Florida Holiday 2015 + Haul

Hello lovelies! As you know I've had a lot going on the past year so activity on here has been pretty much non-existent. However, with a new university year starting I have decided to try and commit to writing again. This is my last year at uni and I have to make it count, doing as much as I can possibly fit into my remaining time here. Goodness knows how I am going to make time for all the things I want to do as well as studying and running a blog regularly!

Anyways, less of my rambling about thoughts in my head and onto the subject of this blog post. Recently I went to Florida on a family holiday. We spent a few days at Disney (a first for my family), a few days at my godmother's house and the last portion of our holiday at Fort Myers for a family reunion with my dad's side of the family.

Some Disney snaps for your viewing pleasure!

In between spending time with my extended family and discovering the magic of Disney, I somehow managed to fit in a lot of shopping. The majority of which, unsurprisingly, were cosmetics. So today I thought I would take you guys through what I bought. It goes without saying that I do not mean to brag or anything, I'm just very happy with the purchases I made and I cannot wait to start using them on myself and clients. I personally love blog posts like this because it gives me an idea of what makeup is on the market at the moment. 

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Palette

MAC Mineralize Skinfinish in " Global Glow"

Smashbox Full Exposure Palette

 Bobbi Brown Sheer Finish Pressed Powder in "Basic Brown"

MAC Lip Pencils in "Boldly Bare" and "Cork"

Becca Shimmering Skin Perfector Pressed in "Moonstone"

Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette

Tarte "tartelette" Palette

NARS Dual Intensity Eyeshadow in "Phoebe"

MAC Sized To Go Pigments in "Vanilla" and "Melon"

NYX Lip Pencils

NYX Soft Matte Lip Creams in "Copenhagen", "Abu Dhabi" and "Prague" and NYX Butter Gloss in "Angel Food Cake"

 Urban Decay 24/7 Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner in "Radium" and "Retrograde"

The swatch doesn't do the eyeliners justice. They are so vibrant and glittery in real life.

I hope that you found this interesting. Please let me know if you have tried any of these products and what you thought of them.

Lots of love,
Kira <3 xxx

Review: Zelens The Balm

Let me start by saying that I am the worst. I have literally run out of ways to say how sorry I am for not posting on this blog regularly. This is my first post since my New Years post at the start of the year. That is just not on I'm afraid, I am very disappointed in myself. All I can say is that this year has been a crazy, extraordinarily tough year for me and maybe one day I'll write a post on why that is, but not today. Today I get straight back into the swing of writing proper content for this blog, starting with a beauty review. 

So here's the back story: I am very picky when it comes to lip balms/treatments. I have extremely dry lips that crack and flake all the time (glamorous, right?) so I don't find that popular lip balms such as Vaseline and Blistex work for me. To make things even more difficult I also have very sensitive lips so other lip balms such as Carmex and Burt's Bees react with my lips and even make them bleed in some cases! So with this in mind you can imagine how important it is for me to find a lip balm I like. I finally found one I could rely on in the Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream Lip Protectant which saved my lips on numerous occasions. It would even work wonders when my lips were at their worst, transforming them almost completely overnight from dry and scaley to smooth and moisturised. So you can imagine the heartbreak when I lost my beloved lip balm! Unfortunately for me I do not live near anywhere that stocks Elizabeth Arden and my desperate need for something to fix my lips quickly (combined with the curiosity of a beauty blogger) led me to visit my nearest Space.NK.apothecary for a suitable substitute.

Having explained to the very friendly sales assistant my annoying situation with my high maintenance lips, she helped me decide on the Zelens The Balm lip balm. I had never heard of Zelens before and so I was very curious to try something from their range.

Spot the awkward iPhone reflection...

Firstly, the packaging is gorgeous. The embossed mirrored tin looks very chic and I love how minimalist the design is.

