Why I hate the phrase ‘man-cave’

First – a disclaimer! I know loads of people who use this term – so if you’re one of them, please don’t be offended. This is just my personal opinion, and I don’t think you’re a bad person. 

So what is a man-cave?

I’m going to turn to Urban Dictionary for this. A man-cave is:

A room or space in a dwelling that is specifically reserved for a male person to be in a solitary condition, away from the rest of the household in order to work, play, involve himself in certain hobbies without interruption. This area is usually decorated by the male that uses it without interference from any female influence.

Sounds great – so what’s your problem?

My problem is not with the idea of a ‘man-cave’. Having a personal space that is decorated to your tastes and allows you to pursue your hobbies without disturbing other home-dwellers seems like an enviable goal.

My problem is that the ‘man’ element has become synonymous with the idea.

Stop being such a crybaby!

In case you’re wondering why it bothers me, it’s not just because I want a man-cave (I actually don’t. I’m lucky that my husband shares my interests).

It bothers me for the following reasons:

1. Implicit in the very name is that man-caves AREN’T for women. The definition above states that man-caves are to remain free of ‘female influence’. In short, it’s like putting a large ‘no girls allowed’ sign on the door.
2. Except it’s not girls, it’s women. It’s the wives and partners of men (this is pretty heteronormative so please forgive that) being told they are not welcome in that space. That their men need time in solitary, away from whatever interruptions they might be subject to in the dangerous, open waters of home.
3. As usual, having a gendered term for what is effectively a ‘hobby room’ or a ‘den’, continues to perpetuate stereotypes of both men AND women. Stereotypes of women as irritating shrews who make their suffering menfolk miserable with chores such as ‘babysitting’ their own children. And of men as solitary animals who need escape from the old ‘ball and chain’, so they can enjoy childish pursuits such as gaming without fear of reprisal. (PS. I love gaming and don’t think it’s childish!)
4. There isn’t a term for a woman-cave (nor should there be). But when you read those words, did your imagination immediately conjure a room decorated in white or pink, with wall-to-wall  shabby-chic storage units filled with craft items such as cross-stitch patterns and card-making accessories? If so, then that is why I don’t like unnecessarily gendered terms. Adding genders automatically loads the phrase with pervasive, learned stereotypes.

So what?

I’m not suggesting a movement against the phrase – I just wanted to share my thoughts. I believe that most people who use terms like this (we all do it at times) don’t mean anything bad by it – they have become common parlance after all. But sometimes it pays to stop and think about how language like this can be so loaded and exclusionary.

Next time you refer to a man-cave, could you try using another term? It might even make the woman in your life feel more included, and less of an annoyance to you!

25 hour wear foundation from Rimmel – can it get me through the day?

Hi all! Welcome to my first foundation review in about 10 months. Forgive my slackness, but full time work has made it hard to find the time to write these reviews. But now I’m back and hoping to update the blog a bit more often! 

So where shall be begin? I was tempted to try the ‘Rimmel Lasting Finish 24 Hour Foundation with comfort serum’ as I have seen it mentioned a number of times on YouTube as a great high-street foundation.

The foundation comes in a pretty poxy 7 shades, and costs £8.29 for 30ml at Boots. Annoyingly, the Boots stores I visited didn’t stock all the shades, so I bought ‘Ivory’ believing it was the lightest shade. The actual lightest shade is ‘Light Porcelain’, which appears to have a pinky undertone (which I need).

I have to question who’d want to wear their foundation for 25 hours, but if it can go the distance (ie a day at work), I’ll be happy to endorse it!

Before

Forgive the lighting, it’s dark again in the mornings.

After

The first and most obvious issue with this foundation (as you can probably see from the pictures) is that it has the wrong undertone for me. This is a yellow-based foundation (warm), whereas I have pink undertones (cool).

However, it was a breeze to apply and was medium-to-full coverage in one layer. The finish was matte, but not a dull, flat matte. My skin looked healthy, and with all my other makeup on, you could barely tell the tone was wrong (if anything, I just looked slightly tanned).

So far, so good.

1pm check-in

By lunchtime, this foundation is still holding up well. My journey to work is hot (train and tube and walking!) and the office is very warm, so my foundation always has to cope with a bit of sweat. And this one did so gracefully – a light sheen on my nose and across my forehead was not a bad result at all. The foundation has barely budged.

Forgive the crap lighting, the toilets at work have no natural light I’m afraid.

8pm check-in

I’ve been wearing the foundation for 13 hours and I’m still impressed by the longevity!

My journey home from work was a disaster and resulted in my needing to walk about half an hour to another tube station, and then another half hour home from the station. Despite all this, the foundation still hadn’t moved or broken down. At this point I have a good amount of shine, but given the circumstances, this is totally reasonable!

My conclusion

This is a great, affordable high street foundation. If you’re looking for a matte foundation for oiler skin-types, and you happen to match one of the seven shades on offer(!), this could work for you.

Coverage – 8/10

High-medium to full coverage, this covered my redness really well. I used some concealer for any of the obvious blemishes or redness, but this did a great job of evening out my skin tone.

Pore smoothing – 6/10

This formula didn’t do much to help my pores, but I didn’t mind this too much as I tend to use pore-smoothing primers for this issue.

Finish – 7/10

The finish on this foundation was pretty – matte but not too dull and lifeless. The only reason it didn’t score higher was because I prefer a more ‘satin’ matte finish (like the Lancome Teint Idole foundation or YSL All Hours). 

