Zoeva En Taupe palette, budget foundation part 2 and Primark foundation update!

Well, the last time I posted, I was praising Primark's £2 stick foundation. I gave it a 4.5/5 and was rather taken aback by how good it was. Well, the phrase "too good to be true" really was apt in this case. I TAKE IT ALL BACK! BURN IT WITH FIRE! In total, I had the foundation on my face for about 6 hours. My face was a greasy mess. There was absolutely no foundation left on either side of my nose and there were actual streaks on my face where you could see the natural skin underneath where the foundation had swiped straight off my face. It was a hot mess. It felt slippery and almost like my face was sweaty. The rating has fallen all the way down to a 2/5. Never again.

On a happier note, my Zoeva
En Taupe palette came yesterday morning! It was £18 from BeautyBay (will pop the link for it at the bottom) and it is absolutely beautiful. Now, neutrals aren't my thing at all. Most of my eyeshadow palettes are either full of brights or darks but I struggle with neutral colours are they never seem to excite me. But my sister had asked me to do a more natural look on her recently and I sort of just stood despairingly in front of my make-up case wondering how in the hell I was going to pull this off but I found a small Freedom palette with some nice pinky neutrals in it that fit the bill. It was obvious, however, that I was going to have to invest in some more muted palettes if I wanted to be able to cater to more people.

I stumbled across the Zoeva palettes when I was flicking through BeautyBay on Thursday and it's a brand I hadn't come across before. I had a look around on YouTube and apparently they're a German make-up brand with some of the most gorgeous palettes I've ever seen. Like I said previously, neutrals don't generally excite me very much but I saw these are fell in love. Being a conscientious shopper, I had a look at some videos on YouTube with people reviewing the palettes and couldn't resist buying one to check out for myself.

I paid £20.50 all in as I paid the extra £2.50 for next day shipping so it wasn't particularly expensive compared to some palettes on the market at the moment considering you're getting 10 reasonably sized eyeshadows in the palette (works out at £1.80 per eyeshadow!).

The packaging is just your standard thick cardboard magnetic palette and it comes in a pretty little cardboard slip cover as well. I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but I'm a sucker for pretty packaging and Zoeva pretty much nail it, all their palettes come in very pretty packaging and I love it!

The eyeshadows themselves are amazing quality. They're so smooth and creamy, not chalky at all. Due to the texture of the eyeshadow they are so easy to blend and you don't get a lot of fall out, even with the darker colours. They are so highly pigmented so combined with the texture, a little goes a long way. It's a perfect addition to anyone's collection if they have a soft spot for neutrals.

Moving on to the budget foundations, this time I tried out the Essence Stay All Day 16hr Long Lasting foundation. Again, Essence wasn't a brand I was familiar with but I had seen it talked about on various make-up groups on Facebook, praised very highly so I thought it was worth including in my venture. I looked into Essence a little bit and they're a European brand, cruelty free and reasonably priced. The only place I've seen them sold in store is in Wilko and I must have passed by them so many times without even noticing they were bloody there! So the 16hr foundation is £3.80 and comes in 3 shades. Looking at the shades available, I think I need to go with Soft Beige but the lightest colour they had in store was Soft Crème. I bought it anyway thinking I could use powder to lighten it slightly if it was too dark.

The texture of the foundation is very smooth, it blends really well and is faintly scented. Now, I have no idea whatsoever what it's SUPPOSED to smell like but it's nice. I don't normally like scented make-up products unless it's lipstick so I was a bit skeptical of a scented foundation.

As I suspected, the colour match was waaaaaaaay far off. It was super orange compared to my own skin tone and I looked like I'd been fucking Tangoed. Even other people were pointing out to me how orange my face was, even after powdering to try and lighten it! But I made the best of it and blended it far down my neck to try and cover up the obvious difference since we were only trying it out anyway. Well, that was until I found out we were actually going out for dinner and I didn't have time to change my make-up!!

