorista brand of dye in Boots, I knew I wanted to try one of the colours, and the one that caught my eye the most was Rose Blonde it looked all dusky pink but slightly metallic, and I fell in love with it, so I ended up buying it after a tiny bit of deliberation!



After having the dye for a while, I finally decided to act on the urge to dye my hair, so I reached for this one, as it’s permanent, so hopefully it’ll last longer than semi permanent would.

Unlike most other permanent dyes I’ve used in the past, this one doesn’t have a nozzle on the bottle, so you’ll have to mix it up in a bowl luckily, they provide a brush in the box! You get the colour crème, the developer cream, a brush, some gloves and of course, the all important conditioner to use once you’ve rinsed the dye out of your hair!

When I was mixing it, the fumes were pretty strong and my eyes were watering like mad I’m not too sure if it’s really potent, or the fact I dyed my hair while I was ill, but make sure you’re in a well ventilated space when you’re doing this! I also noticed that the dye looked like strawberry milkshake once I’d mixed it properly.



Once it’d developed and I’d washed it off, I noticed that it was paler than I was expecting it to be it turned out a very soft baby pink on me, but I really like the result! Mine also didn’t look very metallic, but luckily I was happy with the end result anyway! Here’s a picture of my hair colour before, and my colour after, so you can see exactly how it worked on me.

BEFORE


AFTER

Overall the smell and fumes were pretty strong, and it turned out paler than expected, but otherwise I really liked this dye, and I’d probably end up using it again! At the time of writing this blog post, it’s been about a week since I dyed it and I’ve washed my hair three times, it’s faded to an even softer pink but it’s still noticeably pink I feel like it’ll last another few washes at least.

Have you ever used the L’Oreal Colorista dyes, or do you want to? Let me know! 

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Monthly Favourites // April

Hey guys!

It’s been quite a while since I did a favourites blog, and they’re one of my favourite kind of posts to do I like recommending things to you, I also enjoy reading other people’s posts and watching favourites videos to see what other people recommend too, as trying out new things is always fun!
Before I start there’s a couple of things I’m putting in my favourites that I’ll also be doing a longer review post on in the near future, so if I don’t go into too much detail, that’ll be why. So, without further ado, let’s get into my April favourites!

This month, I’m going to start with gaming.

Last month, Nintendo released their newest console, the Nintendo Switch, and they also finally released the long awaited new Zelda game, Breath Of The Wild the game also launched on the Wii U, as was originally planned. As you probably already know, I’m a pretty big Nintendo fan, so when the Switch got announced, I knew I wanted to buy both it and Breath Of The Wild. I was lucky enough to be able to grab the limited edition bundle here in the UK, this included the game, a soundtrack and a statue of the Master Sword. I also got a Zelda t-shirt as a preorder bonus! I’ll try and keep this as spoiler free as possible, in case any of you are currently playing it too, or are planning on picking it up.

I will be doing a full review of my thoughts so far on the Switch, and a more in-depth chat about Breath Of The Wild, but I will say now that last time I checked, I’d hit 155 or more hours on Zelda I also finally decided to finish the story over the weekend. The game, quite simply, is massive the world is pretty huge, so you can spend forever exploring and still not discover everything! There’s also 120 shrines to find and complete, some of which you’ll have to figure out a puzzle to unlock they’re also like mini dungeons inside, so you’ll have to try and figure out how to beat whatever’s inside to proceed. There’s also a LOT of things you can collect, too, so you’ll never get bored even though I’ve now finished the main story of the game, I still find myself reaching for my Switch and playing Zelda because I still have a lot of stuff still to do, including side quests, shrine quests (I’m currently on 109 shrines out of 120) and more!





Next up on my favourites list is music!

Earlier this month, my best friend Beth invited me to go and see one of my favourite bands, You Me At Six, with her in Birmingham, as she had a spare ticket and she knew I’d had to cancel my previously booked London date because of family reasons. I took her up on her offer, and stayed with her for a few days too! (see my previous blog post for more details if you’re interested in seeing what we did)
You Me At Six are one of those bands that I always love seeing live their setlists are always well put together (apart from Underdog, please stop with Underdog now), they always put so much into the show, plus it’s always an amazing atmosphere at a You Me At Six show. They also played both of my favourite songs off the new album, which is always a surefire way to put a smile on my face! I’ve seen them countless times over the years, but it always feels fresh and they’re one of the few bands that I always look forward to seeing live!

