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Ah what a year eh?! Brexit and Trump is obviously the headline of the year, but beyond that what has happened? Well, to reflect on my year, major changes have happened in my life in all sorts of ways. I finished my A Levels and headed off to university to study history. This has been the biggest thing in my year and caused me to over come all sorts of hurdles and this will form the majority of this post...

I am not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination. I see myself more as an ambivert leaning towards introversion. Yes I am, when you first meet me, shy, of few words, quiet, and yet I can be massively extroverted and loud once you get to know me and I feel comfortable within my surroundings. University for me was where all the extroverts of the world lived, the party goers, the alcohol bathers, the loud people. A situation I could never see myself being happy in, let alone enjoying! This means I have been terrified of going for as long as it became something in my foreseeable future. However, 4 months down the line of starting and I can honestly call university some of the most enjoyable months of my life so far. I have already made friends I hope I will still know 50 years down the line from now and have never laughed so often and so hard! University forced me to face my fears head on, from encountering new situations on a daily basis to calling up companies on the phone to sort out issues, because the parents are no longer there to take on my responsibilities for me. I mean I was sorting out a problem with M.A.C. customer services the other day, something I could not have done 4 months ago! I have also got train travel down to a T having had to use it so much in the past term. One day I'll get round to writing a guide to university for non-drinkers/non-extroverts, but I probably need to have completed my first year before being 'qualified' to talk about these things haha - look out for that next summer and start sending me your questions and fears you want me to address in the mini-series! 

My other achievement of the year was starting this blog! I have wanted my own online creative beauty outlet (if that's what you want to call it) since I was 11 and first discovered the world of the online beauty community on YouTube (something I am considering going into next year - YouTubeing that is), so watch this space! While it may still be early days and I haven't got an publish routine etc going yet because I'm trying to work out how to balance it with uni work, I have loved having an outlet for all my ideas :) I also got a new phone for Christmas (the Moto G4 FYI) so look out for slightly better photo quality haha!


And who's to forget that this was the year of Potter?? With an amaaazing new film (which I only saw the other day (hangs head in shame) and an announced 4 more to come I am so hyped for more potter filled years! And on my last day of term I won tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child through the Friday Forty giveaway on only my 2nd attempt!!!! Ohmydays it was the best thing ever!! I won't give away any spoilers obviously, but the special effects are incredible, the theatre itself is beautiful and gah! I loved every second. If you are lucky enough to get seats in the stalls like I was (as the Friday Forty Tickets are reduced best seats), then the experience is heightened further. If you've seen it, you know what I mean :) I really hope that they release a DVD of it in the next couple of years so everyone gets the opportunity to see it as well as read it :)

So here's to focussing on the positives of such a weird year!

What were the highlights of your 2016? Lets have a natter in the comments 😊

Happy New Year!

June xx

So, party season's coming up, whether it be Christmas or going clubbing in town with your mates,
here are 3 eye makeup looks, that take 10 minutes max to achieve aimed, at all abilities :)

Look 1: All Over Bronze

Difficulty: Easy

Look 2: Smokey Glitter

Difficulty: Much harder than the other two, depends on how comfortable you are using eyeliner, and will take up the full 10 minutes.

May I introduce to you the best eyeliner I have ever done in my life!! Inspired by the eyeliner look Sam uploaded on PixiWoo this week (although I was planning on creating a look like this anyway), this is ideal for those whose eyeliner gets accidentally too thick when trying to even it out and can go with any lip colour you want!

