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!)

One Direction... makeup!

It's no secret that I am a bit of a fan of One Direction, so it's no surprise that the new One Direction range by MUA was released I had to get my hands on it, or that it managed to break my blog-drought (Sorry about that guys, now that I'm back into a little bit of a routine I can try and do some blogging in my spare time, and I have a lot of photos to share, along with the huge array of new products I can buy now I have an income!)

I haven't actually done any real research about this new collection. All I know is there's 5 lipsticks, 5 lip polishes, 5 nail polishes and 3 cheek tints. I have absolutely no idea if 1D had anything to do with it, but I don't really care because I like MUA's products and I'm a sucker for branding! Hence the 1D mug I also picked up today. Each 1D boy has a lipstick, lip polish and nail polish named after them.

I ended up picking up 4 lipsticks and 1 of the lip polishes. I hadn't intended on getting a lip polish at all, but saw a good review about it on Pretty in Pink and decided I needed it. The nail polishes didn't really tickle my fancy, and I can't wear nail polish at the moment because of my job. I may have a look at the cheek tints in the near future.

The lipsticks I got are I Want (Liam), Moments (Niall), I wish (Zayn) and Rock Me (Louis), with the lip polish in Liam Loves... Blueberry. All the lipsticks come in a bullet similar to MAC lipsticks, with a scent that also reminds me of MAC's lipsticks. The silver inside has the signature of the corresponding 1D boy on it, and the lipstick bullet has X's and O's down the side, with a 1D embossed on the top. This doesn't last very long, as you can kind of see on I Want (no matter HOW many times I checked and re-checked in Superdrug, I still managed to get a lipstick that had been tampered with. What is with makeup companies not sealing up their products?!). I've found the tubes of all of them are quite hard to push up and down. As for their formula, they seem to apply very smoothly, almost buttery. However, they do end up quite sheer (apart from I want), but still manage to cling to dry patches. You can't expect perfect quality for a £3 lipstick though.

I want, Moments, I Wish, Rock Me.

I want is a bright red with a hint of coral and a gold shimmery finish.

Moments is a lovely nude-pink with a nice gold shimmer to it which is totally work appropriate. 

I Wish is a pretty candy pink. It's not as scary on the lips as you would expect, but still not quite a nude.

Rock Me, although pretty scary looking in the bullet for those who aren't used to bold lipstick, is quite an understated pinky liliac shade. It's a little sheer, and would be perfect if you wanted to wear something different, but didn't want to stand out.

As for the lip polish, I'm pretty happy I picked it up. It's got a lovely buttery texture, a little like the Nivea lip butters, and is surprisingly pigmented! It leaves a lovely sheer colour on your lips, and smells a little like grapes.

Swatches with Flash (l-r) I Want, Moments, I Wish, Rock Me and Liam loves... Blueberries.

Swatches in natural light (same as above)

So far these have only been released in Superdrug stores, and on their website (which I had to find through a link, I couldn't find it by going through the Superdrug site). I haven't heard anything from MUA's facebook about when these will be going on their website. I have a feeling this may be because  there'll be a huge influx of traffic once they are released and they don't want another fiasco like the 50% off sale!