Now onto what's inside the tin, which of course is the most important part. The lip balm is unlike any other lip balm I've tried in that it is not waxy at all but more of a thin cream formula. A problem that I have had with waxy formula such as Vaseline or Lipsyl in the past is that it acts as a barrier on my skin and doesn't let moisture penetrate deep into the tissue, so my lips do not feel like they are benefiting in the long-term. Therefore, when I tried this lip balm I was intrigued by how this would affect my lips. I do definitely prefer the cream formula to the waxy ones, however I think I would prefer a formula that was slightly thicker for the my lips, since they do need very heavy duty care which I do not feel this lip balm is able to give me. For someone with less problematic lips this could be a very good option though since it is fairly moisturising.

One thing I do absolutely adore about this lip balm is the smell. It has an enticingly sweet cocoa butter smell which I cannot get enough of. 

So, how does this lip balm hold up to my beloved Elizabeth Arden? I still prefer the Elizabeth. Although it has a greasier formula and more medicinal smell (that signature Elizabeth Arden scent I've come to think fondly of), it works miracles on my lips that the Zelens just cannot compare to. It takes a lot more time for my lips to heal with the Zelens than it did with the Elizabeth Arden, and honestly I don't think the Zelens has ever managed to match the results I got with the Elizabeth Arden lip protectant. I find this disappointing because I really wanted to like the cream formula of the Zelens. Finally, the price of the Elizabeth Arden makes it the more economical option.

The Zelens lip balm is very expensive. For 10ml of product I had to fork out £35. This is a lot of money and definitely not something that I would consider a necessary buy as there are plenty of  alternatives which are just as good. For me, the price does not justify the meagre results that I experienced using the product but that is not to say that someone with less dry and sensitive lips would not love this product. I would not purchase this product again though, I'm definitely going back to my Elizabeth Arden as soon as I finish the Zelens tin.

I hope you've found this review useful. Let me know if you have tried this product and what you thought about it. Also, let me know if you've tried anything else from this brand which you think I should try.

Kira xxx

What Happened To Me in 2014?!

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry I have been gone for so long, life got in the way and before I knew it 2014 had ended. I'll spare you all the nostalgic, inspirational and overly optimistic rubbish that you are all probably bored of hearing and instead I give you this: 2014 was distinctly average; I'm hoping 2015 has more in store.

I'm not being negative, I'm being real here. There is so much talk of "YOLO" and "living for the moment" and whatnot, which quite honestly can leave you feeling inadequate if you're not climbing Kili or petting a drugged up tiger (not a fan of that by the way) or partying your way through £10K in one night. So what if when someone asks me what I did last year I can't remember a single exciting thing off the top of my head because my life was predominantly occupied with university work? That was not a wasted year. That was a year spent doing what needed to be done. Don't get me wrong I had some good times in 2014, but I guess it wasn't as adventurous as perhaps I would like my life to be. But not all years of our life can be full of adventures in the conventional sense, that's not how life works and so to put yourself down for having a less exciting year is absurd. There will be better years and there will be worse years and I'm intrigued to see how 2015 turns out.

That probably sounded like a pointless rant to many of you, but I feel like now is a time where people both reflect on where they are in life right now, how they got there and where they want to be and that's what I'm doing here. And if I can't do that on my own blog where can I, eh? As I said, 2014 wasn't one of my favourite years, but I did have some good experiences. One aspect of 2014 that I want to share with you is some of the work I did in the makeup artistry field, which is one reason I have not had time to put any posts up for the past two months. Obviously, it's hard for me right now because I am still trying to get myself out there and build up a portfolio so that one day I can charge for my work. But right now I am enjoying the learning process of working on different types of projects, different faces and different looks. I have challenged myself so much this year and I feel like I've become more and more confident with every client that I do. My biggest project this year is definitely the UCL Classics Play of Euripides' Bacchae. I did the makeup for the play last year and was asked to return as the Head of Makeup in a much more visually extravagant production. This task involves coming up with multiple makeup looks for different characters, teaching four other girls how to do the makeup looks I have come up with (who have no makeup artistry experience) and apply/oversee the application of makeup to a cast of 26! It's a huge task but one I feel so fortunate to have the chance to undertake.

