My first ever Face of the Day!

My first ever Face of the Day!

Ok so I have finally braved it and done my first FOTD!!

I love reading all your FOTD's so thought it was time I did one. We have been trying out lots of products over the last few weeks and we thought it was about time to show you them put into practice!

So firstly here are the tools for the job!!

• Liz Earle Superskin moisturiser as base before foundation application.
• Bare Minerals Foundation and bisque concealer.
• Vivo Cosmetics baked blusher.
• Lumiere cosmetics amethyst eye pigment.
• Bare Minerals volumizing mascara.
• Make Up Academy lipstick.
• All the brushes are from my own collection of Bare Minerals and Body Shop.

And here is my finished face:

A close up for you of the eyes:

And a closer look at the lips:

I have really enjoyed using all these products, and most are now part of my everyday routine!

I am hoping to do some more of these now I have done the first one, and will hopefully bringing you some Christmas party FOTD's!! I am getting excited about Christmas already and will be getting the decs down from the lost this week!

Stay Beautiful!

Stace x

p.s. Mags has just returned from holiday, all tanned and relaxed, and will be back blogging soon!

28th November 2011

Skin secrets from Liz Earle

Skin secrets from Liz Earle

It's Black Friday today in the USA, and I expect many people are out shopping, battling with the crowds to bag that Christmas bargain. I have started to think about Christmas presents, making lists, scouring the shops to try and find that perfect present. Last week when I was out shopping I spotted this book. Liz Earle, Skin secrets is absolutely the perfect present for anyone into beauty and reading. It combines the two passions. It has also been reduced in many of the online book stores as it is a few years old now, but it is still completely relevant, making it a perfect choice for your best friend, Mum, Sister, Aunt etc.

Lets take a closer look...

A lovely quality hard back book, that would look lovely on any beauty lovers bookcase.

Chapters of the book cover:

What influences skin, Plants that love your skin, How to have lovely skin, Caring for your skin, The sun and your skin, Skin problems and solutions, Feed your skin, Everyday fitness, Relax, unwind, sleep.

So you can see it covers a wide range of subjects.

A  few of my favourite parts of the book:

A section on different ages, what your skin needs at the different ages and how we can look after our skin.

You can see how lovely the photos are from the above picture.

How to get the best from your products looks at the daily beauty regime an some great tips and techniques to get the most from the investment we make in our beauty products.

As a foody I loved this section! Covering the food we eat and the affect they may have on our skin, as well as some recipes for beautiful skin.

And a beautiful final word from Liz herself, full of sentiment and reinforces why I believe in Liz and her brand.

A real treasure of a book, and great Christmas present. Or a great pre-Christmas treat for yourself!

Are there any great beauty books you own? We'd love to hear about them!

Have a beautiful Friday.

Stace x

25th November 2011



A mascara moment

I have been umming and ahhing all day about what to blog about tonight as I have so many blogs I want to do, and lots of Xmas blogs planned. So I thought tonight I would talk about mascara. I have a major love/hate relationship with mascara. I love what it does to my eyelashes. I hate picking a mascara, mainly because they so often disappoint me. I used to love Lancome Hypnose, but then a few wands ended up lasting only a few weeks before that dreaded smell of an off mascara, and at £20+ a wand, I just couldn't keep up.

Then back in the Summer, I bought and eye kit from Bare Escentuals, and in there was one of their mascaras. And lo and behold, when this one ran out, I bought two more. A repeat purchase of a mascara!! This must be love!!

I bought a pack of two mascaras from feel unique for £12.75!! Ok so they are only 5ml, but the last one really did last me a long time.

I love the cute little box this duo came in and I thought it would make a perfect Christmas present for someone as the price tag is just right as well.

In the box were the Bare Minerals Mini flawless definition mascara in black and Mini flawless definition volumizing mascara in black.

Starting with the flawless defintion, I find this mascara perfect for work, it sperates the lashes well and highlights and elongates the eyelashes without making them to OTT for a day time look.The wand is quite small and easy to control. This was the mascara I had used before so knew what to expect, and I think it will now be a staple in my make-up bag.

The volumizing mascara was a great surprise! I wore it out on Saturday night, and it really opened up my eyes, lengthened my lashes and looked very much like my old friend hypnose!

As the picture shows the wand is much fuller with longer bristles for application. I will be wearing this mascara on nights outfrom now on!!

