Sleek Vintage Romance i-Divine palette

I've been meaning to blog about this palette for a while now, but I've been lazy. Sleek is a brand I was excited about trying when I got to the UK, and it took me a while to decided which i-Divine palette I wanted. But when I saw the Vintage Romance palette, that was the one I was getting. It's the perfect winter palette, full of dark pinks, purples and gold. The colours are also named after cities in Europe, 7 of which I'll be traveling to very soon!!

I love the matte black casing of sleek products, they're so sturdy and have a big mirror inside. Don't use an alcohol wipe to clean the outside of the palette though, because the sleek logo will come off. It comes with a double end foam applicator, which found it's way to the bin soon after I opened it.

The 12 shades are mostly shimmer and glitter shades, with one matte shade. They're mostly very pigmented (with the exception of Vow in Venice and Propose in Prague, but you can work with them easily enough), and are lovely and soft and easy to blend.

The 12 shades are:

 Pretty in Paris - light silver shimmer

Meet in Madrid - gold shimmer

Court in Cannes - cool bronze shimmer

Lust in LA - bronze shimmer with green tones

Romance in Rome - navy blue shimmer

Propose in Prague - reddy copper matte

A Vow in Venice - dark mauve shimmer,

Marry in Monte Carlo - bright reddy purple glitter

Honeymoon in Hollywood - dark reddy purple with a slight shimmer

Bliss in Barcelona - dark bluey purple shimmer

Forever in Florence- very dark purple with silver glitter

Love in London- matte black with silver glitter.

Top:Pretty in Paris, Meet in Madrid, Court in Cannes

Bottom: Vow in Venice, Marry in Montecarlo, Bliss in Barcelona 

Top: Lust in LA, Romance in Rome, Propose in Prague

Bottom: Bliss in Barcelona, Forever in Florence, Love in London

I found I get the most use out of the 3 shadows in the bottom left of the palette (Vow in Venice, Marry in Montecarlo and Bliss in Barcelona). They're prefect for autumn and winter, and go well with MAC Cranberry and MUA shade 25. Meet in Madrid and Court in Cannes are also really lovely neutral shades.

After using this palette I will definitely be getting my hands on another sleek palette in the near future. This palette is a limited edition, but you can still find it online from a number of websites.

It's time to go...

My time here in the UK is coming to an end. Next week we head to London to hop on a bus to go on an incredible journey through Europe before heading back home to Australia. These past 8 months have flown by, and I've done and seen so many amazing things. Even though I'm ready to go home and see the dogs again (I seriously can't believe it's been 8 months since I've seen those butt heads!) there are quite a few things I will miss (and not miss) about this crazy country. For a place that is so similar to Australia, it is absolutely completely different.

Being able to drive an hour or two in any direction and being in a totally new and exciting place is what I'll miss most! We've been living a hop skip and a jump (ok, a 2 - 2.5 hour bus ride) from London, and been able to go there for the day plenty of times. We drive for an hour and we're in Bath, Bristol, or even in a different country (ok, Wales). It's also incredibly cheap to travel to mainland Europe from the UK. You can fly to so many places in Europe for way less than what it costs to even fly Canberra to Brisbane. Or even Canberra to Sydney!!

Brothers toffee apple cider is the nicest drink I've ever tasted. Ok, that and Butterbeer. And you can get both of these here. I have a friend who lived here for 6 months and he ended up getting a case of toffee apple cider shipped to Australia he liked it so much. I thought he was crazy but it really is delicious. Of course I was going to love butterbeer too, which was one of the things I was most excited about going to Harry Potter world for. I kinda knew what it was going to taste like, I've tried a recipe for it that uses A&W vanilla cream soda mixed with butterscotch schnapps (which tastes excellent, by the way) but it exceeded my expectations. I went back for seconds (only because the first time I didn't get it in the collectible handle mug. Mistake, always go for the collectible mug.) Sticking with the drinks theme, alcohol is so much cheaper here. Like, loads.

Another thing that's cheaper, brings me to my favourite stores here, Boots and Superdrug. I've spent a lot of time in the makeup sections of these stores. It's still exciting to see the MUA, Sleek, Collection, Barry M, Look Beauty and Soap & Glory stands in the stores! There is a major lack of testers though in both these stores, as well as lack of packaging. Most times I buy something I have to seriously inspect it before I bought it to make sure it hadn't been swatched or even destroyed already. Although it'll be nice to get back to some good old Australian brands (I'm looking at you Australis, you and all the things you've released while I've been away!!), Essence just doesn't cut it for me in the beauty bargain category like MUA does.

White swans. AND SQUIRRELS!

Old castles and buildings.

Cold weather - they had a heatwave here in the summer. With a top of 33, not stupid 40!

Primark!





There are a few things that I wont miss, like the outside malls and seriously crazy traffic, but I really did love my time here! I will be back, that's for certain. Otherwise I'd be wasting my British passport!

