Mini haul and my FIRST Mac purchases

Hi all,

I've just got back from taking the kids to Legoland for 2 days. I have to say I need a few days to recover. It was brilliant but exhausting!
We did want to pop to London on our last day but we ended up spending way more than we expected whilst we were there so we decided against it. We took £400 for 2 days as spending money thinking we would have enough left but we ended up spending it all. If you have kids and are thinking of going to Legoland take plenty of money!

So on the way back I decided I wanted to take a bit of a detour and we went to Bicester and found a little outlet village. There were loads of fab shops but my husband pointed out to me the Cosmetic Company Store. I actually stopped breathing for a minute, I kid you not.

They had Estee Lauder, Clinique, Bobbi Brown, Mac and a few other brands all at discounted prices. I've been wanting to try Mac for a while but the prices put me off because I have seen so many mixed reviews on alot of the products and whenever I have been into Selfridges and swatched I have never been overly impressed but considering they were cheaper than usual I couldn't not!

I picked up 2 things a Mineralized Skin Finish in Porcelain Pink and a Mineralize Eyeshadow Duo in this and that.

The MSF is gorgeous, its a pinky coral colour and is lovely as a highlighter. I have got a bit of colour to my skin at the moment since having a few days of sun and looks really nice as a subtle highlight to my cheeks. I really do want to try some more of these. I've been looking online and really like the look of a couple of others. I think I'll be grabbing at least one more when pay day comes around (and this cannot come round soon enough)

The eyeshadow is also amazing, they had loads to choose from but I am loving my neutrals at the moment and have been using my Naked 2 palette every day for the last month so I picked up this little beauty. The colours as stunning, the pigmentation is really good and the lighter shade looks amazing in the inner corner of the eye and as a brow bone highlighter.

The MSF cost me £15.25 and the Eyeshadow duo was £11.75 so quite good prices in my opinion.

There are 6 of these outlets in the UK. They are

1). Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth Harbour
2). Bicester Village, Oxon
3). Designer Outlet, York
4). Cheshire Oaks, Ellesmere Port
5). Designer Outlet, Swindon
6). Junction One, Antrim

The one at Ellesmere Port is the closest to me so I will be heading off over there a week on Sunday after getting paid to pick up a couple more. I can see this becoming my new (expensive) addiction.

After arriving home I wanted to go to Boots to see if they had anything new in. I picked up 2 items.

First was this No 7 Skin Illuminator in Peach, this was on half price from £11 to £5.50. It comes in either pink or peach. I have already have a pinky illuminator so I picked up the peach. I swatched it in the store and it was really nice, since getting home I have put a little on my face and I'm not as impressed if I'm honest, it seemed a little patchy. I'll try it again tomorrow on freshly moisturised skin and hopefully it will be better. I also really dislike that it has a brush, you have to twist the brush round so the product can be released from the tube, you have to be super careful with this. I ended up squirting it all over my hand and the sofa trying to twist it as it was really stiff. I'll update if the product turns out to be any better when I try it again. 

I spotted this in the clearance section for £1.75, I have been wanted to try these for a while but I didn't want to fork out £6.99 for it as I don't tend to get on with L'oreal eyeshadows. For £1.75 I thought it was worth a go and luckily the only colour they had was Endless Choclat which was perfect. Its a lovely dark brown colour, it goes onto your lids like silk. It blends effortlessly and lasts for ages. Looking at in in the packaging does it no justice, it really is a beautiful colour. The packaging is quite nice, what I really like is that there is a little stopper inside which stops any of the shadow going all over the place. This is super handy. I'll definitely be picking some more of these up. 

Last but not least I headed over to Poundland to pick up some diet coke. I picked up this rather lovely Revlon lipgloss in coral reef. Its the perfect coral colour, I look awful in any coral/orange shades as in really really bad but I love them so much. I picked this up on the off chance it suited me and it does! Its a gorgeous summery colour its really glossy but not sticky at all and it lasts a good while before having to be reapplied. I have seen a lilac one of these glosses in another Poundland near to me, I've often admired it but always thought I would never be able to pull it off but after trying this and seeing how gorgeous it is I think I shall pick it up next time I'm in town.

Hope you enjoyed my little haul. I hope I'll be doing a FOTD with these products shortly as soon as my skin has cleared up!

Which Mineralize skin finishes have you tried? Any recommendations would be appreciated!

Lots of Love

CF x x x

17 Purchase

I popped into Boots today to pick up a new blusher, not that I needed another one but I wanted something a little more pink than the others I have. I've seen a couple of reviews on these so I picked one up. 

I got this in the shade In Bloom, it has two very different pink shades.

