Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection

Foundation has always been my downfall. I've always been terrified of it, I am utterly rubbish at choosing colours that are good for me, they're either too pale or too orange. I ended up using one from Avon forever because it suited me and I was too scared to get anything different.

I asked the brilliant Jen at All that glitters and sparkles and she told me about collection 2000. When I've seen her pics I've always loved how flawless her skin looks and she uses this foundation, and it was pretty cheap from Boots at £5.99 so thought it was worth a punt.

I've got to say, it's one of the best products I've bought all year. I'm more than likely telling you stuff you already know as it seems I came to the party late on this one, but hell you can hear it again. It claims to give 16 hour wear and give flawless coverage, oil free, anti transfer and has the added benefit of being SPF 20 (yes, I always forget to put sun lotion on with make up).

It does pretty much do what it says on the tin. My skin looks great, even without a colour corrector or primer underneath. It gives medium to full coverage but is very light on the skin. My skin tone normally is very uneven, sallow and I generally just look ill all the time, so personally that shows how good this is.

 Shall I show you a pic of me with no make up on? Promise not to balk in disgust? Haha.

Just joking, I'm not that hidious!

Ok there we go, me with my gorgeous, yet filthy little man. As you can see I benefit from horrible pinkness and some yellowy pigmentation around the eyes, and that's me on an alright day!

Now to show you my skin with this foundation, now bare in mind, there are no primers or toners or anything on my face other than the foundation and some translucent pressed powder.

And for a close up of it


Now that was taken a bit into the night (there was much to drink, and I had a part in helping it fulfilling its life's destiny to be drunk) so had been sweating....sorry perspiring... and I still think it looks pretty good.

As for the lasting 16 hours? Well as it shames me to say it, I was a little worse for wear the next morning and yes, I went into work with my make up still on from the night before, I am disgusting I know, but my skin still looked pretty good, people even commented I didn't look as rough as they thought I would do, once it woke up and washed it off the full grimness was there to be seen haha.

I love the pump applicator, it means I can just pump some on the back of my hand and I'm not having to tap the end like a ketchup bottle and ending up with a big honking mess. I tend to put a couple of squirts on the back of my hand and apply it with a slightly damp sponge.

A great little benefit I've noticed, I have a tattoo on my arm which I hate hate hate! I can use this to hide it quite well, it takes a few applications building it up, but it covers it well.

George Nail polish

 I don't like ending on a bad point, so seeing as I hated my last product, I'll post one that I love.

I think I'm a bit late on the band wagon with these but I love them! They keep falling in my trolley when I'm doing my ASDA shop (pesky polishes!) and while there on offer for £1 each then they're my kinda price although for the colour range they do, I'd be more than happy to pay more than that.

I've only managed to get a couple so far, but they never seem to have great stock at my local one, bad times :(.

L-R: Be Mine, Streamer, Magical, Deceit, Blue Lagoon, Starry Eyed.

  OK, they don't have the most amazing sticking power, but for a quid and a gorgeous colour, who cares! So long as it lasts the day then I'm happy because I tend to change my nail polish every day, I've found though when testing they start to chip during day 2 but do show slight wear on the tips sooner. The range is great, when they have them of course, they do loads of different shades of each colour and some look like they should be so expensive. The matte shades are on my to-do list, but I've heard these chip really easily so I think I might invest in a matte top coat first.

Deceit

Baring the pastels (why are pastel polishes so hard to get right?!) the formula on them is great, just the right consistency and only ever need 2 coats. The brush is decent for the price, I've had the occasional stray bristle but nothing major.

Starry Eyed over W7 Black Cherry

Has anyone else got their hands on any of these yet? What's your fave colour?

Technics shimmer powder

This might have a real name other than shimmer powder, the colours might have individual names, but to be honest I don't care. This really is quite pants.

I bought this on sale for 99p from £1.99 and the packaging at first glance did intrigue me and looked quite cool. As you can see it's 1 circle seperated into quarters all eclosed and each has their own applicator brush as a stopper. Quite frankly it is rubbish. The applicator sits in a little spout so in order to get some on the applicator you've got to have it in the tub and shake it a bit. I hate products where you have to use the applicator that comes with it and you can't seem to get enough on it to use your own brush.

