Happiness Is Madness

Friday, 11 November 2016

Make Up Revolution Haul (Tam Beauty)

Hello Beautiful Faces!
My blog posting was on such a roll, but life and tech issues are a plague upon the modern blogger!
Excuses aside...
I am a qualified make up artist. I'm allowed to have an unhealthy obsession with make up, but unlike other artists I have a low budget, no savings, I live pay to pay and sometimes cant afford to buy food... so when I do have spare money I don't really want to be spending ridiculous amounts on designer and trend make up. But I still want the outcome...and all I can say is THANK GOD FOR MAKE UP REVOLUTION.
I'm utterly in love. Its well priced, drugstore make up with the pay-off of a high quality brand, the added benefit of having vast amounts online, in store and being cruelty free too! BOOM

Over the past 5 months I've been picking up the odd item here and there so I thought i'd share them with you guys! I also created a couple of Halloween looks using these items AND I even did swatches of the lipsticks for you beauts! As usual links and current prices at time of posting are all below photos.

As much as I adore all their products I have to say the lipsticks have to be my favorite of them all.

(Left to Right)

Ultra Amplification Lipstick Shade; "Deepen" £3.00

Iconic Pro Lipstick Shade; "Liberty Matte" £2.49

Iconic Matte Shade; "Chauffeur" £3.00

Rose Gold Shade; "Private Members Club" £3.00

Rose Gold Shade; "Chauffeur" £3.00

Swatches (left to right)

Chauffeur Matte, Chauffeur Rose gold, Private members club, Liberty Matte and Deepen.

My first purchase was the Chauffeur in Rose gold, and I'm not going to lie, it was because of the packaging. My magpie mode engaged, I had £3 and a "F*ck it" moment. Then that lead into the pinky and berry shades, then the darkest berry matte and then Chauffeur in Matte because...well sometimes a girl needs a matte shade.

I also bought some of their Salvation liquid Lacquer- which I shall openly admit is not as good. It's a bit drying, if you eat with it on it seems to go powdery and its STAINS. I bought the shades "Velvet Vamp", "Velvet Reble" and "Velvet Black Heart", another disappointing part of this was Vamp and Black heart are identical shades. If i took the stickers off the packaging I wouldnt be able to tell them apart except in opacity. They also take a really long time to dry!

and then stained for hours after...

They can all be found HERE and are all £3.00

Next is Palettes. I have 3 eye shadow Palettes and one blush Palette and every morning it is always an annoying choice between them all as I usually want to wear all of them. But they all cater to my inner unicorn as much as my inner goth.

Mermaids Vs Unicorns £4.00
The colour pay off on this isnt as intense as you may think first off but it is totally worth the extra effort to drag across another layer. Shades are easily bendable and all of them pretty much work with one another. There are a few shades with added glitter just to appease that inner unicorn!

Dia De Los Muertos £6.00

This was actually my first ever Make up Revolution item and it's now about a year old. I bought it because at the time I had just coloured my hair bright green and I wanted the brights to contrast with my hair. Its well used and still not touched pan!

Flawless Matte £8.00
This is for my inner goth and grunge days. Every single shade in this palette is highly pigmented, and some even come out a lot darker than they are in their pans. I am very pale so do take into consideration that any colours will appear more pigmented on a blank canvas. But I truly Adore this palette. (there's now a flawless matte 2)

Ultra Blush Palette Golden Sugar £6.00

I use this every day. I use the bottom right, non shine brown for contouring, the 3rd top for my blush and the white for highlight. And when i'm doing bridal make up i use bottom row and second in for blush as it has a pigment to it that also acts as a highlight and the soft rose colour works on all skin types and is amazing on every bride.

Odds: Individual eye shadows and highlight.
Make up Revolution Eye shadow £1.00 each!!! There are loads of colours to chose from I have "Insomnia, Purple Heaven and Good Life"

Vivid Baked Highlighter "Pink Lights" £3.00

(Pink lights is no longer available on there website so I linked a coral highlight called "Rose Gold Lights")

And finally Awesome Double Flick eyeliner £3.50

(if you ever see my amazing cat-eye I usually wear daily on my Instagram, THIS is what I used)

If you've made it this far down the post here are some bonus Halloween pics using Make up Revolution products!

XoXo

Sunday, 24 July 2016

Green/ Mermaid Hair.

That's right people. I have kept a hair colour for longer than 2 months. ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED.

Admittedly it's changed from the La Riche, Directions "Teal" to a new combo of colours...
allow me to show you...

If you go to my first green hair post HERE. You'll see the original colour my sister created. Now we're here;

I have used a combo of Alpine green/ Apple Green / Spring Green, but I have recently ordered some Midnight Blue to add to the combo to begin adding more blue tones throughout to make it an awesome mermaid extravaganza.

I'm actually totally in love with my hair like this. I have seen a few people in recent weeks try and re-create it but mines still better. Im also avoiding bleaching it like i used to because 1) As we discovered before green is just the worst colour to remove...and 2) it's actually quite unique to have right now, although "mermaid" and "sea" hair is on the rise on Instagram.

