15 Unpopular Beauty Confessions

Hello! Today I thought I would do a post on something I've been thinking about doing for a while - unpopular beauty confessions! 

These are my thoughts on loads of different things that are circulating around the beauty blogging and youtube world! 

1. There is such a thing as too much highlighter. Sorry, I said it. It sometimes makes me cringe when I see people with a strip of white shimmer across their cheek, and at that moment, I think people have taken it a bit far. 

However, I do like a rather fabulous highlight myself, but I am really not a fan when you feel that you need sunglasses to look at someone!

2. The MAC 217 is not that good. This is the first makeup product I bought as a result of Youtube hype. I thought that all my eyeshadow woes would be cured and it was going to work wonders. After I got it, I went on about how good it was, but I realise now that it's kind of scratchy, and can hurt your eyelids a bit if you blend with it for too long. I've also tried Makeup Revolution blending brushes that I think work the same or even better, which are £2.99 or even cheaper! I do still use this brush whenever I do eyeshadow, but it just feels a bit cheap to be honest, and it's definitely not worth the hype or the price (£17!)

3. How do eyebrows work? I have absolutely no idea. I fill them in with a brow pencil from Makeup Revolution, but to be honest I don't know how to do it, I just brush it through my brows and pray I look alright. I have only ever had my eyebrows waxed twice in my life, and they were both over a year ago, and now I don't even tweeze my eyebrows because I'm scared I'll accidentally pull my whole eyebrow out! 

4. I despise looking shiny, or oily or 'dewy' as some people call it, so much. Any spot of shine on my face is soon killed by good old Stay Matte! It makes me so annoyed when a youtuber doesn't powder their face and it's so oily, and you just want to take them by the shoulders and scream "Just apply some powder on your face!" Just me? Okay.

I'm so not a 'dewy' girl, I like shimmer on my eyelids, and on the tops of my cheeks, and that's it!

5. Most of the advent calendars are so ridiculously overpriced this year, it's awful! The ones I featured in my best budget beauty advent calendars post the other day were the ones I think were the best value for money, but ones like the Charlotte Tilbury, or Jo Malone or Diptyque ones are so overpriced, with the Charlotte Tilbury one being £150 and the Diptyque at £250! I really don't know how anyone could justify spending that much on an advent calendar, I struggled to justify paying £15 for my Tanya Burr one! 

6. Taking off makeup is such a boring task, and to be honest, a lot of the time I'll just shower with it on at night and hope it all comes off, because cleansing is such an effort...

7. I have a really bad habit of picking at my nail polish or my nails when I'm stressed, so my nails are constantly chipped (which I hate) and they're currently horrible and short and thin, (which I hate even more) and I've only painted my nails two or three times in the past two months!

8. When I first started getting into makeup when I was around 12, my go-to look for the weekend was a £1.50 foundation, concealer and powder from Asda (shade 1 for the foundation and concealer, - a nice pale orange shade- and shade 2 for the powder - a nice shade of tangerine.), blue eyeshadow from a really old MUA palette, a sparkly brown eyeshadow from the MUA palette for my eyebrows, and to top it all off, a pale pink chunky, glittery lipgloss that I stole from my mum. 

9. For around 2 years, I kept buying foundations that were far too dark for me, and now I have 3 foundations that are a range of 1 shade to dark to about 4 shades to dark that I can only wear if I mix it with literally half a bottle of my Body Shop Lightening Drops! I'm just pale and pasty at heart!

10. I rarely clean my makeup brushes. I think the last time I washed them was at the start of October. I always say I'm going to do it, but I've just got so many brushes that it takes an awful amount of time to wash them all properly! I just avoid using the really dirty ones, and I end up only being able to use about 3 brushes for my whole face! I do wonder why I've broken out in spots recently...

11. The Kylie Lip Kits, as much as I love them, are so not worth the money. The Mini Mattes that I bought away back in August are amazing, I love them so much, but I paid £50 for 6 mini liquid lipsticks, including shipping ad customs fees, which is ridiculous. 

