Goodbye England...

Today I am going to sunny Menorca for two weeks! woooo! I just thought I'd let all my followers know that I have scheduled a couple of posts for when I am away so that you have something new to read on my blog whilst I am away. It also gave me an excuse to post a picture of my younger sister wearing the snorkelling sets we have bought to use when we are away haha! (her forehead looks really wrinkly but I ensure you that it is the mask doing this!)

Anyway I hope you all have a brilliant two weeks as I know I will and I'll post about my holiday when I come back!

Have a great day! :)

xxx

What's in my makeup bag?

Hello everyone!

This post will contain of what I have in my everyday makeup bag and what I think of some of the products that I use.

The makeup bag I am currently using cost £3 and is from primark. I love it as it is such a cute makeup bag but also fits so much stuff in it! I am going to divide my makeup into three sections: face, eyes and lips.

The picture above shows the different products that I am currently using for my face. These products are:

- Pressed power (unsure of what brand, I've had it for a while)

- Clinique moisturiser

- Rimmel lasting finish foundation: shade ivory

- Natural collection cover up cream

- MUA pressed powder

- Two brushes from the body shop

- Rimmel Blusher

- Avon cover up stick

- Face sponge

My favourite products out of all of this are the foundation, moisturiser and the blusher. I've been using this foundation for a while now and absolutely love it, I feel like it stays on my face for the whole day and gives me complete coverage. The moisturiser is actually a sample from clinique as my auntie always sends me them and I think they are amazing! I will never put on makeup without using the moisturiser first as it makes my face extremely soft! The blusher adds a little bit more to the everyday look and is the only blusher that I have ever used and I love it!

The eye makeup that I use is:

- Eyelash curlers (not branded)
- Clinique eye shadow (brown and pale pink)
- Two different eye liners (not branded & one is a spare)
- Beauty rush chubby eye stick (haven't actually used this)
- Rimmel waterproof mascara
- Collection 2000 eye liner felt tip
- Maybelline Great lash mascara
- Miss sporty waterproof mascara
- Rimmel waterproof volume mascara
- Avon super enchant mascara

My favourite eye products are my eye liners and my Avon mascara, I need to get a new one but I wear eye liner everyday and is the one piece of makeup that I always have to use! I got the Avon mascara free when I bought some other products off the Avon website and I absolutely love the mascara! The mascara makes my eye lashes look extremely long but also makes them have a nice curl (unfortunately I don't think Avon sell it as a product) :(

I'm not really a person for lip products so don't actually keep that many in my makeup bag. The ones I do keep in there are:

- Revlon lip butters x3 'cotton candy', 'cupcake' and 'sugar frosting'
- MUA lip balm in 'sugar lips' and 'great lips'

I love all of these products and I did a review on the Revlon lip butters here.

What makeup products do you keep in your makeup bag?

Thanks for reading :)

xx

Review: MUA loveheart lip balms

Hello everyone!

Today's post is going to be a review about two of the MUA loveheart lip balms that I purchased in my superdrug haul a couple of weeks ago. Like every other blogger in the world I absolutely love MUA products as they are extremely cheap but amazing quality and when I heard about these lip balms I knew I had to get my hands on some!

The two I decided to buy were sugar lips (here) and great lips (here). Sugar lips is a pink colour and great lips is more of a nude colour.

I absolutely love both of these lip balms! They add a nice colour to the lips but are also extremely moisturising. My favourite out of the two is great lips. I find that great lips gives the lips a bit more of a colour as sugar lips does and this is the reason as to why I tend to wear this one more.

These lip balms are only £2 each and are extremely good value for money and therefore I would recommend that people at least try one pot, because if you decide you don't like it then you're not losing out on a lot of money!

Have you tried these? What do you think of them/

Have a great day!

xx

Review: Olay face products

Hello everyone!

So for today's post I thought I would review some Olay face products that I purchased during my superdrug haul.

The products I am going to be reviewing by Olay are conditioning milk, refreshing toner and eye makeup remover. I bought them for only £1.50 each and they are currently on the same deal (half price).