TRAGEDY STRIKES! My cheapy oval brush from eBay fucking snapped! The handle snapped clean in two while I was applying my foundation so we had to switch half way through to a Real Techniques face brush which actually seemed to blend in the foundation even better in this instance. It blended in very well and gave a lovely smooth, flawless finish. It's medium to full coverage and I wear two coats of foundation anyway so it covered up any flaws whatsoever.

Staying power-wise, it stayed on all day. I had it on for approximately 9 hours. It would be rare that I would have foundation on for 16 hours anyway so I didn't really get to test it to it's full potential. When I came to wash my face that night, I still had a full face of make-up on, nothing had budged or went cakey in patches. I was really impressed. I felt a bit jaded by the Primark fiasco so I wasn't really expecting much from another cheapy foundation. I really do need to try and get it in my own colour because it truly is a wonderful foundation for the price. It's something I would use every day, it's good quality, my only issue is the lack of variety in shades.

This is the finished product of my endeavours. As you can see, the foundation really did look pretty good so worthy of another try (in my actual colour!!!) And the eyeshadows are just to die for. I was planning on doing a tutorial but there were too many people home and I couldn't sit and film it while everyone was sitting around taking the piss SO, maybe another time. If I can get peace. Unlikely. But I'll give a quick run down of what I did.

I primed my eyes with MUA eyeshadow primer. Using a soft brush, I covered my whole lid in the shade Stitch by Stitch (pale creamy shade) and then applied 'Gallery' all over my lower lid. Using a fluffy shading brush, I started working 'Outline' into the crease and blending slightly upwards towards the brow, and the shadows were so soft they just blended right up seamlessly. So be careful if you're using them that you don't just blend everything away LOL!. Then I went into 'Exquisitve' with the same fluffy brush and started working it into the outer crease into a 'V' leading down to the outer corner of my eye. Just a small amount to add a bit of definition. When working with pale neutrals, I love just popping in a wee bit of colour because sometimes, it can just end up looking quite flat and boring. My personal opinion, I'm not saying anyone else looks boring, I just find it hard to stay interested in my reflection at times without looking like a unicorn has done it's business all over my face. Anyway, using a smaller brush, I put a little more of the 'Exquisitve' shade under neath my eye close to the lash line. I then popped a little bit of 'Sheers and Voiles' as a highlight just at the brow bone and dabbed just the tiniest amount of 'Gallery' onto the brush to go into my crease again just a TINY little bit. Finished it all off with a little KIKO Gel Eyeliner and Essence's Lash Princess mascara. Not forgetting to finish off my face with my new joint favourite lipstick, Scorpio.

TA DA!!!!

So tomorrow, it's another budget foundation review. One I can guarantee 100% will not be the same colour as my natural skin tone so that'll be fun. And possibly discussing my lust over the new Urban Decay palette coming out next month that I HAVE to get my grubby little hands on!

x M x

Beauty Bay - Zoeva En Taupe palette

Jeffree Star and Budget Foundations!

Now I've recovered from my complete meltdown over my parcel coming, I feel that I might be composed enough, MIGHT be, to post this....

MY MOTHERFUCKING JEFFREE STAR'S CAME! Scorpio and Gemini were released last weekend on Jeffree's site but the site I order from in the UK didn't receive them in until during the week. I sat refreshing the page for hours and finally they went live. Unfortunately, Gemini wasn't up there so I ordered Scorpio and Dominatrix. They are everything!!

One thing I will say is these photos do not do the shades justice at all. They are much darker in real  life in the natural light. The Dominatrix shade is such a rich chocolate brown and Scorpio, I cannot even begin to describe the colour of it. It's grey but it's purple and it really is so much darker than it looks in the severe light of my bathroom where I took the photo.

I don't have confirmation but I THINK the formulation might have changed slightly because the new shade seems to be even creamier and silky than before. I'm totally beside myself over them. I can't even. I can't. My Zoeve En Taupe palette will be here tomorrow and I can't wait to try it along with the Scorpio. I think they're going to compliment each other really well.

