How I Save £££ On Make-Up | #JANBLOG 19

Hello lovely readers, I hope you are all well! I am currently hating myself for procrastinating and essay by doing just about everything possible to avoid it ._. It is going to be a looong night..but for today’s post I thought I would share with you my top 10 make-up money saving tips, following on from my 101 day spending ban post – I hope this is helpful!

1. Make Use of Advantage/Loyalty Cards!

I have one for boots, Superdrug, Debenhams and the Nectar card (because where I work is located within Sainsbury's). I also have a Costa card and a Nandos card. If they are offering you points, which could later be translated into money take it! Although it may not seem like a significant amount, every little adds up! Last year boots held a few ‘points events’ and I went along and bagged myself £10 worth of points which I later spent in their boxing day sale! Who doesn’t love a double bargain?? I must admit the Superdrug card is a little naff, they only give you one point per pound spent…but then you can use your point’s to pay for PART of any payment, something you cannot do with boots. Having said that boots give you 4 POINTS PER POUND! So why not snap them both up! Along with this some stores give offers exclusive to card holders, for example Debenhams offer free delivery to any one with a beauty card! And I’ve yet to come across a store who charges for the card, so what are you waiting for?!

2. Become an e-mail subscriber

You know those little boxes at the end of most shop’s online webpages? Enter your e-mail address, or perhaps create a second e-mail that is not for personal/work related and enter that… then keep an eye out for offers. I always find it handy to know  when a store is having 20% off, free delivery or gift with purchase. Sometimes shops will have online only sales, so you can pick up your makeup and skincare for cheaper than leaving your home – winning! Again it’s totally free and takes a matter of seconds.

3. Always wait for a 3for2!

Do you REALLY need that eyeliner right now? Or can you wait a little till boots do this fantastic offer? I think we both know the answer, and believe me it feels a LOT better getting an eyeliner for free than it does having to cough up for one! I would say I’ve probably shopped at boots twice when they HAVEN’T had a 3for2 type of offer on, get more for your money ladies!

4. Keep Wish lists

So following on from the previous point, write stuff down. I’m sure the majority of us like making lists anyway, so jot down something you’ve seen a YouTuber or Blogger rave about (I always have a wish list going in the notes section on my iPhone) and then when offers strike you can pick up what you wanted! it also allows you to think carefully about whether you really want the particular item, although of course random splurges are sometimes inevitable!

5. Have a browse of your local super market!

You may remember my Sainsbury's post a few weeks ago, where I picked up some things that were ridiculously cheaper than a ‘drugstore’! So if you do the weekly shop, or are simply passing a supermarket and have time, go check out their beauty and skincare isles and see what is on offer that week. I am always pleasantly surprised to pick up a moisturiser or blush for a very reasonable price from a grocery store.

6. ASOS IS A STUDENTS BEST FRIEND

Firstly they offer 10% student discount all year round, IF you have a NUS card or have signed up to UNIDAYS (LINK). And don’t worry you can be a secondary school student and sign up too! So if you’re after a particular rimmel mascara, or bourjois bronzer do check out ASOS’s beauty section and enter your code for a cheaper beauty fix! Another thing I adore about ASOS is sometimes they RANDOMLY have flash beauty sales on a particular brand, for example 30% off Rimmel. So by keeping the beauty section bookmarked and checking it now and again you could have some serious savings! FINALLY the days when they have a whooping 20/30% off EVERYTHING, beauty lovers REJOICE because that means you get to pick up a NARS BLUSH for 20% off! Oh YES! I purchased my first and second NARS blusher’s during these 20% off’s, so worth it! Oh ASOS, I love thee.

7. FragranceDirect.com

I’ve ordered from here at least 4 times and have never had an issue with any of my cosmetics or perfumes. I LOVE this site! You do have to thoroughly go through the categories to separate the good from  the bad but sometimes you can find AMAZING deals! For example the Manhattan Mat Lip Creams (reviewed) are available for 99p!! It’s well worth checking FD out now and again.

