AKA The only inspiration you need for last minute Christmas and NYE Makeup looks this year.


Now I don't know about you, but if there is a make up product that is synonymous with winter celebrations, it's the wine lipstick. This dark colour screams high level glam, but can be tricky to balance with your eye makeup. Over this past year, I have created two looks that I always reach for when I want to use this beautiful lipstick by L'Oréal [See Below]. They are super easy, quick to do and look STUNNING! Keep reading to find out how you can create these dark lipstick friendly looks, ready for Christmas and New Years Celebrations (admittedly a bit late, but as many of you will have gathered by now, last-minute is my middle name).

The lipstick featured is L'Oréal's Color Riche Matte Lipstick in 430 Mon Jules.

Ombre Liner

Eyeliner: 

Black Eyeliner: Estee Lauder Pure Color Eyeliner in Blackened Black [Discontinued - I cry 😭, this eyeliner is so good!]
Silver Eyeliner: Maybelline Color Show Kohl Eye Liner in Sparkle Show [This may be an updated version of what I used, I don't currently have access to the actual eyeliner I used]

Recreate this at home: 

This look works best using creamy, easy to blend eye pencils. Start by drawing the outer half of the wing in the black eyeliner. Then draw the inner half of the eyeliner in the silver pencil, overlapping it with the inner third of the black eyeliner. If you are worried about the eyeliner melting off, or smudging, go over each section using eyeshadow in the same colours.

Simples!

Sparkly Lids

This light-on-the-eyes look sits beautifully on simple, glowy, healthy looking skin. Therefore, skin-prep (think well-moisturised skin and dewy-finish primers) is key! For the eyes, just one eyeshadow is needed - something gold and glittery!

Eyeshadow

Now before we get started, this isn't me moaning that I'm not attending Cambridge or Oxford University. Similarly, this is not me trying to dissuade people from going to either uni. They are the top universities in the country, and some of the best in the world, so if you have the ability, why shouldn't you take on the challenge?

No, this is me explaining how I've changed my opinion of it over the years. (It also happens to be a cute case study in discovering what is (not) important when choosing a university to attend - who'd have thought it?!)

This may be the most pointless thing I have ever posted on here, but, alas, I promised it in my November 2018 edition of Dissertation Diaries, so need to get it up (albeit the day before the video goes live).




You could say I have experienced a bit of a tumultuous love affair with Cambridge. I say Cambridge, because, whilst Oxford intrigued me, Cambridge, for a multitude of reasons you will soon discover, truly stole my heart.

First and foremost, it was familiar. 

I visited Cambridge at the tender age of 14, when I had to interview tourists there for my GCSE Geography coursework. Besides terrorising the elderly by asking them about how far they'd travelled to see King's College, a question 3 other groups had already asked them, I fell in love with the old buildings, how easy it was to navigate, the history of the place, the fudge shop (Fudge Kitchen is an actual gem!) - let's just say I wanted to live there.


Fast forward a year and my school took some 'gifted and talented' (no you just rolled your eyes in disgust) students to explore Cambridge University. Following a talk in a cute lecture theatre, we got taken to look at some accommodation (I'm pretty certain it was Trinity, though my Cambridge friend was so shocked that I'd seen inside there that I'm starting to doubt myself). Basically, I had started to get to know Cambridge pretty well by this point, and so the romanticism began.

Enter Sixth Form. 

Near the end of year 12 I attended History and Classics taster days. Let's just say that I really. didn't. enjoy them. The lectures, besides an ancient philosophy one about turtles holding up the Earth or something, were pretty dull and it was massively off-putting. The main issue of course was that the lectures weren't on topics that I found interesting, and I was yet to discover that lectures are generally boring, wether you like the topic or not (or that might just be me, I dunno...).

One of the main reasons I thought about applying to Cambridge, and didn't give up on it despite this 'traumatic experience', was the familiarity of the place. I had visited it, I knew the city, I knew a little about a college. This fact calmed my anxious mind.