The production is in February but so far my makeup team and I have worked on the promo images and trailer for the play and I am very happy with how they turned out! So here's some background on the play before you look at the images and think "What in the world was she thinking? And why is there so much mud and blood?" The Bacchae is an Ancient Greek tragedy in which the women of a city go off into the woods to perform some wild rituals and rip their king limb from limb (okay there is a LOT more to it than that, it's actually a very good play and definitely worth reading). So as you can imagine the play is very dark, wild and abstract which reflects in the makeup looks.

That gold leaf though!

I wanted to embed the video of the trailer but for some reason I can't so click here if you want to watch it on Youtube.

I have also been working on two short films recently. They were both with the same director and for different film competitions. The first was a piece about a social issue filmed solely on an iPhone for the "Eye Want Change" movie festival. I was actually involved in this project because I worked with the guy who produced this (and provided the spoken word for the piece) on another of his projects which I shall link here (contains crude humour so not suitable for younger readers!). The film is called Mourning Agender and it's a very thought-provoking piece that you won't believe was filmed from a phone. The second was a Nouveau Noir piece for the Campus MovieFest Awards called Queen of Hearts.

So now I've caught you all up on some of what I was up to in the latter part of 2014 when I was M.I.A on here (which I really am sorry about). There is only one thing I have left to tell you which is non-makeup related...

I cut most of my hair off!

It was down to my hip before!

What do you think? As much as I loved my long hair, it's refreshing to do something a bit different for once. My hair is also even curlier now without the weight of seven and a half more inches on it! VIVA LA CURLY!

Lots of love and speak to you all soon xxx

September Favourites 2014

Another month, another collection of favourite things for me to share with you all! This month is more weighted by beauty products than other things, mostly because this month I have been experimenting with different colours and textures daily. Also, this week was Freshers Week so I had a lot of free time to play around with makeup looks, plus there were a variety of events going on which required different kinds of looks from going out/party looks to wearable daytime looks to bolder colourful looks for work (makeup artists get away with a completely different sort of 'work make up' to regular folk). So without further ado, let's see what I have been loving for the month of September!

Makeup...

10 Amazing Music Video Makeup Looks From the 90's

The 90's are officially back in fashion and I could not be happier (although I do want the 00's to come back as well. It might be too soon for that though). I have been celebrating this by listening to some classic TLC, Destiny's Child, Blink-182 and Steps among other heroes of that era and let me tell you, it's been a good few days of reminiscing. I may have been born in the second half of the decade and spent most of that time unable to walk and talk but I did still grow up listening to 90's music so to me it still is my childhood. 

Now, we've all seen the pictures of Kylie Jenner's grungy eye makeup and the brown lip which for me is synonymous with the 90's and I know I am not alone in obsessing over this trend. I looove that 90's lip and I have Kylie to thank for it's re-emergence into the beauty-sphere. In bringing this trend back, Kylie has definitely put herself out there as a figure to watch and I'm sure we're going to see much more trend-setting with her in the future. I absolutely love her style and her ever-changing hair!

Having sufficiently established how much I love 90's makeup and music, I thought it would be a fun idea to combine the two in cataloguing my favourite beauty looks from famous music videos of that decade. These are in no particular order because if I had to decide between them I think I'd explode from my indecision. It was hard enough to cut this list down to ten videos.

My Illamasqua Make Up Course Experience

Okay so I know I  previously said that I wouldn't talk about the Illamasqua make up course I attended because I wanted to avoid annoying the company by talking about it without their permission BUT I doubt showing my own work from the course will get me in trouble. There were various tasks to complete, each developing critical skills necessary in the make up industry. This included precision line work, blending, colour application, the perfect lip, skin sculpture and lash application. I wasn't able to get a picture of every single task we completed but the following pictures are from the few tasks I did manage to take a cheeky snap.

August Favourites 2014

This month I have been keeping track of the things I have loved using to make it super easy when September came around and I could do an August Favourites post.

I'd like to include a range of different items in this post which are beauty and lifestyle related, since that's the style of my blog. It wouldn't feel right to only take about beauty products because I have been excited by so much more than just cosmetics this month.

Make Up...