Eye makeup remover:

The first thing I do when cleansing my face is take off the makeup that I'm wearing. I had never tried any Olay products before so was a bit sceptical about buying this but as it was so cheap I thought it was worth trying. As I wear waterproof mascara I was a bit unsure as to whether this would work or not but as soon as I used it I knew this was my new 'must have' product! The smell isn't too overpowering but I think it is a lovely refreshing smell and you only need to use a small bit of the product to get all of your eye makeup off! It is extremely sensitive and leaves your eyes feeling lovely and refreshed. I will definitely be buying this product again!

Conditioning milk:

After taking my makeup off I then use the conditioning milk. The conditioning milk like the eye makeup remover has an amazing smell but it is definitely more obvious in the conditioning milk. However, it still isn't overpowering. I love the conditioning milk as it is quite runny but not too much and automatically leaves your face feeling refreshed. 

Refreshing toner:

After the conditioning milk, I use the refreshing toner and this is liquid so it is a very runny product. However,  it is still as amazing as the other products and I love using all of them. I will definitely repurchase this one again as well.

Overall, all of the products are amazing and for the price I think everyone should try them! I will definitely be repurchasing all of these products once they are ran out and as I use them both morning and evening I think this will be fairly soon. 

Have you tried any of these?

Have a great day! :)

xx

What's in my bag?

Hello everyone!

I don't know whether you're like me or not but I'm extremely nosey and love seeing what other people carry in their bag! For today's post I decided to do a 'what's in my bag' since I enjoy reading them and I'm sure other people love reading them too!

The bag I am currently using is my fake Alexander Wang bag "focco" (I also have it in Grey). I purchased mine on Ebay for only £14.99 including postage! I absolutely adore these bags, they are so simple but yet the studs add a completely different element to the bag and I think they look a lot more expensive than they actually cost. Another thing I like about the bag is that it is extremely spacious and therefore I can fit loads of things into it which is good if you are like me and tend to carry a lot of rubbish in your bag!

Recently I have been using a bag organiser as my auntie bought me one so I thought I would try it out (think this one is from primark so it wouldn't be expensive). I absolutely love bag organisers as it means I can find what I want straight away and it just makes my bag so tidy! Another thing I love about the organiser is all of the different pockets and pouches so there are a lot of different parts to store different things!

The pictures below are what my bag contains, I won't go into detail about the different things but I will list everything in my bag.

- Foldable hair brush (my dad got it for me when I was younger)
- Morgan makeup bag
- Lipsy reading glasses
- Carmex lip balm
- Vaseline lip balm
- Sunglasses
- Purse
- Hello kitty tablet tin
- Tissues
- Calvin Klein "One" perfume
- Ted Baker body spray
- Impulse body spray
- Anbesol (for mouth ulcers)
- Mirror
- MUA lipstick
- Revlon lip butter in 'creamsicle' (reviewed here)
- Dr Dre Beats earphones
- iPod classic '160GB'
- Skin Therapy hand and nail cream
- Plasters
- Hand sanitiser
- Car and house keys (not in picture)

The top left picture is of the inside of the Hello Kitty tablet tin. The top right picture is of my car and house keys which were left out of the original picture by mistake. The bottom left and right pictures are of my Dr Dre beat earphones (I have the Justin Bieber edition iBeats) - The earphones are around £80 which is a lot of money for earphones but they are AMAZING! They are completely sound cancelling and you heard the music a lot more (hard to explain). I would definitely recommend the earphones!

Have you done a what's in my bag post? I'd love to read it!

Have a great day! :)

xx

Instagram & Twitter

This post is an extremely boring one but I'd just like to ask everyone who reads my blog to follow me on twitter and instagram and I will definitely return the favour! I have two twitter accounts, my personal one (here) and my blog one (here). I have two accounts because my blog one is just to talk about my blog and my personal one is the account I definitely use more. My instagram is: xLAURADELANEY :)

I would love it if you would follow me on these and comment below what yours are and I'll be sure to follow you!