8. Invest in A Good Base

Now not everyone will agree with me on this one, but I think although the drugstore have some phenomenal products, it is always worth investing a little more into a base that will be  failproof. Mine is probably NARS Sheer Glow, it is a good medium/full coverage base which photographs beautifully and seems to look better and better the longer I wear it. Plus the yellow tone in the foundation is amazing! Especially if you are a WOC going high-end will make your makeup routine easier, and probably cheaper….with the more expensive stuff generally a little goes a long way, it’s more long wearing and of course tailored to more unique skin tones something the drugstore fails on often. A lot of the times (but not always!) higher end bases can tick more boxes than drugstore, so by investing in one you're saving more time and money and adding less stuff to your face to get the perfect base.

9. Invest in  Acrylic Storage & Get Organised

Yes Muji seems to be on every beauty guru’s channel and most blogger’s own them but there is a great reason for that – they are incredibly functional (as well as looking gorgeous!). With acrylic storage you can see EVERYTHING you own and hopefully you’ll end up using it a great deal more too! If you’re a generally unorganised person like myself they will go a long way in helping organise all your makeup and really getting your money’s worth out of a product! On top of that you can immediately see if you NEED another concealer or if the one you have is still going strong….resulting in unnecessary spending and less waste ok maybe I just love Muji too much to not include it in this. But seriously ladies, although they are an investment, and can be pricy if all bought in one go, I cannot recommend them enough. It has changed my makeup collection for the better, and will help me make the most of my stash, especially when I move rooms!

10. Use iHerb.com to buy your Real Techniques and Eco Tool brushes!

Every single Real Techniques brush I own, aside from Sam’s picks collection was bought from iherb! You get your brushes for almost half price, and the shipping is very reasonable too. I bought the core collection which costs around £21 for only £11 and so could afford to spend more money because the US prices are so reasonable! One thing to make note of however is that if you order more than £15 worth in one go you will probably be charged customs tax…so keep it under 15! When I ordered mine I made multiple separate orders and had no issues, you can also pick up Dr. Bronner’s soap from there which I mentioned in my ‘how I thoroughly clean my makeup brushes’ post as well as a heap of other natural products for cheaper prices! Don’t forget to use the code LCD104 to get at least $5 off your first order – every little helps ;D

And those are my golden money saving tips ladies! Like I said I RARELY pay full price for anything, and through being a little savy I’ve  built up a collection I am quite proud of. When you can save your pennies, why not? ^_^ If you found this post useful please give it a thumbs up on my facebook page, and thankyou very much for reading! Please feel free to share any other ways YOU save money on makeup below :)

p.s Again thankyou all SOO much for your wonderful comments on my past few posts, I will reply to them as soon as I’ve ticked these assignments off, but honestly you’re such an amazing bunch! <3

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How I Save £££ On Make-Up | #JANBLOG 19

Hello lovely readers, I hope you are all well! I am currently hating myself for procrastinating and essay by doing just about everything possible to avoid it ._. It is going to be a looong night..but for today’s post I thought I would share with you my top 10 make-up money saving tips, following on from my 101 day spending ban post – I hope this is helpful!

THE 101 DAY SPENDING BAN! | #JANBLOG 18

Hello fellow beauty lovers!
Following on from The Money Book post, yesterday I ordered what I had been waiting for (SLEEKS NEW COLLECTION OH MY GOODNESS ITS GORGEOUS) and then set about thinking how long I wanted this ban to be for. Now 1 months of wages was weak, two months a good start…but THREE MONTHS OF WAGES UNTOUCHED AND STRAIGHT INTO SAVING? Now that is what I deem to be an achievement! And coincidently yesterday started off 101 days of no spending (till April payday!)
So I shall keep this fairly brief, but my reasonings?

