Sleek Blush by 3 Palette in Lace

I'll start this off by apologising for the lack of posts lately. I've been so busy working and traveling that i haven't really had time to sit down and write blog posts, let alone have time or the right conditions to take photos. Ive also had a lot of problems with my macbook's airport card. It's 6 years old now, and definitely on it's last legs, and I won't be able to afford a new one until I get back home. Winter is fast approaching, and apart from it getting a lot colder, a lot darker earlier, it's been raining almost every day for as long as I can remember. I'm not complaining, I love the rain, and the cold (bring on the snow!!) but it makes it hard to take photos.

Anyway, the Sleek blush by 3 is a product I've been wanting to get for some time but haven't been bothered placing an order online. The colours in Lace are perfect for me, pinky orange, and it contains the all important and beautiful Orgasm dupe!

I really love the way Sleek package their products. The huge mirror and black packaging make it feel really nice, and er, sleek. Haha. But they definitely feel like youre getting more than you would expect from their £9.95 price tag. There's also a huge among of product. The pans are seriously huge. I can't see myself running out of it anytime soon!

The colours are really pretty, and super pigmented too. You do have to be a little careful not to put too much of this on or you end up looking like a clown. Seek suggest layering these, and I find this works great, using either two outer colours before using the middle one over the top to give a lovely glow. The middle colour, guipure, is definitely my favourite. It's a lovely pink with a golden glow, and doesn't look too over the top if you accidentally put too much on, unlike the other two

 They are a lot more orangy than I expected from looking online, but are still great colours.

Up close

Swatches without flash (l-r) crochet, guipure and chantilly.

Swatches with flash, same as above.

I'm keen on getting another of these palettes, but I'm not sure how many more make up products I can justify buying before I have to start posting things home. Luckily they are pretty easy to get your hands on I'm Australia now! I'm also going to try and start posting a little more, I still have so much to share with you all!

Have you tried a sleek blusher, which is your favourite? What other Sleek products would you recommend?

Prettiest village in England.

Toby and I have been trying to do as much as we can on our days off, so a while ago when we both had most of the day off, we wanted to go see a Roman villa that's nearby. Unfortunately that was closed, so we ended up in a town called Bibury, which turned out to be the prettiest town I have ever seen! We visited a trout farm, didn't get any trout, and after walking around for a bit headed to another town called Burford to have afternoon tea.

yep, Australian swan. It wasn't very nice.

MUA blush in Marshmallow

I'm a big fan of MUA. Ever since I won their Undressed Palette in a giveaway I've been interested in reading lots of reviews about their poducts, and keeping an eye out for new products. So it's been pretty cool to be able to check out their stands here! Unfortunately a lot of them aren't kept very well (think the Australis stands at Kmart!) and there aren't a lot of testers either!

They did release a new range of blushers recently which are all really lovely colours! So far I've picked up 2, cupcake (see here) and the brightest of the range, Marshmallow! For £1, these are fantastic. You get quite a bit of product, considering you only use a little bit at a time. These are also super pigmented! You can't really tell from the swatches, but you really only need to touch your brush onto the product and you've got almost enough for both cheeks. It's not even just because this is a bright, in-your-face pink, Cupcake is also super pigmented. 

The colour is fantastic. I don't own any pinks quite like this, and certainly didn't bring anything so bright with me to England. It is really lovely paired with the Rimmel Scandaleyes shadow stick in Turquoise, and MUA Kiss Me Lipstick in I Wish.

It is quite powdery, as you can see from the picture below. I just touched the pan with my brush and that much powder came off. Luckily the lid is quite secure and you can just leave that product in there for next time and it wont leak out. It's not at all powdery on your cheeks, and blends really easily.

heavy swatch (l) and blended (r) with flash

  same as above in natural light

I'm a real fan of this blush, and will no doubt buy more from the £1 blush range.

Have you tried any MUA blushers? What did you think of them?

Day Off at Cotswolds Wildlife Park!

Toby and I get Tuesdays off together, and after spending every single one just shopping we decided to do something different. Our boss has been writing a list of things around where we're living that we can visit, but of course we forgot to have a look at it before we left work on Monday. I was browsing google maps, as you do, and found the Cotswold Wildlife Park. Toby remembered a girl at work raving about it, and we decided we'd head there!

I love going to the zoo, and my favourite animals are the meerkats and penguins, and there were lots of both. There were a few baby animals around, including a white rhino, camel and a few baby meerkats.

I think my favourite of this trip was seeing two monkeys fighting. I took a video of it on my instagram, along with a whole lot more videos!

