I'm just kels

Friday 24 August 2018

The Wonky Wand.

I'm obsessed with making flatlays, I find the whole process from arranging, photographing to editing so cathartic. I don't know why but I love making pretty things.

Today's post is clearly about the L'oreal Unlimited mascara, or as I have so loving dubbed it the Wonky Wand mascara. As I always take products at face/packaging value lets start there. This packaging sucks, in the sense of design. It looks cheap and simply uncreative. I know that this essentially means nothing and adds no value to the quality of the mascara in the tube, but I like a bit of production value! When I buy any makeup I want to look at it and feel like it's a treat or a luxury and this says neither. In comparison to Paradise mascara in its pretty pink and rose gold packaging with its beautiful cardboard outer, this looks like the very ugly sister. In terms of looks this does not tick any of my boxes but I'm trying not to be shallow, so lets dig a little deeper.

I know you're probably thinking, if the packaging repulsed you so badly why did you buy it? Well I'm looking past the frankly LAZY packaging because I'm so intrigued by the wand and its ability to move to a 45 degree angle. I was curious, is this a gimmick or does it actually improve mascara application. So I've used this every day for around a week to try and figure out if this wand is the way forward for the mascara market. So my first impressions were that the unique angle of the brush did seem to help get right to the root of the lashes with ease. I felt like it was easier to coat the very end lashes at both the inner and outer corner of my eye. The biggest benefit that I noticed was that it was a lot easier to apply to my left eye, I don't know why but it just felt less awkward than usual. Not that it is a daily struggle or anything but it can be difficult applying mascara to the eye that's not on the same side as your dominant hand. I usually find myself swapping the wand around a lot more to try and get into the corners on my left eye than my right. Strangely enough I didn't find myself doing that with this mascara.

Maybe we should compare my thoughts to what L'oreal claims this mascara should do : Taken from the Boot's website

- Bendable mascara wand for precise application - Reaches every last lash, from corner to corner - Lengthens, volumises, defines and separates lashes - Intense black finish for high-impact lashes - Longwear formula

Well the wand is certainly bendy, so were off to a good start. As stated above I do agree that it is easier to reach the lashes on the inner and outer corner, which is why I really like this wand. I feel as if the mascara itself lengthens very well and definitely defines and separates the lashes. I do however feel that it's not a great voluminous mascara. In comparison to Paradise (which I really like hence the constant comparison) this barley adds any volume to your lashes. I really like chunky, thick lashes and I don't feel like this mascara achieves that very well. That however is personal preference and not a fault of the mascara at all. In terms of colour it's very dark just how I like it and the longevity was very good. I can suffer from transfer of mascara from my lashes to my brow bone or eyelid and I noticed none with this mascara. Most importantly I didn't get that weird crumbly thing either.

My final verdict is that I really like the shape of the wand, what I'm not blown over by is the brush... Am I just picky... probably. This mascara is excellent if you want long separated and defined lashes. If that's your thing go for it. For me I'd prefer this if it was more of a thickening mascara with a chunky brush. Similar to that of Paradise. Basically I want paradise brush and formula with this wand. A girl can dream right?

Hello Happy Foundation

One of the first foundations I ever used was Benefit's playstick in the shade paper dolls. I distinctly remember loving this foundation, from the shade to the little cylinder cardboard outer packaging.but I'm pretty sure they don't even make it anymore but for many years it was my pride and joy. I wish I could say that my romance with Benefit had lasted a life time (or at least the 23 years I've so far existed) but apart from their brow products there's very few items that have taken my breath away. I hate to sound mean but I always feel like the brand is style over substance, beautiful creative packaging wrapped around average products. Harsh! I hear you cry, but read it back I said average I didn't say poor. A lot of the products I've used from benefit have been good, but not good enough for me to uproot my old faithfuls from my makeup bag and make their products permanent residents. So because of my ill feelings towards the brand... perhaps manifested by the longing for a product that no longer exists... I usually skip over their new releases. To put it blankly it's not a brand I have on my radar.

I honestly only picked this up out of sheer impulse. My cousin wanted me to order it for her and I just had a mild moment of spontaneity and ordered one for myself. I had pretty much no expectations, other than it would look super cute in a flatlay. I think they are ultimately the best purchases, when you're not really expecting to love something and it ends up being something you really like. Yes cats out the bag, I like the foundation. For once I feel like the beautiful packaging matches the quality of the product and I couldn't be more happy that I spent my hard earned coin on this. Why do I like this foundation.. let me count the ways:

Lightweight but great coverage
Matte but not heavy or caked, skin still looks like skin!
Great oil control
Good longevity
Small amount goes a long way.

