Five Songs For Wednesday

Clicking the images will take you to the song on youtube.

1. San Cisco - Awkward

For some reason I love crazy person songs (Paramore's Crazy Girl, No Doubt's Bathwater), so this is right up my street. Please please tell me if you know any more of these kinds of songs. I think this is my favourite so far. 

2. The Chemical Brothers - The Salmon Dance

People seem to either really love this song or think it's completely stupid. I, of course, think it's brilliant. It's silly but so what. The video is once again a total piece of art. 

3. Muse - Panic Station

I'm definitely still on a high from seeing Muse a couple of weeks ago. They sounded so completely polished and having real drones flying around the stadium was insane. My housemate is convinced she is the future Mrs Bellamy and if that means we get to be mates then that's fine by me. This is one of my favourite Muse songs. 

4. Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

My friend made me watch the video of this to see Christopher Walken dancing and I fell in love with him a bit. Great song, great video.

5. Nothing But Thieves - Trip Switch

For some reason, it really makes me cringe when the name of a song is heavily featured in the lyrics, so this was more of a grower. But it is another fantastic song from a great band. 

Once again, I'd love to hear any recommendations. Especially for crazy girl songs!

Too Faced SemiSweet Chocolate Bar Palette Review

If I could marry a palette I would marry this one. I would take it off into the sunset and spend the rest of my life with it, every day in bliss. 

I was very hesitant to buy the semisweet palette as I already own more neutral palette than any one face needs, but as I STILL can't get hold of the sweet peach palette (seriously if anyone knows anywhere I can get hold of it please PLEASE let me know) I thought I'd give it a go...

First impressions wise, I love the novelty packaging and it comes with a really handy 'how to' guide, ideal for some inspiration.

But the smell... Oh god the smell. Having not owned anything by TooFaced before I was nervous that it would smell like that nauseating fake chocolate smell that you get in cheap candles and other things that are meant to be chocolate scented, but it's lovely. It doesn't smell exactly like chocolate in my opinion, but it is lovely and sweet and it makes me happy when I open it up. 

It consists of sixteen different shadow shades, mostly neutral browns and oranges, with a few pops of pink and blue. There is a good mixture of matte and shimmer shades, with a couple of glitters too.

I absolutely love that you get larger pans of the light, highlighting colours, as these tend to be the colours that you use most of. It's simple but well thought out and was definitely a push factor in buying the palette.

Swatches over Urban Decay Primer Potion in Original and over nothing. Excuse the patchy swatches... I'm impatient and didn't wait for the primer to dry.

The colours in this are great and you can do SO much with them. They are all lovely and creamy, except Coconut Creme which is a tiny bit chalky. The pigmentation is absolutely amazing. With the Naked palettes I find I have to load up my brush quite a bit, but I barely have to touch these shadows to get great colour payoff. In fact I got caught out the first time I used it and ended up swiping a big, thick, dark brown line across my eyelid as I completely wasn't expecting it. 

I've been looking everywhere for a palette with great peachy oranges and totally wasn't expecting it from a chocolate bar palette, but Bon Bon, Caramel and Peanut Butter are exactly what I was looking for. 

I would recommend this to anyone. Especially as a first time buy or if you are on a limited budget. This palette will do everything you need and more.

This palette is available here for £37

New Bedroom Lights!

It was Student Loan day on Monday, otherwise known as Treat Yo Self day (Parks and Rec anyone?)
I gathered quite a stash of new things, including a lot of fantastic new makeup to be reviewed shortly, but I thought I'd make a quick post about some adorable lights I found super cheap in Primark.

Tiny butterfly fairy lights - £2.50

I feel like these were a huge bargain, as they are so so delicate and pretty, yet super super bright. As they're strung on wire it was really easy to wrap them round the horns of my deer head. I think it makes him look great. (Lights take 3xAA batteries)

Flamingo Standing Light - £10

I'm a bit obsessed with flamingos at the moment,so this was mine from the moment I saw it. It's a bit more expensive but I think it's still cheap for what it is. (Light takes 2xAA batteries)

Moroccan style gold fairy lights - £6

I love the patterns these project onto my walls, they make my little bed and book nook very cosy. (Lights take 2xAA batteries).

I love the huge difference all these lights have made to my room at a very low cost, and Primark have loads more to choose from so go and have a look! Happy Thursday!

Five Songs For Thursday

Clicking the images will take you to the song on youtube.