My second and final music favourite for this month is the latest AFI album, subtitled The Blood Album. It came out in January, but I’ve pretty much had it on repeat for all these months now because I love it a LOT! One of the things I like and admire about AFI is that they’re never afraid to experiment with their sound their albums always have a different kind of sound to them, as they grow more as artists and evolve their sound. This is the first album that their guitarist, Jade Puget, mixed as well, and he did a pretty amazing job!
I think that my favourite songs from it are Aurelia, Feed From The Floor and The Wind That Carries Me Away, so I definitely recommend that you check out those songs at least! They’re also supporting Deftones in a few weeks here in the UK, and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see them in London with my friend Vicky, so I’m far too excited for that!



This will probably be the longest part of this month’s favourites now beauty/makeup!

First up when I was in Birmingham with Beth, I picked up a few makeup items when we went on a mini shopping spree in Superdrug, oops.
The first thing was an eyeshadow palette from MUA/Makeup Academy, called the Tropical Oceana palette  it’s got so many pretty summery colours in it, ranging from bright pink to shimmery orange, pale green to deep sea blue. You could create so many gorgeous bright summer looks with this palette, and I mainly picked it up because I have no orange eyeshadow and that caught my eye! I do believe the palette was £8, it contains 25 eyeshadows 5 orange, 5 pink, 5 purple, 5 green and 5 blue!
(I apologise for the photos of the palette, the lighting wasn't very good at the time and it really doesn't do the colours justice!)




I also picked up a gel eyeliner pencil from L’Oreal – the L'Oreal Infallible Gel Crayon Eyeliner
I’ve been meaning to try out gel eyeliner for a while now, as a lot of the time, my liquid eyeliner ends up smudging all over my eyeshadow. This one is easy to use, as it’s a pencil, not a brush, and I’ve found that it stays put all day and doesn’t smudge always a bonus when you wear as much eyeliner as I do!



A few weeks ago, I was browsing in my local Boots (I currently live over the road from one, it’s both a blessing and a curse) and I noticed that they had the Hello Kitty Tangle Teezer brush on sale for around £3.50 I’d wanted to try one for ages now, but couldn’t justify spending £13 on a hairbrush, so naturally I had to buy one!
I keep mine in my bag, as they come with the plastic cover to keep the bristles in good condition, and it fits nicely both in your hand and to the shape of your head while you’re brushing your hair. It glides easily through your hair even when it’s pretty damn tangled and it just makes life a while lot easier. Plus, it’s adorable!



The final part of my favourites this month is miscellaneous the things I wanted to include but wasn’t sure of a category to put them in!

I used to be obsessed with Pinterest I’d spend hours just looking for pretty things to add to my mood boards, it was always a good way to kill some time. I had it on my old tablet, but then it started playing up, so I forgot all about it and my Pinterest was also neglected. However, I recently decided to download it to my phone again, and I’m slowly but surely getting hooked on it again when I’m in bed and can’t sleep, or I’m waiting for a bus or something, I’ll just hop on it for 15 minutes or so and look through things that catch my eye!



Finally when I was seeing Beth, I mentioned that I wanted to go to a shop in Birmingham to pick up a plushie of my fabourite Pokemon, that I’d wanted to buy the last time I was in Birmingham with her but I didn’t. When she met me on the platform, she surprised me with the Umbreon plushie that I’d wanted! Needless to say, I love it, and it has pride of place on my shelf at the moment it’s so cute, and I’m veryyyy tempted to get the shiny version eventually too!



There we have it, my April favourites! Thank you if you read all the way to the end you’re a trooper!

Next month, I have a couple of gigs coming up, so I’m really looking forward to those and I may even throw up a review of one/both of them, or put them in my next favourites post you never know.


What are some things you’ve been loving this month? Let me know! 

Friday, April 14, 2017

Birmingham, Best Friends & Bands!

Hey guys!

I know it’s been a while since I last blogged, but I had very good reason not to I was in the middle of a very stressful house move (which is still ongoing, as we’re in a rented place for now, but we’re hoping to be in the new house sooner rather than later), plus my laptop screen was broken and I couldn’t find anywhere that could fix everything that was wrong with it for a reasonable price so, I’ve been trying to use it hooked up to my old computer monitor! Once I’m feeling a bit more settled, I’ll be back to blogging fairly regularly again, so I hope you can be patient with me for a little bit longer!

Anyway, going back to this post it may be pretty long and maybe a bit rambly in places, so if that’s not your kind of thing, I apologise!