Thanks for reading

xx

DIY: Lip Scrub

Hello guys

So for today's post I am going to show you the lip scrubs that I made and I'm going to tell you what I used to make them and where I got the recipe from. I've heard of lip scrubs a couple of different times but have never tried one myself, after reading a blog post about how smooth it makes your lips I decided to buy one but decided they were quite expensive for small pots. I remembered seeing some blog posts about making your own lip scrub so thought I'd have a go!

I decided to make two different lip scrubs as I saw many different recipes and didn't know what one would be best!

The pictures above show what I used to make both of the different lip scrubs, I also used spoons but haven't included them in the pictures. I used two separate recipes but didn't follow them exactly and mine turned out completely fine so feel free to actually create your own recipe!

The two recipes I used are from here and here. For the first recipe (brown sugar) I used coconut milk instead of oil and it worked fine but it was watery which meant you need to use more of the other ingredients! The second recipe (white sugar) I added about two teaspoons of lemon juice to give it a bit of a flavour.

Once I had put the lip scrub into the pots I noticed that it was quite runny so I put them in the fridge for about 20 minutes and after taking them out they are the perfect consistency!

Overall both the lip scrubs were extremely easy to make and I definitely would recommend trying them! I have tried both and after using them my lips are extremely smooth and I know I will definitely use these all the time! My favourite out of the two is the brown sugar one as brown sugar is thicker than the white sugar but both of the lip scrubs taste absolutely AMAZING and because of what ingredients are in it they are actually edible so you don't have to worry about any product getting into your mouth!

[The white sugar scrub is on the left and the brown sugar one is on the right]

Thanks for reading!

Have you tried making your own lip scrubs?

xx

What I bought today: Primark haul

Hello everyone!

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet and just show you what I bought today whilst shopping with my lovely mum. Nothing is very exciting and I'm going on holiday in just under two weeks (wooo!) which is why I have bought random summer things.

What I bought: luggage and passport holder (union jack), cupcake pj's, flip flops (I don't like these but I needed something easy to slip on and off at the pool!), grey cardigan, black and white blouse, 'love, laugh, kiss' long top, underwear, white vest top, grey/brown swimming shorts and finally a makeup bag 'make me gorgeous'.

Out of everything I bought my favourites are the makeup bag as normally I don't go for things quite as bright but I loved it and it is so spacious and the passport holder and luggage tag. Everything was pretty cheap (it is from Primark!) and I'm happy with what I bought. :)

I'm sorry this post has been extremely boring but thanks for reading anyway! Hope you've had a great day!

xx

NOTD: Newspaper nails!

Hello everyone!

So recently I came across 'newspaper nails' and whilst bored last night I thought it would be a good way to cure my bordem! It's extremely easy and all you need is a newspaper stips x 10 (I used a magazine and it worked just as well), vodka (rubbing alcohol can also be used), nail varnish (pale colours work better), a top coat nail varnish and a small glass to put the vodka in (I used an egg cup).

Once you have all the stuff it is extremely easy to do! All you have to do is paint your nails with the chosen polish and wait for them to dry. One they are dry pour a bit of vodka in the cup (enough to cover your whole nail!) and then dip one of your nails into the cup and make sure it is completely covered, put the newspaper strip on your nail and hold for 20 seconds then slowly remove the newspaper strip. Do the same thing one each one of your nails and then finish by painting your nails with a top coat (any clear nail polish works) and then leave to dry!

I'm not too sure if I'm too keen on this look yet, I think I would have preferred it if I had used another colour, oh well there is always next time!

Have you tried newspaper nails?

Have a great day!

xx

My current obsession: Revlon lip butters!

I know what you're thinking, 'not another way of those Revlon lip butters post' and I completely agree because I've seen them EVERYWHERE. However, ever since I've bought one I've become obsessed with them and therefore felt the need to write my own!

The pictures above show the four different shades of Revlon lip butters that I currently own: Sugar frosting, creamsicle, cotton candy and cupcake. 

