Surprise, Surprise yet another Disney themed look. This time I have decided to become Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. 

The first thing (as with all Disney Princesses) is a stunning flawless base. So, I used a high coverage foundation and concealer and set it all in place with powder to make sure it was really long lasting. Next came some contouring, nothing extreme but I still wanted it to be noticeable. Finally a very warm toned blush, because Jasmine is far more tanned than I am, and some highlighting to add some definition to the face.

The eyebrows and eyes came next and took up the most time. My eyebrows are brown and quite thin whereas in every picture I saw Jasmine's were extremely thick and jet black. Using a black powder I added as much thickness as I could and rounded off the fronts to stop them looking too harsh. Then, for the eyes, sticking to a good quality image I found I used a bright purple eye shadow up to the crease and used a warm toned natural colour to blend it up and out. Jasmine's eyes are lined with black all the way round with a great big wing and of course I couldn't leave it out because it just wouldn't be a Jasmine inspired look without it. This took me a fair few goes because my liner just wasn't cooperating! 

The lips are just a warm toned nude gloss, and that's all there is to it. Please let me know if you've tried this or any of my other Disney themed looks. I hope to do some more in the future.

xxx

Huge Primark Haul (Home Decor):

Not too long ago my Mum and I did some pretty serious damage in Primark. I mostly got stuff for my new room because I'm decorating it, but I'll start by showing you the shoes I picked up.

The first pair are these smart looking black pumps with tassles. I loved them instantly because they look really good quality as well as being lovely. They feel really sturdy on too I can see them lasting me years.

I also got this mustard coloured pair of brown lace up boots. These are amazingly soft they literally fit around you feet and whenever you wriggle your toes or feet around the shoes move with them. They look like a nice mixture between smart and casual so I can get away with wearing them most days.

I picked up some insoles too because I have a few size 4 shoes that are too big.

Now, onto the homey things. I fell in love with this throw which has a patchwork of different vintage looking prints all over it. The theme I'm going for is vintage and because this measures to slightly larger than my bed it means I can throw it over a bed without having to worry too much about what the duvet underneath looks like. Also, having an extra blanket around in England is never a bad idea considering our weather.

I got these beautiful little fairylights too in little wicker white hearts. I'm thinking of wrapping these around the head of my bed because they should look really nice there. As well as that I can imagine reading by soft fairylight I bet it would feel nice and cosy.

To match the lights I picked up these two sets of hanging wicker hearts. I'm not sure where they're going to go at the moment but I'm thinking of hanging them from each end of the curtain poles.

This candle matches the pretty bottle I was given for Christmas  so I'm going to pop them next to each other. Little things make a big difference when it comes to decorating I think and small trinkets are a big part of a vintage theme. 

Sticking with scented things I picked up some red berry and orchid scented incense.

Last but not least I picked up some dusky pink coloured curtains. They're long enough to reach the floor and match the colours in the throw I got so should help to tie the room together nicely.

That's all for another blogpost let me know if you enjoyed it. Also would you like to see a room tour when everything is complete? 

xxx

My Skincare Routine:

This has been a really highly requested post from my friends, because they all say I have perfect skin when I come into college with no make up on. Just before I get started I should tell you that I have combination skin which can change from horribly oily to terribly dry within a matter of days. I use these products to try and balance my skin out as much as possible and at the moment I'm pretty happy with this routine apart from the fact I'd like to get a lighter moisturiser to use in the daytime, so any suggestions in the comment section would be very much appreciated.

The first thing I do every morning is wash my face using Garnier Fresh Essentials Refreshing Gel Wash with Grape Extract. I usually use this with a flannel, because I find it exfoliates my face and gets the blood going through my skin which is perfect for an early morning because it wakes up the skin. I've done a review of this facewash already so I won't say too much about it here other than the fact the smell of grapes is really refreshing in the morning. 

At the end of the day I use my trusty Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish, I love this so much it smells amazing, removes every scrap of make up and makes my skin so nice and soft to the point that whenever I use this around other people I stand there telling them to touch my face. I hugely recommend treating yourself to this next time you're in Boots.

