I'm back! Summer make up look.

Hey everyone! It's been months since my last proper post, and I'm so excited to be back. I've missed blogging so so much and now exams are over, I can get back to regular posting!

As Summer in the UK has just about started, I thought I'd show you all a summer look I love to wear.

The products used in this post are Rimmel London Stay Matte Primer, Rimmel London BB Cream 9-In-1 Makeup (Light), Naked Flushed, Naked Palette, Naked 3 Palette,  Benefit Browzings Kit (Medium), Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion, Rimmel London Lash Accelerator Endless Mascara,  Tanya Burr Lipgloss in First Date , Rimmel Colour Rush Balm in Shade 'All You Need Is Pink'

 During the summer months, I really dislike wearing foundation as it always feels so heavy on my skin. Usually I tend to go without any kind of coverage on my face, but this year I really wanted to try out some BB Creams. So as a base I have used the Rimmel Stay Matte Primer and the Rimmel 9 in 1 BB Cream. It does actually say the BB cream works as a primer, but I've felt that using an extra primer just helps it last a little longer.

I then took Naked Flushed and put bronzer on my cheekbones, sides of my nose and a light coverage on my face to give me a little more colour and help my cheekbones become more prominent. I tend to only use a light dusting of the Flushed blush as it's quite pink and can become very obvious, whereas I prefer blush to be subtle. I then took the highlighter and used in on the tops of my cheek bones and on my nose.
And voila, there's my base! Nothing fancy, just a quick simple bit of contouring.

For my eyes I used the Urban Decay Primer Potion, to make sure my shadow lasted all day and had no creases (not that I've ever had that issue with the Naked palettes). I then used just the powder from the Brow Zings Kit to shape and define my eyebrows (doing the best I could, in need of getting them done again!)

For the actual shadow, I used Half Baked as an all over colour. I love the sparkle and gold of this colour, it's super summery and brings out the blue in my eyes. I then used Trick from Naked 3 from the outer corner to the middle of my eyelid to create a more varied colour. I then used Mugshot from Naked 3 along the crease and in the very outer corner of my lids, and finally the matte colour of Dark Horse as a softer eyeliner, as liquid liner can often run and make my eyes itchy in the heat. 

I put Dark Horse on my lower lash line and put Half Baked over the top to create a soft, shimmery and smoky liner look.

To finish this off I just applied mascara to define and extend my lashes (using my old favourite mascara, it's in like every blog post I've written I think!)

(so I totally forgot to take a picture of my lip gloss and balm up close... Oopth!)

I really like two coloured lips at the moment, so for this I took the Rimmel Colour Burst Balm and put it all over my lips. I adore this colour and find it quite pinky, which is an odd choice for me, as for lip colours I usually stay quite dark or neutral. I adore these balms because they're super pigmented and so so moisturising!

I then used Tanya Burrs lip gloss and put it on the centre of my bottom and top lip, dabbing it on and blending it out, to create a sort of 'gradient' look. Tanya's lipgloss's are also super moisturising and not too sticky.

And that's that! Here's the overall look I created, I hope you like it. I'm super glad to be back and cannot wait to start blogging more again!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this!

Lucy

xx

Brighton Trip

So, I've written this post about 10 times, but today I am finally going to finish it. On February 19th (I know, this is super late) I went to Brighton, a place that I've fallen in love with over the past few months, as it's so cute I thought I'd share my day with you!

The first stop on our trip was the beloved bric-a-brac shop that's hidden in the lanes. It's one of my favourite places, purely because they sell everything from suits of armour to fur coats to vintage Dalek's and amazing suitcases. The shop itself is huge and made up of tons of different individual sellers displays, it's such a quirky layout and gives the impression of an 'organised mess'. I love how different one corner is from the next- oh and upstairs they have incredible vintage and hand made clothing that is so beautiful (and super expensive, oh the downside of being a poor teenager).

  

Image source

Our next stop was the incredible West Cornwall Pasty Co. . Now, when I found out we were going to Brighton again, I was super excited to find a cute cafe that sold pretty little sandwiches and cakes, not once did I think about Pasties. My god am I glad we did though. They are so tasty, they range from your bog standard (but delicious) cheese & onion, to the slightly more unusual Chicken & Spicy Chorizo (also delicious). and seeing as they cost around £4 and are super filling, it was definitely a good choice!