I love this little mascara set, even if you have a mascara you love, these are perfect for throwing in your bag as they are small, and at about £6.50 each, a true bargain.

They really highlighted my lashes and framed my eye well. I am a fan of mineral mascaras anyway as they are the only mascaras I have found which don't sting my eyes and that has to be because of the minerals in them.

They definitely gave my lashes fullness and flutter, and I may even repeat purchase these in the New Year! Happiness is finding a mascara you love!

Have a beautiful week!

Stace x

Lumiere cosmetics - first look!

Lumiere cosmetics, an American mineral make-up company, recently tweeted looking for bloggers who would like to try their products. After filling in a short form detailing our skin types and make-up preferences we received skin and eye samples to try. They arrived Thursday, and I was so excited when I opened them that I wanted to share them with you right away!

We are mineral make-up fans anyway, so despite the messiness which you cannot really avoid with mineral make-up, these samples have a very similar look and feel to Bare Minerals, and their success has been phenomenal.

First of all here were the skin colours to suit my skin tone, so lots of lights:

Top left - Poppy blush, Top right - Autumn blush
Bottom left - Light cool luminesse, Bottom right- Light cool cashmere

My favourite of the swatches is the Autumn blush, this will look amazing in the cold weather that is fast approaching!

I will be trying out this make-up this week to give it a fair trial, and will bring you some more pics soon! First impressions of the product, the powder seems quite loose, but when you place it on a brush it sticks well. There is a lovely 3D texture to all the colours, with a glisten of gold specks running through the colours.

The eye colours have got me really excited:

Top - Butterfly Blue, Bottom left - Golden Plum, Bottom right - Amethyst

Just look how lovely rich and deep the colours are! Perfect for this time of year. I quickly tried out two of my favourite colours on my eyes this morning -

This is the Golden Plum, a lovely everyday eye shadow, easy to apply, probably need to blend a couple of coats to get a nice coverage.

Butterfly blue, this is my favourite! Just perfect for nights out in the Winter! Very impressed with the tone and depth, and the lovely way the light reflects off the colour.

I am looking forward to putting these products through their paces this week! So far I am very impressed, being a mineral make-up convert already, this brand has some new exciting colours which I cannot wait to try out properly!

In the meantime, if you would like to find out more, visit their website.

Have a beautiful weekend! I'm off to buy some Christmas Yankee candles scents, and then ordering my Elemis QVC TSV tonight at midnight - it looks like it's going to be brilliant!

Stace x

19th November 2011

Evening of indulgence!

Evening of indulgence!
Hi ladies!

I wanted to start the weekend by sharing with you some pics of a fab local event I went to last night! Ladies who Love...evening of indulgence is a brilliant girls night out ran by an events team in our local town. The night features many local salons, restaurants, shops etc, as well as some big known brands like L'Occitane and Neals Yard. It is an opportunity to have taster sessions from some of the local salons, sample some of the restaurants food and have a lovely pamper evening.

Make-up artist Jess took advantage of the some of the wonderful offers:

Jess started the evening by having some colourful Racoon hair extensions put in by local hair salon Number sixty. They looked so pretty!

She then had a lovely file and polish by another local salon.

The colour was OPI 'Lincoln Park After Dark', what a great Christmas party colour!

It was a really fun evening, and great value for money, thanks Ladies Who Love!

Does your local town do any events like this? They are a great way to find out about local beauty hidden treasures. I also picked up some samples from a make-up brand which is new to me, which I hope to tell you about soon!

Have lots of fab products to blog about in the next week, unfortunately, with the lack of light when I am at home, have been unable to take any photos, so will be spending much of the weekend taking lots of pictures!

Stay Beautiful!

Stace x

18th October 2011

The perfect pout?

Today I wanted to share a quick post with you about two new lipsticks I have purchased recently, and how these stack up against my old time fave.

Now I love lipstick. There is something so luxurious about the cases they come in and something glamorous about the application of lipstick. And of course the colours are phenomenal.

My default lipstick has been Chanel  Rouge Coco in Rose Dentelle since I had this lipstick for my wedding last year. It is quite expensive with a RRP of £23.00

Chanel is easily my favourite lipstick case, so bulky and smooth, a real statement in your handbag!

This shade is quite summery, and as my wedding was on a sunny island it was perfect, I still like to use this colour in the winter though, and to make it adaptable for winter I just add some clear lipgloss over the top which tones down the shade.