Urban Decay Naked 3!

Guess what guys? Another post about a Naked palette! I don't care if you've read these a million times, because I'm super excited I finally own one of these. I contemplated dropping the money on the other 2, but after getting MUA's Undressed palette, which I love, I couldn't see the point. But when I saw the shades in Naked 3, I knew it was a game changer. I'm a sucker for rose gold shadows, and this palette is full of them. And why not buy it while I'm here in England and it's a bit cheaper?

I ordered off Beauty Bay and it arrived in less than a week. It is as pretty as the pictures! Number 3 comes with a mix of matte, shimmer and glittery shades, along with 4 sample pots of different primers (these will have to wait till I get home, using them while traveling could get messy) and a double ended brush. I'm a little disappointed with the brush. The blending end is absolutely fantastic, but the 'shadow' side is a little to long for my liking. The shadows are all amazing! So fine, soft and pigmented. I didn't think I would actually notice a difference between it and the high street shadows I usually use, but there really is a difference. These are so much easier to blend! They last too! I'm a chronic eye rubber, I can't help it. But these didn't budge all day at work, without any primer either, which is a serious feat. Usually I end up with the shadow of at least one eye completely rubbed off.

The shade selection is perfect for me. Here is an attempt at describing the shades from a person who is not very good with colours. You could just look at the swatches below. Or someone else's swatches, because England has no sun so taking photos is hard. (Sandra at The Black Pearl has done eyelid swatches, I would probably go and look at them)

Strange: light highlight, almost matte.

Dust: Glittery light pink

Burnout: Light pinky brown shimmer

Limit: Matte dusty pink

Buzz: dark pinky brown shimmer

Trick: The perfect gold glitter

Nooner: Dark matte dusty pink

Liar: Copper Brown shimmer

Factory: Chocolate brown shimmer

Mugshot: Taupey brown shimmer

Darkside: Dark taupe, almost black shimmer

Blackheart: Matte black with rose gold glitter.

Natural light  - Strange, Dust, Burnout, Limit, Buzz, Trick

With flash - Same as above.

Natural light - Nooner, Liar, Factory, Mugshot, Darkside, Blackheart.

With flash, same as above.

My favourites would have to be Limit and Nooner - the pair are perfect for a matte eye look, and Dust, Buzz and Trick. I'm surprised how much I like Blackheart, although I doubt I'll get much wear out of it (I'm scared of really dark smokey eyes) but I'll most likely pull it out when I go partying in Europe.

I have a feeling this is going to be my go to palette for the next little while, and certainly for my trip around Europe (why would I need to bring any other shadows?!) and I'm totally not disappointed with the money I spent on it. That being said, as soon as MUA release a version of it (hopefully before I leave) I'll be snapping that up.

What's you're favourite Naked palette? Are you getting number 3 too?

Long time no post!

Hello internet, it's been a while. I got lazy. I didn't feel much like going home from work to blog, and I certainly didn't have time to on my days off, which have been spent galavanting around the country. I haven't falling out of love with blogging, I've had plenty of ideas and plenty of exciting new products (new eyeshadows, new foundations, and next week, a new Naked 3 palette!!) to blog about and I even have a few half written posts in my draft folder. It's just hard to find time to take photos of stuff when I've got so many other fantastic things I could be put photographing.

The one reason I want to start blogging again, is that next month the boyfriend and I are heading on a European adventure! A 24 day Topdeck tour called Winter Spirit, which goes to places like the Swiss Alps, Venice (on valentines day of all days!), Amsterdam, Krakow, Paris and Vienna. Really, I could go on and list all the places, but I'll leave it for now. I'm seriously excited to go everywhere, and eat everywhere, and I have no idea what to expect! There hasn't been much written on the internet about doing Europe tours in winter so i want to put in my 2c (2p at the moment? Is that a thing?) and write about it. I'm not making any promises, but there is a few long bus rides between cities that I'm sure I'll have time to spend a little time tying on my ipad, and apparently the busses have wifi. Fingers crossed on that one! I'm thinking of creating a separate blog for that, so stay tuned.

Anyway, here's a little overview about what I've been doing the last few months. I didn't realise how much I've been doing until I started putting some photos together for this. It's crazy!

Fell in love with Brighton Pier.

Went to Cardiff

Visited a scale model village of a really pretty village.

Drunk butterbeer and then visited Hogwarts!

Had fireworks for Guy Fawkes night.

Went to Stonehenge.

Decided I like squirrels so much I got a tattoo of one!

Visited the Bath Christmas markets and went ice skating!

Went to the Christmas markets at Hyde park twice! Drank Stiens, went on crazy rides and met up with friends from home. Also got a Harry Potter tattoo!

The last few months have been jam packed, and the next few months will be too, and I can't wait!