Weekend Wear: Peplum Power

The weather this weekend was really nice - and it has stayed like that since. I've been out and about enjoying it, hence the slightly belated Weekend Wear post (whoops). So naturally when the sun was out, my logic was to wear a black dress (OF COURSE). Hmm. In my defence, it's a lightweight dress, made of soft t-shirt material so it didn't feel like I'd just rolled out of my coffin swathed in velvet. It also has a peplum waist, a shape that I hadn't worn until I bought this dress (and an identical grey one - it was buy-one-get-one-free, your honour) because I wasn't sure if it would look right on me. I always figured the structure of a peplum dress was to help create a bit of shape for slimmer girls that had straight up-and-down figures so I was surprised when I ended up liking it! 

The dress is from Vans (yep, the same label that makes the shoes - turns out they make cute dresses too) and even though it's a 'fancy' shape, the casual material makes it super comfy. I wore it with a cardigan from Urban Outfitters that I've had for ages, mint H&M tights and my Vivienne Westwood x Melissa flats (although you can't see the shoes in the picture, my bad).
I also wore a sparkly bow from Crown and Glory and a Vivienne Westwood pendant from a couple of Spring/ Summer collections ago. The orb is made of rubber and nice and chunky, love it! I had originally done my nails a teal colour using OPI's Fly but later that evening Lauren (from Living in a Boxx blog) very kindly gave me a fabulous gel manicure using purple and grey glitter.  I wore this outfit to meet a couple of the other blogger girls at the weekend and had a lovely evening getting to know them a bit better.

I had cracked open my new Kat Von D Everlasting Love liquid lipstick (OBSESSED with liquid lipstick lately) and as well as being super bright and going on nicely, I'm pleased to report that it lasted through an evening of eating, drinking and chatting. More details on my Kat Von D makeup purchases to come in my upcoming Sephora makeup haul - later this week.

I'm happy to hear that the nice weather is to continue through to this weekend, as The Boy and I are going to London for a few days to celebrate our anniversary (ain't love grand?) and it would be nice to not lug umbrellas around all day! Also, if any of you lovely readers know what kind of fun things there are to see/ do/ eat/ etc in Shoreditch please feel free to tweet me or leave a comment. I know I can Google it but I think it's always good to hear about the things and places that real people love and have had fantastic experiences of, don't you? I've already got The Diner jotted down as a must-do for a bite to eat, and I hear there is an excellent market on a Sunday. Unfortunately I don't think the cat cafe (SQUEAL!) has opened yet but I can always see that on the next visit...

What did you wear this weekend? Have you worn a peplum dress before? Would you visit a cat cafe?

Thanks for reading!

Holiday Wear: Orange Sherbet

As I was not around to blog my usual Weekend Wear posts, I thought I would pick one outfit from my holiday and write a post on that instead! This is an outfit I wore at some point in the second week of our trip and aside from the glasses and hair flower, it was comprised of new purchases I made during the holiday (who wants to read about my Primark shorts and tee shirt combos anyway?), yay!

Let's take a moment to talk about this dress. It is ORANGE! Like, borderline neon orange. I have never worn anything so bright since my mum stopped dressing me as a kid (there were a lot of Lion King-esque ensembles when I was ten, let's not talk about that though...) and as a teenage goth I never thought I would wear something so bright ever again. It is the second orange frock I have bought in recent times (teenage me would be rolling her kohl-plastered eyes in disgust) and waaaay out of my comfort zone. But! I really like this dress. The cut is seriously cute and the white print (all moons and shooting stars) reminds me of Lucky Charms. So even though it is very bright, I was still drawn to it. The Boy deemed it as approved, declaring it "something a cartoon character would wear" - he always knows just what to say. I have Christened it the 'Orange Sherbet'.

The dress is from JC Penney (or JCP as they are now rebranded as), a large US department store. JCP have introduced some new designer-name collections to their store (think H! By Henry Holland at Debenhams, same kind of concept here) including Lulu Guinness, Betsey Johnson and Nanette Lepore. This dress is part of Nanette Lepore's L'Amour collection for JCP, and I managed to get it in the clearance section which made it even sweeter (I'd have paid full price for it anyway).

I paired the dress with my new Levi's studded denim vest (bought from the Levi's outlet) which I customised with a few pins that I had with me until I got it home to my full magpie-like range of pins, button badges and brooches. This broke up the bright orange a little and I had been dying to wear my new vest anyway so it was a win-win for me!

My hair flower and faithful heart-shaped glasses are from H&M (every girl needs a pair of heart-shaped sunnies...) and I did my 'holiday mani' nails a few days before using OPI's Strawberry Margarita, Sinful Colours' Crystal Clear glitter with a Hello Kitty for Sephora decal on my ring fingers. The result was a bright pink, glittery, kawaii dream - exactly what I was going for.

It was very, very warm and sunny that day (and every day that fornight) so tights were out of the question. I know, I know! I don't actually wear tights in Florida, I go with my bare legs and let my self-consciousness fly out the window for a few weeks. Who's have thunk it, eh? They would have dissolved in the heat though! I had bought two pairs of Vans trainers while at the outlets (perfect summer footwear, so light and comfy) and could not resist the uber-glitter goodness of these shoes! They remind me of Columbia from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so it really didn't take much else to persuade me to buy them. As I was wearing such an eye-catching dress I really had no clue which shoes to wear, nothing seemed to match or was subtle enough, and black just looked weird. So I decided to fight fire with fire, or at least, glitter!

