Last Sunday's Outfit

I paired my new thrifted light blue cardigan with my Forever 21 high waist black jeans, and a pair of Mum's old heels (which are probably nearly as old as myself but still a favourite pair!). I also wore the earrings my Mum made and gave me at Christmas and an old pink, heart shaped ring I bought from Claire's when I was thirteen. The lipstick I'm wearing is Ravishing by MAC blended with a bit of Rose Passion by Rimmel, and Periwinkle Pout by Forever 21's Love & Beauty line.

I've just discovered the new Blogger post editing layout thing and this may take a bit of getting used to before I can completely get the hang of how it works -- but I have to say I love the new photo uploader!

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REVIEW: Periwinkle Pout Nail Polish from Forever 21

I'd been looking at this polish colour on Forever 21's website for a while and when I spent my birthday gift card I decided I'd give it a try -- and I'm so pleased that I did. Despite the name, 'Periwinkle Pout', I think it's more blue than it is periwinkle -- but it'll still be lovely for spring and summer. It's one of those colours that reminds me of pastel coloured Easter decorations.

I applied it as I always do -- three coats of polish and a top coat, and despite it being very inexpensive ($3.80), it didn't wear off much quicker than my more expensive polishes. It's a non-sparkly polish, which I like. I'm not a big fan of nail polish with very fine bits of glitter in it, but I do love the really glittery polishes (such as OPI's Gettin' Jiggy With Miss Piggy, from their Muppets collection last year). It's glossy without a top coat, but even nicer with one (and it will, of course, last longer with a top coat).

All in all, I'd give it a 8 out of 10!





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Recent Purchases

Here are a few super cheap items I've picked up at thrift shops lately. I just love the red button down top, it'll be perfect for summer and could easily incorporated into a retro-style outfit. My mum said it reminds her of Marilyn Monroe, haha.



These are two other favourite things I bought.

I love the length of the skirt. I never really liked longer skirts up until last autumn, and I'm looking forward to some slightly warmer weather and then I can wear them and not have to worry about freezing to death or having to wear bloody tights!

And the little lace slip is so pretty -- I really love the shade of it is and the cut, it's really feminine and delicate looking, which I love!



And these are three things I bought from Forever 21.

My aunt gave me a gift card for my birthday last year and I'd been holding onto it for a while and decided to finally spend it.

I bought this belt, a bottle of Periwinkle Pout nail polish, and a neutral eyeshadow palette. I was actually sent the wrong palette (I'd ordered a neutral one that also included a few bright colours), but I'm actually quite happy with this one -- it has several nice shades of brown, and I primarily wear neutral shadows, anyway.

I'm going to post a little review of the nail polish, and may do one for the palette, also.



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TUTORIAL: Glittered Makeup Brushes

I bought this set of brushes from Claire's a few weeks ago, it was on their 10 items for $10 rack, so I thought it was a great deal -- but I didn't love the colours and pattern on the brushes. If you've been following my blog for a while, you may remember my glittered heels tutorial, this is basically the same process repeated, but I'll still be including the instructions and whatnot in this post.

Let's begin!

What You Will Need:

• Your chosen makeup brush(es)
• Newspaper or a large piece of paper (used to catch excess glitter)
• Tacky Glue (or similar glue)
• Mod Podge
• Two or three paintbrushes (I used one small brush for touch ups, a medium sized brush for painting on the glue, and a larger brush for painting on the Mod Podge)
• Loose glitter



This is how my set of brushes looked before I began.



Step #1

Paint the part of your brush you want to glitter with a fairly thin layer of glue.
You want enough to completely cover the part of the brush you want to glitter and you want a thick enough layer for the glitter to stick, but too much glue will only cause unnecessary problems such as taking too long to dry properly.



Step #2

Begin to glitter the brush, try to avoid getting glitter in the bristles. I had a slightly tall pot of glitter to work with so I would stick my brush into the pot and twist it round until the glue was completely covered. If this is not an option, carefully sprinkle the glitter onto the brush.

This is where the newspaper or large piece of paper comes in handy -- it helps to keep the glitter from going everywhere as you can just fold it up and bin it when you're finished!



This is how my brush looked after the first glittering.



Step #3

I glittered my brushes twice in order to get them covered as well as I could, and then touched up the small spots that had somehow managed to remain glitter-free. It is important to wait for the glue to dry before doing the second layer of glitter. Once the original coat of glue is dry, carefully paint on a second layer over the original layer of glitter.



Step #4

Repeat Step # 2.

