Beauty Bay Haul | Zoeva, Morphe & Makeup Geek!

Hello everyone! I have a very exciting post to share with you all today…it is my haul! After over 140 days of not buying makeup, this is the haul that I purchased with my gift card from work (which I talked about in my January update!). So just to clarify, I am still on my no-makeup-buying challenge till my 21st, which is exactly 90 days away now so just three months to go. Anyway I was very grateful to get a £50 voucher of my choice, it was like a little reward 5 months later for sticking at the challenge ^_^ and of course I had to pick beauty bay as they have so many wonderful things that are on my wishlist. 

I must say here that I am extremely impressed with beauty bay’s delivery, I placed this order at 7pm on a Thursday and it arrived at 12pm the following day! Normally I don’t have much luck with hermes delivery, but for some (great) reason my order arrived extremely quickly and everything was in tact, yay!

So starting with the much lusted after Zoeva Cocoa Blend Palette (£15.50) the moment I saw this popping up on blogs everywhere, I knew it had to be mine. Although it is (yet another) neutrals palette, most of the colours are useable on a regular basis and I know there are a couple of shades in particular that I’ll be gravitating towards the most! The first shades to catch my eye were ‘substitute for love’ and ‘freshly toasted’ which are both gorgeous crease and transition shades. ‘Bitter start’ is the perfect brow bone highlight and of course ‘pure canache’ is my ideal base shade - gotta have some gold! The quality of these eyeshadows are second to none, they’re so pigmented, soft and bendable and I love how the palette has it’s own sleeve too! The size of the pans are pretty decent too so overall this is a great value palette.

One of the best things about owning a palette which is ‘hyped up’ or much loved, is that there are a lot of youtube tutorials focusing on this palette alone. I really appreciate that because I do tend to stick to my comfort zone when it comes to eyeshadows looks, doing the same thing over and over. So having a range of videos to draw inspiration from is super useful. 

I also purchased my first morphe eyeshadow brush, the M330 blending crease brush (£4.75). The main reason why I went for this one over the others was because I was determined to keep my spending total to just under £50 so I didn’t break my ban (#dedication). I also really needed another blending brush that wasn’t too big. My eyes are slightly deep-set which means I don’t have the most lid space and I find that large brushes kind of mess up the whole look! This brush is so useful and it really has met my expectations. The elongated shape and tapered tip means I can use this to apply my transition shade and crease shade and then blend it all out in a few quick strokes. It also works well for adding concentrated colour to the outer corner and in general is a fantastic addition to my collection! 

And finally, probably the most exciting part of my haul I present to you my MakeUp Geek Eyeshadows! (£4.95). Every single beauty lover will have heard of these beauties and most likely seen them in action, used by some of the biggest beauty gurus. Just in case you haven’t though, let me give you a quick introduction! MUG shadows are extremely high quality, often described as better than MAC but they’re a much more affordable (and ethical) option. I opted for 6 of the regular shadows, however there are more options on beautybay, which are a little more pricy. Each eyeshadow pan contains 1.8g which is fantastic value for money and of course the best thing about these shadows being sold on beauty bay is the fact that now those of us who don’t live in the U.S can get our hands on the whole range without being hit by dreaded customs! 

So I had the budget for 6 shadows and of course I had already watched a lot of videos and noted down the MUST have shades. I also used the lovely Jasmine’s post (here) to help me decide what my first 6 shades should be. Admittedly they don’t look exciting, however I know MUG are known for their gorgeous transition and crease shades so I had to pick up some of the ones I have been lusting after for years! From Top left I bought Creme Brûlée which is a shade I’ll be using every single time I wear eyeshadow, because it is PERFECTION at making your eyeshadow game go from a 2-8 I kid you not. You just need to use a fluffy brush to sweep this all over the crease area and it pulls together whatever you’re going to be putting on next. Frappe which is several shades deep and more brown, works in a similar way but adds depth and definition. I purchased the shades Cocoa Bear and Bitten because they are two of the most loved shades out there and they’re wonderful for the crease and for the lower lash line too. I am SO excited to play around with these because the pigmentation and quality are just wonderful! Finally the shades Homecoming and Pretentious are my ideal all over the lid kind of shades. I do love me a good gold shade too but these two stood out more to me first over the golden ones. 