Lip Colour: Rimmel Apocalips in 304 Eclipse

Lip Colour: Discontinued (or at least since repackaged) H&M Lipstick in Love That Red.  Any true red is a dupe for this (i.e. not cool (blue) or warm (orange) toned)

Lip Colour: Rimmel Apocalips in 600 Nude Eclipse

To create this I took my trusty Soap and Gory Supercat Pen Liquid Eyeliner in Black. I started by mapping out the wing drawing a line as a continuation of my lower lash line. I then created a wing from this line by drawing a line from near the top of the line to somewhere along the inner ⅓ of my lash line (I normally finish in the middle of my lash line so this will thicken the wing). To fill in the wing as I drew that second line I used the edge of the pen, not the tip - I will do a video on this one day by the way because this is so hard to explain :) - and then went back with the tip of the pen to fill in any gaps. Using the tip of the pen I followed the inner lash line, extending it past my tear duct until it was in line with the bottom of my tear duct where I then connected the liner to my lower lash line. This creates the pointed inner corner that I went back and filled in. I then took a black pencil eyeliner (in this case, my favourite Estée Lauder Pure Color Intense Kajal Eyeliner in 01 Intense Black) and placed it in my water line, smudging it onto my lower lash line so the pencil smoothly joined the base of the liquid liner cat flick. TaDa! You're done.

My base makeup stayed the same for all three looks:

Primer: I didn't use primer as I was wearing this to photograph, not to actually go out in - hence the jumper. However, a good primer and/or setting spray is essential to help your makeup last all night :)
Foundation: Nars Sheer Glow
Powder: Rimmel Stay Matte
Concealer: Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer over the top of the concealers in the MUA Conceal and Brighten Kit
Eye Primer: MUA Pro-Base Eye Primer
Mascara: Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara (waterproof version)
Contour/blush colour: Benefit eyeshadow in Soft Shoulder
Brow Powder: Shade 3 in Avon's Tiger Eye's Palette (discontinued as limited edition, yet to find a dupe, let me know if you know of one cause I don't know what I'm gunna do when I run out 😭)
Brow Gel: Collection Colour Lash Mascara in 1. Clear

I know I'm late on the bandwagon (or what ever the phrase is) here, but I am finally the owner of the much raved about, very beautiful Fortune Favours the Brave Palette by Make Up Revolution and BritishBeautyBlogger. It comes with a mix of 30 matte, shimmery and baked shades and costs just £9.99 (with free shipping if you get it at Superdrug with your Health and Beauty card- gotta save your mulla as a student haha). This means each shades is costing you just 33p! The pans are smaller than usual (see comparison with my thumb below) but this is probably to keep costs down and to fit them all in a non-huge palette. Although it is a little bigger than usual, it is not as big as, say, a Morphe 350 palette, meaning that it is a great palette to take with you on your travels - the colour range means you can create loads of different looks without having to pack a tonne of makeup :) As you can see, the colour range runs from light pinks to purples, blues, greens and browns as well as highlight shades. 

Back of the outer packaging (box) (the front of the box is the same as the inner main palette's cover below) Front of the packaging (it's so beautiful!!) Back of Packaging

I love that all the shadows were given names, as far as I'm aware Makeup Revolution don't normally name their shades... It makes it so much easier to refer to shades as a blogger, provided I don't loose the plastic sheet with them on... Also, note how small the pans are in contrast to my thumb. They are smaller than regular pans, but ah well :)

Artsy photo cause blogger 😂

Now what is the all important pigmentation like you ask?? Well maybe because it was super hyped about I was expecting it to be better than it is, especially as I have the Iconic 3 Palette so can compare it against other Revolution palettes. The colours are a bit hit and miss in some areas, and to get the best payoff, as always, you will need to use a primer, or at least moisten the lid area in some way, for instance by using concealer on the lid if you don't own primer. Originally I wanted to swatch each colour on my eyelid with and without primer but when I tried I quickly remembered that my terrible phone camera doesn't do the colours justice... Instead I've done a couple of examples so you can see what I was getting at, as well as some arm swatches. Note about arm swatches. 1) to keep it as even as possible I applied with the same brush each time (removing as much of the previous product as possible) and brushed the brush in each pan 4 times before switching onto my arm using the same amount of pressure each time(this sounds like my A Level biology coursework XD). 2) You can apply a lot more pressure with the brush when applying them to your arm than on your eye hence the fact the pigmentation looks out of this world. Believe me when I say that when it comes to applying onto your lid, they will not look as good as they look on your forearm.

