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Hi Lovelies 🙂

Just letting you know I will be posting more from now on… It’s been a while! About eight months actually… eek!

I have a good excuse though, I moved to Australia so that’s all new and exciting and now that I’m settled I shall be getting back in to the swing of things!

Just quickly, so that this post isn’t boring as hell, how beautiful is Lily from LLYMLRS hair in this photo? So pretty! I hope she doesn’t mind me using her photo, go check her out here 🙂

August Favourites

Hello again, it’s time for my August favourites! I did miss June and July unfortunately, so all of the below are really my favourite products used over the last few months.

I had a fantastic August as I went to Thailand for two weeks for a holiday which was amazing! And now it’s Spring here in New Zealand so I’m excited for some warmer weather to start appearing 🙂

As you can see above my favourites are as follows: MAC Mineralized Skin Finish Natural, NARS Ondine Eyeshadow, Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturiser, OPI Mermaids Tears, OPI Pearl of Wisdom, OPI Start to Finish Base & Top Coat, Loreal Paris Super Liner, Natio Moisturising Lip Balm, Benefit Bad Gal Lash Mascara, Victoria’s Secret Bombshell Perfume and Topshop Eye Kohl in Frost.

Now let’s get in to why these products stood out for me in August!

My first favourite for the month of August is the Loreal Paris Super Liner.

I actually bought this a while ago now, but it has been my eyeliner of choice for the last few months.

The interesting thing about this Eyeliner is that it has a really fine sponge tip applicator, which you would think wouldn’t be as precise as say a felt tip liner… But it really applies exactly how you intend, stays on all day, and is really black so the pigmentation is great.

I’ve been reaching for this over my Gel or Pencil Liners for the upper lash line every time, so I will definitely be repurchasing this soon as mine is almost gone!

Next up is the Topshop Eye Kohl in ‘Frost’.

I have been loving putting this on my waterline! It’s just a nice fresh change to having black on the waterline and really opens up your eyes and makes them look bigger and brighter (and more awake!).

It’s super pigmented and lasts forever on the waterline. I even applied this one morning, and that night I went to a friends party who, as I was leaving said ‘Ohh I like your white liner!’ and I hadn’t even touched it up since that morning. That’s some staying power!

This next one is actually more of an All-time Favourite but I thought I better include it, the Benefit Bad Gal Lash Mascara.

You can see I’ve used the hell out of this mascara because most of the writing has worn off! This seriously is the best mascara I have ever used, and like most girls I’ve tried A LOT of mascara’s.

Bad Gal Lash seriously makes my eyelashes so long and the formula is great as it doesn’t clump at all. The only downside to this mascara, is that we can’t buy benefit here in New Zealand so I have to order it online each time!

Favourite Eyeshadow for August was NARS Eyeshadow in ‘Ondine’.

I really love this as a lid colour, because it’s actually quite deceiving. In the pan it looks like a darkish brown colour, but when applied it goes on as more of a Taupe/Purple tone.

It’s so pretty with just a hint of sparkle and it’s also quite buildable, so you can layer it to get a more intense look or just use a light touch for daytime wear.

Next up is the infamous Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturiser!

Ahhhh, so excited! I was lucky enough to spot this while in Thailand and had to grab it there and then! (also not sold in NZ – we are so neglected!) I got the oil-free version of course because my skin is oily/combination and it’s perfect!

There’s not much more I can say except I love this. It worked out perfectly that I found whilst in Thailand too, because it was so hot and humid that I didn’t want to be wearing a full coverage foundation that would just melt off my face!  I have been applying this and then a quick sweep with MAC Mineralize skin finish and I’m good-to-go!

I was expecting this to be less coverage so I was really impressed to see that this actually covers most of my blemishes, scarring, evens out redness and also looks so natural and light on your skin (It’s a ‘your skin, but better’ type of product).

Best purchase of the month by far!

Also we are coming into Spring and Summer here so this came at the best time, I’ll probably replace my MAC Studio Sculpt with this for the warmer months, and then go back to that in the winter 🙂

My next favourite is MAC Mineralize Skin Finish Natural in Medium.

This is an All-time Favourite product as well, but I’ve included it in this post as it works wonders and I use it almost every day.

I apply this once I’ve done all of my makeup and I’m just about to leave the house, it just gives you that flawless smooth skin look. Medium is just a tinge darker than my natural skin tone as well so it acts as a slight bronzer for me too.

Next up is a nail combination look using OPI’s “Mermaids Tears’ and “Pearl of Wisdom’.

I find the ‘Pearl of Wisdom’ can’t really be used on its own, which is a little disappointing as I was hoping it would be a gorgeous pearl colour by itself, but around 5 coats later I realised it’s not really made for that. (I think if you have a white nail polish and then you apply 2 coats of this you might get that effect?)