This spray on Instant Boost Skin Tonic Spritzer after this, except I use it on a cotton pad to make sure it really sinks into the skin and removes every last scrap of make up. I can't quite put my finger on the smell of this but it's nice and relaxing and really calms me down before bed. I've got a full review planned for this so I wont say too much about it just now though.

As a moisturiser I've been using this huge bottle of Vaseline Essential Moisture. Like I said before this is very thick so you literally only need a tiny dot for your entire face. This is perfect at nighttime because it creates a really nice layer of moisturiser over your face which lasts until the morning.

Once a week I use this St. Ives Apricot Invigorating Scrub. I use the Invigorating version because my skin can tend to look quite dull and dead so I use this to wake my face up and remove all the  dead skin cells, bringing some brightness back into my face. Any scrub with apricot in it is going to be really good for your skin as it has well known properties in it that remove skin cells.

Also for scrubbing, but in this case for my lips. I always use the Mint Julips lips scrub from Lush, first of all the smell and taste of this has to be addressed! It smells and tastes exactly like the gooey insides of After Eight Mints, as well as that it works nicely too it gets nice and deep into my lips and always makes me feel nice and clean.

Over the top of this I'll use the first lip balm to hand, at the moment I've really been loving this Born Lippy balm in Strawberry from the Body Shop. It smells like strawberry sweets and leaves a nice red tint on my lips. It's also a good quality too making sure my lips are nice and soft.

This next product is supposed to be for lips but I use it on my eyelashes around a bout once a month. It conditions them so well and I've found that it's really helped them grow and stay nice and soft when I find mascara damages them.

I make sure I use a face mask minimum once a month. I have a tea tree one from the Body Shop. I find the tree products work really well with all skin types but in particular if I ever have a break out or have quite greasy skin then this makes a huge difference. It makes my skin nice and soft too and really makes me feel clean because it makes my skin tingly and cool.

That's all for another post I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you all next time.

xxx

Valentines Day & Harry Potter Studios Tour:

This is just going to be a little bit of a catch up blog post today because I feel like it's been a long time since I posted. As well as this you all seem to enjoy the posts that are a little more personal and a especially the ones featuring Myles. (My boyfriend for any new viewers.) With that in mind I thought I'd tell you about our Valentines day together. 

As you can see by our red faces it was very cold and windy!

Valentines day this year was a Friday which meant we were both at college throughout the most of the day. He spend all day making me believe he felt really bad and guilty for totally forgetting Valentines day, which made me a little upset and sulky all day. I was totally wrong though because when we got to his house there was a card, a box of chocolates, a single red rose and most special to me a stunning blue orchid! Orchid's are my favourite flower and I love the fact it was blue, really different from the typical flowers girlfriends get given at Valentines day or any other time.

After a Dominoes and a tub of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream between us (my romantic choice for an evening meal) it was an early night because the next morning we had to be up at half six ready to go to the Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio Tour!

This is actually something we booked together as our Christmas present to each other but because it's such a popular place the 15th of February was the closest we got to Christmas. With that in mind we both agreed that the day would be our Christmas treat to each other and we'd get each other a Valentines day present from the gift shop. 

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

When we got there we found out that we'd been lucky enough to book tickets during the Animal Actors week which had the animals from the films dotted around the studios. We saw a little puppy of Fang's Crookshanks the cat, Scabbers the rat, Hedwig the owl and I touched a snake! It was a very strange feeling but I'm so glad I did it. It's a very brave thing for me to do.

On arrival we were told that it usually takes visitors 3-4 hours to walk around and enjoy everything including the giant gift shop at the end of the tour. Myles and I however, took a good 5 hours plus making sure we didn't miss a single thing and stopping for a nice lunch in the café. In the café we tried a Butterbeer which has to be one of the most disgusting thing's I've ever tasted which was disappointing, although it was made up for by the fact I got to keep the glass!