Just across the road from the pasty shop, there is the cutest little vintage book shop. I adore reading and book stores are one of the few places that help me relax and unwind. So of course, I was in my element here. After like half an hour of marvelling at the awesome selection, we finally picked up a couple of books, I bought a collection of Hans Andersens fairytales that was published in around 1929 and is super pretty.


Whilst on the conversation of literature, Brighton is full of comic book stores, it made our forbidden planet in Southampton look totally inadequate. We found around 3 in walking distance of each other and of course, we then spent ages freaking out                                                   over all the merch and fantastic comics! Oh to be                                                 near a comic book store, the things I could buy...

Red Velvet cupcake from my IG

Before I show you all what I spent all my money on I feel you should all know about the incredible yummy-ness that Angel Food Bakery. It's a gem hidden in the lanes that we found kind of hard to get to, but the cakes make it so worth it! I went there first in October on recommendation from a friend and it was incredible. The cakes are so so delicious, and the icing isn't overly sweet which is fab because it's the thing I hate when it comes to cupcake shops. And the fact that they're like £2 is incredible, but fair warning they are so so moreish.

And last but not least, time to talk about the mini haul that I came back with from the day. 

I think it comes as no surprise to you all that I visited Lush, I'd try to cover and say I only bought like two bath bombs, but I actually bought around six. The Brighton Lush shop is super cute and all of the bath bits looked extra good! In the end I came home with Dreamtime, Ceridwen's Cauldron, Lord Of Misrule (Limited Edition so no link to the site!), Avobath, Blackberry Bath Bomb and Honey Bee. Thank god for budgeting and friends stopping impulse buys, otherwise I'd have come home with only Lush products!

I finally got around to purchasing a new powder. Rimmel Stay Matte Powder is fantastic and so much better then my Maybelline Fit Me powder. As a congratulations for finally moving away from that horrible product, I thought I'd also buy myself a Real Techniques Powder Brush, I can safely say it's flawless. The bristles are super soft and it evenly distributes the powder to give my skin an amazing finish. Since Brighton I may have encouraged a Real Techniques obsession as I've bought two since - but that's for another day...

We somehow ended up near a Debenhams, which is never a good thing because Debenhams means Urban Decay, and Urban Decay means I spend all my money. I've had my eye on the Naked Flushed Palette for a while now and as it was triple points on beauty products, I just had to buy it. I actually wrote a bit about it in my February Favourites Post.

Finally I picked up a couple bargain every day clothing pieces. On the left of the picture you can see the flannel shirt. I absolutely adore it and I wear it quite often with a black skater dress just to give me an extra something to keep a look casual, and for £5 I can't complain. It's super comfortable and is a Mens fit, so super baggy! And then I just picked up a baggy jumper for casual wear, once again for £5. It's nothing special but it's super comfortable and will be perfect for days when I can't really be bothered with my outfit!

I hope you enjoyed this post, sorry if it was a bit long? 

Idk it was hard to write!

Lucy 

xx

Leibster Award!

I checked my inbox today to see that I'd been nominated for a Liebster award by the lovely Emily (theoxfordshopper) , I've seen a lot of bloggers do these but I never thought someone would add me to do it, so thank you!

The Rules

1. You must link back to the blogger who nominated you

2. You have to state 11 facts about yourself

3. You have to answer the 11 questions given to you by the blogger who nominated you

4. You have to nominate 11 other blogs (with under 300 followers) and set 11 questions for them to answer

5. You can't nominate the person who nominate you

6. You have to tell the nominee that they have been nominated by you

11 Facts

1. My main goal in life is to be a Forensic Scientist and it's something I've been interested in since I was Eleven. 

2. My favourite colour is blue, and I tend to always buy and wear blue or black clothes. 

3. I have an intense hatred for banana's that goes beyond a normal dislike for food.

 4. My natural hair colour is brown, I've been dying it red/ginger for five years. 

5. I'm incredibly not organised and I find it very difficult to stick to a routine (hence the lacking posts sorry everyone!) 