My lovely best friend Beth invited me to stay at hers for a long weekend, as we were going to see You Me At Six and it made more sense for me to spend a few days with her and her family.
The journey up was quite hellish, not going to lie the buses up here in Yorkshire don’t run very often, plus it takes forever to let people on and off the buses, so I ended up missing my pre-booked train and had to hang around for almost an hour for the next one I also had an hour’s wait partway there, so all in all it took me around 7 hours to get to Birmingham (where Beth was meeting me) instead of the estimated 4.5 hours it said online!

When my train pulled into Birmingham, Beth met me on the platform and surprised me with a chocolate milkshake and the Umbreon plushie I’d been planning on buying myself over the weekend, which was very kind of her to do and I still really appreciate it! We had the longest hug hello ever we hadn’t seen each other since February, I do believe then headed off to catch the train to hers. We didn’t realise we were in the quiet zone of the train until just before we got off, so sorry if we annoyed anyone with our conversations!

I’d already met Beth’s mum before, when they came to Kingston in January to see You Me At Six with me, but I hadn’t met her dad or brother before, so I was feeling incredibly nervous by the time we got back to her house they were all lovely and welcoming, so it put my mind at ease pretty quickly, even though I was still feeling anxious deep down inside! Beth had also bought me a few presents at Comic Con a few weeks back I forgot to take any photos of everything together, oops, and some of it was food so it’s been eaten by now which was lovely of her! She got me a mini Umbreon plushie keyring, a sticker of Isabelle from Animal Crossing New Leaf, some Sanrio bubblegum, a Mario easter egg and some strawberry Pocky (which we shared and it tastes like strawberry milkshake so good!)
The first night, we went out for dinner I got a chicken burger with cheese and jalepenos, so good and then headed back to Beth’s, which was perfect for me, as I was really tired from travelling and all the delays. We ended up in my room playing Zelda together for a few hours, which was a lot of fun!

The next day, we headed out to a lovely place called Cannock Chase it’s a forest, so it was really pretty, Beth and I both ended up taking far too many photos! We also ended up lagging behind everyone because we kept stopping to take photos and talk. I wore ankle boots, which I ended up regretting because I kept twisting my ankle/falling in holes, plus it ended up being hotter than I was expecting! When we got back, I think we ended up playing more Zelda this time with Beth’s brother, Matt and playing with Cookie (their guinea pig, who is far too cute). We also ended up in my room later on that night, doing ridiculous Buzzfeed quizzes while watching silly videos on YouTube.

On the Monday, we headed into town for a while in the morning so Beth could show me round we also did some shopping and took some more photos, of course! I treated myself to some eyeliners and a new eyeshadow palette, as well as a game. Beth also got some makeup,  the same game as me and I persuaded her to get Xenoblade Chronicles (one of my all time favourite games ever). Afterwards, we went back to hers to get ready to go to Birmingham for dinner before You Me At Six.
We ended up getting sushi and some banana Pocky both were amazing before wandering around the shops for a while because we didn’t fancy queueing for ages. By the time we got inside, we couldn’t really get a decent spot where we could see the bands, so that was a bit annoying but I’m used to it as I’m pretty short! Neither of us really enjoyed the support bands very much, but You Me At Six were amazing as always they played pretty much all the songs I was hoping they’d play, plus I realised I’ve known them for almost 10 years, which is pretty crazy! I also ended up buying merch for the first time in years, as one of the tops was too nice to resist. By the time we got back, we were too tired to do anything, so we just made tea and went to bed, pretty much!

Tuesday was my last morning there, which was really sad because it felt like time flew! We didn’t do very much that morning, as I had to pack my stuff and get ready to leave, but Beth took me back into Birmingham to make sure I got my train okay, which was lovely of her. It was such an amazing long weekend, it’s always nice seeing Beth and luckily it’s not too long before I see her again!


If you read this blog to the end, thank you for your patience! I’ll be back soon with more blog posts I have a few ideas lined up already so stay tuned and I’ll see you soon! 

 Me and Beth waiting for You Me At Six to come on
 Banana Pocky! Tasted just like milkshake :D
 A really pretty area in Cannock Chase
Cute flower filled clearing
 Sushi! Mine was the tuna and salmon, Beth's was the duck! Pic credit - Beth
 You Me At Six! <3 Pic credit - Beth
Another one of You Me At Six! Pic credit - Beth