Fine lines and wrinkles – 7/10

This is a fairly thick formula (but not too much so). If you over-applied this, I can imagine it would get a little cakey in fine lines, particularly with more than one/two layers. However from my experience, it was only slightly noticeable in the very fine lines around my eyes.   

Longevity – 9/10 

Really a strong point of this foundation – it lasted 13 hours and hardly budged or broke down despite my sweat and oils. It didn’t survive around my nose sadly as I still have some remnants of a cold!

Pros

• Very affordable
• Pretty finish
• Great coverage
• Lasts for ages

Cons

• Doesn’t contain SPF
• Only 7, white-centric shades
• Store stocks are poor / it’s hard to know which shades are available

Today I did manage to get Keef’s comments:

It looks good. Very even. Very fresh.

Keith didn’t seem to pick up on the yellow undertones, so it can’t have been too noticeable. But I do it’s quite noticeable in the first ‘before’ picture!

Have you tried the Rimmel 25 Hour Lasting Finish Foundation? Did it really last 25 hours? Let me know your thoughts!

My work Christmas party: from desk to disco

First off I’d like to apologise for the super-cheesy title of this blog post. Apparently in another life I was a writer for Heat magazine and patronising headlines are in my veins.

ANYWAY – it’s the Christmas season, and my work (being super-keen) had its Christmas do on the earliest acceptable date – the 1st December. You might know I’m pretty new at work (5 weeks in), so I wanted to push the boat out and look a little fancy. And because I’m terribly vain, I thought I’d take you on the journey with me! LET’S GO.

Step 1: Nails

Luckily for me, my office had arranged for a ‘mobile’ hair and beauty service to come into the office, so we were able to book appointments for all things nails/hair/eyebrows etc. on the day of the party. I was unable to resist and booked 2 appointments – one for a manicure, and one for my hair.

I wanted something sparkly for my nails originally (as this was the theme of the party), but as I was wearing all-black, I decided to go for a metallic reddy-orange instead. More Christmassy, colourful, and I frickin’ love metallics.

My first nail looks dodgy as she cut my cuticles and in this case, literally ‘cut’ them till a little bit of blood came out. Beauty is pain…right? RIGHT?

Step 2: Hair

The mobile hair people were offering a range of dos, including:

• The Kate (Middleton – twee curls concentrated at the bottom of the hair)
• The Kendall (Jenner – very straight, very slick)
• The Alexa (Chung – a modern, messy bob)
• The Ponytail (erm – this is just a fancy ponytail)

Despite the association with Kate Middleton, I wanted a wavy/curly sort of hair to make the most of my new dye-job, so this is what I went for. Here I am in the chair.

This is where I had my first hiccup. When the (very nice) hair lady first took my hair down, it was BIG. I felt kind of ridiculous, mostly due to the frontal-volume, as you might be able to tell from the face I’m pulling in this picture.

So I pulled the classic manoeuvre of running to the loos and pawing at it until I felt it looked more acceptable.

Step 3: Makeup

So on to makeup. First off – I employed a tactic whereby I wore the most basic makeup possible to work in order to make the transformation later seem more dramatic! In this picture I’m wearing foundation, mascara, eyebrow pencil and a nude lip colour only.

Then it was time to put on my ‘glam’ face. Except OH NO, DISASTER! Despite my extremely careful management of my makeup packing, I’d remembered every single item except arguably the most important one – my eye-shadow palette. I was pretty devastated! My eye-shadow was to form the basis of my whole look.

However, very luckily for me, a kind colleague was willing to contaminate her own palette with my bacteria in order to save the day. And so this makeup look was born:

If you’re interested, here’s a quick run through of the products I used:

• Estee Lauder Double Wear foundation – the only foundation I can trust to take me though a 17 hour day including a party. SO GOOD.
• Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz in shade Taupe in my eyebrows
• NYX eyebrow setting gel to keep ’em in place
• Laura Mercier translucent powder all over to set makeup
• Kevyn Aucoin ‘medium’ sculpting powder to carve out cheekbones
• Lancome Star matte bronzer to warm up the cheeks
• Hourglass Ambient Lighting blush in shade Luminous Blush for a flush of colour on the cheeks
• Mary Lou Minizer from The Balm to highlight the cheekbones
• Chanel Rouge 446 Erienne lipstick and Chanel lip liner Rouge Profond in 57

And onto the eyes – my colleague allowed me to use her Urban Decay Naked 2 palette, which is perfect for doing a smokey eye.

• I started by laying down a base of the lightest colour in the palette (on the far left) so that my other shadows would blend more easily on top
• Then I used my Kevyn Aucoin sculpting powder in the crease of my eyes to try and define the socket a little, whilst giving me a transition shade to blend into/onto
• Then I took the grey shade second from the right and used this to define my crease and outer ‘v’ area of my lid
• I took black and did the same step as above, but in a smaller area, just to define the very outer area
• With that done, I took the goldest colour in the palette on my finger for the fullest colour pay-off, and put this all over the centre and inner-corner of my lid/eye. I kept packing this on till I felt sufficiently golden!
• Next time for some eyeliner – and I used the NYX black kohl liner to ‘tightline’ my eyes (basically, the inner rim of your upper-eyelid. This isn’t much fun.)
• Then some L’oreal liquid liner just on the very base of my lashes to help define the lashline – I didn’t want the eyeliner to be overbearing.
• To top it off, I curled my lashes over my existing mascara and added a second layer for some extra oomph. I might’ve applied lashes but I didn’t want to worry about the maintenance.

