Review // Poundland Makeup Alley Liquid Eyeliner

Hey guys!

If you’re anything like me, you’ll love picking up some bargain makeup to try – whether it’s a budget brand like Miss Sporty and Natural Collection, to something slightly more expensive like MUA, I like trying out new makeup and seeing if there’s anything new that will become a staple in my makeup bag. To be fair, most of my makeup is high street brands like Makeup Revolution, Collection and Maybelline, although I do own the occasional bit of Clinique, Benefit and other high end brands too!

I also enjoy watching videos on YouTube of people testing makeup, especially when it’s a cheaper brand like Primark or Poundland. I recently watched a couple of Poundland makeup videos where people tried out all of the different makeup items - Makeup Alley - and they all seemed to rave about the liquid eyeliner – as a self confessed eyeliner addict who regularly spends up to £15 on a liquid eyeliner, I thought this sounded promising, so I thought I’d pick some up next time I popped into Poundland!

Ideally, I would have liked to get the black eyeliner, but they didn’t have much choice left in my local Poundland – it was between brown or space grey, so naturally I went for the grey!

The first thing I noticed about it, when I swatched it on my hand, is that it’s a nice consistency – it’s not really watery like some cheaper eyeliner can be. It’s also fairly pigmented, so you don’t need to keep going over the same area again and again to build up the colour.

When I applied it to my eyes, I found that I made my flick a bit thicker than usual – the applicator of this eyeliner is a brush, and I’m used to felt tipped eyeliner pens, so that’s probably just down to my lack of practice with brush eyeliner. It ended up looking quite pretty anyway, which is good, and hopefully I’ll get better at using it with more practice. The only thing that annoyed me about this eyeliner is that, when I blinked, it felt quite sticky in the outer corner of my eyes, where my flicks were – I ended up taking the eyeliner off because it was bugging me, but for a cheap eyeliner, it was quite good overall, if you can overlook that!

My verdict – not too bad for the price, it applies well and is rather pigmented – I just didn’t like how it felt a big sticky in the corner of my eyes! I’d recommend it if you’re on a strict budget, but if you spend a little bit more, you can get slightly better ones.

The end result - slightly messy, but pretty nice!

Have you tried any of the Poundland makeup? Would you recommend any of it? Let me know! 

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! 

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!