The blush is not chalky at all and is quite soft considering the price of £3.99. It does blend quite nicely and leaves a lovely flushed look to your cheeks. Its exactly what I was looking for colour wise. 

Secondly I spotted this little beauty

IT CHANGES COLOUR!!!! Ok so its really gimmicky but I'm a sucker for anything like this. The polish goes on a silvery lilac colour but when you put a top coat on it it turns a darkish purple colour. It really does work too. I'm not overly sure on the point if I'm honest as I would say most people would put a top coat on there nails anyway, I know I do so I really would never get the chance to benefit from the lighter shade apart from the first ten minutes of applying when its drying but hey ho. I really like the brush and the formulation. I found that one coat and my nails were covered nicely and it didn't take too long to dry.

The left is the colour it goes on straight from the bottle and the right is after a top coat. Apologies for the awful picture my camera just did not want to take a photo of my nails today. I love both the colours, before and after and I think I'll just have a great deal of fun watching my nails change colour. Small things and all that!

So these two rather lovely items came to £7.48 and Boots currently have an offer on, if you spend over £5.99 you get a free gift.

The gift contained a lip gloss, eyeshadow and a cream blush. 

I love the shadow, its so pretty and its one I will definitely wear. I'm loving my nudes at the moment. My  husband won tickets to the Leeds Festival in a couple of weeks so this will be perfect for taking with me and I wont mind if it gets smashed up with it costing me nothing.

The lipgloss is also nice, I swatched it on my hand and it looks quite bronze and I cannot pull off bronze lipglosses they just wash me out really badly but it goes on your lips a really nice nude colour and it looks quite nice.

The cream bronzer unfortunately is the dud of the box in my opinion. It says on the box to use it to contour. I have no idea where they got this from. I would never use this to contour it looks like a really sheer orange colour and I just cannot see how this would look nice if you used it to contour. I may be wrong but I wont be trying it out. But considering it was free I can't complain too much. I'm sure I can find another use for it.

All in all I'm happy with my purchases and considering I was expecting to pay around £7/£8 for a blush I think I got a pretty good deal, all this for £7.48! (+ an extra 100 boots points for buying two 17 products)

Lots of Love 

CF x x

First Illamasqua purchase

Hi all,

I popped into Debenhams today expecting to come away with a huge haul but for some reason I couldn't find anything to spend my money on. I started shopping at 09:10am and finished at 5:20pm and this is the only I purchased. Clearly there is something wrong with me!

So whilst wandering around aimlessly I spotted this bad boy by the till. It was £38 but the contents are worth £91.50 (although I think some may be in the sale on the website so the £38 value may be correct at the moment).

Here is what the box contained:

So I knew I would be getting the gold cream eyeshadow and the pink nail varnish but the other items were a mystery. I'm really bad at deciding what colours to go for and always end up playing safe and picking boring neutrals so I thought this would be a good way to experiment with colours I wouldn't normally go for. The colours I got in my box are a million miles from anything I would normally choose. Heres what I got:

The first thing I spotted when I opened the box was the blush, it is bright red, and when I say bright I mean BRIGHT. At first I thought there is no way I will ever be able to wear this, I swatched it on my hand and again thought no way will I be able to put this on my face. 

 

Just look how bright this is.

So you can see from the swatch that its a really bright matt red colour, I gave it a go and put some on my cheeks and I love it. I really really love it. I'm so shocked I honestly never thought I would ever be brave enough to wear something like this and I thought I would look like a clown but its amazeballs! If I saw this is a shop normally I wouldn't have even given it a second glance but I really am loving it and will definitely be investing in some more of these blushes. They blend so well and you can achieve a more toned down look if required. 10/10 for this one!

 

Continuing on with the red theme I also received a lipgloss in besotted, I generally don't go for bright glosses or glosses in general really but this one is nice. Its not too sticky and its really true to the colour you see. I hate it when you buy a gloss for the colour and it comes out pretty much clear with a slight tint. I like the gloss but I don't wear lipglosses so I wont be buying any more of these but I will get some use out of this one.

Onto the eyeshadows. Firstly the one I knew I was getting, the liquid metal in electrum. It looked so pretty on the front of the box so I was quite excited to try this and I wasn't disappointed.

 

Oof how pretty is this. I absolutely love it, I'm so happy this was included in the box set as its a gorgeous. I'll definitly be purchasing more of these, they are really blendable and so pigmented. Another 10/10 product.

Secondly was a powder eye shadow in Fallen, its a matt purple colour again super pigmented and easy to blend. Its a buildable colour so you can really build the colour up if you want to. I can't wait to purchase some more of these and I'll be picking some colours that aren't my usuals, maybe yellow or turquoise? or maybe not :-) we shall see.