I'd been wanting to try Revlon lip butters for ages as I had heard amazing things about them on every blog I read! However, due to the fact they retail at £7.99 I didn't want to pay that much for something I might not like. I gave in when I was buying stuff from superdrug as they were on sale for £5.99 and decided to finally try one in 'Sugar frosting'. As soon as it arrived I knew that I would love it. The packaging is so simple and girly but looks extremely classy at the same time. 

I find the lip butters extremely moisturising and as I'm not a lipstick wearer I decided to get it in sugar frosting as I knew it didn't have much of a colour and would be perfect for people such as me who don't like bright shades of lipstick. 

After buying sugar frosting I knew I wanted a couple more but the sale wasn't on anymore and I didn't want to pay £7.99 for each one so I ended up purchasing three more off ebay for around £5.71 each which I thought was great! (They are from the USA which means they take longer to arrive but mine arrived in under a week!). You can purchase them here. 

I absolutely love all four of the colours that I have bought but as you can see from the photo above, cotton candy and cupcake are extremely similar colours but this doesn't bother me at all!

The only problem I have found with the lip butters is that they are extremely soft which means my sugar frosting one looks a bit messy now as it isn't sitting well it the tube which is extremely disappointing :(

The Ebay seller that I bought three of the lip butters off has a deal where if you buy three or more they send you a free gift! The gift I got sent was a Victoria Secret's beauty rush chubby eye pencil in lilacquer and I love it! It's such a lovely colour and although I don't normally wear things like this it will be great on nights out and for my holiday!

The cheapest I have seen the chubby eye pencil for is on Ebay and is £4.17 and £2.57 postage (can be bought here) which shows it is definitely a good free gift!

Do you have any of the Revlon lip butters? What shades do you like?

Have a great day!

xx

DIY: storage pots

Hello everyone!

This is just going to be a quick post. I originally saw this idea on one of my favourite blogs islaay.com and thought it was such an easy yet effective thing to do so immediately had to try it! In Islay's post it gives a link to another blog explaining how to make the pots and you can find that link here. The pots can be used for many different things and at the moment mine are just holding random things.

The picture above is of the three pots that I have made so far, as you can see, I used different sizes and completely different patterns as I thought this looked quite quirky. The bottom picture is showing all the different wallpaper samples I got. I used many different websites to collect the free wallpaper samples for my pot and can't remember what ones (sorry!) but I just searched 'free wallpaper samples' into Google and that brought up all the websites that I ordered mine off so if you are interested in making these you can just do that!

Thanks again to Islay for making me aware of these amazing little pots! Go check her amazing blog out which can be found here.

Thanks for reading!

xx

Yankee Candle Tart Burner

Hello!

This is my second post today (catching up since I've had no internet!). This is slightly different to all the other posts that I have done and I was debating whether to do it or not but I thought it would be nice to post about something slightly different.

I love scented candles and was looking at buying a yankee candle jar as I love the look of them and most of them smell AMAZING. However, they are like £18 each for a large jar! (slightly above my price range!) so I decided against them. Whilst researching these I came across 'wax tarts' by yankee candle so I decided to check them out and I'm so glad that I did. I read many reviews saying how amazing they are as they fill the whole room with a lovely scent and unlike candles they don't have to be burnt very often! After reading so many good reviews about them I decided to buy six wax tarts which range from £1.25 - £1.80 from here and a cream petal wax burner from here.

When the wax burner arrived I noticed how well packaged it was and I absolutely loved it! It was so plain and simple but it matched the colours of my room perfectly and looked really nice. They do sell the wax burner I bought it different colours but I went with cream as like I said, it went with my room.

The pictures above show the burner once I had unwrapped it and because I knew it would get hot I decided to use an old soap and glory lid I got from a set as a base to sit the burner on. The one thing that I didn't like about the burner was that the top just sits on the bottom which means it would be extremely easy to knock it off by mistake but as I was putting it out of the way I knew this wouldn't really be a problem for me.

The six wax tarts I bought were bahama breeze, fruit fusion, pink sands, sweet strawberry, creamy caramel and strawberry buttercream. Smells are extremely hard to explain but I will tell you what I thought about each one.