6. I adore Welsh and Scottish accents, I could listen to people talk with them for days.

7.Even after quitting gym like 7 years ago, I can still somehow do the splits and am quite flexible.

8. I find it really difficult to write facts out about myself, this has taken me over an hour.

9. I have two dogs (a jack russell & a great dane) and 3 cats.

10. I love Disney and I've seen The Little Mermaid so much I can recite quotes whilst I watch.

11. I have like no hobbies, unless you count reading and blogging.

Questions From Emily

1. Have you ever met any celebrities? I've met a few people I see as celebrities, from bands I like. For example I've met Mayday Parade and Boys Like Girls. And I've also met quite a few authors (Darren Shan, Derek Landy & Terry Pratchett)

2. What's your guilty pleasure? It's gotta be my love for all these incredibly cheesy - One Direction, Glee and cliché romance films.

3. What's the first thing you notice when you meet someone for the first time? Honestly? Their eyes, I'm a big sucker for really pretty eyes and eyelashes.

4. What's something you want to do before you die? I want to travel the world and see as many places and meet as many people as I can.

5. Are you a pessimist or an optimist? A pessimist

6. If you could have a dinner party with 5 people of your choice, dead or alive, who would you choose, and why? Hannah Hart - because I admire her and I feel she'd be really good at the whole interesting dinner conversation, David Attenborough because he's incredible and well, I could meet David Attenborough... Sylvia Plath just for the pure reason that the bell jar is such an incredible book and her poetry is amazing, I'd love to just have a conversation with her. Hank & John Green (they count as 1 they're brothers) because I think they'd have great dinner table conversations, and again I'd like to show my appreciation for them. Lastly, umm Dylan O'Brien because he's a top class cutie and I'd just really like to meet him

7. Favourite fictional character? Ah either Will Herondale from The Infernal Devices, Tris Prior from Divergent, Margo Roth Spiegelman from Paper Towns or Bitterblue from the Graceling series.

8. What's something everyone loves but you hate? Pickled Onions. I eat them by the jar load which is super gross but they're so tasty.

9. Favourite pizza topping? BBQ base, cheese and peperoni.

10. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Definitely a night owl, I don't do early mornings.

11. Winter, spring, summer, or autumn/fall? Spring is definitely my favourite. I love winter temperatures and snow but it makes me so miserable. I always feel like Spring is the beginning of something happy, y'know? Like the light after months of darkness.

Ah even thought that took me so long to write, thankyou for nominating me Emily, it was super fun!

I'm going to nominate the five people I follow that are under 300!

Katie - andtherestfollows.blogspot.co.uk

Shelley - shelleybusby.blogspot.co.uk

Isabelle - isabellelauderrobb.blogspot.co.uk

Jordan- jdaisygauntlett.blogspot.co.uk/

My Questions
1. If you could meet one celebrity, who would it be and why?
2. What book has changed the way you look at life?
3. What's one beauty product you couldn't live without?
4. How easy to do you find it to introduce yourself to a new group of people?
5. Top 5 favourite bands?
6. Are you introverted or extroverted?
7. What's your biggest aim for the future?
8. What is your favourite time of year and why?
9. In an argument, are you more likely to apologise or wait for someone to apologise to you?
10. What's your favourite feature?
11. If you could have any animal in the world as a pet, what would it be?

Thankyou for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

Lucy 

xx

Staying Positive

Hey everyone I'm back! I thought today I'd share with you a few ways that I try and stay positive giving the difficulties that have popped up lately.

Unfortunately, I tend to be rather pessimistic and so I have to try my hardest to stay positive, especially when things aren't so easy. Over the years I've discovered ways in which I can stay optimistic, and I thought I'd share a couple here!

Writing
Whenever I feel like I'm struggling in some aspect of my life, I grab my journal and I write. It's never anything structured or grammatically correct, just what I'm feeling. I always feel that once it's down and on paper my feelings are easier to control as I can analyse and figure out what has caused the issues and how I can fix them.
I feel writing is a quite important thing to help me stay optimistic as I can literally read my problems on a tiny piece of paper. That makes them a lot easier to manage than swimming around in my head.