But I discovered this combination which is great for Spring! I used ‘Mermaids Tears’ first and then layered ‘Pearl of Wisdom’ over the top of it, and It just created a more subtle and pretty light minty green colour with a pearly sheen! Very pretty.

Also the Start to Finish Base and Top Coat has been awesome with stopping my nail polish from chipping at all!

Now for something that also came in handy on my holiday! The Natio Moisturising Lip Balm.

The reason I’m adding this to my favourites is because I literally used this every day in August. I LOVE Natio Products (Except for one horrid blemish cream. You can read why I hate this here) so this definitely lives up to the other Natio items I know and love.

This was super handy mainly because it is SPF30 and considering we were in 40 degree celsius weather, it meant we had to be extra careful and wear sunscreen constantly so me and my boyfriend were both using this while we were away.

And the final favourite is a perfume, Victoria’s Secret Bombshell Perfume!

Love, love, love this perfume! For some reason I really got into this perfume last month and now I’m addicted to the scent!

At first smell, the scent is a little like a mens cologne, but the lingering smell during the day is really floral and musky. I bought this duty-free on my last trip to Sydney and kind of just forgot about it… But it has reappeared and I’ve been using it a lot!

Thanks for reading my August Favourites! Hope you all are well 🙂

Olivia xo

Inglot Eyeshadow Review & Swatches

Hi Ladies,

I managed to get my hands on a custom Inglot palette recently (a slight mission as they don’t deliver to New Zealand!) and I thought I would share my thoughts on it and also show you some swatches of the colours I chose.

I can’t quite remember how I first heard about the Inglot brand (most likely someone on YouTube) but as soon as I saw how amazing they looked I started investigating how I could get one for myself.

Inglot sells pretty much everything; Foundation, Concealor, Powder, Blush, Bronzer, Blotting Sheets, Lipstick, Lip Paint, Lip Gloss, Lip Liner, Nail Treatments, Nail Polish/Enamel, Eyeshadow, Eyeliner, Mascara, Brow Items,  Brushes, Eyelashes, Makeup Cases, Eyelash Curlers etc!

They are a Polish Cosmetic company started around 20 years ago and have apparently become one of the fastest growing cosmetic companies in the US, and I can see why. All of their products are paraben free and cruelty free, both of which are very important to a lot of people and on top of that everything is superb in quality. At the moment I believe they only deliver to the USA and Australia from their online stores, however they do have retail stores internationally, I know they have one  in Times Square, New York City and a showroom in Sydney, Australia. A full list of their stores can be found here.

My Palette: I mainly went for Neutral and Purple tones with a couple of bright’s in Blue and Gold 🙂

So to get started I went on their website www.inglotcosmetics.com and went straight to the ‘Freedom System’ link, where you can basically create your own custom palette by choosing from hundreds of different colours! I spent days researching which colours to get, looking up swatches and comparing them all – I even made a little palette in Photoshop and played around with the eyeshadow colours until I came up with 10 eyeshadows that I just had to have and went really well together. (Their website would be amazing if you could do this on there, like just click and drag so you can see how they all go together but I can imagine this would be rather tricky to implement)

I think I ended up paying 115AUD for the whole palette plus shipping, which isn’t too bad considering these eyeshadows are such good quality, and the magnetic case is amazing too.

The shadows I chose:

I’m honestly really delighted with all of the colours I chose, the colour payoff is exceptional and even the Matte tones blend really well. (I have some trouble with other Matte eyeshadows not blending very nicely).

Inglot also sells these palettes in numerous different combinations. You can choose from the square style pans (like mine above) with 10, 5, 4 or 2 eyeshadows or also the round style with 10, 5 or 3 eyeshadows. The round style ones can also be pretty handy because you can create a mixture of concealor, eyeshadow and lip gloss as these products all come in the same sized round pans.

Also you can link all of the cases together, so if you have a 10 spot square eyeshadow palette, on top of that you can have another 10 spot rounded one with concealor and lipgloss and then another on top with blush and brow items etc – as they are all magnetic so they stick together! The coolest thing about that concept is how much SPACE you could save, especially if you are a makeup artist.

Time for the individual swatches! You’ll notice the names are pretty generic (probably because there are way too many to give them each creative names) but someone started a blog called Name That Inglot dedicated to coming up with names for all of their shadows which is really cool, so i’ll include those too along with the different eyeshadow descriptions 🙂 {There are five types; Pearl, Matte, Shine,  Double Sparkle and Advanced Makeup Component.}

Pearls:

A very pigmented Lustrous, Iridescent finish. The texture is Silky and Smooth which makes them very blend-able

Pearl 441

Pearl 420 (Taupeness) Similar to Satin Taupe by MAC but lighter

Pearl 399 (Mulberry)

Matte:

Very pigmented flat Matte finish. The texture is Silky and Smooth.