Honestly I cannot describe the excitement I felt when getting this parcel, not only because it contains items I have wanted for months and months (if not YEARS!) but also because it was such a treat after 5 months of not buying any new makeup items! I know for a fact that I was a lot more grateful for every single item because of my challenge and I truly appreciated that excitement which definitely goes once you become a bit of a hoarder!!

P.S I've just seen that beautybay have the new MUG contour shades and they're less than a tenner each - such a bargain! You must check out the video on youtube because there are shades for EVERY single skintones, for real it's amazing! I cannot wait to pick up a shade or two after my birthday ^_^

Have you tried anything in this haul? Any MUG recommendations? Please let me know in the comments!

Thank-you for reading ♥

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Beauty Bay Haul | Zoeva, Morphe & Makeup Geek!

Hello everyone! I have a very exciting post to share with you all today…it is my haul! After over 140 days of not buying makeup, this is the haul that I purchased with my gift card from work (which I talked about in my January update!). So just to clarify, I am still on my no-makeup-buying challenge till my 21st, which is exactly 90 days away now so just three months to go. Anyway I was very grateful to get a £50 voucher of my choice, it was like a little reward 5 months later for sticking at the challenge ^_^ and of course I had to pick beauty bay as they have so many wonderful things that are on my wishlist. 

I must say here that I am extremely impressed with beauty bay’s delivery, I placed this order at 7pm on a Thursday and it arrived at 12pm the following day! Normally I don’t have much luck with hermes delivery, but for some (great) reason my order arrived extremely quickly and everything was in tact, yay!

LOTW | Manhattan Soft Mat Lipcream in 56K

Hello everyone! Now I was a little hesitant to write this weeks LOTW because sadly it is no longer on fragrance direct and there isn’t a great deal of variety on eBay or Amazon :( The reason why I’m sad is because I really like this line, the Manhattan Soft Mat Lipcreams and they’re essentially dupes for the NYX version - which are unethical! It annoys me SO much that L’oreal bought NYX a few years back, making the brand unethical…but anyways onwards and upwards. 


The Manhattan brand are based in Germany I believe which is probably why not many people have heard of them and when I discovered them on Fragrance Direct for the great price I had to pick one up. I liked it so much that I went and purchased a couple more, so the only reason I’m actually writing this is in the hope that it’s not been discontinued and if you do stumble across it one day you’ll have an idea of what to expect!

Price: I believe this was £1.99. Yup. SUCH A BARGAIN.

Colour: This particular shade is ‘56K’ and its a medium bright pink shade. Alone it looks okay on me but I know it would suit fairer and deeper skin tones a lot more. 

Formula and Lasting time: The formula is creamy, soft and almost velvet-like. It is very very comfortable to wear on the lips and it doesn’t dry down completely. Although it is not entirely transfer proof, it does last a decent amount of time on the lips. Alone probably 3 hours and mixed with a lipliner a good 4/5 hours at least. It doesn't feather or bleed which is great. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the slightly tacky texture which I can feel on my lips when I press them together, which y'know isn't something I do regularly but still!

Favourite way to wear it: I don’t love the pink shade alone, so of course I go in with my trusty Rimmel lipliners. The shade Tiramisu is one I talk about often on the blog because it is a firm favourite as far as neutral liners are concerned. Tiramisu, as you can see in the above swatch makes the pink lean more towards a ‘my lips but better’ shade and the beauty of the ‘soft matte’ formula is that any lipliner over the top applies smoothly. You must give it at least a minute to dry down as much as possible though, because otherwise it’ll slip and side under the liner. The second Rimmel shade I’ve enjoyed used is ‘addiction’ which is more of a mauve shade and transforms  the colour into a cooler shade.