Looking back at memories.
As much as I hate to say it (for the worry of sounding spoilt and selfish) I have days where I feel like I have nothing and I do nothing and just generally feel inadequate. That's when I run to my memory box and pick out the items and albums (like this one). In a busy college/work life it's very easy to forget all you've experienced, so collecting images and little pieces from all the wonderful places you've visited really reminds you of all you have. Not only that but looking back on past photos just brings back the happy memories and puts me in a wonderful mood.

 Reading
I've always been quite a book-ish person and so whenever I feel stressed or upset my first reaction is to grab a book. When I read I tend to go into a completely different zone and immerse myself into the world I'm reading about. I find this a major help to keep me optimistic as after a few hours of reading I feel relaxed, refreshed and ready to take on any problems I've been having. Obviously, If you don't particularly enjoy reading, there's always watching films and youtubers or listening to your favourite music. All of those seem to have a similar effect, reading is just the preferred for me!

Writing Lists
This is one I tend to use when I'm stressed over deadlines more than anything else. When you have multiple jobs that need finishing, it can become overwhelming and scary to begin them all. I've found that writing lists of the things I have to do (from eating lunch to writing an essay) gives me a lot more motivation as being able to tick the boxes and see the jobs decreasing takes a lot of the stress away!
On the topic of multiple jobs that need doing, I try to start with the most difficult so that later on in the day I'm not facing the tough challenges.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and that it's helped in some way (especially with AS Level exams coming up in a few months!)

I'd love to hear how you unwind and stay positive, feel free to comment with some tips!

Until next time

Lucy 

xxx

Goodbyes

Just a quick one today, need to do some explaining to y'all. 

This week I've had to say goodbye to someone who's been like a sister to me for two years (without getting into it a lot she's leaving the UK) and it's been a very emotional week for various reasons surrounding that circumstance.

As it's all I've really been focusing on, every time I've sat down to write a new blog post I can't bring myself to write something good. I mean I probably could have written half decent posts about all the things I wanted to write about on my week off, but it wouldn't be great.

So I decided on Monday I was going to leave my blog alone this week and go back to normal either this Sunday or next Wednesday.

Basically, I apologise for the lack of posts but bear with me and all will be back to normal next week!

Lucy

xx

Birthday? Birthday.

On the 31st January I turned 17, which in itself is completely insane. I'm not entirely sure where the past years have gone, my 10th birthday seemed like it was 2 years ago, not 7!
I've always thought of 17 as a very practical year, learning to drive and all that. So I didn't expect any physical 'gifts' from anyone, just driving lessons. Turns out I was spoilt rotten by friends and family members, not only did I get 10 driving lessons, I got some pretty amazing gifts. This isn't a post to brag, just to express my gratitude for people and how caring they are.

This is the main bulk of my gifts from friends and family, minus a few things. They got me some pretty special gifts, from music to films to tv shows to lush, they all know me so well. If any of you read this, thank you so much, you're awesome!

Until around 7:30pm the night before my birthday, I wasn't expecting to do anything! It was gonna be a stay at home and watch films with the family kind of birthday. My friend Hayley sent me a text asking me to keep the night of my birthday free. It was so nice to know that I was actually going to see her, as two of my best friends go to a different college, we rarely meet up.

It was so nice to spend an evening with them, gossiping and catching up with each others lives. In a way not seeing them constantly makes it even better when we do all see each other. 

It's funny because one of my other close friends, Alex, has the same birthday as me. So to celebrate his, the next day we all went over for pizza and movies. Alex is essentially a 70 year old man (not sure if you can tell by the dressing gown) which is the funniest thing when 17 year olds are there making your house messy. It was so relaxing to get a big group of us together and just mess about, even if we did argue about pizza for around 30 minutes! I much preferred it to a party in which you rarely speak to the people you want to. 

So basically, I had an amazing birthday and my friends are great! 