My full size lip kit, when compared to the minis, must have a different formula, as it feels much thicker on my lips and flakes off really easily, whereas the minis are so thin and last all day without drying my lips up or flaking. So I rarely wear the full size one, and would rather wear the mini mattes instead of the full size...

12. Expiration dates on makeup? What? I've still got eyeshadow palettes and foundations and concealers from when I was about 12/13, and I still use them! According to the expiration date on my eyeshadows, I should've stopped using my Naked 3 palette almost a year ago. Do you think I'm paying £38 for a palette to just throw it away after a year or so? I don't think so!

13. I'm really bad at the whole body scrub, body butter ritual. It's just so much effort to first shave your legs, let's be real, but to spend even more time putting a scrub on them and then rubbing a thick body butter that takes at least 20 minutes to sink in properly. I'm just a shave-really-roughly-in-30-seconds-so-you-miss-90%-of-the-hair-and-practically-cut open-your-whole-leg kinda gal.

14. Lush has really went up in price, recently, and when I saw the prices of some of their Christmas rangethis year, I was shocked that most of the bath bombs are nearly five pounds! I've just asked for a Lush giftset for Christmas, which is cheaper than buying loads of the Christmas range separately. I really am not a fan of paying £5 for a bath bomb that you can only use once! I think the last time I bought a bath product from Lush was away back in April, when I went to London for my birthday, and I can remember my total for Lush costing so much for literally about 3 bath bombs.

15. This is a really unpopular one, but I absolutely love the feeling of applying foundation, especially if it's really high coverage, and I quite like the feeling of it being really thick. The Marc Jacobs foundation looks so nice to apply as it's so high coverage and thick, but I'm not planning on giving away my left arm in order to buy it anytime soon, so I'll just swoon over watching people applying it for now!

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I hope you liked this post! Can you relate to any of these, or do you have any beauty confessions? Let me know in the comments, and I'll probably be able to relate to them too...

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you soon!

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Skincare Routine // How I Cleared Up My Skin!

Hello everyone! This is my first proper blog post in a few weeks (last week's post didn't count, that was just me rambling away for a while).

So, a skincare routine! I thought it was about time I done a new version of this, as since the last time I done one, my skin has completely cleared up and it's all down to these products that I use every day! Well, at least I'm assuming it's because of these - I don't know what it would be because of otherwise!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Massive Beauty Haul - UD, Kylie, NYX & More!

A few weeks ago I uploaded a non-beauty haul, and at the end I promised to upload a huge beauty haul. Well, it's time for that big ol' makeup haul.

Looking at everything, it's not even that much, but it all adds up to a lotta money, so I'm showing you it all so I can justify spending the money on everything!

Just before I start, I just wanted to say sorry for not uploading for two weeks! I know I say this all the time but I've had so much to do with school and stuff recently that I've had absolutely no time to write up blog posts! I really want to get back into uploading twice a week, although I do find it a bit difficult at times. 

If I don't end up posting twice a week, then I'll definitely upload once at least. 

The first product is the Urban Decay Alice Through the Looking Glass Palette. I've already done a full review and swatches of this (here), but I couldn't not mention it in another post, as it's so gorgeous. I do think this is the most beautiful makeup product I own, the packaging is so extravagant and the shades are so unique and cool. I've been using this so much over the past few weeks, and I'm trying to push myself to wear the brighter colours more, as there's just so many bright and out-there colours like bright blues, teals and pinks.

I also recently bought a new nail polish, because clearly I need more nail polishes. The one I bought is from Barry M, and it's called Beachy Keen I think? I'm not really sure as there's no name on the bottle so I had to Google it! My friend bought this a few weeks before me, and I really loved the colour, so I bought it because I'm a copycat.

This is a really pretty orange-y nude shade (think Kylie's Exposed Liquid Lipstick) and I've been loving wearing this ever since I got it. 

Next is an eyeliner from NYX, this is the NYX Crystal Liner in Crystal Hip. I first saw Shannon (Shaanxo on Youtube, you should all go subscribe to her, she's fab) use this in a makeup tutorial and I was so in love with it! I searched the NYX counter at my local Boots, and finally found it! This is so gorgeous, it's a glittery rainbow eyeliner, that I like to use either on top of or alongside my normal black eyeliner. It looks so beautiful when the sun hits it, as all the little sparkles all shine and it just looks so cool. 

