Max Factor False Lash Effect Fusion Review

Hello Bloggeroonies!

A few months ago while I was walking aimlessly around the shops and was pulled into the Max Factor make up stand by all the bright colours and glossy products! I had read a few things about the False Lash Effect Mascara's but I was a bit sceptical as the TV adverts always have a small disclaimer at the bottom saying "filmed with lash inserts". Never noticed these little disclaimers on the bottom of the screen?? You will now! I did think to myself - If a product is that good then why do they need to film with lash inserts? But thought I'd give it a go...

False Lash Effect Fusion in Black
(please excuse my nails - I know they need doing!)  :)

Well I was about to find out! I paid £10.99 for a mascara that promised Volume, Length and an "extreme look"! It has a large brush and the wand is quite short which is good for control over where you're applying it. The colour of the bottle is funky and bright making it easy to find in my huge box of make up.

I curled my eyelashes before applying the mascara and started working the product through them. It was initially quite clumpy and the formula seemed quite runny. The more I tried to work this through my lashes the more it came off! I waited a minute or so and tried another coat but it made no difference. My lashes were visibly coated and I could see there was a slight difference in the length but nothing dramatic or extreme at all.  It also had a very strong chemical smell to it which I've not had with any other mascara in the past

I was so disappointed with the result this gave me and I definitely wouldn't recommend it based on my experience.

Hope this post was helpful and you enjoyed reading it. xxx

What's your experience with Max Factor Mascara's? Do you stick to one particular mascara or do you change every time your current one runs out?

Benefit They're Real! Mascara Review

Hey Blogeroonies!

I am reviewing this mascara because it is without doubt one of the best I've used! I got this last Christmas and was immediately hooked on it. It promises more length, curl, volume and lift. I didn't read any reviews about it as it was so new but at £18.50 I was a bit worried it wouldn't live up to its claims!

The sales girl on the Benefit counter advised me the best way to apply this mascara was to hold is horizontally and sort of wiggle it from side to side as you brush it through your lashes. I'd not heard of this technique before but it seemed to work well. I had to add a couple of coats to get the look I wanted. I do find this gives my lashes more length (good) but not as much volume as I'd like (not so good!). I have re-purchased this and will probably buy it again as I'm yet to find a better mascara.

I'd say this is a 100% clump free mascara that stays put all day and doesn't flake off leaving bits all over your face!

Nice long brush that catches every lash!

What's your favourite mascara? Has anyone tried the L'oreal Beauty Tubes - are they any good?? xx

Products On My Wish List....

Hey there Bloggeroonies,

This is just a little post about a few products that i've wanting to try for a little while and have added to my "beauty wish list"!

First off is the L'oreal Double Extend Beauty Tubes. They apparently make your lashes 70% longer by coating them in a base coat and then top coat mascara. This creates a tube effect which helps to lengthen the lashes and give them a fuller look! They retail about £10.99 so once my current mascara has run out I might give this a go!

Has anyone tried this product? What do you think of it?

Next up is the Smashbox Soft Focus Powder Eyeliner which retails at £16.00 and as far as i'm aware you can only buy online. The description is "Get diffused, never-harsh lines of color with our unique powder formula that mimics the effect of a soft-focus lens"

This sounds like a really great product to create a smokey eye effect and one that i'm definitely considering buying!

Chanel Illusion D'ombre is something that i've been admiring from a far for a long time! These are £23 each and come in 6 different shades. They not only look amazing in their gorgeous little pots but the shadow itself is velvety soft and looks long lasting.

What do we think?? To buy or not to buy...that is the question!


Lastly is the Sleek Face Contour Kit which is only £6.50 and available in Superdrug. You'd think i'd rush out and buy this right?? Well i've certainly tried my hardest but its sold out in every Superdrug i've been in! I may resort to buying online and accepting the fact i'll have to pay out on the postage.

This kit has a highlighter which can be used to help sculpt the face and define your features. It also has a darker powder (sort of like a bronzer) which is used to create shadows to define the jaw or bring out your cheekbones.

This is a medium colour kit, I would go for the lighter one as i'm quite pale!

Well that's it for my wish list, well for now anyway! Hope you guys enjoyed this post - would love to hear your feedback and let me know if you've tried any of the products i'm lusting after! xxx

L'oreal Glam Shine Miss Candy Lip Gloss Review

I'm an absolute sucker for anything pretty or glittery so when I saw these advertised on TV I knew it would only be a matter of time before I succumbed to these gorgeous glosses!