I'm also running a test of budget (ie cheap lol) foundations to see if they really compare at all to mid-range foundations. I always use No7's Beautifully Matte foundation in the shade Calico (£14.50). It's my holy grail. I really love a full coverage foundation and I spend a lot of my time touching my face (don't ask me why, I'm a total freak) so I like something that will stay put through all my constant fingering (let's not lower the tone pmsl!).

This afternoon I bought a selection of low cost foundations, all supposed full coverage to test out and see if they were worth a look.

The first I've tried out is Primark's stick foundation. Now, I used to always use Max Factor's Pan Stick (I paid £6.99 for it in Boots) but stopped when I found out that they weren't cruelty free. The Primark one is £2.00 and doesn't come in very many shades from what I saw. My local Primark isn't particularly big so the larger stores might carry more variety when it comes to shades. The photos above where I'm showing the lipstick shades is where I'm wearing the Primark foundation.

There's a fair amount of product for the price first of all, there's a faint scent to it but it's nothing over powering or unpleasant. I bought the ivory shade which was the palest one I could see there. I'm quite yellow toned and it fit me perfectly. The colour match was perfect which is a rarity as I seem to find myself in between shades a lot of the time and either having to mix shades together or adjust with powder or bronzer/blush so was pleasantly surprised.

I primed my face with Nivea Post Shave balm and I applied it as I usually do with stick foundation and just run it over my face a few times and blended it in. I used one of the cheapy oval brushes from eBay and it was so rich and creamy, it just slid right over my skin and blended right in. I used my usual setting powder (MUA Matte Perfect Loose Powder) along with a brush to set it and went over the apples of my cheeks with blush. At first glance, it was perfect. I was really taken aback by how flawless it was. The coverage is amazing and like I said previously, it blends so unbelievably well considering the price. HOWEVER an hour later, it looks a bit cakey around my nose. I'm used to that with stick foundation as the Pan Stik did the same so it might just be my skin type that's the problem. My nose gets a bit oily throughout the day and I just went over it with the brush and it evened itself out again. My only let down is, it seems to take a hell of a lot of powder to set it as it's so creamy. I swiped my finger across my lip when taking off the Scorpio to switch shades and managed to wipe off some of the foundation above my lip. It was still soft to the point it would rub off by hand. I'm going to try it again with different setting powder and squirt some setting spray on there too to see if it makes a difference.

Overall, I'm really impressed. Going to give it a 4.5/5, only losing the half mark over the cakeiness around the nose but it might drop depending on wear time so watch this space.

It's something I would contemplate using again if I can find a way to work with the texture of it once set It'll be perfect for drag looks as I'm not typically in drag make-up for an extended period of time out of the house so cheap and cheerful for that. I am really surprised that it was so good if I'm being completely honest. I'm not a make-up snob by any means but I highly doubted that such a cheap foundation from a store that predominantly sells clothing as opposed to toiletries and cosmetics. I'm going to see how long it holds for and then update (with a photo) of how it held up over the hours. It'll be about 5 hours I'll have been wearing it when I wash off so should give a good indication of staying power.

Tomorrow I'm going to be testing out Essence's 16 hour foundation and reviewing the Zoeva En Taupe palette! Now I'm off to stare at myself in the mirror while alternating between lipsticks until I get sick of my reflection. As if that'll ever happen lol!

x M x

Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick restock, new shades and Jeffree/Kylie drama!!!

All my constant refreshing finally came to fruition this morning when I came upon the new Jeffree Star Velour Liquid Lipstick shades live on the Cocktail Cosmetics website! 

At the moment, Scorpio has already sold out and from the looks of things, Gemini hadn't yet been added to their site. Currently, Redrum, Queen Supreme, Unicorn Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Dominatrix are still in stock but I'm not sure when exactly they'll be getting more of the Scorpio or if they're even going to get any of the Gemini.

