Inspiretty #113

If you've popped over to The Shoe Girl Diaries today, you'll have seen the lovely boots I wore on Saturday, that got everyone who saw them in a fluster! They are super comfy and look gorgeous, it's almost quite tempting to get the leopard print version too.

Video: ASOS Premium Handbag Haul

I didn't have time to post this video here yesterday when I finished it. If you follow my YouTube channel or Facebook page, you'll perhaps have already seen it. Just a quick little haul video of my latest ASOS purchases-a couple of cute bags. Excuse the chipped manicure but I'm waiting for my new Models Own polishes to arrive! x x x

Inspiretty #112

Another Monster High doll I managed to cross off my wishlist arrived today. 'Dead Tired' Ghoulia, super sweet! Only a few more to get now.

Inspiretty #111

I'm so excited to have my internet back! No dropping out at all!! I managed to pop through to Dundee to check Argos for the 1 Monster High 'Dawn Of The Dance' doll they had in stock, at the weekend. Luckily it was one I was after, the gorgeous Lagoona! How freaking cool is it that she has dark green lips and a mohawk? Pretty darn cool!

Review & Swatches: Rimmel Vinyl Max Gloss

Firstly, I'd like to apologize to Rimmel for taking so long to review this. Unfortunately it was delivered during the time I was without a computer, so I do have an excuse! Now that I'm back on my feet (kinda), I wanted to get this review down. I'm losing track of how many variations or relaunches there has been of Rimmel's Vinyl glosses...quite a few I reckon, this one is 'Vinyl Max Gloss' and comes in 6 shades. It aims to deliver full coverage, thick, voluptuous shine in one effortless stroke. The plumping formula with magnifying complex based on Hyaluronic spheres aims to volumize, smooth lips and reduce fine lines for a fuller, plumper look.
The colour I tried was 211 Desire and I have to be completely honest and say I wouldn't have picked that. Brown lips can get a bit of a bad name in the makeup world, but I'm quite fond of them usually. This gloss is a deep rusty reddish brown though and just isn't a particularly nice colour to look at never mind wear on my lips. However I gave it a good shot and at times it didn't look too bad (it could be sheered out). Swatches below show one swipe from the wand on the right and how dense the colour is on the left.
above 'with flash' and two below without.
The next thing that struck me about this gloss was the size of the wand. We're talking mahoosive. Really. Remember the MAC Wonder Woman supersized lipglass? That size! Ok, so not necessarily a bad thing-it means one stroke application for example. However given that this shade was so dark, it didn't work well with the big doefoot applicator. My MAC one is a pale coloured gloss, so any mistakes aren't noticeable, but with this one, it applied outside my natural lip line (as you can see from the images above) and just looked obviously sloppy. It's not like I wasn't being careful; my party trick is applying lipstick or gloss without a mirror, so I know what I'm doing! However, this made me look like a 12 year old rookie and I was using a mirror!
If you take a look at the comparison pictures between the MAC and Rimmel wands below, you'll see the MAC gloss sits only on the slanted surface of the applicator, not on the sides at all. This is due to the suction within the tube when you remove the wand, it literally takes 'Wonder Woman strength' to pull it out! The Rimmel one doesn't have that and this is why the gloss is all over the wand and yet again, more difficult to apply, regardless of the shade of gloss.
That said, the actual gloss itself is very nice. It has that cooling tingly feeling, similar to Too Faced Glamour Gloss and MAC Plushglass, perhaps not quite as strong. I'm a sucker for that type of gloss, it has to be said. I can easily get addicted to the sting and burn of lip plumpers but even more so to these refreshing, cooling glosses-I love it! My lips did look luscious and full, in part due to the gloss sitting outside my natural lipline though! The packaging aesthetically speaking is 'meh', nothing exciting but it does it's job, kinda! Overall, I love the gloss, dislike the colour and don't like the wand-so a bit of a mixed review on this one really.

