August Favourites!

Soap & Glory Solar Powder (£11.00/9g) - When it comes to bronzers I'm pretty weary of what I buy mainly because I'm pale and don't want to waste £11 on something which doesn't work for me. Although when I spotted Soap and glory had a 2 or £15 offer on I finally picked up this little beauty and fell in love! I will be posting a full review on this so I wont say too much, just that this is a really  lovely contour shade for paler skin - I love that there are two shades although personally I just use a mix of both.

Soap & Glory Glow all out (£11.00/7.5g) - I brought this along with the solar powder and love this just as much. It's just a great all round highlighter which I've found myself reaching for over all of my other products.

Maybelline Babylips in 'Cherry me' (£2.99) - To be honest this product represents the whole range as I really do like them, while I don't find these to be the best balms in the world I really love the coloured versions especially 'Cherry me' - you can read my full review of the whole range here.

L-R: S&G Solar Powder, S&G Glow all out, Maybelline Babylips in 'Cherry me'

Simple regeneration age resisting eye cream (£6.99/15ml) - I may only be 18, but I think the skin around your eyes is something so many people neglect in their skincare routine despite the fact that its something which can really age you. Since using this the skin around my eyes feels so much more hydrated, Puffiness also hasn't been an issue since. I also picked this up on offer too which is always a nice bonus.

Benefit They're real mascara (£19.50/8.5g) - Keeping with the eye theme I have once again fallen in love with one of my favourite mascaras. If only the price tag wasn't such a killer! I cant believe I have never reviewed this one fully so look out for that rave review.

Neutrogena intense repair lip balm - This was another one of my Boots Clearance finds and cost just a pound, It's lived in the back of my draw for a few months now although when I started organising myself for uni last week I discovered it again just in time since my lips had started playing up. Nothing has ever fixed my lips quicker and now I'm pretty much in love. If you guys know where I can find this please let me know in the comments below (I will love you forever)

I find it crazy that by the time I write my next time I write one of these types of posts I will be living in halls (I move two weeks today), What have you been loving this month?

August Empties!

 This month I've been in a rush to use up a bunch of products before I leave for uni, meaning I've found my way through quite a few things. I still have a few bits which I'm close to finishing so you may see another empties post before my moving date.

Naked Skincare Up Tone Girl Toner -  This range has been discounted now which is a shame because I really enjoyed the products. This was just a really nice toner which left my skin feeling clean and clear, If you can find a bottle I'd suggest picking it up!

Soap and Gory No Clogs Allowed (£11.50/100ml) - I love this stuff and will be picking up another tube when I get a chance, It just works! I was lucky enough to pick it up for just £3.50 in the clearance and will be stocking up when S&G have a good offer on.

St Ives Apricot Scrub (£1.20/30ml) - This is the best scrub I have ever used and I will be picking up the full size very soon! I just love that its jam packed with beads meaning it really gives a good exfoliation.

Loreal micellar water (£4.99/200ml) - I made my thoughts on this pretty clear in this post, I used the rest on my make up brushes.

Simple blackhead eliminating scrub (£4.99/75ml) - If you want to eliminate anything I wouldn't recommend this. Personally I like a scrub you can feel working - this was too gentle for me!

Batiste dry shampoo light & Blonde (£3.99/200ml) - This is the only dry shampoo I will use. The 'hint of colour' means that it blends with my blonde hair rather than adding a strange white/grey tint like similar products can do.

John Frieda Go Blonder Shampoo (£5.99/250ml) - I tend to use this in the summer to give my hair help in the lightening process, it does the tick and there's often a three for £10 offer.

Organic Surge Blonde Boost Conditioner (£5.99/200ml)- I got this in the sale for £1.50 and thought It did a good job. I loved the way it left my hair, although I hated the smell!

Fish Protective straightening mist (£1.00/150ml) - I picked this up in a poundshop and really liked using it, it protected from any heat damage without leaving my hair looking greasy. If I saw it at such a low price again I'd stock up!

Herbal Essences bee strong shampoo and conditioner (£3.89/400ml) - I like Herbal Essences although personally I don't think this is the best range they have to offer, but i find these to be reasonably priced and the bottles last forever! 

Lush Melting Marshmallow moment (£3.85/100g) - I did a full review of this product here, It smelt lovely although I wont be buying again.

Lush The Comforter Bubble Bar (£4.50) - Again I fully reviewed this product here. Although I preferred this over the Melting Marshmallow moment, I still feel this is way to overpriced.

Mango Body Scrub - This was part of a gift set so I have no idea where it came from. The scent was amazing and as a body wash I liked it, although its marketed as a scrub which is strange because it had no exfoliating power whatsoever.