Sadly I don't have many pictures because I took them all on Myles' phone (his camera being a better quality than mine) but I'm sure if any of you are as big fans as I am then you'll either have seen the place in person or on youtube videos and blog posts. All in all I definitely recommend the experience to any of you who are big fans of Harry Potter it literally is magical. 

From the gift shop I got a Gryffindor hat which I love and is super cosy. I got my little sister a chocolate frog which she was head over heels in love with and Myles a Ministry of Magic mug.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I'll see you all next time...that could be a while away though considering all I feel like doing at the moment is curling up and watching Harry Potter films over and over and over again.

xxx

New Tag: Lotions & Potions/Product Storage:

Hey guys,  I hope you're all well today I'm going to be doing something a bit different and start my own tag. I'm going to call it the "Lotions & Potions Tag" because that's the name I've always used for all my hair, skin and tanning products e.t.c. and everyone has a different storage technique for them. I thought some of you might be interested in seeing the way I store mine and seeing how all the rest of you store yours.

I keep all my beauty products (that aren't make up) on top of the chest of drawers that holds the majority of my clothes and pyjamas. Going from left to the right the first thing you should see is a little basket. This is where I store the main products I use with the tallest at the bag working forwards to the smallest, so that I can see everything well and hopefully no product will be forgotten about and abandoned. It also means I can easily grab anything I need on lazy mornings without having to rifle through and knock things over. If I ever have too many products to fir into the basket then I'll line up some of the pretty little things along the front as you can see in the picture, I really like doing this because I think lining up some pretty bottles along the front can look really nice.

In the taller flowery pink basket I stand all my different hair brushes, I've got a thin and a wide toothed comb, a flat brush and a rounded barrel brush. I find that keeping them in a basket helps keep them look neat and pretty, when it's easy for your brushes to look a little scruffy when they don't have a proper home. I also have my tangle teaser which lives just outside the basket because it doesn't quite fit. Back to the basket though, I have my big bulldogs clips and grips to separate my hair when I straighten it clasped on to the side and a pair of scissors on the inside because, well, you never know when a spare pair of scissors comes in handy.

On the left side of the drawers I keep my vintage tin which features close up in this post  which holds little cotton wool pads for nail varnish and removing make up. Next to it I have a pretty little vintage bottle which you saw in my Christmas Post and my big mirror from Ikea. In a little glass box that my uncle made for me with an engraved lid (it has my name on it) I keep all my makeup brushes and last but not least I keep the necklace I wear everyday on it's little stand in the box and the watch I wear every day behind it.

Some of you may have noticed the little box with the red lid under the drawers in the top picture. This is a pretty little storage box that I keep little empty pots and bottles in that I want to photograph for empties posts.

Well that's it for this post I really hope this tag takes off because it would be nice to see how other people store their products. I tag all of you that want to have a go. 

xxx 

Monthly Favourites: January 2014

I know this gets said by every blogger and youtuber at the beginning of every single monthly favourites, but where oh where has the month gone? I still can't get over how quickly Christmas came and went and here we are in February. However on to the point, I know I don't do these posts every month but that's because I'm a but of a creature of habit and tend to stick with a product until it is completely used up so I very rarely have new products that I use each and every month. On to the point though as last month came after Christmas I had plenty of products that I've been loving and so I thought it was high time I made a monthly favourites.

I'll start with the least glamorous of the bunch and that's deodorant. Lacura is an Aldi based brand and some of you may be thinking oh dear not a supermarket brand but I'm sure the rest of you who have used Lacura products will know what I mean when I say you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and regular beauty products if you didn't know. This is the Aloe Fresh roll on deodorant, and after the Sure product from an old empties post which stopped working about half way through it was nice to have such a fresh clean feeling product that actually worked. I would say I recommend it because it did it's job but I would be lying because I won't be buying it again as it has stained a ridiculous amount of my tops with those horrible white marks that so many deodorants do.

The M.A.C 235 is hands down one of the best brushes I have ever used. My first impressions of it were oh dear it's bigger than my eye I'm really going to struggle to use it, whereas in actuality I find it the perfect shape and size for highlighting under my brow bone and in the inner corners of my eye. It's made it a two second job to do both eyes since I started using it, and I have no intentions of stopping for a time.