Thank you for reading, I hope you all have fab birthdays this year

Lucy

xx

Hogwarts In The Snow

As most of my friends and family know, I always have and probably always will love Harry Potter with all my heart. In fact, I think it was the first series of books I read at the eager age of Seven! So when the Warner Brothers Studio Tour was announced two (?) years ago, I knew I had to go. It was as magical and perfect as I thought it would be, but nothing could have prepared me for the announcement of Hogwarts In The Snow!

 We actually visited the Studio Tour on January 6th, so this post is a tad late. I hope you don't mind as I really wanted to show you all how magical and christmassy they had made it. Luckily for us, we managed to see the last day of the Christmas set up in the great hall, before it just transitioned into Hogwarts In The Snow (which is in fact still featured until February 2nd!) I was overwhelmed enough by being in the great hall the first time round, so seeing it all festive made my inner 7 year old squeal with excitement.

The decorations were just perfect, all of the place settings had matching house Christmas crackers, surrounded by ceramic and real (much to my surprise) seasonal food, with all of the trees colour co-ordinated to the right houses. It was just incredible to see how much detail the set designers went to in order to give it that festive feel - it was 'snowing' outside the windows, and to make the Christmas Trees just that bit more magical, they had flying witches circling the top!


One of my favourite things about Harry Potter is the costume and hair variations, so seeing all the wigs and prosthetics that they used in the films was wonderful. To know that Evanna Lynch's hair wasn't that long or flowing or perfect, it was  a wig, made my envy of her just slightly reduce! I'm fascinated by how makeup and hair and costume can change a character completely so seeing all the sketches and costume ideas is one of my favourite things about this tour.

I have to say, my favourite costumes of the whole film are definitely the Malfoys collection. They're so dark and plain, yet so iconic and powerful. It's funny how you can just glance at their costumes and know which characters they belong to, yet another awesome thing that the HP crew managed to achieve.






One of the cool things about this tour is that they've left the Privet Drive set so you can visit the street and take pictures, something I've actually always wanted to see. I didn't actually realise it wasn't a real street until I visited the tours...

I have to say my all time favourite set from the whole tour is the potions room. The fact that all the bottles surrounding the walls featured hand written labels, or that the potions books were hand written show just how much care and intricacy have gone into the whole film. Even the minor details are treated as if they are a key part of the scene. All the cauldrons in this set have stirring spoons moving constantly to make it feel like you're actually in Hogwarts yourself!

Now back to the Christmas side! The Gryffindor boys dormitory was surrounded with tinsel EVERYWHERE. Wrapped around all the boys individual beds (you can suss out who's is who due to the things on their bedside tables) and taped to the walls. If you got a chance to go and look closely, you would have seen that on every table their featured various hand made Christmas cards from student's, all with magical themes. I like the fact that the decorations are homely and juvenile, it meant they fit in perfectly with Harry's idea of hogwarts being his home.

Last but definitely not least, the Hogwarts castle. Fun fact for you all, the first time I went, the castle actually made me shed a tear. It's actually quite overwhelming to see something so spectacular and close to your heart. 

This time was no different, in fact, it was better. The entire castle is covered in snow, with snowmen and footprints everywhere.  The picture really doesn't do justice to how festive this makes you feel. And this, for me, was the thing that showed me how much care and effort was put into these films. The castle has all individual windows, turrets, doors and gateways and it features every part of the Hogwarts grounds - from Hagrids Hut to the Boat House in which snape died (*crys*). It's bigger than I had imagined it to be, and to truly take in all of the detail, I imagine you'd be there for hours!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

Lucy 

xx

All photos taken by my friend, Elysha Richards

Hey!!

Well, Hi!
I'm Lucy, a 16 year old girl from Southampton, a city in England.
I adore reading books, ~trying~ to do makeup nicely and well, going on the internet.
Essentially this post is to explain what this blog is gonna be, i'm gonna try and do a mix of different things, book reviews, film reviews, makeup posts and just general life events. I've decided that if I'm gonna procrastinate from my College work, the procrastination should be at least some form of productive!!
So welcome, 
feel free to email me if you want to chat; lucycollingwood97@gmail.com
or speak to me on tumblr http://uolycul.tumblr.com/ask
or tweet me ^^ http://twitter.com/Luucy_3