1. Mini Mansions & Alex Turner - Vertigo

I love this single from Mini Mansions and Arctic Monkeys vocalist Alex Turner, it was recommended in my 'Discover weekly' Spotify playlist and was added straight into my favourites playlist.

2. Andy Grammar - Honey, I'm Good

I heard this playing in TopShop when me and my friend were having a Treat Yo Self day, both immediately shazamed it. Not the kind of thing I'd usually like, but this is so catchy and feel good that it's hard not to enjoy... The video is also absolutely adorable and I'm kind of upset I'm not in it.

3.Oasis - She's Electric

 Perfect oldie but goodie track, who doesn't love a little bit of Oasis from time to time?

4. Waterparks - Crave

A friend of mine recommended this to me, and not only is it a great track, but the video includes dogs. AND attractive men dressed as dogs. As I may or May not have a small obsession with dogs this is right up my street.

5. Newton Faulkner - Badman

This is a really lively and upbeat track. I like a lot of Newton Faulkner's music but this track is a personal favourite.

It may be a day late, but this is what I'm listening to at the moment, and what is getting me through an incredibly stressful week of deadlines that I'm fairly sure were in May... but hey ho! Leave your recommendations in the comments!!

Urban Decay Gwen Stefani Eyeshadow Palette Review and Swatches

The Eyeshadow Palette was the first piece of the Urban Decay Gwen Stefani collection to be released. It's currently out of stock on the Urban Decay site, but is available on Feel Unique for £40 with the option to use a student discount or other voucher codes that can be found online to reduce the price ( I love Feel Unique). 

I've had this palette for a few months and whilst I was counting down the days for it to be released, I'm a little disappointed by it. 

The Palette contains fifteen 1.4g shadows, three of which are permanent shades (Skimp, Stark and Blackout) with the remaining twelve being limited to this palette. The palette contains a mixture of matte and shimmer shadows in both neutral and bright colours. 

The shadows themselves are a fantastic formula, as with pretty much all Urban Decay shadows. All are creamy and pretty pigmented, though 1987 is a little creamier than the rest. 

Swatches over Urban Decay's Primer Potion in Original on the left, no primer on the right.

What bothers me about this palette is the range of colours you get. I felt like a palette with fifteen shades was great value, but it doesn't feel like you get as many as that as a lot of them are incredibly similar. Most of the shades are neutrals and a large chunk of those are very light. Once on the eye, I find it pretty difficult to distinguish between Skimp, Bathwater, Blonde and Pop.

The only colour in this palette that I actually use regularly is Punk. Punk is a gorgeous, warm, dark brown shade and is great in a warm toned smokey eye look. I use this pretty much every day and am pretty disappointed that this isn't one of the permanent shades as I'd love to be able to buy it separately. I'd love to hear about any good dupes for this shade in the comments!

I'm not usually one for pink eyeshadow, but Harajuku mixes very nicely with 1987 for a rose gold eye look, these are the only other two shades I use fairly frequently. 

When I ordered this, it came with samples of four of the Gwen Stefani lipsticks which was a nice surprise. I'm not sure if it still comes with these but they are a pretty great bonus as the lipsticks are fantastic and I've since bought a few. 

All in all, I'd say this palette probably isn't worth purchasing in my opinion. There are better neutral palettes out there for less money that I feel you would get more use out of. It's a shame as there are a few great shades but they alone don't feel worth the hefty £40 price tag!

Let me know what you thought of the palette in the comments!

Removing my half and half hair dye

Anyone who knows me knows how often I dye my hair. I get bored within weeks and am always trying interesting new colours.

Last December I went for half black, half white blonde hair.

I loved it, and over the next few months played about with different colours on the white side. As is always the case, I got bored and decided I wanted to one colour all over again. I massively underestimated how difficult this would be to do. 

By the time I went to start, my hair was a pretty big mess of colours as the half and half was difficult to maintain on my own. 

The blonde side was a mess of pink and blue, and the black had chunks of red and green. Yet I still reckoned it would be easy enough to just bleach it all and start again. I used LOreal Preference Extreme Platinum, which I've previously had good results with when going brunette to white blonde. 

Except apparently if you're going from black and red to blonde, it doesn't work like that. As can be seen by the disaster pieces below.

My hair was green and orange, and the ends were absolutely fried. So I booked a haircut and hoped they wouldn't comment on the colour too much as I couldn't afford to get it fixed there.. 

Nope. 

"What the hell have you done now? Why? What on earth did you use? Why do you do this? Just please let me do the colour..." 