And so my makeup look was complete. I thought it looked okay – although I’ll never feel great doing my makeup after a 12 hour day without starting from scratch. A lot of my colleagues DID do that, taking all their makeup off and starting again. I felt daft for not thinking of it. My mum gave me her review of my look, which was that she ‘liked it, but the lips are too dark’. I’m afraid I dig the red lip mum!

Once my look was finished and my clothes were on, it was time to play with my awesome new selfie light on my mobile. This passed the time nicely until the Uber arrived.

Step 4: Glitter face-paint

Very soon after arriving to the party, I realised there was a face-paint lady doing lovely designs on peoples’ faces, including lashings of glitter if required. I promptly pushed into the queue (unknowingly – I did ask if there was a queue and the lady said no! Turns out she was wrong) and let her do her thing. I actually really enjoyed the finished result.

Step 5: Get judged by a stranger

If any of you have already read this story on Facebook, you can leave this part – you’ve made it to the end! But if not, here’s the story of how my night took a bit of a crap turn thanks to a drunk party-goer (NOT me!)

In a quiet moment, I went out to the lobby to ask the nice water for some still water. No one else was in the lobby, so while he went to get it I used a nearby mirror to top-up my lipstick.

At this point, a drunk man and his female friend came into the lobby, whereupon he looked at me in disgust and said, ‘are you looking in the mirror AGAIN? I saw you taking selfies when I came in – what the fuck is wrong with you?’

This from a guy I’ve never spoken to in my life. FYI the selfie was of my glitter art I’d had done at the party and wanted to show you lot – not that I should have to defend my selfie taking. I didn’t know how to respond so just said, ‘bit harsh…’. His friend said ‘bit aggressive!’ – but then they just tripped off together to continue having fun.

I was left reeling a bit and felt like leaving the party, embarrassed that someone was so angered by my supposed vanity. I tried to move on and have a nice night, but couldn’t help wonder why this strange guy thought I gave a single fuck what he thought of me, and why he’d think it was OK to tell me so aggressively.

As it happens, when going back through my photos, I found one with the guy in the background! I won’t post it here as conversely it would probably get me into trouble, but there you go.

Just to top off the evening I managed to lose my debit card, which I then proceeded to cancel on the bus to the train station. Then another total stranger lectured me for 10 minutes about how he ‘couldn’t believe I’d lost my debit card’ (after eavesdropping on my call) and telling me his tactics for not losing his phone. Thanks strange old guy!

I missed my train as the coat-check people at the party took 20 minutes to locate my things, and then despite queuing for 15 minutes for a milkshake at Burger King while I waited, I got to the front of the queue to find they’d sold out.

BUT apart from all those things, the party itself was very nice! Thanks for coming on this journey with me – I hope you enjoyed it.

Foundation review: Bare minerals bareSkin® Pure Brightening Serum Foundation

Update: At the very end of this post, I try the foundation a second time using the appropriate application technique – so keep scrolling past ‘Keef’s comments’ to see that!

Hello everyone! Today I’m reviewing an unusual foundation from Bare Minerals, called ‘bareSkin Pure Brightening Serum foundation’. Why is it unusual I hear you ask? Read on to find out!

This little number contains SPF20, comes in 20 different shades (not bad) and retails for £27 for 30ml. As usual, I colour matched as ‘Bare Porcelain’ – the lightest shade.

I was keen to try this one as Bare Minerals has a great reputation for being a natural, organic brand, with the mineral content of its powder foundation making it a popular choice for acne and rosacea sufferers. I never got on with the powder, as the application method (constant buffing for 30 seconds per half of your face) was quite aggravating for my sensitive skin, and the coverage wasn’t quite there.

So let’s crack on!

Before

After

Applying this foundation was a really strange experience. When I shook the little sample tube, it sounded like water – very runny and thin. Then I tipped some onto the back of my hand and it was in fact, very runny!

I picked up some of the product with my beauty blender and worried that it had soaked straight in, as I could hardly see any on the sponge. When I tried a dabbing motion on my face, I saw very little coverage – so I switched to a dense brush (Bare Minerals’ recommended method).

Once I really got some product onto my face and started blending, I noticed the very unusual formula of this foundation. It felt like there was nothing on my face…like I was blending air almost. It glided on extremely easily, but was a little disconcerting how it felt so ‘nothingy’. That might be the ‘serum’ element coming through.

When I had applied one layer of this,  I was worried that it looked extremely dewy on my face (almost ‘wet look’ dewy). I immediately wondered if this was going to be a big oil generator for me. After it dried down a bit, I piled on a lot of powder to try and dull it down.

Despite this being a ‘brightening’ foundation, I actually found the shade was maybe a quarter/half tone too dark for me. This didn’t match badly, but I found it didn’t brighten my skin at all. However, I actually really liked the finished effect initially.

Some pics below:

After initial application – a very dewy look!

After I let it try down – still fairly dewy but better.

1pm check-in

As so often happens with foundations I start out liking – by lunchtime they take a serious nose-dive. And this one is no exception. By 1pm, the coverage was barely-there, with all my redness showing through with reckless abandon.

On top of that, something really weird was happening on my cheeks… The foundation seemed to gather in little tiny clumps, almost like foundation freckles! NOT cute. My nose is oily AF but the rest of my t-zone is holding up okay.

6pm check-in

The foundation has been on for 11 hours now and frankly, it looks like it. I almost think bare skin would be better, as it would look less weird on my cheeks and I’d probably be less oily.