Up next is the Instant Glow Bronzing Rocks by Seventeen. This was actually sent to me (that's right, your girl got blogger mail!) after I joined the Seventeen Blogger Programme, which is great for helping your blog gain more popularity. I've never used this type of product, so I'm really interested to try it! The product is quite shimmery, which put me off at first, but who really cares if my face looks like a glitterball? - Not me.

Then, one of my favourite new makeup bits - the Sleek Solstice Highlighting Palette. I know everyone's probably fed up about hearing about this but I was shopping with my two friends and it was sold out in Superdrug, then we noticed that there was 3 left in Boots - clearly this was a message from the gods. We picked them up in a rush and bought them, and I was so ready to glow like NikkieTutorials.
These are some intense highlighters, you literally need the teensiest amount on your brush! I'm not really into the cream highlight, and the purple kind of scares me, but the two on the bottom are so gorgeous!

For lips, I have two different products to show you! The first is the hyped up Kylie Birthday Edition Mini Mattes. I have a whole post coming up on these soon, so I won't go into too much detail! But wow, were these stressful to buy. I love my Kylie Koko K Lip Kit, and I thought by ordering these little mini ones, I could try out loads of the different shades and see what I like. In this little set you get Exposed, Candy K, Dolce K, Koko K, Kristen and Leo.

Next is another two products sent to me by the Seventeen Blogger Programme. These are two of the Mega Matte Lipsticks in the shades No Corals (a bright coral pink) and Rioja Your World (a dark burgundy red). These lipstick feel so nice and smooth to apply, and they aren't drying at all! Ii can't wait till Autumn so I can wear the darker one more! 

(That's such a typical beauty blogger thing to say, isn't it?)

The last two bits in this haul are skincare related! The first is the Lush Dark Angels Cleanser, which I bought at the start of August. I have used this every morning and it's helped clear up my skin so much, I don't tend to get spots as much now and all of my spot scars have almost completely faded! I  think I'm going to do a new updated skincare routine soon, as it's completely different and everything seems to be working well with my problematic skin! This is completely black, and has a bit of a funny smell, but it works so well and I use it so often that I don't even notice it anymore.

And the very last thing of the haul is The Body Shop Camomile Cleansing Butter. This is my second tub of this, as I finished up my last tub a few weeks ago. My parents bought this and a few other bits for me after I got my exam results, as I had said I really needed to buy a new one. This is so good at removing makeup at the end of the day, it's really gentle and lasts for ages!

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That is everything is this massive haul! I told myself I was on a shopping ban after buying all of this, but I'm clearly not strict enough with myself, as I've done one to many big shops in Primark and H&M a the past two weeks (whoops). 

Have you tried any of these products? If you have please let me know what you think of them!

Again, sorry for not posting for two weeks, I'll try my hardest to upload two posts a week, but no promises!

Thank you for reading, and I'll see you on Wednesday! (hopefully)

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Starlight Blogger Award!

Hi! SO last week, I was very kindly nominated for the Starlight Blogger Award by Charlotte from Vie Avec Charlotte! Thank you!
I'd never heard of this tag before I was nominated for it, but I thought it sounded like a fun idea to do, so I hope you like it!

Huge London Haul - Makeup, Lush and More!

Hi! As you all probably know if you've been reading my blog for the past few weeks, I went to London with my mum for my birthday. While I was down there, I done a little hella lot of shopping. When I got home, I decided that I could justify all of the things I bought by showing them in a big haul! 

I did buy clothing bits and things like that, but I didn't include them because they're a bit awkward to photograph. I'm going to get onto the haul now, as it's a long one!

How To Survive Your Exams - Study Tips and De-Stressing!

It's everybody's favourite time of the year - exam season!
I'm from Scotland, and the exams have just started here, so I'm not sure about how far along exams in the rest of the UK are, sorry!
This is my first year of exams, and I thought it would be a good idea to do a post on my tips on how to study and how to de-stress. and I thought it might possibly help other people who are doing the same thing.