Compared to other zoo's I've been to (which is really just Canberra, Sydney and Perth zoos...) it was quite small, and didn't have a great deal of animals. It was a really open planned zoo, with lots of low fences, which was a nice change from seeing all of the animals in cages.

 

The giraffes were so close!

Sleeping wolf

There was a paddock with goats you could go in and pat. The goats didn't seem too keen on it though.

We ended the day trying to find a farm that sold cheese with no luck, and driving past the supposed house of a certain television celebrity.

Rimmel Scandaleyes Shadow Stick in Tempting Turqouise.

One of the things that's caught my attention most in the pharmacy's over here (and supermarkets, I always manage to make my way to the make up isle in any store I go into) is the Rimmel Scandaleye shadow sticks. I know eyeshadow sticks are something that have been around for a little while, and they were certainly available in Australia when I left, but I've never really paid attention to them until now. It took me almost 2 months to actually buy one though, and of course I ended up not buying the colour that I would use the most (a nude) or one that would suit my eye colour (the purple), but the colour I've never used on my face before, Tempting Turquoise. This was a bit silly, seeing as at my new job I've been going for a very natural looking face of make up, so would only be able to use it when I have days off.

The only real problem I've had with this is that it is so hard to find one in the shops that hasn't been smeared all over someone else first. Seriously, half of the shadow sticks I've looked at in stores have the point completely worn down, and the rest have the product smeared all over the lid. I can't for the life of me figure out why they can't just sticky tape the lids closed! No one's going to want to buy a product that's been used first, so they're clearly going to save money by sealing their products because they'll be able to sell all of them! So annoying. However, I did manage to find one in the shop I went into to buy these that hadn't been tampered with.

These sticks are so easy to use! The colour is a really nice vibrant turquoise, with a little bit of shimmer. I'm thinking I'll really only be able to use this colour as eyeliner, but it glides so smoothy along the lid and the thickness means you can get a nice thick line, perfect for if you want to layer black liner underneath, which is how I decided to wear this. I tried to blend it, but it didn't work very well, but mostly because I can't imagine wearing blue all over my lid! I'll have to buy some of the neutral shades to try out blending I think.

It came off easily with cleanser, not leaving any hint of blue behind. I'm not sure how great these will be to sharpen, as the product is quite soft, but I'm sure if you put them in the fridge or maybe freezer before hand they would sharpen fine.
I did find that these really didn't stand up to 24h waterproof claim. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be 24 hours wear or they will be waterproof for 24 hours, but I don't believe either. I wore these for around 9 hours, and I had a lot of smudging. Mostly on my right eye, which was a little bit of a mess when I got home, but I did find that it had smudged into the crease of my left eye. I did get caught in the rain, however I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the smudging, because both my black eyeliner and mascara were not waterproof and didn't move. These also work ok when using a eyeliner brush for lower lashes, but ruin the point a little bit.

thick swatch (l) and shaded (r) natural light.

same as above, with flash.

Shadow stick by itself.

Shadow stick, with Covergirl line exact liquid liner and clump crusher mascara.

These are coming to Australia in September, with a BIGGER range than is available here in the UK. I know, when does that ever happen?! I'll definitely be purchasing more, and I'll probably end up with the other 4 shades.

Have you tried these? What's your favourite kind of shadow stick, if you even like them at all?

Oui Paris!

At the end of June, we took a trip to Paris for my birthday! It was full of delicious food, amazing architecture and a butload of stairs! I was going to write up a long post about it, but it was so long ago, and ya'll probably don't want to hear me yammering on.

We ended up going to the Eiffel Tower a whole 3 times. Yep! The first 2 days we went it was closed due to a strike, so on the 3rd day we walked up to the second floor, only to find the ticked booth closed to the top (I'm so scared of heights I wasn't at all upset about this, but Toby was a bit bummed.) We visited the Arch De Triumph and the Champs Elysee, The Catacombs, The Louvre, Notre Dame, The Opera, and Galleries Lafayette and Laduree for macarons. I was super lazy this trip and didn't get my camera out much, so a lot of my favourite photos ended up being instagram photos. I would be sad about that becoming a way of life now, but I really love instagram (hit me up, my username is Klerr).

A bridge of locks near Notre Dame. We definitely put another one on there!

Got Maccas just to have a beer with it!

The Catacombs are super creepy. So many bones.

Delicious creme brule we shared the night before we left. Other delicious French food we ate and I didn't get a picture of include escargot, duck confit (ie my favourite dish ever), croissants (of both the plain and chocolate variety), macarons, nutella crepes, cheese crepes, mille feuille and steak tartare (when the waiter had to double check that I knew it was raw beef, and was shocked that I was ok with that!)