My conclusion

I had high hopes for this foundation, but unfortunately it left me feeling cold. However I do want to add for full disclosure – I didn’t study the recommended application technique (start with 1 – 2 drops for light coverage, add another 2 for medium, another 2 for full, lots of buffing etc). I pretty much went straight in with a blob of the stuff! So that might have helped it somehow if I’d done it properly. I’ll try again at the weekend…

Coverage – 5/10

This gave a very sheer coverage, which is probably to be expected from a foundation with ‘bare skin’ in the title. Fine for evening out skin tone if you don’t need much coverage, but next to useless for me.

Pore smoothing – 8/10

To be fair, this formula initially had a smooth finish and was great for blurring my large nose pores.

Finish – 5/10

As you can see from the pics, the initial dried-down finish was still very dewy – which isn’t ideal for oily types like me. When I watched some people try this on YouTube, their finish seemed less dewy, so I’m worried I applied it wrongly! I packed on a lot of powder to bring down the dew, but I think this is partly why my cheeks look so rough later – like the foundation coagulated with the powder or something. 

Fine lines and wrinkles – 7/10

This formula is very thin and smooth, so didn’t seem to exacerbate my fine lines and wrinkles too much. 

Longevity – 4/10 

As you can see in the pictures, by lunchtime (6 hours of wear) the foundation looks pretty bad. The slipperyness of the formula felt like it might be contributing to its lack of longevity.

Pros

• Contains SPF
• Natural, organic ingredients
• Skin-care benefits
• Easy to apply
• Feels lightweight on the skin

Cons

• Exacerbated my oiliness
• Very low coverage
• Didn’t last very long
• Overly dewy finish
• Did weird foundation freckles on my cheeks

Today I did manage to get Keef’s comments:

This is a ‘tan’ look. I like it.

So I think that’s more a comment on my overuse of bronzer that morning, and perhaps that the shade is a little darker than usual as well.

Have you ever used the Bare Minerals bareskin Brightening Serum Foundation? Did you find the application technique made a dramatic difference to how it looked?

UPDATE: A second try

After posting this review on Facebook, it was bought to my attention that perhaps I hadn’t used the appropriate application technique as recommended by Bare Minerals (which the woman on the counter failed to mention to me).

So this time, I started with a couple of drops of the foundation on a dense flat-top kabuki brush and blended the first layer in really well. Then I went back in with a second layer, then a third (as the website recommends – 3 layers for ‘full’ coverage).

The result is below – read on for a (slightly) revised conclusion.

So – this time, the finish was much better – in so much as it wasn’t super-dewy and ‘wet’ looking. The coverage was still pretty low and, as suspected, the constant buffing motion made my skin warm and red, making it basically impossible to cover with the foundation. This is one of the reasons I stopped using Bare Minerals powder foundation! It also caused some micro-exfoliation around my nose, which made my nose look extra dry and textured.

All in all, I still didn’t love the colour and finish of the foundation, particularly after I added some powder to my T-zone. Close up, it definitely looked like the powder and foundation did not sit well together. However from a distance and in pictures it did look pretty good, until about 6 hours in I started to get oily around my nose as expected.

So my revised review is more positive, as I didn’t get the ‘foundation  freckles’ like before, but it still isn’t the foundation for me. However, I can see this could be really nice on someone with normal/dry skin that isn’t sensitive to buffing.

Thanks for reading my update!

My hair transformation

I hadn’t coloured my hair since before my wedding. As a result, I had a few inches of mousey-brown hair riddled with greys, followed by many more inches of a warmish sort of brown that had grown out from my previous dye-job.

I definitely needed a change.

For a while I had wanted a balayage (a technique for highlighting hair in which the dye is painted on in such a way as to create a graduated, natural-looking effect) from brunette to blonde. However I was put off by the high cost, and the potential upkeep.

But then I thought – ‘fuck it’ (sorry mum and dad if you’re reading).

So I went to a salon around the corner from my work, owned by Charles Worthington. The prices were pretty steep – but they weren’t far out from my usual salon in Medway. The only difference was that in Medway I would pay for the Director stylist what I was going to pay for a graduate stylist in London. I figured that such a strong brand would probably train decent hairdressers, so I gave it a go.

Before

I snapped this cheeky shot while my stylist was mixing my hair dye. I was a bit embarrassed, hence the weird face!

During

When my hair came out of the foils, had been toned, treated, cut and mostly dried, it was looking distinctly ‘warm’ (aka ginger) to me. In theory this isn’t an issue, I adore ginger hair. But it wasn’t what I’d gone in for, and when you’re paying £200 for a style, you have to be happy with it.

So I told the *lovely* stylist that I really would have liked it to be blonder, so she offered to run some lighter bits through it, tone it again to take out the warmth and try once more. It was already 8pm so I felt kinda guilty, but off we went!

After

The next time we dry it all up I’m 100% happier with it, and absolutely love the lighter blonde look she has achieved. I took the pics with my front and back camera, so the colours and quite different in both -I’d say it’s between the two – but it still has a gingery tone to it.

However, apart from some dryness (my poor hair), it feels amazing and I love having such a different look to anything I’ve had before. It’s still not quite what I was hoping for (I’d have preferred a darker root colour, but my stylist rightly advised that this would look much worse growing out), but ultimately I’m delighted!

In case you’re curious, this treatment should have cost me £195:

• £130 for the balayage
• £45 for the hair cut
• £20 for L’Oreal Smartbond treatment (L’Oreal’s version of Olaplex – which ‘maximises the strength of hair by reconnecting broken disulphide sulphur bonds in the hair’)

However, whilst I was live-posting the whole thing on FB, a friend mentioned she was getting her hair cut in the same salon the next week. I mentioned it in passing to my stylist, who said my friend and I could both get 20% off if she ‘referred’ me. We did this, and I saved 20% off my cut! Wohooooo!