So I had a little looksee on Benefits site to see what they claimed this product does: ''This lightweight foundation evens out skin tone and blurs imperfections with soft-focus optical blurring spheres. With a natural-matte finish and light-to-medium coverage, it looks like skin and feels like nothing at all. Happy looks good on you!''. For once I pretty much agree with the overall description of this foundation, I think the foundation is very light, but offers good coverage and has a beautiful matte finish that still looks like skin texture and has a life to it that some foundations just lack. Matte usually makes me cringe, I really hate looking like you've got a mask of dull foundation on. I don't know how but this foundation has got the right balance. For an oily girl who needs shine control but doesn't want to look dull and loose the skins natural luminosity, this is your best friend. I feel like this foundation was hand made for me...that annoying girl who's like ' I have oily skin, but I hate matte, oh but also I don't want to be tooo shiny.' I know only a hand full of you will relate to that, but if you do just know that your time has come! I'm leaving this review here, I think its clear that it's secured a spot in my makeup bag, how about yours?

ABH Norvina Palette First Impressions

If you came here via instagram, then you probably know that this isn't going to be a gushing review. I typically don't do first impressions but fuck it I feel like venting my frustrations. So grab a snack and get comfy cause I'm here to ramble on for a while.

I'll start with a little background info, I usually adore abh shadows I own Modern renaissance, soft glam and prism all of which I rate. I also really love purple shadows so this is not because this palette doesn't appeal to me. Because let's be honest I'm not in the habit of spending £43 on shadows I think I won't wear. I also have ZERO issue with the formulation in the sense of fall out/ kick up, I blend quite softly and all though I experience fall out it's not really an issue for me. What I'm finding with this palette is that the shades look so different in the pan to when they are applied to the lid.

When swatching the shadows I was impressed with the iridescence of the shimmer shades, yet when I put them on my lid I found them incredibly lack lustre. Celestial in particular had very little shimmer too it even when I used my finger instead of a fibre brush. The only one that really had some intensity I found was wild child but even then I foiled the shadow with fix plus to add a bit more oomph. The shade love really confused me because it looked like a peachy pink colour in the pan, it was so much darker on my lid. I intended to use it in my crease but it came up so much darker with almost a brown cast too it. Soul was the colour that really drew me to this palette, it's a really unique colour. So of course I wanted to incorporate it into a look, I found that the pay off wasn't that great even building up the colour and patting it on the shade just felt muted and dull. Maybe it just doesn't suit my skin tone? I really don't know. I used love in the crease first and tried to blend in soul to it, to make a gradient but it just kind of looked dark and messy I tried to brighten it up by adding celestial to the lid and adding wild child foiled to the centre, but it all just got very dark and a bit amateurish really fast. Which is really odd because all of these colours are pretty light.

I'm kind left a bit puzzled, looking at images on Anastasia's site and images on the gram of peoples creations and I am stumped. How did they get these vibrant looks? To me every matte shadow applied darker than what it looked like. Don't get me wrong this is not a disaster palette and I spent my hard earned coin on it so you bet I'll fucking use it... but I'm left just feeling so underwhelmed so sad at what this palette could of been. Why do such bright colours feel so dark and muted? Maybe it's just me, perhaps I have super high expectations or maybe I have just completely misunderstood the concept of this palette. I think I will use this palette but not to create an entire look, I will pick and choose colours to combine with other shadows and try and make this work, for the sake of my bank balance and my guilty shoppers conscious.

Please comment your feelings if you've bought this palette I need to know if it's just me or if this palette's got you on makeup downer too. Final comment is that I still love you ABH I'm just not in love with this palette, but maybe I just need to give it some time.

Supermarket Sass.

Lately I feel like mixing up my blog a little. If you haven't noticed I've been producing more outfit posts than beauty ones lately. That's just the direction my creativity is taking me at the moment. I having a lot of fun organising photo shoots and creating themes. So here this week's titled Supermarket Sass.

Yes this was in Sainsbury's and yes it was embarrassing. Yes I bought cereal out of guilt.

Outfit details at the end of post.