I still looked into Cambridge after this, rationalising that I might not even have those lecturers, and wouldn't take those courses anyway. However, upon looking into the course, I reluctantly decided against it. The majority of it was chosen for you, there were many exams, and you had to do Latin for a year if I chose to study Classics (which even the prospect of being taught by Mary Beard could not make look appealing - though, looking back at the end of my degree, I wouldn't have minded doing it).


However, the uni snob in me (error number 3) wouldn't let go of the Oxbridge dream just yet, and decided to look into Oxford. I knew the city and one of the colleges from a 3 day choir course I did there once, but I never got my head around the city and so have never warmed to it as much (as you can see, I like familiar things 😇). That being said the course was much better, covering all areas of history, including ancient. However, there was an entry exam, and (here's the killer) my AS grades were not good enough anyway (spoiler alert - neither would my A2 levels).

Here endeth my first encounter with Oxbridge. 

What I will now happily admit to, is that I have a very romanticised, opening-scenes-of-The-Theory-Of-Everything, view of Oxbridge. It's all cool gowns, exclusive and alluring culture, fancy dinners, and pretty buildings. Despite knowing I couldn't do my undergrad there, by the end of sixth form I had already discovered the medical and science history masters programmes that both universities offered. The dream just would not die!


Anywho, moving on to university, and some point in first or second year I discovered Cambridge's Health, Medicine and Society Master's degree which looks like a DREAM! Soon I found myself re-romanticising the whole Cambridge experience, and later discovered the NHS grad scheme which, through the most tenuous link imaginable, I used as a way to justify doing a £14,000 postgraduate course I really didn't need.


This brings us up to the beginning of third year. 


I remember looking through all the different colleges in order to work out which ones to look around at the post-grad open day, and feeling so out of place that I put off booking it til a week before, by which time, only one of the three slots were open, with only 7 colleges to choose from.



By this point, I'd had the reality check that made me face what I'd be hiding from. 

Having chatted to my Academic Advisor about the application and funding process; being told that doing a dissertation on beauty was not going to help a medical history masters application; and being asked if the reason I wanted to go had anything to do with it being Cambridge (which I sheepishly avoided answering 'yes' to),  I accepted what I knew all along - I was doing Cambridge for all the wrong reasons. If I was not willing to change my dissertation topic to get in, and the main reason I wanted to go was because of the allure of Cambridge and wanting to experience it, then £14,000+ was a waste of my money and extra debt I did not need (especially when I would qualify for basically no funding). I mean the relief I felt when my advisor vaguely understood the tenuous NHS link, only emphasises the fact that I knew how bad the excuse was, and desperately wanted people to believe me in order to persuade myself.

On to the Open Day. 

By this point I was well and truly over Cambridge (well, I still have hope, but y'know). I stayed with a friend who attends there, and remember feeling like this just was not the place for me, as she described her course and how many essays she had to do; how early her mornings were; how you can only do one society; and thinking how different the experience was to my university undergrad experience - and not in a good way. When walking around Cambridge this time, I discovered it had lost much of it's rose-tint, and I remember the conflict I felt with Murray-Edwards: a college I'd love to attend if only it was old and historic (and even in older colleges, you normally live in newer, separate accommodation as a post-grad). I have such great priorities.

It's time to accept that the best time to have done the whole Cambridge thing was as an undergrad. That the main reason for me wanting to attend Cambridge is to experience the unique culture of being a student there and to say I've lived in one of the cool ye olde colleges like Kings. To get access beyond the gates. The non-tourist access.

Basically all the wrong reasons. 

Yes, the course looks amazing (a good reason to go), but with no way to currently justify it and as someone in desperate need of a break from academia, the dream, if ever achieved, will have to be put on hold for a later, self-funded, convincingly justified, date.



So, what was the point in analysing my life story for you all? 

Well, apart from never romanticise anything if you want to avoid disappointment, I want to show you that Oxbridge is not the be-all and end-all. If it isn't right for you, that does not matter. I found the perfect university for me, with a great course and a location that I got to know and love: and it isn't even Russell Group! But I also want you to learn from this. Use this as a guide to how not to go about choosing a university and warning signs to look out for.


I hope this post was in some-way helpful.

I'll get back on to something with a bit more point soon, I just needed to get these thoughts off my mind first.

June xx

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