Saturday, November 29, 2014

☾ ootd: Mild Autumn Afternoon




Here’s what I wore on a surprisingly mild November afternoon. I haven’t been able to get my white converse out for a good few weeks because it’s been rainy and rubbish and I don’t want them stained and ruined, but I was able to stick them on on this day and I was very very pleased!

Jumper: American Apparel Fisherman Pullover in Nude
Scarf: Vintage (Charity Shop)
Jeans: Topshop Joni Jeans in Black
Shoes: White Converse


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Thursday, November 27, 2014

☯ wishlist: eBay Winter Fashion


In need of a winter warmer anyone? These are my top wintery picks for this Christmas season and I couldn’t put together a better winter wardrobe if I tried. I’m especially in love with the platform brogues, they look very similar to the Doc Marten versions, and I’m loving the platform Chelsea boots too. It’s all about collared shirts, too, because you can layer these up pretty inconspicuously and they still look gorgeous. Knitwear, jeans and lacy collars and socks, I’m excited to order these in a couple of days! 


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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Breathing Easy - Quitting Smoking


This isn’t a topic I really wanted to address on my blog because I’m aware that it taints the way a lot of my readers might view me. I’ve not been smoking for a very long time, but I fall quite heavily into habits (nail biting, lip chewing etc) and the past few months allowed smoking to get really under my skin. I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to quit, and I thought I’d write a list of reasons why that can help remind me what I want to achieve and remind me what a good thing it is that I’m doing! Hopefully, if any of you are in the same boat, this post can help you too.

Money
First things first, smoking is one of the most expensive habits. A pack costs me about £7.50, and when I think about the amount I’ve spent over the course of the last few months I cringe! If I added that up, I could be walking around in a lovely big faux fur coat or with a pretty handbag instead, something much more meaningful and useful. I’ve been putting the money I would have been spending on cigarettes into a jar on my dresser, and hopefully in a few months there’ll be a good chunk of money to help me feel rewarded!

It’s disgusting and not the person I want to be
I look at ashtrays and just think they’re foul, but very rarely make the connection that I’m inhaling this horrible, stinking smoke and it’s clogging me up from the inside out. I want to be a positive, healthy, happy role-model type person and smoking just doesn’t fit in with that.

Health and Hygiene
I started to suffer with trouble breathing when I slept and had a cold that just wouldn’t go away because I didn’t think smoking was affecting it, but it was. That’s when I realised I had to give it up, because I’m just too delicate and my health and ability to sleep is much more important to me than standing out in the freezing cold rain to have a cigarette. On top of this, my fingernails get dirty, my teeth never really felt clean and it made my breath smell awful. It was only a matter of time until my skin started to clog up with smoke and dirt and my pores would look horrendous and spots would begin to cause trouble.

Winter is the best time to quit!
Who really wants to go and stand outside freezing and getting rained on to have a cigarette? It’s nonsense. When all of my work friends are going outside one by one to get rained on and wind blasted, I’ll be smugly sitting by the fire inside instead. Winter makes it easier to quit because it’s much more difficult to find the motivation to go outside into the tundra.

What are your top quitting smoking tips?  




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Sunday, November 23, 2014

christmas inspo: Gifts under £10


VANILLA BRULEE TREAT BOX £7 The Body Shop // Foot salt £1.50 H&M // Baby Frosty Butterball Bath Bomb £9.75 Lush // Knitted Tube Scarf £8 H&M // DIGITAL PENGUIN TOE ANKLE SOCKS £3.50 Topshop // MINI LIP BULLET DUO SET  £10.00 Topshop


Most of us will know a fellow beauty lover, and lots of us have little sisters or younger beauty loving friends or relatives who we are looking forward to spoiling this Christmas! I’ve been doing some digging and found some great Christmas beauty buys for £10 and under. These are all highstreet products so they’re dead easy to pick up, and hopefully they’ve given you some inspiration for little-ish presents this year!


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☾ face of the day: Subtle Daytime Cat-Eye Flick









Here’s a look I wish I had filmed! I was so so pleased with the end results I took about 105678394 pictures and loved how the finished look complimented my lavender hair and didn’t overload myself with colour. It’s a perfect daytime look; so effortless looking and pretty. I wore it out to go shopping and for lunch with my boyfriend.