So let me know what you think of the new blonde tresses – and share your own hair transformations with me  🙂

La Mer foundation – worth it at £80 a bottle?

While traipsing through Bluewater this weekend, I dragged my ever-patient friend to the La Mer counter so we could gasp and giggle at the eye-watering prices.

I thought I’d try my luck and ask for a sample of the ‘The Soft Fluid Long Wear Foundation’, assuming I might get told to “do one”. But lucky for me, the woman behind the counter didn’t work for La Mer, and gave me a sample no-questions-asked.

This foundation retails at £80 for a standard 30ml bottle. That’s the most expensive beauty product I’ve ever had on my face. It contains SPF20 and comes in 15 shades, which largely neglect those with deeper skin-tones. I picked up the lightest tone ‘Porcelain’. This magic formula is supposed to:

• Refine pores
• Hide imperfections
• Protect a flawless complexion with SPF and antioxidants
• Help colour stay true (ie not oxidise), even in humidity.

Let’s crack on!

Before

My skin isn’t on top-form at the moment, but it’s been worse. An average amount of redness and a couple of spots on my chinny-chin-chin.

After

 

I applied this using a beauty blender, as YouTube had advised this would be the best way to get decent coverage. I would say this is a medium coverage foundation, but definitely not full coverage.

On first application, I thought it looked pretty great! My skin looked lovely and smooth, pores were not invisible but certainly reduced, my redness was largely covered, and I started to panic I was going to like the extremely-expensive-foundation.

1pm check-in

Despite a great start, things started to go downhill pretty quickly. This is supposed to be a ‘hydrating’ foundation, which might explain my excessive oiliness by just 11.30am. The oil was bad enough that I had to blot in order to feel comfortable showing my face at work. And here’s how it looked by lunchtime…

From a distance it looked passable, but up-close it’s easy to see in the cheek close-up that my redness is showing through very clearly, making the coverage feel very low.

However the biggest disappointment was how it sat around my nose area. Obviously my nose is oily, but in the pores/crack where my face joins my nose, it’s broken down, it’s moved around, it looks cakey and generally just crap. You can also see that the area under my eyes is looking pretty dry and liney.

Finally, the colour feels a little darker than when I first applied, with more of an orange tone than it had previously.

6pm check-in

The story is much the same as the 1pm check-in. Redness still looks bad, oily nose, looks crap around the sides. My under-eye area is a horror show. Overall I’m pretty disappointed.

My conclusion

When I set out to try this £80 foundation, I’d read some really positive reviews and had pretty high expectations. So overall, I was really disappointed by the final effect! I suppose it goes to show that everyone’s skin is different, as this one definitely wasn’t for me. I think I’ve got enough sample left for one more try, so I might just give it a second chance.

Coverage – 6.5/10

Medium coverage at best, this one doesn’t pack a huge punch. This isn’t unusual for very high-end foundations, as they tend to aim for the ‘natural look’ (probably because it’s easier to get right!)

Pore smoothing – 7.5/10

On first application, my pores looked just fine. However by lunchtime, they were starting to make a comeback.

Finish – 6.5/10

The initial finish was *beautiful* and felt so soft and smooth. But by lunchtime you can see how it’s broken up and moved around, and even looks cakey in places like my nose and eyebrow area. Very disappointing. 

Fine lines and wrinkles – 5.5/10

This didn’t do much for my fine lines and wrinkles generally, but also didn’t exacerbate them. EXCEPT for under my eyes, which honestly looked pretty cruddy by the end of the day! 

Longevity – 6/10 

Not really impressed by this either. Blotting by mid-morning, a dodgy nose by lunchtime – it certainly didn’t go the distance. It also might be my imagination, but it felt like it oxidised (changed colour, getting slight darker) by the end of the day as well.

Pros

• Supposedly contains a lot of skincare benefits
• Contains SPF
• Very easy to blend/apply
• Looks lovely on application

Cons

• Exacerbated my oiliness
• Looked cakey and broken up by lunch-time
• Not great for coverage
• *Might* have oxidised a bit
• Just. So. Expensive.

Sadly I didn’t get time to collect Keith’s comments as I was (typically) running late for work.

I’d love to see if any of you have tried this (or any other) mega expensive foundations and had better luck with them – let me know in the comments!

Primark makeup: a full face for just £16!

Buckle-up guys – today’s post is going to be a long one! But I promise it’s very exciting – so don’t leave, K?

One of my lovely friends What’s App’d me and suggested I try reviewing Primark makeup, and I couldn’t resist the idea. Not only had I never tried it, but my new office is two minutes away from one of the largest Primarks I’ve EVER SEEN. On top of that, if it’s decent stuff, I might save myself a bob or two.

I visited my local Primark with the intention of buying enough makeup to do a full face. However, because it was extremely stressful in there (at one point I thought I’d have to fight a girl for the last Porcelain foundation), I accidentally forgot to buy blusher and any sort of eyebrow product. So you might wanna chuck on a quid each for those!

Finally I’d like to add a disclaimer that I’m simply reviewing how these products worked for ME – if I rubbish any products you use and love, please don’t take it personally!

Let’s get stuck in.

What did I buy?

• Contour kit (containing a contour shade, a bronzer shade and a ‘highlight’ shade) – £4
• PS_Pro Longwear Mineralized Foundation with SPF15 in shade ‘Porcelain’ – £5
• 9 shade eye palette – £2.50
• Colour Correcting Finishing Powder – £2.50
• Volumising mascara in black – £1
• Lip Crayon in a sort of red colour – £3

For full disclosure – there were cheaper foundations in the collection (around £2.50), but I went for this one because I always say that base is the most important step of my makeup look. There were also cheaper lip colours for around £1, but none of them floated my boat.