1. I want to get more control over my finances. I want to be able to save a portion of it per month and spend what my income allows and I think the only real way of doing this, is completely cutting off from spending and just watching my savings accounts grow! By having this huge spending ban (a quater of the year!) I really do think it will make it easier for my to save more money in the future, even if it’s only half my wages per month – CHANGE STARTS FROM HERE!
2. It does quite irritate me when people tell me I spend too much money on something (i.e makeup). what my perception of too much is and your perception may be totally different. Also I don’t spend my money drinking, and dancing or on eating out every other day each to their own. On top of that I am rather savy when it comes to buying makeup (watch this space a very useful post coming up for you ladies!) and so although I do happen to own a fair amount, the VAST majority was not bought full price…but..having said that I’ve come to the stage where I really want to use and APPRECIATE all the beauty goodness I own!  A big reason for why I’ve not been using all my makeup is because like I have mentioned I am in the process of moving bedrooms, and honestly I am just itching to hurry up and organise it all nicely in the new room so I can truly appreciate what I have! Everything I own was bought out of hard earnt money, and I want to be able to get the most out of it. I do think starting a beauty blog is positively correlated with having a larger makeup collection than most!! So now is the time to get using it! ^_^
3. Finally just to prove to myself that I can indeed do this! I know its a long time, but 2014 for me so far has started off with the need to push myself. A great example is #Janblog if you asked me a few weeks ago if I could blog every single day I would have laughed in your face! I do hope the content and photography hasn’t suffered too much though..anyway yes i’m doing this for ME!

I’ve already deleted the amazon, asos and ebay app from my phone. let me tell you window shopping via the phone when boredom strike can be fatal! I’ve also started deleting enticing brand e-mails when they arrive (I’m an avid e-mail check, and those can be my weaknesses ._.)

The exceptions/rules;
- I’m allowed £5 a week for buying food whilst at uni, it won’t get me far but I really need to STOP BUYING FOOD FOR INFLATED PRICES! There’s plenty of food at home, it just takes 5 minutes to pack them!
- The essentials like my phone top-up and driving lessons.
- I need to buy a couple of presents in the upcoming months, so they’re obviously not included!


That’s all guys! I’m feeling pretty positive about this all and really hope it is successful! A big thankyou too all your positive comments in the money book post, you beauties are the best! <3  I’ll miss packages arriving, but I sure won’t miss that guilty ‘I already had one of those, was another that necessary Iqra??’ moments ._.

If you missed yesterdays post, check out my review of some of the ebay brushes/RT dupes ^_^

THE 101 DAY SPENDING BAN! | #JANBLOG 18

Hello fellow beauty lovers!
Following on from The Money Book post, yesterday I ordered what I had been waiting for (SLEEKS NEW COLLECTION OH MY GOODNESS ITS GORGEOUS) and then set about thinking how long I wanted this ban to be for. Now 1 months of wages was weak, two months a good start…but THREE MONTHS OF WAGES UNTOUCHED AND STRAIGHT INTO SAVING? Now that is what I deem to be an achievement! And coincidently yesterday started off 101 days of no spending (till April payday!)

Brush Series | Ebay Brushes pt.1 | #JANBLOG 17

You may have seen these brushes floating around the blogosphere, and of course when I saw them I had to pick them up! For just under £2 each, these brushes have been reviewed as wonderful alternatives. I really wanted to try them out a little before I gave my two pennies, and here I am! The reason this is part 1 is because I have ordered another set but it’s yet to arrive ._.
Now I am a makeup brush fanatic, they’re probably in my top 3 of things I like to buy (along side makeup itself and sweets of course). The response I read on my instagram and in the comments to my second post of this series was ’whoa girl you got a LOT of brushes’. Y’know some girls collect bags, others shoes..and I seem to collect brushes!  and when I see potential backups, for a very reasonable price it is certainly going into my basket!

I will be going through each brush in turn and sharing if and why I like them and also what I use them for. I’ve ordered from two sellers recently (I also have this random blue one but don’t really like it so haven’t featured it) and as they come from the East they took around 2 and a half week to get here. Starting with the first seller, (LINK)  I ordered these two brushes:


As you can see these are almost identical in colour to the Real Technique core collection, and around the same size too. On first touch you will notice that the bristles are extremely soft (to the point where you want to rub them against your face), and not very dense. The bottom’s of these brushes aren’t the same rubber feel of the RT’s but they are useful in that they can stand up easily on any flat surface so a thumbs up from me!

I was particularly interested in getting the angled brush (number 5 from this seller) as I wanted to see if it would make a different to application and I tried this with foundation three times…because it isn’t as dense as the buffing brush it was a little more time consuming to blend into the skin and make sure it was an even application. I do however love the angle for light contouring, as it gets right under the cheekbones and softness makes it easy to blend out. It also works well as a great powder brush, again because of the angle it can get into the corners of your face with ease! A back up from the buffing brush? Maybe not,  but a great brush to have around nonetheless!

photo comparison of this brush and the RT contouring brush which is one of my favourites!

