Feeling Festive| Christmas Party FOTD and OOTD

 

So what does a girl wear to her Christmas party? Never mind that! What does a girl wear to her first Christmas party at a company where she is still trying to impress and make a good opinion? This was my dilemma last week. Usually I would be the first to whack on a tight dress, get my tanned legs out and put on my stiletto heels, but when I work in an office in a very rural location, where my nearest cocktail or champagne bar is at least 70 miles away, I had to second think my attire. I still wanted a look that was glam, but maybe not as sexy as I normally aim for.

I decided to based my outfit around my sparkly shoes from Moda In Pelle which I love with all my heart! Look how amazing they are! They were the pair I wore for my mum’s wedding, and I think they are perfect for the festive season. I paired it with a matching glittery clutch bag from TKMaxx.  After I chose my shoes and bag I was stuck; I have a million dresses in my wardrobe, even more so now I have lost a dress size, but couldn’t decided which one was appropriate. So like you probably all have done, I ended up sat amongst all my clothes after having a hissy fit about how “I don’t have anything to wear!” I know a little black dress would of looked great but I wear black dresses to work everyday, so wanted something with a bit more colour. So after trying on all of my dresses I finally settle on the above lilac one from H&M. at first I thought of it as a more summery dress; more fitting for a wedding. But after trying it with the shoes and bag I thought it was perfect; sophisticated, girly and festive!

My works Christmas Party was a great success. We all went to a local hotel to have an all expenses paid for dinner and drinks, plus a little disco. It was a nice change to see my work colleague outside of the office, and we all had a great night; Sunday was evidence of that! Lets just say I had a few too many glasses of wine!

What did you, or are you wearing to your Christmas Party this year? Anything sparkly like my shoes?

Scary Cat| My Halloween Look| FOTD & OOTD

I don’t know about you, but I have never been a huge fan of fancy dress. I do love Halloween, but find that it is a little bit too Americanised now, and preferred it when the point of a Halloween costume was firstly for it to be Halloween related and secondly it was to scare someone. I’m all about the pumpkins, trick or treating, scary masks, claws, cobwebs and cloaks! This year I was invited to a Halloween party last Saturday night by my manger at work. I was a little unsure to begin with, but when she said that you had to dress up, and your costume had to be scary I was all for it. Now, I am a little unoriginal with my Halloween outfits, as I normally go as I cat as I can’t help but love the irony. I love when drunk people find it hilarious that I’m called Cat and I am a cat!

I decided to stick with what I know but wanted to scare my outfit up and make it a bit more dramatic. I had originally bought face paint and face crayons to decorate my face, but after practicing with them I found them very waxy and not very pigmented; consequently not creating the dramatic look I was after. I changed tactics and decided to buy the above makeup items to create my look. The Lipstick I have talked about here, and the eyeliner I already had. The lip liner was used to draw on cuts and scratches all over my body, and it was the perfect blood red. The eye-shadow is Boujois and was part of their Halloween collection and it’s amazing! I don’t know if I will wear it again soon, as it is a very pigmented and a very matte black. But it creates the perfect dramatic cat eye, and stayed  in place all night! The Boujois nail varnish was again very dramatic; it needed a few layers to build up colour, but once you did it looked great.

For my outfit I wore a black cocktail dress and tights which I ripped up. My hair I backcombed to the max and used a whole can of dry shampoo to turn it grey. Unfortunately you can’t see it too much in the pictures but believe me my hair was very tatty and grey! I actually woke up on Sunday morning and was rather confused by all the white dust all over the surfaces in my bedroom, it took me a while to realise the white dust was in fact the residue of my dry shampoo.

I admit my look isn’t the scariest ever, but I think I did a pretty good job. At the party and in town there was some great scary costumes, lots of very convincing zombies and vampires, along with Goth brides, Bettlejuice and Jimmy Saville (a little bit of bad taste, but we all knew someone would dress up as him).

What do you think of my look? What did/ are you dressing up as for Halloween?

*Apologies for the poor quality iPhone pictures, still in need of a camera*

Why do you wear makeup? | Tag

*Combination of my own images and those from We Heart It*

I have seen this tag floating around on peoples blogs over the past few weeks and it seems to be spreading like wild fire. Now I’m not normally one for tags; I don’t know why, I just never found one that inspired me and if they did, they were quite lengthy. However this tag is short and sweet and gives a little insight into the blogger. So here goes my answers.

When did you begin to love makeup?

