It's not me, it's you.

You know those products that everyone raves about when they first come out and  you are desperate to try but some perverse sense of not wanting to run with the herd prevents you from purchasing?  The ones where the praise is still being heaped on the product months after the launch and you hear stuff like "24 are bought every nano second" and you can't find a bad review any where?  If they are stocked in Boots sooner or later you are going to have just the right amount of points to hand and you start to toy with the idea of caving in and then the brand has a promotion where if you buy a full size one you get a mini one free and suddenly it's a no brainer.

And you want to love it, you really do.  Initially you pretend that it isn't failing at a very fundamental level, that it isn't doing the thing that your absolutely HG equivalent, that costs half the price btw, that you have re-purchased over and over again, until this last time - stupid, stupid - never, ever did.  You re-read the reviews to see if anyone else ever mentioned having similar issues and they didn't so you decide it must just be you.  Then you just get used to it.  Until one day, months later, you look in the mirror and you just decide it has to stop.  You can't keep pretending that it's not happening and that you don't hate it.  It's not working and no amount of wanting it to is going to help.  And you have to say good bye, so long, do one you over-priced, over-hyped peace of poo.

Never again will I wipe big panda rings of mascara off from under my eyes.  I'm going back to my first love, my HG mascara L'Oreal Telescopic.

So, Benefit They're Real I'm sorry, your dumped.  It's not me, it's  you.

So beauty fans, do you have a product that you're slogging on with that you know you need to dump but you just can't bring  yourself to do it yet?  Or have you dumped something that everyone else raves about and secretly wonder if actually it IS you?!  Spill the beans!

L'Oreal Volume Million Lashes Luminizer

I am an ad man's dream.  Saw this advertised on tv and had to have it. Didn't even bother to check whether it had been enhanced in post production, it was purple mascara and I really really wanted it.

Hauled Em off to Boots today and dithered over buying just the mascara or whether to get the eyeliner as well.  Em, who is clearly now the boss of me, refused to let me buy a liquid eye liner until I had proved to her that I could use it?! so I settled for just the mascara.

One thing I don't get with these mascaras and eye liners is the colour options; purple for hazel eyes makes sense I guess, green for brown, can see that working though would have thought blue was better but blue for blue eyes, have been told since I was tiny that was a total no-no.  Anyway, not sure why I was bothered as I was buying purple for my blue eyes and would not be dissuaded.

So got home, cleaned off my usual L'Oreal mascara which I love and had a go at applying the Million Lashes.  First lets talk about the brush.  It's hard plastic and sodding huge.  It's like applying your mascara with a hair brush.  I have very short, sparse lashes and nothing ever really makes them look long and lovely and this was no exception, unlike my usual mascara I had to do a couple of coats to have any effect at all; for all its size the brush doesn't apply very much mascara. 

Anyway I was doing all this in my usual subterranean lair so wasn't expecting to see beautiful, illuminated colour on my lashes, though it would have been nice.

When I came upstairs into day light my disappointment was huge.  £12 all but and I had basically bought a mascara with a brush I  don't like that looks no different in colour to my usual £9 one.  Perhaps if I was having regular retinal scans the colour would be seen by someone, but even then I doubt it.  

It wasn't until I smeared some onto a piece of white card that I could see the actual colour which to my eye looks much more of a brown shade than a purple, if I was being generous I might call it garnet but I am not.  So in essence a brown mascara for people with hazel eyes, total fail surely?

Em seems to think I'd be much better off with the Collection 2000 purple mascara, which someone I was chatting to on Twitter (@misspurplemakeup - or similar twitter name?) also suggested so might have to give that a whirl instead.

To sum up, if you have been sucked in by the advert save your money, add £6 to it and buy the new Benefit mascara that EVERYONE is raving about, could bloody kick myself that I didn't. 

Em and I spent ages trying to get a usable pic of the mascara on my lashes by the way, she kept vetoing them because I "looked ancient" and apparently I don't in real life!  My eyelids are so crepey I was a bit freaked out.  Em decided I needed a helping hand......

Back from hols

But nothing to report. The major downside of being broke is that I don't have money for lovely shiny goodies. I suppose I could blog about my duty free purchases - I got Clarins Multi Active cream, as a purchase that I had told Steve I was going to make and so did on my card and then a sneaky replacement of my Eau Dynamisant!! It was £22 for a bottle on its own or £23.95 for the spray and a free body lotion - you know which one I went for! And my hols got off to a flying start because having spent that much I got a free little make up bag with a mascara, lip gloss, face mask and hand cream. Ok so now I have to take photos of my haul and they can be my first post hol blog post.

Photos coming up v soon.

Am still on a mission for a pale lilac nail varnish too btw so maybe I can shake out all my pockets for enough shrapnel to get one in Leeds on Saturday!

Max Factor Summer Essentials Giveaway!