As you can see by the swatch, it's not to overbearing. It is easy to apply, although my only complaint is it can be a little drying so I always add a lip treatment before applying. (Vaseline will do for this!)

This lipstick has staying power, a whole day with one application.

As much as I love this lipstick, it's not an affordable year round option.

I received a free Estee Lauder lipstick in a recent Boots giveaway . The lipstick was Pure colour long lasting in blushing creme. Unfortunately it came in a plain case, not like the one on the link, but then it was free and the product was still the same. This product normally retails for about £15.00 so slightly cheaper than the Chanel option.

Not such a glamorous case! But does the job!

This deep red colour is really suitable for this time of year. The lipstick has a very creamy texture to it, and feels very silk and luxurious.

As you can see from the swatch, the colour is a very deep pink. I would probably be more inclined to use this on nights out than just a day in the office. Considering this came free in a pack I really love this product and it will be accompanying me to some Christmas parties.

And finally, I wanted to talk about another new lipstick, and new brand I have only just discovered, MUA lipstick. This new brand available exclusively at Superdrug has lipsticks for sale at an amazing £1, just think, I could have bought 23 lipsticks for the price of my Chanel one from MUA! But does it step up to the mark?

The lipstick case is actually a lot more substantial than the Estee Lauder one, and it's useful to see the colour of the lipstick on the packaging.

The lipstick doesn't feel as creamy in texture as Chanel, but a couple of thin applications are more than enough for a long lasting lip colour.

The swatch shows a really nice subtle, day colour, which would be fine for wearing to the office everyday. Application is easy and the product covers the lips well. You can tell this is a cheaper brand, when you try it against the more expensive, but for the money, it is really a good lipstick!



So while I may not be persuaded away from my Chanel lipstick permanently, I am excited about a few new editions to my lipstick collection. I am also a firm believer that a girl can never have too many lipsticks, so MUA I may be back for a visit to purchase a different lip colour for every day of the week!

Stay Beautiful!

Stace x

My magical MUA eyes!

My magical MUA eyes!

I decided it was about time I tried Superdrug's own make-up brand Make Up Academy (MUA) after reading so much about this brand online. (They have definitely got one thing right, their social media that's for sure)

MUA is the £1 make-up brand, a range of make-up, consisting of everything from lipstick, blusher, nail polish and eye shadows to mention a few.

I was of course, slightly sceptical, what can you really buy for one pound these days? A bar of chocolate, one pint of milk, a couple of first class stamps...not a lot basically! But in the interest of being on the edge of finding a new brand that won't dent the bank balance every month, I had an open mind.

The products I am going to talk about tonight are two of the eye shadows. I deliberately picked two colours that I would wear on a night out as I think the sort of prices MUA charge, these products sit perfectly as those 'use once in a while' colours.

Shade 8 pearl (teal colour) and Shade 4 pearl (purple)

I picked two of my favourite colours, and was impressed with the purple even before application, the colour had depth and wasn't just one dimensional with flecks of another colour running through it.

As the above swatch shows, the colours really come to life once applied on skin colour. they shimmer in the light, and both colours are really pretty. I can imagine them being perfect for weddings, Christmas party's, Summer events, all sorts of occasions.

To give you an idea of what the colour looks like on the actual eye I did a trial run, see the pictures below. I only have shadow on and no eye liner or mascara in these pics.

So what did I think? Firstly, thank you MUA for not giving us a free applicator brush. I never use the free ones, and would rather money was spent on making the product better. Application was very easy, product stuck to the brush, and swept on the lids beautifully, and didn't fall like some cheaper brands do.

The teal colour was lighter than in the pot, which was a good thing as I didn't want to feel like I was in fancy dress, and I would wear this colour out on a night out to highlight my green eyes.

The purple was my favorite, such a depth of colour, it shone in the light and gave off such a high end quality to it that I cannot believe from looking at the pictures it only cost £1! I will be wearing this one out the next chance I have!

And if being £1 isn't cheap enough, Superdrug had a 'buy 3 for the price of 2' deal on, so I got a free MUA lipstick! (More about that another day). It's not often I have change from a fiver and walk out with 3 beauty products...

Converted to the high street make-up counter...I might just be.

You can also buy MUA online on the Superdrug website

Stay beautiful!

Stace x

14th November 2011

Liz Earle Superskin - it does what it says on the tin

Liz Earle Superskin - it does what it says on the tin
I have been waiting to review this product for AGES, but I really wanted to give it a fair go, so a month later, Liz Earle Superskin Moisturiser, please step into the spotlight!

