What's In My Make-up Bag?

I've seen a few people do this now, and I thought sharing the content of ones make-up bag on a Sunday morning seems like a lovely idea! A lot of what's in my huge Bill Brown bag is skin care, but that's for another day. So here are my essentials, and some not-so-essentials along with some hints and tips...

Contents:

- Vaseline: Everyone should have some emergency lip balm!

-Rose design compact mirror

-Kryolan translucent powder, decanted into a cheap little pot, easy enough to buy online. 

**TIP** Set your foundation with a small amount of translucent powder, this will make it last a lot longer!

-The Body Shop, Tea tree Blotting tissues: A necessity for oily skin!

-Smashbox Photo finish primer & Benefit Porefessional Primer

**TIP** Use a primer as a base before foundation, this will create a smooth base for your foundation and give it more staying power.

-Tweezers

-Topshop Cream blush Duo

-NARS Edie Eyeshadow (part of an Andy Warhol Gift set)

-Bobbi Brown Gel Liner in Caviar Ink

-The Body Shop Perfume Oil in Madagascan Vanilla - It's a perfect summer scent!

-Bobbi Brown Corrector in Peach 

**TIP** Peachy tones will counteract the dark circles around the eyes for yellow and darker toned skins & pinks will do the same for paler, pinky toned skins

-MAC Face and Body Foundation: Waterproof, light coverage

-MUA white liner

-The Body Shop Brow & Lash gel

-Smashbox Full exposure mascara - I LOVE this! 

**HINT** Pick a free sample up with any purchase from the Smashbox website, alternatively you can buy the 'try it kit' for £19 Follow this link: www.smashbox.co.uk

-Bobbi Brown Rich Caviar Eye palette: My favorite shade is 'Wheat' (top right), perfect for contouring the eyes.

-Topshop LIPS lipstick, in Charmed - I picked this up in the Jan sales (they still sell it) and it's now an essential piece in my make-up bag!

-Smashbox Lip enhancing gloss: This also comes in their 'try it kit' - Follow the above link.

-The Body Shop Brow & Liner Palette: Comes with a wee applicator.

So there it is! That's my personal make-up bag, most of the items above don't change but I'm always finding new additions! 

Anna xx

Alice & The After-Tea Party

This is just a little post about my most recent college project! I developed a 'Dark Alice' concept - hence the 'After' tea party, but I didn't want her to be your typical, short skirt, boobs out and everything in black 'Bad Alice' so instead I took inspiration from Tim Burton, the film maker who directed the most recent Alice in Wonderland and also Tim Walker, the photographer who does all the crazy props and photo shoots!
I absolutely LOVED doing research and prepping for this shoot, I watched both the Alice in Wonderland films, dragged my boyfriend round second hand shops looking for copious amounts of tea cups, teapots and all sorts of bits and bobs, then rooted through our attic (which by the way, is brimming with junk!) finally I raided Abakan and settled down to make the costume and accessories.

A lot of work went into this project so I really hope you like it!!

 Let me know what you think :)

Anna x

Get super soft hands!

Now, I got this hand cream as a freebie (a good sized one at that) from the April issue of Marie Claire, which you can still get your hands on!

 As with many of the freebies you get from magazines, they have a tendency to look lovely which makes it all the more underwhelming when the product doesn't live up to the packaging...but not this one... Neal's Yard Remedies 'Bee Lovely Hand Cream', to start with it has a lovely scent which is orange essential oil and honey, sounds weird, but I promise you it's not!

A little of this product goes a long way, and leaves your skin feeling velvety smooth, I rarely find a hand cream I like but I'll definitely be sticking to this one for a while. I'm not sure how good it would be on VERY dry or chapped skin but I'd 99.9% recommend it for normal to dry skin, and as a little bonus it's made using organic honey, so if your into your organic ingredients, this is perfect for you!

If you don't manage to pick up a copy of Marie Claire Mag, you can buy it from Neal's Yard Remedies for £10 for a 50ml bottle: http://www.nealsyardremedies.com/bee-lovely-hand-cream

It really does live up to it's name.

Anna x

(If you've already tried it let me know what you think!)

Illamasqua: ''No More Blind Mice''..

If you haven't heard of them, Illamasqua are a big but still developing makeup brand, they have an ethos for free creativity, expression and individuality. Their ever growing range of tools and products, showcase a MUCH larger colour palette than many other brands. I really mean it when I say they are a creative make-up artists dream, and my go-to brand for anything slightly unusual. 

So naturally I was very happy when I saw this: 

They said: 

''Illamasqua has and always will stand against animal testing. So as an independent British beauty brand we are proud to support the new EU ban against animal testing in the cosmetics industry. Coming in to action this month, we know the ban is close to many of our fans hearts.