Swatches of every shade, laid out as they come in the palette so you can workout what every colour is. This picture is every shadow applied with a primer underneath. By comparing this to the swatches on my eyelids, you can see what I was getting at about how misleading they are about the colour intensity of the shadows.

Swatches without primer. As you can see with the darker shades, there is little difference in the shade intensity - but when on the eyelid the difference is massive. The lighter colours do benefit from the addition of a primer though. One thing I was impressed by was the black shadow- it's the one I accidentally smudged. Look at how intense the colour was post smudging; some poorer quality eyeshadows can look intense then disappear when smudged to nothing. Good work Makeup Revolution!

Shimmer eyeshadow (I think I used Brave) No primer on the right, with primer on the left. Look at how less patchy and more intense the colour is on the left - I know my poor camera quality makes it hard to see, but believe me, the difference was considerably more noticeable in comparison to on my forearm in real life.

To give you an idea what the matte and baked shadows are like. The blue is the baked shadow skylight which I'm really not a fan of- for me the blue is too bright (or at least doesn't go with my skin tone) and the gold doesn't go; I would have preferred a bronze shimmer. The matte shade on the right is Latte if I remember correctly. I was really impressed with this shade. Normally mattes struggle in palettes but it applied and blended really easily :)

Here are some looks I created with the palette while playing with it in the last week. I created a neutral pink look, a blue look (that looks quite grey. I don't know why, potentially because I took it after wearing it for a few hours cause I forgot to wear it straight away) and a green look (which was surprisingly my favourite haha). The glitter on the centre of my lids faded quite fast, which I have come to notice with a lot of drugstore eyeshadows after Sam of PixiWoo pointed it out in her high end v highstreet videos. They don't crease too badly (although the blue look did more than the other two), I use the MUA Pro-Base Primer if you're interested, which was quite surprising and a nice bonus :) My lids aren't that oily but eyeshadow does generally crease by the end of the day...

I don't know what this pose is XD. I keep finding myself pouting since watching Candice on Bake Off and I don't know why haha. Anyways, this was created using some of the green shadows. And I don't even know what's going on with my hair, it doesn't like to lie flat 😂

This was a blue look, but looked much greyer by the time I remembered to photograph it a few hours later... Worth noting from this picture though that the centre of the lids had one the of the bronze/gold shadows on and that after a few hours it had completely faded off - lets play Where's Wally but with the bronze shadow on my lids haha

A pinky, bronze look. A bit more day time friendly than the other two looks I created. Definitely something I'll be reaching for in the spring time!

So overall, how would I rate this palette?? Pigmentation wasn't as amazing as expected from the hype but still good once I got used to the palette. I have never used baked shadows before so don't know how comparable they are to others on the market, but they aren't my favourite shades in the palette although they look beautiful in the palette - New World looks like marble😍. The greens and purples are probably winners for me personally and I know I will be hitting pan on them before long bwahaha. Please don't even attempt to use the brush. It is the WORST brush I have ever used in my life. Honestly. it does nothing and the flat brush fails to pick up any product at all. I'm keeping it for special effects work cause I can afford to ruin it haha.

Pigmentation: ★★★☆
Lasting Quality: ★★★★
Colour range: ★★★★★
Value for Money: ★★★★☆

(☆= half a star fyi)

Hope you enjoyed my FIRST EVER review. I would love feedback about how I can improve these, what you would like to know about products I review in the future, so please leave constructive criticism in the comments below.

Have you ever tried the palette? What did you think of it? Or have I tempted you to buy it? Lets have a natter in the comments section :)

June xx

disclaimer: I was not paid to feature this product by anyone. I bought this with my own money and it was my own decision to review it. Neither am I a fan of the blog "BritishBeautyBlogger" meaning I don't feel obliged to love this palette as a fan of the creator of it. In fact, to show my ignorance of the blogging world, I had never heard of her before this palette.