L'oreal has created 6 new "Miss Candy" glosses in the Glam Shine range. They have a swirl of two colours blended together and a cute heart shaped applicator. They are selling for £7.69 but at the moment Boots are doing buy one get one half price and Superdrug are doing 3 for the price of 2.

As I already have a huge amount of lip glosses I went for the offer Boots have on and bought Nude Bonbon (711) and Bubble Pink (701).

I love the Glam shine range and usually go for something with a sparkle but these were both matte and very different. The Nude Bonbon is very sheer nude colour which is perfect for a day time look and the Bubble pink is gorgeous and adds a nice subtle colour for the day time also. I wouldn't wear either at night as for me they colour isn't full on enough. The other colours they do were a bit too sparkly for me.

Nude Bonbon (Left) Bubble Pink (Right)

I'm definitely going to use these glosses a lot but not sure if I'd re-purchase as they're quite expensive at £7.69 for 6ml! One great thing about these are that they aren't sticky like some lip glosses, so at least your hair won't be plastered across your lips every time the wind blows!

Hope you enjoyed this review. What's your favourite brand of lip gloss?

Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser Review

Hey Bloggeroonies

Just wanted to do a quick review of my favourite beauty product, the one I could not live without!

I started using Liz Earle products about two years ago after I started suffering with acne at the age of 26! I had always had the odd spot here and there but had never had acne, so it was quite a shock to suddenly have to deal with it in my late twenties. All Liz Earle products contain naturally active ingredients and Liz herself has suffered with eczema so has made a really great range for those for sensitive skin but is also suitable for all skin types.

Its a super rich cleanser that I use morning and night on dry skin to remove make up, general grime (not that my skin is grimey first thing in the morning!) but can also be used on mascara. I don't tend to use it to take off my eye make up as I find I have to scrub at my eyes if I do and prefer to use cotton pads with specific eye make up remover.

200ml Bottle

The main ingredients are Rosemary, Chamomile, Cocoa Butter and Eucalyptus Essential Oil. You only need a small amount of this cleanser as it goes a long way. Once you've spread it over your face and down your neck you remove it with one of the muslin cloths that come with the product. The cloth has a very slight rough texture to it but doesn't harm the skin in any way. You're supposed to rinse the cloth in hand hot water and polish the cleanser off with it. The cloth being slightly rough give the skin a real "polish" on every cleanse and lifts away dead skin cells.

Gorgeous creamy cleanser! :)

This product leaves my skin so clean and smooth and within weeks of initial use my skin cleared up by at least 80%. I know lots of other companies are now latching on to this "cleanse and polish" idea but I truly believe this has got to be one of the best due to its natural ingridients. I have now changed my whole skin regime to Liz Earle and love how they leave my skin feeling.

Liz Earle is available online and they have great offers, she also has stores in London, Guildford and the Isle of Wight.

Hope you enjoyed this post...what's your number one beauty product?? xxx

Umberto Giannini Big Hair Review

Hi Bloggeroonies!

I've recently tried some Umberto Giannini Big Hair Products and decided I'd do a review of them. I have long fine hair and have recently had my bonded extensions taken out after 6 years of having them! I had them more for thickness than length so was quite self conscious about my hair looking limp without them. Due to the extensions I've had to use specific shampoo and not too many products that would effect the glued bonds so it was quite a change for me to be able to choose any products I wanted!

I'd read a couple of things about the Umberto Giannini range so chose:

• Umberto Giannini Glam Hair Ditch the Dirt Volume Shampoo - £5.60
• Umberto Giannini Root Boost Volume Spray for big hair - £5.49
• And a mini trial size of Umberto Giannini Backcomb in a Bottle - £1.99

The first thing I noticed about the shampoo was that it had small particles of glitter in it which made it quite funky looking. It didn't smell bad but equally it wasn't a pleasant smell that you get with some shampoo's. It left my hair feeling very clean and did have a slight bounce to it but I wouldn't say I noticed a huge difference apart from that really.

The Root Boost spray says to spray this into the roots of your hair where you want volume once your hair is styled. So after straightening my hair I applied this to areas around the crown of my head. Again it didn't have a particularly nice smell but not bad either if that makes sense?? I then sort of worked it through with my fingers and kind of plumped up my hair a bit. It seemed to work and my hair had a nice "bounciness", as my partner put it! I think I'm definitely going to keep using this and found it didn't leave my hair greasy or sticky like some products do. The packaging is also really sleek and eye catching with the purple bottle.