After glittering the brushes the second and final time I carefully looked them over and made sure they were completely covered. There were a few small spots I noticed that had managed to remain glitter-free. I used a small paint brush and applied a small amount of glue to the spots and then applied glitter to cover up the bare spots.



This is how my set of brushes looked after the second glittering. After the second coat of glitter and glue the brushes will likely take longer to dry than they did with the initial coat. You may choose to leave them to dry overnight. I left them laying on the piece of paper I was working on which worked out quite well, actually. They didn't stick to it at all, and I reckon this is because the glue was entirely covered with glitter and therefore simply couldn't stick to the paper.



Step #5

After the brushes have dried completely, it is time to apply the Mod Podge top coat. Use a paint brush and carefully apply the Mod Podge all over the glittered area. Once dry, repeat this step in order to make sure the glitter is completely sealed in. This will make the glitter slightly less sparkly, but it is a must for this project -- if the glitter isn't sealed it will end up falling off and chipping off. Since you're going to handling these brushes quite a bit when you're using them you want the glitter to be sealed in as well as it can be.



Step #6

Wait for the final coat of Mod Podge to dry (it will take slightly longer than the first coat, as did the final coat of glue). I arranged them over my heat vent to aid the drying process, but this isn't a must. It is best, though, to somehow suspend them in the air slightly (as I did with these cups or over my heat vent's grate) so that they don't stick to anything and possibly get smudged in the process.



Once they have dried, you're finished!

I really love the end result of this project and I think it was a massive improvement (but I'm biased as I love glitter, haha).
I'm most impressed as these brushes only cost me $1 for the set and they turned out pretty bloody good!



The process I used in this tutorial can be used on many other things.
For example, the heels in the old tutorial I linked above or these earrings!

Before



After



If you have any questions about any of the steps, feel free to ask -- I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

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23rd of March Update

Hello lovelies, I hope you're all having a nice Friday. I've been working on my German course and I went and picked up our mail earlier and chatted with one of our neighbours whom was out walking her dog. I haven't got any plans for tonight, so I think I'll be having a nice, quiet evening.

01. I bought some super cheap costume jewellery a few of weeks ago and had been planning on redesigning some of it and finally got round to it a couple of days ago. All the pieces in the photo below cost $1 and are from Claire's Accessories, aside from the peacock feather earrings and small black pendant earrings (they were originally connected as a single pair of earrings and cost $3 from Suzy Shier).

I used to do this sort of thing all the time and loved it, and I discovered I still do love doing it actually. I love simplicity and I think costume jewellery is often somewhat overdone and I think that overdone-ness frankly, cheapens the overall look of the piece. So, I removed some beads and extra dangly chains and such off some of these things and I think it really improved how they look.

For example, the feather earrings originally had small black pendants hanging between the actual feather and the hook. I think they look much better without the pendants, and I think the pendants look more classic and pretty by themselves. I wish I had taken a 'before' photo, but I didn't think to do so until after I'd finished, so I've only got the 'after' photo for you all to see.



02. When I got on Twitter this morning I saw people tweeting about Paloma Faith's new song, Picking Up The Pieces. Since Paloma is one of my favourite singers I had to go and see if I could find somewhere to listen to it, and sure enough I found someone had uploaded it to YouTube. I've listened to it so many times already, I completely love it. I can't wait for her new album to be released.



03. I've been working on a little tutorial lately and have just finished the project yesterday, so I shall be posting the tutorial itself soon. I've got the photos sorted out for the most part, I just need to write out the instructions!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.
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Thrift Shop Goodies

When Mum went to a few of the thrift shops around town last week, she picked me up a few things while she was shopping.
All of these were from the $1 rack, aside from the lace skirt in the first photo.

She picked me out these two pretty skirts. I love the retro style of the red one, it'll be perfect for summer.
The lace one is gorgeous, it reminds me a bit of Florence Welch's style (which I love!).



This lace shirt, and these two cardigans. The light blue one is my favourite, I think. The neckline is lovely and, it looks grey in the photo but, the light periwinkle shade of blue is really pretty. The bright blue one obviously needs me to steam it to get rid of the wrinkles, but once I do it'll be ready to wear. And I love the lace shirt -- I have one somewhat similar to it but it's getting fairly worn as it's quite old.



These lovely brown pants and beige cardigan -- I had to take the legs of the pants in as they originally were bell bottoms (and I don't really like that type of pant leg) and I think they look great now! The cardigan seems to me to be more autumn and winter appropriate than spring and summer, but I should be able to get a bit of wear out of it before it completely goes out of season.



These three belts that could be paired with all sorts of outfits.



And finally this brooch and clip-on earrings. I have pierced ears, but I reckon I could probably still wear these, right?