Who doesn't love a freebie? Even if half the time its stuff you don't want or need!! I needed another bottle of Max Factor Second Skin foundation in Creamy Ivory ready for my hols (Corfu, on Friday, can hardly wait!!) So having had a rummage to check that Second Skin was the way to go, haven't bought the same foundation 3 times in a row in like forever, I think - that's how good this stuff is, absolutely love it! Noticed that if you spent £15 you got a lil' make up bag with some stuff inside and thought that as the foundation was £13.99 I only needed a wee tiny thing to have spent enough and Lo! there was the Max Factor Max Effect range sitting there looking all sparkly and shiny and I had had half an eye on the Dazzling Blue nail varnish since I first saw them, for £3.49 I think? Teeny bottle but it just looks like a really nice blue/gold/purple duochrome, although actually that would make it a triochrome and they don't really exist do they!


Isn't it lush? Have a feeling that I might be disappointed by it in real life, it has a real opal look to it in the bottle but often this kind of thing doesn't convert in the wearing so we'll have to see - I promise swatches asap.



So onto the freebie. This cute make up bag, I have bazillions of make up bags and still don't have too many. Some one please explain this to Steve. Thank you.


And inside an array of loveliness.



I am actually really surprised. Black kohl eye liner, Em nabbed that straight away. Masterpiece High definition Black mascara, worth a try - my go to is L'Oreal precision - the comb makes my non-existent lashes actually show up - but I am happy to have this to try. Disco Pink Nailfinity nail varnish, cheesy name or what? Nice vibrant pink cream though, could be very Corfu! Earth Spirits eye shadow in Ultra Aqua which is a lovely pearly aqua shot with a bit of gold - TV Db rides again! Even if I only wear in on holiday with a bit of a tan and my new turquoise maxi dress! And a mini lippy which is no. 804 Hint of Red. I HATE lipstick, too dry, too claggy too vile, I always use sheer lip stuff, dont do gloss as am too old and dont like the gloopy feel, current fave is either the UNE lip balm or for a bit more colour Dior Serum De Rouge in Raspberry - £24 bought in duty free last November and it is fantastic, creamy, smooth, lightweight, nice hit of colour but sheer enough not to look old lady AND it'd doing your lips good, allegedly. This Max Factor lipstick has blown me away, its a do'able shade of red, pretty sheer and really really moisturising, feels lovely on.



And if that weren't enough you get two sample sachets of Second Skin foundation - Natural and Golden, both of which will probably be too dark for me and finally a £3 voucher off Second Skin foundation, which is fab! Oh and a pair of those weird toe separator thingies for when you do your pedi, so all in all just perfect as a pre-holiday selection of loveliness!

Had a fab weekend in the Lake District so photo blog will be getting some updates soon too, btw!

TRESemme - Hair dryer

Not for one minute do I believe all that "TRESemme - used in salons" bs. If it was we would all have seen it, right? And have we, no. Ergo, bs. Thank you. Buuut, I was in Asda looking for a hairdryer as my current one has started making that high pitched screech which indicates that its demise in a massive fireball in my bedroom is imminent. There was a Nicky Clarke one and a Toni and Guy one, both at around £30 and with 2000w motors and a TRESemme one with a 2150 watt motor and "4 x more ionic" which of course as we all know is vital in a hair dryer, my god would anyone buy one that was only "3 x more ionic"? I sincerely hope not, can you imagine such a world? No, I have no clue what "4 x more ionic" means either, more ionic than what? Presumably its a lack of ionics (ions?? trying to dredge up some of Tom's GCSE chemistry, or should that be physics?) that makes your hair frizzy, as anything ionic is supposed to reduce frizz although I suspect that all this ionic shizzle could be coming from the same place as that massive L'Oreal discovery "boswellocks" or whatever it was, by my reckoning about three letters in excess of the truth.


Love the artists impression of ions shooting out of it!!

To be fair its a good one and well worth £15!! It's not too heavy and is very powerful, I tend to "blow dry" old laydee stylee, Em blasts the hell out of hers just to get it dry and then does the whole lot with the straighteners and she can now get her hair completely dry in 6 mins, which is good considering just how massive her hair is. She has commented on how much less frizzy her hair is blasted with the new dryer compared to the old so those ions are doing their thang too I am happy to report, would recommend this dryer next time you are in the market for one!

Actually I am going to have a bit of a rant now. Recommend Obsessive Cosmetics Disorder, or maybe a bit of cjane from the list above if the last thing you need right now is me ranting. Adverts for mascara that carry the words "styled with lash inserts" or whatever it is they say. Why the hell don't they just advertise the mascara saying "if you wear false eye lashes and use this product your eye lashes will look like this, if you dont they will look like normal lashes with some black stuff on them, get over it" Or shampoo that gives you fantastic hair advertised by Cheryl Cole whilst she has a whole second head of hair sewn into her own, it would be like Fern Britton advertising magic slimming knickers and then showing them on Fearne Cotton, very similar but frankly not the same thing. I think what I am objecting to is that adverts aren't even pretending any more, stuff doesn't deliver so they use inserts and digital alteration to suggest how good the product could be, if only it worked! Sorry rant over. Forecast for most of the UK looking fab for the weekend so enjoy!