The colours: Well, they're a bit "meh". The grey/siver is very nice and I will try to decant this to another tub to use, but the other colours lack any richness and I didn't find they lasted all that well, by the end of my working day they'd pretty much gone from my eyes.

In the Shade

In the sun

 Here are some swatches to show the colours. I really don't recommend these, although maybe others might find them better with a primer?

Bodycare Treats

O.K, so despite telling myself I was nipping into town for a hair cut and nothing else....Well I cheated.

I popped into Bodycare because I needed some more cotton pads and remembered they sold odds and ends of cheap make up. The range as gone quite a bit bigger now. Most of it mainly appeals to the younger teens and clubbers etc. but there were some serviceable items and some for 19p on sale. I did my bit for the economy and decided to get some stuff. 

I'll just do a general post now and cover each item individually when I don't have my cat sprawled all over me.

There is an item missing there which is a white loose eyeshadow and you can't see the polish remover I got. Apparently its formulated for removing acrylics and tough polishes, I'm having a right mare removing my flakies and glitter polishes so thought I'd give this one a go.

The one you can't see as I said was an eyeshadow, I may as well put it on here or I'll forget.

So this one is from a company called Body Collection and the shade is 18501 Ice Maiden. I only paid 89p for it but I found it online in other shades at http://www.lovethymakeup.com (I cannot vouch for this website!) a bit more expensive at £1.99.

I'm not a massive fan of really loose shimmers because I'm really pants at putting them on and they end up all over but I can get over it for a colour like this. The applicator is really rubbish, its a hard rounded tip a bit like an eye liner blender so I just used a normal brush and swiped from the applicator.




Getting back to the colour, it is very shimmery and iridescent. I tried and failed to pick up just how sparkly and pretty this is. The colour as you can see is white, but there are flashes of blues, pinks, lilacs and greens. It's not very pigmented, but I do wonder what it would be like with some sort of primer or blending medium, I think it has potential. I could never wear that colour as a base though anyway so it makes no odds to me.

Apparently these are supposed to be good for layering but I just used it on the inside corners of my eyes for the old trick of making them look wider. I used it on a night out with work (which was fab by the way, I went on the karaoke and had to be near wrestled to the ground to get the mic from me) and it lasted all night. For 89p I'm extremely happy about how this one performed and will most certainly be using this again.

Bargain Ebay Palette

Bottom layer

 All pictures are clickable.

Right, well here we have my palette. I bought this from Ebay a few months ago. I was getting back in to make up and needed something cheap to be practising with but this has actually become my first point of call when I'm doing my make up now.

There are 120 shadows in total (so faaaar too many to swatch unless there is a certain colour anyone wants to see). In all those there is a good mixture of shimmer and matte shades. I've not used all of them because I'm not lucky enough to have a skin tone that pulls off 120 shades of colour. :( As you can see 1 is broke, luckly that is a colour I can't wear.

Top layer

Yellows to blue

Surprisingly some of these are very heavy pigmented and you don't need much at all, they're creamy and last really really well. I'm useless at taking my make up off once I've been out and had a few sherbets at the club and I've woken up a few mornings with my eye make up still intact. Some are actually a bit of a bugger to get off. Likewise some are a bit pale.  I think my one criticism, some of them are a bit too powdering and you get some fallout when applying them so I tend to put a bit of tissue under my eye

Lilacs to Greens

I said in the title that it was a bargain and it certainly was, I paid less than a tenner for this including postage. The seller was from China but it was dropshipped from a warehouse in England. My seller no longer sells these but you can get them on Ebay still, although you have to filter out the ones which are from the UK.


I have done some random swatches all taken in natural sunlight (might as well make the most of it while its here!). To be honest I don't think these do the shadows any justice in the slightest and are pretty pap. There are some lovely shades in this and have been used to make some great day and night looks.

All about Face cont...

Well I said I would post pictures of this, I've only just managed to get around to it, sorry. This is what the bottle looks like, mine was in a little plastic see through bag and was on one of those racks rather than on an actual stand if that makes any sense.

All pictures are clickable to see them a bit bigger. If only life was like that huh?

And I apologise for the state of my mani, I only had the light from the TV on me and to be quite honest, I simply couldn't be bothered cleaning up too much. I do need to get a new corrector pen though, at the moment I'm just using cotton buds dipped in polish remover and I sometimes end up removing some of the polish from my nail if I'm not too careful!! Can anyone recommend one?

