photo diary #5

Olympic fever has hit the UK, especially this guy! - debating running off to Hogwarts - pretty flowers - utopia and ibiza mix - read this 23282 times, never gets old - new Lush emotional brilliance in 'believe' - Daisy's first Brighton trip! - oh I do like to be beside the seaside - bubblegum ice cream - waiting twenty five minutes for a bloody train - natural history museum time - I gave Emma a MAC makeover - cute baby YSL sample - the best SFX show ever - Illamasqua's 'depravity' and MAC's 'cyber' - so close to my heart - two faced make up - making the yummiest lunches ever lately - reading about Marylin, my babe - my make up work was pulished in 'The Sun' newspaper! - I won Collection's Olympic nail art competition, thank you to those who voted!

homemade strawberry sugar scrub

If your skin needs a little pick me up an exfoliate is always a good idea, I've grown bored of my personal facial scrub and decided to do a little research into making my own. I decided to make a strawberry sugar scrub, it's surprisingly simple and I had no idea how good strawbs were for our skin, here are a few benefits:

• Rejuvenates skin
• Cleans and tightens pores. Thanks to the natural acid they work deep into the pores, cleaning them, removing debris and impurities.
• Can be used as a cleanser and exfoliant to remove dead skin cells.
• Reduces and cures acne
• Can be used as a body scrub
• Very effective in treating oily skin.

So not only do they taste great, they treat our skin great to! Here's how to make your very own strawberry sugar scrub:

1. Grab eight strawberries, two cups of sugar and a teaspoon of olive oil.
   
2. Blend the strawberries to a puree and add the sugar and olive oil - mix well!
   
3. Store in a jar or container (I bought mine from Ikea) and use whenever your skin needs a pick me up!

mac cyber lipstick

Dark lipsticks have been cropping up everywhere lately and I've found my favorite one by far! 

MAC's Cyber is a deep, dark purple with a berry red hint thrown in and a satin finish. It's very pigmented and easy to apply. This shade is perfect for the recent dark lips trend if you don't want to really jump on the bandwagon and step out with a black pout.

The key to wearing this lipstick well is trying to minimise what's going on with the rest of your make up, if you wore this and a very dramatic smokey eye it may look a little too much... however, this does look great with dark eyes - simply add a black kohl liner to your upper lash line, waterline and a little on the lower lash line and use your finger to blend out the product creating a sultry, smokey effect.

What do you think of this lipstick? Is it a little too much or are you loving the dark side?

bunting nail art

1. Start by painting your nails a base colour, I find a pastel colour works best if you're going for traditional cute, floral bunting style.
   
   
2. Use a white nail polish and fine brush or white nail art pen to draw the lines the bunting will hang from.
   
   
3. Take the base colours for your flags and paint your triangles on, outline in white or leave - it's up to you!
   
   
4. Add your design, if you want to keep it simple try polka dots and stripes, for a little more detail here's a tutorial on floral nail art :).

look beauty: must have products

1. Prime Perfect - £10: I adore this primer, this is my favourite product out the LB must haves. Not only does it transform your skin into a silky smooth dream, it also really does help your make up last longer. The consistency is very easy to work with; thin but not runny, and it's also clear which I like as sometimes primer can sit in strange places and extra blending is required. I used this at the Elite Model Look event and the models couldn't stop touching their faces and commenting on how smooth their skin felt. A definite must have for your make up bag!
   
   
2. Mattify Me - £8: One of my pet peeves is my skin being shiny, especially my T zone as I sometimes suffer with oily skin, this powder is perfect for minimising shine and setting your base. As you can see the swatch is barely visible as the product has a relatively translucent finish. If you're in for a long day or off on a night our I'd recommend using a kabuki or oversized brush to dust this over your foundation enabling a shine free, long lasting result.
   
   
3. Loud Lips 'Tangerine Cream' - £7: The whole range of LB lipsticks are lovely, I like all the shades and the formula enables a smooth, easy application, but I have to say this shade was my favourite! At first glimpse the product fooled me into thinking it would be along the lines of MAC's Morange but it is a much more subtle shade. Although it appears orange the applied shade is a bright peach, with a little pink tone thrown in and a sight of sheen finish. It's a beautiful shade for the summer!Tip: dot a little Tangerine Cream onto the apples of your cheeks and blend using your finger for a hint of colour on a natural make up day.
   
   
4. Go & Glow Highlighter - £10: An incredible highlighter! I always struggle with liquid highlighters as I find the consistency is always too runny, too difficult to blend, too wet, etc, however this highlighter is literally perfect! The product is a light rose gold shade, a little different to the normal highlighter, it blends perfectly onto the skin and looks great with olive skin. It comes in a squeezy tube which may lead to product waste if you're only highlighting small areas, a tip is to squeeze a small amount onto the back of your hand and work with that! I really loved using my Real Techniques stippling brush to blend this into the cheekbones for a radiant, dewy finish!

❤ P.S. My camera is currently lost in a sea of baby stuff, make up and DVDs I need to sort out, so I'm using Instagram for my blog photos - I quite like using IG if I'm honest - what do you think? Would you use IG for your blog photos?

working with look beauty & elite models

I've recently had the privilege of working with Look Magazine, Look Beauty and Elite Models on their Elite Model Look tour at their Lakeside roadshow and semi-final. Each event was amazing to work at, the days were very fast paced and lord knows how many mini-makeovers I gave the lovely contestants! I was lucky enough to work with some of the nicest, talented people in the industry including the lovely Karla Powell who's a huge inspiration to me, Joanne Timms, Naomi Lake and Charlene Joyce - all amazing to work with and very passionate about our work, oh and I also met the bright haired beauty Jamie Laing (Made In Chelsea), he gave Emma a phone call and I think she died when I told him to refer to her as 'hashtag Milkteef' trolol. The semi final on Saturday was so much fun to work, the final photo shows the beautiful models that the five of us applied natural, dewy skin make up to. For the models we used only Look Beauty products to create the make up and I fell in love with some of the products, especially the primer, I'm planning a post on my favourite products! It was a great experience, thank you to everyone involved.