Overall: I have really enjoyed this weeks lippie, whilst I did have to use a separate lipliner to get it to work well as I did with the liquid lipsticks, the formula of this made it so much easier to do and a whole lot more comfortable to wear too. I would love to pick up a few more neutral shades and I will be on the hunt for this brand in the summer because I need more in my life! The doe foot applicator also makes the application super easy.

Available from: Search amazon and eBay. Keep an eye out on FragranceDirect.com.  *UPDATE* A lovely reader has let me know that these are available at poundworld! So if you happen to be passing them, check these out!

Rating: 8/10

Repurchase? Yes I would.

Thank-you for reading ♥

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LOTW | Manhattan Soft Mat Lipcream in 56K

Hello everyone! Now I was a little hesitant to write this weeks LOTW because sadly it is no longer on fragrance direct and there isn’t a great deal of variety on eBay or Amazon :( The reason why I’m sad is because I really like this line, the Manhattan Soft Mat Lipcreams and they’re essentially dupes for the NYX version - which are unethical! It annoys me SO much that L’oreal bought NYX a few years back, making the brand unethical…but anyways onwards and upwards. 

Review | Primark £1 Nails

Hello everyone! Last week I stopped by Primark and decided to pick up some of their false nails. I’d gone past them many times before but no colour or pattern really caught my eye, until I saw this beautiful dusty/nude pink! This is my ideal nail polish shade because its so simple, classy and flattering at the same time. I have been wearing these nails for two days now and thought I’d type up a quick review for you all, because for the price tag I think more people should hear about them!

Firstly I love the shape of them, they’re not too long nor too short and if I could change my nail shape to any it would be this one! I must admit I’ve been admiring them kind of all the time, whilst driving, typing, even just doing my makeup haha. As I don’t wear false nails often, it’s not something I’m too used to, however I didn’t feel like I had to be more gentle with day-to-day activities because the length isn’t ridiculous, its just right. Also my natural finger nails are pretty wide and I don’t have the patience to file and shape them, so I just keep them short. Having these false nails on have made my hands looks SO slender and feminine (I almost don't recognise them!). 

You get 36 nails in the box and it was relatively easy to find ones that match my fingers, though I do feel like there was a closer match on one hand than the other! Also some of them could have done with a little filing to make them rounder which’d match them closer with my cuticles. These nails come with a little tube of glue, which has a tip but for whatever reason mine didn’t work so I had to screw the opposite end off. This made application of the glue quite messy and also it was difficult to see exactly where on the nail I had put the glue as the glue is a clear shade. Because of this two of the nails came off without any warning, one while I was at work and the other after dinner. As there are so many nails in the pack it was easy to find a replacement, however if the glue was better it would be easier to rely on them for longer than one or two days! When reapplying the nails I found that the more glue the better and I held it down for over 10 seconds which also made the replacements feel more secure. You might also be able to see that some of the nails are a little jagged, as the material of these are pretty thin but personally I’d rather this than a thicker type which can feel uncomfy sometimes. 

All in all for £1 I really don’t think you can go wrong with these and I need to pick up a couple more of this particular shade because it is GORGEOUS! I do plan on purchasing some of those nail sticky tabs, or perhaps a nail glue which is stronger and has good reviews. That way I am confident they’ll last a week at least which is the longest I would want to wear them. They're not perfect, but they're probably the best false nails I have tried on a budget and the ease of finding the correct size was awesome too! If you want a change from just applying a bit of polish, pick these up and give them a go next time you’re passing Primark - they might surprise you just as they have me. 

Have you tried the Primark £1 nail range? What are your thoughts? 

Thank-you for reading ♥

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Review | Primark £1 Nails

Hello everyone! Last week I stopped by Primark and decided to pick up some of their false nails. I’d gone past them many times before but no colour or pattern really caught my eye, until I saw this beautiful dusty/nude pink! This is my ideal nail polish shade because its so simple, classy and flattering at the same time. I have been wearing these nails for two days now and thought I’d type up a quick review for you all, because for the price tag I think more people should hear about them!