Events: Speed Beauty

After reading online about Itison's Speed Beauty event a couple of weeks ago, I knew that it would be something that I would be interested in. Playing with makeup and talking about makeup generally makes me about as happy as a pig in muck so the idea of spending an evening with some awesome brands and fellow slap addicts to boot made it easy for me to sign up. The event was held on Wednesday night in Merchant City's Metropolitan venue and the concept behind it was simple: similar to speed dating, Speed Beauty allowed you to spend ten minutes with each brand before deciding at the end who had stolen your heart!

Once all the attendees had arrived, we were split into 4 groups and the running of the evening was explained. Each group will go to their first designated brand and spend ten minutes with them. During the ten minutes they will see a demo of the products and participate in some beauty banter. After the ten minutes has ended, there will be two minutes of Q&A with the brand, before the horn was sounded and that will be your group's cue to move onto the next stand. After all the groups had visited everyone there will be time to then go back to the ones you like, have a chat and buy anything that took your fancy. The brands listed as participating were impressive: Illamasqua cosmetics, DIY Nails, Beautiful Brows, We Are Faux lashes and Belle & Blackley hair. Unfortunately once we got there we found out that We Are Faux had cancelled at the last minute, which was a bummer as my friend and I were looking forward to seeing them. However, the rest of the brands were still there and we had such a great time that the fact We Are Faux hadn't managed to come didn't cause too big a dampener anyway.

The other girls in our group were really nice. Everyone was excited and up for a laugh and it had the atmosphere of a fun giggly night out. Our group's first stop was at Illamasqua, a high-end cosmetics line normally stocked in the likes of Debehams and Selfridges. I've been a fan of Illamasqua since seeing their initial advertising campaign and adore their commitment to encouraging individuality and their use of cruelty-free makeup and tools. At their demo, make up artist Mika created a 'night time' look on a lucky girl in our group - creating a dark, smokey eye with glitter pigments and a soft pink lip.

While talking us through the products being used, another Illamasqua artist let us play with a selection of different products, allowing us to try them out for ourselves. I especially liked their blush duo in Lover/ Hussy and their glitter pigments which were so soft they didn't feel like there was so much sparkle in them (some glitters by other brands have a rough 'gritty' feel which was not the case with these glitters). Illamasqua also invited us to their 'Beauty School Drop In' (Grease reference, love it!) tutorial at Debenhams to learn a pin-up make up look for free. I was impressed with the demo and the products and before we knew it, it was time to move on to our next stop - DIY Nails.

It's a not-so-secret fact that I am huge fan of nail art and in advance of the event I had seen that DIY Nails, a Scottish nail art brand would be at Speed Beauty. DIY Nails was created by Tammy, entrpeneur extrordianaire who can turn pretty much anything into some mani candy! Needless to say, I was all over this stall. I was happy to sit and chat about decals and ring finger accents until the cows came home (first pigs and now cows...) and even had my nails done with some super cute unicorn and french fry decals. DIY Nails can make decals out of pretty much anything and take bespoke orders which I  think is a genius idea - I could have Prince on one hand and pizza slices on the other (IMAGINE!). I knew that I would be back to see Tammy at the end to buy some decals and she kindly put aside the ones I liked for me!

The next stall was Belle and Blackley who are a salon in the city centre. Their stylist took us through 5 ways to use GHD straighteners (other than for straightening) and also gave us some top tips on how to get the best out of using the straighteners. The curls and waves created in the ten minutes looked really good and seemed very easy to do. The group definitely seemed impressed with this demo. After this there was one more stand left and we made our way over to Beautiful Brows once hostess Sherri sounded the horn.

Beautiful Brows - where to begin?! I will admit that before the evening started I was probably looking forward to this stand the least. What can I say, I was naive! I heard other girls in the group talking about Beautiful Brows and how amazing they were but I didn't realise just how amazing until I seen them for myself! Beautiful Brows have come up with a semi-permanent brow makeover system using makeup and stencils. I know the stencil bit sounds a bit strange but it has to be seen to be believed. The friendly representatives from the brand did everyone in our group's eyebrows - and still had plenty of time left to chat to us. The process takes seconds to apply so it was easy to get our whole group done. For the rest of the evening we were all looking at each others eyebrows, it was quite funny!

I was really impressed with the products from Beautiful Brows and how they managed to transform my patchy eyebrows into more solid, yet natural shapes. So impressed in fact, that I went back later to buy a kit. I will post a full review of my Beautiful Brows kit (or what I am now referring to as Voodoo Magic For The Face) separately.

After the 'Speed' part of the night was over, we spent a bit of time with each of the brands and chatted a little more. I also bought my brow kit and some R2D2 and burgers n' fries decals. It was tempting to buy some of Illamasqua's beautiful makeup but I decided that could be a purchase for another day - and it's always easy to pop into Debenhams and see them anyway. 

I really enjoyed Speed Beauty, and was pleased to hear that it was a tester event for more in the future to be arranged. I would definitely be interested in going back. Also, the staff at Metropolitan and representatives from Itison were very helpful and upbeat, which helped create a relaxed setting for people to enjoy themselves in so a big hi-five to all involved in the running of the night! 

Did you go to Speed Beauty? Which one was your favourite brand? Would you wear pizza slices on your nails?

Thanks for reading!