Balance Me Super toning Body wash (£10.25/260ml) - I feel like £10.25 is way too overpriced, but I really enjoyed this sample while it lasted.

Soap & Glory Clean Girls Body wash (£6.50/500ml)- This stuff smells great although personally I prefer 'Clean on me' and will be buying that scent next time.

& Other Stories Punk Bouquet Body Scrub (£7.00/250ml)- I reviewed this product here, and honestly cant rave about this enough. I'd strongly recommend & other stories if you're in the market for a new scrub.

Chocomania Beautifying Oil (£9/100ml) - I brought this in a blog sale for £2, I enjoyed using it although wont be buying another since I go through it way too quickly to spend £9 on it.

Raspberry Body Butter (£13.00/200ml) -  Loved this body butter, although I cant see myself paying £13 pound for it. Will be looking out for offers!

Vaseline Spray & Go Body moisturiser in cocoa radiant (£4.99/190ml) - At first I loved this stuff it's super practical and smells amazing, although when it run out after under two weeks of use I wasn't left too impressed!

Superrug Mango & Papaya Body Butter (£3.69/200ml)- I rave about these all the time, they're so moisturising yet don't break the bank!

What products have you finished using this month?

The Comforter Bubble Bar

 Nothing has cured the stress of the past week better than a good old bubble bath. Suddenly I've found myself spending my limited time left at home shopping for essentials and packing up my room in the rush to be ready in time for uni. While I still have a whole two weeks left at home, my aim is to make those two weeks count - I don't want to suddenly get to a few days before the big move and have to waste my time left packing! My bath product of choice this week has been Lush's 'the comforter bubble bar slice' which smells incredible! You only need about a sixth of this to get a really great bath, all you have to do is crumble it under running water and you're left with a bath full of pink water a life time of bubbles! 

My only issue with this is the price tag which according to the website is £4.50 (although I know I paid less when I brought this a couple of weeks ago) for the limited number of baths you get I feel this is a little pricey. Especially when alternatively you could find a pretty decent bubble bath for around a pound.  I love the smell and whole experience of using this product just not enough to justify buying this for myself again. 

What do you guys think of Lush products? Can you justify the price tag?

LIB Collections Editor's Picks box

Back to normal posts today which I'm really excited about, I've never really had a blogging 'routine' although I have always tried to post at least once every other day and miss it when I'm unable to so. I was having a nose on Latest in Beauty the other day and spotted that they had a new Editors picks box which happened to fall into my basket so today I figured I'd show you guys what I got in the box because at £12.95 (including postage) I thought it was great value.

Bella Pierre eyeshadow in Celebration (full size worth £12.99) - This alone covers the price of the whole box which is pretty impressive. To be honest I already own one of these which has been forgotten about until now, but now that I have two I'm going to make an effort to use them and get a review up for you guys. I got the shade Celebration which is a lovely bronzy shade that I look forward to trying.

The Vintage Cosmetic Company shadow brush (full size worth £7.00) - I've been wanting to try something from the vintage cosmetic company for a while now, although personally I do feel that £7 for a single brush is a little pricey when you can get a RT set for under £20 if you shop around. With that in mind this feels lovely and I'm happy to have it in my collection, I look forward to trying it with my new eyeshadow!

(B-T: Bella Pierre eyeshadow in Celebration,Mirenesse Velvet mini lip moisture shine)

Benefit they're real mascara (3g sample size worth £6.88) - I love this stuff, although parting with £19.50 for a 8.5g tube isn't something I find easy so I'm happy to have yet another mini tube in my collection. It just leaves your lashes looking great and doesnt budge all day. Although to be honest I dont understand why benefit has changed the Mini versions, pevoiusly minis were 4g and resembled the shape of a full sized tube.

Mirenesse Velvet mini lip moisture shine (1.5g worth $12.95/£8.32) -  I wasn't expecting this to be so expensive! They even have a bigger size version on the website that retails for nearly $40! I'm not too sure what the shade of this is called one but it feels great on and I love the colour so its a winner in my book!

Mavala nail colour in Rouge Rubis (5ml worth £4.00) - Again this a a product from a brand I've never tried, I love the shade and the fact that the bottle is pretty small as I struggle to finish nail polishes!

Nspa Melting Cleansing Gel (Full size worth £6) - I'm always hearing about Nspa but haven't been lucky enough to try any of their products yet. Despite the latest in beauty website advertising a 30ml sample size I actually got a 125ml tube of this stuff which was a lovely bonus. Although at the moment I have a load of products I'm trying to use up before I move to uni next month so will be taking this unopened bottle with me to use when I get there.

Eve Lom Rescue Mask (15ml sample worth £10.50) - This is a product from yet another brand I've wanted to try for a while now. I haven't had a chance to try this yet but it smells an awful lot like Out of trouble from Origins so I look forward to trying!