Products used:
MAC Prep and Prime Skin
NARS SheerGlow Foundation in Santa Fe
MAC Pro Longwear Concealer in NW15
MAC StudioFix Powder Plus Foundation in NW15
Illamasqua Sculpting Powder Duo
NARS Deep Throat
Benefit Gimme Brow in Light/Medium
Stila In The Light Palette
Seventeen High Drama Intense Liquid Eyeliner
Rimmel ScandalEyes Mascara
MAC Lipstick in Crème Cup


I hope you like the look as much as I do! 

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Friday, November 21, 2014

☮ video: American Apparel Haul


Items Mentioned:
Denim High Waisted Shorts
http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/rs...
Corduroy Circle Skirt
http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/co...
Double Layer Chiffon Skirt
http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/ch...
Jersey T Shirt Romper
http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/je...
Fisherman's Pullover
http://store.americanapparel.co.uk/un...

The music I've used in this video is my incredible boyfriend's talented band Tiny Folds and it would mean the world if you checked out their stuff!
http://www.tinyfolds.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/user/tinyfolds/

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Wednesday, November 19, 2014

☾ ootd: Adidas Vintage Jumper & Joni Jeans


I’m very very good at dressing ‘like a homeless man’ as my mother always politely says. I absolutely adore vintage fashion, and for some reason I’m drawn to vintage sportswear and sports brands like Adidas and Nike. I spent more than I’d care to admit on this jumper in a dramatic bidding war on eBay, but it is my baby and I’m obsessed with it. It’s really snuggly and so easy to layer up underneath to keep me warm in these chillier months. The Joni Jeans are a fashion blogger favourite, and they’re certainly in my top 3 favourite pairs of jeans! I love high waisted anything, and these black babies from Topshop feel very flattering and are easy peasy to wear.

Jumper: Vintage Adidas Pullover
Jeans: Topshop Joni Jeans in Black
Boots: Dr Marten 6 Hole Boots
Scarf: Thrift (Charity Shop)

Hair: Violet Skies by BleachLondon

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Monday, November 17, 2014

☼ review: Batiste Dry Shampoo in Floral




Raise your hand now if you’ve ever bought a product based purely on packaging…I’m a massive culprit of this. I just can’t help it! This beautiful product is my latest example of this. While I know I’m already a huge fan of the Batiste dry shampoos, when I strolled into my local Superdrug I grabbed this beautiful vintage floral patterned can without even checking the fragrance out! It was on sale for something like £2, and as you probably know Batiste is a huge favourite among beauty bloggers and youtubers, despite it’s teeny tiny price tag.

This one has a gorgeous delicate floral fragrance which is mostly masked by Batiste’s usual powdery smell, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. What matters most is that my hair feels and looks fresh, and once the initial strong powdery smell fades, the light flowery scent is more noticeable. I use this baby when I’m rocking pastel hair and am minimising the amount I’m washing it, and it does a great job of maintaining my clean hair and sorting it out when it’s looking hideously greasy!

Batiste is a speaks-for-itself product, and there’s not much more bigging up I can do! It’s just such a staple that every girl needs in her makeup bag, and it’ll save you at 8:00am when your alarm fails and you’re late for work, as well as keep you looking and smelling fresh as a daisy at festivals! If you haven’t tried this, pick one up and watch your morning routine time be halved!


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Saturday, November 15, 2014

how to: Get Pastel Hair











One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked by my readers is how I have been achieving my pastel pink or purple hair. I couldn’t think of a better way than to write a step by step guide to help you get the same colour I’ve been absolutely LOVING! It’s surprisingly easy, and the results are so beautiful. I always get so many compliments on my lilac, lavender hair, which I’ve had for about 2 months now, and I hope that this guide makes it easy for you to recreate, and that I can answer the questions I’m frequently asked!

Step1: Begin with bleached blonde hair
This is the step that’s going to be a pain for a lot of you, and it’s the step that takes the most time if you’re starting from a dark colour. Unfortunately, you simply can’t go pastel over black or brown hair. For those naturally blonde among you, bleaching won’t take nearly as long, but you have to start with a very light (almost white, ideally) base colour. This is what the colour is going to stick to, and the lighter the hair, the truer the pastel colour going on!

