Bargain Synthetic Kabuki Brushes | Sigma/Zoeva Dupes.

If you're into beauty or have watched a single Jaclyn Hill video, I'm sure most girls know about the synthetic kabuki craze. In fact, I'm sure some of you even own one or two! I love these kind of brushes, and have been using various different ones from Sephora, ELF and Real Techniques for ages. Sigma, Blank Canvas, Zoeva, Sedona Lace and plenty of online brush brands came out with a series of different shaped kabuki brushes (for both the face and the eyes). Although a lot of Sigma brushes are certainly cheaper than MAC, they're still bloody expensive - especially for their synthetic kabuki brushes. All of the kabuki brushes that these online brands have to offer are always the same, just with Sigma or Sedona lace on the handle. They generally consist of; a flat top kabuki, a founded one, an angled one and a tapered brush with matching smaller brushes for the eyes.

FOTD | Comfort Zone Smokey Eye (Wet n Wild Tutorial)

I bought the Wet n Wild Comfort Zone palette (along with their Petal Pusher one) AGES ago, when I first saw they had come to Ireland. I swatched the shadows briefly, thought they were gorgeous and typical me stuck them at the back of a drawer never to be seen again. I recently saw someone mention Club eyeshadow by MAC in a tutorial and remembered Wet n Wild having an exact dupe of Club in the Comfort Zone palette. Club, and the definer shade in this palette are warm brown shadows with a blue/green shift which looks amazing when it hits the light at different angles. Club is easily one of MAC's best selling shadows - but I actually prefer the Wet n Wild one! It's more pigmented, shows up more "blue" and you can get the entire Wet n Wild palette (10 shadows) for about €6... a fraction of the price of a single mediocre MAC one! 

Anyway, dupes aside, I wanted to use this palette because I haven't featured any Wet n Wild shadows on my blog so far, I love them almost as much as their lipsticks! I think this is a great shade if you, ironically, want to get out of your comfort zone just a teeeeny bit. The palette itself is mostly neutral, with the blue/brown shade and a few olive greens. I think the blue/brown shade is such a fantastic way to wear colour if you're a neutral girl at heart. So, to truly bust out of the comfort zone, I used it in a smokey eye tutorial, taking you through all the steps to create this look which I think would be perfect for Christmas parties coming up! This look is really easy to create, keeping the dark shades on the inner/outer corners and using the blue/brown colour in the centre and lower lash-line. I used lashes for maximum impact, but they're always an option! Keeping it easy, I opted for no winged liner which means there's no excuse not to try this look for your next night out! When using such dark shades, I'd definitely recommend using a sticky base/primer and doing your foundation last! Finally, I kept the cheeks warm and peachy with some peach nude lips. Hope you guys enjoy! :)

FOTD | Airborne Unicorn.

So I'm finally back with a FOTD on my blog! I knew when my Lime Crime lipstick arrived that I wanted to do an all out purple look on both the eyes and lips. I was also really inspired by my friend's purple winged eyes at a gig we went to recently and decided to recreate my own version! This was done on a complete whim, at 5am because I had recently just bought a new light up mirror and could actually take semi-decent pictures with that as my light source! I included glitter in the inner corners, which is a PAIN to photograph (my crappy camera doesn't do it justice!) but you could also do a shimmery silver shadow instead. And, of course, if the eyes and lips are too much, you could opt for a neutral eye or lip and tailor it to suit you! Nonetheless, I wanted to do something quite bright and fun, since I haven't done my makeup for my blog in a while. I think the eyes would be perfect to wear to any parties or nights out over the next few weeks! Hope you guys enjoy! :)

  

Bloggers Christmas Tag + Galway Christmas Market.

Hi, my name is Grace and I used to blog on here about makeup type stuff that interested me. I've been so crap at blogging lately and I really have to apologise! I will absolutely be blogging more regularly this month and into January. I have SO many blog post ideas that I want to get done, but just haven't found the time yet. I'm super active on Twitter and Instagram so if you want to see some mini makeup hauls, sneak peaks of whats to come on the blog and other things in between my (sporadic) posts, then follow me on there! Last week I was tagged by Mary over at Miss Lucas to do the Christmas tag (make sure you check out her post, too!). I've been super busy with end of semester assignments and exams coming up but with today being the 1st of December, I thought it was appropriate to do the Christmas tag! I think non-beauty tags are a really good way to get to know someone a little bit more. I'm obsessed with Winter and especially Christmas. I mean, obsesssssed. Don't forget to comment below telling me your favourite Christmas movie, your favourite thing about Christmas in general aaaaand because this is a beauty blog, tell me your favourite Christmas makeup item; a glitter liner or a bright red lipstick, perhaps? :)

Galway Christmas Market, 2013.

Christmas Jumper - Topshop. Lips - MAC Cherry lipliner + Viva Glam Rihanna I.

Winter Nail Picks.

I love dark nails around this time of year. Black, burgundy, navy, greys. I love the way they look with a shiny top coat and a dark vampy lip. I also love glitter, too, so you know I had to include just a liiiiittle bit of that. Most of the glitter polishes I have are limited edition from different OPI or Barry M collections, but I will say that Barry M has the best range for fun polishes so definitely check that stand out first!