Bahama breeze - this is my favourite wax tart out of all six and I personally think it smells AMAZING! This is the only one I have burnt so far as I knew as soon as I smelt it that I wanted to burn this one first. My parents actually love the smell of this one and because of this they have bought a wax burner and tarts themselves!

Fruit fusion - this is another really nice smell. It's easy to say what this smells like as the name of it says it all: it smells of fruit. I think this would be a lovely smell for summer.

Pink sands - I love the smell of this one! I'm not too sure what it smells like so I can't really explain it but it is really nice.

Sweet strawberry - I thought I would love this one the best as I love the smell of strawberries. However, I didn't like this one as much as I thought I would. It's still nice but doesn't have much of a smell.

Creamy caramel - this is by far the worst one I bought and is actually HORRIBLE. It doesn't smell like caramel but smells extremely strongly of liquorice (which I hate) and it smells so strong it gave me a headache so I am currently keeping it in my sock drawer (don't ask).

Strawberry buttercream - this doesn't have much of a smell if I'm honest, the smell that it does give off isn't very pleasant but I'm hoping it will smell better once I've burnt it!

I would recommend going to a yankee candle store or somewhere that sells yankee candles to smell them before buying them so you don't buy ones you don't like! There isn't a yankee candle store near me which is why I ordered them offline.

Like I stated earlier, bahama breeze was the only one that I have burnt so far and I decided to cut it into four quarters so that I could swap scents easier but you don't have to do this. You place the wax tart in the burner, light an unscented tea light underneath and then enjoy the smell. The smell you get off these is amazing and it travels everywhere! The bottom left hand picture is of a liquid once the tart had melted and the bottom right hand picture is once the tart had hardened.

Overall I am SO glad that I bought this tart burner and will enjoy trying the different wax tarts!

Have you tried any yankee candle products before?

Hope you've had a great day! :)

xx

NOTD: fruit nails

Hello everyone!

First off I'd like to say hello to all my new followers and thank you so much for following! I'd also like to apologise for the lack of posts recently but the internet wasn't working in my house and has decided to randomly start working today (I now realise how much I rely on the internet!).

In one of my previous NOTD posts I tried using fimo shapes on my nails and I loved them so much that I bought three other types of shapes. For this particular style I used Barry M nail varnish (I'm unsure on the colour, sorry!) and used an orange, an apple and a strawberry on my thumb on both hands. I thought this looked extremely cute but didn't like the actual nail varnish as it has gone all clumpy and horrible :(

I bought the fimo shapes from here.

(Sorry about the rubbish quality of the photo', my camera battery died so I took them using my iPhone!)

Have you tried any of the fimo shapes?

Have a great day!

xx

Essie Collection: starting up!

This is a scheduled post as I am currently on holiday so won't be able to reply to any comments until I am home (13th August).

I have started in a previous NOTD that I had ordered more essie nail varnishes. I ordered three mini nail varnishes and a full size 'bikini so teeny' all from Ebay.

I haven't used all of them yet but I love all of their colours and think they will be great on holiday as they are all rather summery.

The colours I ordered left to right are: bikini so teeny, braziliant (it's actually an orange colour but looks more red in this photo), super bossa nova and smooth sailing.

What essie nail varnishes do you have?

Have a great day!

xx

DIY: Hello Berry inspired bracelets

Hello!

I don't know whether you have heard of them or not but Hello Berry is a shop on Etsy that create bracelets and necklaces. I absolutely LOVE their bracelets and have wanted one for a while but they are around £17 and I really didn't want to pay that for bracelet so I decided to create my own. The Hello Berry bracelets are available here.

The picture above is of the Hello Berry bracelets. Now for my bracelets...

As you can see, I used smaller chains as I ordered the wrong size so I used three chains instead of one on each bracelet. I bought the chains from here. The plastic lace which I used to actually create the bracelets I bought from here and here. The tutorial I used was from youtube and you can find that here. I found the tutorial extremely easy and absolutely love the bracelets!

I was thinking of maybe selling them but I don't know if anyone would actually buy them?

Thanks for reading, have a great day! :)

xx

NOTD: flowers!