Step2: Tone your hair
Blondes can become brassy over time, but thankfully there’s a heck of a lot of really good, really effective violet toned shampoos which can pretty much sort you out in 15 minutes or less. My ultimate favourite is the Pro:Voke Twice A Week Brightening Violet Toned Shampoo (which I’ve reviewed here) which I lather up and leave on for ten minutes, which leaves my hair looking platinum blonde and revitalised. Not a brassy strand in sight!

Step3: Choose a good dye
My go-to hair dye is the BleachLondon dye in Violet Skies, which I use to get this gorgeous lilac pastel hair. In the past I’ve also used Rose by BleachLondon, which is insanely popular and has loads of reviews online (read my review on Voilet Skies here and Rose here). I’ve also dabbled using Crazy Colour’s dyes, which are also pretty good, and come in a great range of colours. Bleach London is £5 from Boots per bottle, and comes really quickly in the mail. Just make sure you have enough to cover all your hair!

Step4: Apply the dye
There is a method to this madness, and this is how I like to apply my dye, and it’s the way that works for me. Bear in mind I’m rubbish at everything hair-related and I’m certainly not qualified to be doing any of this! I hop in the shower and shampoo my hair twice, to make sure it’s really clean. Then I towel dry it, section it into four sections (two back halves and two front halves) and slather the dye all over the hair. I leave the dye for about half an hour, which is longer than the bottle states but I like the vibrancy of the colour if you leave it on a little longer. I rinse it off in the shower using water only, and I don’t condition my hair at any point during this process as it causes the colour to slide around and fade much quicker. I dry it off to check the colour (if it looks patchy or too light, which it did the first time, I repeated the dye application process, but with practice you get much better at getting every piece of hair!)

Step5: Protect and maintain your colour
I like to use Tresemme Platinum Strength serum (review here) to smooth and nourish my hair, to stop it looking frizzy and dry after skipping the conditioning stage when washing my hair. I very rarely wash my hair when it’s got a temporary colour on it because with each wash, it fades and it is sad, but when I do, I use the Pro:voke toning shampoo. Because of it’s purple pigment, it stops the lilac tones from fading as quickly as they would if I’d just used a normal shampoo. To keep my hair clean, I use a dry shampoo which doesn’t strip colour like traditional washing does, and refreshes my hair beautifully so you can’t even tell I’ve not wet my hair for over a week (eek!)


I hope you found my tips and steps helpful! This is the way I achieve my much loved lavender hair colour, but I followed most of these steps with the Rose dye as well. Hopefully this post answered most of your questions, but if not, feel free to comment or tweet me with your extra questions and I’m more than happy to get back to you!

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Friday, November 14, 2014

christmas inspo: Cute Vintage Style Gift Wrap




I managed to track down these incredibly beautiful and retro-looking rolls of vintage style giftwrap for my Christmas gifts this year. I’m so happy with how they look! I had a couple of gifts ready to wrap up and I couldn’t believe how pretty they look.

I purchased two rolls of gift wrap; both on a brown paper base (like the gift wrap you see in those vintage films), and one has gold Christmas trees and the other has cute pink polka dots. I then bought a roll of brown string and a roll of champagne ribbon with ‘Merry Christmas’ in golden writing on it to tie the presents up with and decorate them. The gift tags are natural card with a more delicate cream string to tie on to the ribbon, and they look great on the presents I’ve wrapped so far.


All I searched in Google was ‘vintage gift wrap’, and this is what came up. The string can be found very easily, as can the natural vintage style tags. Altogether this lot came to about £15, so it’s affordable, and I just love the traditional feel they give to my presents. I can’t believe how pretty it all looks!

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Thursday, November 13, 2014

recent purchases: Asos, MAC, eBay


Here’s what I’ve been buying lately! I really shouldn’t have and I’ve got to start being a lot more careful with my money, but I simply couldn’t resist these fall/autumn essentials. I’m loving these jeans, they’re sort of like American Apparel Easy Jeans or Topshop Joni Jeans, which I’m a massive fan of, and they’ve got a really cool acid-y pattern. I’ve also picked up the MAC lipstick in Faux so I can start perfecting my take on the Kylie Jenner mauvey pink lip!

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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

☯ wishlist: Christmas!


Well! Here it is! I’ve been a very good girl this year (sort of) and I’ve put together my ultimate Christmas wishlist, and I truly hope Santa will bring me some of these beauties! What’s on your Christmas wishlist? Are any of yours the same as mine?


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