And for a sneeky peek at my palette..

NOTD - Tesco All About Face Black Cherry

Ok, I know it says nails of the day, but I've actually been wearing this for nearly 3 days now. Look at how well it's bearing up!

I am wearing my GOSH rainbows over, I love it too much, but you can see the colour of the polish coming through. This colour was recommended to me by another blogger friend Jen after how disappointed I was with the Black Cherry from W7. This is a beautiful colour, it's very optulant and rich once you've got more than 1 coat on. It is a bit watery but nothing major and still went on nicely. The applicator wasn't too my liking however, it was a bit too light and being the clumsy oaf I am, I tend to drop things if I can't get a good grip of something.

It looks quite shiny in the picture but this is more from the GOSH, I found it to be a bit dull so would have put a top shine coat on it. I will post a picture later with just the colour on it's own.

I will have to have a go with some of the other colours in the range, I'm really impressed with it's staying power, after nearly 3 days and there only a tiny bit of wear on the tips whereas the W7 didn't even last a trip in the washing up bowl (always knew housework was dangerous!!). I work in a call center, so need a

At only £1.47 I think it's a billy bargain!

I'll be doing a post on my eyeshadow palette soon, so don't worry, it's not all nails.

W7 Nail Polishes.

I went shopping today and decided to get a few new polishes. I have a friend who works for Superdrug and she managed to find me a bottle of the coveted GOSH Rainbow and of course it is a layering polish so I had to buy a couple.

Now first I apologise for the photos, they were all taken quite quickly with my Blackberry but fairly represent the colours.

One of the local makeup stalls sells products by a company called W7, yeah I've never heard of them either but hey, we'll give it a go. They were selling a £2 a bottle and sold everything from pastels, metallics, neons to traditional colours.

I bought (from left to right) #70 Suede, #26 Black Cherry and #62 Sheer Blue



The bottles are good sizes, quite chunky and heavy with a good sized handle. The brushes I found were ok and shaped like bog standard brushes, although the one in the Sheer Blue had some loose strands.

I found the colours to be hit and miss. W7 Sheer Blue was very runny and needed a good 3 coats before I got any good colour, and then it was patchy in places and it just waterlogged my cuticles as you can see from the pictures. The colour in the bottle is very pretty and was a good indication of the end dried product. I doubt I'll use this much and I just know it wont last long thanks to how many coats I needed. It had a nice shine to it as well.



W7 Suede has got to be the best out of the 3 I tried. The colour was lovely (although I need a tan to pull it off completely), it went on beautifully smooth and only needed 1 coat. I can see myself using this one quite often.



W7 Black Cherry disappointed me slightly. You can see in the bottle and on the first coat that it does have a lovely cherry red undertone to it but it does need 2 coats to get the coverage you need and in that you end up losing the red tone to it and it just ends up being black, it's very very shiny though which I did like. It did go on fairly well though and has lasted well, I've been wearing a good few hours and have been tapping away at the computer, cooking etc. and I've got no signs of wear which for a cheapie is good. I will end up wearing this one because I got it for layering with my GOSH Rainbow but only until I find something that does show the undertoned colour.



And a sneaky peek at it layered with GOSH Rainbow (I will do a post on this another day).

How does one begin to blog?

You know, I'm not even sure why I'm starting a blog. I suppose this can be a way to document my trials and many errors into getting back into make up.

When I was a teen I wouldn't be seen without at least a bit of war paint on, as time went on and kids and commitments came along I stopped having time. I now rarely wear make up but I want to get back into wearing it even if it's just for a nice treat for myself to feel good when my skin looks pants.

When I was a teen I had some bad beauty moments, I might have to come back and do a post just on those! But I never got into the finer points of blending or anything like that and I think it is high time I did. Problem is, I can't afford to. I'm going to try to find some bargains and give them a while and see which are the keepers and which are a waste of time, hopefully by knowing which are the good buys I can save money to put towards buying the posher stuff.

I had my first go at blending the other day, looking at the eye on its own it looked half decent, I clearly have forgotten what shades suit me though because looking at my whole face, I looked like a clown on acid. Not a good look. 

I'm still learning how to use liquid liner properly to give different effects (I've always been a waterline gal) and can't find a red lipstick that doesn't make me look like a £10 prostitute, but lets see where this takes us, huh?