Now it's fair to say that of the two of us, Mags is the skincare enthusiast. I have the basic concept grasped, a Summer moisturiser, generally with SPF, and something for Winter. And I suppose a night cream, if  I have time...(come on we are all the same, sometimes we are too tired to even think about night cream at the end of the day).

Price and packaging
Retailing at £34.50 for 50ml (this price is from the Liz Earle website) it is probably a bit on the high end for most peoples budget. I tend to spend about this on my moisturiser so for me the price won't put me off.

As usual for Liz, the packaging is gorgeous, and when you're spending this sort of money, I really believe that matters. The box has a lovely metallic finish to it, with the picture of a plant growing across it. Included in the box is a little pamphlet of how to apply moisturiser correctly (see photos at bottom of post). I love these little added extras from Liz Earle, it is things like this that makes customers return again and again.

The glass finish to the pot again adds that feeling of something special. These types of pots where you can scoop even the last bits of the product out are a big plus for me, I like to know I can get use of every last bit of the product. The pot looks really cute on my dressing table, and feels like something you might find in an old apothecary shop.

The product

The cream has a good consistency to it, quite thick and rich, meaning you really don't need a lot of product to completely cover your face, neck and decolletage.

Ingredients are stated as cranberry, seed oil, borage oil and natural vitamin E, but the moisturiser is fragrance free, with no strong scents coming through. I think this is a plus, but I know some people prefer a scent to their moisturiser. It smells very clean and neutral.

A few things worried me before trying this product, the claim on the jar states 'makes mature or very dry skin look and feel rejuvenated and replenished.' I may be still only just in my 20's but I'm sure that my skin is yet mature, but I still kept an open mind.

The product sinks quickly in to the skin, not settling on top for a long time like other brands. It also does not leave a tacky finish to the skin after applying.

The verdict

As stated before, I used this for a month, morning and (shock horror) every night. And wow. The difference to my skin has been amazing. It feels more full and plumped up. It has a smoothness that didn't exist before, and the normal tight drying feeling I have at this time of year has not happened. By putting the cream on at night, the morning has revealed skin so clear I could (but I won't...) go without make-up. I have even put it on when I have had a particularly bad break out of spots, and by the morning have seen a noticeable difference to the appearance of the offending spots. It acts as a great base before applying my foundation in the morning as well.

I know normally I will try my best to balance my reviews with at least one negative. Nope can't think of one. This product will be finding it's way into my daily routine permanently, and might even make my desert island product list...

Superskin from Liz Earle, actually delivers Superskin.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Stace x

11th November 2011

This review is of course my opinion and everyone's skin type is different.

Tips on how to apply your moisturiser, Liz Earle says it so beautifully, there is no need for me to interprut!

My beautiful November!

My beautiful November!
Hi guys!

I know I have been absent over the last week or so and Mags has been blogging about some great beauty products which I have been enjoying hearing about! Anyway here is a quick round up of my November so far!

I had my hair coloured, I have for 15 years been dying my hair lightest blonde myself. I love at-home dye kits, but with my big birthday looming just around the corner, I wanted a change and was too scared to do this myself, so with the help of my trusted hairdresser at our local Aveda salon, I now have gone a nice shade of ash blonde which I love.

My new hair!

I also have been to Jamie Oliver at Home party. I know what you're thinking, normally these parties can be quite pushy with below average products, but I believe this party is the exception, we all came away with some free gifts, products are great value and really good quality, and they also do a beauty range with perfumes, shower gels etc.

A sprinkle of crystallised violet, attar of rose and midnight jasmine shower gel, smells lovely...

I have been enjoying reading the new Christmas beauty catalogues that are out now, although getting ideas for myself more than for other people...oops!!

Liz Earle and Boots Christmas catalogue!

And have also been down to my local Superdrug, that whilst having an awful display that was dusty and did not show off the products in their best light, I was able to purchase my first MUA products, and they were 2 for 1, what a bargain!! My thoughts on the products coming up soon!

Reviews coming soon!!

Also have now got into my winter wardrobe, with woolly jumpers making their first appearance on bonfire night, and getting excited looking for a Christmas party dress! What have you guys been up to this November?

I can't wait to bring you lots of reviews and beauty talk over the next few weeks!

Stay warm and beautiful!

Stace x

9th October 2011