I'm pretty obsessed with painting my nails recently but have been getting bored of using the same old colours so I purchased some fimo shapes off Ebay (here) for only £1.39 which is a rather good price in my opinion! They are extremely simple to use as you just paint your nails and then push them down onto your nails whilst they are still wet (I used a tweezer to do this!).

The pictures below are what my nails look like right now. I'm happy with them and it's so simple and quick to do! The nail polish I used is from George (Asda's Brand) and the shade is 'smarty pants'.

Have you tried any fimo shapes? Leave a comment below!

Have a great day!

xx

Superdrug Haul

Hello!

So last week I went on a major shopping spree (online - I'm slightly addicted). I bought rather a lot of stuff from Superdrug which I am going to show you in this post! I originally just wanted to order some make up but ended up buying loads of extra things as I am going on holiday at the end of the month and everything was basically on sale!

Top left to bottom right: 1. Superdrug dry shampoo, spirit of the carnival, away with the fairies and chocolate brownie. 2. Timotei Shampoo fresh and strong, conditioner fresh and strong and shimmer shine shampoo. VO5 shampoo and conditioner nourish me truly, VO5 shampoo and condition revive me daily. 3. The box of all the goodies that I received. 4. Original source shower gel lavender & tea tree oil, Olay eye make up removal cream, Olay gentle cleanser refreshing toner, Olay gentle cleanser conditioning milk and a Superdrug travel toothbrush.

Dry shampoo - The dry shampoo was on offer for buy one get TWO FREE! I'd heard brilliant reviews about it and on such a good deal who would say no?

Shampoo and conditioner - The Timotei shampoo and condition was also on buy one and get two free so I bought it for my mum for holiday. The VO5 shampoo and conditioners I bought for myself for holiday and they were only 99p each! BARGAIN!


Olay and show gel - I've heard good things about the Olay products and they are only £1.50 each and the shower gel was 99p (I LOVE tea tree oil!) and will be good for my holiday.


Toothbrush - The toothbrush is for my holiday and was only 10p! I don't have another travel toothbrush and therefore figured that this would be a good buy for my holiday.

Carmex - I absolutely adore lip balm and have heard great things about this product. I've tried this one and absolutely love it already, the smell is divine and it looks like there is loads in the pot (also good for my holiday as it has sun protection).

Revlon Lip Butter - If you're from the blogging world then you would have definitely heard of these lip butters. Like many bloggers, I wanted to try these for myself and this was on sale for £5.99 which to me is still quite expensive considering I don't wear lipsticks but I wanted to try it out as it is more of a lip balm. The colour I got is sugar frosting.

MUA lipstick - The shade is 'Juicy'. I never wear lipstick as I don't think it suits me. However, I wanted to try a lipstick and have heard good things about the MUA range and as it's only £1 I couldn't resist. The colour is actually a lot lighter in real life than it looks in the picture.

MUA loveheart lip balms - I've wanted these for quite a while and at £2 each I decided to get two. The colours I decided to get were 'great lips' and 'sugar lips'. Looking forward to using these!

Have you tried any of these products?

Have a great day! :)

xx

My new 'Focco' bag!

Hello everyone!

So you might of heard of the 'Focco' bag which is a fake of Alexander Wang's Rocco. I've wanted one of these bags for a while but obviously didn't want to pay the extremely high price tag! The bag I purchased was off Ebay (here) and was only £14.99 included postage: BARGIN!

After waiting around a week (I have no patience!) my bag finally came this morning and I couldn't wait to open it. The first thing that became apparent as soon as I opened the packaging was that it was extremely well packaged and had four different layers before I actually got to the bag! The picture below is of the bag and the packaging when I was unwrapping the bag.

I obviously haven't used the bag yet so cannot review it as such but I will do a review once I have used it! All in all I am EXTREMELY happy with this purchase as it was such a good price and brilliantly packaged which shows that the company actually care for their customers!

I also purchased a little hello kitty tin to put tablets in my bag as generally I always need them! You can buy the tin here :)

Do you have a 'Focco'?

Hope you have a brilliant day!

xx