The next one is smaller and where the first one lacked density this one makes up for! I believe it is number listed number 1 out of the five this seller stocks. It has a distinctive tapered point and when I saw it I instantly thought it would be great for contouring. This COULD be a backup of the RT contour brush, but of course when it comes to blending out the products its not so great because of how dense the bristles are. I think this would work amazingly well with cream contouring, and now I really want to jump out of bed and try it! (hopefully I’ll post an update in here sharing what I found!). The primary use I've found for it is actually highlighting, it puts just the right amount of product on the exact areas that I want to be brightened up.





The next three were from a different seller (link here) and I was pleasantly surprised to see they actually came in boxes – a nice little touch! These are pink in colour, again similar to the RT ‘finishing touches’ brushes multi-task, blush and setting. The first one that I was the most excited to try out was the stippling brush..



This is because I did actually own a Real Techniques one but (I never share this story because it makes me feel so distraught slight exaggeration but I may aswell let it all out seeing as this is the brush series!) from the first time I used it I knew it was a faulty brush ._. it was rough and unkind to my skin, and when I washed it soooooo many hairs came out! I was horrified because to the best of my knowledge Real Techniques brushes never shedded!! I did have to chuck it out, but thank fully it was JUST the stippling brush that was faulty and not the rest of my collection!



Ok back to the review,  I ADORE THIS BRUSH! Before I used these I washed them, and only one hair came out of this which was most promising. It has a decent sized head, not too large but not tiny and it’s a dream to use with creamy products…and for blending out blusher overload of course! It is super soft and doesn’t shed a tonne like the e.l.f small stippling brush seems too. I’ve used this almost every time I’ve applied makeup since buying it, so a huge thumbs up from me!


Next in line is a long very dense type of brush (the first one in the photo), and I THINK its the one called 'long' from the five this seller has. This is probably the one I have reached for the least as it’s quite an awkward shape/size. I initially thought it would be good for contouring but again I find it too stiff..I suppose you could maybe apply blusher with it using the side?? hmm. Not a fan, though it is still very soft I wish it was more versatile!



The last one (soft fibre) is this small flat topped brush,  and when I say it’s head is small I’m not kidding, it’s just a smidge bigger than a 50p coin. It is actually my second favourite from this little e-bay stash because it is a DREAAAAAM to blend concealer out with. Again the bristles aren’t particularly dense, but they are more so than the stippling brush, and if you’re going for the Kim K highlight look this is perfect for under the eyes and in the triangle shape. I did try it with blusher, but I would recommend NOT going for that because it packs on product like no tomorrow and I was alarmed to see my maroon sleek blush shade gashed onto my cheek in such a harsh manner D: But for blending in cream and liquid products, it is amazing and I know I’ll be reaching for this fellow a lot!

SO all in all for £2 a pop (including P&P!) I think these are well worth checking out! I didn’t order a full set, but near enough! Again the ones I’m super impressed with are the second and third brushes in the photo from the second seller and I’m pleased to have the angled flat top from the first. The other two aren’t BAD brushes, but I could live without them in my brush collection. These brushes are all over eBay at the moment, and I’m sure they’re all manufactured from the same place so take your pick of colours because there is also a blue variety available which is a nice change from the gold, pink and purple!

I hope this post was somewhat useful to anyone thinking of buying these ‘dupes’. I obviously still recommend investing in Real Techniques because you can’t really get better in terms of shape, size and how dense the bristles are, however if a full RT kit is too pricy for your liking, or you simply need a great stippling brush for price you can’t even buy a bag of chips for these days then these are a fantastic option ^_^

Brush Series | Ebay Brushes pt.1 | #JANBLOG 17

You may have seen these brushes floating around the blogosphere, and of course when I saw them I had to pick them up! For just under £2 each, these brushes have been reviewed as wonderful alternatives. I really wanted to try them out a little before I gave my two pennies, and here I am! The reason this is part 1 is because I have ordered another set but it’s yet to arrive ._.