Like many others I have forever been a girly girl. When I was a little girl I was obsessed with princesses, pink, glitter, Barbie's and spent my time dressing up, putting on fashion shows and baking mud pies. With this girliness came the love of makeup. I remember I used to have a big pink makeup case at my Nanas house and would stand in front of her mirror applying glitter, stick-on tattoos, peel off nail varnish and sickly sweet perfumes. I have always been gifted numerous makeup palettes for birthdays and Christmas, and as I grew so did my make up case. Obviously as I got older the quality of the product improved.

I first started wearing “proper” makeup aged 12… yes it is a little early, however when I was a younger I wore glasses, which unfortunately made my eyes appear smaller than what they were. I was obviously very self conscious of this and used to (still do) layer on the mascara to make my eyes look bigger. I probably started wearing a full face of makeup when I was 14, again to mask my insecurities, which at the time was my bad skin. When I started wearing a full face my confidence with my makeup improved and so did my experimentation, cue lots of black eyeliner and bright eye shadow… baby pink was one of my favourites for a while. Thankfully my taste has changed and matured, but I still like to have fun with it.

How do you feel without makeup?

A bug! I have a bit of a complex whereby I think my eyes look very small when I’m not wearing mascara, I call them my little bug eyes! As a result I almost never leave the house without mascara, the only time I do is when I’m out running. I know they probably don’t but I just don’t feel very confident when not wearing mascara. I will quite gladly leave the house without other makeup; I choose not to though. When my skin is looking good I will happily just wear mascara and a bit of bronzer and blush, especially during the weekends.

What do you like about makeup?

Quite a difficult question I think as sometimes I love makeup (like 70% of the time) and other times I feel like its an evil necessity and more like war paint than makeup. The days when I love it are obviously days when I’m feeling on top of the world. I love that makeup allows me to look and feel more human. I like that it can help enhance anyone’s natural beauty, and draw out a persons individual and beautiful features that they may not have been aware of before. I also love how colourful and pretty makeup is, the colour combinations and collections are never ending… it’s always great finding a new favourite lippy.

The days when I don’t love makeup are obviously days when I’m not feeling quite my normally self, perhaps a little blue. On days such as this I tire of applying my makeup but I would never leave the house without it. Like I mentioned, I feel like it’s a necessary evil; war paint; a mask that myself and many others apply to hide behind. I wish there was a national day where us girl don’t wear our makeup and show and (try to) embrace our natural beauty, as no matter how much we fight it, we all have something unique and beautiful about out face.

Three “Holy Grail” Items:

Mascara- I’m not fussed on which brand, however I do love L'Oreal Telescopic False Lash Mascara and Maybelline Colossal Mascara

Urban Decay NAKED Palette- A god send for eyeshadow lovers! I use mine all the time, perfect for both day to day looks and for dramatic night out looks. The pigmentation is great and the colours all compliment each other perfectly.

Rimmel Blush Pink Rose- A bargain high street product, but one that is very pigmented, lasts forever and is a great match for my skin tone. Great at giving me some colour on these dull days and a daily wear for me.

I hope you enjoyed reading my answers and learnt a little more about me. I look forward to reading some of your answers, if you do write your own be sure to Tweet me or comment below so I can give them a read.

Vampy Lips| Rimmel Kate Moss Matte Lipstick Wine 107

Just a quick post for you today, as I wanted to share with you my new vampy lipstick. Firstly I apologise for the quality of these pictures, they were taken on my iPhone in bad light. I am really missing the sunshine, these dark days make taking pictures for my blog very difficult. I have actually resorted to taking the majority of them at the weekend when I actually see some daylight! So if someone wants to buy me a new camera to help my fight for good pictures then I will love you forever!

Anyways onto the lipstick; I picked this Rimmel lipstick up at Asda as it was on offer for £4 and I needed a blood red shade to wear for Halloween. It’s from Rimmels new collection with Kate Moss, which has been hyped up a lot. The 107 shade is actually more of a deep wine red shade, not blood red, but still perfect for Autumn. It is described as being matte, and it is more of a matte finish than my other lipsticks however I would say it is more of a demi-matte as it is applied quite easily. I can’t believe how pigmented it is, the pictures above show me wearing two coats. I would definitely pick up another lipstick in this range as the quality is great for the price I paid.

It is actually the brightest and boldest shade of lipstick I have ever owned, I normally go for a nude or slight plumb shade. However after wearing this around the house it is growing on me; I don’t have to confidence to wear it outside yet, but watch this space!

Have you tried Rimmel Kate Moss Matte Lipstick range? Do you wear bright shades such as this often? If so can you give me some confidence tips to help me pull these bright shades off!