I've read some really mixed reviews about the Backcomb in a Bottle spray so I was reluctant to spend money on another product that didn't work and would be left unused in my bathroom. So when I went into Boots I found they do a couple of the Umberto Giannini products in 30ml trial sizes for £1.99 which is appealing to me as then if I don't like the product I don't feel bad about it going to waste if I don't want to continue to use it. I used this after washing my hair with the volume shampoo I've mentioned in this post.

Well, I'm really glad I got the trial size as this was not the product for me! The directions on the bottle are "Spray from approx 6 inches to where you want backcomb effect and jujj hair into shape as you go". I did exactly this and ended up with no "backcomb effect" and instead I got a sticky/tacky feeling wherever I had sprayed it! I actually think the stickiness weighed down my roots and made it look more flat and lifeless. Not a happy bunny but then I'm yet to find a product that offers BIG hair without actually backcombing - if you know of one let me know...

Overall I think I'd re-purchase the root spray and possibly the shampoo but then again now I'm without extensions the shampoo world is my oyster so I may be sampling a few more before I settle down with a regular one! :)

Hope you liked this post - which is the best volumising shampoo you've tried?? xxx

Cocoa Butter Formula Natural Bronze Gradual Tanning Moisturizer

Hi Guys!

Since deciding to do a beauty blog i've been desperate to review the Palmers Cocoa Butter Formula Gradual Tanning Moisturiser as i'm such a fan of it!

I purchased this from Boots for £5.35 and it comes in a 250ml bottle. Having tried every fake tan under the sun (excuse the pun!) I decided to go with something more reasonably priced and something I could control the colour of! I've spent lots of money in the past on Xen-Tan, Fake Bake and various others that are good but either streak or cost a lot to repalce on a regular basis.

Admittedly this does have a strong Cocoa Butter smell but its not offensive. It does give you a slight biscuity smell until you wash it off once the tan has developed. I'm naturally quite pale and my little milk bottle legs were in dire need of some colour so I put this on a few nights ago before going to bed. Its a white lotion so you don't have much of a colour guide so I made sure I worked it in well. I found it dried fairly quickly and wasn't greasy at all.

8 hours later after some badly needed beauty sleep I awoke to find a nice warmer shade on my milky skin! I was really impressed with the results after just one application. The really good thing about this is that you can build this up as quickly or as slowly as you like. It didn't come out as a tango tan, it was just a nice warm brown.

 Also it doesn't fade in horrible patches and my skin feels really moisturised. I made a real beauty error by not washing my hands straight after and I was left with orangey palms and inbetween my fingers which I ALWAYS forget about! So annoying but it was pretty easy to exfoliate off so it wasn't a drama.

I'm planning on using this for the rest of the summer and to top up my newly acquired tan from my hols in Spain! Bargain price, easy to use and streak free - Happy Days! :)

Thanks for reading...more beauty reviews to come very soon.... xxx

Rimmel Wake Me Up Foundation

Hi guys! Welcome to my first blog!

The very first thing i'm reviewing is the Rimmel Wake Me Up Foundation. I've been using more expensive foundations for a long time and as the purse strings are getting tighter I decided I needed a cheaper foundation for every day use. After reading a few reviews I decided to try this foundation as it was only £8.99 for a decent sized 30ml bottle.

I was surprised with how lovely this foundation was! It gives a medium coverage and a lovely even skin tone. It comes out quite thick in my opinion but one decent pump goes a long way and it doesn't feel heavy or cakey at all. I was pleasantly surprised with the gentle glow it gave my skin and I even had a couple of people ask which foundation I was using, which is always a good sign!

My natural skin tone is fairly pale and I've made the mistake of buying a foundation in the past whilst wearing fake tan! Naturally the shop assistants on most make up counters match your foundation with your neck so I have had numerous "too-dark-to-wear-without-fake-tan" foundations. I was determined not to make the same mistake with this so ran quickly into boots with no make up on and did a sneaky trial with the testers. I ended up with the shade Soft Beige 200 which is the second shade up from the palest.

In the above picture it looks a bit glittery but its only very slight and not as shiny as the photo makes out - think it was the flash that added the glitter effect!


It advertises an anti-fatigue effect and radiant glow and has a SPF 15. I definitely think it provides the radiant glow and my skin does feel moisturised since i've been using this. The bottle is light enough and slim enough to take on holiday so its not going much extra weight to your luggage, leaving you more room for extra dresses! :)

I think this will be my every day foundation and once i'm out of concealer I'm planning on getting the one that matches this foundation. Very pleased with this purchase and more than happy with the price as well!

Hope your enjoyed my first blog - many more to come xxx