The plan was to order one of each of the new shades but as Gemini wasn't being stocked yet, I decided to order Dominatrix alongside the Scorpio as I've been lusting after it for a while and with £4.25 postage and packaging, I felt it would be best to make the most of it.

The new shade, Scorpio, is absolutely stunning from what I've seen in photos. I'm a sucker for a purple lip and Scorpio is a beautiful muted grey-purple shade. I cannot wait to get it on my face. As for the Dominatrix, it's a shade I've been wanting to buy for ages but never got around to it. It's a rich chocolate brown shade and it seems to suit any skin tone from what I've seen online. I know that Cocktail Cosmetics have said themselves on their site to allow 24 hours for orders to be processed as they're expecting a high volume of orders due to the JS restock so I'm not sure exactly when it's going to be here so there's going to be a lot of order update checking over the next few days.

Now I must weigh in on the Jeffree Star/Kylie Jenner shenanigans that's been plastered all over social media. So, I've seen a lot of people bitching about Jeffree and complaining that he's being unprofessional calling Kylie out about the quality of her lip products (specifically the wands). Now, I might seem biased because I love JS but I don't see the problem with this. It's probably notable that the Kardashian/Jenner clan have a massive following who seem to get defensive at the slightest negative implication towards them but would people rather be ignorant to a problem, buy it and be disappointed or have the real truth and be aware that they're paying a considerable amount of money for a considerably poor quality product? Maybe it's because I love a bit of shade but I was cheering from the sidelines. Thankfully, it's now been promised that all customers will a faulty product WILL be receiving a replacement so I have to give her credit for acknowledging that there was a problem there and trying to rectify it. But I have to wonder what the quality control is like in the factory if so many faulty products were able to slip under the radar.

It's probably worth noting recent speculation that the Lip Kits might actually be a product of private labelling. I can't confirm or deny this so I'm not going to pretend I know for definite but I'd be extremely unhappy if I found out that I had been paying $29 (approx. £20) for a possibly repackaged Colourpop product (the Colourpop mattes retail at $6 on the Colourpop site which is approx. £4). Now this isn't a slight against the Colourpop mattes because I'm desperate to try Colourpop myself as I've heard so much about the Colourpop lipsticks being amazing, but a slight on the speculation that these lipsticks might be repackaged and sold at a considerably higher price. I imagine that we'll hear more about the subject over the next wee while and I'm truly hoping that private labelling isn't the case here for the customer's sake as well as hers because I doubt people would be very happy to find out that the wool had been pulled over their eyes. So here's hoping that it's all a huge misunderstanding.

What I do know for certain is that over the next few days I will be stalking the postman and be prepared to pounce on him as soon as he appears at the door to get my new lipsticks. Decision has been made on my first video post and it's going to have to be swatches of the Jeffree Star lipsticks,. I know it's been done to death but I figure it's an easy enough choice to ease myself into YouTubing and becoming more comfortable in front of a camera. I'd quite like to record a base routine as I get a lot of people asking me what foundation I use and  I'm awkward enough meeting people in real life never mind sitting alone in my house essentially talking to myself. 

AAAAANNNNNDDDDD today is motherfucking Drag Wednesday bitch! So I'm going to do a step by step eyebrow covering photo tutorial and post the final look tomorrow morning!

x M x

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Life update: I'M A STUDENT!!!

So I don't think I've updated since I got my interview letter for college through so a little update is necessary.

So the lead up to the interview was hellish. I couldn't sleep for that whole week leading up to it and I felt like utter shit. To put it plainly. The anxiety was at nuclear meltdown level and I was a riot. The lack of sleep was probably exacerbating the feeling of anxiety to be honest.

I organised my stuff for the interview. I had to take photo ID along with my qualifications and it felt a bit rough. My darling friend took me to one of the photo booths to get my ID printed and what a riot that was. Got my make-up done, looking lovely and fresh and it ended up that my photo looked like a mugshot. Fantastic. So if the college is keeping them for our student IDs, I'm basically going to have to pass for a serial killer for the next 3 years!