I wore this wee outfit to go bowling at Splitsville Luxury Lanes, which is new at Downtown Disney, and later that night we played mini golf (so much better in the cooler evenings compared to during the day). We had a blast!

Do you rock the orange sherbet look? What is your latest dress purchase? Have you ever fought fire with glitter?

Thanks for reading!

Weekend Wear: May the Fourth

This weekend is The Boy's birthday which makes it a special one. It was also May the Fourth (also known as Star Wars Day) - which to any sci-fi or movie fans out there is significant as it's also an opportunity for fans of the Star Wars movies to celebrate all things Star Wars. When I asked The Boy what he wanted to do for his birthday this year he told me that he wanted to stay in, eat some of his favourite food with a couple of pals and watch The Empire Strikes Back - his favourite of the Star Wars franchise. The plan was laid back and fun, just like The Boy himself!

Always keen to throw myself headfirst into a theme, I wanted to make sure the evening would be as Star Wars-y as possible so started planning out what food to make, how to decorate and - of course - what to wear!

With a couple of t-shirts to pick from and the fact that we were spending the evening at home watching a movie, a t-shirt and skirt combo sounded like the ideal ensemble. I picked up this Star Tours tee at the re-opening of the Star Tours attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios park in 2011 and paired it with a navy blue and white polka dot skirt from Tommy Hilfiger. Since I'd already started a blue and white theme I wore a pair of blue tights from H&M and didn't bother with shoes since I was hanging out in my own flat.

The Boy wore his Star Tours tee as well, although it was a harder choice for him as he has more Star Wars clothes to choose from (including some pretty awesome Adidas x Star Wars limited edition items).


Hair-wise, it was all about the Princess Leia buns of course! I mean, how could I (k)not? I also jumped at the chance to wear my new DIY Nails R2D2 decals, hurrah! These were a little bit more fiddly than your average nail wraps but looked great on. I will need to invest in a stronger topcoat though, and I'm not ruling out PVA glue, because my usual Sally Hansen just wasn't cutting it! I also made a couple of button badges for us to wear - mine said Ewok Princess because when watching the films as a kid I loved the Ewoks best.

We watched the movie, played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, laughed all night and ate our body weight in junk food (including some birthday cupcakes that I had just enough time to whip up during the day). A good time was had by all and The Boy said it was his best birthday yet.

What did you wear this weekend? Did you celebrate May the Fourth? Do you know any insanely strong topcoats I could try?

Thanks for reading!

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! 

Beauty Bites: Sinful Colours

Last week over the Twitterverse I had heard that US drugstore nail polish brand Sinful Colours had arrived in the UK and was being stocked in Boots. Sinful Colours have a reputation for delivering a high-quality, 'professional' finish a la OPI and China Glaze at a purse-friendly price so I decided to buy a couple of colours and try them for myself.

I managed to squeeze past the tweens that had crowded the display at Boots to pick my colours out. With 70 shades to choose from, and a range of finishes which included glitter, pearl, shimmer, cream and matte; I was left spoiled for choice (even the amount of PINKS to choose from was huge.). They had every shade in stock except for Unicorn, a lemony pastel yellow - the actual colour of a unicorn's horn (in my imagination). After a lot of umm-ing and ahh-ing (and sighing from The Boy - well, there is only so long you can wait for a girl to pick some nail polish I suppose) I settled on Pinky Glitter - not as clever a name as Unicorn but chosen because, well, you know...it's pink and glittery. I also picked out Mint Apple which is a nice shade of light aqua.

At £1.99 each they certainly live up to their low-cost promise, but how did the colours actually turn out? Mint Apple was very easy to apply and after just two coats I built up a strong colour that dried very quickly. I decided to wear Pinky Glitter as well so painted my ring finger nails that colour (ring finger accents are my manicure detail of choice at the moment). To make the pink really stand out, I applied a bright polish first (Raspberry Crush by Model's Own) with Pinky Glitter layered on top. One coat of Pinky Glitter worked really well and I could see the flecks of pink and gold sparkling in the light (although difficult to capture on camera). I layered another coat on top to see how that affected the finish and I am pleased to report that unlike some glitter polishes it could withstand two coats and dry properly without any smudging.

A few days later and the colour has held up really well. I didn't bother using a topcoat this time to see how the colours would last on their own. There is some slight chipping but considering what my hands have been through the last few days (things like doing the dishes etc) I think the polish has held up pretty well, probably as well as if I had used one of my OPI, MAC or Chanel colours to be honest.

At £1.99 I would definitely recommend picking one up and since they are currently in the 3 for 2 offer at Boots you could always mix and match a couple (if like me, you find it hard to choose between 70 colours).Overall I'm impressed by the range of colours, the quality and the price.

Have you tried Sinful Colours nail polish? What do you think of them? Do you ever imagine what a unicorn might look like?

Thanks for reading!