OOTD| FOTD| Pre Wedding Dinner

Outfit Of The Day

Dress- Dorothy Perkins

Shoes- Christian Louboutin

Clutch bag- Tkmaxx

Face Of The Day

Eyes- Urban Decay Naked Palette

Face- Primer- Rimmel/ Foundation- Maybelline Super Stay 24 hours and Revlon Colour Stay 24 hour – Contouring- Sleek Palette- Blush- Rimmel

Lips- Rimmel Kate Moss Nude

I thought I would do a Face and Outfit Of The Day to show you what I wore for the night before my mums wedding this past weekend. I’m frantically trying to think if I could do an actual wedding day Outfit And Face Of The Day however I think I was so busy enjoying the day I didn't even take pictures of what I was wearing or what my makeup looked like… blogger fail!

Anyways back to the Friday. The Friday evening was a smart casual affair, where dinner and drinks were served at the hotel while we all mingled and got to know each other before the big day. I originally planned to wear a dusty pink dress to kick off the pink theme to the wedding and to match my Mum’s dress, however as much as I tried I did not find a dress I was completely happy with. In the end I spotted this teal number in the Dorothy Perkins sale. It is actually the same dress as another I had bought and worn previously (You can see it here) and as I knew it was a flattering fit and comfortable I chose to wear this for the Friday night instead. I paired the dress with my Louboutins which I received as a graduation present; its actually only the second time I have worn them as they are so precious, and my silver clutch and silver jewellery which I also wore on the wedding day.

For my face I decided to go for a dramatic smoky eye and nude lip as on the wedding day I wore a more natural look, so I wanted to create a contrast and dress my face up a little bit more. I created this look using my trusty Naked Palette, the same palette that the makeup artist on the Saturday actually complimented me upon, as she loves it just as much as us bloggers. I am wearing lash inserts in the above picture; I treated myself on the Thursday night as I didn’t want to have to be fiddling with fake eyelashes all weekend. I only got the two week occasional wear ones, but they are still going very strong and I am in love with them! It means getting ready in the morning takes about 10 minutes less as I don’t have to apply endless layers of mascara, and I am much more confident with out makeup as my eyes are very defined. I will be writing a review on them in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that. I have been attempting to contour my face this past week, and although still a beginner I am enjoying the way it makes my face look.

I had a great night, as did many others judging by some of the sore heads in the morning, my boyfriend being one of them. However everyone had soon recovered come the ceremony, and the Friday evening allowed the wedding day to be more relaxed as the ice had already been broken the night before.

Are you are contouring pro? Could you give me some tips or recommend any products?

A Pretty Face For Drake- FOTD

So as previous posts have mentioned, I went to see Drake the beginning of this week, and had an amazing night. This is the face of the day for that evening. I went very simple, with a smokey eye, nude lip, and bronzed/ blushed face. This tends to be my go to face if I am unsure what to do, or if I’m felling less confident, as I always feel sexy with a good dark smokey eye. It is definitely one of my favourite looks for makeup as it can be worn with anything and is a classic.

To achieve this look I used Urban Decay Naked Palette Dark Horse of the whole lid, then Mac Knight Divine on the outside of the lid towards the middle, then Naked Palette Virgin along the brow line and on the inner corners of the lid. Very simple!

What is your go to look for your make-up for evenings out? Do you also favour the smokey eye look?

Glamorous Eyes| FOTD

Argh...Eyelash problems 

Another look that I call glamorous casual, as when the eye is closed, the makeup looks quite dramatic, but when the eye is open and paired with a simple face overall, the look is casual. I wore this to dinner and drinks one night. 

To get this look I used

Face-

Foudation- Rimmel Stay Matte

Bronzer- Rimmel Sun Shimmer

Blusher- Rimmel Blush, Shade- Pink Rose

Eyes-

Eye shadows- Urban Decay Naked Pallete- Darkhorse, Smog, Sidecar and Virgin for highlighting.

Mascara- Rimmel Scandeleyes

Fake Eyelashes- Eyelure

FOTD

This is actually my first FOTD, and to think I've been blogging for 3 months now... what have I been chattering on about!

So this is my face I wore for a few celebratory drinks last Friday after I had handed all my assignments in. We went to a lovely new bar in Newcastle near Central station (really can't remember the name!) Anyways I had a few glasses of Prosecco to celebrate, and went for a glamourous casual look.

Please excuse my messy hair, and the hairs on my face from a makeup brush, only just realised them now.. amateur mistake.

For this look I used;

Face- Concealer- Rimmel Match Perfection

          Foundation- Rimmel Stay Matte 

          Bronzer- Rimmel Sun Shimmer

          Blush- Rimmel, Shade Pink Rose

Eyes- Mascara- Rimmel Scandaleyes

          Eyeshadow- Urban Decay- Naked Pallette- Shades- Sin and Half Baked.

I'm showing my Rimmel addiction here!