Along with the photograph and certificate, we were asked to bring in photos of make-up that inspired us. So I ran to the library at the last minute (my specialty) to get them printed out. I chose the following 9 images to take along.

I wanted to make sure that in taking the photos that I did with me, I was putting across really who I was as a person. I'm inspired by the bright, the bold, the beautiful. Drag has become such a huge part of my inspiration that I actually ended up having to cut some of the queens out (the shade) so I wasn't taking too many photos in with me! Overkill much?

There was a bit of here and there going with me trying to decide whether I should take a portfolio in with me or not. It wasn't required but it seemed like it would be sensible. You can only sell yourself so much with your words but actually being able to take some of my work in with me would let them see exactly what I can do. So I put together an album of about 100 photos of work I'd previously done on myself and other people. There was an even mixture of more neutral looks, really bright and in-your-face looks and some drag looks so there was a nice balance there to show that I'm not a one trick pony and I really am willing to try anything.

Then came deciding what I was actually going to do with my bloody face and clothes. I didn't want to go in proper interview attire because that's just not me. I've prided myself on always putting Marianne across and not pretending to be something or someone else I'm not so when people started to advise me to go in interview clothes and tone down my make-up I was quite on edge. I ended up settling for a simple black swing dress with knee high boots, my hair in it's usual slicked back style and attempted to tone down my make-up just the slightest bit. Couldn't resist throwing in my old faithful JS I'm Royalty to add a splash of colour. I'm now considering it not only my favourite lipstick but my lucky lipstick!

The interview itself swung around quicker than I was comfortable with, if I'm being totally honest with you. Walking into that college on the Tuesday morning was incredibly nerve-wracking. I had no idea what I was walking into. Disappointment struck when upon entering the room the lecturers informed us that the course was full and they were actually interviewing for a waiting list. We were advised to look at other courses as a just-in-case sort of thing and also that the course was a Level 6 course and it was preferable but not necessary to have qualified at Level 5. So at that point I lost all hope inside. I had no make-up or hair qualifications and no experience working in the beauty industry so I really knocked myself down. The feeling of hopelessness almost had me walking out the door.

My turn came around and I was taken to speak to one of the lecturers, she asked a few questions and looked through my portfolio, she was very complimentary of my work which almost made my heart explode with pride and I was grinning like an absolute idiot. Then had a look through the inspirational photos we were asked to take and she said they were really great. After a quick discussion I decided that I would apply for another course just in case I didn't get in but she said that she didn't see a reason why I wouldn't if the place was free. On my way out the door I was a little bit lost so I stopped one of the lecturers to ask her how to get out and as I walked off she tapped me on the shoulder and told me she "loved my look" and at that point, a shot of confidence went through me and I all but skipped out into the corridor. 

I got home that night and felt a mixture of emotions. The biggest part of me was saying that there was no way it was happening. The course was full, I had no experience, no qualifications, there was no point. But the other part of me was thinking about how well the interview had actually gone in the end. I awoke the next morning and sitting there in my e-mail inbox was an unconditional offer to start in August. I could not believe it! I burst into tears on the spot and just sat totally frozen to the spot. How many times did I read the e-mail over and over again? Lost count, honestly.

So I called everyone and messaged everyone to spread the news and now here I am. Sitting here waiting on August to come around and I'm absolutely terrified. But it's baby steps, we got in so now we just need to take it one day at a time. My sleep is still all over the place but I'm trying to keep my eye on the prize and that one day in the near future I will actually be able to pen the letters M U A on to the end of my name.

In other news, a YouTube vlog is coming. I figured there's no time like the present and since everything else is going so well at the minute, I might as well suck it up and put myself out there. So tomorrow is filming day (Review and swatch of the LA Girl Matte Gloss lipsticks) and it's also Drag Wednesday! Woohoo!!! Promises from now on to try and update daily!

x M x