Inspiretty #110

So, all week I've been without internet connection until the afternoon. Today it took until 4.30pm for a signal-what the hell is going on? I was bored outta my brain! I've been uploading pics and resizing them, trying to do what I can offline, but it can get so tedious and then when the internet does come back I have too much to do and am sick of looking at photos, so get nothing done! I have eventually sorted through the MAC lipstick pics that I promised a few weeks ago, I have a couple of reviews of Scarlett & Crimson products coming up and if Rimmel haven't already struck me off their best friends list for being such a bad VIP, I will be reviewing their Vinyl Max Gloss. Oh and I made a little video of a couple of ASOS items I got today-I just have to get my editing hat on-probably tomorrow morning when I have no internet (can you tell I'm a glass half empty type of gal?) and will get that finished. Onto Inspiretty and yesterday my new booties finally arrived, green bunny 'Abigails Party' by Irregular Choice to join my pink bunny pair-super cute huh?

Inspiretty #109

I've been pretty quiet about the latest Kandee collection and that's because it's one of those ranges you don't want anyone to know about in case they snap up all the goodies before you! I'm serious! I literally felt sick browsing the new shoes as I mentally calculated the cost and formed my wishlist, knowing that I didn't have enough money for one pair let alone the several I want! The styles are extremely limited this season too, to 50 pairs. That's only 10 pairs per size, hence my panic and all-round queasiness! There's at least 7 styles (minimum) on my list including these After8 spangly courts. The colour is drop dead gorgeous, amazingly, seriously beautiful! One of the best shades of green I've ever seen. So please everyone hold back on buying until I've pimped myself and raised enough funds...merci!!

Another Little Primark Purchase

As I mentioned last week, I had some items to return to Primark. A couple of dresses, a skirt, top and cardi...but then I came home with scarves, a dress and bolero along with a top for my mum, jigsaw for my nephew and two bags for my sister. In the end £1.40 was refunded onto my card, soooo worth it, haha! There were quite a few new dresses instore actually. Mostly they didn't look like they'd do much for me or else were only available in smaller sizes. I tried on a pretty 60's style lace shift with long sheer black sleeves. It was hideous on me! Absolutely atrocious! It looked like I'd gained around 30lb and decided to take cover under a giant black tent. Guess the 60's mod trend isn't going to work on me then!

The dress I did buy, wasn't anything that great, just plain black jersey with a skater skirt, 3/4 length sleeves and little pocket flaps with gold buttons on the skirt. I think it was around £11 and I'll probably get a lot of wear out of it in the winter. I was mega excited to see this little bolero though. It's very like the H&M one, from the limited garden collection thingy they did last year. No H&M near me got that collection and this was the piece I really liked. It comes in red or the peachy salmon pink one that I got. It was £13 (if I remember correctly). It has a little hook fastening and 3/4 length sleeves.
It's quite a difficult shade to coordinate, it can look dirty next to certain colours. I wondered if it would go with my ASOS Salon dress that I was hoping to wear to my nephews christening. What do you think? It doesn't 'not go' but I'm not entirely convinced it does go. I really need some sort of cover-up for it though and don't have a suitable one. I wish Primark had other colours of this, like a navy one, brown and maybe a green. It's mega cute I reckon.
I've made a mental note to try and buy more scarves because I use them quite regularly (small ones for hair bows and larger for turbans) and would like some variety. I loved the nautical themed duo I got a while back and I spotted some horsey and birdy ones this time, which I snapped up. They are £2 and you get the two scarves for that. They just tie around my head and no more, so I prefer to make these into a bow and clip them into my hair.
Then, there was one left of this scarf. A cute little deer print in a lovely turquoise colour. Don't know if it was a return or if I've completely missed it previously. Anyhow, I think it was £4 and it said 'oversized' on it, which I didn't fully appreciate until I got home. I reckon it's the size of a single bed! There's loads of other ways you could wear these, but I have to say I'm not much of a scarf around the neck type of person-it just doesn't suit me at all.

Imitation Is The...?

When I spied these shoes on the Peacocks website today, I instantly recognised them, anyone else? They are tres similar to my Ediva platforms from KG by Kurt Geiger that I wore a couple of days ago. The same shaped heel, skinny strap and buckle, same platform and in black 'suede' with the contrast ivory toe. They don't have the t-bar or the bow (which make mine super cute) and the heel isn't snake effect like Ediva, but they are still spookily alike. Pretty naughty of you Peacocks!

Inspiretty #108

Totally running behind today (see my latest TSGD post for more info), so it'll just have to be a quick Inspiretty...again! You're going to laugh at this, but todays is loo roll! Hold the laughter! Why nobody has thought of making toilet paper pretty before I don't know, but Andrex have this cool stuff now that comes in all sorts of prints and we've been using it in our house for months (my nephew loves it, although I hasten to add it's not a good flusher...tmi?). There's multi coloured polka dots, butterflies, brocade and even freaking flamingo print! I find it totally kitsch and I love the colours, so that's the pretty thing I spotted today and therefore worthy of Inspiretty, kinda!

