Skin care products

One of the skin lotions I love and will never go without, is Simple - Purifying cleansing lotion. I have been using this for years and it just works really well. It is very creamy so it does not dry out my skin, gets rid of those little bits of make-up left on your skin. Overall really great!

Simple I get from Superdrug/Boots It's about £3. Superdrug usually have an offer on most of their products, a tiny bit cheaper there! 

Another brand I love is Estee Lauder. Their foaming cleanser I love! It really cleans your face but what is even better is their Balancing lotion. This stuff really is great and usually I hate it when the sales person tells you, you should get both they work great together. I feel like they just want you to buy more of their products but these two really work great together and on their own. They are a bit pricey, around or just over £20. I try and get them when they're on offer, I think Debenhams currently have an offer of them.

The Estee Lauder skin care products I have are for normal skin, the blue bottles. They also have pink ones which are for Dry skin. I have tried the Dry skin foaming cleanser, I actually prefer this one. However I haven't tired the Dry skin balancing lotion. 

My last products are from Tesco, they are My Skin. I think they're Tescos own brand. One is a daily face wash and one is a moisturiser. I love the smells of these. The face wash is really good and the products work well, they do the job. The products are about £2 - £3. They usually have offers on them too, which are like buy 2 get 3rd free. 

Offers are great!

I use the simple cleansing lotion daily and the Estee lauder skin care a couple time a week, they are really strong so I don't want to use them every day. I use the My Skin daily facial wash the days I don't use the Estee lauder products and I use the My Skin moisturiser when I need to.

Above is picture of all my products and I styled the picture with some of my paper bead bracelets.

Puppy measuring tape!

I am currently swamped with work. I want to write a very extensive post about clothes, unfortunately I don't have the time so I thought I would post this super awesome picture I took of my measuring tape when I was playing with it, I noticed it looked like a puppy!

Enjoy this very unusual picture!

My Jewellery!

I love making jewellery in my free time. I really enjoy just sitting down in front of the t.v and making bracelets. Bracelets have to be the one item of jewellery that I really love, they're not too fussy. I do prefer them over necklaces and earrings! I have blogged previously about how I like to make paper beads, then turn those into bracelets, but I just wanted to show the bracelets I've made with bought beads too.

The pictures above are of paper bead bracelets. They are all varnished with matt varnish. The smaller beads take much longer to make but look really good!

The green bracelet is made using all class beads and the purple bracelet is made using large glass beads and large glass pearl effect beads, then smaller plastic pearl effect beads. 

These are plastic beads. I made a lot and put them all on and noticed this diagonal pattern, I just had to take a picture! 

The top four bracelets are clear and blue, the second two are blue and green. The next four are light blue and blue breads, finally the last five are red and clear. I love contrasting colours. The plastic bracelets above are all made with purple coloured elastic. I think it's such a nice pop of colour when you're stretching the bracelet a little to put it on. 

I have many many more I have made, various types, beads and material. I always use silver plated fastening and findings. I also make a lot of elasticated bracelets. I made of of these bracelets during the summer, June - August. Unfortunately since I've started university again I haven't found the time to make more. These pictures were all taken around August/September time. 

V&A - Hollywood Costumes

This Wednesday I went to the V&A - I went with uni for the Hollywood costumes exhibition, my lecturer for  the module I went for got the uni to pay for our entry, so that was a huge bonus!

Hollywood costumes was so good. They had so many outfits than I expected. The exhibition took over an hour to go though. The first costume I saw was the Green dress Scarlett O'hara wore in Gone with the Wind, played by Vivian Leigh. This film is one of my favourites. I was watching parts of the film the day before I went to the exhibition. I was so excited when I saw it. I was just starring art it. I wish I could have seen the back of the dress better. They even had the hat and everything. The dress looked so nice in person.

It was really great to see all the costumes close up in person. Its amazing how much detail they put into all these dresses, especially when they're only on screen for a few minutes some times.

They had another dress Scarlett O'hara wore. The bright red dress. The colour had looked like it faded slightly, but you could see all the embellishments. I think the description said the embellishments were glass and metal. I assume the metal is encasing the glass.

They had so many outfits, a lot of mens costumes, which I didn't expect. They had Rocky Balboa's boxing outfit from Rocky 5 and Indiana Jones, a lot more that I cant remember.