In total, everything cost about $14.50. Mum's always checking round the thrift shops and finding neat things.
Myself, I haven't been in ages -- I really need to start going to them again soon!

I really can't believe how cheaply some of the thrift shops here sell things for.
I remember ages ago it seemed only one of the thrift shops here had a $1 rack, it seems like they all do now.

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Classic Makeup

I mentioned in my last post that I'd trying out a new makeup look, from this tutorial, and I think after three tries I've got it sorted out. It's a really pretty, understated (aside from the lips!) look, I really love red lips and simple eye makeup.

Here are a couple of close-up photos I took -- I tried to show the details as well as I could.







For this looked I used the following products.

Face & Brows

• Revlon ColourStay Liquid Foundation in Ivory
• L’Oreal Bare Naturale Mineral Consealer in Fair
• Maybelline FitMe Pressed Powder in Ivory
• Covergirl Blusher in Rose Silk
• Mac Eyeshadow in Embark
• Maybelline Great Lash Clear Mascara

Eyes & Lips

• Dimensional Eyeshadow in Champagne
• Annabelle Eyeshadow in Champagne
  
• Discontinued Maybelline Eyeshadows
• MAC Fluidline Eyeliner in Blacktrack
• Rimmel Soft Kohl Eyeliner in Pure White
  
• Maybelline Great Lash Mascara in Very Black
• Ardell False Eyelashes in #109
• LashGrip Adhesive
• Rimmel Moisture Renew Lipstick in Rose Passion

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Mid-March Update

Hello lovelies, I thought I would write a little update post since I haven't done one in a while. I've been so busy lately. I have a bunch of decent ideas for posts, so hopefully I can turn some of those ideas into actual posts!

01. I've been trying to perfect a new makeup look, inspired by this makeup tutorial done by MasqueradeMakeup. She has so many lovely tutorials, you should definitely give her YouTube channel a look! I'm planning on trying to do the Adele's Grammy's 2012 makeup and the Sopfia Loren one sometime soon.

I've noticed, from past experience, it normally takes me about three tries to get a new makeup style looking right -- I've done this one twice (a couple of photos of the second attempt below!) so perhaps once more and I'll have it sorted! I really need to buy a couple of new eyeshadows -- my old favourites are starting to get all used up, especially the nice matte cream colour I use all the time.





02. On Tuesday afternoon I attended a talk/question and answer session held by Liberal MP Justin Trudeau at the University of Victoria. It was the first talk I've ever gone to, and I'm so glad I attended, Justin Trudeau makes a very inspiring and passionate speaker. It's gotten me sort of psyched for the party's upcoming leadership race as there may be some other talks and what not held in Victoria during that. But I won't go into detail so as not to bore you all to death talking about politics -- I do enough of that on Twitter!

I took a quick picture with my mobile phone -- but the bloody thing wouldn't let me zoom in at all for some unknown reason, so this is the best I could do.



Mum and I were watching the news later on that evening and they did a segment about the talk and she spotted me in the background of the shot. How weird, haha.



03. These two pictures are from attempt #2 at the makeup I wrote about above.

Nerdy had to get in on the photo taking action! She pulls the best faces, no?





04. I've recently listed a bunch of accessories, clothes, shoes on my eBay. All of the items are listed as Auctions, but I also have Buy It Now prices listed for all of them. All listings end on the 21st of March and I am more than happy to answer any enquiries about any of the items!






05. I'm not sure how many of you are fans of Marina and the Diamonds, but I absolutely love, love, love her newest single and video, Primadonna! I don't know that I've loved a music video so much since Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. I'm also a bit obsessed with her Starring Role demo. Love Marina.



06. As you may have noticed I've recently changed my blog's layout. I really like it, but I still may make a few minor changes before I'm completely done with it. I've also decided to start using Blogger to upload my photos -- rather than TinyPic. They keep randomly deleting my photos and that -- well, that just doesn't work for me. I found a neat hack that allows you to upload larger photos on blogger than the standard small size -- it can be found here for all curious! I'm also intending to change my blog's URL sometime in the near future, but I haven't decided what to change it to quite yet.

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7th of March

Here is what I wore on Wednesday.

I've had those jeans for ages and had been meaning to take them in for as long. I finally got round to it about a week ago and with Mum's help we did a bunch of alterations on some of my clothes (including taking in the legs of those jeans!). I really love them and they fit wonderfully now! I'd originally bought them at a thrift shop for only a couple of dollars and I'm sure I'll get plenty of wear out of them now.

The coat is second hand, the cardigan is from Suzy, and the heels are from Sirens.

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