At Illamasqua we carefully research each of our suppliers, and continually look for new and more ethical ways to produce the colour-intense make-up you love. Unlike many brands, our range of professional brushes are 100% cruelty-free. Made entirely of advanced synthetic hairs, they deliver a flawless finish you can really believe in.'' *

It's always really nice to know that a big brand such as Illamasqua is just as concerned for the welfare of others (even teeny tiny animals) as they are about their own profit and growth! 

Well done Illamasqua! 

*You can read more about Illamasqua's stance against animal testing here:  http://www.illamasqua.com/explore/about-us/against-animal-testing/

Anna x

Smashbox Tapered Shadow Brush

If you haven't had the good fortune of trying Smashbox's brushes then you should. I can't vouch for all of them, but I bought their tapered [eye]shadow brush #7 a few weeks ago, and oh my is it good. I'm assuming the quality goes accross the board, but that's never guaranteed so this blog review is soley about the eye shadow brush (the wee brushes that come in their palettes are also good as far as mini's go!)...

The bristles on this brush are dense and it's natural fibres are super soft, so it's perfect for packing colour onto the lid (or anywhere else for that matter!), and it blends amazingly well, I wish I had more than one of them! It's £19.50 from www.smashbox.co.uk, but you can buy them from Smashbox counters at selected Boots stores. And as an added bonus for buying it online, postage is usually free and you get to choose a mini sample with your purchase.
The only thing that lets the brush down is that it has a tendency to moult ever so slightly when washing it (and I don't even submerge my brushes), but it's not enough to put me off!
It's now a staple eye shadow brush in my brush set, I'm looking forward to trying the rest of their range (apart from the angled liner brush, it's still Illamasqua's ALB all the way for me!).

I noticed last Christmas they did a brush set, which I'm gutted I missed out on! So if you're very patient, it would be worth waiting for!

Tip: Avoid using natural fibre brushes with cream products, as they'll soak up the oils, which will ruin the brush.

Anna x

As always your comments are very welcome!

'The Dark Side of Alice'

Here's a mini preview of what I'm aiming for on my next project/assessment... 'The Dark Side of Alice'....

My dress for the shoot is coming along nicely, needs a few extra bits, but it's almost there! Make-up and hair decided on and practiced (apart from the eyebrows - do I go no brows or OTT brows? Oh the decisions!).
Only the head piece and props to get sorted now, going totally over board on teacups and teapots, so I best get raiding those charity shops....

Almost There..

Rough idea of the make-up look I'm trying to achieve

 I'll do a full post on my design and the final images at then end of next week..

Half way through the eye make-up (Not sure why I didnt take a proper one at the end aswel!)

 Anna x

Bobbi Brown BBU Face Palette

Please excuse the lack of posts this week, I've been caught up with a big assessment for SFX next week, and it's been keeping me rather busy!

After a long debate with myself as to weather or not I should invest in the Bobbi Brown BBU palette, I went ahead and bought one. It cost me around £143.00 with my 25% student discount and would normally be £185. I decided to go ahead with it mainly because it comes with 20 shades of their stick foundation, 11 shades of corrector and 14 shades of their creamy concealer.
I thought it would be a very handy thing to have in my kit, as a go to, due to it having so many shades of foundation in one handy place! The foundations are yellow based which is great for redness etc but not so great if you have someone with a pinky toned skin, needless to say I still get good use out of them and I'm forever using the correctors and concealers (as you can see from the pic) which are great for all skin tones as they have peachy tones for dark skins and pinks for lighter ones, and they give fab coverage!
The foundations give a very full coverage which is brilliant for covering blemishes and it's always good to keep a slightly heavier duty foundation in your kit, and they can be blended in to give more of a medium coverage if full coverage isn't the desired finish!

The other thing with this palette is I was expecting it to be on the small side but not quite as compact as it turned out to be! That being said it's still been very usefull and excellent quality; but I don't think the spare mixing well is necessary as you end up wasting valuable foundation buy using it! So instead I use a very small palette knife to decant what I need onto a palette/back of my hand, so that nothings wasted (and it's also very higenic). I got my palette knife in the HD brush set from Crown Brush and I have to say it's been very handy, especially with this palette! You can see what it looks like in my blog post on the HD brush set: http://inthemakeupbox.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/crown-brush-hd-set.html

If you're looking at getting it for personal use...don't! You won't use half the shades in there (if that!) making it a huge waste of money, you can buy the foundations individually for £28 and the correctors and concealers for £18, which can be matched up to your specific skin tone at your nearest Bobbi Brown counter! Couldn't be simpler!

  

But from a professional point of view, over all I would say the BBU palette (although being small) was worth the money, It's compact which means it's lightwight and doesn't take up much space in my kit - which is always good news! I'd recommend it to anyone who dosn't have heaps of different foundations already, needs to save on space and is pro, quality over quantity; and especially if you have pro or student discount!