I really liked how they had descriptions from the costume designers about the outfit and inspirations or ideas. I remember they had the costume Natalie Portman wore as Alice in the film Closer, when she had the red short hair and wore that long denim coat. The designer wrote that she saw this homeless girl and copied the outfit. Its nice to know where their inspiration came from.

I also liked how creative they were with some of the costumes display. Superman's outfit was hanging from the ceiling like it was flying, Spider-mans outfit was crawling on the wall, Catwoman's outfit was high up on this ledge. Best outfit display had to be Uma Thurman's costume in Kill Bill, it was in the position as a flying kick!

They also had Jack and Rose's costumes from Titanic. Their outfits were really far away and they weren't in a good position to see. Maybe its because their outfits aren't as popular as some of the others.

The Addams family outfits were their too! They had Wednesday, Pugsley, and the baby's outfits. It was nice seeing them and noticing how small they were. I was really surprised to all the detail on Morticia's costumes. You don't see all that detail in the films, so it was nice seeing it in person and appreciating it.

I think the outfit I was most looking forward to was Dorothy's, played by Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz. I was a bit upset when I read the description and found out it was all a reconstruction however they did have the real slippers she wore! For being over 80 years old, the colour had faded and they weren't as sparkly but it was nice seeing the shoes she wore. I am a huge fan on Judy Garland, for her being very short I expected the shoes to be quite small but they weren't. They had reconstructed shoes made from the original shoe pattern, they were really bright and sparkly, you could see them from the other side of the room!

Another thing I noticed was the size of the actress and actors. You can never really tell how tall or skinny they are until you see them or the clothes they wear. I was surprised to see how skinny so many of the actresses were.

Overall I really liked the exhibition. I recommend it to anyone! It was really great seeing all the detail to all the costumes.

VO5 - Plump it up

A while ago I purchased the VO5 Plump it up, Amplifying Blow Dry Lotion. I have used it a few times and the first time I used it I liked it, It did "plump" my hair a little. Personally I don't think it works all that well. You're meant to spray it on damp hair then blow dry.

The bottle indicates that it has a new fragrance and I do really like the smell of it. I think that's why I use it, it smells nice. 

I have found a better use for it though, to get rid of my frizz! I always get a little bit of frizzy hair once I blow dry so I have used the Plump it up spray on my hair after its dry. It does seem to get rid of my frizz a bit.

I do like the smell but I don't think I'll be buying this again. 

Shop Displays

Yesterday I went shopping to Westfield in Shepherds bush, London. Its fairly close to me and I go there often so it wasn't like a big day out. I had just gone out with my Boyfriend and decided that while were out, might as well get a little shopping done!

I love shopping centres for their cool and elaborate displays. Shop windows always have great stuff too.

Below is a picture of a mannequin in River Island. I'm not a huge fan of the shop but I loved the bag skirt. Very creative!

Below is a picture of a stall for Models own make-up. I loved the shape of this! A dripping nail polish bottle.

I love how all these displays attract people. Some great marketing there!

Halloween!

So this year... I went as a half skeleton. I went out to my university, they have a club-like-thing on campus. My uni is out of London so to me it's in the middle of nowhere.

I went out with a few friends, overall I had a good time. I did get a few weird looks. At one point a girl saw me then told all her friends to look at me too. That was really strange. Hope it wasn't because I looked bad. I was going for the scary look.

It took loads of layers to get the look I wanted. I used cream based face paint; black and white. Using the black first, then the white for the highlights, where my bones are. I then blended the harsh lines together and used eye shadow to make the face paint more matt. I then chose to use black glittery eye shadow in the black areas.

I did use YouTube tutorials to help me, so I know where to put the face paint and make-up.

I was really worried that the face paint wouldn't come off. I had an assessment at university today, so I really needed it to. Lucky it did all come off, almost with one face wipe but I did have to use more.

This is a really bad picture of me, isn't very clear. This was me at the end of the night, about 3am here. I'm shocked that the face paint all stayed. I extended the skeleton look down my neck and one of my collar bones.

The white, went more grey, mainly because of all the blending. 

Really bad picture but the rest I have aren't so clear, If I do find a better one I shall post it!