Inspiretty #107

The cutetastic Monster High 'Ghoul Spirit' Draculaura. I bought the three pack this doll came in, intending to only keep Ghoulia, but once I saw how sweet Draculaura was, I couldn't give her up ; )

Inspiretty #106

If I were to wear a sweatshirt, laughable I know, but for the sake of this post let's pretend (or 'attend' as my nephew says), then I would sooo wear this one. Ok, so the actual shape and colour aren't anything overly exciting, but that print is absolutely adorable! It's 'Ugly Betty' and I love the retro glasses and leopard bow, super, super cute! It's by River Island but you can purchase it at ASOS.

My Recent Hairstory Part 2

You can read Part 1 of my Recent Hairstory here and if you'd like to use any images from these posts on another site, please credit and link back to Pink Haired Princess, thank you.

So after brunette, I was hankering for the brightness of my beloved Atomic Pink and knew it would only be a matter of time before I went back to it. People were very complimentary of the brown, but it just didn't feel like me. Seeing as the original pink still hadn't left my hair, it felt like it was meant to be, so off we went with the bleach and Special Effects Atomic Pink again. I actually recall using a jar of Manic Panic toner this time round (hoping to dilute the colour slightly), with no effect to the outcome at all! AP is just so strong!!
Something went a little funny with the exposure on this photo, but it shows just how bright the pink can be.
I had a wedding coming up that summer, so was a little hesitant to completely play around with the colours at this stage-I wanted to use something where I knew it would turn out perfect. My hair had been getting a little longer, so I think I had it cut quite short again. The wedding photo (below) was taken at around 3am and I'd done my hair and makeup at 10am the morning before, so I was rather dishevelled by this point!
By this point, I'd already been thinking about other possible colour combos. I knew pale pink was out, but what about lilac? I left the ends bright pink (didn't re-colour them at all) and used Manic Panic Mystic Heather on top. When using two colours like this, always use the stronger colour on the lower half, so it doesn't run into the lighter shade when washing. I loved the colour both in the jar and on my hair, but unfortunately it went much the same as the pale pink. I also liked the pink streaks throughout and different shades of lilac and violet, but after a few weeks the pink had completely shone through and the lilac disappeared. Unfortunately I don't have many photos from this phase.
At the same time that I bought the lilac dye, I'd bought Atomic Turquoise, also by Manic Panic. I had been afraid to use it, purely because it was such a departure from the pinks and purples I'd been used to. If the pink had been the main colour with aqua ends, I wouldn't have been so concerned, but I really didn't think I'd suit that much turquoise around my face. I used exactly the same technique, bleaching the top of my head (the area I wanted turquoise) and leaving the ends uncoloured (pink). The pale pink areas in between the bleach and pink turned purple, which was unexpected but I loved it. So now I had almost rainbow hair rather than just two colours.
The aqua tends to start off a blue-turquoise, then over time goes more green-turquoise until it fades to pale green. The purple areas after a few weeks turn very pale ashy lilac. I love AT freshly coloured, it has such a wonderful shine and looks metallic, it's just gorgeous. You can see the varying colours from different stages of the dye and different lighting, there's quite a contrast.

My hair was getting really long again and although I've mostly kept my fringe super short throughout, I felt like a change again. So a few weeks ago, I got a haircut and seeing as the ends were mainly pink, it left me with a bit of a dilemma as I wasn't keen on being fully turquoise, but there really wasn't much pink left. There is still some at the back mostly but it's faded significantly (not surprising considering it hasn't been touched in over a year), so I decided to cover the whole lot in turquoise, thus giving me purple ends (because I truly love the purple colour it produces). When my hair has just been curled it kinda sits in a little curly bubble on my head and I love it like that! The purple doesn't photograph all that well in these images, it's much more vivid in real life, as is the turquoise; as I said earlier it can be so blue at the start (think the colour of mouthwash)! So this is me for now...not sure which is my favourite or which direction I'm going to go next. I'm fairly happy with the way the turquoise lasts, it's nowhere near as potent as the pink, but I don't mind the colour fade.