The Body Shop Beautifying Oil in Olive is next. As much as I still cam't get over the fact I could have bought any other scent than olive (because even though I do like the smell I struggle to get past the fact it really does feel like I'm using olive cooking oil on my skin) I do absolutely love it. I've used it in a really thick layer along the ends of my hair a few hours before a shower to really soak in as much moisture as possible before a wash and also in my cuticles before and after painting my nails to make them look better. I feel like it has made a difference but I can't quite tell if that's a placebo effect or not so I think a little linger using it should make things more clear.

Another M.A.C brush now, this one the 266. Ever since I started using his I have loved the way it makes my eyebrows look. As someone who used to just quickly run a brown eyebrow pencil through my brows using a powder and a precise brush has made a huge difference for me, I think my eyebrows look far more natural and real when I use this brush along with a powder.

Liz Earle's Instant Boost Skin Tonic Spritzer is a big love of mine for before bedtime. It smells so nice and relaxing as well as soothing my skin, which always helps send me off to bed well. I plan on doing a full review of this at some point so I won't go into too much detail but I will say I'm sad the bottle isn't any bigger because I don't want to run out! 

Last but not least is a non-beauty favourite, it's the lovely Michael Buble's album to be loved. I just had to include it because I have to have listened to this album from start to end at least 50 times and I love his voice in every single song. 

That's all for another post, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope to see you again soon. Also do you like a little non-beauty favourite every now and again or would you prefer these posts to be strictly beauty related? Let me know in the comments.

xxx

FOTD: Meg (Hercules) Inspired Makeup:

Hercules has to be one of my all time favourite films and considering I have crazy curly hair and my favourite colour is purple how could I not create a look inspired by Meg?

From the pictures I saw she had a completely flawless base with very angular features. So I really packed on the foundation, concealer and powdered an awful lot over the top to make sure the base was really flawless and high coverage. I also contoured a lot more than usual to really add definition to my face making it look so much more angular. I added a really little amount of a rose toned blush just on the apples of my cheeks because the picture I looked at had a little pink tone in it.

The eyes were my favourite park, there was no highlighting or crease work involved it was just block light toned purple up to the crease and stopping there in a block line. The eyeliner was kind of strange to draw because there was literally a dot at the outer corner of the eye and then a line all the way around the eye completely darkly lining it along with very long thin eyebrows, which I couldn't create too well because mine are so naturally thick.

For the lips she hardly had any definition to them they were very rounded but very dark purple. I filled in the top of my lip to make them look rounded but with a deep purple colour.

I hope you enjoyed this post and if you want any more Disney inspired post's then please let me know in the description.

xxx

FOTD: Pink and Brown Natural Valentines Look:

As you can see this is a very natural look, that I will probably be sporting this Valentine's day. I know it's not a lot of makeup but I personally think that on Valentine's day you wouldn't want to look too done up and over the top. 

I started off with a fresh natural looking base made up of a BB cream, light concealer, a very very light contour, a touch of blush and a little higlithing. The reason I was so light and gentle with all of is because, personally, I associate love and Valentine's with softness and smoothness which in terms of the face would mean no harsh lines or bright colours.

I wanted to go with a pink and brown eye because, again they're soft colours also I really like the way they blend together. So I started with a really light and shimmery pink, then went through the crease with another light shimmery colour, only this time it was a brown. I did a lot of blending to keep the look seamless then blended the same colours under the eyes and doing a little highlighting along the brow bone and in the inner corner of the eyes. The brows themselves are really gentle and natural too I just used a light brown powder and a clear gel to set them. I applied an extremely thin line of brown liner along the upper lash line and a brown mascara.

Last but not least a pretty nude lip, not much to say about that just nice and natural as with the rest of the look. 

That's the end of another post, I really hope you enjoyed this post and I'd love to see if any of you recreate the loo. If you do then please find me on twitter @EJEbeauty and tweet me a picture.

I'll see you all next time. 

xxx