Matte 390 (Hedge-hog)

Matte 388

Matte 360 (Lull)

D.S (Double Sparkle) :

The excellent Inglot Matte finish with Double Sparkles, Sparkles and Micro-Sparkles

DS 493

DS 487

DS 460

AMC Shine (Advance Makeup Component) :

A densely pigmented color with a Satin finish, some are High-Sheen and others are Matte

AMC Shine 10

I hope you all enjoyed!

Liv xo

Fashion Inspiration

Here is something you have to watch whilst I get my self sorted to put up some posts…

THIS GIRL IS AMAZING:

Please go subscribe to heyyyjune on youtube… She has the best style ever… and her lookbooks are so cool and always have sweet music too 🙂

Click below!

May Favourites

Hi Guys, time for my May Favourites! This is going to be fairly long because I have lots of favourites this month due to the fact that I spent wayyy too much money, but nevertheless I’m sure you will enjoy!

In order of favouri-tive-ness (Yes I totally just made that word up. Ha!)

Hourglass Veil Mineral Primer. Only the most amazing primer you will ever use in your life. I would go on and on about how amazing it is, but I already did that in this post – so go read that if your interested. (Oh and a quick update from that post, I ACTUALLY think this IS helping my skin clear up)

So as you probably know (if you read my blog regularly) I’ve been using my Jane Iredale PurePressed Base for years and more recently I’ve been teaming it with a little Almay TLC Truly Lasting Colour Liquid Foundation under it for more coverage. So, I finally decided I should try a high end liquid foundation and went into MAC to get the Pro Long Wear (because I really wanted one that lasted all day) and unfortunately they said because that particular foundation is not one of the newer ones, it didn’t come in my colour.

As in, none of them were light enough for me (LOL!) so she put me on to the MAC Studio Sculpt because she said it was high coverage, long wearing and a newer formulation, which meant it came in a light enough colour for me.

And the verdict is in that I LOVE this. I find applying this with a stippling brush gets the best result and the best coverage without it looking too thick. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it hasn’t broke me out which is what I was worried about! So yeah, thumbs up from me.

So the same time I went in to get the Studio Sculpt I also got this MAC Blotting Powder. Absolutely love this! You dab the little sponge onto the powder and then go ahead and pat this all over your face and this absorbs all shine. But the best thing about this is that it actually has no pigmentation at all so it’s not like your putting powder over powder over powder and then looking cakey and gross. It’s awesome.

MAC 224 Tapered Blending Brush. I have no idea why I never purchased this before. This is my new favourite brush of all time and it wastes the 217! Love this little gem.

Favourite Lip combo for May! Rimmel London Nude Delight Lipstick (totally forgot about this in my drawer and rediscovered it this month!) with Natio’s Mineral Lipgloss in Caramel. The best ‘Nude’ combination if you’ve got dramatic eyes going on!

Clarins Waterproof Eye Pencil. Obsessed with this because it stays on the waterline like there’s no tomorrow. And it has a smudger on the other end so its great for smudging in the liner on the upper lashline so it’s less harsh and is also good for smokey looks.

This is delish! Lush Sweet Lips Vanilla and Chocolate Lip Scrub. It’s winter here (officially winter starts today!) in New Zealand and i’m already starting to get dry lips so this is a saviour! I’ll use this if my lips are dry in the mornings and then pop some Lip Balm or Lucas Paw Paw Ointment on and i’m good to go for the day with silky smooth lips. And it tastes amazing!

I’ve been curling my hair SO MUCH lately since I got this Corioliss Glamour Wand, probably at least 2 or 3 times a week (normally I would curl my hair once a month IF THAT because I just found it sooo time consuming.)

So I’m definitely loving the fact that curling my hair with this is so quick and easy and I also love the style of curls that it gives. I think it must be a combination of how the wand barrell gets smaller towards the end and not having a clamp.

And whenever I’m curling my hair I always use this Bed Head Foxy Curls Hi-Def Curl Spray. Firstly because it’s not a ‘hair-spray’ so it doesn’t give you that crunchy texture, and it still holds in your curls really well. And secondly because it smells AMAZING – like skittles lollies!

And speaking of things smelling amazing… This does just that. This is the Benefit ‘Laugh with me LeeLee’ Eau de Toilette and this lives in my bag. I have this with me at all times because it just smells so good. It’s just bottled amazingness. TRY IT!

And last but NOT LEAST – These Bronx Brogues have been permanently glued to my feet all of May. I love them so much, I just think they are the cutest and give a vintage vibe to an outfit.

Have a good weekend!!!

Olivia.