I have to top it up once every 2-3 weeks so i find its always changing colour too, which is doubly awesome.

I buy all of my dyes from Salon sellers on Ebay for around £3 a pot. Although recently I have noticed the prices creeping up to around £3.50.

Original directions website is HERE

or for inspiration from the Directions Instagram go HERE

(this is not sponsored)

Rant/Mind Rambling.

I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason", but sometimes I do just want to shake my fists at the universe and shout..."well what the fuck was this for? Was I a toilet brush in a past life!!!"

I genuinely sympathize with anyone trying to get a solid 30h+ job in this day and age. I have a 20h a week job in a certain high street retail chain, and I love my job, but this time of year overtime is hard to get as all the uni and collage kids are out stealing it all. But my husband has been in retail and then hospitality for as long as I've known him. He's always worked 30-40h a week without question....until recently.
He was a Duty Manager at a bar in a local Hotel. Really nice people, great job, but career advancements weren't quite as fast paced as he wanted so when he was offered the role as Manager of a bar he leapt at the chance, and left his secure job to go and work for a much smaller pub, but it'd be his own place to manage, and much better pay for the hours.
He was originally hired with the pretense that he'd be replacing their current manager as she was terrible and they wanted to fire her. That didn't happen at all. Despite multiple complaints against her too. He was there for his 3 week trial, during this time the 'woman' that he was supposed to be replacing had began what we have worked out was her usual torrent of abuse to a new member of staff (this place has had more people leave than I've had hot dinners and we figure she is why) and he made a formal complaint about her after he started suffering with anxiety at just the thought of working with her. That's pretty much as far as it went. And it turned out after the 3 week trial they just wanted him as a general dogsbody. A barman. No set salary, no set working hours...Not slating barmen, it's a hard job, he's done it for years, but when you've worked your way up to manager you don't want to take that much of a step backwards, and why should you! So he left. But trying to find any job over 30 hours or that isn't a zero hour contract seems to be impossible around here. I truly think they don't realize how much it costs to run a house here in the UK. We have no savings left as we didn't have much in the first place and we used what we did have while he was transitioning over into his "new" job.
He has got himself another new job within 9 days but its only 14h a week and the pay alone wouldn't even cover one months rent. It's going to be tough. It already is tough. When you include rent, gas, electric, council tax, water rates, internet, tv licence, feeding the pets...feeding ourselves, plus debts were still paying off from years ago...it's all too much and can so easily snowball out of control. We will never, EVER be in the financial situation where we could get a mortgage or a business loan to open our own bar/pub. Our credit history is just appalling, and then in times like this when you get into arrears again it just affects it more.
We've already been arguing. Money is the ultimate stress maker. I hate it as much as I love what it can do for a person, the lack of it can royally screw up your life in a very short space of time. And I find myself getting annoyed with myself as I struggle with my various health issues, I wish I could push myself to find a job with more hours, or that my back problems and my mental health would allow me to work more hours, regularly without breaking myself. But i'm finding even doing extra overtime at the moment is making me feel broken and fragile mentally and physically. It's a terrible horrifying thought that we just exist to exchange hours of our lives to make money, to pay bills for things we don't inherently need to survive and live on this planet...yet here we are...little hamsters in our wheels turning the cogs on the industry. Our reward...4 weeks holiday a year, food money. bills to pay...and then retirement money...that you should have saved up yourself as there is no retirement/state funded pensions anymore.
I'm going to have to work until i'm dead just to be able to eat.
I do feel sometimes that if you have a disability or a mental health issue they just like to brush you off and ignore you until you break and remove yourself as a problem to them... and by "they" I mean any government body that's supposed to be there to help you financially and medically. But this is probably the defeatist in me coming out because of recent events and lack of help out there for people who have worked most of their lives who are having a bit of trouble...there is NO HELP.
I GIVE UP.

Side note; I'm also a tad proud of myself that given my list of disabilities from such a young age I do hold down a job and get up and go and do things. I know some people aren't able to do as many things as I can who suffer with similar issues and worse. So I do feel fortunate. It's just really hard sometimes to pretend to be fully functioning human being when really you're lucky your broken shell and mind can even roll you out of bed in the morning.

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Primark Haul, River Island Bag, antique shop finds and Lush.

Hello Peeps!

I've have a busy month! I've got more hours at work! I've been attempting to re-arrange and re-decorate my house. I've been sorting out general life issues, including getting back to my more spiritual side, meditation, yoga etc... and I've been off on an adventure to Exeter to see my old school friends for a much needed-catch up, and obviously some retail therapy occurred!

I did have a huge issue the entire weekend away with my anxiety being on high alert, but I think I kept it quite well in check, with a little help from my friends. It has left me on a bit of a downer though, so to perk myself up...blog post! BOOM.

Product list, prices and links all at the bottom. xoxo

PRIMARK