Just for a quick idea of value-for-money, the cost of this whole set of makeup would buy me one Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz pencil (and this isn’t even top-shelf makeup!)

Trying the makeup

Before we get started, Keith and I decided to do Garnier Moisture Bomb Tissue Masks for fun. These are 99p each and I’ve been seeing ads for them ALL OVER my Instagram.

Keith had to ‘amend’ his mask manually for less beard coverage

These masks were nice and very, very cooling (not ideal on a winter’s day!). My skin felt moisturised but not greasy, and my makeup went on nicely afterwards. I didn’t look too different (I always notice a real difference after using my L’Oreal clay mask), but these are a bit of fun.

Before

The PS_Pro Longwear Mineralized Foundation with SPF15 – £5

 

I was impressed with the packaging of this foundation – the box was nice, the bottle feels sturdy and it comes with a pump. Not bad going! In the right-hand picture I put the foundation on my hand and turned it upside down. It didn’t budge an inch, so this is one thick formula. For this reason, I applied it using a foundation brush instead of a sponge.

My first impressions are:

• Woah – this is super-pale!
• Woah – this has super-high coverage!
• Woah – this has a really nice finish! (Fairly dewy, not really matte).
• I had to work quite hard to blend this into my skin – it’s a very thick formula and requires some elbow-grease.

So my first impressions were actually really good, and if anything, the shade was a little TOO pale for me (very unusual!). I *believe* this only comes in three shades. Don’t get too excited though – check in later for final thoughts.

Colour Correcting Finishing Powder – £2.50

I chose this colour correcting powder as I thought it might help with my redness. However, what I didn’t notice is that this powder gives a ‘radiant’ finish (ie there’s glitter in it). Hopefully you can see the glitter in the close up picture. As an oily-skinned person, this is the LAST thing I want in a finishing powder.

Here’s a close-up of my forehead, where hopefully you can see the sparkles where I wanted a nice matte finish.

If you want to glow – this powder will be great for you, but frankly – I hated it! It didn’t mattify my makeup at all.

9 shadow eye palette – £2.50 

I chose this palette because it had some reddy-burgandy shades – exactly what I’d been looking for for Autumn. Unfortunately they only had the shades in shimmers, unlike the mattes I would have much preferred.

I wanted to build a look using the bottom right colour, the one just above it, and then the darker one in the bottom left, and finally the more brown colour in the top right. However, I had a few issues:

• These shadows were not very pigmented at all. To get colour payoff, I had to use a flat brush and in some cases, my finger.
• The red shadow at the end of the second row came out too lightly, so I had to use the bottom left shadow instead.
• The shadows were chalky and gave me a lot of fallout.
• My main advice here is to a) aim two shades darker to achieve the colour you want and b) you’ll have to work hard to get the pigment, but you can get there.
• PRO TIP – if you use these shadows, do your base afterwards! This is why…

Volumising mascara – £1 

I started out by curling my lashes and applying a layer of this. Layer one was pretty weak and didn’t inspire me at all! Layer two made next-to-no difference, so I gave up on this pretty fast.

PS Contour Kit – £4 

This one was a bit weird – I couldn’t see the colours before I bought it, and the ‘highlight’ shade here is much too brown, so I couldn’t use it. The packaging talks about ‘New Darker Shades’ – but I couldn’t find any other colour options in the shop.

I started by trying the contour shade. This shade isn’t bad – it’s fairly cool-toned and quite pigmented. This makes it a little tricky to work with – you need to be very light-handed with your brush and build up slowly.

The bronzer shade was a little darker than I usually go for and contained shimmer, which I don’t like. I’m all about a matte bronzer! But this actually looked okay on my face, which needed some warmth after the super-pale foundation.

And finally, to try and keep this test ‘true’, I also used the contour shade to fill my eyebrows.

Lip Crayon in red – £3

I splashed out on this red lip crayon as I liked the colour. I put it on my lips and then held up the crayon so you can see a rough colour comparison:

The lighting here really isn’t great – but I’d say this is quite a corally-red, and not the deeper red I was hoping for. This was VERY easy to apply due to it’s crayon shape, but no matter how much I layered it on, the pigment never really built up and was a little patchy.

Some cheeky extras… 

At this point, I felt like something was missing. I was heading out for dinner with my lovely husband and I wanted to feel pretty. So I reached for some of these, which are NOT from Primark…

These are short and medium Ardell individual lashes (BTW I get all my lashes from falseeyelashes.co.uk – their prices are really good and delivery is very fast) – except you get three-in-one. I’ve never managed to get the hang of individual lashes, but these are much much easier. I loved the final look!

With some blowdrying and straightening of my hair and a new waterfall cardigan-type thing, I was finally ready for our date!

Before we headed out…

So there I was, thinking I looked pretty bomb and feeling super-impressed with the Primark foundation, when I got down to the kitchen and checked a different mirror in different lighting. It was at this point I realised that a) my nose looked a HOT MESS and b) my foundation was looking thick-as-shit where I’d had to layer over the eyeshadow fallout. Yuck.

Our date 

We had a wonderful evening meal at a super-cosy pub in Biddenden called ‘The Three Chimneys‘.

Evening check-in

After getting home from our evening meal, having been wearing the makeup for almost 6 hours, I did a quick check-in.