 

The nail varnish in the box is also absolutely bootiful! I already have my finger nails painted so I have done the swatch on my husbands finger. After he argued with me about already having the same shade on my fingers at the moment. It is NOT the same shade, the shade on my nails is alot darker. Men! 

 

This was only 1 coat of the polish, it covered brilliantly and dried really quickly. My husband is still currently wearing the polish and the moment to check for chipability (yes, this is now a word!) so will let you know how long it goes. Not sure I can persuade him to wear it to work tomorrow though, unless I hide my polish remover mwahahahaha!

Finally the thing I looked at and straight away said no, no this is not for me I will have to swap it with someone. I even posted a photo on the Facebook swap site I am on to see if any of the other girls wanted to swap me for. Its purple, I could never wear purple lipstick. What will people think? I'll look stupid. It will be far too dark. My husband will laugh at me. Well these were all the things that were going through my mind until I caked and put it on. I'm in love, just in love. I am wearing this to work tomorrow I do not even care. Its amazing. I love the colour, its so moisturising on my lips and it actually suits me. No lipsticks ever suit me but this purple one does. I have no idea how this works but it does. I'm super happy and can't wait to wear this out. I have it on my lips now and my husband hasn't even commented which is a good sign! I have my eyes on a couple of other lipsticks on the Illamasqua site so watch this space for more!

So what do you think? Would you be interested in these boxes and would you dare to rock the purple lipstick and red blush? Comment below and let me know. 

Lots of Love

CF x x x

Todays Haul (Very picture heavy!)

Hi all,

I haven't done a post in a while due to being extremely busy with work. I've also been very short on cash this month, we are off to Legoland Windsor with the kids in August and have decided to stay over in London for a couple of days. I know how expensive London is so we are saving every penny we can for when we go cause I'd like to do a bit of shopping whilst I'm there also :-) 

So due to my lack of money I haven't been into town for a while as it just kills me to walk past all the lovely make up and not be able to buy anything but I had some money through Top Cashback come through so decided to go and have a mini shopping trip. It was only £30.00 but at least I could get a few bits, I have to say I'm rather happy with my purchases

Here is what I bought, first up I went into Bodyshop for a little browse and spotted these for £2.00 each so I snapped them up, the shampoo was actually chosen by my son, he stood smelling everything in sight and decided that this smelled the best so wanted it and for £2.00 I couldn't say no. I needed a new toner anyway so hopefully this Cucumber Freshening Water will do the trick!

Next up I popped into Superdrug and picked up these.

I went in for the Garnier Pure Wash, I was looking online this morning and saw this so I wanted to give it a try. It was only £1.95 so if its horribly bad for my skin its not cost me much.

 

Then I spotted that the Accessorize make up was on offer, so I picked up this eyeshadow trio for £2.95   and its called The Good & The Bad, its so pretty

These masks were in the clearance section and were 99p each, they have up to 10 uses so I grabbed two considering a sachet is normally around £1 for 1 use.

Next up I popped to the market style make up shop near me and spotted this Smooch bronzer, it was only £2.99 so I had to get it as it looked so pretty. I currently have about 8 bronzers on the go and have no need for this whatsoever but I challenge anyway to walk past this and not buy it!

I then popped into H&M to pick up some black leggings, I really love the quality of them from H&M and they beat any other high street shop I have found for leggings and for £5.99 you can't go wrong. They also had a sale on some bits and pieces so I grabbed a few 

Everything (apart from the leggings) was £1

This is a cute little Mickey and Minnie mouse compact mirror. 

Set of 3 mini nail polishes (for just over 33p per polish I couldn't leave these behind!)

In case you can't guess from the photo this is a Cassis Noir Lipbalm and it smells DIVINE!!

Theres also a set of 2 Mickey and Minnie Lipbalms in Cherry & Vanilla but the picture wouldn't upload for some reason but they were also £1.00

And finally, I popped into Aldi, yes Aldi! I have run out of my usual moisturiser which sets me back £40, I can't afford that at the moment so asked around for some cheaper alternatives and someone suggested I try the Lacura range at Aldi so I went in to take a look and they had day and night creams for a bargainous £1.99 each, I really hope this stuff suits me as it will save me a small fortune!

I also grabbed a Lacura eyeshadow duo whilst I was there. Again it was only £1.99 and they are so pigmented. My only issue is that there is ALOT of packaging for just an eyeshadow duo but I will look past this as the colours are so pretty :-)

I'll do some reviews on the individual products once I have had a chance to try them out, I'm so hoping to come back to you with fantastical things to say about the creams, keep your fingers crossed for me ladies!

See you all soon!

Lots of Love

CF x x x

** please also check out my recent blog post, I would like as many people involved as possible, would also like to say a HUGE thank you to those who have sent pictures so far :-)