After being told off, I had more of my hair cut off than I've lost in years, I was pretty ready to cry, but at least it felt slightly better..? As can be seen in this candid post trauma shot;

I've always had hair way down my back and am still slightly gutted. I went home and my next set of dye had arrived. When doing my crazy colours I tend to use La Riche Directions dye, as it's conditioning so doesn't damage my hair, and the results are always really vibrant. It's also available on eBay for less than £3 a pot and can be added to conditioner for pastel colours or to spread it further. I put the shade violet on and set it for about two hours and here it the end result. 

It's still much darker on the left, but I'm looking more purple allover, it's going to be a long process to get back I think but I'm happy for now. If you're after going half and half, do. It's great and reasonably easy to do with the help of a friend, but do bear in mind how you'll get it out after. I would very much recommend having it professionally recoloured if you can afford it.

Five great songs for Wednesday

Clicking the images will take you to the song on youtube.

1. Milky Chance - Stolen Dance (2013)

A mellow, summery song from a German folk music duo.

2. Nothing But Thieves - Itch (2015)

I recently saw Nothing But Thieves support Muse and they were absolutely fantastic live. This is my favourite track from their self titled album.

3.The Coral - Dreaming Of You (2002)

A classic from their debut album that has made it's way back onto my daily playlist. This made it to NME's top 150 songs of the past 15 years.

4. The Maccabees - Marks To Prove It (2015)

This is the first track from The Maccabees' latest album. I'm a huge fan of what they're producing at the moment and find this is a great track to start the day with.

5. Zara Larsson - Lush Life (2015)

Whilst this isn't the sort of thing I'd usually listen to, something about this caught me and I've been listening to it on repeat for the past few days. The video is also fun and laid back, not to mention she's only 18... kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing with my life...

So that's my current top five, I'm always keen to hear about new music so please leave your reccomendations in the comments! 

Lime Crime Velvetines and Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick Review

Lime Crime have had a lot of bad press and as a self professed lover of drama, I have spent longer than I'd care to admit reading over blogs and tumblrs dedicated to reporting all the failings of this brand.

I am however weak and easily swayed when it comes to pretty lipstick, so forgetting momentarily that I have no money I ordered some velvetines and a Jeffree Star liquid lipstick to see what the fuss was about. I ordered them from DollsKill at about $15 each, after import costs and postage it came to around £90 for all six.

From Left to Right; Jawbreaker, Jinx, Wicked, Pumpkin, Squash and Beet it

The packaging is lovely and I've kept all the boxes, but when it comes to the tubes themselves, the velvetines feel very light and kind of cheap when compared to the Jeffree Star. The Jeffree Star is also contains considerably more product and feels better value for the price. 

(Messy) swatches, I'm clumsy. From Left to Right; Jawbreaker, Squash, Pumpkin, Beet it, Wicked and Jinx

After a very good scrub with a makeup wipe

They are all incredibly pigmented and are fairly difficult to remove once applied. I'm still sporting coloured stripes on my arm a good few hours later. The velvetines also have a strong and slightly unpleasant scent that reminds me a lot of playdoh.

They are still incredibly pigmented on the lips and I found them very easy to apply with the doe foot applicator, I find that I don't really need to use a lip liner to get a clean edge. 

Lime Crime Velvetine in Jinx

Lime Crime Velvetine in Wicked

Lime Crime Velvetine in Beet it

Lime Crime Velvetine in Pumpkin

Lime Crime Velvetine in Squash

Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick in Jawbreaker

I found that Jinx applied slightly more patchy and had a thinner formula than the others, but this was easily rectified by adding another coat. Out of all of the shades I like Pumpkin best, I find it to be the most wearable and have had many compliments on it while out and about. All six last fairly well, though I did find that I had to reapply a few times throughout the day and after eating as they did lose colour in the center of my lips. 

You would definitely need to use a lip scrub before and probably after using any of these as they are fairly drying, the velvetines considerably more so than the Jeffree Star. They do become fairly uncomfortable and I feel very conscious of how dry my lips look. The Jeffree Star feels far more moist and I feel it looks a little less matte than the velvetines. 

Overall I think they're good lipsticks, but I'm not sure how worth the hefty price tag they are. If I was to buy more I think I'd probably go for more of the Jeffree Star Liquid lipsticks as they're more comfortable, It's just that Lime Crime seem to offer a better range of colours at the moment. 

Let me know what you've thought of your Lime Crime or Jeffree Star Lipsticks in the comments!