I think you can see there’s a lot of smudging and creasing under my eyes, and the foundation has broken up quite a lot around my nose and given me the dreaded ‘dotty pore’ effect. My nose is unspeakably bad – the makeup here is coming off and where it remains, it looks cakey and horrible.

My lipstick has obviously come off but that’s totally fair enough, as I was eating and drinking all night!

My conclusion

For a quick recap – I’d say that this Primark makeup generally wasn’t awful. If you’re prepared to put in the work, you can get some decent payoff.

• Foundation – for £5, this isn’t far off the price of some of the cheaper high-street foundations, like my current favourite L’Oreal Infallible foundation. For the extra £3, I’d say go for the really cracking foundation. However – the Primark one had such amazing coverage, I decided not to give up and tried it again the next day. I’ll post a follow up soon!
• Colour correcting finishing powder – I hated this powder with a passion, as it did everything I didn’t want (ie made me shimmery and glowing). The foundation already had a pretty luminous finish, so I didn’t need this. If you like a very luminescent finish, you might love it!
• 9 eyeshadow palette – this one was pretty average. Thankfully for me, the shimmer didn’t show through too much, so these aren’t overly glittery. I had to work very hard for colour pay-off, which resulted in lots of fall-out. But they are SO cheap, you could say they’re good value.
• Volumising mascara – again I really didn’t like this one. It was next to pointless, and as mascara is so critical for any makeup look, I would recommend splashing out the £8 for Maybelline’s Lash Sensational.
• 3 shade contour kit – for £4 this is pretty good value. The contour and bronzer are both totally useable, but if you’re pale like me, build up slowly to avoid looking muddy. The highlighter was basically unusable.
• Red lipstick crayon – this was easy to apply but didn’t have great colour pay-off. Again, I would turn to Rimmel for a great range of affordable, decent lipsticks before buying this again.

I would LOVE to hear what you guys think of Primark makeup, and if any particular products have wormed their way into your makeup kit. Let me know in the comments below!

Day 13: Maybelline Dream BB Pure

It’s been a few weeks since I did a base review – so let’s get right to it!

This one is Maybelline’s Dream BB Pure and costs just £6.99 for 30ml. As it’s a BB cream it only comes in two shades – Light and Medium, which is pretty disappointing. It does contain SPF15 though, which is a bonus.

I was particularly interested to try this BB cream as it contains Salicylic acid. This sounds scary, but is actually really good for skin like mine. Here’s a quick extract from Marie Claire to explain what it does:

What is salicylic acid?

Less commonly known as beta hydroxy acid (BHA), salicylic acid is a multi-tasking ingredient that can tackle skin’s many problems. Often prescribed by doctors, it’s a must for anyone prone to acne, due to its exfoliating nature. As an anti-irritant, it has the ability to soothe stressed skin, reduce redness and work as an anti-inflammatory to calm breakouts and angry skin. It’s also a keratolytic medication, which means that it’s an excellent exfoliator.

Now let’s check out the benefits! They are supposedly plentiful, so I have high hopes…

Before

Due to the darker mornings, I’m afraid the light in my pictures is more ‘orange’ than usual, as it’s coming from my desk lamp. STILL AN AMATEUR, PEOPLE.

After

Starting with the application – this BB cream applied and blended sooo easily. It was also a light enough shade to look good on my pale-ass skin, so that was positive too.

To achieve the coverage in the picture I had to use a fair amount of product, maybe twice as much as I would use with a regular foundation. I think the third picture demonstrates that my redness still showed through quite a fair bit (I have no blush on), so this does give a very low coverage. But I can’t really fault the product for that, as it IS a BB cream, not a foundation.

The finish is very dewy when you first apply it, so I used a lot of powder to set it. I was already starting to worry that I might get oily early on in the day.

1pm check-in

It’s lunchtime and I’ve had to settle for a couple of quick snaps in the lift. And I’ve just realised I look super crazy in that second one – like my eyes are looking in different directions.

When I arrived into work in the morning, I had scratched my nose and basically all the makeup came off! So at 9am I had to apply powder foundation to my nose (I carry a Mac Studio Fix powder round in my bag) to stop me from looking silly.

This makeup definitely has transfer (ie it comes off on clothes/fingers/tissues easily) and I felt like my skin looked a little ‘naked’ by lunchtime. I was also starting to get oily, but not as much as I thought I would by this time.

One plus side is that this cream feels very lightweight on my skin, and my skin feels lovely and soft.

6pm check-in

Still at work and checking in in the toilet (so glam!). I’ve tried to get a good angle here so you can see how oily my forehead is.

At this point I don’t really feel like I have any foundation on my face (although I definitely do judging by the makeup removal process!). I’m also demonstrating some real high-shine on my forehead and around my nose.

However – the base doesn’t look BAD. Because the coverage is low, you can’t see any obvious areas where it has come off and is revealing the red skin underneath, which can happen with higher coverage formulas.

My conclusion

I’ll say now that I don’t think this is a bad BB cream. I don’t think I’ll use it again for work, but I would definitely reach for this again if I was just going out for a few hours, or if I wanted a quick fix to head to the shops, or even just to even my skin-tone on a really good skin day.

If you’ve got drier skin or mature skin and you don’t need much coverage, I think this could be *amazing* for you. But for us oily-skinned types, this one is just that bit too moisturising.

Coverage – 5/10

The coverage of this BB cream is super-sheer, but that’s to be expected. So to be clear – this 5/10 isn’t a negative in general, it’s just not the coverage I personally need. However it did a great job at evening my skin-tone, so it’s perfect for a light-touch/natural look.