Nicky Clarke instant calmer (30ml sample worth £3.60) - I don't think I've ever tried anything from Nicky Clarke so I'm excited to try this as I'm one of those people that has to put product in my hair after washing. I love the smell too!

Yardley English Rose (full size worth £2.49) - To be honest I'm not a huge fan of rose so this is the thing I'm least excited about. Not too sure what I'll do with this although I will most likely pass it on to someone else.

As London Candle - I have no idea what this last one is worth since there seems to be nothing like it in the As website although judging by their other products I'm guessing its expensive. I'm not too fond of the smell although hopefully I'll prefer it once it's burning.


Overall when you consider that this box is worth a grand total of £61.78 (based on the price of full sized products) even without the price of the candle i think this is a great bargain. Especially because I will use pretty much all of the products. What's your opinion on beauty boxes?

Clacton-on-Sea

So as you may have gathered from my Internet silence last week, I took an unplanned short break while on holiday. I have had Internet access although I will always favour quality over quantity and didn't just want to throw together posts at the end of the day that I wasn't proud of. I suspect things will get a lot busier here over the next month as I have so many things I want to post about, but today I wanted to show you guys a few snaps from my trip. We ended up staying in a family friends holiday home for around five nights, which was basically on the beach. It was just lovely to wake up and see the sea from my window every morning without worrying about rushing to be somewhere ontime. The above picture was the view from my bedroom window which I already miss waking up to everynight.

I snapped this picture while walking on the beach back to the house one night, being me I only packed actual shoes, although luckily there was a holiday camp quite near buy where I managed to buy the ugliest flip flops in the world. Even though I only wore them twice it was worth it though as the beach was lovely, esepically with the sunset!

One day myself and LFA tried to catch a boat,we failed miserably as the place was signposted terribly although i did managed to get a picture of the boats and the amazing blue sky we had that day.

Once we worked out the boats were off limits we took a bus to Claction Pier where we went on pretty much every ride on offer, I actually ended up here a couple of times since my sisters wanted to see the pier too. Although the floor pretty much terrified me, so many gaps!

Finally after we'd been out to eat one night I took this picture of an arcade which I thought was pretty. Personally i'd rather waste my money on make up but each to their own.

So there you have it, a few pictures from my five nights in Clacton, have you been anywhere nice this year? Also a big congrats to the winner of my two year giveaway, I'll be in touch soon!

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On the road again..

I'm currently staying in a family friends beach house for the week, although being me I'm super unprepared and forgot to plan any blog posts (or pack my case until an hour before leaving for that matter) I figured I'd show you guys the things I had with me for the car journey, although I probably wont be doing any more travel themed posts purely because I did them while I was away in June. I will be joined with fellow blogger LFA tomorrow so I can see myself blogging at some point. Firstly I have a magazine, Company is the only one I will actually read, I think this mainly because its one of the few magazines to actually embrace new forms of media and it doesn't bore me with about 300 adverts before I get to the articles. I have my sun protection and aftersun in the hope that the weather will be better than it is at home along with my standard nail file, hand cream and sanitiser. Make up wise I simply have an & other stories lip gloss and a babylips in the shade cherry me. As always I have my purse and passport since I'm one of those people who gets ID'ed for everything, along with a packet of chewing gum and some yogurt coated raisins as a snack. So there you have it everything I have to last the journey along with my phone which was used to snap this picture.

What are your travel must haves?

Melting Marshmallow moment

I've always wanted to try products from Lush, although to be honest I've often been put off by the pushy sale people in my local stores. So when I was shopping in Westfield I was sure to check the selection of products available while it was quite  busy. One of these products I ended up walking away with is this Melting Marshmallow Moment Luxury bath melt. I'm pretty much obsessed with moisturising so a product which promised to leave my skin 'silky smooth' sounded great to me. It wasn't until I was home that I realised just how amazing this smelt, according to the website it smells 'just like snow fairy' so I will be jumping on that bandwagon next year!

Unfortunately my love of this product pretty much stops with the smell. When reading the Lush website so many people claimed you could get 4+ great baths from this, although the two baths I had with a fourth of the product in were nothing special at all. If anything there was a lovely but faint smell. My final bath was with the final half of this bath melt which was admittedly better - the water turnt a slight pink shade and the smell seemed stronger although didnt last on the skin. This also claimed to be packed with oils and although on the last bath I did notice that my skin was slightly softer, I still felt the need to mostiurise afterwoods.

Overall I feel this product would be best used as a whole, although I will not be racing to spend £3.95 on a single bath anytime soon.  With that in mind I loved the scent and will be on the look out for snow fairy when it launches this year!