Review | Seventeen Define and Conquer Contour Kit.

It's not secret that finding a good contour product can be hard, but a good contouring product from a budget brand? Unheard of... until now! I'd seen this product pop up on a few beauty blogger Instagrams and with the inner drag queen in my always looking for new sculpting products, I decided to take up the Boots 3 for 2 offer and give this a go.

First off, I love the clever name. Lame, so lame, but I thought I'd mention it anyway! I also really like the packaging. Very Nars-esque but without the horrible dirt/powder attracting rubber texture. Sleek and compact with a good mirror. I approve already.

Inside are a highlight and contour powder duo. The texture is the same for both - creamy and pigmented, not chalky and definitely blendable. I already knew after one application that this would be a good one for beginners, it's so easy to blend!

10 Winter Lip Picks.

It's probably no surprise that I love bold, dark, vampy lips. So much so that this post was both a joy and a torture to write. 50% of me was so excited to share with you my favourite dark lip colours because well, I love talking about lipstick! The other 50% was dreading it because it was extremely hard for me to narrow it down to a) a particular number and b) permanent, readily available shades. I'm happy to say that all these colours are permanent, no limited edition ones here! I managed to restrict myself to just 10, otherwise I'd be here all day listing lipsticks! Most of these are more berry, purple and burgundy toned colours (although I did include a couple more subtle shades for you guys!) because I find them more readily available than the darker reds. That being said, I am waiting on a certain Lime Crime product that I'm hoping will prompt a follow-up post closer to Christmas around my top 5 holiday reds. Keep an eye out!

A lot of these are MAC, but I have a few budget/drugstore lipsticks here too that I love for winter and I hope you will too! These are just some of my favourite dark lipsticks, particularly the ones I've been using this year... if you want to see more lipsticks (and to see them in action on ma faaaace) then follow me on Instagram. I always post new makeup purchases on there and usually show them in a FOTD before they feature on ze blog!

My Inglot Eyeshadow Palettes + Swatches.

I've been a big Inglot eyeshadow fan for a few years now. I feel like it was such a small brand for a long time and lately has grown to be more popular than the likes of MAC among Irish girls. They're big into their Instagram and other social medias and have super talented makeup artists working on their counters so it's no surprise why they're getting so well known. It's so funny to me that when I first saw xSparkage mention Inglot, her and other beauty bloggers were talking about the struggles of finding Inglot stores (particularly in America) and now there are about 4 in Dublin alone! It's nice to see more stores popping up around the country (Galway needs one asap!) and with Inglot Ireland announcing their online store, I thought it would be a good opportunity to whip out my palettes and get swatching for you guys! 

In short; Inglot eyeshadows are pigmented, amazing quality and amount of product for the price and come in an array of colours and finishes. The high quality is pretty much the same for all Inglot shades I've tried. The only downside I have to Inglot is their numbering system - it's impossible to remember the numbers. That's the only reason why I refrain from using them too much in blog posts because I have to try and get them out of their palettes which is no fun for anyone involved! I would actually own more of their shadows if I kept a list of the shades I already own, because I'm always worried about getting doubles of the same shadow!

 

Numbers aside, they are amazing eyeshadows and that's what I'm going to focus on today, showing you the shades in my current collection and some of my favourites. They have a Freedom System whereby you choose the eyeshadows individually and put them into the Freedom System palette. These palettes come in loads of different sizes (2, 3, 5, 10, 20, even 40 eyeshadow slots!) and the Freedom System also extends into powders, blushes/bronzer/contour, lipsticks and concealers. These are SO ideal for both travel and makeup artistry. The prices of the palettes of course vary on the size, and are available on the Inglot Website. One thing I want to mention before I get into the shadows I own, is that Inglot also offer rainbow shades (in bright and neutral shades) which consist of 3 different shades of the same eyeshadow. I don't own any of these yet but will definitely be investing in some soon, it's worth looking online for swatches of those because I know they're super popular among Inglot fans!

Brow Game 101 | My Brow Routine - Products, Techniques, Tips&Tricks.

I've been meaning to do this post for a long time, but I was avoiding it for ages. Purely because brows are a personal thing, different for everyone and can be hard to explain in a written post. That, and there are so many different ways to fill in your brows depending on the look you're going for. This is going to be my own personal brow routine. I'm a big fan of a fuller, sculpted brow and that's exactly how I like to do my own. My brows are naturally dark and thick, but I thought I would show you guys a couple of different ways I like to do my brows. I definitely don't think my brows are perfect, and I'm constantly trying to make them better, but I get asked about my brows quite a bit so I thought I'd do this post for those who were curious! These methods and tips can be taken and tailored to suit your own personal brow style and I think there's a few things everyone can take away from this post, no matter what brow shape or style you like! I hope this is helpful for some of you; I've gone through some of the different methods separately so you have the option of reading all of them, or just focusing on the way you personally prefer to do your brows. I'm going in order of my natural evolution in brow products; I began with powders and soon discovered new and unique products to use - I hope you discover some new ones as well! This is gonna be a long one, so stick on the kettle!