Pore smoothing – 7/10

My pores looked pretty smooth with this BB cream. They weren’t completely blurred out and my bigger pores are still visible, but it didn’t draw attention to them at all.

Finish – 7/10

The finish of this BB cream is initially very dewy – it almost felt ‘damp’ and it took a fair while to dry down. Even then it was still so dewy I had to powder a lot to mattify it. But if you have drier skin and want a healthy-skin look, this would be perfect! It certainly made my cheeks look healthy and smooth. 

Fine lines and wrinkles – 9/10

This formula was so smooth it didn’t settle at all in any fine lines or wrinkles, even under my eyes or around my mouth.

Longevity – 6/10 

The longevity of this wasn’t great. As I mentioned, my nose was nude by the time I got to work, and I noticed a high amount of transfer compared to most foundations I use. By the end of the day I looked mostly bare-faced.

Pros

• Good light shade
• So blendable and fast to apply
• Super lightweight
• Contains Salicylic acid – still an uncommon ingredient in makeup
• Super-cheap!

Cons

• Very low coverage
• Longevity was not great
• Made me pretty oily despite claims to ‘absorb excess oils’
• Transfer happened easily – base had a slippery element to it
• Only two shades – rubbish!

Keef’s comments

Keith’s only comment on this morning’s look was…

PINK.

As someone who has Rosacea and wasn’t wearing blusher, this feedback wasn’t terribly well received. I think this just highlights the low coverage of this BB cream and how it allowed my natural skin tones to come through. Not necessarily a bad thing, if that’s what you’re after.

Have you tried this BB cream? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

My mini 90s makeover

Hello everyone! I’ve been quiet for a couple of weeks as I recently started a new job and it’s all been quite intense and busy.

This is going to be a short and sweet post, as I wanted to share a mini 90s makeover I gave myself this weekend. I chose this makeup look as I was spending the day with Keith’s friends, who all grew up in the 90s. I was 5 – 15 in the 90s, but I didn’t start wearing makeup really until the mid 2000s. The link was pretty tenuous, but I just needed some inspiration! So here’s the before and after…

What a transformation! I took a few quick steps to get here…

Tinting my eyebrows

Shaving my face

Doing a face-mask

So let’s look at that makeup again.

Rather than boring you with all the details, the key elements to this look are:

1. Brown. There is a lot of brown in this look!
2. I used a few shades on brown on my eyelids, putting a lighter, more metallic champagney colour on the centres to make my eyes look a little bigger.
3. I also added a winged liner and some half-lashes to try and elongate my eyes as best I could.
4. I added a fair bit of contour, which is hard to see in this picture. This helped to give me a hint of cheekbones.
5. I then went over the contour with a LOT of bronzer, and took this bronzer right up onto my cheeks (almost like blusher), onto my nose, around my forehead, and even a bit around my jaw-line. Again it’s hard to see in this photo as I used my front-phone camera, as I was running late (as usual). I didn’t use any blush in this look.
6. The most important part of this look is the brown lipstick – I’m wearing the shade ‘Whirl’ by Mac. It’s very matte (so be careful if you have dry lips), but it really brings the 90s to this look!
7. Finally I straightened my hair and added a flannel shirt (not pictured) to bring a 90s vibe.

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture – I really need to sort out a proper camera. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my 90s look. I would have added a choker if I could’ve found one to fit my neck 😦

If you have any ideas of looks from an era you’d like to see – let me know and I’ll give it a go!

Halloween special: The horrors of the M&S Autumn collection (modelled by me and my sister)

My big sister Becky and I went shopping today for some new outfits. As part of our tour of Bluewater, we visited M&S and perused the Autumn collection.

It was at this point that Becky and I started to worry we’d wandered into some kind of time-hole and ended up forty years in the past. It was the only explanation for the fashion horror-show we were facing, made up almost exclusively of velvet items.

But we remained open-minded and took a few of the outfits to the dressing rooms to try. And now, you get to enjoy the pictures from the comfort of your own home!

Lets start gently with this beautiful sequin Midi Pencil Skirt (£49.50) and short sleeve velvet T-shirt (£25) combo. I must confess, I liked this skirt more than I should have.

Becky rocked this 3/4 Sleeve Bling Shoulder Sweatshirt (£35). A flattering sleeve on ANY woman, flaring out at the typically bulging forearm area to allow for extra breathing room. Can you believe that Becky has no previous modelling experience?

Don’t be fooled my next outfit – this is not in fact a nightshirt, but is instead an *actual* shirt. This one is so bad, I think they’ve decided to leave it off of the website. What I like best about this one is the unflattering length and the featureless design.

Becky tried on this Brocade Print Jacket by Twiggy (£79) for japes, but I think she secretly liked it.

And now for my pièce de résistance. We have a wide leg velvet trouser in blue (£59) and matching velvet double breasted jacket (£89) with a rather beautiful long sleeve v-neck Clarissa blouse (£35). I don’t think I need to say any more. My eyes are closed in most of these pics, so I thank my sister for that.

Becky didn’t want to be left out on the velvet suit front, so we set her up with this velvet straight skirt (£39.50) and matching tie cord embroidered velvet jacket (£59). We paired this with a gold long sleeve cold shoulder lurex jersey top (£19.50). The tassel detail really makes this outfit.

So that’s it for our fashion exploits today – I hope we’ve inspired you with this halloween look-book. However the horror didn’t end there, as we found this strange collection of items randomly discarded on the floor…

And finally, Becky found a dismembered pair of hands just lying around unattended. So of course we took the opportunity to snap some artsy shots.

We’d love to hear your feedback – which outfit was your personal favourite?