Candle of the week: Fresh Apple
My brother's girlfriend, Claire, bought me this candle as part of my Christmas present but I haven't used it until this week. Although I really like fresh scents, the crispness of the apple seemed a little out of place in the middle of winter. This week however, the days have been getting longer and the temperature has started to rise, so I thought it was the prefect time to have a change from my spicy winter scents. It's absolutely gorgeous, and I can even smell it when it's not lit. When lit though the scent fills the room and the hall with an almost wet apple smell, as if it's been raining on a bucket of freshly picked apples, it really is a lovely smell. Unfortunately I don't know what the brand is or where it's from, but I might have to ask so I can buy another one.
Beauty product of the week: Too Faced Matte Eyes Palette
I bought this a few weeks ago but only really got around to using it frequently last week, does anyone else buy new products and forget you've got them? On a day to day basis I prefer matte eye shadow, so this palette is perfect as it has 9 matte shadows, 7 of which are either pretty bold colours or can be built up, 1 perfect brow highlight colour and a very pale pink which I use as a base all over the lid. It's so nice to have every shade I need in one palette, I usually have to pull out a separate brow highlight as I prefer it to be matte and very few are pale enough for me, this one is just perfect.
Bought: Makeup Revolution Palettes
Clockwise from top left: Iconic Pro 1, Iconic Pro 2, Blush Palette in Golden Sugar, Pro E101 Brush, Redemption Palette Iconic 2
After hearing back from Makeup Revolution regarding their animal testing policy, and reading their ingredients page to see which products are suitable for vegans (most of them are), I felt confident enough to make my first big purchase from them. I've been eyeing up a few eye shadow palettes for years now, such as the Naked palettes from Urban Decay and the Lorac Pro 1 and 2, but none of these are vegan. Thankfully Makeup Revolution have brought out dupes for all of these and they're all vegan, and under £7 each! Although the Iconic 1 and 2 (the Lorac dupes) aren't yet listed on their ingredients page, the ingredients are listed on the packaging so I can see that they are vegan. I also picked up a blush palette and one of their new eye shadow brushes, it's a short flat shader brush, something which is lacking in my collection. I'm sure you'll be seeing more about all of these in the future, once I've had a chance to use them all.
Learning: How to use my camera
Before Christmas I was using my phone to take blog photos, and while most of them were ok, they weren't as good as I wanted them to be, so I put this camera on my wish list. I didn't think for one minute that I'd get it, but I was lucky enough to be bought it. I've been trying ever since to figure out how to use it on my own, but it's not happening as fast as I'd like, so I bought the dummies guide, in the hope that I'm not too much of a dummy to understand it. Hopefully I'll be able to start to move away from the 'guide' and 'automatic' modes a lot more after reading this.
Splurged on: Lush limited edition shower gels
I need more shower gel like I need a kick in the teeth, but when Lush release limited editions I find it so difficult to say no and let them pass me by. With the Valentine's Day collection due to leave the site I just had to try Prince Charming. I wanted to buy it when it was first released last year, but waited too long so I'm really glad I got a bottle this year. Yummy Mummy is from their Mother's Day range, so will be around for a while longer. You'll be hearing more about these soon, I'm sure.
Bloglovin': I reached 200
Earlier this week I reached another milestone on Bloglovin', I now have 200 followers! There are a few reasons that this makes me really happy; the first is obviously that people like what I write enough to subscribe to it, it also helps my blog grow; the more people that are subscribed, the more feedback I'm likely to get so I can continue to improve upon things that people don't like (this is why I like getting negative feedback as much as positive). However, the first thing that jumped into my mind when I saw that I'd reached 200 was that I won't get any more Liebster Award nominations. I can't tell you how often I'm sent a tweet telling me I've been nominated, and while it's lovely to be though of, it's also a bit annoying. I wrote a whole post on it here if you want to see what I mean.
